EPISODE 008: How to Protect What You Love: Business, Contacts, Copyright, and Family with Autumn Boyd & host Dana Malstaff

Autumn Witt Boyd is a lawyer who helps creative entrepreneurs who grow their business. She helps her clients develop air tight custom contracts that you can actually understand and protect the business they’ve worked so hard to build. She’s got over 11 years of experience as a business lawyer and has experience protecting intellectual property through copyrights and trademarks. When she isn’t working, she enjoys spending time outdoors with her twin sons (who are 4) and her husband.

We are really excited to bring this interview to you today, because Autumn shares some amazing nuggets of awesomeness. Let’s dive right in!

Listen to the audio: [smart_track_player url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/bossmom/EPISODE8-AutumnBoyd.mp3" title="How to Protect What You Love: Business, Contacts, Copyright, and Family with Autumn Boyd]

Subscribe to the Boss Mom Podcast in iTunes.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• Autumn’s journey from working as a corporate lawyer who traveled frequently to becoming an entrepreneur and how her husband influenced the switch.
• How Autumn’s business found success quickly, even though she didn’t bring any clients with her when she left her law firm.
• Why Facebook groups are a powerful marketing tool.
• Why it is okay if your target market and ideal client evolves over time.
• What the some of the biggest assets for a creative entrepreneur are and an easy way to protect them.
• How to navigate contracts when you’re working with friends or people you trust.
• Why it is important to put downtime on your schedule.

Can I quote you on that?

• Going out on my own as an entrepreneur was challenging, scary, and exciting all at the same time.
• I had a well paying job and even though I was unhappy, I thought to myself that this is as good as it gets. As it turns it, it wasn’t as good as it gets.
• I went to a ton of networking events, but no one hired me…...I realized that they were not my people.
• If you think about your ideal client, it should be someone you want to have a relationship with- it’s easy to engage with them.
• Having a well prepared contract will protect you from having a client who decides decides half way through the project they’re not happy with you and they’re not going to finish paying you for what you’ve done.
• All business is about relationships but in the end, it’s just business. And people will do things that you would have never imagined they’d do. You’ve got to look out for yourself, no one else is going to.
• Contracts are great for both sides. It tells both parties, these are the rules of the game and this is how we’re going to conduct our relationship.

Recommended Resources, Links, & Books:

• Being Boss Podcast
• Autumn’s freebie available for download: Answers to your top 10 copyright and trademark questions. To access this, head on over to her website!

Connect with Autumn:

Autumn offers affordable contract templates at her website,

“Contracts keep things from going wrong in your business. They lay out all the terms and expectations of the parties, such as what you’re doing to deliver, and how much you’re going to be paid for it. In a nutshell, contracts protect you, your business, and your sanity. My contract templates are sent to you in Word format so that you can fully customize them. No more waking up in a cold sweat worrying about misunderstandings, when you’ll get paid, or whether you'll be sued.”Website / Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn

What is the number one thing that’s valuable in your business that you want to protect? Share with us on instagram by commenting @danamalstaff .