Calligraphy Biz Corner

18. How to Make Your Calligraphy Business Legal with Paige Hulse of The Creative Law Shop

• Alane Gianetti

Share episode

We’re so excited to welcome Paige Hulse, lawyer and founder of The Creative Law Shop, to this episode of Calligraphy Biz Corner! Paige shares her inspiring journey from owning a calligraphy business herself, and how that led her to becoming a serial entrepreneur. Most importantly, she breaks down all the legal essentials you need to know to make your calligraphy business official and legally protected.

In this episode, we dive into crucial legal topics that every creative business owner should know. Paige walks us through what to include in a calligraphy contract to protect you and your clients (yes, you need a contract!), how forming an LLC protects you, and common mistakes that can leave small business owners exposed to risk. Whether you're just starting out or looking to level up your legal game, Paige provides practical tips to safeguard your business so that you can take on clients with confidence. 

We also answer listener questions about the right way to sign contracts and how to protect your work from intellectual property theft. Plus, Paige introduces the Creative Law Foundry—an AI-powered app designed to help creative entrepreneurs like you easily craft contracts tailored to your business.

If you’ve been wondering how to make your calligraphy business legally sound, or how to protect your art and your client relationships, this episode is for you! Grab a notebook because Paige is dropping some serious legal knowledge you won’t want to miss.

The following acronyms are used in this episode, we've provided links that help explain what they mean and encourage you to do your own research as well. 


🔗 Links to resources mentioned in this episode:

Text us a question to answer on a future episode!

Support the show

👯‍♀️ Learn More About Us:

alane_3_10-08-2024_175118:

Hello and welcome back to Calligraphy Biz Corner. We have a very exciting guest for today's episode and one that I know everyone is going to benefit from. I mean, I was like furiously scribbling notes for myself during this interview today. So this Kind of episode topic, I guess, was a request that we got in June while we were on our break. And we knew that this was something that we wanted to bring to you guys as well. So Alison of Yaks Lettering had asked about contracts and like, Just, you know, setting your business up for, I guess, legal success, if you will. once we confirmed this guest, we ended up throwing a question box up on our stories, on our Instagram, to take, you know, other people's questions that they have when it comes to, you know, Legalities, contracts, et cetera, for your business. So throughout this conversation, we actually ended up answering two other listener questions. Um, one from Corey of Sadie bean designs and one from Alex of signs of our lives.

shaochen_3_10-08-2024_155118:

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing those questions with us So today our guest is page of the creative law shop I found her years ago when I purchased her calligraphy services agreement And then when I created my online courses, I also purchased her online terms and conditions for online courses agreement You So it was really cool to actually get to chat with her. I love this conversation because Paige was actually a calligrapher herself. And in fact, that was the catalyst for her to enter the world of entrepreneurship. And she shares some of those details and how calligraphy influenced her whole business journey. and she also shares a lot of calligraphy specific scenarios. I had honestly never thought of and hope. Never happen. Um, and I wrote down a whole list of action items that I'm going to check for, similar to Elaine after this episode.

alane_3_10-08-2024_175118:

Yeah, I'm not going to lie. A few of the things that she shared with us were like giving me heart palpitations.

shaochen_3_10-08-2024_155118:

Yes, a little bit

alane_3_10-08-2024_175118:

I was like, Oh my gosh, I need to go make sure that I have something in my contract that will protect me if that happens. but I think that everybody's really going to enjoy this episode and especially hearing Paige's story. I feel like I could identify with it really well. And I think others can too, of just following the things that make you curious and that bring you joy and seeing where that leads and where that kind of curiosity takes you. and she has just such an interesting path from calligraphy to law and kind of how they weave in and out of each other too, I feel like. But one of my favorite takeaways from this episode was she just gave a really great analogy of thinking of your business as a house and making sure that you are building a very strong foundation to set yourself up for success in the long run. I know when I first started my business, I think I waited Probably a year and a half to close to two years in before I like formed an LLC and made my business legal. and part of that was just like, Oh, I don't know what this is going to be. I don't know if it'll actually be my full time job one day, or if I want to pursue it. But the way that she talked about just making sure that you have that solid foundation right from the start, regardless of where it's going to go was, I think it's just such a good reminder. And if I could go back in time to, you know, beginning of 2016, I would have done things a little differently if I had listened to this episode first.

shaochen_3_10-08-2024_155118:

Yeah. And also, like, don't feel bad if you don't have any of these things. I think, like, knowledge is power. And we're all on our journey where there's a number of trade offs. You have to assess like what level of risk you're comfortable with, and also what level of financial investment you have, because some of the things we're talking about, like trademarking, that is going to be something that costs you a couple thousand dollars, for example. So just, I think it's really important to listen and understand all of these concepts so that you're like fully educated in making some of these legal decisions for your business. I love that we got a lesson not only on the legal aspect, but we also got to hear about her specific entrepreneurship journey. And so with that, I'm going to introduce Paige here. Paige is the founder of The Creative Law Shop, the creative entrepreneur's online destination for attorney drafted, industry reviewed contract templates and educational resources. As a passionate serial entrepreneur. So in addition to that calligraphy business, she had, she also currently owns page host law and intellectual property and general counsel services for entrepreneurs and also a nonprofit special forces support fund that provides deployment specific equipment for special forces. but her work through the creative law shop enables her to provide smart and strategic creative entrepreneurs with legally sound resources without the hourly rate. So with that, let's dive into her interview

alane_1_10-08-2024_161420:

Welcome, Paige, to the Calligraphy Biz Corner. We are so excited to have you today because contracts and legal things come up so often among calligraphers. We're all always like, What are we doing? How do we protect ourselves? So I know that this is going to be a really exciting episode. Before we dive in, I would love if you could just introduce yourself to our listeners, give a little bit of background. I know that you have a start in the calligraphy world, which is really interesting. So I'll let you take it away.

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

All right. Well, thank you all again so much. Like I was saying before we got started, I, anytime I get to speak to other calligraphers, it just, it means so much to me because all of my creative roots come from dabbling in calligraphy. And so I am genuinely, genuinely excited to be here. I, as a, just a really quick introduction, like you said, my name is Paige Hulse. I'm an attorney. I primarily practice intellectual property law now. I work with entrepreneurs around the world in both the intellectual property realm, as well as the general, as I just say, the general counsel realm, which just means I handle pretty much any business matter that pops up for my clients. So whether that be contracts, et cetera, as a really quick introduction and to tie in the relevancy of calligraphy in my past I have always been drawn and I can get really kind of nerdy about why I was so, so drawn to this. I was always drawn to calligraphy. I have something called So when I read letters are different colors. So, which sounds really weird, but that's why I've always loved to read. And that's why the minute I picked up my first calligraphy pen, it, I felt like I was doing like watercolor painting. Like it was just like a different type of beauty to in my, literally in my, my mind's eye. And so to help really try to soak in everything I was learning when I was studying for the bar, those sections of the bar that were really, really hard to learn, I would actually sit and calligraph them and it would just like ingrain it into my brain. and

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

Cool. you then see it as like a picture when you like word it out? Oh,

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

which I don't share that part of the story too often, but I think as just as calligraphers, you all, you obviously understand that it's like, There's such an art to, there's such an, an artistry to calligraphy that a lot of people can overlook unless you're, you're really in it. And so that was just, that was what kind of lured me in, in the first place. And then I, I put it down for a little while. I started practicing as a full time litigator. And I was actually the only woman working at my firm and I was in court the first week of practice. And it was just, it was very, very stressful. I loved it, but it was stressful. I had to find a healthy way to counterbalance that stress. And so I just started doing calligraphy when I would come home in the evenings after court just calligraphy, literally anything and everything that I could think of. And. That was a time of my life where it seemed like every single one of my friends was getting married. I think I was a bridesmaid like six weeks in a row type of thing one of those years. And so my friends started asking me to do the calligraphy for their weddings. And I did, and then I realized, Oh, I might need to literally realize I might need a contract for this. And then I started having to ask myself the same questions. A lot of my clients ask of, Is this actually making a few hundred bucks on the weekend? Is this, is this a business? I very truly did not never intended to be an entrepreneur ever, never intended to be a creative entrepreneur of all things. I was a, I was an oil and gas litigator when all this happened.

alane_1_10-08-2024_161420:

Wow.

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

Could not be more different, but then, then the creative entrepreneur realm, but as I started working or providing calligraphy for these weddings and getting to know the other vendors at the weddings realized the gaping hole in the market in terms of no attorney that I spoke to knew what a creative entrepreneur was. And so all of these creative entrepreneurs would ask. They would find out I was a lawyer. They would ask me questions that to me were very like easy and obvious that I could help with right away that they had never been able to find help with before. And anyways, one thing led to another, and I realized I had that itch for entrepreneurship. And Actually, when I started my law firm, I kept the calligraphy business going for about 6 months into starting the firm and then realized I couldn't actually do everything. So I retired the nib.

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

I love that. I think our listeners will definitely relate to that story because so many of us. Pick up calligraphy because of the meditative aspect and like the distressing from whatever our work or busy lives or whatever. You just kind of get into the zone. And then a lot of them also get their start in business by doing work for their friends. So yeah,

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

It was funny because what really led me to realizing that this was an area of legal need, you can say is I did all of the calligraphy for one of my friends from law school's wedding. So it was a Literally a room full of lawyers. And I did the seating charts. I did all the place cards. I did all the invitations, et cetera. With that wedding in particular, the, the wedding planner made the poor decision to drill holes in the, in the plexiglass seating, seating charts. And so as one might imagine, it created a spider web and the same chart crashing the ground and that was the night before the wedding. Again, we're all like, all the bridesmaids are lawyers. So we're all sitting there just like thinking about all the liability. We're watching happen. And I ended up having to stop. I spent almost an all night or the night before one of my best friends weddings, redoing that seating chart because of that, a very avoidable mistake. So my point being, I have this, like when it comes to calligraphy in particular, I have this really odd boots on the ground perspective. It was the first contract I ever wrote. It was the first contract I, I transformed into the app. Like it's, it literally was, it's the spearhead that started everything for me.

alane_1_10-08-2024_161420:

Wow. I like, I still feel anxiety right now after hearing that

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

I'm like, which claws would protect me from that, you know?

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

it's in the Querphy contract because of, because of little,

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

and also side note, I've always thought synesthesia is so cool. I've never met anyone with it. So Could you tell us what your favorite letter is and what color it is?

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

You are the first person that's ever asked me that

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

Oh, really?

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

I love that. This makes, it's like, you're bringing out my dorky side, but I love it. Do you see the, the correlations in some of the colors you see behind me?

alane_1_10-08-2024_161420:

Mm hmm.

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

Lots of like deep blues. This is what, like, the letter, like, S's and K's and, like, B's look like to

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

Hmm. so cool, the connections in our brains. And for those of you who are listening on podcasts and not watching on YouTube, Paige was just pointing to some pictures that kind of had these like deep blues and greens, almost like blue green colors.

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

that's part of what I loved about calligraphy too, is I loved using even like, like walnut ink and it, like, not one letter was necessarily the exact same color as the next, literally on, on paper. It's all, it was all kind of like a striation of colors and, and depths to that color. And I just, that's part of the artistry. element that I appreciate so much.

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

If you were using a walnut ink, would it, would the walnut color carry over to what you saw?

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

Yeah, I can, when I read and it's funny, it's, this is, this is obviously going off on such a different tangent. I thought I lost it in law school. I was, I was reading so much every day and I was so stressed. The more stressed I am, the less I can see those colors. So it's almost like a metric of. Of like, I guess, mental health that, that I engage within myself. But yeah, I can, I can like literally see if something's like black, like I can see the color. It's matter of how much I'm allowing that creative side of my brain to take over. And as insanely dorky as this might sound when I write a contract, I can remember a word 13 paragraphs before the paragraph I'm reading currently, because I can remember the colors that I'm seeing at the same time, if that makes any sort of sense.

alane_1_10-08-2024_161420:

No, I mean, I feel like it's almost like a photographic memory or being able to make, you know, when they say if you are studying for a test or something like that, using techniques that help you

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

like a

alane_1_10-08-2024_161420:

associations and it's almost like that, but it's natural to you.

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

That's exact. It's exactly right. It's something that all obviously always made me kind of weird, but the older you get, the more you realize those things that make you kind of weird, or maybe your secret sauce at the same time.

alane_1_10-08-2024_161420:

Your superpower.

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

Yeah. ahead with the story, but that, that's what allowed me to be able to create what I created with the shop, I can never be copied. Someone else can create something that could be similar, but no one can ever replicate it exactly because it's built off of that odd part of my brain, I guess,

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

That is so. cool. I love it. Thank you for sharing that with us. think our listeners will love getting a sense of that experience from you, especially as an artist and calligrapher.

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

I think that's actually the first time I've shared that. Anytime I think back to my calligraphy days, that's, that's, those are the memories that really stand out. And I'm just, I'm so glad that I. Followed that not just business curiosity, but just follow that curiosity for the artistry as well. You never know where, obviously, you literally never know where it's going to lead.

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

Yeah, that's such great encouragement for people just starting out.

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

Thank you.

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

So let's jump into some legal advice. And this is specifically targeted towards our listeners who are just starting their business and they wanna make sure they're doing it the legally correct way. And we always hear that there's like so many items on that list, like registering your business, business insurance contracts, and it can be really overwhelming. So could you help us to prioritize what they should be doing first, or what's the most important thing to be doing?

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

And actually, before I answer your question, I'm going to go ahead and slide in my legal disclaimer here which is that everything I'm about to talk about, it's Everything is going to be as literally as much legal education as I can provide, but none of this is going to be specific legal advice. So to everybody listening, I hope that this is as helpful as humanly possible for your business, but know that I'm not your attorney unless and until we sign a client agreement. And if you have follow up questions, email an attorney in your jurisdiction to help you with those. So now that that's out of the way, I can actually answer your question and starting a business is it's almost scary easy, right? It's only after the fact that we realize that retroactively, there might've been some, some check marks we forgot along the way. When it comes to actually helping somebody, my sister, actually, I'll speak to her specifically. She's a few months into starting a creative business herself. And so the exact conversation I had with her, I will, I will share with everybody listening. And that is first and foremost, think of, think of your business as a house. Even if it's quote unquote, just a creative business, even though I hope my story goes to show that there's no such thing as just a creative business. it is important. But think of that creative business as a house. So let's make sure the foundation of that house is built as strong as possible so that we don't have to go back and fix that foundation over and over. What I mean by that to take it out of the abstract is I want you to make sure that you've separated your personal liability and you're from your business liability. And what I mean by that even more specifically is most people listening to this should have an LLC or a limited liability company or whatever the variation might be if If somebody is listening from from out of the United States, of course you should have an LLC or some type of legal entity that separates your personal liability from your business liability. I don't want anything that you do. And this is part of why I share the story about the wedding planner almost hitting guests with the seating chart. The seating chart almost fell on one of the most high powered attorneys in. What if, what if in a worst case scenario in that story, that seeding chart had hit her in the head and we had all of these massively expensive legal bills all of a sudden because she wanted to sue me for making the seeding chart wrong or, you know, something silly like that. We want to make sure that any and all liability that arises. activities, no matter what you're doing and no matter how low liability you think it may be. Just go ahead and separate that out from your personal liability at the get go. The secondary note that I will add to that is we also want to protect your business from from your personal liability. So if you are in a fender bender and you all of a sudden have insurance attorneys involved even if it's not that big of a deal, you don't want them to try to go after your business bank account. In the meantime, you want to always keep those two things separate. Never let the stress from what you are building and what you're doing creatively or, and, or, you know, for commercial purposes, interfere with your personal life and vice versa. That's not why we create businesses. Number one is always look to make sure that you have an LLC or you at least know why you're waiting to create an LLC. I spoke to somebody earlier today who was told that they did not need an LLC until they started making profit. And that is just a, that is just a lie. That is a bold face lie. And I want to dispel those types of lies and rumors and whether or not they're well meaning. I want to dispel that misinformation right now. You can have an LLC at any point in time.

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

So I know that a lot of advice for us being creative entrepreneurs, like single member companies is that we can form a sole proprietorship. So can you tell us just the sole proprietorship separate our personal from our business?

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

I'm really glad that you asked that question because there's no such thing as forming a sole proprietorship just by operating as just by opening a website or like me selling my very first calligraphy print. I was a sole proprietor just by default. So that's, that is the state's wording for default status. That just means that you are a person trying to sell goods or services. It does not provide any type of liability protection whatsoever. A DBA provides no type of liability protection whatsoever. That's another big myth that I hear frequently, a DBA just means that you may have formed an LLC under one name or you're a sole proprietor operating under one name and you want the let's say the commercial name to be different than that LLC or that sole proprietorship,

alane_1_10-08-2024_161420:

That's really helpful. And there's really no, like, there's no negative side to forming an LLC, right? Like other than paying whatever fee might come with your state or having to file your annual report, but if you're like, I think I want to have a business or I'm going to start to have a business, even if I don't have any clients yet, let me just get that legal foundation set is basically like the top advice. And there's nothing wrong with doing

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

What is exactly right. And I also, especially if we have people listening from California, California is the most expensive state and it's approximately a thousand dollars to form an LLC. To me, that's not like chump change. Like I know that that's, you know, that's an investment, and I want to be, I want to be very pointed with this fact as well. I've obviously said the word liability several times. We have two different considerations when it comes to LLCs. We have the liability consideration and we have the tax consideration as well. Luckily, I'm not a tax attorney. I don't, I don't do anything when it comes to taxes, but I can tell you that a good tax attorney or a good CPA, excuse me, would be able to save you money once you are once you hit, and I'm not even going to get into the conversation about what. Number that is, but once you start making some money with your business endeavors, a CPA is going to be able to recommend that you elect for that LLC to be taxed as an S corporation. And that's going to allow you a tax benefit. And that is a very oversimplified explanation of that topic, but just know that there is a tax and monetary benefit. Potential tax and monetary benefit as well. But from a legal perspective, I, it freaks me out. If anybody is operating, doing anything without an LLC, because somebody like me, I can, I can say that, well, you dropped the seating chart and you almost injured somebody. And almost injuring somebody in some states is considered assault. And so maybe I'm going to try to sue you for assault. And maybe I'm going to try to see you for breach of contract. And maybe I'm going to try to see you for intentional infliction of emotional distress. I can add all of those types of items to the lawsuit causes of action. I can look at you and say, and you have a business and you have probably personal bank accounts and you probably have savings accounts, et cetera, and I'll try to go after all of them. We want to make sure that I would only be able to go after the 1

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

yeah, I would say that's worth 1, 000. Um,

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

Way of explaining it, but that's really what I told my, again, I, I say it, I say it because I care. It's important to talk about what. a litigation mindset involves. This is why I call, I call it the little sister conversation. A little sister. And that's what I told her.

alane_1_10-08-2024_161420:

I love the idea or your analogy of like, Thinking of your business as a house. So it's like, once you have that solid foundation, which sounds like separating your personal and your business liabilities, what would kind of be those like next steps or like the next, you know, two to three most important steps that business owners can take, like, is it getting a contract in place or is it business insurance in your, you know, expert opinion?

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

Okay. So my answer as of this year has changed slightly when answering this question, because one side note that I want to add for everybody listening. And this is going to be the most boring part of my entire conversation today. A new law came out on New Year's Day of last of this, this year called the Corporate Transparency Act. It's a mouthful. We call it the CTA BOI form. But I want everybody listening to know that if you have an LLC and if you're listening to me and you're saying, yeah, This sounds right, but I did this seven years ago. What else do I need to do next? Know that you need to fill out that CTA BOI form and you have to do it by the end of the year. Brand new, brand new law that came out that I'm trying to just put on everybody's radar. So getting that out of the way, because that even bores me to talk about and actually answering your question. If we're going with my dorky analogy of a house, the next, the next part of the house that you're building is the threshold. So who are you inviting over the threshold of your house? Who's getting to come in and getting to come out? That's your contract. Your contract's almost more important than than even getting that LLC in place in the 1st place, because that any time that you are exchanging money with with any client or customer, they need to be signing a contract. Even if you listened to this and you disagreed with me and you decided not to form an LLC, or again, any, whatever the corollary might be in your jurisdiction, you at least need to have a contract in place that has those clauses, those very specific clauses that limit your liability, that indemnify you, that provide those representations and warranties, all of those boring things that you don't need. necessarily think about when you're like me and you're just starting with like doing some invitations for a friend's wedding. Those, those provisions in your contract, I cannot stress and I'm happy to go into as much detail as you want, but I cannot stress how important it is. If you think of every business transaction as a vehicle, that is the seatbelt that you put on the minute you get in the car, and it should be something that you put on every time you get in the car, and you shouldn't even have to think about it twice. It should just be a no brainer.

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

yeah, I love that analogy of the seatbelt. And I want to continue down the conversation about contracts, since that's one of our top questions that we get from our listeners, but real quick just pointer here based on what Paige said about the BOI report. I did mine. It does not take very long. It's very easy. Like take 10 minutes to do it just so that it's checked off your list. It asks you very basic questions about your business ownership, stuff like that. So don't be intimidated by that. You don't need to hire someone else to do it. You can definitely do it yourself. But let's go back to the contracts. We would love for you to elaborate a little bit on that topic. Can you tell us kind of the top three? Sections or items we should be including in our contracts as calligraphers. I mean, I know that best practice would be to purchase a legally written document or hire a lawyer, but knowing that a lot of our listeners may not be at the point where they can afford that I always feel like having Some sort of policies in place is better than nothing. And you can tell me like what you think about that. But if our our listeners were looking to kind of put their own contract in place, what are a couple of things that they must have in their document?

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

On my creative law shop website, I have a checklist and so if you've written your own contract, and I'm full, like, I started my calligraphy business with. Literally no money. I wouldn't have been able to buy a template. I wouldn't have, I didn't even know at the time, like what to draft into my own contracts. that I have that checklist. People can go and you can find like every provision that I would make sure you add in. But to actually answer your question, especially in this post COVID world that we are in, I would say the top three provisions that I would, I would ensure are in every contract that I'm sending or signing are going to be number one, contract disputes come down to money. So how are you getting paid? How have you specified that payment? We can get into a whole separate conversation about how to split up the payments, but I can tell you even more specifically than that. In your payment section, make sure that you have the words non transferable and non refundable. I've saved clients over 300, 000 at least in the last calendar year because of the word non transferable. And those aren't because those were like high ticket contracts. That's just how often that word comes into play. So just word to the wise, make sure that you have those two words in your payment section. And we have a lot of resources on the shop website regarding how I would recommend structuring your payment. Your payment provision itself, but I want to start there just because again, anytime you have any sort of contract dispute, it's usually because somebody's trying to back out of a contract and they're trying to say they don't need to pay you or they need a refund for what they've paid you, et cetera. So we want to make sure that's as buttoned up as possible. Number two is going to be. In that same vein, kind of your cancellation and termination provision, which I'm considering is one provision. So if somebody does need to cancel the event or does need to cancel your services or terminate the contract itself, make sure that you've, and those are two different legal mechanisms, by the way, make sure that you've spelled out how that is going to happen. So there are no questions around how that could happen. If I were, if I were forced to choose a third provision and no other provision to include in my calligraphy contract you know, honestly, I would typically, I would start talking about the intellectual property provision, but when it comes to calligraphers in particular. The scope of services section in the contract which sounds so obvious, but that scope of services, again, use, use my own story as an example. I had written in with my lawyer friend that I was going to be providing a certain number of place cards, a certain number of invitations, which, by the way, I also, in that case, I did not specify what would happen if they changed their mind regarding ink color, so I had to redo all of the place cards because they realized they did not like walnut ink after I'd done all 300s in. 80 something of them. So be clear about those types of deliverables be abundantly clear about the deliverables and who is going to be responsible for any installation regarding those deliverables or what happens if if the post office can't read the writing on somebody's envelope. I mean, those types of odd things that pop up really only for calligraphers. It's interesting. The calligraphy agreement it's not complicated because it's longer. It's just, there are more nuanced issues that calligraphers run into than most other creative entrepreneurs. So be as detailed as, as you possibly can regarding and think through all use stories like this and think through all of those types of any type of scenario that you can regarding. Everything that you're saying that you're going to provide to the client and what's going to happen if something goes wrong and you cannot end up like, even if it's out of your control, but you can't provide those items to the client

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

That's a really great place to start. And like you said, there's a whole checklist of other things that you need. But I think that a lot of our calligraphers starting out, that'll be great for them to note that they should outline that in their contract at a minimum.

alane_1_10-08-2024_161420:

So we would love to know, what are the biggest legal mistakes that you see creative business owners making?

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

Here are the 2 biggest mistakes. I see any creative and or calligrapher make number 1, just briefly want to hit on a on a, like, from a 10, 000 foot perspective. As we're rounding out this conversation about what you need in order to make your business legally sound just to get it off the ground. We've talked about in depth LLCs, but make sure you have to have an operating agreement in order to actually maintain your liability protection. So you have to add that to your checklist. Number two, if you have a website, it is a federal mandate. You have to have a privacy policy. That is it. That is not a you legally should. It is a law. You have to have it, but you also legally should have a terms and conditions. And then number three, you obviously, as we've spoken about, should have a client agreement. So as we're finishing out a silly analogy of the house, those are the three elements that round out the house. Now in terms of the specific mistakes that I see creatives making with their contracts most frequently, I saw somebody sign a, a seven figure contract yesterday. So literally seven figure contract and they signed the contract incorrectly. So the most important, or I guess I could say most prevalent mistake that I see people make, and I see this happen. So frequently that it boggles my mind. And I almost wonder if I'm like not providing enough information about this, but please make sure that you're signing your contract correctly. So what I mean by that is in the intro paragraph of the contract, if you're signing as an LLC, Specify that you're signing as an LLC. So for example, my business, I keep talking about the creative law shop, technically that's page host LLC doing business as the creative law shop. If anyone signed an affiliate agreement with me, they've seen it spelled out like that, and then parentheses, I say creative law shop, and then it's just referenced as that throughout the contract. If you look at my signature line, and this is like, Let's put asterisks next to this, next to this sentence. You will always see that I will sign as Paige Hulse, owner, Paige Hulse LLC, doing business as the creative law shop. You will never ever see me sign a contract as just Paige Hulse. You'll never see me sign a contract as. the creative law shop. You have to designate who you are, what you are in relation to the business, and then what the business is, because we want to designate, because again, we want to keep people like me out of your contracts. And so we want to designate that if there is God forbid, a dispute that arises from the contract, we're relating to the contract that we're only talking about your LLC. We're not also talking about you personally.

alane_1_10-08-2024_161420:

Okay. So just to clarify, like if I send a contract to a wedding client, they sign it, they send it back to me now. It's my time, my turn to countersign it. I want to be signing it. Elaine Gennetti, owner of write pretty for me, LLC

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

Yeah. Or just owner comma and then business name. It can be owner. It can be manager. It can be whatever your, whatever your designation is.

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

So the right way to sign for everyone listening is your name, comma, owner, your business name.

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

exactly.

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

So sorry to get into the nitty gritty, but I want to know that I'm doing this right now. Um, When I'm typing my signature to countersign an e contract.

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

Huh.

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

I'm just typing my name, but then underneath that, there's a line of text that says this, right?

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

Yep. Because not everybody sets up their, their contract template, like in Dubsado or HoneyBook or whatever it may be to, to designate this properly, I will actually, like, if I'm countersigning a contract, my entire signature line will look ridiculously long. Cause I will, I will type out Paige Hulse comma owner. Page host LLC, but I'm always spelling that out. I have a blog post that I've literally like, Because I'm a visual person as has discussed thoroughly, I have a blog post that shows exactly how to sign a contract,

alane_1_10-08-2024_161420:

there's one, a listener question that I would love to ask right now, cause I feel like it ties in well. So somebody had asked, Do both people need to sign a contract in order for it to hold up?

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

So, okay, good. That's a great question. And to clarify, this person's not asking if, for example, both the bride and the groom, or the couple getting married need to sign. They're asking if. Like, 1 signature line could stay blank and the contract still valid.

alane_1_10-08-2024_161420:

I believe Yes, I believe so. That's a great follow up question that I should have asked.

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

Yeah, well, I can answer that one as well. So the, the short answer is yes, you need to have both signature lines need to be filled out. That's, that's just the short, that's the short answer. There are ways sometimes that I can work around it if somebody hasn't, but it's going to cost a lot of money in attorney's fees for me to even prove that on your behalf.

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

Well, now I'm curious if you're working with a couple, do they both need a sign? I don't think I've ever had both the bride and groom or partners.

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

Yeah um, so technically it's 1 of the only instances where you don't have to have both of them sign the contract. And I, I know I'm being like, really nerdy right now. You can, you can tell me to stop, but that is because a wedding is one of the predominant events that is classified. The parties are classified as third party beneficiaries. So that means the wedding is only occurring, literally only occurring for the benefit of the two parties getting married. So. That's one of the few times in law that even though technically it's contractually binding to both parties getting married, you only need the signature of 1.

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

Ooh. I was going to ask you what happens when the mother of the bride or someone like that.

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

that is exactly what I was about to bring up. I will die on the Hill of saying, do not let a mother of the bride sign the contract. And I can tell you hours worth of, of horror stories, but because I do have some instances, I have, I have some clients who do celebrity weddings and they just simply like, there's no question that celebrity is not signing the contract. They're having. Like their agent signed for them, whatever. So much to my chagrin, I have added, I'm being sarcastic, obviously, but I've added a clause into all of our contract, all of our wedding contracts in the shop, that is a, a third party signatory clause and a third party payor clause, because I know we also run into disputes all the time. Of even if you have, even if the bride signs a contract, but the mother of the bride pays for the wedding and the mother of the bride then has opinions typically that's the scenario that I see occurring not to pick on the bride. But you can add those types of provisions to your contract that provide those additional layers of security, just in case that were to happen. But I wanted. Abundantly clear best practices are to have the person get one of the two people getting married, sign the contract and do everything in your power to try to not have a third party contract.

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

That's really interesting because some planners we work with are like full service, so we don't even sometimes put their clients.

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

have big issues with that.

alane_1_10-08-2024_161420:

Yeah, that was going to be one of my questions.

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

so

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

you could see like the back end of some of those deals yeah.

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

try to get one of the people getting married to sign the contract. And my second takeaway is make sure you buy Paige's contract for calligraphy services, because if one of the third parties signs it, there's at least a third party clause in there, right?

paige-hulse_1_10-08-2024_151420:

Yeah, I'll promise I'll keep this really short. So we talked a second ago about third party beneficiaries. So the people getting married are, it's the wedding's happening for the benefit of their marriage. What happens in American law, whoever you sign the contract with, you have something called privity of contract with. That's the legal definition of your client. So whoever signs your contract is your client. So if the mother of the bride signs the contract, She's your client. However, I keep talking about the couple being third party beneficiaries Because technically they are your clients as well. So what what happens then this is an actual question what happens then if the let's say the mother of the bride had signed the contract and then the bride gets into a dispute. And I've actually had this happen. The mother of the bride wanted the wedding to be literally all white flowers, all just all flowers, black and white, like black and white wedding theme. The bride wanted it to be, I'm just going to say something completely different. And she did not want any white flowers. And up until the week before the wedding, they started like. I mean, they got into a brawl and so then every single vendor involved with the wedding was in it. It became a dumpster fire evidence because anybody that allowed the mother of the bride to sign the contract had a second door of liability. So you're liable because you have to do with the mother of the bride who you have privity of contract says, and you're also liable to the third party beneficiaries who are also your clients. So you're literally in an impossible situation where you're liable to both people at the same time. You never

shaochen_1_10-08-2024_141420:

up with all these scenarios I never came up with on my own. Luckily, luckily, I haven't experienced any of these. So I'm glad you're like forewarning us before they happen.

shaochen_2_10-08-2024_150612:

so let's answer one more listener question. This one is we've all seen artists getting their design stolen by big companies who profit off of them. What's the best way we can protect our digital products or designs?

paige-hulse_2_10-08-2024_160612:

Thank you for, thank you for asking this question. So there are two different ways people can, can protect themselves before this happens, because unfortunately I think this. it's a matter of when, not if this is going to happen. So two different ways. Number one, you need to have a terms and conditions on your website or the point of contact that somebody like if you have prints on your website, for example, and somebody's, you know, replicating those prints, et cetera. The terms and conditions are going to give you a Breach of contract, cause of action. Number two is intellectual property. And I want to hit on intellectual property very, very quickly because when we're talking about intellectual property, particularly when it comes to calligraphy businesses or creative businesses, we're talking about two different forms of FIP. We're going to simplify it and say, and those are copyrights and trademarks. Copyrights cover tangible works of authorship. So paintings or books or prints or online courses. Trademarks cover your business name, logo, and slogan. To answer the listener question directly, in order to take action against somebody who is copy copying or replicating or stealing whatever verb we want to use, stealing your work. You need to have a copyright registration in place in order to fully enforce your rights against the person who is stealing your work. When it comes to intellectual property, though, the, I think the number 1 takeaway that I want anybody listening to. Take away from this conversation is until and unless you trademark your business name, you don't own your business name or logo or slogan. So obviously the next question is, why does that matter? That matters because unless and until you own that name, somebody else can trademark it or trademark something that's kind of close to phonetically or visually kind of close to that name. And desist letter Either threatening to sue you or threatening to, or being nice and allowing you to pay them a 30 licensing fee to continue using that name. I see this happen every, literally every single day. So the number one takeaway, if you're operating any business that is not your own name, so not your own surname, surname, so not your own last name, start with looking at the USPTO website. Know that that is not a full due diligence search, but reach out to a trademark attorney like myself to Run what is called a legal knockout search and make sure that you actually can legally use that name without accidentally stepping, into a potential lawsuit. And it's 1 of the most again, it is just, it's 1 of the most avoidable and common mistakes that I see business owners making. Even though when it comes to especially creative businesses, our contracts and our client relationships are obviously what we consider. That is what's most important to take care of first. That is what is critical. Kind of at the forefront of us building our companies, but we have to think a little bit more futuristic and you have to build something that can last. And in order to do that, you have to have a name that isn't going to get you sued and that you can build a reputation around.

shaochen_2_10-08-2024_150612:

And I know with the trademark process, what I've heard is that it's best practice to hire a lawyer for it because it is more complicated and more time consuming. And so it can also be a little bit more of an investment to get into that process. Is that right?

paige-hulse_2_10-08-2024_160612:

It is absolutely more of an investment. Do not try to file a trademark on your own. Take that, that word of advice or leave it. I see people get into five year, like literally five year dog fights. Because they try to do it themselves

shaochen_2_10-08-2024_150612:

All right, I'm budgeting for that trademark

alane_2_10-08-2024_170612:

Yep. I'm like, add that to the to do list.

paige-hulse_2_10-08-2024_160612:

genuinely, like, if you work with an attorney that understands entrepreneurs work with somebody who maybe would, like, start with a due diligence search and then, like, build up to a trademark because, you know, Even for myself, like even filing my own trademarks, it's not cheap. You're, you're paying the federal government to try to own something. It's not cheap, but an entrepreneur, an attorney working for entrepreneurs, especially creative entrepreneurs should understand that side of being an entrepreneur and work with you to achieve, or the goal is not to hamstring the company. It's to actually build the company.

alane_2_10-08-2024_170612:

It's a great reminder. Okay. So we're going to switch gears a little bit because you have a really new, exciting addition to your creative Losh app and it is. An AI powered app, correct? Called the Creative Law Foundry.

paige-hulse_2_10-08-2024_160612:

Yes.

alane_2_10-08-2024_170612:

Awesome. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? I poked around in it towards the end of last week just to kind of see how it worked, what you could do in it. But we would love to hear in your own words what this is, how you see it helping creative entrepreneurs and yeah, where they can learn more about it.

paige-hulse_2_10-08-2024_160612:

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much for asking about that. I think this is one of the first times I've. I think this might be the first time I'm talking about this like on a third party platform, actually. So

shaochen_2_10-08-2024_150612:

we got the exclusive.

paige-hulse_2_10-08-2024_160612:

I know I get kind of like, I'm kind of like giddy finally getting to talk about it because I had to keep it. I had my own NDAs that kept me gagged for so long. Okay. To make a long story short, I am, I am at the time of recording this and the time this comes out, you will see we have converted the creative law shop into a law firm. An AI powered platform. What that means is that from a consumer standpoint, you can still come and you can still choose to download a template, or you can choose to basically have me in your back pocket, which I know sets me up for all sorts of jokes there, but I worked with thousands of entrepreneurs in 2020. I saw so many people who had bought our templates and who had tried to do everything that I've talked about who had tried to fill them out correctly, but maybe didn't sign the contract correctly, or didn't fill out their scope of services correctly, or just didn't, they just didn't, they didn't, they're not lawyers. So they, you know, they just didn't do everything correctly. And from my perspective, I, I literally could not sleep at night because there was an integrity disconnect that I couldn't quite put my finger on because I knew that there was a way there was, there had to be some sort of way. I, I can't be the world's attorney. I can't actually provide legal advice to every single person that ever sends me a quick question. But there's a way that I could try to do better than just having a blog and just having contract templates. And so I just started going down the rabbit trail. I've been joking about doing this for years. I realized around this time last year that I was at a point where I don't, I didn't think I was joking anymore. I couldn't live with the what if, so then it was a matter of, okay, well, so what's it going to take? What I ended up doing is I was able, because again, going back to accidentally with me bringing up synthesizer without meaning to talk about it at the beginning, but the way that I see contracts, I see on the back end, all of these. triggering events, you can say. When somebody comes to me and asks, me to review or revise a contract, they think they need help with one provision and I'm making edits in like maybe a dozen other, and it might look like one word edits, but maybe a dozen other provisions, but every provision in a contract builds off each other is my point. So again, going back to the integrity question, how can I expect somebody to Amend their own like amend their own intellectual property provision, for example, even if I've given them the language that they need and the options that they could choose from if they input that correct incorrectly, how can I expect the rest of the contract to hold up in my mind? I saw how I could create those triggering events on the back end. And how somebody could just click a button, like a yes or no button, or like literally I tried to make it as simplified as possible. Yes. No. I think some of the only question boxes are like, fill in your, your services, like place cards, envelopes, you know, those types of services and build that contract for somebody. You're able to do with the Creative Law Foundry now, um, is I've taken every contract I've written, built them off of each other. So it's all based off of my language. So it's AI powered, but it's all controlled by my language. So you can ask, you can fill in the questions. You can, you can click the boxes. There's an AI powered GPT that I've trained as well. I've trained off of every contract I've written every seven years of, of redacted. I will add, but redacted emails in the shop. And redacted versions of every cease and desist and every pre litigation dispute that I've been involved in and trained this GPT to provide the advice that I would provide if somebody's saying my client's pushing back on. Paragraph three, a what should I say? It literally is trained to tell you what I would say. And this, this tool is in place or it is built so that you are able to build your own contract to suit every specific client. case that you have come along without needing to email us and get the email that says, I'm sorry, we're not your attorney. We can't provide legal advice or you having to wait, you know, a month to get on my calendar for me to answer a 15 minute question. It's literally all sitting right there. I just, I had an integrity disconnect with where contract templates were and where consumer behavior and consumer knowledge changed post COVID and I know it because I saw it, I saw what existed before I helped people through it. I saw afterwards, and now you have clients that are willing to say, what happens if we have a pandemic, what happens if we have a shutdown, what happens if, you know, they, they're. We're trained to expect the reschedulings, the cancellations, et cetera. And so this is going to allow you to be prepared to have all those questions answered and in place and be able to operate like that and not have to it bridges the gap between just trying to throw out a, throw out a product and hope for the best and actually provide a tool that can, can fit into the toolbox of your company.

alane_2_10-08-2024_170612:

That's amazing. I'm going to like try to concisely sum up what this is, just so I'm also understanding it properly. So it sounds like we can purchase contract templates that the creative law shop with the boundary, we can tailor them for specific circumstances, scenarios, et cetera. And then there's also this AI. GPT component where if I have a question, like if somebody cancels their wedding and they're asking me for a refund, I could come in and ask that almost like I'm asking you because it's been trained by you. Like, what do you suggest? Or how do I handle this? Or, you know, get the legal advice without having to, like you said, wait a month to get on your calendar or whatever the case may be like kind of have you in our pocket.

paige-hulse_2_10-08-2024_160612:

That that's exactly right. Exactly right. So you have the choice now. And I, I actually, I keep a few of my own templates on my, I truly keep a few of my own templates on my desktop, like my independent contractor and my NDA and a few others that I use all the time. And sure. Sometimes I'll just open up the word document and delete the highlighted portions and just use it real fast. Or with, with the foundry, with what I've created there, I literally can go in and within two minutes, click a few buttons and have that polished version. That has the client's information and put it already and have that document that I can spit right into my CRM system within literally, I've never had one. That's taken somebody more than 10 minutes to fill out.

shaochen_2_10-08-2024_150612:

So for someone to use the foundry, do they need to have purchased the contracts separately? Or kind of tell us about, like, is the foundry an add on to the contracts? Like, tell us more about how they can get access.

paige-hulse_2_10-08-2024_160612:

That, that is a great, that is a great question. I'll just add one other piece of context before I answer that question directly. Just to try to bridge that gap of integrity. I was talking about When the GDPR came out in 2018 on my birthday, I decided to start offering lifetime updates because I could not from an integrity perspective, sell somebody a contract that was legal in 2017, but it's not legal now. So this builds in all of those necessary updates to the law. So that being said, anyone that purchased from us prior to May of 2024 were transferred over as founding members. So your portal was literally moved over to the foundry and you, you can still download it at any time, or you can use a free trial and try out the, the actual SAS platform. New customers now are able to come and You're able to either purchase the contract itself, or you're able to purchase the contract and whatever package in terms of like a 3 month, 6 month, 12 month, whatever that may be for the foundry in addition.

shaochen_2_10-08-2024_150612:

So the foundry is a subscription model.

paige-hulse_2_10-08-2024_160612:

Exactly

shaochen_2_10-08-2024_150612:

Okay. Got it. Well, awesome. Thank you so much for telling us about this innovative. I can't say that word new product, but also like congratulations. That sounds like a massive undertaking, especially to make it available to all of your contracts. Cause how many contracts do you have now?

paige-hulse_2_10-08-2024_160612:

94. it took me, I'll just say it took me. From January 12th until, actually I finished them Sunday.

shaochen_2_10-08-2024_150612:

Oh my gosh.

paige-hulse_2_10-08-2024_160612:

Every Thursday at around three or 4 PM until Monday morning, I would log about, this sounds like a, a wide range, but 30 to, I think my top was 64 hours. I'm just thankful that I was naive and dumb enough to go ahead and just go for it. Once I have enemy, I can't tell you how hard this was. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. I also, for the first time, literally, and I'm not kidding. And I'm a raging intomniac, so I mean, it's literally like literally sleeping well at night because this is what my gut was nudging me to do for years and I couldn't quite put those puzzle pieces into place. I think that within a couple months of recording this, there will be a few other variations of it. Like I said earlier, there may be, there's no one that's going to have exactly what I've created on the back end because every sentence of every contract is based off of my own language, my own knowledge, and all of that language and knowledge comes from either me performing those services, like calligraphy or photography or whatever it may be, or writing those and litigating those contracts for my clients. So, so we'll see how it goes. It's weird to, it's really weird to launch something. That's the first of its kind in the market. It's very odd. And I'm like, I'm very fine. I'm completely fine with being honest about that. And being honest about the fact that we'll see how it goes. I will, I decided to launch it gritty and I love entrepreneurship and I'm willing to show if I like fall and get dirt on my face, hopefully someone else can learn in the process too.

alane_2_10-08-2024_170612:

No, I love that. We're around here where you always talk about. You know, progress, not perfection and just doing whatever is on your heart And then learning from whatever happens

paige-hulse_2_10-08-2024_160612:

The only other thing I could have done is wait for someone else to do it and then try to figure out my own smarter way to do it, which is stupid because I've had this idea for almost a half a decade and. Again, I wanted to create something that I knew in my mind's eye exactly how to create and I didn't want that to be a replica of anything else out there.

shaochen_2_10-08-2024_150612:

We feel very privileged to be getting The scoop on all of these new things and stories you've never shared with anybody else before so we appreciate it

paige-hulse_2_10-08-2024_160612:

Like I said, that wasn't, wasn't necessarily my plan and I'm not just saying that to, to fluff anyone's. Feathers, but I, I just, I love getting to, it all comes full circle. I genuinely love getting to talk to other people who started, you know, who have clear calligraphy businesses. And I mean, think of the hours that I spent at my old law firm, listening to podcasts that were talking about calligraphy and just trying to glean every bit of information that I possibly could about how. To do this thing that I really enjoy doing. So I really, what you all are doing is important. It's important to me and it's important to a lot of people who are listening as well.

shaochen_2_10-08-2024_150612:

Thank you so much before we wrap up, can you tell us where our listeners can connect with you?

paige-hulse_2_10-08-2024_160612:

Yeah, absolutely. So the everything We've primarily been talking about the creative law shop. So that is shop creative law. com and everything regarding the creative law foundry. If you just go to the shop homepage, you'll be able to find it'll lead you straight over there as well. We're in the, we're in the process of merging the websites. So I'm just going to say shop creative law. com for now. If you want to work with me one on one or. If you have any questions about anything intellectual property related in particular, then you can find all of that information at my law firm, which is page host law. com. And the Instagram handles are page host law and the creative law shop.

shaochen_2_10-08-2024_150612:

Perfect. And we also have a special code for our listeners. So you'll get 10 percent off any purchase At the creative law shop whether that's contract templates or the creative law foundry We were just talking about and we will make sure to include that code in our show notes

paige-hulse_2_10-08-2024_160612:

Perfect.

alane_2_10-08-2024_170612:

This was so insightful I can't thank you enough for like I said sharing your time with us And your expertise and your knowledge and just being so open with us and our listeners. We really really appreciate it

paige-hulse_2_10-08-2024_160612:

Absolutely. I, I really appreciate the invitation and I, I love what you all are building here.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Alane Gianetti

Host
Head Shot

Shaochen Wu

Host