269 – Legal Safeguards for Entrepreneurs: In-Depth with Sarah Waldbuesser

Karen Yankovich 0:00
Hello, and welcome to the good girls get rich podcast. This is episode number 269. And I’m your host, Karen Yankovich. And I’m excited to have Sarah Waldbuesser here with us today. And what I’m excited about for today’s topic is, first of all, as I was researching what I was going to do with this show with Sarah, I realized that I have not done this in 269 episodes, which is crazy, because it’s such an important topic. And it’s, you know, one of these things like I want you to be you know, if you’re if you’re, if this is not the first time you listen to this show, you know, my mission in this world is to that’d be more wealthy women in the world. Women with money can change the world. So as we build our businesses, and as we build our impact and our influence our income, we also want to be smart about it right. And that’s why I’m excited to have Sarah here today. Because Sarah is a an attorney. So Sarah comes to she is Sarah Walb user Esquire. She’s an attorney for coaches and online business owners. And after a few years at a law firm and a few career jumps, she ended up falling in love with our online business, and loves helping entrepreneurs achieve their dreams and a smart and protected way. She’s also an adventurer, a traveler, a food and a wine lover. And when she’s not at her computer, she loves hanging out with her two little kiddos, having wine with friends, flying around the globe and connecting with other online business owners all things that sound like sounds amazing to me. So, Sarah, thank you so much for being here today. And, you know, shame on me for not bringing this topic sooner to my audience, because I think it’s so important. And as I was reading through your stuff, I’m like, Oh my gosh, I need to do half the things she’s talking about. And we haven’t even started talking yet. So

thanks for being here.

Sarah Waldbuesser 1:34
Yeah. Thanks for having me. Hey, it’s better late than never. Yeah,

Karen Yankovich 1:37
yeah. You know, it’s so interesting, because, you know, as an online, I mean, my journey I’ll speak for myself, my journey as an online entrepreneur, especially in certainly in the beginning, was like bootstrapping things, right? Like, what can I do? You only need a contract? Where do I find a contract? Let me Google and find a contract. Let me Google and find this. Like, let me find this. We’re talking to your friends and saying, Hey, I need to quickly I need a contract for this. Do you have one I can modify, right? But as your business grows, we got to remember to change that stuff, right? We got to remember to, to be to pay attention to that stuff. Right? So tell me a little bit about your journey. Because I can tell you, I have a few attorney friends and none of them are happy. Like I don’t think a single one of them are saying I love being an attorney, and fighting family law cases or fighting or litigating. They’re all like, what’s my next chapter? Right? So tell me a little bit about your journey. Yeah,

Sarah Waldbuesser 2:27
absolutely. I love that because I have some attorney friends as well. And many of them are also not happy. Um, so you know, like most and not like most, but I first went to law school for two reasons. One, I didn’t know what else to do. You know, when I graduated college, many decades ago, it was people you still at that point where like, one career, you had to pay long career, right, you were doing for 4050 years, and I just had no idea what that might be. And so I was like, well, I’ll just go to law school, because I’m sure I’ll figure out something. I just wanted to help people. And I was like, you know, lawyers can help people. And so I thought I might do something like human rights law. You know, I have a huge interest in travel and international stuff. But like many people, I got sucked into those high paychecks coming out of law school. So I ended up working for a law firm in Washington, DC. And I knew I knew pretty quickly within the jumping into the fire. Yeah, exactly. I knew quickly within, I would say six months that that just wasn’t for me, I I didn’t love the long hours. Of course, I had no desire to kind of be in the corner office and make partner and do all this stuff. So I stuck it out for about two years. But after that, I kind of had another career. I went back for a master’s in public health. I worked in international, worked with international health treaties and kind of brought in legal and public health policy, and was able to travel because again, that’s that’s a recurring theme. It’s a passion of mine. And it was great for a while, I did get to travel for work, but then I spent many months out of every year sitting in a windowless office writing government reports that nobody probably ever read, and was about 10 years ago, where I, you know, just wanted more I was supposed to, I was in this great city, and I had great friends and I was supposed to have my dream career. And I just wasn’t happy. So I started Googling things like work and travel trip, like I own the only career I could think of was like a travel agent and Right, right. So I was like, what else is there and I stumbled upon a podcast of these two guys that were running a business from their laptop, they were living in Bali, this was like 2011 2012 and it like hit me like lightning of like, wow, people. You can do this now. And they were offering I have a course and on a tropical island in the Philippines on how to start your first online business. So I lost my job and cash in my 401k, much to the chagrin of my parents, right. And I went, and I started my first online business. And actually, at the beginning, I really fought doing anything legal because I didn’t like being a lawyer. So I was like, How can I, I’m not gonna like this. I don’t want to do it, right. But my first business was called the bootstrap lawyer. And I definitely had some like, in betweens, between that and where we are today with destination legal. But what I found during that time period of starting this first business, I was doing some consulting, I was traveling the world that is digital nomad. And I just kept meeting so many online business owners who had legal questions, once they found out I was attorney, you know, it opened the floodgates of exactly what you were just saying, like, you know, I Googled this and what’s what contract do I need? And what about a privacy policy? And so, you know, that’s how destination legal was born. And I will say like, even though I admit I don’t love talking about privacy policies all day, but I do love what legal does for people and what it does for yes, I would love that, especially women, because I agree with you, the more wealthy women, the more happy women doing what they love, the better off we all are. And so I think of my contribution in that is the legal piece and making sure people are protected, have the right contracts, right? Trademarks, right terms, because with legal in business, it’s not a matter of if it’s when you will run into a legal issue. So that’s kind of the short story of how destination legal was formed. You

Karen Yankovich 6:44
know, that’s so interesting, because I actually just had, before we recorded this, I had a call with our I run a 12 week program called she’s linked up that is, supports women entrepreneurs in kind of building relationships and building their brand. And there was one woman on the call who was struggling a little bit with, I know how to do this, I do this really well, but my heart is over here. But I know I can do this. And I don’t know where she’s gonna land yet, to be honest. But what I what I said to her is, we’re not really thinking about the journey, because at the end of the work you do with these, these people that you already know you can serve, is that transformation is what lights you up, right? It’s not, you know what I mean? So that’s so exactly what you just said, and I’m certainly not advocating for do a business that you hate, and then just be happy at the end result. Not saying that at all. But maybe sometimes there’s a happy medium. And it’s always a good place, when you know the the name good girls get rich, really comes down to the, in my mind, what that really means is do what you’re good at. And, and and stay there. And don’t let people tell you not to do that, because that’s where the abundance comes in. And sometimes we feel like we need to do things that are hard, right to, to be able to, you know, build that wealth we really want to build but what you’re saying is, I know how to do this, even though the this itself doesn’t necessarily jazz me up. But the results of all of that and the women that I get to change their lives, I get to transform as a result of it is what Jazz’s me up, if I’m hearing you correctly,

Sarah Waldbuesser 8:12
I love that it’s so true. And like, you know, one of my first trademarks that I ever registered was protect your passion, because I love working with people that are passionate about what they do. But I think you that is such a great point. And it is something I’ve struggled with, because I’m like, you know, sometimes we get sucked into Instagram and seeing business owners just living these amazing lives and everything is perfect. And they love what they do every minute of the day. Right? We know that that is not always true. But I have had to tweak my mindset around that because exactly what you said, I am good at it. It is needed and valuable. And so I look at it from the perspective of what I my contribution to the world. And you know, I think if I had some other desire to like be a chef or you know, whatever, that I would maybe follow that. But honestly, I can’t think of anything better than helping women run businesses and protecting their brands and making sure they’re keeping their sales and it provides me the freedom and flexibility that I know, we all want as business owners.

Karen Yankovich 9:21
Oh, that’s so beautiful. All right. So let’s start with the crummy stuff. What are mistakes you see a lot of business owners making when you when they bring you in? What are some of the most common mistakes that that we’re making?

Sarah Waldbuesser 9:34
Yeah, absolutely. So I think the obviously one of the biggest mistakes is just ignoring legal. I think it isn’t the most sexy, I know that it’s kind of like legal and money in taxes or like, we don’t want to think about it. But that is a mistake. And no. I think one of the awesome things about legal and maybe you can attest to this is once you have the right templates or contracts and terms in place. You do feel more are confident and empowered in your business? And so as long as you don’t, there’s always this little thing in the back of your mind of like, am I gonna get in trouble? Am I gonna get sued? Or am I gonna lose money? And so one mistake is just kind of ignoring it and pretending that it’s not there. Because as I said before, it’s just a matter of when it’s not if something will happen. Well, we all you know, I think the other mistake is, everyone wants to think 100% of their clients are just the most amazing people and 99% of them will be, but I can promise 1% are gonna cause you a problem. And that’s when you want to have something legal to refer back to. So I would say just in not implementing soon enough. The other mistake is also what you said at the beginning, like googling for contracts, we call these ranking contracts, because they’re, like, pieced together, and you have no idea if it’s protecting you or not. Right, right. Right. You don’t know what you don’t know, borrowing a contract from someone, which couldn’t be copyright infringement. And you could get in trouble with whoever, you know, Attorney drafted contract or something like that. So you know, borrowing, copying, like really not stepping up as the CEO was a business owner, and buying, you know, your contracts or templates from a trusted source, I would say, that’s another big mistake that people make.

Karen Yankovich 11:20
Oh, gosh, I hope everybody’s listening to this, or whoever’s listening, I can’t wait to hear how you can help us with this. Okay, so are there any other mistakes that that you see a lot that we should be focusing on, like, let’s just get rid of all that, let’s get this all out of the way. So we can talk about the good stuff.

Sarah Waldbuesser 11:35
So legal, I like to talk about legal kind of as a toolbox, because it’s something that you add to as your business grows, or almost like a stepladder, like at the very beginning, when you’re just starting out. Most business owners, if you’re a service provider, you know, a coach or product you might just be offering, like one thing, like maybe you’re doing a one on one service or one on one coaching. And then to at that point, you really only need your one on one contract. But as you grow, and as your business grows, you’re going to need to add on things to that. So something I see is, you know, you might have a one on one contract, but then you release a membership site or an online course, will you need terms of purchase for that, right? Anytime. You know, a good blanket rule is like anytime you’re paying somebody, or someone is paying you, you need some kind of contract in place. So whether that’s, you know, terms of purchase for a group program, or course, a service provider contract for hiring people, or retreat contract for hosting a retreat, you know, when you’re doing anything in person, your liability, just UPS UPS up. And so, you know, an affiliate program partnership, again, anytime money is involved, you want some legal protection there. So that’s just a good rule of thumb to keep in mind and not to get overwhelmed. Again, it’s like a toolbox, you don’t need everything at the beginning. But as you grow, you want to add on to it. The other big thing is not protecting your brand with trademarks. And this is something that can be a little bit overwhelming, but like so awesome trademarks, you know, I will praise them forever, because of what they do for your business, meaning they actually allow you to own your brand name, they it gives you so much power in your industry, nobody else can use something similar. And so something I see a lot is people not trademarking at all. And then one of two things happens one, they they have built a brand, not a name they don’t own. And so that’s like, you know, it’s basically like driving around seeing an empty house and just setting up shop there. And then all of a sudden, the family comes home from vacation, right? So if you don’t own it, and you’re investing all this money, you can lose it at any time because somebody else could get the trademark and then you’d have to stop and rebrand which can be really disappointing for people and so not

Karen Yankovich 13:55
more expensive than the trademark in the first place. So not doing

Sarah Waldbuesser 14:00
that not even thinking about trademarking and not doing the research before naming your business or your program. So, even if you’re not going to get a trademark, it’s still a good idea to make sure it’s not trademark where you invest a lot of time and money. Right? Oh, such

Karen Yankovich 14:17
and so important. Okay, so, so where do people start? Like if I am, you know, if I’m a business owner, I’m growing my business, especially like if I am you know, I’ve had this side hustle. And now I’m stepping more deeply into it. And I really wanted to be a full time business. I want to be making quarter million dollars half a million dollars a year with this, you know, top line income in this business. What are the first things I should be doing?

Sarah Waldbuesser 14:39
Yeah, so the first two things are, you want to make sure you have a contract in place for any services that you’re offering. So like that’s number one, even before you become an LLC or anything like that, making sure you’re not offering services and opening yourself up to liability without a single contract in place. It’s like that’s the number one most important thing, because that’s what keeps you out of court. And so after that, it just again, it depends what you’re doing. So if you have a website, there are certain things that you have to have that are legally required in the US in most countries, like a privacy policy, if you don’t have this, on every page of your website, or any page where you’re collecting emails, you could get fined, your Facebook ads won’t be approved. So there’s things like that website, Terms of Service. So getting your website protected. And then a contract for you know, your one on one services is typically that starting place, within the first year, six months to a year, it is a good idea to incorporate as an LLC, and there’s a couple you know, you can do it at any time. You certainly can do it at the beginning, there’s no harm in that it does make some things easier, you can get a you get your EIN number from the IRS, you can you get your business bank account, clear accounting, and having an LLC offers legal protection because it separates your business assets from your personal assets. So it’s a great thing to have. But what I find is, people get intimidated because they don’t want to do it. And so then they just stop with their business thinking I have to be an LLC, you really don’t you can be a sole proprietor for a little bit and becoming a, you know, an LLC, you can do it yourself,

Karen Yankovich 16:21
I would just say I think I did that myself, I did that. And the EIN myself, it was really pretty simple.

Sarah Waldbuesser 16:26
Yeah, go, don’t go to LegalZoom like you just Google Secretary of State and actually, whatever state you’re in, we have a product called Happy Hour, your LLC, which is just like 20 bucks, it’s just a guide on how to do it go to Secretary of State, here’s what you type in, go to the IRS, here’s how you get your EIN, because there really is something that you can do. And I think people get intimidated by that. Well, I

Karen Yankovich 16:52
want to go back a second to the contract, because I’m not disputing one for one second, that the importance of a contract Anytime somebody’s paying you for something. But what I do see different flavors of and I personally have different flavors of or have had different flavors of this over the years is when to actually get that contract signed. So you know, the marketer in me, and and because I focus a lot on women who we are the Queen’s of second guessing ourselves, you know what I mean? So the marketer of me is not looking to put any roadblocks between the Yes, and the credit card. You don’t I mean, not because I’m trying to trick anybody into doing it, we have a very low if almost no refund rate, right. That being said, I want you to make that decision, I want to just I just want to be able to do it for you change your mind and take decide to pay your kids lacrosse camp instead, you know what I mean? Instead of investing in yourself, right? So what we do now, and maybe this is not the way we should do it, we do that. And then the next thing that happens is they get the next day or whatever, they’ll get a contract, and then they sign it and send it back. And we have, I’m gonna say we have 100% success rate doing that. But there’s a part of me that always thinks, should I be getting the contract? Before I get the credit card? Does it matter? How much does it matter? We say that how much does that matter

Sarah Waldbuesser 18:07
in question and one that I’ve gotten a lot over the years because I know the importance of closing the deal. And sometimes if you’re on the phone or however. And so it is fine to do it how you’re doing, you know, in a perfect world, we have the contract signed, and then they pay, you know, but in just a you know, a less than perfect world, you know how you’re doing it is fine. Here’s the caveat to that. And you are doing it right. You need you should have it signed within 24 to 48 hours. And then you’re good. The thing is, don’t go out and spend all that money in that sign. Yeah, what can happen is they could get the contract and change their mind. And if they if they haven’t signed a contract yet, you have no policies in place you have, you have no no refund policy in place. So you really would have to give back that money. So just don’t go buy a new couch immediately. Wait until the contract is signed. So that’s the only caveat. And I’ve you said you haven’t run into an issue of some seeing the contract and being like nevermind, but you just want to if you are taking payment upfront, you just want to make sure that it’s signed within 24 to 48 hours, and definitely don’t spend any of that money until the contract is in hand.

Karen Yankovich 19:30
Good advice sounds like really sounds like really, really good advice. Okay, so what about using things like DocuSign or electronic signatures any reason we can’t anything wrong with doing anything like that?

Sarah Waldbuesser 19:38
No, it’s perfect. That’s what we suggest. DocuSign Dropbox sign, you know, there’s a lot of great software these days like dubsado and Satori that allow you to kind of actually do signing of the contract invoicing, scheduling all in one which is amazing. Dropbox, or DocuSign is great because once you sign it party gets a copy. And it’s kind of done. So, yeah, those are all considered, you know, actually, they’re more, you know, that’s what’s used these days, I haven’t, you know, I have to go in person next week and sign some, you know, documents for my family with a notary and stuff. And who does that anyway? No,

Karen Yankovich 20:20
I know, it’s so it’s so true. So I have a friend who’s an attorney, and I had another friend who was buying a buying house, and they needed something, they needed me to sign something as a reference for her, and they needed an original signature. And she’s like, I need you to sign it and fax it to me. I’m like, fax it to you. What do I go to, like, 19? Ad? Like, how do I, you know, like, how do I do that? So I basically like because I know Tech, I basically was able to sign it with my apple pen and a different color, and be able to email it to them. Like it looked like she was like, I said to them, they were she was like, Wow, I’m like, Yeah, they were in Florida. I was in New Jersey, you know, but and it was, you know, done. But it’s so funny how I feel like the legal world is like the last world to come around to the fact that fax machines don’t exist anymore, you know, and so funny.

Sarah Waldbuesser 21:04
And, you know, I, some lawyers, I’m definitely not what I’m like, well send emails and then follow in hardcopy, yes,

Karen Yankovich 21:13
yes. But the problem was that I had an attorney that did that. And the problem with that is you stop you opening things, and then you miss things, because it’s just you’re just getting diluted by stuff. Right. So yeah, that’s crazy. So thank you for being an attorney that doesn’t do that as being on the other side of that. I appreciate attorneys that understand that. I have another question for you. Because but I do want to move to trademarks. Before we get to that, you know, one of the one of the one of the things that I kind of take as a reality of being an entrepreneur, but maybe shouldn’t be, you know, we live in a we live in a world right now where everything’s disputable, right? And if somebody what I hear from almost every entrepreneur I know is you’re not going to win the dispute refund the money if people want their money back, like even and I can I can think of one, I think of what the situation was. But I can think of one time where like, somebody Wait, this was years ago, but somebody had asked for their money back about something. And I Oh, no, I know what it was I had, oh, anyway, doesn’t matter. It was it was years ago, I had documentation on top of documentation and lack of documentation that contracts were signed and emails were signed. And this was said, and that was it. And frankly, you just don’t I just You just don’t when that stuff. Right. And I and so is there a way that we can know that we want to I don’t want I want people that join my program to be a hell yes. I am not looking to keep people’s money that are not interested in being there. I really am not. That being said, once I’ve started putting out money and paying my team to support you and things like that, it’s hard for me to read, it’s hard for me to say yes to a refund. How can we minimize that? Or can we minimize that?

Sarah Waldbuesser 22:42
Yeah, it’s a good question. It’s a hard one. Because some, you know, again, this is not going to be the 99%. But the the 1%, who put up a stake, and it really depends on the situation. So if they if they do a chargeback, you know, even if you show all the contracts and all the information you still might lose, although I still I’ve seen people when chargebacks once they show the delivery of the program, they show the contract to stripe or the credit card company. So, you know, that’s kind of situational. If they’re just asking for a refund. And, you know, I guess it’s different. So are they asking for a refund? Or have they stopped making payments that they contractually? Oh, so these are two

Karen Yankovich 23:26
different light, then that’s another good question. Because I don’t I don’t know, I shouldn’t probably say this publicly. But I haven’t I don’t even go after that. Because yeah, they go through and it’s just not worth it to me.

Sarah Waldbuesser 23:36
Yeah. So if you have a strong no refund policy in place, and someone is asking for a refund, it’s within your legal rights to say no, you agreed to this, we delivered what we said we would, that’s the end of it. If they you know, if they tried to come and get that money, they would probably lose if you went through arbitration or something like that, assuming you could show that you delivered your product right. So but I will also say your contract is your starting point. So it’s your it’s up to you as the business owner to enforce it or not. If someone is asking for a refund and you know, maybe they have a sob story and you feel bad and you want to give a partial or full refund that’s up to you to do so those are pretty situational. On the other side, when if they owe you payments. And they agreed to let’s say a six month contract and for months and they’ve they’ve ghosted you, there’s a couple things that you can do. And again, it’s just how much of your time and money is it worth it? Like for $700? Maybe not for $7,000? Maybe so write a couple things. First, you can send, you know, a nice email and hey, like, here’s the here’s the contract. This is what you still owe. You know, do you need a more extended payment plan? Do we need to pause it like some people prefer to try to work with it and see what, yep, that doesn’t work, you can send a demand letter which either you could have an attorney send or it’s just more strongly worded like, here’s what you owe, here are the dates that you owe, you have 10 days, or we may take further legal action. And then then you really have two legal actions. One is you could go to collections, and you know, you send a copy of the contract to them, they go after the money, and then they take a percentage of that. Or you could bring a claim. So whether you depending on what your contract says, when you go to small claims court, or bring a claim for arbitration or mediation, typically, you know, if you have a solid contract, they will side with you and get the judgment. So, again, that’s a longer process. So is it going to be worth it? For a right? Okay,

Karen Yankovich 25:49
so I feel like this is gonna go longer than I want it to go. But it’s okay with you. Let’s keep going here. Let’s dive into trademarks. Tell me a little bit about why they’re so important. Yeah,

Sarah Waldbuesser 26:00
absolutely. So a trademark. It basically designates who owns who selling goods and services, right? When you see someone if I’m walking down the street with a white cup with a green circle, you know that I went to Starbucks and I didn’t go to Dunkin Donuts. If I have a shoe with a swoosh on it. You know, it’s Nike and not Reebok. So they exist. So the consumers know who’s selling something. And so in, you know, in the online space, the business world trademarks are everywhere. People have, you know, one or 1000 of them, you know, Kim Kardashian has 700. Amazon has 900. Yeah, so they’re very powerful because they allow you to own the name of your business or brand. Without it. As I said earlier, it’s like building a house on land, you don’t own building a brand without owning it. Because once you have the registered trademark, you can tell someone in your industry not to use that name or something similar. Now, again, it does have to be within your industry. So for example, there’s dove chocolate and Dove soap. Both are registered trademarks. But if I said I had the best piece of dub for lunch today, you would know that I meant chocolate. Right? Right. Right. So they really are powerful in that respect. It’s important. You know, if you ever want to sell your business or sell off pieces of your business, owning that intellectual property, having a trademark is almost a non negotiable. If you’re selling products on Amazon, they have the brand registry that you need to have a trademark for. So it really is just a powerful business asset that as you grow, you want to think about and so you know, I always get asked, What should I trademark? And really, it’s something you know, trademarking is almost more emotional. Because really, you want to trademark those business names that you love, and that you would like, be really upset about if somebody else started using it. So whether that’s your podcast name, your business name, your retreat, name, your group program, your online course, your T shirts that you’re selling, you know, so you really want to think about it that like if you had to stop using something tomorrow, and how would you feel? And that’s when you want to think about, oh, it might be time to protect that

Karen Yankovich 28:17
now, is that something you can do yourself? Or does that something you it’s time to hire an attorney to help you

Sarah Waldbuesser 28:21
with that, so you can do it yourself, but it is time to hire an attorney for that. And here’s why it is pretty it is complicated. There are 45 different classes of goods or services you have to pick right one, you have to describe it the right way, you have to submit a specimen. So people if you try your own at least 50 to 60% fail because they get something wrong, that they would have gotten right with an attorney. I have people come all the time, who tried it themselves or who went to LegalZoom and it’s just a mess. Whereas if you had an attorney from the beginning, it would have been okay, so it’s one of those things like I can fix my toilet but should I right, like so. There are certain things that you want to invest in and trademarking is one of them. Yeah,

Karen Yankovich 29:08
Okay, interesting. What are your thoughts on and I’m and I’m not sure if this is even still a thing anymore, but I know it was for a long time, not being able to use like Entrepreneur Magazine trademarking the word entrepreneur, and so many people can’t use it in their podcasts, can’t use it in their programs can’t use it in their Facebook groups, right? Like, is that still a thing?

Sarah Waldbuesser 29:27
It is still a thing and I wrote a whole blog post on this and

Karen Yankovich 29:31
he will have to send that to me what

Sarah Waldbuesser 29:34
infuriates me that this happened, this is an anomaly. They should never have been able to get that trademark. And the fact that they did and now they’re really going after entrepreneurs, which is like, out of integrity. Right? Right. Right, because their moms are newer and the way newer, like these are not competitors with your magazine.

Karen Yankovich 29:56
Right and your magazines presumably supports these people. Yeah. Exactly so that you are trying to put out of business because they are using the word entrepreneur. It’s like using the word ice cream.

Sarah Waldbuesser 30:05
You know, it infuriates me, It upsets me. But if someone comes to me wanting to trademark printer, I won’t do it. And I tell them there’s no point because they will challenge you. They have the second brakeless law firm like doing this. And it’s really unfortunate. It does upset me. But yeah, it’s still a thing. Sadly.

Karen Yankovich 30:26
Well, I’m sorry. I’m sorry to upset you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to upset you with this. But trademark

Sarah Waldbuesser 30:31
bullies. That’s like a trademark bully is what Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Karen Yankovich 30:35
yeah. Okay, so I want to talk, I want to dive into one last topic here. And it might be it’s maybe it’s a beast, and maybe, you know, maybe it’s not something we can do on this. But talk to me a little bit about AI. Are we right? Like, I have such a love hate relationship with AI? Mostly today. I love it. If a year ago, I was like, Oh, heck, no, I’m not doing this. But there are really what I stand for, like this people that refer to the work that I do is I help people be consistent, but lazy, right. So if there’s a way that I can be, I can be simplify things, by using AI to take some things out of my head that I didn’t, we’re taking me an hour to get to, I’m all down for doing that. But at the same time, I don’t use it to write my stuff. You know, I might use it to give me ideas. Like if I have an idea for a podcast, I might go into AI and say, Okay, this is my thought, what can I say about this? Give me some titles around this. Give me some ideas around this right? And then of course, I make it my own? I think, right? Like I think that’s what I’m doing. But what are yours? It’s such a it’s such a, I feel like it’s new, but it’s an explosion. So it’s a big deal. So tell me a little bit about what you’re where you’re what you’re seeing on that topic.

Sarah Waldbuesser 31:44
Yeah. And it is a big one. And actually, we can also include because I did a blog post on five legal things around AI that will Awesome. Well, you know, I would say I use it too. And I do think it’s a great tool. There are some legal issues around it around copyright around ownership that I think are still being worked out. I would say you’re using it the right way. So use it for ideas, use it as a tool, but don’t cut and paste responses from it. Because for two reasons. One is actually if you do that, technically under Chapter CPTs terms, you have to tell people that it was written by AI. Really, yeah. So it says like, if you’re just you know, taking something from AI and putting it on to the world, you’re supposed to say that. So really, a lot of people don’t realize that.

Karen Yankovich 32:37
I’m thinking about like, maybe bios, right? Like if I go into chat GPT. And I say I’m Karen Yankovich. I’m the host of this podcast, and I do this and I do that blah, blah, blah, write me a 250 word bio.

Sarah Waldbuesser 32:48
Yeah, I think that’s fine. It’s more like if you’re doing entire posts and writing books and papers and things where that’s where they’re consulting. One thing is, with AI, you can never know that it’s original content, because you know, maybe for your bio, because it’s your name, specifically, right. Any other prompts that you put in, technically, someone else could put in the same prompt, so you can’t copyright anything that comes out of AI because to get registered copyright in the US it has to be invented or written created by a human. And so there’s been some challenges around this at the copyright office with AI art and things like that. Still a developing field for sure. I think it has exploded, but I think we’re still at the very beginning. So I’m with you any tools that can make things easier, go for it. But just always put your own spin on it is what I would say. Yeah,

Karen Yankovich 33:50
Okay, interesting. And I’m sure there’s a lot more to happen with that we’ll learn about this over as it just is growing so incredibly fast. Yeah. Which is a little scary. You know, I’m not gonna lie. It’s a little scary.

Sarah Waldbuesser 34:01
Trying to think about it too much.

Karen Yankovich 34:05
Right. There’s something about like, AI. Yeah. Anyway, I don’t even get into it. Because it’s mind boggling. My mind can’t even wrap it around some of the things that that happened, but I do think I do think we want I feel like I want to be conscious of the limitations but but available to the ease it could bring to my life and my business. Right. So I say it’s like it’s your assistant, not your director of marketing. Yeah. Right. Like, yeah, so,

Sarah Waldbuesser 34:30
like your intern. Checking. Right, right. Right, right. I will check everything.

Karen Yankovich 34:37
Sir. This has been so good. So tell me a little bit, you know, I mean, I’m listening. I’m like, I’m in how do I learn more about Sarah, how do I get take the first couple steps to get some help? Because it’s time for me to be able to sleep better at night around the issues in my business?

Sarah Waldbuesser 34:54
Yeah, absolutely. So we’re at destination legal.com And we’re on Instagram Facebook at destination Legal are on LinkedIn you can find me Sarah web user, or destination legal over there. And you know, destination legal really helps people in two ways. One is we have a template shop that has over 30, downloadable, customizable with directions easy to use, like literally from download to use 15 minutes for coaches and business owners and everything from, you know, everything we talked about today. So whether you need a one on one contract your website protections retreat contract terms for our course. It’s all there in the template shop. And then we also offer a done for you full service trademark package. So if you’re listening, and you’re like, oh my gosh, if I had to rebrand tomorrow, I would be devastated. And it’s time to trademark definitely reach out to learn about our package, what is protect your passion. But, you know, we not knowing where to start is something that I hear all the time, right and just being overwhelmed and daunted. And so what we’ve started doing, which I really enjoy are these free legal lightning calls. Because legal lightning, they’re strong like lightning, they’re powerful. And basically, they’re just free mini audits for people that are lost and want some guidance. So you can hop on the phone with me or someone from my team and just chatted out, you know, we learn about your business and give you an action plan on what you need. And when and so that has been really helpful for people, it’s almost like going to a therapist and just venting, sometimes just getting it out is helpful. So when he wants interested in a quick 15 minute powerful chat, that’s it destination legal.com forward slash lightning.

Karen Yankovich 36:45
Awesome. We’ll put all that in the show notes too. And you have a checklist,

Sarah Waldbuesser 36:50
right? Yes, we also have our coach’s legal checklist, which go over the four most important things that you need to think about if you’re growing a coaching business as well. Awesome,

Karen Yankovich 37:01
awesome. I think I’m actually so we’ll put all this in the show notes. But I think I’m also going to put this on. If you were to Karen yankovich.com/tools, you’ll see a lot of you’ll see a lot of tools that I use that I recommend to other people. So maybe we’ll put it on the Tools page as well, so that people can easily find it. Because I’m always sending people, my programs and stuff there. You know, to stuff there that you know, just to make it easy of finding things. So definitely what we’re gonna put out, make sure that gets on there before this is live, so but we’ll put it in the show notes. And then also, if you go to the Tools page at my website, Karen yankovich.com/tools, you’ll find a link to something there. We’ll figure out what that makes most sense, but maybe the checklist, or maybe your library, maybe that sounds actually pretty cool, too. So or maybe people will say, All right, well, Sarah, this has been so good. I don’t know why maybe I needed to wait 269 episodes to find you. So thank you for being here today and offering this beautiful level of service to our listeners. And you know, if you’re listening and you are a woman that is stepping into a new role is stepping into maybe your maybe your side hustles you know becoming your business or you’re just leveling up like it’s just time to level up six figures is just you know, barely doesn’t six figure business, let’s get real. Do we know by now that that’s not enough money, you know, because by the time you pay all your stuff, you could be working at McDonald’s, right? So I want the money in your bank account. So that’s what we do in our shoes linked up family of programs. It’s all about supporting women to build wealth to build a business that drives wealth to your business, not just the stuff. And it’s interesting when we when you were talking about all the different social media platforms and people doing all that stuff. Yeah, I do that stuff too. But to me, it’s about visibility. I just like to me, like where’s the money? Where’s the money? Where are the people with the money in their hand, that’s who I want to talk to, I don’t really need to be dancing on tick tock and I have nothing against that. But I’m busy. So if that resonates with you, I love to see your name on my calendar, just go to Karen yankovich.com/call. And grab a spot on the calendar and we will talk about what it might look like to get some support as you move into the next chapter of your life with some branding. And you know, we’re talking a lot in 2024 about reinvention and rising right reinvent and rise. So that’s what I’m here to support you to do. So let us your name on the calendar. And if this spoke to you and it’s something that you you know think can be helpful to other people and I mean come on, we probably all have a million friends that need to hear this. I’d love for you to share this episode on your social take a quick screenshot, share it on social use the link use the hashtag good girls get rich tag me tag Sarah, we are both committed to supporting you. So we’ll share it with our networks if we see it for tags so that we can you know, we can share that as well. Follow this show wherever it is you’re watching because that just will you’ll get to see you’ll get to meet more of the incredible people I get to hang out with like, Sarah, I love sharing them with you. So follow this wherever it is you’re listening. And then, you know, there’s a part of me that we moved to this video format a couple of weeks ago because I really felt like talking me talking into my microphone with a blank wall in front of me just seemed like me talking at you. And I know that I’m still talking at you hear, like, I know that it’s even with video, I’m still kind of talking at you. So we we also in our show notes, have a link to SpeakPipe, where you can go to Karen yankovich.com/speakpipe. Leave me an audio message. I love to know what you thought about this episode. If there’s a guest, you think I should interview if there’s a topic you’d like to hear me talk about, I respond to every one of those personally. So I love getting messages on SpeakPipe. So check that out. You also can go to Karen Yankovich TOCOM slash SpeakPipe. And that’s where you can get right to that link as well. So, but first and foremost, know that I’m here to support you with the show. And we’ll be back here next week with another show. Sara sounds like you’re pretty supportive of your community as well. So thank you for being here for our community. And it’s been a real pleasure getting to know you. And I’ll see you guys all back here next week.

Sarah Waldbuesser 41:07
Thanks so much.