Episode 102. Can Legally Protecting My Business Actually Grow It?

Sam Vander Wielen: Welcome back to another episode of Sam’s Sidebar, where I tackle your essential legal questions about starting and growing a legally protected online business in ten minutes or less every single Thursday.

So, this week, we’re going to talk about whether legally protecting your business can actually help grow it. So, I got asked by a listener, “Can legally protecting my business actually grow it?”

So, here’s the deal, number one, legally protecting your business gives you visibility. So, over the past six years, I’ve heard from thousands of customers who share that once they got legal protection in place, whether it was an LLC or a legit contract or even just knowing what they were legally allowed to talk about, that they felt so confident that they were able to start talking about their business more or start talking about their offers more.
I hear so often from people that they even just feel like they’re able to create something for the first time because they feel legally safe doing it.

So, I think you can put two and two together and realize what happens when you start to talk about your business more on social media or through your website or start emailing your email list more.

Here’s the other thing that I see happen most often when you don’t have legal protection. So, when you’re thinking about putting out a new offer, for example, but you don’t have legal protection yet and you don’t know if you should spend money on legal yet because maybe your business should be a little more established until you invest on the legal side of things. So, you sort of “launch” your program quietly. And you know that doing so is like a little bit risky legally. So, since you launched it quietly and you’re afraid to, like, truly invite people in, not that many people buy it and end up joining your program.

That really is the cycle that I help coaches and service providers get out of. Because if you’re just continuing to stay afraid of putting your product out there, then no one’s really going to buy it if we’re not talking about it that often.

The second thing that I see legal really help you with when it comes to actually growing your business is trust and professionalism. So, once you legally protect your business, it’s incredible how you actually show up differently as the business owner. Even if your business isn’t the big success it’s going to be in the future – I know that. It’s going to be true for you – it’s important that you start acting like you’re heading in that direction anyway.

Once I stopped acting like the business and the CEO of the business that I am right this moment, and instead started acting like the business and the CEO that I knew I was headed towards and I really wanted to become, that’s when everything started to change for me. I think it’s kind of like when you start acting or you start dressing for the job that you want, I think it’s like your way of saying to the world like “Look, I’m this big professional business” before you actually are, everybody else just kind of catches up with it.

I also know that having legit contracts and looking like you have your stuff together is more attractive and feels safer for future clients to want to actually work with you. They’re going to be more willing to work with someone who looks legit because they’re going to trust you. And when they trust you, they want to work with you.

The third thing, I think, is that legal actually helps you to actually grow your business is the fact that you’re actually able to recoup money or prevent the loss of money.

So, for example, one of my Ultimate Bundle members, Maya Nicole – she’s actually @mayanicole on Instagram – she shared on my Ultimate Bundle Member Roundup episode – in case you haven’t heard it, I’ll link to it down below. It came out on January 23rd – she was actually able to recoup tens of thousands of dollars in 2022 alone just because she had her legal ducks in a row thanks to my Ultimate Bundle.

So, she had terms of use in place for her course and people were purchasing her course and her membership, and then they were doing a chargeback threat. That’s when you tell your credit card like, “Hey, I don’t want to pay for this thing that I’ve paid for.” And because she had the proper terms in place, she was able to successfully defend herself against these chargeback threats. So, that’s huge. And that’s a really clear way how legally protecting your business actually helps you to financially grow it.

Okay. So, those are just three quick ways that legally protecting your business actually helps you to grow it. For one, I think it gives you the confidence to be more visible. Two, I think it brings a lot of trust and professionalism, which allows other people to actually want to work with you. And three, it gives you the opportunity to actually recoup money that you might have lost if you hadn’t had your legal ducks in a row.

So, I hope that this week’s episode was helpful to you. Send me a DM on Instagram, @samvanderwielen, and let me know if you liked it or respond to my email if you get my emails. Thank you so much for listening. I’ll see you on Monday.

Thanks so much for listening to the On Your Terms podcast. Make sure to follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You can also check out all of our podcast episodes, show notes, links and more at samvanderwielen.com/podcast. You can learn more about legally protecting your business and take my free legal workshop, Five Steps to Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business, at samvanderwielen.com. And to stay connected and follow along, follow me on Instagram, @savanderwielen, and send me a DM to say hi.

Just remember that although I am a attorney, I am not your attorney and I am not offering you legal advice in today’s episode. This episode and all of my episodes are informational and educational only. It is not a substitute for seeking out your own advice from your own lawyer. And please keep in mind that I can’t offer you legal advice. I don’t ever offer any legal services. But I think I offer some pretty good information.