Practical Exercise to Pinpoint Strengths and Weaknesses + Legal Priority List
By: Mairin Van Shura, Esq. l Solivagant Legal
How are we less than 100 days out from a new year? I swear, I blinked in April and now it’s September. Anyway, before the start of the final quarter of the year, a few recs to ensure you’re finishing out the year strong, protected, and well-positioned for next year.
How To Run a CEO Day To Identify Blindspots
Take a CEO Day before the start of next quarter and make a list of what’s worked and what hasn’t so far this year, as well as write out your biggest pain points. On the “what hasn’t worked” side, are any of these recurring issues? And next to those recurring issues, I’d list why you think the recurring issues keep happening. I’d then challenge you to dig a little deeper and question those beliefs:
Hypothetical Examples To Challenge Assumptions
📈 What’s working:
-Full client roster for most of the year
❌ What’s not working:
-Multiple requests for early termination
💭 Why I think it keeps happening:
-People who aren’t financially stable are enrolling in extended payment plans and then defaulting
💡 Why it might actually be happening:
-My contracts and sales copy aren’t clear on client responsibilities and I’m attracting clients who are looking for a quick fix or have outsized expectations
Example 2:
📈 What’s working
-Hit the $10k month mark one year into business
❌ What’s not working
-Sales are inconsistent and many are to unaligned clients
💭 Why “I” think it keeps happening
-I’m newish to business and don’t have a large enough network or follower count
💡 Why it might actually be happening:
-I’m overly reliant on social media versus building out an engaged email list. Also, I don’t embody the value of my offers and my copy is vague and overly focused on all the details of everything someone gets in my offers, versus the overall transformation they’ll experience.
Why This Review Exercise Works
This exercise isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but following through on actually doing it forces you to be both incredibly honest and radically accountable, which can be pivotal for your business. It also encourages thinking about a problem from an entirely different perspective. I once had a mentor say, “you can’t read a label from the inside of the jar.” And I think that’s so true. When you’re looking at a problem under a microscope, you’re so zoomed in you’re only looking at one possibility or explanation. When you’re zoomed out, you can take in, consider, and validate additional perspectives and information. Also, it gives you powerful information to take to a coach or a lawyer-depending on the issue-to help you develop a solution.
Legal Priorities To Tackle After Your Review
What you should be prioritizing legally is highly variable depending on where you are in business and what (and the level of its quality) you have in place right now. If you need help with this, please contact us.
Contracts
At a minimum, you should have lawyer-drafted contracts for every monetized offer. This isn’t adapting your 1:1 contract for your course to save money using ChatGPT, either (not a made up example, unfortunately 🙈). Different offers have different scopes, different liability requirements, and often, vastly different terms. We have contract templates for a variety of offers, from everything to VIP Days, to online courses, to retreats. I may be able to help with custom contracts before I’m completely booked out with FGC (pls. see below); email me if you need custom contracts.
Website Policies For Sales Pages and Sites
If you’re selling from a website or a sales page, at an absolute minimum, you need a Privacy Policy. It’s a legal requirement and you could be fined without one. Also, Stripe could shut down your account without a compliant Privacy Policy. You should also have a Terms and Conditions Policy and a Disclaimer Policy. The latter is a legal requirement if you have affiliate links on your site, and/or have testimonials from former clients. We have a bundle of all 3 policies and you can pay with Klarna over a year.
Trademarks to Secure Your Brand
Especially if your brand is also your IG handle (i.e. you, your reputation, and public knowledge of your business are all associated with your brand), your brand should be trademarked. ASAP. You don’t own your brand without a trademark. Period. It doesn’t matter if you have an LLC in the name of your brand, a URL in the name of your brand, and all social handles in the name of your brand. You don’t own it, and someone could still use it (and trademark it without your knowledge).
Payment Options To Budget Costs
If you’re budgeting a lot of expenses for the remainder of the year, remember that we offer Klarna. For trademarks, that means you can pay over up to 24 months (I think it’s like $137 per month), depending on what you qualify for. Klarna is also available as an option at checkout for all contract templates and contract template bundles.
Advanced Next Steps For 2026 Planning
If you have these down (👏 ), your priorities should be having a lawyer review all of your contracts to determine what needs to be tightened, tailored, clarified, or updated to position you for the new year. I’d recommend a full legal audit to look at your entire business and make sure it’s legally compliant, with all risks identified and mitigated, especially if you’ve been building the foundation of your business piecemeal. I’d recommend working with a lawyer to develop an intellectual property strategy for the remainder of your offers, and talk through strategic planning around your 2026 goals. This could include brainstorming and building out additional avenues of passive wealth creation via licensing and advanced partnerships and collaborations. A business lawyer can even file intent-to-use trademark applications for offers you’re excited about but haven’t yet built or launched, to protect the names ahead of time. Check out my new Fractional General Counsel service, a quantum legal shift encompassing all of the above, for the scaling entrepreneur who just “wants it all fixed.”
Questions and How To Connect
Questions? As always, please feel free to contact us with questions. If we haven’t already connected on Instagram, I’d love to connect with you there, too.
Have a great rest of your week!