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274. The Legal Basics You Actually Need As A Solopreneur · The Life-First Solopreneur

• 0:00
  Carly Ries: You didn't start a business to get derailed by legal landmines, but ignoring the boring stuff can quietly hurt your business. In this episode, we sat down with Bobby Klink, a lawyer and founder of Plainly Legal, to make legal protection finally feel simple and doable without the fear tactics. We talk about the most common mistakes solopreneurs make when they're moving too fast, what you actually need in place early on, and what you can skip for now. If you wanna stay protected without overpaying lawyers or overthinking everything, this one gives you the clear practical do this first checklist that you're looking for so you can build with confidence instead of crossing your fingers. You're listening to the Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for anyone on the solo business journey, whether you're just toying with the idea, taking your first bold step, or have been running your own show for years and want to keep growing, refining, and thriving.
• 0:54
  I'm Carly Ries, and along with my cohost, Joe Rando, we're your guides through the crazy but awesome world of being a company of one. As part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all things solopreneurship, we help people design businesses that align with their life's ambitions so they can work to live, not live to work. If you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the place for you. But if you want real world insights from industry experts, lessons from the successes and stumbles of fellow solopreneurs, and practical strategies for building and sustaining a business you love, you're in the right spot. Because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone.
• 1:30
  No matter where you are in your journey, we've got your back. Bobby, I told you this offline, but you have a cool vibe about you. I'm happy about that because the topic today, I think a lot of solopreneurs shy away from because they're intimidated by it, but you make it so relatable, and we'll get to that in a second. But first, we ask all of our guests an icebreaker questions. So we wanna ask you yours, what is one thing you wish you would have known before becoming a solopreneur?
• 2:01
  Bobby Klink: I think the first thing I would have wished I had known is it's probably gonna take longer than you think to get the success you're after. When when I first decided to focus on building online business as opposed to running my law firm, is kind of where I was at the time, I did all the things. I did the stupid thing of going all in, investing a bunch of money, expecting to get it back, doing a big launch, and I had one person buy after spending tens of thousands of dollars through the year on different things, and bought for like 600 and something dollars. And then that person asked for a refund twenty nine days into a thirty day, no questions asked refund policy. And I was talking to my kinda life coach, after the fact, she was like, oh, you made a sale? actually most people don't make a sale their first launch. I was like, woah. How come you didn't tell me this before? I would've liked to have known that information before going all in. So I wish I would've known that, and kind of set my expectations the right way from the outset.
• 3:03
  Joe Rando: Well, you know, it just reminds me of my favorite saying, which is we do this not because it is easy, but because we thought it would be easy. And we have to think it would be easy or We wouldn't do it.
• 3:14
  So actually your coach did you a service not telling you that.
• 3:18
  Bobby Klink: Yep. Either we have to think it's easy or we have to just be eternal optimists. And I think I fall in that second category. Everyone who's ever worked with me would say, I always expect everything to work out great and and have expectations that aren't exactly realistic. Luckily, I don't let failure crush me, which is I think what allows me to get by with that.
• 3:38
  Carly Ries: Yes. Absolutely. Well, I was alluding to, earlier I was talking about you. You were gonna talk about a topic today that a lot of people shy away from, and that's all the legal stuff when it comes to business. But like I said, you make it so approachable.
• 3:52
  But a lot of solopreneurs hope that they can kinda just get by without dealing with it for a while. What is the actual risk of waiting too long, and what should they handle to stay protected from the get go?
• 4:04
  Bobby Klink: Okay. So I wanna start by prefacing everything I say with an important thing of don't let the legal stuff be the reason you don't start or don't build a business. Don't let it freak you out. Don't let it become this things like, oh, I can't do anything because of it. Now, I know there are a lot of lawyers out there who spend a lot of time trying to scare people, and I don't wanna do that.
• 4:29
  But that being said, I do wanna say the reason not to wait is that the problem with the legal stuff and making mistakes is often what you're doing is you're kind of baking in a time bomb into your business that you don't realize is there. And you go on and you just kind of build a business and you're doing things. And then all of a sudden, six months later, a year later, or sometime even further than that, all of a sudden, that time bomb you built in way back in the beginning by not dealing with the legal stuff goes off. And it's the kind of thing that maybe would have taken you fifteen minutes to do it right the first time. But because you didn't, when you have to deal with it, it ends up being something that can cost you thousands of dollars, hours of time, tens of hours of time, weeks of time, and also a lot of stress.
• 5:17
  So it really is one of those things where, prevention is a lot easier than the cure in the legal stuff. Quite honestly, that's that was what inspired me to push into the online space and helping online people and creating the tools I did at the outset because I was running my own law firm and I kept having businesses come to me after things had gone wrong. So like after it had kind of blown up and quite honestly by the time they came to me I said, well you could hire me but it's actually gonna cost you more to pay me in my attorney's fees to deal with this than to just pay the other side to go away. And I was like, that's not ideal. And I was always kind of working to try to find a way to help people avoid those things, and you can.
• 6:00
  You just have to be conscientious at the outset.
• 6:03
  Joe Rando: So help me out, though. Help me understand maybe just a few, maybe two, three, four examples of the kinds of things that people aren't doing when they get started that they should be doing? If you just so we can kinda get concrete.
• 6:17
  Bobby Klink: So let me give you an example I see over and over again, and that is not searching up a brand name before you start using it. Could be for a podcast, could be for a program, could be for your overall business. And if you think about that, when you do this, a lot of people ask me, should I trademark my name? Should I get a trademark? And I'm like, you're asking the wrong question.
• 6:36
  The first question you should ask is, does someone else already have rights to that name that prevent you from using it? And that's important because let's let's talk about a podcast for example. Let's say you launch a podcast today and you have a great name for it, but you don't take the time of running what's called the trademark search, which by the way, you can do yourself and get a very long way of feeling comfortable that you're good to use it. But if you don't do that, you're gonna spend six months, a year building that podcast, building goodwill around it, building that brand name, And you know what, if someone else has a trademark for that name, they're not going to know about you at the outset. Because why would you?
• 7:15
  Nobody's heard of you. You're just starting out. When are they going to find out about you? When someone emails them or someone else kind of says, hey, do you know about this other podcast? Once you have gotten successful?
• 7:27
  And then all of a sudden, they're gonna send you a letter or they're gonna send you an email. They're gonna rightfully demand that you stop using that name. And all of a sudden, all that effort, all that time you spent building goodwill, building that brand around that name are gone. And you have to rebrand, and you have to do it in a hurry. And theoretically, it could be a problem like you may have to rerecord intros and do all those things depending on how much of a stickler the person is. that's just a small example. Just imagine how much of a pain that is in your business, and it could have been avoided with fifteen minutes of doing some Google searching and going on to the patent and trademark office and doing some searching to make sure no one else had to write for the name. So that's like an obvious example I use for people, and I use it because quite honestly, you can do that for free without having to pay me or any other lawyer or anyone else. You just have to know, ah, this is something I need to do and go out and do Another example is not getting agreements in place. And these are things that can bite all of us, it can bite you in different ways, and it can be, oh, it's my friend or oh, I trust them, it's not gonna be an issue.
• 8:34
  And I maybe showing my age, but I think of Jerry Maguire and, you know, he didn't sign a contract because the guy said, my word is my bond and it's as strong as oak, and then he loses the first draft pick on the night of the draft. And so, I think of that and that happens all the time in business. And people end up in these sticky situations, and they end up in fights that they don't even need to have if they just had a written agreement. So you need to make sure that when you're doing anything that's important to your business, any relationship that's important to your business needs to be documented in a written agreement that is signed or agreed to by both parties so there's really no dispute. And the real key I like to say is make it as clear as possible because lawyers like me, we tend to get involved when things aren't clear, when there's ambiguity, when there's uncertainty. I might be, you know, nice and warm and fuzzy, but most lawyers aren't. And so unless you wanna spend time hanging out with some lawyers, get those agreements in place and make sure they're clear.
• 9:35
  Carly Ries: Yeah. I love those. And those are just such quick wins to just get from the beginning. Bobby, do solopreneurs have any misconceptions or there any common myths that drive you bananas when you meet up with people?
• 9:50
  Bobby Klink: So there are a couple I'll name, and these were ones like, in 2017 when I kind of entered the online space and I started going on podcast, it seemed like the one thing that almost every host told me a story about that it happened to them or a friend was the Getty Images letter, which I don't know if you guys know who Getty Images is if you're watching listening, but Getty Images is one of the biggest licensing companies for imaging. So they own the copyrights to a ton of the images you find online. And so if you are going around the internet and you see an image you like and you do what I call the right click save as problem. I like this image. I'm gonna just right click it, save as, and I'll use it later. You're probably gonna get in trouble because you're infringing someone's copyright.
• 10:34
  Every image out there that you're finding, unless it was created by AI, but every other image is protected by copyright. And so if you don't get it the right way and you use it, you could be in trouble. And so what will happen is if you happen to do it with an image that is owned by Getty, it's kind of the worst because they have people who are out constantly looking for this. They're gonna just send you a letter or an email that says, why thank you very much for using our image. The licensing price for that image is $5,000 or something on that magnitude.
• 11:03
  It's gonna be a lot of money. And I would have people come to me and say, well, what do I do? What do I do? And I said, well, you could try to negotiate down, but infringe your copyright. There's not much you can do about it.
• 11:12
  So that's one. You can't just use images you find online because they're online. Doesn't matter if they're on the internet, doesn't matter if they're on social media, you do not have the right to use images. Assume every image, every video, everything you find online is protected by copyright by whoever created it and you cannot use it without permission. I tell people if it's on social you can use it within the rules of social media.
• 11:37
  It's like you can reshare things and all that as long as you're following the rules of that social platform. But other than that, don't do it because you'll get yourself in trouble. So that's kind of the big mistake, but the myth that I heard all the time, I would hear people talk about the seven second rule. I was like, what? And then some people say a thirty second rule.
• 11:57
  And I was like, what? People had in their mind and they had this belief that they could use seven seconds of a song or seven seconds of a movie or something like that in their platform without it being a copyright image. I said, where'd you get that idea from? And and they never knew, but they'd heard this. And it's based in this idea called fair use, which says you can make fair use of another work.
• 12:23
  And the extent of use is one of the factors. But it's not like there's some rule that, hey, as long as I you only use seven seconds, I'm okay. There is examples of where someone has used, like, two seconds, and that was enough. so there is no hard and fast rule. So don't think, oh, as long as I don't use too much of the music, I'm okay.
• 12:42
  Music, videos, all that stuff, same rule. Don't use it unless you get permission to use it.
• 12:47
  Joe Rando: So this all came from that whole thing with sampling. Right? When people started sampling to create new songs. you know, honestly, because of that, I would've thought the same thing.
• 13:00
  I mean, I don't do it, but I would've thought, oh, I can use a few seconds, and nobody can say anything because, I hear all these songs that were songs that I knew when I was younger that they basically sampled and just work from, but it's complicated is what you're saying.
• 13:14
  Bobby Klink: Yeah. I mean, there is an example. So again, I'm gonna age myself with this one, but, what was it? Think it one of the Vanilla Ice songs. It was like almost identical to, a seventies song.
• 13:25
  Like, the hook was. And, I mean, literally, there was a copyright infringement suit about that. So, I mean, it's one of those things where people think that. And again, I always say this, I'm a horrible example because in college, I was in a band, and we recorded a record, and we literally, put portions of, like, movie, audio at the beginning of songs. I'm like, you know, it's outside the statute limitations.
• 13:48
  It can't get mad at me now, but you can't do things like that. And, again, there are limits. Like, so you can put quotes from books without having to worry about it as long as you're quoting a little bit. But, I mean, if you're quoting, whole sections of a book, it's different. And like I said, fair use is a very complicated concept that there are lawyers who spend their entire careers litigating about, is this a fair use or is this not a fair use?
• 14:15
  I don't know about you, but especially as a solopreneur, I don't wanna find myself in that dispute. I just want to avoid it entirely because I don't have the money to fight over it. I don't have the time. I don't have the bandwidth. So, again, my perspective is, hey. Let's just avoid any issue there because it's not worth it. I go to iStock. You know, you go to iStock. It's not that expensive. You know, there are cheap images there, and you don't worry a bit as long as you're not putting it on T shirts. Right? then it's a different license.
• 14:44
  Joe Rando: then for the music, there's all that royalty free music you can license. It's not crazy expensive, and it's certainly cheaper than a lawyer.
• 14:50
  Bobby Klink: Exactly. Yeah. And again, there are free image sites too, like Pixabay, Pexels. There there are a bunch of those. And here's the other thing you understand for people to do.
• 15:00
  If you get good at using AI now, a little thing to understand, AI generated image, text, any of that stuff is not protected by copyright. So you can do that and use it to your heart's content. But understand someone if they knew you created that with AI they can then just copy it too. But most of us don't care about that right? I Mean that's not something that really bothers us.
• 15:20
  But that's now a new solution that's making things even better. Again in the past I couldn't have done the kind of artwork I can do now. I mean I at some point, hey. This was a couple years ago, and it's gotten so much better since then. I asked it to create like a an image of me as a renaissance man.
• 15:35
  And I was like, wow. I mean, it was amazingly good, the things you can do if you learn how to prompt with AI. So I mean, you can get around a lot of this by learning how to do that as well.
• 15:44
  Joe Rando: Just a point that I was talking to a lawyer a while back. It was actually the lawyer, they do a lot of copyright work, and they were helping us negotiate a contract with Wiley for a book. And he told me that a lot of his clients are software developers who have been using AI to help them code and then trying to copyright the code and not able to do so because it was generated by AI, which is really interesting. I never would have thought of that.
• 16:14
  Bobby Klink: Yep.
• 16:14
  Joe Rando: I'm not sure if you ever came across that.
• 16:17
  Bobby Klink: I mean, there was a decision by the copyright office, Virelan. It wasn't about code, but it was someone created a graphic novel by basically all of the images were prompts from, I'm forgetting what one of the early ones was but prompts and one of the early AI models and they put it together and the copyright office said these images are not subject to copyright because you have to have a human author for it to be copyrightable. Now the way it was put together and organized, etcetera, was, but the individual images weren't. The same thing would happen with the code. So for example, if you got pieces of code and then put it together in different ways and did editing, some of it might be protectable, but the underlying work created by these tools is not copyrightable because basically it's not created by a human.
• 17:06
  Carly Ries: So moral of the story, to avoid a fine or getting the Getty letter, just avoid all of this. But on that note, what are some other areas of people's businesses where where you think solopreneurs overpay for legal help when they could just be doing it themselves?
• 17:21
  Bobby Klink: So what I say is, first of all, I want to caveat everything I say here separately by saying there are always levels of good when it comes to legal protection. And what I mean by that is in just about everything, you would be get the best protection possible by hiring a lawyer who understands the particular area of law and your particular type of business and business model. They will be able to do the best because they will be able to 100% customize things for you. But for most people, that's just not possible. So for example, I had someone who, prior to my current business, which is a software model, I sold legal templates.
• 18:02
  And she purchased a pack from me, and I don't remember how much it cost. Let's say, it was, like, $750 is what it cost for her to purchase it from me. And she sent me an email after the fact and said, thank you so much. I was thinking about buying this, and I went to talk to a lawyer and got a quote. Took a while, so she went ahead and bought it.
• 18:20
  And then the lawyer came back and was gonna charge something like $5,000 to create like four agreements for her. And you know, she said, I couldn't have afforded that. And so again, if your choice is, hey, get some template somewhere versus pay $5,000, get the templates just because that is gonna serve you better to have something. Heck, if you can't even afford to buy anything, just write something yourself that covers things as much as possible. That's better than nothing.
• 18:48
  So really there are things, some of the simplest, like you shouldn't pay, like if you're going to create an LLC, you should not pay someone to create the LLC for you. In most states, it's literally you go online and you answer a questionnaire and you can create your own limited liability company without having to actually hire someone to form it for you. Now, again, if you're a solopreneur working from home, you're probably gonna want to have a registered agent so that you don't have to put your address out on the Internet and that's fine, but that's separate from forming the entity. So don't pay something. People used to pay $500, $1,000 to lawyers to form an LLC for you which I mean literally when I formed my LLC originally in DC, I think I'd answer like seven questions and there you go.
• 19:35
  I'd set up the LLC and none of it was stuff that I needed legal training to understand. So that's a that's one example. Another is again with trademarks. We talked about this before with with branding. Now if you're going to invest heavily in a brand name of some sort, you're probably eventually gonna want to invest in a lawyer or some kind of service to help you do some deeper searching and potentially get a trademark for it.
• 20:01
  But before you even think about spending that money, you should do the basic work yourself. Because if you find an immediate red flag that says, there's someone else using that name. I mean, don't pay a lawyer to find that out for you. Find it out yourself and then say, oh, okay. I better pick a different name.
• 20:15
  And so there are a lot of those things where you can do the first level of work, but even agreements. I mean, I'll just tell you, I am not a trust and estates lawyer. So I don't know how to draft a will. My will was created by LegalZoom. My and my wife's. you know, I didn't hire a lawyer for it because I said, you know, my estate's not that complicated. I don't have a lot of things where I really need to customize this, so this solution works perfectly for what I'm trying to do. And so that's like, you know, me as a lawyer telling you, I use those sources rather than hiring lawyers these days.
• 20:49
  Joe Rando: I have a question and just your opinion on this. So, you know, these idea of templates are great, but, as you said, they're not necessarily specific to your state or your particular business. What do you think about the idea of taking something like that, putting it into chat GPT and saying, here's the specifics of the situation. Can you make this better fit? Is that a reasonable strategy or dangerous?
• 21:14
  Bobby Klink: what I would say is you gotta you gotta use your own common sense a bit when you do that. And let me address a couple of things before I talk about that. First, you mentioned the not being state specific. That's true. But what I'll tell you is very little of what we deal with in kind of solopreneur world, building online business is state specific.
• 21:36
  Contract law, which is what governs this, is nearly universal. It's literally the Uniform Commercial Code, the UCC, which most states follow. There's restatements. So there are small little, you know, variations. But quite honestly, unless you're like in California, there are some clauses that you might wanna put in there specifically in all caps that California contracts need.
• 21:57
  But other than that, now again, are there little things you might tweak? Sure. But they really don't matter all that much. So I would not worry about the state specific thing. Now countries differ, obviously.
• 22:08
  If you're not in The United States and using a template from The United States, it's gonna be different. Because your law might be different. But what I would say on the chat GPT, you could put that in, but I'll just tell you. there are things that I see that chat GPT clawed all of them mistakes they make.
• 22:28
  And it's not even hallucinations. It's that there are a lot of bad legal information out on the Internet. And so they make bad mistakes. And one example, I'm trying to think of what it was, but there was one thing. So part of my current business, we have a software and I have built a chat functionality that it harnesses that, but it is trained very specifically with stuff.
• 22:52
  I had to put very specific instructions in about a few different things, because it kept saying things that weren't right about, LLCs, for example, about the benefits of LLCs that just aren't accurate. And here's one thing just for people to understand. If you create any kind of corporate entity, an LLC which is a limited liability company, any of those corporations you could form, a lot of people think, oh, if I do that, I can't be sued for any mistake I make in the business. And ChatGPT kept trying to give that impression. That's not accurate.
• 23:27
  You can always be sued for your personal actions even if you have a company. the point of forming a company is to avoid getting sued for mistakes that other people make in your business, not for mistakes you make. And I use this example, when I had my law firm, if I had ever committed malpractice, I never did, but if I had, there would have been a lawsuit that would have named Klink LLC, my LLC and Robert Austin Klink individually if I had made a mistake. And so this is just an example I use because I see that mistake. If you ask ChatGPT, Claude, any of those models, they're actually gonna say things that make you think that an LLC protects you, and it doesn't.
• 24:09
  So you have to be careful if you're just using one of these base models. Now that being said, if you're just trying to add language into an agreement to address a particular thing, and you're like, this has a refund clause and I want it to be worded differently, that it can definitely help you with. Because that is a very discreet task that you're telling it what to do, and it'll kind of just reword it in the right way for you.
• 24:36
  Carly Ries: So I wanna go back really quick to the templates and everything that we were talking about, because a lot of solopreneurs operate online obviously in the modern world. And they don't think about like terms of use, disclaimers, privacy policies, and so on. How often do they know which documents or templates they actually need and which ones are optional? And you said, don't ever let this stuff hold you back and just get going. But to a degree, especially if you're working with contractors, What do you mean?
• 25:04
  Bobby Klink: So here's what I'm saying. From a legal perspective, most business owners, even online, there's only one document you're legally required to have, which is your privacy policy. Under various laws, there's some laws in California. A lot of people heard about the newer California laws, which by the way don't apply to you. New California law only applies to businesses doing over $25,000,000 in annual revenue or collecting data from a 100,000 California residents in a year or making more than 50% of their revenue from selling private data.
• 25:38
  So it doesn't apply But there's an old law from like 2001 which requires you to have a privacy policy and it basically says, hey if any visitor from California comes to your website, you got to tell them these things. Same thing in the EU, the GDPR which went into effect in 2018, same thing. So that document you are legally required to have on your website. Everything else, best practice, not required. That being said, you need it.
• 26:02
  So there are a few things you do need. You should have a terms of use on your website which sets out kind of the basic rules of the road. If you're selling, again, depending on kind of what your business model is, let's say you're selling some little template things or little kind of low priced digital products on your website in addition to some other big services. Your website terms of use will often have the background refund policy. So what is the refund policy generally for our products?
• 26:32
  Now you could have a different one for other products, but it'll have things like that set out and set out basic agreements for those things. Separately, for any service you provide or kind of big product you sell, so if you sell a course, if you sell anything like that and it's a signature part of everything, you should have a terms and conditions for that program or an agreement for your services. Think of it this way, anytime money changes hands, there should be an agreement in place. It doesn't have to be overly complicated so that you understand with with a course or any one of those types of programs. It's gonna be a click to accept.
• 27:08
  You're not gonna make them sign anything. It's just, as part of the checkout process, they gotta click a box saying they accept it and with a link to your terms. But you should definitely have that. You need to do that for services. If you provide services to people, you know, getting an esignature is somewhat stronger.
• 27:25
  But quite honestly, I never did that. And I sold products up to $10,000 in the online world. And I was always like, in my world, a click to accept is good enough. And I didn't feel a need to go beyond that. So those are some basic things.
• 27:40
  If you're working with contractors, you should definitely have that and here's why. If contractors are creating anything for you that is intellectual property, so they're creating content, they're creating any of that stuff, the default is they own it. You don't own it unless there is a contractual provision that says you own the copyright, you own that intellectual property. And so you need to have that. And one of the early examples that someone approached me, like they actually had a contractor create an online course for them like a yoga course.
• 28:12
  The person was actually the person who did all the pose and all that and she didn't have an agreement with her. And the woman said, take it down, it's mine. And I was like, you know, it's weird, ugly, I mean, you might be able to win because the whole nature of the agreement where she was creating it for you, but you don't have a written agreement to prove it. And so you definitely need that with anyone you're you're working with as a contractor because that's one of the places where you have some exposure. Now chances are it's not gonna be a problem.
• 28:43
  I mean, most people aren't gonna be an issue, but you don't want uncertainty. Remember, kind of the thing I said early on, you don't want uncertainty because that's where lawyers like me come in and and make trouble for you. You wanna just keep me away.
• 28:55
  Joe Rando: Can I throw another example? This is one I think people run a risk of. It happened to a nonprofit I work with, and they had a contractor who was doing a lot of work for this nonprofit and being paid for it, decided to leave or yeah. She decided to leave and then basically came back with a lawsuit saying she was actually an employee, was owed all this money for, you know, self employment taxes she paid and blah blah blah. And they lost.
• 29:19
  And you know, that's another risk. Right?
• 29:23
  Bobby Klink: Yeah. Unfortunately, that's not one you can actually contract out of. So having an agreement in place really doesn't help you all that I mean, it could. But having an agreement that says you're a contractor and you agree that your contractor is not buying you. Ultimately, the decision of whether someone has to be an employee or a contractor comes down to the nature of the relationship.
• 29:44
  And I wanna be very clear here. I don't wanna scare people. But this is an area that people in the online space have been getting wrong all over the place and had been classifying people as contractors who actually have to be employees legally. And a lot of people got up in arms about a California law. I can't remember about 2019, 2020.
• 30:07
  But even under existing law, the way that most people treat some contractors is not actually a contractor. Ultimately, question is how much control do you have over the work? If you tell them how to do the work, when they have to show up, if you exert those levels of control, it doesn't matter what your contract says, that person will be treated as an employee if they fight it. So in a traditional contractor relationship, you're simply paying for the work product. You're paying for the result, not for how they do it.
• 30:41
  And if you go further than that, it's difficult. So as an example, if you have someone who's a contractor, I'm not and again, don't wanna scare you and say that we have a standing meeting on Monday every week and you have to show up, makes him an employee, that alone wouldn't. But for example, if you mandated, you have to be at your desk looking at this stuff between 8AM and noon every day to do support, for example, that person's probably an employee, not a contractor under the law. And having agreement won't change that. So you got to be careful about that.
• 31:12
  You need to look up the test for employees versus contractors if you're worried about it. But generally speaking, you gotta be careful because it's something a lot of people mess up.
• 31:24
  Carly Ries: Joe, you're doing a good job. You know how to treat contractors
• 31:30
  Joe Rando: Been there for a while.
• 31:32
  Carly Ries: So Well, okay. speaking of like, LifeStarr and me being a contractor for LifeStarr and everything, we have a community and we have a lot of people who are coaches or in the wellness space or finance space or whatever. And the term is being compliant gets thrown a lot thrown around a lot. What does that actually mean?
• 31:56
  Bobby Klink: Your guess is as good as mine. Again, because what I mean is people would use that in different ways.
• 32:02
  So some people, if they're talking about compliance, what they're talking about is being careful about, area of expertise or practice, and especially in the coaching and wellness space. I, for example, have a lot of people who've been in my orbit for a long time who are doctors, but either they have quit practice and now they're coaching or they still practice, but they also have a coaching element. And so in that context, there are very significant, hey, am I in compliance with the rules about about practicing medicine?
• 32:34
  Same thing with me, practicing law. I have to be very careful. I cannot give anyone a direct specific answer where they give me all their details about their their situation and I answer it because then I'm practicing law and depending on where you are and all that, it could create problems. So you have to be very careful about things like that. Same thing, various states, people don't realize this, but if you're giving nutrition advice giving advice is okay if it's general, but if you're giving particular nutrition, guidance to people, that could be something that requires a license in certain states.
• 33:06
  And so those are the types of things you have to be careful about. But quite honestly, could also mean is my marketing compliant with the rules and compliant with the law. It could mean a lot of different things. And and marketing was where a lot of people get things wrong because we've all seen and again, depending on where you are and and kind of how you have learned how to create your marketing, you've probably learned that you need to talk about the promise of what your offer creates for people and and what they can get out of it. The problem is that under the Federal Trade Commission rules, you have to be giving people and talking about what the average results are, what the typical results are.
• 33:50
  And just saying these results are not typical is not good enough. You actually have to say if you're using kind of a testimonial or a case study from one of your best results that you've gotten someone, you have to say these results aren't typical and here's what the typical results are. That's what the law actually requires to be compliant from a marketing perspective. Otherwise, the Federal Trade Commission's perspective is, hey, if you present a case study, people will assume that those are the typical results. If you can't substantiate that those are the typical results, you have broken the law.
• 34:24
  Now again, I want to be clear. The FTC is probably not coming after you because they're busy going after the people making tens of millions of dollars with these claims. But state attorney generals might get involved and might have the same perspective. So you have to think about these things. And so being compliant is kind of a big topic because really it means, are you doing everything right at the end of the day?
• 34:47
  Joe Rando: There's gotta be prisons full of scale, bros.
• 34:51
  Bobby Klink: Right. And again, I always like this is the thing I try to tell people. So I'm telling you this stuff, but understand, I'm not trying to scare you. I'm not trying to make you think all this, but I'm just helping you understand. And you then have to decide from a business perspective how much risk do you wanna take.
• 35:06
  You know, how much do you wanna scrape the law? And these things aren't criminal law. Unless you're committing fraud, we're not talking about crime. We're talking about regulatory issues. So it's, you know, there's gray area.
• 35:16
  And so how much do you wanna push it? How close do you wanna get? I've always just said, hey. It's not worth it from my perspective. But quite honestly, that's because in my business model, you know, I've always said it's kinda it's rough because my best testimonial is I use Bobby's stuff and nothing happened.
• 35:31
  I mean, that's the good result. Right? You know, I use Bobby's result Bobby's products, and I didn't get sued. And it's like, well, I don't know if you would have gotten sued anyway, but great. I'll take that.
• 35:39
  So I don't have the problem. I understand it for some people that there is an urge to talk about these things, but I just wanna make sure people understand where the lines are.
• 35:49
  Carly Ries: Right. Well, Bobby, if you could wave a magic wand and have every solopreneur listing right now instantly understand one legal concept, whether we talked about it today already or not, what would it be, and how do you think it'd change their business?
• 36:02
  Bobby Klink: So it's not even a legal concept. Because the problem is the legal stuff that we deal with that it in this kind of online world, in the solopreneur world, there are so many different legal issues at play, which is, by the way, one of the reasons it could be tough to actually find someone to help you because they need to understand intellectual property law, contract law, privacy law, and so many different things that aren't normal, like marketing law. But what I would say is the concept is the thing I kind of started with, which is that a little bit of prevention is worth so much in, you know, pain later. So think about it. Take some time.
• 36:43
  Make sure you're going through a little bit of work to understand what are the rules that you need to follow so that you can follow them so you can kind of be a knowledgeable consumer here. And again, don't think this means you need to read a bunch of legalese. You don't need to become a legal expert. That's not my my goal here. Just understand these things so that you can be what what what's called an issue spotter.
• 37:04
  See, in law school, quite honestly, we we didn't learn a lot about the answers. The tests we took at the end of every every, our exams at the end of every course were called issue spotters. It was literally we were given this big fact situation, and and the important thing was that we spotted the different issues. Not that we got the answer right. I don't wanna say that the teachers didn't care if you got the answer right.
• 37:27
  The teachers cared that you spotted the different things that needed to be analyzed because that then allows you to go deeper. And so kinda that's what you need to build as a business owner. It's kind of the spidey sense that says, this is about content. Maybe I need to be thinking about copyright law here, and maybe I ought to, you know, do a thing. And especially now with ChatGPT, you can at least then ask a quick question and see, okay, is there maybe something here I need to be thinking about?
• 37:53
  Carly Ries: Oh, love it. I feel like we need a part two, part three, part four. There's so much that we could get into, but we wanna respect your time. So I wanna ask you a question that we ask all of our guests, and that is what is your favorite quote about success?
• 38:07
  Bobby Klink: I don't know the exact quote, but it's basically success isn't about how many times you get knocked down, it's about how many times you get back up. And I think about this, I was, in a mastermind that this online coach had a a program. He had a course and he had a group coaching program, and then he had the mastermind, which was for the people who were kind of at the highest level making the most money. I was in that at a live event, and one of the questions that people ask because there was a panel of us from the mastermind. One of the people things they ask is, what makes you guys different than us?
• 38:37
  And I said, nothing except that we keep taking shots. I said, I have a lot of really, really bad ideas. But you know what? I keep taking shots. And so people forget about the bad ideas that I had.
• 38:51
  People forget about all of the failure because if you keep taking shots and if you keep getting back up, ultimately, it works. And so part of this, I used to play poker quite a bit, and part of this is making sure that you're making bets that you can afford to lose. Don't do what I did that at the very beginning, I talked about going all in and spending tons of money and tons of don't do that. Take little bets and see. And if it works, okay.
• 39:15
  I'll make a little bigger bet on this. And if that works, make a little bigger bet. But make sure that you can stay in the game and keep taking shots over time, and that will ultimately be the key to your success.
• 39:27
  Joe Rando: So can I overdub the Chumbawamba song?
• 39:31
  Carly Ries: I was just gonna say that. That's literally I was gonna say we need to have our editor, Kian, put Chumbawamba in the background as we're saying this.
• 39:39
  Joe Rando: And then we'll get sued.
• 39:40
  Bobby Klink: Yeah. There you go. I'm gonna say don't do that because, again, the whole seven second rule. But, yes, that is a great reference.
• 39:47
  Carly Ries: We can sing it, Joe. Take it away.
• 39:49
  Joe Rando: Yeah. Oh, no.
• 39:52
  Carly Ries: That's so funny. That's what I was gonna say. Well, Bobby, where can people learn more about Plainly Legal? Where can people learn more about you? Where just send us wherever.
• 40:02
  Bobby Klink: So the best place is plainlylegal.com. And again, so to answer this kind of ties back to one of, the questions before. I have this weird perspective that I don't think that business owners should have to pay to understand what they need to do legally. So Plain Legal is a software solution. If you want to create agreements with it, if you wanna use our chat feature, that's part of a paid plan, but we have the ability for you to go in and do a legal audit.
• 40:32
  Tell it answer questions about your business and the system will tell you here are the things you need to do legally in order, kind of prioritize triage with explanations, that's absolutely free so that you can kind of understand those things and, you know, understand what you need to do and hey, if if you at some point wanna pay me, great. I'd love that. But if you don't, at least you have the information and can get your protection in place. So that's always where I send people to plainluthalia.com And there's plenty of things that say start free, so any one of those buttons will get you to that free audit.
• 41:06
  Carly Ries: Awesome. Love that so so much. We'll put that in the show notes. And just thank you so much for joining us today. This is very insightful and very helpful.
• 41:14
  Joe Rando: Thanks was for great.
• 41:15
  Bobby Klink: It's always fun to chat with other business owners.
• 41:18
  Carly Ries: Oh, yes. Well, thank you, and thank you listeners for tuning in. As always, please leave that five star review. Share this episode with a friend that you think could use this legal advice and legal help. And be sure to subscribe to The Aspiring Solopreneur on your favorite podcast platform including YouTube.
• 41:35
  And we'll see you next time on the Aspiring Solopreneur. You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures? At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs.
• 41:59
  Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com