TCC Podcast #451: All Your Legal Questions with Andrea Sager

As the owner of a copywriting business, you have a lot to think about—your products, your clients, your research process, writing great copy, finding new clients and more. So it's no wonder we tend to push legal questions to the bottom of the to-do list until there's a problem. Don't do that. Andrea Sager is my guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. And she's got a lot of great legal advice on using A.I., contracts, business entities, and protecting your business and assets. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: AndreaSager.com Legalprenuer.com The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Research Mastery Course Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Do you have questions about contracts, trademarks, business entities, and your legal risk and liabilities? Today, I have answers. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. About a year before I took on my first freelance writing project—I’m going back a long time here—I took the LSAT, that’s the test for admittance into law school. I had thought I would become a lawyer from about the time I was in eighth grade. And I did well enough on the test to get into most of the schools I was planning on applying to.  My plan at the time was to practice law in the non-profit sector. And to help with that goal, I decided to enroll into a Masters program in public administration. But once I started that program, I was so bored by the curriculum, I couldn’t envision myself finishing.  At the same time I met someone who asked me to write an article promoting a product for a company she was working for. When I realized I could make money as a writer, I turned my back on my dream of being an attorney and started writing copy. So when it comes to legal advice, I can’t really help, but my friend Andrea Sager can. Andrea has helped hundreds of small businesses with legal advice and services. I tried to ask her all of the legal questions copywriters tend to have about things like using A.I., contracts and agreements, trademarks, and how we limit our exposure to legal liability that could cost you your business, your home and more. This stuff matters. And I hope you enjoy this interview. Before we get to the interview, the last couple of weeks I’ve mentioned that I put everything I know about conducting research and using A.I. as part of my research process into a short course called Research Mastery. It includes a lot, but it’s not an overly long, impossible to watch course. Instead it’s the kind of course you can watch in an afternoon or weekend and walk away with a research process that helps you uncover the insights you need to write great sales copy. ..more than twenty different techniques for capturing ideas, … all of the questions I use to get find big ideas about my client, their product, their customers and their competitors as well as the documents you need to capture your research and several tutorials on how to use A.I. to speed up your processes and even help with your research itself. But unlike other research courses that take hours to watch and implement, this one will teach you everything you need to know in a single afternoon. You can learn more about this unique resource at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery… research mastery is all one word. I’ll link to that in the show notes so you can easily find the link if you can’t type the URL into your browser right now… thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery And now, my interview with Andrea Sager. Hey, Andrea, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. I am thrilled to have you here. It's been quite a while since we talked to an attorney about all of the stuff that we need to be thinking about in our businesses. So I'm excited to have you here, but before we get started, maybe you could tell us your story. Just how did you become an attorney, an author, founder of the legal preneur.com and if I'm reading your website correctly, last year, you were ranked in the number 22 trademark lawyer in America. How does that all happen?  Andrea Sager: Thank you so much for having me. I so I way back when I started my journey in big law I got the big, fancy, quote, unquote dream job right out of law school, which was the plan. I thought I was going to be married to my job work my way up to partner. And the first week there, I it hit me all of a sudden, and I remember thinking there is absolutely no way I can sit here for the next 40 years of my life, so immediately I'm trying to plan my exit. But it was a little harder because my husband, at the time we he was staying home with our son, and I was the only breadwinner. I was the only one making any income. But about seven months into my journey in big law. I always tell people I manifest getting fired, but ultimately I just wanted to work with small businesses. I had a previous small business where I had connections with other small business owners, and they kept coming to me at the firm, asking for help with trademarks and similar things that I do today for small businesses. I. And the firm didn't want to help them. And at the time, I was confused, because nobody was asking for a discount, nobody was asking for a discounted rate. They just needed help, and nobody to go to and so I saw this clear need in the market, and after seven months being at the firm, I had an idea that I would be able to survive if I went out on my own, but I couldn't exactly make the leap on my own, and luckily, the universe pushed me out and said, All right, here you go. You no longer have a job here, so you got to figure out how to make it work. So that the day that I got fired, I launched my law firm, and I was I was ready. I was planning on it. I launched my law firm, had my first client that night, and that was seven years ago, and it's been quite the journey ever since I launched my law firm. Andrea Sager law in 2018 legal preneur came about in 2020 when I wanted to reach even more entrepreneurs. And legal preneur Is the what we what I call the DIY side of things. We have all the resources. We can file your LLC. You can buy all the contract templates, all the legal related but no attorney client relationship. That is what legal preneur is. So it's just an opportunity to meet even more entrepreneurs where they're at and still providing all of the resources that you need to set up and grow and be successful as a business owner. So that's how I got started. It's been a wild ride, but it's it's been quite the journey, and just so fun. And I'm every day, I'm so honored to be able to serve entrepreneurs. And in my law firm, I primarily now just do trademarks, and that that's how I have been ranked so highly I've it honestly is an honor, just because that is my passion, is helping small businesses, and just being able to continue doing this year after year, day after day after seven years, it gets better every day, and I'm just excited for the next seven years. Rob Marsh: I'll bet most people, when they get fired, don't have the plan. They're not ready to go. It seems to be pretty shocking, and there's sort of a period of adjustment. Doesn't sound like that happened to you? You hit the ground running. Andrea Sager:  I was ready. What's funny, actually, is so we were living in Cincinnati at the time, and we were making the move to Houston, so on that Monday, we put our house for sale. Wednesday, I had texted my husband and said, I you know I can't he we knew I wasn't happy. We knew I wasn't going to stay there. But I said, I can't stand it here. I want to quit today. Can I just quit? I think we have enough money to hold us over until we move. And he said, Just wait until we have a contract on the house. That way we know it's going to sell. And I said, fair enough. Absolutely, that makes sense. Friday morning is when they walked into my office and told me that I had a choice to make, and they offered me a severance package, and I actually just packed up my thing so quickly and never went back. Rob Marsh: Well, that's the start of a good thing, and so what you're doing today is helping a lot of entrepreneurs, like you said, with legal stuff. So let's talk about this. Obviously, our audience here is copywriters, content writers, marketers, most of whom, but not all, most of whom, are freelancing in some capacity. Maybe it's their full time business. Maybe they're doing it on the side. Maybe they're trying to figure out how to do it full time. Where should they be thinking about legal stuff? That's maybe a terrible way to ask the question. What's the first thing that they should be saying? Okay, if I'm gonna do this thing right from the beginning or from where I am now, I'm gonna start doing it right, what's the first question they should be asking. Andrea Sager: Number one that you want to always take care of, no matter what business you're in, no matter what stage you're in, if you haven't done this already, it needs to be done yesterday, and that is filing an LLC, which is a limited liability company. And what I want to make sure everybody understands is, even if you're a freelancer or a contractor, you are a business owner. And I worked with so many people throughout the years where there is a misunderstanding and they think, Oh, I'm just a freelancer. I'm a contractor. I'm just a 1099, I don't have a business that is actually a business. And you have to make sure that once you take that first step to being a business owner or a freelancer, a contract, whatever you want to call it, you have to make sure you are protecting yourself every step of the way. And step number one is filing that LLC, which is a limited liability company, and the whole purpose of that is to make sure that you as an individual are protected from the debts of your company. Rob Marsh: So you say LLC, obviously there are a lot of different kinds of business entities, and there's maybe some crossover here between,...