[00:00:06] Viktoriia Miracle: Hello. Hello and welcome back to happy time happy money podcast and today we have Elena. She is a lawyer for online entrepreneurs, specializing in online business law. She's also business mentors, strategies, and likes to call herself an overachiever because life is too short to just do one thing. She likes to make legal easy, so you can protect your butt and business.

[00:00:33] Hello and welcome Elena.

[00:00:35] Elena Favaro Viana: Hi, I am so excited to be here.

[00:00:38] Viktoriia Miracle: I am so excited to have you on, I haven't had a lawyer yet on my podcast, and I'm so curious to learn more about how I can protect my butt and my business. But before I would love for you to share your story on how you started and what inspired you to start it this journey?

[00:00:56] Elena Favaro Viana: You know, so I've been in law for a really long time, as you can imagine, just the process of becoming a lawyer is lengthy, but I actually started my journey in international law. So I wanted to be a diplomat. So I ended up working for the United nations for a while. So I was living in Cambodia and then I ended up working at the international criminal court in the Netherlands.

[00:01:15] And so I spent a lot of time abroad. I had to come home. I was getting a little homesick and I was feeling like, you know what, it's time to stop living out of a suitcase. It's time to like buy dishes and be an adult. And when I moved to Toronto and I moved back home, I saw this air of entrepreneurship, this spirit of everybody doing their own thing, paving their own way, carving their path in the online space.

[00:01:37] And it was contagious. And so I sat there and I said, I want to be a part of this. And so it was so funny because at this point I was like, how can I be a part of this? And being a lawyer in this space also never occurred to me. I was like, I'm done with law. I'm not going to do it. but then of course the world changed in 2020, as we all know.

[00:01:55] And I sat there and ended up losing my job that I wasn't super passionate about. As most people did. And I was like, all right, well, I need to make a quick buck. I do have this law thing. I am a lawyer. I know what I'm doing. And so I just went to Instagram one day and I said, hello? Like, does anybody need any contracts?

[00:02:11] And honestly Viktoriia, within 24 hours, I had secured four clients like, and EFE legal was born. It was, it was truly magic. It truly felt like the universe was like, listen, Elena, this is what you were meant to be doing. Finally, thank you for arriving like, here are all your gifts of abundance. And so from there, I really realized this gap.

[00:02:31] You know, for lack of a better word in the market, that there aren't enough lawyers focusing on female entrepreneurs on online business law, a lot of lawyers don't even know what a webinar is or what call scheduling links is. They aren't aware of these things. And a lot of lawyers are still for lack of a better word, old white guys in their ivory towers.

[00:02:50] And so a lot of the clients that I work with are just like, oh gosh, thank you for being, you know, modern for being, you know, a millennial and actually understanding what we do and filling this, this void, this gap to actually help the small business owner get protected, like protecting their butts because the truth is a lot of our clients like their moms at home or, or, you know, small businesses, side hustlers, and they just don't think their business is worthy enough of legal. They just don't think that they can actually walk into a law office and be like, Hey, I need protection for my little small business, but you, and I know that's the biggest lie ever. And so when I started, I realized, wow, people online are actually making quite good money and they're doing these amazing things and they deserve as much if not more protection due to the virality of their business. So that's kind of how I started. Wow.

[00:03:42] Viktoriia Miracle: Universe come to use story and I love it. It's just like a pure sign of that. You like you were needed there and I absolutely can say there's not many lawyers online that I've met. And it's, it's interesting because there's really not that via webinar. What's the funnel?

[00:03:59] Elena Favaro Viana: They're just like we work a lot with coaches too, and it's like, what, what do you do? What's a coach because a lot of these more traditional. You know, get therapy with one, what are these hype women? Who's like, no, there's so much more that's happening here right there. So, you know, social media managers are really hard job, right? A lot of us think you just post on Instagram and it's not true. And I also used to think like that until I started my online business and I was like, man, content is a struggle. So yeah.

[00:04:27] Viktoriia Miracle: Well, I would love for you to share like top three mistakes that online businesses makes like, would that cost them lose money?

[00:04:35] Elena Favaro Viana: Absolutely. The number one mistake is actually deprioritizing your legal, right? A lot of people think legal is a luxury when in fact it is a necessity, okay. Having a business is a privilege, but in and of itself is a legal process. You actually need to tell the government. Hey, I'm starting a business. I'm going to register it.

[00:04:57] And at the end of the year, I'll pay my taxes on it to you. We seem to forget, and a big mistake is forgetting that the government is your silent partner in business. At the end of the year, they always want their cut. They want to know what you're up to. So thinking that legal is a luxury and something I'll do later.

[00:05:13] Huge mistake now to piggyback off of that. The second mistake, I was thinking, oh, I'll just get a few more clients before actually investing in legal and completely opening yourself up to this lack of protection when you start your business right. And not getting that client agreement in place. Your client agreement is truly the bread and butter of your business.

[00:05:37] If you don't outline what you're delivering, how you're delivering it, what your office hours are and how you want to get paid. I mean, so many things can go wrong. And so I'll give you an example, especially cause we're talking about money too. And I know that's like one of your biggest themes is if you don't have a contract at the beginning There is something called a statute of limitations.

[00:05:57] All right, and a statute of limitations changes based on your jurisdiction. So I'll use Ontario. So I'm in Ontario as an example, but what that means is that you can actually take legal action up to two years from the date of the event. All right. So what this means is 18 months ago, you started your business.

[00:06:18] You had the mentality that legal was on unimportant. So you've got a couple of those clients through the door. And now 18 months later, those clients didn't have a contract and they're coming back for full refunds. They're taking legal action against you. They're unhappy, and you have nothing, absolutely nothing to protect yourself, but to in fact, pay them back a full refund.

[00:06:40] That's all you can do. And so to give you a larger example. In New York, you have something called a breach of contract that actually lasts six years. So somebody can come and take action, legal action against you five and a half years later, if you had a bad contract or a Frankenstein contract, or one of those fun ones.

[00:07:00] Copied and pasted and found it was bad ones five and a half years later when you're super successful and you've gone viral, right. We see this all the time. The online space, small business owners get very successful very quickly. I mean, depending on your jurisdictional limits, It can really bite you in the butt if you don't do things properly from the very beginning.

[00:07:19] And that's like, why in the beginning it was of protecting your butt because it can seriously hurt later if you don't take care of it from the beginning. And so that's a huge second mistake., Right? And then the third one is what do you do when you actually get your clients? Right? A lot of us think that having legal contract templates in place is really just about getting paid right. It's having your contract to client agreements. Sorry, having that in place we think is just about getting paid and while it is, it's also about promising all the things you're going to do. So on the flip side, if you're hiring somebody and they don't have a contract, I mean, you're just, you're what are you doing?

[00:07:55] You're just giving them money. It's like literally burning it down the toilet. They haven't promised you anything in return for that money without a client agreement. So we see a lot of people in small business who think contracts are scary or contracts are going to like ruin the relationship. But I would encourage you.

[00:08:12] One of the bigger mistakes as a consumer is not actually hiring anybody unless they have a contract because otherwise you're just like here, I'm trusting you. I'm giving you money. You're you said you do these things, but we actually have no promise of you doing that.

[00:08:28] Viktoriia Miracle: Wow. That is so interesting and, you know, I had problems with contractors that I did not sign any contracts.

[00:08:35] And what happened is that I paid on the last day of the first day of the month and then what they will tell me, like, okay, I'm done I'm resigning myself. I'm like, but there's so much other stuff that you, you like, you get to like deliver it to me that I just haven't asked for it. It's like the, I dunno, edited YouTube video or whatever.

[00:08:54] And after that, I'm so more cautious about it, but I'm also curious of how are you protecting yourself? Like in that situation, if they're from other countries?

[00:09:05] Elena Favaro Viana: So out of country, what a great question. And I honestly get this one a lot. So when you present a contract, right, you're the business owner and you're presenting a contract to someone else you get to outline in a properly drafted contract, which laws apply.

[00:09:20] Okay. So let's say you're based in the United States and somebody from I don't know, hires you right, Netherlands. Yeah. Someone from the Netherlands hires you, in that relationship, if you've given them a proper contract, it will state that all of the law applicable is that of the United States where your business is registered.

[00:09:40] So if anything were to go wrong and if this person in the Netherlands, gosh, forbid I ever wanted to actually Sue you, they would have to come to a court in the United States in order to pursue that legal action against you. So you actually get to make that decision. In a contract, but you have to make sure you make that decision.

[00:09:57] Viktoriia Miracle: What is an opposite way? Like when you're employing somebody and they're not delivering what they want. I think a lots of small businesses face like this VA problem that you hiring, but at the end of the day, they're not delivering and they're just like, you know, leaving what the money, like, can you create any legal action with it?

[00:10:17] Elena Favaro Viana: Absolutely. It always comes down to your contract. I don't know. That's like the real main point here, whatever the contract says is what goes, because it becomes law between you and this person and it becomes almost like a higher power. You you're bound to whatever it says. Whatever it says. So if a virtual assistant, because many of them have their own business and they're not just coming as independent contractors, they are presenting their own virtual assistant contract to you.

[00:10:42] Now, my advice to you is to actually read it and see if you agree with what it says because we forget a lot that we're allowed to negotiate contracts. Just because someone presented it to us doesn't mean we have to accept it at face value. So read it, read the termination clause, right? How do you fire them? How do they fire you?

[00:11:02] How do you get out of this relationship? Read it, make sure it actually makes sense and it's amenable. How do you pay it? How do they want to get paid? What does that look like? Right. Especially when we're dealing, you know, I had a virtual assistant who was amazing and she was based in the Philippines but paying her.

[00:11:16] So much more money to transfer the funds. And so I was like, oh, that should have been something that we had stipulated, you know, you live in, you learn and so look at these clauses and see if they make sense to you. And if they don't rewrite them, it's the just edits and send it back before you sign it right.

[00:11:33] Now the other side of this, of course, if you're the VA handing over the contract and they've signed it, make sure you sign it too, right. We do this a lot. We do this via dub Sato. We send contracts, but we never signed them on our end. Contracts, not legally binding, unless you've both signed it. So you're allowed to negotiate.

[00:11:51] Make sure you both sign it and make sure this whole process happens before payment, before invoices. Right? It has to happen before the invoice contract, before invoice. You can't do this thing where you're like, oh, pay me now and then sign the contract next week. Like absolutely not. That's completely not binding.

[00:12:09] So you need to do it the other way around.

[00:12:12] Viktoriia Miracle: Got it. That is so awesome. I love it. I love it. I feel like there's so much value already. And I wanted to just ask the last question that I asked everybody on this podcast, fill in the blank for me. If you really knew me, you will know that I am.

[00:12:28] Elena Favaro Viana: Gosh, the contracts expert.

[00:12:32] Viktoriia Miracle: Perfect. Thank you so much. I know you have an awesome gift. So what did I say? And by the way, why they need to go and get it.

[00:12:40] Elena Favaro Viana: So I have a client onboarding checklist for you guys, and honestly, When we're talking about this whole onboarding process, when we're bringing clients on, we, we touched upon it a little bit contract before invoice, but there are three steps that would be so helpful for you in order to make sure that you're always getting paid in a business relationship.

[00:12:58] And it starts with this checklist that I have for you guys. And when you re go through it, you'll see that there's actually a three-step legal process to bringing on a client into your firm in order to have a successful working relationship with them and to ensure that not only do you get paid, but they pay you in advance because you've given the onus of responsibility to them and you can all do this and what I would call a flawless legal onboarding.

[00:13:21] So I'm going to give that to you guys, and it's all going to be in the show notes.

[00:13:25] Viktoriia Miracle: Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. So if you're watching, thank you for watching or listening to this episode, and if you are curious where you can get the only information just scroll down and there is going to be link to our webpage, just click on that and there is going to be all show notes, all the video, audio, transcript and everything about this podcast series. Thank you so much, Elena and I wish you to have an amazing day and I'll see you in the next episode.

[00:13:52] Bye.