- Hi, everyone! I'm Attorney Aiden Durham
with 180 Law Co. in Colorado.
Welcome back to "All Up In Your Business."
In my last video,
I did something a little different.
I let you, guys, all up into my business
and we talked about
how much money I made in 2022.
Well, we're gonna continue
with this theme this week
and talk about why I recently made
a few changes to my business.
Up until recently, my law practice business
and my kinda YouTuber business
were all housed under one entity.
But then, I decided to break them off
and split them into two separate entities.
And so this week,
we're gonna kinda talk it out,
talk it through, talk about why I did that.
Before we get into all that stuff though,
if you are new here, welcome.
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And while I am a lawyer,
I am not your lawyer.
The stuff I talk about in all of my videos
should not be taken as a substitute
for actual legal advice.
If you need help with any legal issue,
you should consult with a lawyer
who's licensed in your state.
All right, so in my line of work,
working with businesses and small business owners,
I have a lot of consultations
and conversations with my clients
that are around like,
"I wanna start a few different businesses.
"I have a couple of different ideas,
"different things I wanna start doing.
"I'm not sure if I should do
"all of them in one entity.
"Should I form one LLC to do all of it?
"Is it better to have multiple LLCs
"for each different business?"
And really, there's no one correct answer
to a question like that.
Every situation is different
and every answer is going to be different.
Usually, my general response,
my general thought process with this is,
if the two businesses or multiple businesses,
if they're all closely related,
if they're kind of intertwined with one another
and/or if they're all kind of part-time things
where you're not making significant money
from one in particular,
if it's all kind of side jobs
and side money from all of them,
then it's usually easiest
and makes more sense
to just do everything under one entity.
And so in me talking about this
and going through why I decided
to separate my law practice
from my YouTuber business,
again, keep in mind that I'm not saying
this is how everyone should be doing it.
This is just really a fun little anecdote,
a little example, so you can kind
of see my thought process behind it
and the things that I took under consideration.
And hopefully, that will be helpful
for some of you.
So like I said, until recently,
my business, everything was under one entity.
I started my law practice,
what about 10 years ago,
and I formed an LLC for my law practice.
And shortly thereafter,
I started this YouTube channel.
I didn't really consider YouTube
my YouTube channel to be a business in itself.
I wasn't generating any income from it.
And really, I didn't have any intent
or plan to do so.
Frankly, I didn't think enough people
would watch my videos
to actually make any money off
of the YouTube channel.
Ultimately, this in the beginning at least,
was a marketing tool for my business.
If I got up here, talked about business stuff,
intellectual property stuff,
hopefully, some of you would watch it
and then decide to contact me
and hire me for more legal help.
So it was a marketing tool,
not its own separate income generating thing
that I had initially planned.
Then over time, I actually started
to get more and more views.
I started making a little bit
of money off of YouTube.
At first, it was just a few hundred a year
maybe eventually, a few thousand per year.
But nothing significant really by any means.
Then it really kind of started
to grow even more.
It started getting to the point
where I was making a few thousand per month,
really more of like a full-time income almost
that I was making just from YouTube.
And in that sense, YouTube did kind
of start becoming its own business.
It was its own money generating thing
even though ultimately, it was still
a marketing tool for my law practice.
Even then though, even with the growth
of my channel,
I still didn't bother separating it
or creating a separate entity for YouTube.
I didn't really see any benefit to doing so.
I didn't see any real necessity to it.
I didn't want the hassle of now,
I have a second entity to deal with.
And again, ultimately, it's still
all boiled down to my law practice.
So I saw it as so closely related.
They're one and the same.
So why would I bother starting
a separate business for YouTube?
Sometimes when I'm working
with clients and stuff,
sometimes I will recommend
having separate entities for separate businesses
because we don't want shared liability
between the two businesses.
Let's say, I'm a lawyer
and maybe a dog walker.
If something comes up
with my dog walking business,
some liability arises,
I wanna make sure my law practice
isn't going to be subject
to that liability and vice versa.
I don't want them
to share liability with each other.
I wanna keep them separate and separated
from each other's liability exposure
and the potential things that could come up.
But in my actual situation,
I'm not a dog walker.
With YouTube, the liability exposure,
the risk of liability is pretty small,
especially compared to a dog walking business
where I'm out there in the world.
I'm dealing with other people's animals.
I'm dealing with animals
that could potentially hurt people.
There's a bit more exposure to liability,
not so much with making YouTube videos.
I guess there is some risk of liability
but it's pretty minimal.
So I wasn't so concerned about that
that I need to separate the liability
from YouTube from my law practice.
And again, like I said, ultimately,
all boiled down to my law practice.
YouTube was a tool for generating income
in my law practice.
The law practice is the main thing in the end.
Then I started doing some brand partnerships
and affiliate marketing,
making some additional money off of that.
So kind of related to my YouTube channel,
but still income outside of it.
So yeah, okay, this is starting
to become like its own animal,
its own separate thing.
This YouTube thing really is starting
to grow into something kind of separate
and distinct from my law practice,
my law business.
And then the thing that really kind
of turned the tides for me,
I launched my course Brandish,
my online, my DIY Trademark course
where I teach people
how to submit a trademark application
and get a trademark registration
without having to work with a lawyer.
And in my situation
and my circumstances in particular,
this is the main reason that I decided
to create a separate business,
create a separate entity.
Now, this is kinda just a special issue
with lawyers and maybe some other professions.
This probably doesn't apply to most of you,
but we have to be really careful
that people don't think there are clients
if they're not really our clients.
I can't have people thinking
that I'm their lawyer
if I'm not actually their lawyer.
That's why you guys hear me
do that legal disclaimer
in the beginning of each video saying,
"I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer."
I need to make it clear to all of you
just that by virtue of watching my videos,
that is not establishing
an attorney-client relationship between us.
I'm not becoming your lawyer.
Because if I am your lawyer, now,
I have a bunch of responsibilities to you.
I have responsibilities
to my clients ethically and otherwise.
And I could potentially get
in a lot of trouble
if I don't honor those responsibilities.
So with Brandish, my course,
I need to make it really clear
that when someone purchases my course,
if they sign up for Brandish,
that does not mean that they are now
working with me as their lawyer.
We are not establishing
an attorney-client relationship
just because someone purchases my trademark course.
So that really was the main driving force
behind starting this separate entity,
starting a separate business
for my law practice
and everything not law practice related.
I formed this new entity.
So to help make it clear
that you're not buying anything
from 180 Law Co.
You're buying something
from this new separate entity
that's not 180 Law Co.
And since I was gonna do that anyway,
since I was gonna set up
this separate entity for Brandish anyway,
I figured I might as well move
all my non-lawyer stuff to that new business.
Not so much for the liability
sharing reasons that I talked about.
Really more for accounting
and bookkeeping purposes.
I had started to make real,
significant money from YouTube
and from brand partnerships and stuff.
They were really becoming more
like full-time income
and it really had kind of turned
into its own separate business anyway.
And so this way, by having them separate,
by having separate books,
separate accounting records,
I can see really the performance
of my law practice, my income, my expenses,
everything related to my law practice
separate from all the other income/expenses.
And I can better kind of assess
how my two businesses are performing.
And this way, it's just kind of more clear.
It's just easier.
When I send an invoice to a brand partner,
if they've sponsored a video,
I send them an invoice for my fee.
And now, it has my new company,
my new company's logo
on the top of the invoice
rather than it having my 180 Law Co. logo.
By the way, shout out to BrandCrowd for that.
I didn't really need anything fancy.
I don't need really a fancy logo
for this new company.
I just wanted something kind of basic
that I could stick on an invoice.
So I use BrandCrowd to come up,
create this new logo.
I'm gonna touch more on that next week though.
So that kind of, I think adequately describes
why I started this new separate business,
separated my law practice business
from my kind of YouTuber business.
A question that often comes up, again,
when we're talking about creating new entities,
separating businesses and stuff,
"Did I start a holding company?"
No, no, I didn't.
No, I didn't start a holding company.
Almost inevitably, when the question
of two or more entities comes up,
the follow up question
is almost always going to be,
"Well, should I start a holding company too?"
Most of the time, when I'm consulting
with a client or something,
most of the time, my response to this
is to ask a question back to ask,
"Well, why would you?
"What benefit are you looking to get
"from having a holding company?"
And if they don't have a clear answer to that,
if they don't already know
what is this benefit that I'm gonna get
from the holding company,
or if their answer is something like,
"Well, I don't know.
"Everyone just says
"you should start a holding company."
Then the answer is almost always,
my response is almost always,
"No, no, don't start
"a holding company, don't bother."
I wasn't going to get any benefit
from having a holding company
that would then own my two subsidiary
or my child companies.
Really, it was just gonna be added hassle.
It was gonna be one more entity,
yet now a third entity
that I'd have to deal with,
pay filing fees for,
do accounting and bookkeeping
and blah, blah, blah, stuff for.
There was no benefit.
And a lot of the time,
there's really no significant benefit
to having a holding company
in a situation like mine
or where maybe we have a few different
kind of businesses or entities operating.
In my instance in particular,
there was no benefit
to setting up a third company,
having this holding company.
So no, I didn't bother doing that.
Plus I think it could potentially
cause some issues with my law Practice.
I don't know if this is exactly correct
but there could be some issues
with another entity owning
my law practice business.
There might be some ethical stuff
that comes up with that.
So I didn't know
if I'd really be allowed to do that anyway
and I didn't wanna bother researching it
and it wouldn't do me any good.
So that's kind of it.
The main reason I separated my business,
really the main reason was to make it clear
that when people signed up
for my online course,
that they're not now engaging
my professional lawyer services
or creating an attorney-client relationship.
But also, because my YouTuber related business
plus my online course,
all of that was really turning
into its own actual separate business
and generating its own legitimate income.
And so just kind of for financial reasons,
it made sense to have them be separate
so I could look at them as separate businesses.
I hope that's helpful for some of you.
If you learned a thing or two,
go ahead and give me a thumbs up.
Make sure you subscribe.
Click that little bell
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Don't forget to go follow me
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and check the description for links
to additional information and resources.
If you happen to miss
that video from last week
and you wanna get a little nosy
and find out how much money I made last year,
you can check it out right here.
I'll meet you over there.
Thank you all so much for watching.
I'm Aiden Durham and I'll see you next time.