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 ...