---
title: 'The Biggest Legal Mistakes New Business Owners Make (with Attorney Sam Vander Wielen)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=J1j7fuqjZq8'
video_id: 'J1j7fuqjZq8'
date: 2026-07-31
duration_sec: 2149
---

# The Biggest Legal Mistakes New Business Owners Make (with Attorney Sam Vander Wielen)

> Source: [The Biggest Legal Mistakes New Business Owners Make (with Attorney Sam Vander Wielen)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=J1j7fuqjZq8)

## Summary

In this conversation, attorney Sam Vander Wielen joins host Gillian to discuss the most common legal mistakes new business owners make, from waiting too long to get protection to drafting contracts with ChatGPT. She explains the three essential legal pillars—LLC, contracts, and insurance—and shares practical guidance on partnerships, business insurance, and enforcing boundaries.

### Key Points

- **Book's mission** [01:11] — Sam's book, 'When I Start My Business, I'll Be Happy,' is a 'soup to nuts' online business manifesto for building a successful business on your own terms, without burnout or accidentally breaking rules.
- **Success doesn't equal happiness** [02:05] — People think leaving corporate or earning more will make them happy; Sam's own life (parents' deaths and brain surgery) taught her to build a sustainable, streamlined business that supports happiness rather than replacing it.
- **Evergreen content and email list** [03:04] — She invested early in evergreen content with a call to action that pulls people to her email list, which remains her most important business asset at over 50,000 subscribers.
- **Paid ads after building a war chest** [04:40] — She started paid ads 3.5 years into the business, using a war-chest strategy: build enough capital so an unsuccessful ad campaign won't hurt; she still splits time between ads and organic content.
- **Most common legal mistake** [06:12] — Waiting too long to get legal protection; the law makes no room for your profitability or client count — if you have one client and operate as a business, you need protection.
- **The three essential legal pieces** [07:00] — Start with an LLC (or appropriate entity), client contracts/terms of use, and business insurance; together they protect your money, sanity, and enforcement ability.
- **When LLC protection fails** [08:12] — LLCs protect personal liability only if you act like a business: sign contracts as the LLC, use the LLC name, don't co-mingle funds, and check whether your state recognizes single-member LLCs.
- **Partnerships need legal help and balanced ownership** [12:28] — Multiple-member LLCs should get an attorney and operating agreement; never go 50/50 because equal ownership leads to deadlock — even 51/49 is better.
- **Contracts often miss crucial clauses** [17:39] — Common gaps include venue/choice of law, entire agreement, indemnification, and disclaimers; a Washington client sued in Florida paid heavily for a missing venue clause.
- **Why not to use ChatGPT for contracts** [21:18] — Sam tested ChatGPT and found the contract incomplete and inaccurate, missing entire sections like indemnification, entire agreement, and proper choice-of-law language; non-lawyers can't spot what's missing.
- **Insurance: use a broker and be specific** [27:05] — A broker can shop multiple carriers; explain exactly what you sell and how you sell it, because a policy may cover only one part of your business.
- **The two main insurance types** [29:40] — Professional liability (errors & omissions) and commercial general liability are the most common; even virtual businesses may need CGL for retreats, talks, or cheap peace of mind.
- **Enforce your contracts and boundaries** [33:17] — Once protections are in place, enforce them; letting clients break minor terms signals flexible boundaries and invites more pushback.

### Conclusion

The core takeaway: new business owners should secure an LLC, proper contracts, and insurance immediately, then enforce those protections consistently. Legal readiness isn't about size or revenue—it's about giving yourself confidence and safety from day one.

## Transcript

feel confident about, it's [music] like as if you have nothing. When you start to allow people to break little pieces of their contract, it's [music] like a boundaries to and now they're going to push some more. [music] You can't really
stand within your legal boundaries once you start letting that stuff go. I would say never go 50/50. That is a terrible idea. I've just seen too many instances of people who were friends, actual like romantic partners, all kinds of things.
>> It just doesn't go well. >> Hi there, Sam. Welcome to Work Less, here today. >> Hey, Gillian. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me. >> Yeah, for sure. So, I cannot wait to get
into talking about these common legal mistakes that new business owners make. But first of all, I got to ask you about your book. It came out sometime this >> April 15th. >> April 15th, 2025. Yeah. So, it's been
out for quite a few months now, but not too long. Tell me a little bit about what led to you writing that book and like how it all went down. >> So, I really wanted to write a like soup to nuts online business manifesto of how
to build a successful online business for people who also want to do so on their terms without, you know, burning out and without breaking the rules. Um, all the gurus say that they have to do. So that's my style. And people were
always asking me, I have only ever sold two products for eight years. I've sold over $8 million in one of them alone. And so people have always asked me like, how did you keep it so simple? Especially as I navigated uh I lost both
of my parents within the same year. I had brain surgery and still grew my wanted to put it all in one place and kind of do so in my like cozy style. and also really help people to understand that like yes, building a really
successful business is not going to make you happy, but you can still be really you happy, but you can still be really happy with a successful business. having a successful business doesn't have to take away your happiness. Is
think it's that a lot of times people go into starting a business thinking that once they leave their job, once they ditch corporate or once their business even just makes more money that they're automatically going to be happy. And I
think if my like my life story teaches anybody anything, it's it was kind of egg on my face that like I left my corporate career as an attorney and then like my whole world blew up. My parents died, my dad got terminal leukemia, I
wait a minute. I thought this was all supposed to be smooth sailing. And so what I learned instead was how to build a very sustainable, streamlined online business that allowed me the freedom and flexibility to go out and be a happy
person on my own, not because of what the business was doing. Was there any in particular? I don't know. You said that the book is kind of about people asking you how you were able to keep your business so streamlined and grow it so
much. Is there any like particular thing that you can point to that was what enabled you to do that? >> Yeah, I would say two very specific things was that when life hands you some very sticky lemons, you figure out how
to get really like streamlined in especially in your content for example. So, I early on invested on pretty much only creating evergreen content, content that would have a call to action that would p pull people into my world
regardless of when they heard it or found it. And then once they p were pulled in, the place I was pulling them to was my email list because no matter what was going on in my life and how difficult things got or how little time
I had to dedicate to work, I was able to send an email to my list. And now on my email list. And I'm a lawyer, guys. Like, I talk about legal stuff. And I have over 50,000 people there because I always treated it like it's
the most important thing in my business. It still is. And it was the thing that It still is. And it was the thing that allowed me to tap into revenue as much as I needed uh while all that stuff was going on. So, I could be, you know,
stuff, but I had that email list to go back to. supposed to talk about legal mistakes, but I always love diving into people's businesses and how their businesses work. So before we get to that, let's
see. I do have I would really like to hear one more thing, and that is you talked about, you know, using evergreen content to promote your business, right? content to promote your business, right? To get that exposure. Has that been your
To get that exposure. Has that been your main source of visibility and leads? Is strategies like paid ads or anything like that? >> Yeah, so starting uh three and a half years after I started my business, I did
invest in paid ads. I have a strategy I talked about a lot in my book called the war trust strategy where I built up enough capital within my business that I like paid ads and I knew it wasn't going to hurt me if it didn't work out. So
that's really what I what I recommend doing. But once I did that, yes, once the ads worked, I scaled the ads. But I still today split my time between an the paid ads. >> And what type of evergreen content do
you like to create? >> Yeah. So I have my podcast on your terms uh which has weekly Monday weekly episodes um so that people are not only discovering me that way but I actually see my podcast to be a bigger nurture
and conversion tool for people who find me elsewhere. So, it's great because if you do run things like ads, for example, so many people come in who are kind of cold and unfamiliar with your like what you're all about. And then a podcast, I
think, is such a great like more intimate way for them to get to know you about your product and your process and all this kind of stuff. So, I have uh that and then obviously uh doing a lot of content on social media. My main
platform is Instagram um where I'm posting content that is consistently pulling people to my email list. Yeah, for sure. Well, thanks for sharing about that. Okay, so let's get into some of these legal mistakes. I'll start out by
just asking you, is there one legal mistake that you see as the most common make? >> Absolutely. It's that people wait too long to get legal protection. That people make the mistake of thinking that
they they are not ready for it yet, like in their business, right? So they'll all the time, "Oh, I don't think I need that yet. I only have a few customers or profitable." And it's really important that everyone knows that the law has no
room for error for your profitability or how many clients you have. If you have one client, if you are trying to operate a business, you need legal protection. Period. Full stop. And when you say legal protection, what
specific pieces are you talking about? >> So the three main pieces that I would recommend anybody starts out with are actually very simple. So the first is there are different kinds of business entities. Typically, people in online
business would choose an LLC um as a good option because it provides you with personal liability protection, meaning that you're separated personally from personally responsible or liable for what happens as a result of your
business. So, that's the first thing I would do. The second is that I would get Um, if it's a service, you would use something like a client contract. If product, it would be something like terms of use that you would include at
checkout. And the third thing I would do is get business insurance. Um the business insurance is what financially protects and covers your business. And between those three things, they work really, really nicely together to
protect your business and your business's money, and then to protect your like sanity and boundaries and enforcement when it comes to contracts. let's like dive a little bit deeper into each of those things. First of all,
about the business structure and you mentioned an LLC. I know that a common question people have when they're considering forming an LLC is how much considering forming an LLC is how much protection does the LLC really offer?
to that? Like how much protection can you expect from it and in what way does it protect you? Yeah. So, theoretically, a an LLC is supposed to provide you fantastic legal protection for you as a person and separate you uh from your
business and like being responsible for what happens in your business. But different scenarios where you're not offered that kind of protection. The first is when you, the business owner, don't actually act like a business owner
and you don't actually use your LLC to your full advantage. So, when I say that, I mean you're not entering into contracts between your LLC and your customer. You're doing it in your name instead of your LLC, for example. You're
not using your LLC name or the LLC moniker when you're talking about your business online. Um, if you're co-mingling personal and business money example, that is a way that you are not acting like an LLC and that is a way
that you can then actually not be afforded the protection you think you have. So, that's one of two ways. The second way is that you might live in a state that doesn't fully recognize what we call sole member LLC's as much as
they would if you, Gileian, and I owned a business together. So, some states will say that if only a single person owns an LLC, you don't get as much of that's something you need to do some research about or talk to an attorney
of those states. >> That's really good to know. Are there very many states that that applies to? >> Yes, there are many states that applies to. This is also something that's fluid. So, some states, like when I started my
rules in place and now they've updated it. Some have gone the opposite really important that you probably for accuracy purposes you look this up or you talk to somebody near you. >> Yeah, for sure. Well, thanks for the
heads up. And I know that most of the time people can register an LLC on their their Secretary of State business website and fill out the forms, right? Is there any reason not to do that? Any
reason why you might want to involve an attorney or anything in the process? I would say the f the very first thing that comes to mind is whether or not you have the time. They don't want to. They just want to offload it. If it will make
was done. I know it was done quickly and correctly, you can do that. Sometimes a actually talk to your accountant and some accountants will help you to set these up and it's much more affordable than attorneys. If you find an attorney
who will do it, always ask if they will do it for a flat fee arrangement. So, you want to ask them that way you just know upfront like it's $500 or $1,000 instead of getting an hourly bill which you do not want.
>> So, yes. Otherwise, um other than just not wanting to do it yourself, if you have a complicated financial situation, sometimes people contact me who they own multiple other businesses or their partner or spouse owns other businesses
remember somebody asked me about this and they were going through a divorce and they were saying should I set up the LLC now or wait till after I was talk to your attorney because that that can be complicated and that can have
implications for you. >> Yeah, for sure. And the reason I ask is because I have done it myself both ways. I've you opened or created multiple LLC's and most of the time I've done it myself but there were a couple times
when I went with an attorney and personally I ended up regretting the decision because I had to do almost the same amount of work on my end. They were just asking me the questions that you know I otherwise would have just been
know I otherwise would have just been asked by um a form online if that makes answer those questions one way or the other, but now they were kind of just where they were asking me the questions and then I had to pay extra fees, but of
course I still had to pay the state fees as well. So, it ended up feeling like it didn't really save me time or or effort and just costed more money. >> Yeah. I mean, that's that's common. And I guess that brings up another good
point that one time when it's helpful is more than anything is when you're starting a business with someone else. So an LLC can be owned by either just you by yourself or it can have what we call multiple members. So you let's say
together, right? So you're going to split the business 50/50. That is when attorney because you both need to understand what your rights and responsibilities are. What happens if the one person goes like defunct and
happens if something happens to one of you? What happens to the business? there going into business with someone else versus yourself. So yes, the lawyer in lawyers have value and you can go to them, but I mean what I do inside of the
ultimate bundle, my my main product is teach people how to just file their >> Yeah. Yeah, and it totally makes sense that if you are going into business with a partner or multiple partners that you definitely would want um a contract in
definitely would want um a contract in place around that and all your tees everything spelled out. >> You'd want an operating agreement um to that's actually done is that you have your own attorney, your potential
and then you have a business attorney, a the business. And then you each have your individual attorneys look at that document and tell you what's like what are the pros and cons for you as a
>> Is there anything else that you think people should know if they are considering starting a partnership or going into business together with other >> I would say never go 50/50. That is a terrible idea. Um I also I mean I'm a
a practicing attorney I was essentially And so it was about businesses that were always breaking up or some shareholder dispute. I've just seen too many instances of people who were friends,
actual like romantic partners, all kinds of things. It just doesn't go well. I I just don't think it's a great idea. Um, personally, I know that there are plenty of examples of people who get along fine. But, uh, at the very least, please
do me a favor and if you're going to go into business with someone you you know, you're friends with, whatever, um, you have to do the it's almost like more important that you do all the legal stuff that we're talking about, because
that's going to make it just super clear because your relationship will turn very quickly if things don't go well. I'm obviously not an attorney, but that's always been my sense as well that not a good idea to go into business with
friends, family. It just doesn't seem to work out so often and can really damage interesting. You said you recommend never going 5050. Why? And what are some of like the most obvious alternatives?
>> Yeah, you never want to go 50/50 in a business operation because you will never be able to reach a decision. So you need to have somebody who owns more of the stake that when things are split, when you can't decide what you need to
do. I have a friend who was actually on Shark Tank who had a really big were young when they started it. They were best friends and they started it thinking, why not be 50/50? We don't need any fancy agreement doing this.
Well, it turns out the business got really, really big after Shark Tank and that led to some really big differences in opinion and they actually had to bring outside counsel in because they could never come to an agreement on, you
they do this, should they do that? They couldn't do anything because they were want to do that. So, um, you know, different ways. There's there's actual money, there's time investment, there's
investment, um connections that people contribute. So depending on who's contributing what, uh you can divvy up the business. Even if it was 5149, that would be better. Yeah, [laughter] >> for sure. Well, thanks. Okay, so I think
the second thing that you mentioned in terms of getting yourself legally protected was having contracts or terms of service. So, I think that you said if you're selling something like an online course or something like that,
you would want a term as of service. What about if you're selling like a physical product or something like that? >> Yeah. So, if you're selling a physical product online, I at least there's no like official term for these things, but
at least in in terms of what I sell, what I call it is a shop policy. So, if you're selling, let's say, mugs on an Etsy store, you would put shop policies not only within your store, but if you were maybe selling them in your own uh
shop, like a Shopify or WooCommerce account, you can also include those as terms that people have to agree to when they purchase. So, that's where you're chargeback threats, which are increasingly popular and frustrating to
deal with as a business owner. and you have to have the right kind of language that was placed in the right place that was agreed to in the right way in order yourself. >> Are there any things that you think
should be in people's contracts or terms of service or shop policies that you commonly see are missing? >> Yeah, so I see often when people try to actually much more bloated than the ones I write myself. So it's it's funny.
People think that lawyers contracts are really scary, but I'm actually more scared of the ones I see other people create because they get really long and they get um not only redundant, but they actually get inconsistent. So, they will
each other out because people are including things that they don't understand. So, I highly recommend getting something professionally drafted someone like me so that at least you have a solid foundation to start with.
Often people are missing some of the most like probably what seems to you all as like the most boring parts like for example venue and choice of law clauses which are clauses you include in your contract to say which states law
controls the the terms of this contract. You always choose your own because your own should be more advantageous than someone else's. And then you also can you and you always choose your state because then your customer would have to
come to your state to sue you which is obviously more difficult. So I see those customer join the ultimate bundle because she was missing those and she lived in the state of Washington and someone in Florida sued her in Florida
which ended up being a huge expense for her because she had to hire an attorney in Florida, travel to Florida. Florida's law just so happened to not be as helpful to her as it would have been in Washington. So all around bad news for
what otherwise seems like a very boring, mundane, it's part of your contract. Yeah, they all have a purpose. I swear. >> Yeah, for sure. So, you talked a little bit about how, you know, people might draft their own contracts or buy a
Um, what are some of kind of like the advantages or pros or cons of those different options? Yeah. So, the pro to going to your own attorney near you and having them draft it is that you can get something highly customized to you and
how you're working and know that somebody had eyes on it and all of that. The absolute huge downside is that that is very expensive and it's often not an option for many starting out in online business. So, that's why I created my
templates, legal templates, because I thought it gives you a good foundation for somewhere to start. So, if you're someone who has a business, starting a business, and needs some contracts in place, you can utilize something like my
legal templates. You then download them and make them your own. It's also really good for people who are going to have more interaction with your customers day-to-day who then have questions about the contract. So, like if you or I went
on Target's website and we're buying something, we're not asking Target ahead of time like, "Hey, so when you said this in paragraph 14 of your policies, did you mean by that?" Because no one's going to answer us. But when you're
selling in a small shop or something like that, people will reach out and does this mean? Does this have to be in there? Why does this say that?" And I do
think it's helpful for you as a small business owner to be able to navigate those conversations. Um, and so one of the things I do in my legal templates is that as you're filling it out, I'm explaining to people, it comes with like
people like what this section means and explain that to your own customer or client. So that's where it can be if you have the kind of business where your customers might be asking you
>> Okay. Now, I don't think we can talk about contracts or policies without talking about what might be the elephant in the room, which is like Chad GBT, right? I know a lot of people are using that these days to write their contracts
and whatnot. Uh, good idea, bad idea. How can you use it safely? Like, what definitely not do with it? >> I would definitely not create contracts with it. I'm really glad you asked me this because I filmed what I would I
would consider to be the scariest YouTube video I have ever filmed uh a few weeks ago that's that's out now. But I said to my team, you know, I always contracts, but to be honest, I have not tried to create one with it. I just
assumed it can't, right? So, I said, I'm gonna do a reaction video that's real and whatever comes out of it, I'm going to put it on the internet. I filmed my screen. I did the whole thing. So, I went on chat and I I asked I gave it a
very good prompt and I asked it to create me a contract. It was horrible. better. I was so relieved when I saw it. But it [laughter] was it was missing. >> I was like, "Oh, thank God. I still exist." But I I I mean, maybe it'll get
really the thing. I mean, first of all, I can just tell you that it was like woefully not only inaccurate, but incomplete. It had like four or five sections. It was bad. The thing, here's the thing about legal stuff though. You
unless you are a lawyer who then can go on chat and say, "Give me a contract that has XYZ um provisions and make it say this and make it control like this kind of stuff." You don't know what it's missing. And what I have seen now for
eight years whether way before chat GBT existed I can tell you with confidence that if you are using documents whether you get them from chat a friend a downloadable free template online whatever if you're using documents that
you don't feel confident about it's like as if you have nothing because you will still hesitate every single time you go to get a client. You will still hesitate when you go on Instagram to promote your business because you won't be sure that
of whatever you want to go do, do what you need to do to feel confident that you have what you need, that you are safe, and that you can go forward and >> For sure. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Could you I don't know if you remember now, but um you talked about it being like the contract that Chad GPT created being too short and missing a lot of parts. Um, and I'm just wondering if there was any particular things you want
of sense what you're saying about like if you know what you're looking for, if you're a lawyer, you could maybe get a better result from something like chat more specific instructions. And I can definitely see that because, you know,
as a content creator, if I'm writing an article about such and such topic, if I know that if I know about that topic and if I know what I want that article to articles like that in the past, I can give ChatGpt really specific
instructions and then I can effectively edit whatever it gives me. But I know subject matter and maybe doesn't have as much experience creating content, nearly as good of a result with it, right? and it's probably not going to be
an accurate article that they ultimately um create with it. So, I don't know. Is there anything you want to add about specific like faults that you saw with you? >> Yeah, I mean perhaps most alarming for
anybody who was in the content creation business or coaching consulting. It had nothing regarding a disclaimer. It had nothing regarding warranties or important from a legal perspective that you're telling people I'm not
guaranteeing you any sort of outcome or result as a part of you buying this thing or joining this group or whatever. Um it was not it did not have any indemnification clause which is where we stop liability being passed on to us
from third parties who aren't in the um contract. It was even missing an entire missing everything. it was missing an entire agreement of clause um which says agreement that you guys have agreed to so that the person can't come back later
and said but offline you told me that you would do x y or z even though I know the contract says this that's really important and that comes up um it did not have the choice of law or venue clauses that I spoke about earlier kind
but the sentence wasn't correct and it wouldn't have accurately covered you and I guess like one of the things that was interesting for me to refct on too is that like something I think my customers always report being like happily
surprised about. These documents are living breathing documents and so I encourage my customers to update these quarterly. And so I also encourage them to what I call to to update them under what I call the oh I didn't know I had
when a customer or a client does something to you or in your business that you realize like oh I see that that is not super clear in my contract I'm that really clear so no one can do that again. Um or it's like when technology
changes like chargeback threats for example have changed over the last couple of years. Um AI stuff has changed like my customers are coming to me now and saying how do I protect my content so that the people purchasing my course
can't take it and plug it into AI to do things with it. So there are things that are changing. You need to have enough like confidence and skill to be able to go back into these things and update them. And only you are really going to
know like how that works with your clients and what's coming up and yeah opportunity to make it say what you want it to say. >> Yeah, for sure. Okay, so I think the last thing that you mentioned with
protecting yourself legally was business insurance. So I would love to know how would you recommend somebody chooses good business insurance that will actually offer them coverage? Because
When I was shopping for insurance for say my house or my car, there are local offices where I can go in and talk to real people, right, and buy it that way. And there's some peace of mind that's given by seeing a physical location and
a real person that, you know, you can go back to. But with buying business insurance, especially for an online business, um there aren't necessarily as many local options. And so many of us are buying the insurance online from
companies where at least we're not seeing their physical location. So how do you know if a business insurance company is legit and how can you choose the right one for your business? >> Yeah, it's a really good question. So I
recommend trying to find it's almost like a a mix of both the options that you presented because I recommend finding a business broker that could be located near you. It could be somebody you meet online, but a business
insurance broker who then goes around and shops for a policy for you from a number of different insurance companies. So instead of you like you mentioned insurance, you would maybe go to Geico, ask Geico for a policy, right? this with
a insurance broker. They might contract with like five, 20, 30 different insurance carriers and they can go out and get you quotes on from all of them and bring them back to you and present them to you or tell you like the ones
that's usually the option that I recommend for people who are in my recommendations for brokers that I've used and liked uh who I can recommend because I trust them now and they've worked with my customers. But they are
out there and they a lot of them um like they they are licensed in many states if with you regardless of where you are. But I recommend shopping around um and trying to be as clear as possible when you do speak with brokers about not only
what kind of business you have, but what you sell and how you sell it. That's often where people fall short. They don't tell they will tell people like, health coach." And then they don't tell people like, "Oh, by the way, I do
inerson retreats and I sell digital products and I have this group program they're only covered for like one of those things. And they think that just a type of business that they're covered for whatever they do. But that is not
>> And there are different types of business insurance. Can you speak a little bit to that? What are the most common types and what types would an online business generally need? Yeah. So, there are over a dozen different
types of business insurance, but the two most common for online business owners is professional liability insurance, otherwise known as errors and omissions or ENO, and also general commercial general liability insurance. So, those
are the two that most people need or get. Sometimes they only need one of those. Sometimes people need both. As your business grows, there are all kinds. I have many many different policies now with having a multisefigure
business. It's brought a much different level of insurance. So I have lots and lots of different policies, but in the beginning that's really all you need. Um the difference between the two is that professional liability insurance or you
know uh is sometimes what people like commonly think of as like a malpractice commonly think of as like a malpractice insurance, but it's for people who to cover like whatever happens as a result of their work or result of whatever they
products, you might need like a products liability version of that, right? So, that if your mug breaks and it cuts somebody's skin, that's the kind of curling irons and it burns somebody, that's the kind of thing that's covered.
In the consulting and coaching industry, this might look like something more like you give somebody money tips and then their money investment doesn't go so well, so they sue you for it. And that's the kind of thing that's covered by
professional liability insurance. commercial general liability insurance covers um bodily injury and property damage to others. Um so it really depends on kind of like what kind of business you have. And again, even if
you have like an all virtual business, but then sometimes you host retreats or you need. >> If you don't do anything in person at all and it is all online, is there any
insurance? >> Yeah, I have it and I always have had it just in case. I also should mention for like the sake of ease that it's a lot liability insurance. So it's it can kind of be bundled and so when I got my
insurance it was like why not just add that on. Um but in the event that I mean even like going around and giving talks like I spoke at Kit's craft and commerce talk last year and conference last year and it's like I don't know I taught a
me in this. So there are all kinds of scenarios where you can uh consider it. Yeah. M and like you said, it tends to be pretty inexpensive. I have both and to be honest, I don't really know if I need that commercial insurance, but uh
it doesn't cost very much per year at all. So, it's like probably better to be safe than sorry. >> Yeah, that's what I consider. And I too that often these kinds of insuranceances cover your work with
people or the product that you sell or the service you provide, but they don't often cover the marketing that you're doing in order to sell all those things. And at least in America, we can be sued for things that even are just free
say on YouTube, something you say on your podcast or on Instagram can still come back to you. And so it's important for people to know that there's still liability that exists there and that
depending on your subject matter, you might want to consider looking for business insurance that would cover you for blogging, video production, podcast, for blogging, video production, podcast, that kind of stuff.
mistake that people make with not getting legal protection soon enough and legal protection being these kind of three main things. having that LLC or whatever the right business structure is for you, having the contracts um or the
private or the terms and conditions and then having this business insurance. Beyond that, are there any like common business mistakes or common legal owners making? >> Yeah, I would say that it's once you get
those pieces in place, then not like standing within it, right? that you've these things, like if you've said no refunds, for example, um when you start to allow people to break little pieces of their contract, this is something
that came up in a training the other day where someone was saying, "Oh, I have this very specific payment policy in my contract, but you know, I'm I tried to be really relaxed about it and so like I let this person, you know, have some
stopped paying completely." And I said, "Well, here's the legal problem. You've you've already given the signal. It's like a toddler who you've now like bent your boundaries to and now they're going to push some more. You can't really
stand within your legal boundaries once you start letting that stuff go. So, it is important to like have these things in place, enforce them. I think working on the mindset piece that this is not you're not being a jerk, you're not
being mean by, you know, having boundaries. It's all okay to ask for what you need or to to put up that Yeah. boundary when you need to. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Well, thank you, Sam, so much. This has been really
helpful. I love how simply you broke everything down. It really doesn't have to be overwhelming, you know. Uh, and so, thank you so much for that. To wrap this up, could you tell us a little bit about your podcast called On Your Terms?
What do you talk about on the show and why might somebody want to tune in and listen? Yeah. So, On Your Terms is a podcast for online entrepreneurs who podcast for online entrepreneurs who want to grow a sustainable business with
it being on their terms without burnout or breaking the rules by accident. So, I definitely recommend coming over and checking it out. Um, you can also find my book, When I Start My Business, I'll Be Happy, anywhere books are sold. Um,
and I would highly recommend getting my weekly newsletter, Sam Sidebar. It's a every single Tuesday to learn how to grow your online business. include links to all those things in the show notes down below. And thank you so
show notes down below. And thank you so much again, Sam. Thanks for having me.