TCC Podcast #114: Contracts, privacy and protecting your business with Christina Scalera

Attorney and contract expert, Christina Scalera is our guest for the 114th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We’re grateful Christina took some time to explain why we (copywriters outside of the EU) might not need to worry too much about stuff like GDPR and what we really should be worried about instead (if you write sales pages, you’ll want to hear what she says). Here’s what we talked about: •  how and why she started the Contract Shop •  the risks of working with generic legal websites or big law firms •  the #1 thing Christina did to grow her business quickly •  the contracts you absolutely need in your business •  what you need to know and what you can safely ignore about GDPR •  what can happen if you don’t have the right contracts in place •  the benefits (besides legal protection) you get from contracts •  the ins and outs of client privacy •  a few things to know about working with affiliates •  legal risks when it comes to sales pages and sharing results • working with subcontractors—what you need to know We covered a lot of tricky topics and Christina helped us understand where we need to spend time reducing our legal risks—and how to do it. Ready to listen? Click the play button below or download this episode to your podcast app. And if you prefer reading, you can scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Contract Shop Profit First Lianna Patch Chanti Zak Ashlyn Carter Shades of Gray Frank Kern Amy Porterfield Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Rob:   This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground. Kira:   It's our new membership designed for you, to help you attract more clients and hit 10k a month consistently. Rob:   For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com. Kira:   What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, and steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob:   You're invited to join the club for episode 114 as we chat with attorney and founder of The Contract Shop, Christina Scalera, about the importance of contracts, GDPR and other privacy regulations, what we need to know about trademarks, building and growing more than one online business for creatives, and why she collects abstract art. Kira:   Welcome, Christina. Christina:      Hi, guys. Kira:   All right. Great to have you here. Let's kick this off with your story. How did you end up building The Contract Shop? Christina:      Sure, yeah. I got out of law school and I landed my dream job. It was perfect, and it was the job that everybody wanted to get, and I felt so lucky. But unfortunately, a lot of different things were happening at the same time, and I ended up with a couple different health complications and basically had a doctor tell me something had to give. The only thing that I could give was my job. I had to figure out a different way to make a living, and that was where I really stepped into the creative economy that ... Well, not as it exists today, but what we know of it. I decided my first foray into this economy would be as a private yoga teacher, because I had a friend in DC, and she was a former business attorney turned private yoga teacher in DC, and I was living in Atlanta at the time. I was like, ‘Great. I can do that.’ She kind of helped me out with that and everything. But long story short, I didn't make any money. Not a big shocker there. It's hard to make money as a yoga teacher. Not impossible, but difficult. To pay the bills, I kept doing legal work on the side. This yoga studio thing wasn't a total wash. I got a lot of clients that were yoga studios in the area that needed different contracts reviewed, or were doing some licensing, things like that, that I had done in my corporate job. In the process, I felt like ... Maybe you guys have felt this, too, but I was feeling that tug of the mid 20s, quarter-life crisis, like, ‘Okay, I've done all the school. I've done all the things. I've checked all the boxes. What's next?’ I was really on this searching path and kind of stumbled into the creative world maybe that you guys are more familiar with as copywriters working with those kinds of creatives. What I mean by that is The Rising Tide Society was just starting. I think I was one of their first 700 followers, and I was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is really cool. This account has 500 followers overnight.’ Then the next day it had 20,000. It was so crazy to watch. Just got in really early with them, went to some conferences, like Creative at Heart, A Loom with Bonnie Bakhtiari, and just kind of different ... Making things happen. I was just really searching for some kind of answer and solution, what would be what I actually end up doing. It was at these places that I started to meet people. I started to have conversations. I started to talk with people. I started to ask them what their problems were, where they were struggling. Eventually, it would always come out that I was an attorney, and that was when kind of the floodgates opened, so they would ask me all these questions, and they would have all these just needs, and I was like, ‘Wow. This is such an underserved community. This is ridiculous.’ They either are up against these big law firms ... When you Google contract help, you find a big law firm that costs thousands of dollars to help you, or you find LegalZoom. I was like, ‘There has to be some kind of in between.’ I really looked around, and there were a couple people out there that are doing something similar to what I'm doing, but not many, and I felt like I could do it better, honestly. That was really how The Contract Shop started, is just people asking me, ‘Hey, can you work on this thing, but I can't pay you, and I can't afford it,’ and I was like, ‘Well, I'm not going to work for free, so what's an intermediary solution I could give you?’ That was how the templates kind of came about. Rob:   Sweet. You mentioned LegalZoom, and I know a lot of people ... There are others, too, but I know a lot of people sort of rely on them. What's wrong with depending on contracts from LegalZoom as opposed to working directly with an attorney? You also mentioned the expense and the hassle of hiring an attorney from a large firm can be tough. I know you're fitting sort of in the middle, but help us understand sort of the risks and rewards of the other two options. Christina:      Yah, sure. I love this. No one's ever asked me this. Rob:   Oh, good. Christina:      That's why you guys are good copywriters. Yeah, so I don't have a problem with LegalZoom. I think it's a fine solution. I think where I stand out as different and as a better solution is that what I offer to my audience is more tailored to what they're doing. If you go to LegalZoom, from the last time I checked, and I'm not there every day, but last time I saw, they had a general independent contractor template, and that was about as close as it got to what you guys would offer as copywriters, for example, whereas I'm in it every day. I'm working with copywriters. I'm always desperately looking for new copywriters, FYI, but that's a different story. I'm always constantly hiring new employees, independent contractors, and so I'm in it with people, and I have a lot of friends that are copywriters, so I'm constantly hearing about the struggles that they have. I have clients who are copywriters, so I'm constantly seeing what they're coming up against. I'm able to inform my templates with all of that information and feedback in a way that a LegalZoom, I haven't seen. Maybe they're doing this now, but I have never seen them be able to do this on such a personal level. That's something that I really am proud of about our products, is that they are just so personalized to the industries that they serve, and I'm always updating them maybe in a way that bigger companies would just kind of forget about their products, like it's done, it's up there, it's running, good enough, bye. I'm always in there. I'm always like, ‘How can I make this a better product?’ Then as far as big law firms go, I think it's just ... I mean, I feel the struggle of finding a copywriter, but you guys would probably find the struggle finding an attorney, or maybe you've tried to find a good graphic designer or a good web designer or any kind of service provider, and you know how hard that is if you've ever looked in earnest. There's better solutions, thanks to people like you who are educating their audiences and providing these awesome communities for people like me to reach within and kind of try to find someone. But to find an attorney, it's a very difficult thing to do, because you don't necessarily get to see the end result, and in the instance of, say, licensing agreements, you don't really get to see directly how the licensing agreement impacted your business. Was that a good attorney? Was it a bad attorney? It's really, really difficult for somebody who's not an attorney to determine. That's where I really like these templates, is because you're the one who's actually delivering them, and so I can customize them so far, but you can add your voice. You can add your services. You can add your just unique value proposition and special touches to the process, and we try to walk people through and show them how to do that as well when they purchase, just as like a little bonus feature. I think that's the difference between those two other options. Kira:   It sounds like you have an intimate understanding of this creative online space that we're all playing in that probably a lot of attorneys don't understand,