Are you working on a side hustle that is not legally protected? If the ultimate goal of your side hustle is to transition into a full fledged business, then listen up because this episode teaches how to take the first step. Today on The Legalpreneur Podcast, I want to motivate you to treat your side hustle as if it’s already a business, because the moment you’re advertising your goods or services, you absolutely are a legitimate business!

Shift your mindset from day one, because if you treat your side hustle like a business, you’re more likely to successfully create a profitable business! If you can see the potential of your side hustle, investing in your LLC and Trademarks are going to save you so much money as you grow! Once you’re established it becomes an expensive headache to go back and do the work that needed to be done in the beginning.

You wouldn’t think it now but The Legalpreneur started as a side hustle. If I had not treated it as the business that I knew it would grow into; The Legalpreneur would not have become what it is today! Registering your LLC, trademarks and using contracts will make scaling your side hustle into a full fledged business so much easier! Don’t limit your own potential, get your side hustle legally protected now!

Key Takeaways:

[1:28] Whether you’re bringing in money or not you need to legally protect your side hustle

[2:00] Shifting your mindset and treat your side hustle as if it is a legitimate business from day 1

[2:55] Backtracking is more expensive than setting up your side hustle correctly to begin with 

[3:45] The moment you are advertising your goods and services…you’re a legitimate business!

[4:20] The Legalpreneur started as a side hustle and grew into a full fledged business 

[6:40]  You want to legitimize your side hustle by registering your LLC from the beginning 

[7:27]  Don’t be afraid to use contracts anytime money or value is changing hands 

[10:00] Setting up your business does cost money but it is necessary to set you up for success 

THE LEGALPRENEUR BOOK IS FINALLY HERE!
It’s available at the following online retailers:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Walmart

Get Legally Protected!
Want to legally protect your business without the seemingly over-complicated approach?   We have THE solution for you, the Legal Protection Playbook!  Get started here.

Links: 

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Website 
Facebook
Twitter 
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Disclaimer: 

The Legalpreneur Podcast is advertising/marketing material. It is not legal advice. Please consult with your attorney on these topics. Copyright Legalpreneur Inc 2022

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Legalpreneur transcript:

Andrea Sager  00:03

Welcome to the Legalpreneur podcast. I’m your host Andrea Sager founder and CEO of Legalpreneur Inc. As a serial entrepreneur and someone that works exclusively with small business owners legally protecting their business. I’m dedicated to covering common legal issues faced by business owners, providing you with the business knowledge you need to catapult your business’s growth, and showing you just how some of the world’s most elite entrepreneurs have handled these legal and business issues themselves. In true attorney fashion, the information in this episode is not legal advice. This is for informational purposes only. And you should always consult with your attorney before implementing any of the information in the show.

Andrea Sager  00:46

Hello, there Happy Monday. Welcome back. We’re chatting side hustles today. And the reason is because I’m very passionate about side hustles Legalpreneur if you didn’t know started as a side hustle. And so I want to make sure that you know everything you need to know about side hustles and how to protect it. Because you obviously are doing this on the side, it’s probably not your full time gig, you may have a nine to five, you may be a stay at home parent wanting to make a little bit of money on the side. And you don’t know what to do. You don’t know if there’s anything legally you need to do. Or maybe you’re growing and you want to know, hey, how do I make this more legitimate? Now, before we get into it, I want to remind you that the Legalpreneur book is available, you can get it on amazon.com, Barnes and noble.com I think it’s available@target.com.

Andrea Sager  01:34

Anywhere you buy it, I would love if you left a review. And if you buy the book, there are a lot of resources available to you online. Once you get the book, you’ll find the links in there. And basically, I My goal with this book is to make sure that you as a business owner, or soon to be business owner are set up for success now and in the future. So I would be so appreciative. If you could just leave a review, wherever you purchase it, it would mean a lot. Okay, side hustles. What do you do? How do you protect this, whether you’re bringing in money already or not, you do need to make sure that your side hustle is protected. Now, I know a lot of people are scared to spend money, even when it’s just a side hustle. And I get it. The pushback is like Well, I’m just trying to see if I can make this work. I don’t want to spend extra money on legal protection. If I don’t need it, I get that 100% Like, I totally understand that. However, you’re trying to make it work. You want this to work, you want to be a business owner, you probably want this to be your full time gig. So why not already act as if Why not already treat it like a true business? Because that’s what I see. It’s really a mindset shift in thinking about, Oh, I’m just trying to see if this can work. Hey, treat it like a business from the beginning. Act as if number one rule of manifestation act as if, and that’s why so there’s a lot of spiritual components. There’s, you know, technical components, but number one, I like to always tell people look, if you’re trying to make this work, just act as if already treat it like a business from day one. That means you got to set it up correctly, like a business, get that LLC, get the contracts, protect your intellectual property now, so spiritually, number one, you want to act as if number two, why would you want to start growing something and then it grows and then you want to go back and fix things that you didn’t do correctly from the beginning?

Andrea Sager  03:35

Because I can promise you you’re going to spend more money, backtracking what you did than if you just set it up correctly from the beginning. We see this happen every single day people come to me and they I just had someone email me yesterday saying hey, I you know, this has been my side hustle. It’s actually been doing really well cashflow wise and I think I’m ready to make it a legitimate business. And I love that first of all I want to I congratulate her going from you know truly a side hustle to making it a legit business. But one thing you have to understand the moment you start advertising your goods or services, you are a business go back and listen to the episode that I did a couple of weeks ago about are you what makes you know what makes it a legitimate business and the mommy start advertising the moment you have that idea of oh, I want to start I want to make money doing this. You are a business and you have to treat it as such. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love a good side hustle. i So for those that don’t know Legalpreneurs started as a side hustle to my law firm the first product and it was actually initially called the contract vault. The company was Legalpreneur LLC, and we launched the contract ball which is just the contract templates. But because at that time the Legalpreneur membership was only sold through my law firm and then we took the membership out of the law firm and put it into the Legalpreneur company because it really started to take off

Andrea Sager  05:00

In the law firm, and we realize, hey, this is something here, this is actually going to be the main hustle now Legalpreneur what and I think that’s for most people. That’s everybody’s dream. And like I mentioned last Friday on the podcast, it’s because we finally were hitting higher numbers getting recurring revenue. And I knew that I didn’t want to hustle for the rest of my life in the law firm getting the next trademark client, the next trademark client, because it’s one time purchases. And it’s not recurring revenue. It’s not predictable. And, you know, at the height of the law firm, I was, I do not say this to brag at all. But I mean, at the height of the law firm, you guys, I was making million dollars in my sleep. I was, I was working maybe 15 hours a week. And so the business was doing really well, I had a well oiled machine. But I number one was unmotivated. And I knew there’s like it’s not going to this isn’t going to last forever. And I want to build something predictable. And at the end of the day, I can only grow the law firm to be so big. But when I go startup route, and go into startup mode, that I can truly build an empire here. And that’s the goal. I truly want Legalpreneur to be an empire, I want it to be completely changing the legal industry, not just for small business owners, but for attorneys as well. And I knew that we had recurring revenue with the membership. And I knew that it could only grow especially we were very limited in the law firm.

Andrea Sager  06:20

So I knew I wanted to take it out, build it up, and Legalpreneur, the company. So eventually, my side hustle became my main hustle. But from day one, I did put all the protections in place, and I get it like I am a lawyer, I know how to do it, it’s not going to cost me the same thing that it costs you because I’m just the one doing it. So I get that. But I really just want to emphasize the fact that even if you aren’t making a profit, even if you’ve barely made any money, you want to legitimize your side hustle from day one, because the goal is for it to be the main hustle. And you need to act as if you need to create a true business from the beginning, treat it as if it is a real business from the beginning. So of course, what do you need, you need to file the LLC, if you’re going to pursue investors, then we need to have the conversation of Hey, should you be a corporation instead of an LLC, but if you’re not going to have investors, you’re just going to be the sole owner, maybe you have a partner too, then you probably still need to just be an LLC, which is a limited liability company that protects you personally from the depths of your company, then we have contracts, of course, you never want to be afraid to use contracts, always use written agreements, any time, money or value is changing hands.

Andrea Sager  07:36

I don’t care how relaxed the deal seems how chill the situation is, you need to protect yourself. And the contract is there to protect you and the other party, it’s not a one sided thing, it really is there to protect everybody. So I suggest always always using written agreements. Of course, if you if you need help with the LLC Legalpreneur can help we charge $250 plus your state filing fees for the LLC, we file it get your EIN get the operating agreement, we get you all legally up and running. And then the contracts, we have the templates, 199 per bundle, which is different niche bundles, all the contracts, you need to run your business. And then of course, we have our membership, which gives you all access to your own attorney, you get a phone call every month document review every month, which we do have some really exciting stuff coming up this year. Can’t give away to anything right now. But just know that the next version of our app will be coming out this year. And a lot of really get improvements to the membership itself. Anyways, document review, you get access to all of our contract templates, which right now there’s over 100 templates. So literally everything that you need is in the membership, plus, you get a 15% discount on any additional services that you need.

Andrea Sager  08:52

And when you get signed up, I’d like to do a business audit when you first get in because we can tell you, Hey, this is what you have in the business. This is what you still need to protect yourself. And it’s really just giving you that quick win of oh, this is everything like this is all the trademarks, all the copyrights. This is you know, all the contracts that you’re using this is still with the contracts that you need, you can just go get them from the contract vault, and so that the audit really gives you a lot of quick answers. And then we do a free trademark search as well. So I love the membership. Of course I created it, and I created it because I just knew I saw so many business owners that needed this or that and of course you don’t want to go pay hourly to an attorney. So I like to think I created exactly what every small business owner needs. And one thing I want to make sure you understand is a lot of the stuff. I don’t like to use the word expensive. That’s a relative term, but this stuff does cost money. However, it is necessary money that needs to be spent to ensure that you’re setting yourself up for success. A lot of the legal protection doesn’t show an immediate return as the same way that if you were to invest in a I don’t know

Andrea Sager  10:00

Like something for our sales or marketing, like that’s the sexy stuff. The legal stuff typically is not sexy but down the road is where it will save you a lot of money and potentially can make you a lot of money. We’ve had many clients that have made money because they just had their stuff legally protected like the one client that made $25,000 just from having her trademark registered so many crazy stories, but that’s what happens when you are proactive and you put the protections in place from the beginning. All right, I hope this was helpful. Let me know if you have any questions. Always feel free to reach out the all the links are in the show notes and I’ll see you on Wednesday.

Andrea Sager  10:39

Here at Legalpreneur, we’re committed to providing a supportive legal community for all business owners. I know how scary the legal stuff can be. If you found this information helpful, I would be so grateful if you could share it with a fellow business owner. And quite frankly, it doesn’t cost anything to rate review or subscribe to the show. Your support helps me reach more listeners which allows me to support more business owners in their entrepreneurial journey. Have any questions or comments about the show? Feel free to drop me a line on Instagram. I promise I read all of the messages and comments. And if you want to be a guest on the show or know someone that would make a great guest simply fill out our application form and a team member will reach out if we think it’s a good fit. I’ll see you in the next episode.