Protect Yourself Legally as a Content Creator w/Eric Farber

Eric Farber

[00:00:00] J.Rosemarie: My guest today is Eric Farber CEO of Creators Legal. Welcome Eric. [00:00:05] Eric Farber: Thanks for having me. [00:00:07] J.Rosemarie: Sure. this is going to be a very interesting episode, I believe because you have something that we as creators need. But before we talk about that, let's talk about Eric. Who is Eric Farber [00:00:22] Eric Farber: I'm a guy in a box these days. [00:00:26] It's, I'm the founder and CEO of creators legal. We just talked about that, but I have a long history. I was a lawyer by trade. I'm still a lawyer once a lawyer, always a lawyer. And, I, I represented athletes entertainers for over 20 years. And worked in Hollywood. at one of the big talent agencies years ago in the TV department, and then went on to, work as a development executive at a film company, which was based at Sony Pictures. [00:00:58] And then I went back and [00:01:00] became a full-time lawyer. Again, more. I represented athletes and entertainers for a long, long time. And, then transitioned to. We actually represented athletes in there in injuries, for quite some time, which became a community-based workers' compensation from which. To a very large firm, which, is still there. [00:01:21] And I'm still one of the owners, although I don't work there anymore, but it's 80 people in six offices in Northern California called Pacific workers and went off and wrote a book about our growth based on culture and treating people really well. And, something that I think, a lot of business people overlook, especially in law firms. [00:01:39] And then. I had this idea for a really long time about the transition and helping creators through legal tech. And we're all sort of familiar with legal zoom and the ease and the ability to get so many different things done on the internet, rather than having to go to an actual [00:02:00] professional professional, whether it's, you know, turbo tax instead of going to an accountant. [00:02:05] And I just saw that creators really needed. a place to go, to get easy legal documents that are really sort of inexpensive and designed specifically for creators like podcasters. I was pretty excited when I got the ping that you wanted to have me on the show. So I could talk about this. [00:02:25] Yes, [00:02:26] J.Rosemarie: yes. It interested me right away because I was actually starting a new blog and, you know, you have to get disclaimers. You have to get, privacy policy and all of that up there. And as a podcast, I don't even think about the legal aspects. So I, and if I don't, I'm sure there are a lot of podcasts who don’t. [00:02:45] So tell us about, Creators Legal, you know, tell us as much as you can about what it is and what it does for us. [00:02:53] Eric Farber: Well, it secures your rights more than anything else, right? You want to make money off of the [00:03:00] stuff that you're doing. You better have contracts. And we talk about this a lot, because I think one of our biggest challenges is that creators don't realize they need contracts or they just skip over them. [00:03:13] But I'll give you a good example. before we even launched, you know, one of our advisers, who was a musician, a singer decided to start a podcast and that podcast became really big and it got sold. Okay. And so she now is sort of working somewhere else. But the interesting part is she had asked me for a guest release early on before we'd even launched. [00:03:34] She had asked for this. And so I had these podcasts guests releases that we were developing and that, and it's interesting because when we actually launched creators legal, my prediction was that the podcast guest release would be the most common contract sold. And it was up until about two weeks ago when we started selling more NFT agreements than anything else for. [00:03:56] But creator's legal is really, is really, really legal [00:04:00] zoom for the creative industry. So if you're a filmmaker and you need contracts, you can go in there, grab the contract that you need, fill it out easily online, send it out for, for electronic and then store it in a, in a digital briefcase that we've got. [00:04:15] But it's really about that. Contract's do two things and most things don't end up in court. Most things don't end up with a relationship that crumbles apart, but contracts set out the expectations of people. That's one and contracts help build relationships because they're setting out those expectations of people. [00:04:36] Okay. But it really is about creating a bundle of rights. Every time you do a podcast, every time I do a podcast or I create something as creators work, creating a body of work that let's face it, somebody can come along and buy it. You've got a YouTube channel with a million followers or a TikTok Somebody can buy it, but if you don't have the rights locked up from the [00:05:00] people that participate in. In the creation of those rights, then you don't really own the full copyright because that's sort of a work for hire laws. If I participate in something, whether it's creating a podcast, whether it's creating a film, whether it's creating music, I have a stake in that copyright. [00:05:19] And so the person who actually owns it, the producer of it, the owner, they have to get a document from me, a written document from me that says that they own it, not me. And unless they have that, they can't really do anything. And I'll give you a good example. You know, I work with a guy for many, many years who was an extreme athlete, and he did a lot of video and everything, but he did a lot of wingsuit jumping. [00:05:46] Well, you can't film yourself wing suiting. You got to have somebody else flying and wing suiting is a very, very dangerous sport. And a lot of people die and. Somebody came along and said, Hey, we want to [00:06:00] license this footage. And he had hundreds of hours of footage. Well, the problem was that the cameraman had died and his widow wouldn't sign the documents. [00:06:09] So he couldn't do anything with the footage. So this is what we call the of You have to bundle of rights, that's put all together and unless you have that, there's very little you can do with it. I worked, uh, for the Huey Newton foundation for many years, and they had hundreds of hours of film footage, archival film footage that took us about two years to make sure that we have the rights together before they could actually license out for documentaries [00:06:38] So that's what creators legal is all about. We help you get your creating done. If you're doing a podcast, we help make sure that you've got everything together. And we don't do it. It's all do it yourself. And it makes it super easy. And it's very inexpensive. You go to a lawyer these days and they, you know, the average lawyer in America is $350 an hour.[00:07:00] [00:07:00] And that's a general practitioner. You want to go to a good entertainment lawyer. It's a thousand dollars an hour. And so our contracts are $19 a piece. Our annual subscriptions are hundred dollars and you can do as many contracts as you want. And this is really about building a platform that allows creators to, get their work done and keep the, keep everything and get it stored. [00:07:23] And I like to talk about this stuff, but I really also like to talk about where, can podcasters, where can creators. get money. How do they monetize? How do they build their businesses? That's what really all, you know, that's what I'm really all about. I love this stuff. I love entrepreneurship. [00:07:39] And as far as I'm concerned, the creator economy is now the world economy. And if you don't have the tools to do this stuff online and to build a business online, I don't care what business you're in. To do this. You're going to be left behind. [00:07:57] J.Rosemarie: I see that, you know, I, [00:08:00] before I started talking to you or I started listening to you talk, my greatest worry was that my guests sign the guest release and, as important as it is. [00:08:10] it seems like they're more stuff. They're more important stuff that we need to be taking care of as podcasters. So one, I want to, ask you to briefly just say How important do you think the guest's release is in the context of a new podcaster or, and they have to have that, do they have to have that or do they need something else before they start? [00:08:36] Do they need all these things before they start? Cause I find podcasting confusing for my audience. Right. It's confusing for them. But you also have. This is not one of those things. You want to jump and grow wings on your way down. Right? [00:08:51] Eric Farber: things that you can absolutely jump and learn on the way down. What are you doing it for? [00:09:00] I'm a big believer in creating great content. Right? You want to create the best [00:09:04] J.Rosemarie: I'm talking legally, creatively. Yes. We know we can just start, but legal. Is this something we want to be doing? You know, just jumping and go on the wings down. [00:09:15] Eric Farber: look, I think absolutely. This is something they're doing. If you are a, solo person creating a podcast. Grabbing, you know, Riverside, we're talking on Riverside through the Riverside platform. There's all these amazing, amazing tools these days, right? I'm talking on a $90 Yeti microphone, which is as good as a $5,000 microphone, 10 years ago. [00:09:39] And, and all I've got to do is now go to Buzzsprout or go to anchor or whatever it is and upload it, Don. If there's, if you're going to have guests, the one thing that you actually should have is a Guest Release. And in, in the creators legal platform, you can literally do that [00:10:00] for a $19 contract and, and it's pretty much done. [00:10:05] In 20 minutes, 20 minutes, it takes you six minutes to write it. You know, you need an email address. you need the person's name and, and when they're going to be on the show, if you're paying them, we have a different contract with compensation, but if you're hiring an editor, an editor, if you're hiring, a producer, if you're hiring somebody to do the whole podcast production for you, Yes, you should have all of these contracts. [00:10:27] It's important. And that's later on as you get your feet wet, as you start to build, as you start to gain an audience and a voice, and it starts to grow, it becomes even more important. And you're going to wish that you had the, that you had done them for the original. [00:10:46] J.Rosemarie: Right. Right, [00:10:48] Eric Farber: right. And so it is, but I love podcasting. [00:10:52] I think podcasting is amazing. Our co-founder, Phil Alberstein is actually, a co-founder over audio up as well, which is one of those big podcasts [00:11:00] distribution companies.[00:11:01] J.Rosemarie: Okay. All right. Sure. Go ahead. [00:11:03] Eric Farber: Yeah, I think if you're, if you're in business, you should have a podcast. [00:11:07] Yes. I agree with, yes. [00:11:11] J.Rosemarie: All right. Okay. Thank you. because you know, we worry about the microphone and the, you know, the editing and all this stuff. And I do see people on like Facebook talking about, you know, because when Joe Rogan got his contract with Spotify, everybody wanted to be. Joe Rogan. Right. But I'm sure Joe Rogan had his stuff together, his legal stuff together, which is why he survived when he went through the last few months.[00:11:40] Right. Okay. [00:11:42] Eric Farber: All right. It gets, I mean, we're not there's, there can only be one Joe Rogan, so to speak. And there's only one Jerry Seinfeld on, you know, on Thursday night TV. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to take that top spot, however. It doesn't mean that you can't and there is [00:12:00] an enormous amount of room. [00:12:01] So too many people give up too early. I was listening to, I was listening to Gary V experience this morning and yeah, I I'm a big fan of Gary V I'm actually a bigger fan of sort of his books and everything else that had been around for a long time. But big fan of Gary V and this woman gets up, he's talking to conference and says, will you, I'm starting a podcast. [00:12:20] Will you be a guest? And he said, no, not now, but if you record a hundred episodes, all be guests, number 1 0 1. And that's a really huge point, right? Because it takes so much to gain an audience. Yes. We write a lot about this and I have a podcast that's about to launch called the Daily Creator. And we've already had headed out onto YouTube and started putting some stuff on, and these are early tests and things like that, but consistency and creating is everything. [00:12:53] And, and if you're going to take part in the creator economy, which everybody should, and [00:13:00] there's monstrous massive, amazing opportunities out there for so many people, you just have to be consistent and you just have to keep doing it and doing it. Yes. [00:13:10] J.Rosemarie: I hear that a lot. Consistency is key. Okay. Yes. [00:13:15] All right. So you talk about you like to podcast or you love podcasting. I do too. This is my second one, actually. And so, yeah. and so I wanted to talk, talk to new podcasters, tell us what your experience has been, give us something, you know, a piece of advice that, you know, we talk about legal stuff and about starting, but anything else you want to add for new podcasters? [00:13:43] Eric Farber: I think you've got to have all the tools together. You got to have you, you know, you're going to spend the money on getting the right microphone on learning the, you know, which platform works best for you. You're going to broadcast on Squadcast. Are you going to do Riverside? Are you going to do the free zoom and keep it under [00:14:00] 30 minutes? [00:14:00] Right. what, what platforms are you going to use? Are you going to, you've got to make all these decisions. Pick the few minutes. And make sure that you've got things set legally as well. I think it's probably fine to not worry about incorporating or setting up a company or doing any of that type of stuff, unless, and it might be part of your business. [00:14:22] We have in my, in my other business, which I don't work in there anymore. We have a podcast called Work Comp Talk. It's heard all over the world, even though we're sort of in Northern California, we weren't expecting it to sort of grow to the level it actually grew to, but we wanted to make sure that because we are doing this within the business, that the two hosts that are on there, that we have contracts with the hosts, we have contracts with the co-host. [00:14:48] We have the guest releases, et cetera, et cetera, that we make sure that we cover those bases. And. I can say that again. It's, you know, Creators Legal makes this stuff so super easy. If you don't want to [00:15:00] use us, you know, God bless, you know, I can offend me. you want to make sure the stuff is done is done and taken care of right after that. [00:15:08] Talk about. Get on the microphone and go, [00:15:11] yes. Thank you very much. And tell us how to find, creators legal, website. Tell us about you have a book, write about it. [00:15:21] I don't have a book about that. I wrote a book called the The Case for Culture, which is, really about culture and office in law firms and office settings. [00:15:29] but creators legal, it's very easy www.creatorslegal.com. You can connect with me if you want on Twitter at the real Eric Farber, we're the company's also on Twitter, but, we have a Facebook group of all our users, which is, seems to be, growing exponentially. We just launched it a couple of weeks ago. [00:15:47] It's up to about 350 people, but we also have a talk on the creator economy each week, with myself and Sean Kennedy. Who's our chief marketing officer. Who's been in the music business. I don't know, [00:16:00] 25 years and we generally have, you know, a special guests, so you can connect with us on clubhouse house as well. [00:16:04] But www.creatorslegal.com. The other thing is we did a, and you can put this, hopefully you can put this in the show notes, PODTOOLS50 will get you 50% off of an annual subscription. And so I really want people to try it. Podcasting has been huge for us. It's probably our podcast package, which you can buy a package of, podcast contracts to use sort of a single use, for contracts gets your feet wet into, into what is needed. [00:16:32] Maybe $30, I think total for about eight contracts, but we really, we really wanted to focus on this and honestly, anybody out there who wants to try our product and leave us, get, in touch, tell us some feedback of what you need as a podcaster. You know what you might not understand, please, by all means, email me directly, eric@creatorslegal.com [00:16:54] connect with me on Twitter. There's no reason to follow me. I don't say anything. That's all that [00:17:00] interesting. I don't post very much, but I'm there because you gotta be, you gotta be all places as a creator, right? Yes. [00:17:07] J.Rosemarie: Thank you very much. And, uh, yes, I'll put all those links in the show notes so people could have access to that. [00:17:13] what is Eric grateful for today? [00:17:15] Eric Farber: It's International Women's Day the first creator in my life was my mother who was a visual artist and she was very eclectic. and I always think back because it's re it was really her pushing the envelope. And even from a very young age when she was an art school and I was. she, it took her about 20 years to finish with degrees because she raised four kids. [00:17:38] And, I, I'm very grateful for the relationship and what I learned about art and about and about culture from my mother. And I've been thinking about that stuff all day. And I sit all day long and stare at one of her paintings that she did before she started having dementia. And she's now in a home can barely speak, but she is surrounded by all her [00:18:00] artwork. [00:18:00] And, and it's something I think about a lot. Right, because it led me to this. My father was, was an entrepreneur and, I wasn't much of a painter. I wasn't much of a musician. I wasn't much of an artist in any way. but I always wanted to be around the creative arts. And so I'm very thankful for the relationship that I have with my. [00:18:19] Drag me through every museum and gallery that could possibly be and how she pushed the envelope. and I always think when I was a young kid, she did a huge flag of the rolling stones that she, she and my father hoisted above the university of Toronto where she went, but she also did an enormous condom that they. [00:18:38] oops. And I don't know what it was actually used. And at about four in the morning, went in front of the president's office of the university and cut the lock and raised this huge, condom up. And this was in the early seventies. So you can imagine, right. So it was really about what, what is our, and, and what does it take to be an artist? [00:18:57] And where are you going to push the boundaries [00:19:00] and the special in today's world and what we're now seeing? You know, art has always been important and, and that's. That's what I'm grateful for was that a long answer. And I hope it was clear. I'm grateful for the relationship that my mother and I had and what she taught me about the creative world and about creativity. [00:19:18] That's [00:19:19] J.Rosemarie: that's beautiful. That's amazing. Thank you very much for sharing that. And if you still have time, we can talk about the reason is that why you went into creative, to be a legal representative for people in the creative industry. [00:19:33] Eric Farber: Very much. Yeah. I mean, it really led to this, this voracious appetite for movies and music and books. [00:19:40] And I read a lot, you know, through college. I think I came out of college and you know, the first law school, I sort of put it aside cause there was too much to do, but I read about a thousand books and I sort of knew every movie and, it was the relationship I, I really had with my parents that, that led to a lot of this stuff. [00:19:57] My love for sports as well. I didn't [00:20:00] have much to talk about with my dad, but we'd sit down and watch Phoenix suns games and that, you know, and that's where, that's where that came from. Yeah, but that, yeah, it led to it. I, like I said, I wasn't going to be a painter and I wasn't going to be a writer and I wasn't going to be a filmmaker. [00:20:14] I wasn't going to be any of those things. But, I still wanted to be around it. And I found that the business side was where I was going to be creative. Yeah. Yeah. And I do consider myself to be creative. But it's not in a medium. it's not an, a medium where, you know, getting into paint. I did write a book. [00:20:34] It was very difficult for me. Okay. two years on it. and the publisher said, you know, when's the second one? And I said, never, it was just too much. you know, the, the sweat and toil of it was too much for me. [00:20:49] J.Rosemarie: Yeah. [00:20:49] Eric Farber: yeah, I wanted to, and, and I love being a lawyer because it really helps a lot of people. [00:20:55] So creator's legal for me was, was sort of a natural extension of that because now I'm going to [00:21:00] help a million creators in one day, rather than one creator over. [00:21:03] J.Rosemarie: Yes. Yes. And then you don't always have to do the thing in front of you. There's so many ways to contribute. without actually painting or sculpting, you know, whatever, and you're still able to affect that industry. [00:21:19] So, uh, I'm so glad that it brought you here because we need you. [00:21:25] Thank you. I enjoyed [00:21:26] being here. Yes. Thank you, Eric, for coming and talking to us today. Anything else? [00:21:30] Eric Farber: No just, again, connect with me on Twitter, send me a DM. I'm happy to talk about this, this stuff. Join us on our clubhouse show or, you know, it would be great to connect with your too, with your listeners as well. [00:21:44] Really appreciate you. [00:21:45] J.Rosemarie: Thank you very much. [00:21:46] Eric Farber: Okay.