BrittanyRatelle: 00:00 This is Law and Wit episode 19: Legalize your ecommerce site in six steps. Welcome to Law and wit creative counsel for entrepreneurs. I’m your host, Brittany, Ratelle mother for entrepreneur and nap time lawyer and attorney for creative entrepreneurs. I’m here to share inspiration and actions that you can tap with your business blocks and confidently own your business in every sense of the word. Thank you so much for being here. Hey guys, and welcome back. I’m sorry. I think apologies are in order because it’s been a while. I took a little break during the summer. I’ll blame, you know, summer and pool and vacation and camping and traveling and all that other stuff. And I hope you have to take a break too with your loved ones and just remember what’s important for this world – you know, why we do what we do in our businesses and our gigs and are hustles, so that we can spend time with the people we love in any way.
BrittanyRatelle: 00:54 I was definitely reminded of that and taking a break for the last few weeks and I hope you are too, but I’m back. And guess who’s back back again? That’s my phone going off when to turn that off, but we’re back in. I want to talk about some important things and move things forward because I love talking about this stuff with you guys and I love your enthusiasm. I love your sharing this content with other people. It really warms my heart when I see new reviews, when I see you guys screenshotting that you’re listening, that you’re sharing with other people who might find this stuff useful. It really, really means the world to someone like me who’s just a one woman shop who’s up late at night in her really messy office with a microphone. So, um, that’s, that’s the Vignette for you. And just to let you know, it all means a lot to me, that the sharing is caring, so thank you so much for that.
BrittanyRatelle: 01:45 Okay. I do have to give my little disclaimer that while I’m an attorney licensed in Utah. I’m not your attorney unless you want me to be. So anything we talk about today is just for educational purposes only. Okay. If you have any questions, please talk to a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction. Okay. I want to introduce a new segment because, um, because I can, because frankly I feel a little bit like Adam Sandler in the wedding singer where he’s like, because I’m the one holding the microphone and I get to do whatever I want and it’s true, a true story. I am the one with the microphone, so I gave it to do get to decide and what I want to do as a segment on books because I love books. I love reading and I liked to read real books. I read books on my kindle and I like to listen to books.
BrittanyRatelle: 02:29 So no, I am not discriminator. I like books and all the different forums, but I wanted to talk about the last couple of books that I read that I wanted to share. Um, and keep in mind that, uh, my tastes are very varied. Um, but anyway, uh, it’s something I love and I love talking about with other people. So I want to introduce that and have that be a part of this. So I’m the very most recent book I just finished was educated by Tara westover and this is an amazing book. I think it’s, you know, rocket amped to be a best seller, but it’s all about a girl who come growing, you know, it was raised in a very small town, Rural Idaho, southeastern Idaho in a very strict, you know, I would say like Mormon fundamentalist religion by prepper parents who are anti school, anti government, anti doctors, um, in any way.
BrittanyRatelle: 03:18 It’s her memoirs and journey of dealing with that lifestyle, that upbringing and then how she comes to be educated, in coming to college and even pursuing a phd in any way. It’s the writing into the storytelling is really incredible at festivals. You have someone who was educated in air quotes in a very nontraditional way later in life. Anyway, I really enjoyed. I listened to it and I thought it was a really great, interesting read. So if you haven’t heard of that one, it’s not on your list. I would seriously consider that. And what’s crazy is that because she ended up going to Byu and it was very similar timeframe that I was there. I, you know, I kept on hearing all these similar things in her timeline and even professors who you mentioned in any way. I have one of my roommates got to be really good friends with her.
BrittanyRatelle: 04:01 So small world, you know, when you hear someone talking about their memoirs, things that you know, about buildings that you know about and professors that you’ve met and places you’ve been. And it always makes it a lot more compelling. I think k, the other book was girl wash your face by Rachel Hollis, which again, it’s not like I’m the only person who likes his book, but just just sharing is sharing and it’s good. I also listened to this one and I really loved it. I thought, you know, not that I had like low expectations, but I just went in like, oh, it’s going to be like a girl go-get-em’ Book. Awesome. Like I love that. I thought she did a really good job of telling the stories of weaving in things from her past and then the lessons learned from it. Um, she’s had some really, uh, you know, ups and downs and windy road from her relationship and, you know, the romantic comedy that wasn’t, that, you know, just leaves you gasping in terms of the end, um, in terms of her parenting journey and being thrown into the foster system and then losing her children and what that was like.
BrittanyRatelle: 04:59 And um, and it reminded me of so much of what I’ve seen when I’ve done guardian ad litem work. Um, so I’m familiar with some of that pain and hurt and frustration working in child welfare and working with child welfare professionals and in broken systems, which unfortunately make up a lot of the child welfare systems around the US. So anyway, um, but overall positive and boisterous and a spirit of you can overcome, you can control what you can control, you can let go of what you can. Um, and a really good pick me up, but one with teeth and meat to it, if that makes sense. So I would highly recommend that girl wash your face. Um, and the other one I’m reading is a discovery of witches, which is just a really fun fantasy book with witches and Vampires. Um, and I don’t even remember where I got that recommendation probably from good read somewhere, but I’m really enjoying that.
BrittanyRatelle: 05:45 It’s slow going. Um, that’s this chapter here at a time, but just to let you know that I’m not all like highbrow stuff. I read lots of everything and including I love fiction and young adult fiction and Scifi and fantasy and all of that. So if you have recommendations, um, I’m always up for that. Go on my instagram, you know, comment, send me a message, I’d love to hear about velcro recommendations or things that you like to read or connect about that because I’m reading and connecting about that stuff makes me happy. I love it. Okay, so let’s get into the meat of this episode. Okay. Are what we’re talking about today is selling products online or otherwise known as ecommerce nowadays. Um, and you know, this advice applies to anyone, whether you’re running your own domain, like your own hosted site, under your branded name or if your running something like on etsy or another, you know, seller platform, that’s obviously the most common one if you’re a maker or a crafter or making your own good.
BrittanyRatelle: 06:42 So, um, and I’ll point out just a few things that I know that don’t quite apply on etsy but still good to be aware of because I know like a lot of people who maybe started out on a marketplace like Etsy, when they get to reach another tier of success, it’s time for them to move over and have their own, um, you know, own shopping, no domain. So it’s good to just keep some of this stuff in mind so that you are prepared. So in, with whichever camp you are fit in, okay? Okay. The first tip is that you should probably incorporate your business. Okay? And by incorporate, I mean register as an llc or register your business. When people talk about this, these are all terms that can be interchanged. Okay? And I guess that’s probably confusing that we don’t have a consistent, you know, lexicon for how to describe this, but that’s really what people are saying.
BrittanyRatelle: 07:26 Um, and I want to direct you back to episode six. So if you haven’t listened to that, have lawn with episode six goes into specific detail about if you need an LLC. And spoiler alert, you probably do. I’m the only caveat little asterisks that I’ll put on there that you might not need an LLC or might not be worth it is if you’re really making a little amount of money, I’m talking like less than $600 or less than a thousand dollars maybe. And you live in a state with particularly high fees like California if you are not in that set of circumstances. And even if you are, it still might be worth it. Especially if you have some sort of product or something or the way that you’re selling it. You could be at risk of getting sued or contract going wrong. Like, I mean, that’s what I’m talking about here in 99 percent of the time, I’m telling people to set up their LLC.
BrittanyRatelle: 08:12 Okay? And like I talk about that episode, that means that you get your bubble, your little business bubble. It protects you. Okay? You’re Glenda in there, your cool and calm and your beautiful pink outfit and your Tiara. You’re rocking it. Um, you know, just give that girl a phone and a laptop and now she’s business glinda. Perfect. Um, and it just means that people, whatever goes wrong, if something goes wrong in your business, it doesn’t affect you personally, it doesn’t affect your personal ship. Your business ship might sink, which that’s a bummer, you know, but your personal ship of your mortgage, your home, the money that you might share with your partner, your retirement accounts, anything else that you’ve built up, that stuff is separate. Okay? So that’s why incorporating system really great idea, okay? Um, and the. Okay, step number two is to clear your business name.
BrittanyRatelle: 08:57 And by this I mean that you need to make sure that whatever you’re going to name your business, your site, your domain, hopefully it’ll matches and it’s clear, um, but whatever your business name is, make sure that you have the rights to that to use that name. Um, and you do that through doing a trademark search. So, um, I understand that it’s sometimes expensive to do that because I really recommend that you do hire an attorney if you really want to protect your name. I know that there are other options out there and people that will try to sell you packages, um, online solutions in terms of, oh, search your name or clearance or will register your trademark for you. But unless there is a real human attorney who does intellectual property law, that’s the kind of law that trademarks fall onto. It’s called intellectual property or Ip.
BrittanyRatelle: 09:40 Um, I don’t really think you can trust those services that they’re really looking out for you. And if you haven’t done a good search, then you simply are walking out there blindly with. Yeah. And just hoping that nobody paintballs you. Okay. That’s what you’re hoping, and I’m even worse than that. You’re putting it out there and yeah, you’re, you’re carrying moneybags with you because now you have assets you’ve invested under that name and you just hope that someone doesn’t tap you on the shoulder and say, hey, by the way, I’ve been running that business name in and I already trademarked it, or I’ve, it’s been in use for years before you did. Whoops. Okay, big. Whoops. Because now you have to rebrand. Now you have to Redo your packaging, your graphic design, your logo, your website. Now you have to change all your handles and your domain.
BrittanyRatelle: 10:25 I mean, you, you see what I’m talking about, like be giant, giant mess. So, you know, I, and, and here’s a point to think about is that make sure that you are mark can be trademarked. And by this I mean that if you have a really generic name for your store, if you are selling bows and you call it the shop, um, that’s good for Seo, meaning that someone can find you except not really because you know, how many of shops are going to be probably a lot, but that’s what we call a generic or descriptive name because your shop that sells both your abode shop. So you can’t protect that because if someone wants to sell bows, how else will they are? They’re going to describe it rather than a bowl shops. So, but if you call your shop, um, you know, a pig tails, not tears, okay?
BrittanyRatelle: 11:13 I’m just making that up. That’s probably not a good name, but pigtails, no tears. And that’s better pigtails, no tears. Well, that’s something unique and kind of m and t and not descriptive or generic. That’s going to be something that’s set apart and that’s, um, that you could actually protect. That’s something that you would then take to the trademark database. And the first step is you at least do a knockout search on your own and through the test system, um, if that clears. I’m not saying it’s a complete green light, but it’s good that you didn’t have, you know, any big huge red ones. Um, if you find something in there that’s even close that spells or sounds the same or maybe as part of the words in it, then please definitely put up that flag. Go Talk to a trademark attorney. Okay. Like shameless self promotion like me please, or someone else.
BrittanyRatelle: 11:59 Um, the great thing about trademark law is federal. So no matter where you are in the U, s if you or if you own a business outside, but you do business in the US and you want us trademark protection, um, you know, shoot me an email or go onto my website and book a consult. Brittany [inaudible] dot com slash services. I give 20 minute consoles out for free and we can talk about your trademark and what you’ve done, what you haven’t done, what you want to do with it, and what the step and pricing would be to get that protected. Okay? Um, so I really recommend for trademarks that you get some protection. Okay? And again, I have another episode to direct to you and that’s episode 10, which talks all about copyrights versus trademarks. And it goes into a little bit more detail about trademarks, about why they’re important and as you grow your business, it’s just something that you need to be aware of.
BrittanyRatelle: 12:43 And if you’re growing a successful brand and you’ve put money, you know, if you’re going to drop $10,000 on a website, maybe you should take a little bit of that, just you know, a little coin pouch of that money and invest that into actually protecting your business name instead of just the website. I’m not throwing shade and all my beautiful website designers because it’s important. I know that, but just something to think about in terms of where you’re spending your money and how you’re going to be getting returns on your branding and your asset protection. Okay? Alright. Number three step is look at the legal statements on your website and this is well distinguished that these are not as important if you’re selling on a marketplace like etsy because, um, you can’t like collect email addresses from there. So I’m not as worried about a privacy policy.
BrittanyRatelle: 13:28 Terms of use don’t really aren’t as important because you’re under [inaudible] terms of use because you’re on their platform. So if you’re strictly on etsy then disregard some of this advice, but for most people, if you’re running your own domain, I’m going to again direct you to another episode of Mine, episode four, which is on the legal documents that you need for your website. And the two iron clad, no excuses, no bs documents that you need are a privacy policy and terms and condition also called a terms of service or terms of use. Okay? The moral of the story, his terms, you want terms. Okay. And this means that these two policies set out the rules and the regulations and just the protocol for anyone wandering across your website. What rights do they have, what rights do you have, what behavior is expected? And it’s 2018 guys.
BrittanyRatelle: 14:20 You need both these policies. There are literally no conditions and that I can think of where you don’t need these on your website if you’re selling or collecting any information, which you all are. Okay? If you are collecting email addresses, then you need these. If you’re selling goods, services, information, anything as any of that, you need these on your website. Okay? So you need this. There we go. Um, and if you need these and don’t have these yet, or if you’re not sure that they’re good or they might’ve been copy and paste it or just put on your site by your developer and you’re not sure where he got them from, then maybe it’s time to visit my sharp creative contracts.co and take a look because I sell these in a website bundle. You know, everything queued up, highlighted idiot proof with a little video guides.
BrittanyRatelle: 15:07 Screenflow, that walks you through how to customize the, these for your business to what you actually sell to what you want your refund and exchange policy to be, to what you want your image, copyright policy to be on your website. All of those issues that I see their most common where people are not very clear on how they want the websites to be run. I walk you through all of that and then you just copy and paste once you get it all shimmied up the way you want it to and you put on your website. Okay? So, um, if you want the earl for that as creative contracts Dot Co. Okay? Um, and again I will give a shout out and a little special code for you guys. SO if you use the code law and wit, l a w a n, d wit, then you guys get 10 percent off.
BrittanyRatelle: 15:50 Okay? That price of that. So if yoU don’t have those yet, um, and you know, you want to treat yourself and by yourself a little something and what says, you know, self care, like legal documents, guys, I mean, come on, just just, you know, stay with me here, go onto the website, go onto creative contracts, don’t cope by it, check it off your list, make it happen. Okay? Um, and the other thing that I want to make sure that you have for legal statements is that if you, um, want to try to reduce your risk of chargebacks, um, if you guys don’t know what to charge back is, that’s what happens when someone says that they need to re a refund or exchange something, something that they bought from you and they instead of going to you about it and to handle it, or maybe they tried and they couldn’t get through.
BrittanyRatelle: 16:36 They go direct to their credit card company and they say, hey, I want you to do a charge back. I want my money back because this product was bad or it didn’t work. Or it was ms dot advertiser. There’s fraud or something else. So, and the reason why these are a problem if you are a retailer is because not only will that money get taken from you back, but they will also, most of your payment processors will charge you an extra fee on top of that. So not only are you out the money for the product, but now you’re out an extra fee. So there are a huge hassle. There are a real pain when you’re at this part of the ecommerce and the rate for returns in the us is hovering around eight percent. So I’m not saying that’s a chargeback rate, but that’s a return rate.
BrittanyRatelle: 17:16 So returns happen. People for some reason, it’s not quite what they wanted, it’s just a reality. So in thinking about that and trying to prevent charge backs and fraudulent truck charge backs, which are basically people scamming you, um, you know, they had no intention of ever paying you that this is part of their deal that they just buy products and then they go through this procedure and try to do charge backs, um, to make money off of people. JuSt awful. But whatever people, there are bad people out there, um, is that, uh, things that you can do is to make sure you have a clear, flexible refund or exchange policy that should be on your website, which is why I put it in my terms of service. Okay? Template that I sell on my website to prompt you right. Then are there to decide what are your policy’s going to be there right there, easy for people to, to see.
BrittanyRatelle: 17:58 Um, and also to provide. The other tip is to have really clear customer service. Okay? So, um, people need to have a way to get ahold of you if they have a problem with your staff. So you need a phone or an email, you cannot hide. Okay? Hidings a bad idea. This is not hide and go seek or sardines. Okay? Are peekaboo like I play with my cute little 20 month old if you will hide here and make it hard for people to get to you. Or if you’re super ironclad, like no refunds. Doesn’t matter if I sold you a crappy diaper bag and it fell apart. Um, that might be a little personal one for me because that happened to me and I emailed the company and they’re like, yeah, sorry, there’s nothing we can do. And I’m like, this thing didn’t even last a year.
BrittanyRatelle: 18:37 Come on, stand behind your products. People, let’s go anyway. But if something like that happens, you need a way to have people contact you. And if you’re a payment processor, if someone does a charge back and you refute that, if you like, for example of amex as your carrier and you go say, hey, I think this person’s taken advantage. I don’t think that this was a legitimate charge back. I have, I have a problem with this. The first thing that amex is going to ask you and says, what is your return policy? We want a copy of that. Um, and we want a copy of your customer service. Like, yOu know, we want to see how it is that people can get ahold of you because they’re trying to cover their butt. And, um, explain to someone that, oh, you know, you shouldn’t have just done an immediate chargeback because that costs banks and payment processors money, you should have talked to the company first, which is a good policy, but it’s only a good policy in a realistic policy if you make it happen.
BrittanyRatelle: 19:29 Okay? So make sure That you have good customer service. So do whatever you do to have to set that up. Um, even like if you have a, how is everything going? Email that gets sent to your customers just to check on things, if that’s even part of, you know, say if you sell on amazon and you get those emails about, hey, just want to know how things are going. If you want to give uS a rating or review or feedback, we’d love it. you could even roll it all up and something like that. That provides some value and opportunity for people to give feedback because a customers that get communicated with are happy customers. Okay, that’s, that’s true across the board. Okay. Moving on. Uh, next thing, number four is make sure that you own all the rights to the media. The content that’s being used on your website, this means that you should go through and do a little intellectual property audit and look for things like, okay, I have beautiful pictures.
BrittanyRatelle: 20:16 Check dual. I did. I get a model release for the people that are identified in these pictures. Not so. Good question. Um, I have testimonials on my website. Awesome. Good. We all love social proof. Wonderful. Did I ask people’s permission to quote them in here to list their name, to put their picture on, to put the logo of their business? Another good question. Let’s make sure we do that. Let’s make sure people are not surprised to see themselves quoted on testimonials on your website, about using your product. Okay. I have graphics on here. Maybe I have infographics or I have other things that were created. Hand lettering, things that were created by a graphic designer. Do I have paperwork that shows that I have now the copyright to this? Because if I don’t, if I don’t have something in writing, then the copyrights of to this particular work actually still is in the hands of the graphic designer.
BrittanyRatelle: 21:09 Even if I paid them for it and it was our understanding that they were doing it for me, that it was a work for hire. If you don’t have something in writing that says that, then it is not yours. Okay. And it’s not a problem until it’s a problem. Okay? Till you’ve become all big and famous and are making tons of money and now maybe have a graphic designer who comes back and says, hey, I’m, yeah, the stuff that I, that I designed for you that was just supposed to be for your social media. I didn’t know that was going to be your head, you know, your logo or used in print or used in licensing or your trademark or whatever else. You know, as your brand grows, people tend to recycle their graphics and to have, you know, have consistent brand imaging. That’s a good thing if you have the rights to all that and you can keep on using your same content.
BrittanyRatelle: 21:52 So, um, which is another reason why contracts are super important guys, okay? They clarify expectations. They make sure everyone’s on the same page about who owns the rights to what. Okay. Um, and the last thing is check your web copy. Okay. If you hired somebody to help you with sales copy, web copy, product descriptions, any of that stuff that text on your site the same, uh, the same audit should follow. Do you have some sort of written statement? Whether it’s a contract, I’m like another one that I sell on my website, on my shop promises is not just a giant setup for my shop, but um, you know, I, I, I do what I do guys because I’m trying to help you because I know your problems and I’m trying to solve them. Okay. Um, and uh, so yeah. Anyway, so you want to have some sort of, you know, at least transfer statement, copyright, even just even email if you have nothing else that makes it very clear that, hey, um, you know, I was getting all the rights to this web copy, write that when I exchange money, this was the setup.
BrittanyRatelle: 22:46 Now I own all of this. Um, and it’s yours and then you’re not going to see it repeated somewhere. Um, especially that’s not good for seo and it’s not good, you know, ethically, legally. So. Okay. Um, number five is make sure that your email that’s connected with your product site, I know this is not directly related, is a compliant with all the anti-spam, um, uh, rules and this will automatically be done if you’re using some sort of email content manager, which most people are nowadays. I mean, I don’t think anyone is like sending things out from there, you know, boost, boost, baby cheer, paId 55, aol account. Um, I saw a great, you have a day that had everyone lists their screen names and I got a huge laugh out of everyone’s, um, because I remember the days back in the chat rooms when we all had crazy screen names.
BrittanyRatelle: 23:33 Um, so I remember mine was, I think my was brittany from the beginning, like bri ttm age, because may is my middle name. So anyway, and that’s still my username for a lot of things, which I probably shouldn’t be telling you guys, but there it is. So, um, but back to email marketing, the you want to make sure that things, that there was an easy unsubscribe button, um, and that again will be probably automatically if you’re using an email manager, um, the thing that you probably have more control over that you might not know about is that your emails need to be clearly labeled. Every message must be clearly labeled and must match what’s inside of it. So it’s not legal for you to say you’ve won a million dollars on the tagline, on the, on the subject line, every email, if that’s not what’s in the content or the body of the email.
BrittanyRatelle: 24:19 So just be honest, be a good person, don’t lie, you know, basic things. Kindergarten lessons, guys, let’s all be on the same page there. Um, and uh, and again, uh, in terms of I’m not misleading the consumer and making sure people have a way to unsubscribe or getting contact and they know exactly who was coming from, um, you have to have a valid postal address as part of. And again, when you set up your email and manager, that’s why they asked for that information is so it can go into your email manager, um, but just so you’re aware, those anti-spam acts are enforced and you need to make sure that you’re compliant with those as you run any kind of commercial email service that is connected to your business and your website. Okay. The last issue is product liability issues. Um, and these do not apply evenly to everyone.
BrittanyRatelle: 25:06 I will. I will say that these are a much bigger deal if you are in the health and wellness space. So if you are selling anything that’s food supplements, um, anything you know, that people, especially anything that people put in their body or on their body, you definitely are going to want to talk to an attorney, small business attorney or someone who does product liability law and talk about what you might need in terms of disclaimers at what you might need in terms of testing of your products before they’re sent out and they’re released into the marketplace. For example, I was just helping some clients who were doing a kickstarter and it was a children’s product, um, and so, uh, we want to make sure that they had complied with any of the testing that they needed for a children’s products. Um, I don’t know if you’re aware, but, um, if you’re selling something to kids, you, um, need to make sure that it’s past like the lead paint safety tests.
BrittanyRatelle: 25:55 Um, and there’s some other tests that you have to do. You have to go through like a third party lab, which you would think because that’s the way that valid scientific tests are done to make sure that they comply and that they’re safe to go out to kids. There is an exception under that. If your revenue for a particular set of products is under a million, it’s one point, one to $3,000,000 or 7,500 units in a calendar year. So if you’re a smaller maker, again, if you’re running an etsy shop or your, your, whatever your selling is fitting under that you get the small batch manufacturer exemption. Um, so you, you do not have to comply with all the testing, but it’s still a good idea to go to the cpsc, the consumer product safety commission, and I’ll put the link in the show notes to the website and read through and make sure that, look at what you’re making, who are you selling it to, how many of you are you’re making, and make sure that you don’t need to look into other testing to see.
BrittanyRatelle: 26:50 And, and that doesn’t set you back, okay? Because what’s a huge bummer is if you launch a kickstarter, launch a product, you have everything else in place and then the surprises you at the last minute and then you can launch your product or can’t ship your product. So you don’t want surprises. Surprises are only fun when they’re good surprises and this is not one of those. Um, and the last thing is that you, um, if you’re in, again, like one of those fields that I talked about where you might have higher product liability is to think about getting some product liability insurance. And sometimes this can be provided as part of like a general business umbrella insurance, um, and sometimes it’s something separate, a separate writer that you can purchase. So dr someone who sells business insurance and talk about if that might be an option for you, shop around and get some quotes and then you just know what you’re dealing with them.
BrittanyRatelle: 27:36 Okay guys, that’s it for today. So I’m going to finish up, but, um, I’m just want to thank you for being here, for lending me your ears and your time and your attention. I understand that you’re super busy. Um, and I, I try to respect that and not waste your time and I hope that this has been useful for you. Um, I want tO remind you that if you’re not on my email list that you should be because it’s pretty awesome. I only send out email newsletters, um, when I have something useful to share. So I call it a week newsletter, but it’s far beyond far below that at this point because I’ve taken a break during the summer as well. Um, and you can sign up to get on that at brittany, retell.com/newsletter. And if you do, um, I have a free legal checklist that comes with that that kind of walks you through some of the things that if you have a creative business and want a bird’s eye view of, okay, brett, like what do I need to do?
BrittanyRatelle: 28:24 Like start from scratch, what do I need to think aboUt in terms of legal things on my radar? This is, that’s what this little pdf is. Okay. It’s pretty, it’s sweet and short to the point, um, and it makes sure that you’re not forgetting any gaping holes and that you have some information so that you can start asking good questions because I believe that good Information just leads to good decision making and I want you to make sure that you have the information you need and then you can decide what you want to invest in, where, and you can decide that you’re going to ignore all my advice, which is fine. That’s totally your right. Um, but I, I just want to make sure that you have information and feel empowered and that you’re not scared that I’m even starting. This process is going to cost you a lot of money, that you’re not going to be able to find someone, an attorney or another mentor or business strategist or coach who might not understand your business because I think creative sometimes they short sell themselves in terms of their business operation and development skills.
BrittanyRatelle: 29:23 And, um, I want to change that because I don’t think that you’re dumb. Okay? I don’t believe that for a second. And I don’t think that you’re incapable of learning new things. Even things that you think that might not come naturally to you. Even things that might seem complicated or boring or overwhelming. These are words that are frequently flown at legal. And I understand that. I totally understand that, but here’s the big. But if you started a business, you’ve already shown that you can do hard things. Okay? You can go into waters that you’re not sure of how it’s going to be. You can go into the dark and have faith in yourself and your ability to learn new things and ask questions and figure it out. And I don’t think that this stuff is good. It has to be any different. Okay. You’re not just an etsy shop owner.
BrittanyRatelle: 30:10 You don’t just run an ecommerce site and not just a maker or a photographer or a videographer or a seller of drum samples online. That’s all the specific one from another client, a great client of mine, um, your a business owner or business owner, capital beat. So you should act like it. Okay. And that means trying to understand and way through all this stuff and come out better on the other side for it. Okay. So sign up for my newsletter. If you think this episode or any of the other ones that you’ve listened to have helped you and you think that they might help someone else or help a friend, please share. I would really, really appreciate it. Okay. With a capital r, because I’m, I’m a small woman shop and so that means that I will always defer to getting client work done Over doing things like marketing and promotion, even though I know I should, so it means that I don’t do much to promote this, this podcast really. I put it up there and I mentioned in my instagram feed and that’s pretty much all the bandwidth I have for right now. So, for this to really help who I want it to help, I need your help. Okay? I need your help and I don’t ask that lightly because I don’t like asking for help, but um, I would really appreciate it. So please share if you can leave a review and you, if you can and know that I believe in you and your business and that I’m happy that you’ve taken the time to explore some things that will help you be more confident. Business owner. Okay? Because you can understand this, you can get what you need out of this and then you can move forward. So thanks so much for being here.
