All about GDPR with Sean Rogers of My Legal Club - 10 Minute Highlight

What does it mean for small business owners in the UK right now and how is it potentially affecting them as we speak?

A lot of the rules in essence that were brought in are pretty similar to things that were in place. Anyway, the problem was that the Data Protection act wasn't really being enforced. It wasn't as public, I suppose in essence didn't really serve its purpose. And everyone knows everyone them, haven't they, the cold calls. I'm a practicing solicitor. I grew up I suppose in the law in the northwest doing claims and civil litigation. We all know about the, you know, the cold call on ppi, rta. Everyone's at them. So everyone can completely understand why data was of such importance at that level and cold call and nuisance calls. But then at the other end of the scale, and you're seeing stuff come out in the press today about Amazon, Google, loads of stuff to do with private health services, data being sold, information being sold and everything's gone on with Cambridge analytics, all sorts of stuff.

The Boost Hospitality podcast. We're in season seven, episode eight and today we're talking about gdpr. Before we start, I want to thank the podcast sponsors hostfully help you design digital guidebooks that will wow your guests. Check out Paula Butler's Cockington Cottages. She's been using them and she's told me personally that her guests have commented on how good her her guidebook is. Now you can go get started for free with one guidebook. When you want to upgrade, make sure you hit boostly 2M into the promo code for 2 months free. Now onto this episode. Here's what we're going to talk about today. I've got Sean Rogers from my legal club. My legal club is a fantastic new service that is a one stop shop for all of your legal and accountancy services. Shaun is a very clever guy and he's on the ball and on the point with all things gdpr. He's going to introduce himself a bit more about my legal club and we're going to delve into the topics which is some of the core basics that you need to be doing a year on since it become law in UK and Europe. We're going to talk about emails, talk about your website, make sure you stick around to the end because they are doing a free assessment for your business for everything GDPR related. So go to boostle.co.uk mylegalclub to check out more about the free assessment. Really happy to feature him on there. Sean's a great guy and I really recommend you check IT out in full. As always, please make sure you rate, review and subscribe without further ado. Please sit back and relax.

Yep. My name's Sean Rogers, I'm based in Merseyside. Currently I'm in London waiting for my train home this evening. I founded a company called My Legal Club. We are soon to be launching three other services. So we have My Legal Club which is like a B2C, so personal, individual, one stop, shop for legal solutions. In essence, any issues in your personal life, cover everything, divorce, probate, conveyancing, you name it. We also then have a number of business offerings where we have the Business Services Club that's free to use and any businesses that need anything, working capital and accountant, web design, graphic design, insurance, ELPL Insurance, you name it. We try and service every business need with an accredited panel. I know myself having a beauty parade of all the services you need for any business can be difficult, time consuming. So we put together an accredited panel of ours which we think deliver a great sweet spot on service and product so people can get free more obligation quotes via the Business Services Club. And then we'll be launching an employee benefits product and we'll also be launching a business legal solution called the Business Legal Club for any HR needs. We're looking to provide some GDPR support and solutions within the Business Service club.

What does it mean for small business owners in the UK right now and how is it potentially affecting them as we speak?

A lot of the rules, in essence that were brought in are pretty similar to things that were in place. Anyway, the problem was that the Data Protection act wasn't really being enforced and it wasn't as public, I suppose, in essence didn't really serve its purpose and everyone knows everyone. The cold calls. I'm a practising solicitor. I grew up, I suppose, in the law in the Northwest doing claims and civil litigation. We all know about the, you know, the cold call on ppi, rta, everyone's at them. So everyone can completely understand why data was of such importance at that level and cold call and nuisance calls. But then at the other end of the scale, and you're seeing stuff come out in the press today about Amazon, Google, loads of stuff to do with private health services, data being sold, information being sold and everything's gone on with Cambridge analytics, all sorts of stuff, really.

What I want to dial down to is maybe two of the most important places. As we're sort of talking on a marketing point of view, we're going to focus on website and emails. Now, obviously there's a couple more avenues to go down. But I guess if anybody wants to find out more, come to my legal club and you can do that. But let's just focus on two things then. Website. Let's focus on there, Dial down on there. To start off with what is the most essential thing that everybody needs to be doing if you've got a website in to be compliant with the gdpr.

First thing I would say in relation to any website nowadays is Google for SEO purposes, likes websites that are secure. You can get things like SSL certificates that are really, really cheap peanuts. Google likes them. That's where you'll get the green padlock in a browser. So you go on websites that are nice and secure. That's what you'll get. If you use quality companies with really good products and software within them for cybersecurity and so forth, then that's your starting point for your website. And I think with SEO Google being so important, it's a no brainer to go through that strategy. So if you're not already done that, I'd have a chat with whoever you host your website with and look at getting your SSL certificate and check what protection measures they have in place there. I think your starting point would be to make sure that your privacy policy. So I think in your terms of use, you can explain a little bit in there about you want people to use the website and do it in layman's terms really are best almost avoiding the law. In terms of the way that you explain this and that is part of the regulations, it's really important that lay people can read this to give you.

A bit of an insight in how short stay accommodation works. 99% of the time, everybody that's watching this or has has a business, whether it's an Airbnb, a hotel, a guest house, rental accommodation, it will be linked up to a third party, a property management system. Most popular ones free to book, Book alert Avivo these are some of the big guys and all the payments are taken through there. So all of these guys are already got their compliance in place. So what you're saying in essence is just make sure that whatever data is on your website is the same that is being sent to these PMSs, so to speak. Is that sort of what we're saying?

Yes. You use my legal club as an example. You know, I don't hide anything like that. If you go on the homepage, you'll see we were closely with Commodore Security for SSL certificates. We use Salesforce as our CRM system and we integrate that with go cardless. You know, we're on a sort of go cardless direct debit system. So in our terms of use, we basically explain we don't hold our card details. The membership information that you sign up for, we have to use that because we use WooCommerce as one of, one of our commercial partners. So, yes, 100%. I would make sure on your website you explain all these things because remember, when people are. I think people are incredibly nervous about this over the next year because of the stories that are going to come out in the press. Morrison's going through an appeal at the moment to do with the GDPR issue. As I say, when news breaks about this other organization that have lost passports.

Utility bills, we touched upon it and I just want to circle back to it. That SSL certificate is key as a starting point for a potential guest arriving on your website. If they land on it, Google now will have a top thing at the top left hand corner of the screen saying not secure. They click on that, it will say, if you enter your information on here, it could be sensitive to hackers. You know, for a guest experience point of view, if you're thinking like a customer point of view, who in their right mind would continue to go down the route of giving any sense of information through you, they'll bounce and they'll go to booking.com, they'll go to Airbnb, and then you're losing your direct booking, which is what we're all about here. It's like cutting down the reliance on booking.com or Airbnb, getting them into your website and making that book. And so Sean's just given some fantastic little start off points there and you may be thinking, shit, that is a lot to go through, but just focus on SSL certificate, making sure you've got a privacy policy and just being super transparent. Whatever you do, don't just copy and paste what you see on one of these massive websites, because that's not how we do it. Quick question then. Any tools or any apps or anything that you could recommend? Any standard stock policies, do you have that in my legal club, Anything that anybody can get hold of if they're thinking, I need to sort of get a bit of help on this before going into anything.

It's always worth dedicating half an hour to do some research yourself. That's the most important.