201. The Only Legal Program You Need for Your Online Business

Sam Vander Wielen:

Hey there. And welcome back to On Your Terms. I'm your host, Sam Vander Wielen. I am so excited to dive into this episode today because in it, I shared with you the backstory on the Ultimate Bundle®, my signature product that gives you all like the legal templates and trainings that you need if you're an online business owner to run your business legitimately.

But I also wanted to share it with you from the perspective of somebody who has like tinkered with something for years and years and years and has been so passionately dedicated to making this product the best it can be for all of you. And really has been, like, a healthy obsession, I think, for me to build the Ultimate Bundle® and, with it, build my business over the years. And I wanted to share it with you, not only as a source of inspiration, but really, so that you can take what I'm sharing about how I approached the building of the Ultimate Bundle®, the beta testing, the re-tinkering, the scaling of it to apply to what you're doing in your own business, the development of your own products and programs. So I'm really hoping that you'll take a lot away from it.

Dive in, learn the backstory of the Ultimate Bundle®, tell me what you're going to apply to your own business. And you'll also hear me dive into the details for any of you who are interested in like what is included? What do I get with this? Is this for me? Is it the right timing for me? Do I really need this? Can I do something else in the meantime? I dive into all of your burning Ultimate Bundle® legal support questions for your online business.

So before you understand how the Ultimate Bundle® came to be and ultimately how it came to also be my best selling product, I have to share with you a little bit about how it was born. Because first of all, it's going to help you, I think, think through some of the products and services that you might be offering now or something that maybe you've got in the back of your head. But I also always want to be so transparent with you about how long things take, how things like evolve and what you're seeing is like chapter 28 of many, many chapters that have been written and torn out and tossed in the trash and then written again and all that kind of stuff. So I always want to give you like the full pictures that you really understand how do I think through these things? How did I mess up? How did that help me? What has gone well, all that kind of stuff.

So, hopefully you know already that I'm Sam. Hi. No, I'm just kidding. So, hopefully you know that if you're listening. But I was a corporate attorney and when I was a corporate attorney, I always, I mean, my whole life since I was a kid, I loved food and cooking. Really cooking is like my main passion in life. And when I was a lawyer and I was so burnt out and I was so miserable, I would just think, man, it would be so nice just to do something with food and just to teach people about food and cooking. Really, I wanted to focus on teaching people how to cook.

So it started out when I was a corporate attorney that I started like a little food blog called Bear's Drizby. And I was like sharing recipes that I was making, like I had no time to cook. I was working a million hours a day. I was eating most of my meals in the office. So I was trying to show people like, look, here's how I cook. And then I bring stuff to the office, use glass, blah, blah, blah. So I was doing all of that.

, at least at that time, like: 2015

And so I registered for a health coaching program, became certified through this health coaching program. And I think about a year after that, I decided, and I've shared some of my personal story, but I've shared that like, I finally was like, I'm going to go do this, right? It was a series of events that led me to that, that I won't go back through now, had to do with a plane incident, I won't make you listen to that again, but I decided to go and become a health coach.

nd I started this business in: 2016

But I started doing all of this stuff and I fell head over heels for the work that we were doing. I actually didn't really like being a health coach, and I've shared the episode, I'll link to it below about like 10 things, 10 reasons why I think my health coaching business failed, why I know it failed. One of which being like, I just figured I just would model it the same exact way that everybody else was modeling their health coaching business at the time and therefore it would be successful. And it wasn't, but it also, I didn't like buy into it and that really came through.

So when I really had like hit another wall of being like, man, I really thought being a health coach was going to be the answer to all my problems, right? If I left the law, I was super miserable, being a corporate attorney working in a traditional job, if I just leave and I start my own business, everything in my life will just like magically fall into place. And boy, was I like disappointed to find out that that's not really how it works. I don't think that's how it works for anybody, let alone, that was definitely not my situation.

And it was during that time that I realized I got to shift again, I have to do something different, and people would not stop asking me legal questions. People were asking me when I would go to conferences or when I would teach a workshop or even online. What's the deal with an LLC? Like, what kind of contract do I need? Do you know anybody who does this? And I was just like, man, why are people asking me this stuff all the time?

And I realized during that time period, I really needed a little bit of space from the law, but I realized during that time period, yeah, of course they're asking this because the traditional stuffy old legal field that I was working in just months and like a year prior, they wouldn't know what to tell you to do about a coaching business. They wouldn't know what to tell you to do about a podcast, an email list, a TikTok account, a YouTube channel. They have no idea, right? They're not using any of that stuff. They don't know the language. They don't know -- if they don't know how you're using it, then how do they know what to do to tell you like, what you have to protect, right?

So, it kind of started to click for me. Like, of course, on top of all of the things related to, like, it being really intimidating to go and speak to a traditional lawyer, it's also really frustrating to go to one who doesn't understand what you do, so you don't leave feeling very confident. They can also be really condescending, right? And of course, this is not all lawyers. There are many good lawyers, but like, I saw a lot of this kind of behavior in my experience.

r me. And that's why in early: 2017

The idea was I would just start selling digital legal templates, and then I would create SEO driven content that would consistently drive traffic to those templates. And that's exactly what I did, right? Those were my first several dozens, hundreds, whatever of sales of individual legal templates. That's all I sold at that time.

I then added in these free connection calls so that people could figure out what templates they needed because I realized I was getting all of these emails from people saying, I don't know which template I need, and I didn't know how else to do it. In those free connection calls though, people were asking the same questions over and over to the point where I would joke with Ryan, my husband, that I could just record me saying the same thing, pop the phone down, put it on speaker, and walk away, and like have these conversations with people, and like it was such a waste of my time.

And I remember complaining about this one time, just being frustrated that I was saying the same thing over and over and over again, and then realizing, you dummy, this is on you. Like, this is you, this is not a them problem, this is a you problem. Why are you offering something in a way, if you're saying the same thing to people all the time, there's a better way to deliver that thing, right? I don't have to be on the phone with thousands of people explaining the same thing. I can do that through like a video that they then purchase access to.

I realized in those connection calls too, that it wasn't just about buying legal templates, right? So somebody might need a contract. Somebody might contact me and say, all I need is a contract. But then we got talking and they were like, wait, I need to register my business? I thought I could wait till I made $10,000. I was like, no, no, no, no, we can't do that. And then they would say, well, wait, what happens if I get sued? And I'm like, well, don't worry about it. I mean, if you have the right business insurance, it won't even financially impact you. And they were like, what's business insurance?

So I started realizing that there was this thing outside of just a bunch of legal templates. You don't just need legal templates. You need, first of all, trainings that are completely on target for like what you're doing, right, for offering courses, for creating content on social media, for building an email list, for having a website. You need stuff that's specific to what you're doing and how you're doing it. And you also need some support along the way.

So the stuff started to click and I came up with an idea for a product called the Ultimate Bundle®. This has been years and years and years now. And at the time, I had the brilliant idea that it was going to be two different versions. There was going to be a version of the Ultimate Bundle® that was just the trainings, just those little video trainings of essentially me breaking down what I was saying to people on those calls. And then there would be a version of the Ultimate Bundle® that included those trainings plus the templates.

I thought this was a brilliant idea. I was like, okay, I'm going to go beta test this. So I contacted a whole bunch of people who had reached out to me, who I had free calls with, who were maybe I was communicating with through social media, and said, what do you think, do you want to buy this for a couple hundred bucks? You'll be a beta tester. This is going to be more expensive in the long run. All I ask is that you use the product and tell me honestly what you think. And if you like it, then you offer me a testimonial. I made them sign something that was saying that in exchange for this discount to price, they would give me feedback, it didn't have to be a positive testimonial. If they didn't like it, I just wanted the feedback. But I wanted something from them so that I can prove it.

And in doing so pretty much everybody came back and said, I absolutely love this. This is so helpful. Everyone needs this. But the only way I would ever buy this is if it came with the templates because it doesn't make sense for me just to get trainings. I need the contracts. And there was just this like aha moment where I was like right, of course, you need both, right? You need both. Just like how on the phone, I realized it wasn't just the templates that they needed. It also wasn't just the trainings. It was the marriage of both that really made the Ultimate Bundle® as I had conceptualized it special and unique, and nobody had anything like it. There was nothing like it on the market.

So we were like -- I was like, there was nobody working for me at the time. I was like, okay, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to go with just this one option, because I'm a big believer in really trimming down the options for people. I really think people shoot themselves in the foot when they offer lots of different, like variations and levels of things, and like, people get overwhelmed with decisions, and they will always take the road least complicated, the cheapest, the fastest, whatever.

So I went forward with just the Ultimate Bundle®, 10 legal templates. At that time, I think it was 23 legal trainings. You've got access to the Facebook group, all that kind of stuff. And I started selling it right away and it was like maybe one or two bundles a month and like two to four bundles a month. Then like five bundles a month, was like super consistent for a while. I remember $10,000 was about the limit I could hit for like bundle sales. Plus, I had my legal templates. And I was like, wow, this is incredible.

And then 5 became 10, 20, 30, 40, blah, blah, blah. And it kept going and going and going over years, by the way. This took years, years and years, lots of trial and error, to the point now where it sells like hotcakes. It sells very consistently. It's my top seller. It has been now for years and years. And this product, I am very, very grateful and fortunate to tell you has sold millions and millions and millions of dollars in product just for itself, right?

So it's an incredible product that's been built over a long period of time. It's been built with a lot of feedback involved and that I have improved, right? So it's not been a stagnant product for me. It's something that I am going back to now, my team is going into constantly and improving, adding more information, creating additional trainings, updating legal templates, all that kind of stuff.

So I hope that walking you through that, like little story of the Ultimate Bundle® helps you to, first of all, see that these things take time, but also maybe even think about the kind of the mindset that you take towards a product that you might be building or that you might not be satisfied with at this very moment, that it's something that should be evolving, and it's something that you're going to have to continue to tinker, and retest, and test again, and adjust, and walk back, test again, right?

But this like, I think it's been like an obsession for me, in a healthy way, in the way that you can have healthy obsessions to just like pour all of me as a business owner into this and making it the best experience possible. I have lots of podcast episodes where I share more with you about kind of my approach and the way that I treat customers and how much I think that's helped, and like how I've approached the marketing for this product, how I beta tested it in way more detail. So we'll link to all of those episodes for you below.

But I want to also dive in for you about what the Ultimate Bundle® is right now, because first of all, it's on sale right now. But second, I know so many of you are interested in it. So many of you have questions and you might say like, I'm not so sure still if it's right for me, if I need it now, if I need all of what's in it. So let's like dive deep for a couple minutes into what is the Ultimate Bundle®? What's this product that I just told you all about?

So the Ultimate Bundle® is my signature program that gives you the most essential legal templates like contracts and website policies, for example, and trainings that you need to start, build, and scale your online business legally. More informally, what I always like to tell people is that the Ultimate Bundle®, the way that I designed it and conceptualized it was that if you had known when you were in school that this was the kind of thing that you'd be doing for a career, this is the class that you should have taken, right? This is all the information that you wish you had in your back pocket as a business owner so that you knew exactly what you needed to do in any given scenario.

So I created the bundle as a way for you to have any question like, oh my gosh, this client just skipped on her invoice again, what do I do? You can go into the bundle. There's a training on what to do if people don't pay you. And there's also information in the contract templates to try to make this problem go away or not happen as often. So I really wanted it to be that like business BFF that was like sitting next to you anytime you had a legal, some financial questions that you could just pop in there and get what you need.

That's why the Ultimate Bundle® is not a course. It's really more of like an on demand, like a knowledge on tap set of resources and legal templates anytime you want to learn about something, have a question or concern about something, or you don't know how to navigate something on the legal side or financial side of your business, right?

So who then is the Ultimate Bundle® really for? So we literally have every single type of coach that you can think of. It's not only for coaches. I'll go into that in a sec, but we have business, health, fitness, mindset, career, life. love, money, self-care, literally every, there's probably many others. We have every kind of coach that you can imagine. We also have lots and lots of service providers like RDs, Facebook ad strategists, NTPs. We have tons and tons of like health pros who are trying to create a coaching business. Like we have nurses and therapists and doctors, and we have lawyers and CPAs who are then trying to create a coaching business side of their profession. We also have a lot of creative service providers like web designers, copywriters, designers, that social media strategist, that kind of stuff. Right?

Now, not everybody is all online. We have a lot of customers who see clients online, or they sell a course, but they still see some people in person. So you can do both, but the bundle is not that helpful at this current moment for you if you only sell physical products. So if you sell like mugs and t-shirts on Etsy, you sell art or something like that, I think it's incredible. I applaud you for being so talented.

But at this very moment, we don't have a bundle for that. If that's something you'd be interested in, make sure you send me a DM and let me know that you'd be interested in it because I want to talk to you. It's also not super helpful for brick and mortar only people. So if you own a bakery, please send me something that you bake, but unfortunately the bundle is not for you, right? So we can't help people who have just a brick and mortar business.

When is the bundle right for you then, right? So now you've maybe said, okay, that sounds like I fall under the kind of person that this would be helpful for, this all sounds interesting, but when am I supposed to get this stuff in place, right? So we have people join the Ultimate Bundle® at literally every stage of the business building journey, from the beginning to people who are already making seven figures in their business.

But I want to speak to you if you are a little earlier on in your business journey and you're like, I don't think I need this yet, right? I want you to start thinking about the business that you're trying to build, not the one that you have this moment because you don't get legal protection for what you have this second. You get legal protection for the things that you're trying to build and to offer.

And I think if we're being honest, if we can just like, can we be honest? Can we be friends for a sec? We are friends, but like, can we talk like friends for a sec? If we're being honest, a lot of what happens around this topic is that you are hedging your bets to see if the business turns out successfully or not. Right? You're like, if it's successful, then I'll go and get my business registered or I'll get a legitimate contract. But until I know it's successful, I'm going to use a crappy contract, or I'm going to roll the dice and go without any protection.

Two things are happening there. One is that if you have the mindset already that something may not work out, you're giving yourself an out. You're giving yourself a plan B. And whenever you have a plan B, you are not going to fully commit to plan A. I really believe that because that was me when I was starting this business, this legal business. The like first six months to a year that I had this business, I was like, well, if this doesn't work out, then I'll just go back to being a lawyer. And I kept all my lawyer clothes, and I was like keeping in touch with my contacts and all of that. I wasn't buying in. I wasn't jumping in, and I wasn't killing it. I wasn't doing amazing in the beginning. Right.

And I remember I went to this conference and this coach had said to me, you've got too much of plan B in your mind. You're giving so much energy and focus to plan B that you can't commit to plan A. And you're never going to pull this off if you keep saying that there's an out. If you have one foot out the door, you're never going to be all in.

And I went home from that conference. I got rid of all my lawyer clothes. I like stopped interacting, going to these miserable lunch meetings that I didn't want to go to, and I was like I am going all in. I'm giving this an honest go. So, I really do believe in this that if you keep saying like, wait, I'm going to wait to see if this thing works out, you're not jumping in, right?

The second thing that happens when you don't, like, get legal protection early enough is that you will kind of stay in this circuitous pattern of, like, I can't put myself out there because I'm afraid that if people see me or hear me, I might get sued, I might say the wrong thing, somebody might not pay me, I might accidentally do something wrong, right? And so you don't put yourself out there, and you kind of keep your business small and hidden and quiet.

And then, because it's like, not being super successful, you're not making a ton of revenue or anything, you're like, well, I can't invest in legal yet because I don't have this stuff. So do you see how that could continue? Like, the lack of legal stuff could actually be making it worse for you, right? So that's kind of my spiel on, like, when you get legal protection, I believe, like, the earliest that you can do it, the better. That's great for you.

It's also fine if you're like, wait a minute, I've been working with people now and I don't have this stuff. Well, it's better now than not, right? So let's just get it done. I don't think there's much use in spending any time being like, I don't know, like, why I didn't do this earlier, so let's just move forward. So, that's what I think about the when thing. If you have any questions about whether or not it's a good time for you, shoot me a DM on Instagram at @SamVanderWielen or send me an email, sam@samvanderwielen.com.

Let me know what concerns or questions you have. I'm happy to help you and to go through that with you.

If you don't get my emails already, make sure you sign up for my emails below so that you can read more about the Ultimate Bundle®. And if you have any questions about what we've talked about today or the bundle in general, the best thing for you to do is either send me a DM on Instagram at @SamVanderWielen or send me an email, sam@samvanderwielen.com and I'm happy to help. I hope to see you then.

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

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

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