Welcome to the final episode of The Legalpreneur Podcast as we take our long-awaited hiatus. This is the end of the podcast..for now, as we step into a new chapter of our startup. Our team is spread thin, and to reach our goal of uprooting the legal industry for small businesses, as the founder,  I must give my full attention to the grand mission so that The Legalpreneur can continue doing what it does best, supporting small business owners.

Before I leave you, I am giving your the full legal checklist,  to ensure that you have a foundation to legally start, structure, and keep your business on track. As a small business, you are held to the same standard as any Fortune 500 company, which may be overwhelming, but this list will empower you to confidently start and maintain legal protection of your company.

Thank you for supporting The Legalpreneur podcast for these three amazing years. It’s been a pleasure answering your questions, concerns, and simplifying the legal process. Without your support, The Legalpreneur would not have grown into the success it is today! You can still find everything you need in our podcast library, and I hope to be back soon!

Key Takeaways:

[1:00] The end…for now

[2:00] The full legal checklist 

[3:00] You’re held to the same standard as a Fortune 500 companies

[4:00] Creating your business structure, contracts 

[5:30] Always protect your intellectual property 

[7:00] Keep your finances separate and set up your business account 

[8:00] Thank you for following along on our journey


RESOURCES:
The Business Owner’s Legal Checklist: https://thelegalpreneur.com/freechecklist/

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: 

Andrea’s Instagram
Legalpreneur Instagram
Website 
Facebook
Twitter 
TikTok
YouTube

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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. Hello there. 

Andrea Sager  00:46

Welcome back to The Legalpreneur Podcast. I’m going to start this episode by letting you know this is the last Legalpreneur podcast episode. For now. We are putting the podcast on a hiatus. And I talked about it previously. But just to recap, essentially, we’re spread very thin right now. And as much as I love the podcast, I love creating, I love educating I love this, we have to get very, very strategic with our time and what we’re doing. And we made a difficult, very difficult decision to put the podcast on a hiatus until we can expand the team and essentially have more support for everything that we’re doing. We’re doing 1,000,001 things and have to just be strategic. And I actually encourage you to do the same. If you ever feel you’re spread too thin or you feel like something’s not delivering in the way you want it to. Like we should be pushing the podcasts out more and we just don’t even have the team to do that. So it’s really the decision we had to do make for now. But don’t worry it’s not the end forever of the Legalpreneur podcast just for now. And I promise you we are having some good content this episode. But if you in the meantime are like oh my gosh, no, I want to hear more. I want to learn more. Instagram, Tik Tok, I’m always always always putting stuff out on Tik Tok. And, actually a lot of the questions that I address on the podcast come from Instagram and Tiktok. So if you have questions, feel free to leave a comment, do the q&a on tick tock and I’ll actually just make a video on it instead of doing a longer podcast episode. So there’s still obviously plenty of ways to connect with me with the brand with Legalpreneur. 

Andrea Sager  02:37

And today what we’re covering is the full legal checklist. We put out so much content. And sometimes people are just like, Hey, can I just get the quick down and dirty answers. And that’s what our checklist is. So the link is there in the show notes if you want to go grab your free copy. And basically it’s it’s called the business owners legal checklist. And it’s two parts. One is making sure you’re legally properly set up, you’re legally up and running. And the second part is the annual legal compliance checklist. So there’s two parts. One is to make sure you’re up and running correctly. And then the second part is what you should be doing every single year. If you’ve never looked at your stuff, it makes sure you go get this download, because you want to make sure that your business is always properly legally protected. And the reason I’m so passionate about this is because I realized, back when I was in law school and I had my first business, as a small business owner, you’re still held to the same standard as fortune 500 companies, the moment you become a business owner, you’re held to a higher standard. Even though you don’t have the budget for your chief legal officer, your in house counsel, you still have to maintain these higher standards. So I know that Legalpreneur we were created in order to help more business owners without them having to bring in in house counsel. So we of course, that’s why we have our legal premium membership. And everything that we offer, it is to help the small business or early stage startups to ensure they are always legally in compliance. So just to recap, what’s in the actual checklist, when you get set up, you always want to make sure that you have the right business structure. And you’ve heard all of this on the podcast before but I’m just doing a quick recap for this episode. So your business structure, what entity Do you want to be? 

Andrea Sager  04:32

Typically as a small business owner, if it’s a closely held business, LLC is the way to go Limited Liability Company. Then, once you have your structure, then you want to make sure you have your contracts. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid of contracts. Anytime money is changing hands. That’s when you should be using a contract. If you are of the mindset like oh, I just don’t want somebody to think I’m trying to pull one over on them. It’s very informal. It’s just no Know get all of that out of your head, you are a business owner. And this is how business owners operate. They use contracts. So if you think that you’re, you know, it’s a mindset thing, do some work get through that, because I tell people all the time, if I’m now working with someone, and they don’t send me a contract, I start to question their professionalism. Are they really a business owner? Or is this just like a little side project they’re doing? Is it? Are they really a business owner? It makes me question if they don’t initially send me a contract. So keep that in mind when you’re starting to wonder like, Oh, should I actually use contracts? Yes, absolutely. If you are a business owner, you should be using contracts. And you should be using them anytime money is changing hands, then do get our contracts. Always, always, always make sure you are protecting your intellectual property, patents, trademarks, copyrights, doesn’t matter what size business you have, you always need to make sure that your IP is thoroughly protected. And rule number one there, what IP Do you have, that’s what you have to take the time to figure out, of course, go to the checklist. And you will have more details on all this stuff. And then you always want to make sure you have business insurance. I’ve always been a big proponent of business insurance, because obviously, I’m dealing with people that have issues. And when somebody comes to me, and they’ve got a cease and desist letter from you know, somebody, and it’s for a photo that they posted years ago, and they’re like, I don’t even run that website anymore, or it’s like this small thing, but they’re still asking for money. 

Andrea Sager  06:40

That’s because it’s so copyright infringement, and you can still get sued for it. If you have business insurance, typically, the insurance is actually going to cover when that happens. So many times clients have come to me, and first thing I asked them is, hey, do you have business insurance? If they do, we loop and insurance, the insurance typically takes care of it. So it’s just eliminating more issues. And of course, if you’re a brick and mortar, if you have a physical presence somewhere, absolutely. All the more reason you need insurance. But even if you’re just online, you still need business insurance, then you want to make sure you have your business bank account. And this really goes with setting up the LLC, because when you have an LLC, in order to keep that LLC in compliance, you have to have a business bank account. So that’s making sure that you are legally up and running. And the annual compliance piece, it’s very similar, but a little more like, hey, what changed? Did this change? Do you need to do this? Do you need to do that? So make sure you get that download is there in the show notes, just drop your name and email on the link and you will get immediate access to that checklist. Oh my gosh, I like this feels really weird that this is the last episode that I’m going to be recording for the foreseeable future. And like I said in the other episode, where I announced the hiatus coming, this could be a month long thing. It could be a year long thing. I don’t know. I have no idea. But I will tell you that there are many, many big things in store for us this year. So I hope that you are following along on the journey because it has been an honor to have you as a listener over the past three years. And I hope that you will continue to listen when we have future episodes. If you’re on social media, of course, follow along, reach out. I have appreciated your support more than you will ever know by listening to the podcast. And if you’re ever need anything, please let me know. 

Andrea Sager  08:38

Always always if you have questions, you know where to find us. And alrighty, I’m out and I hope you all absolutely kill it this year. 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.