From Lawyer to 7-Figure Biz + Legal Issues Blog (with Amira Irfan)

Lauren 0:01
Welcome to the Launch Your Blog Biz podcast. I’m your host, Lauren McManus. I used to be a full time tax accountant and CPA with a whole lot of limiting beliefs and “I can’ts” whenever I thought about starting my own business. Fast forward a few months, and I quit my job after starting and growing my first blog to six figures in just a year. This is my space to share and yours to listen and grow about how to build and scale your own blogging business and design a life on your terms. Let’s get started.

Lauren 0:36
Hey, y’all. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you’re having a great day. I have another great guest with me today, I want to welcome Amira Irfan. She is a business lawyer, blogger and business coach over at Aselfguru.com. Welcome, Amira.

Amira 0:57
Thank you, Lauren. I’m so excited to be here.

Lauren 1:01
So y’all, Amira is one of our ProBlogger bundle students. She’s taken all of our courses and honestly to this date, I think she’s not only our most successful student, but she’s also the students that has had the quickest success. She has reached the level of earning over $75,000 in a single month with her business, which is mind blowing. So I want to dive into that today, because I’m sure our other students are going to want to hear all about that. But first, Amira, tell us more about what you do, your business, why you started it all that jazz.

Amira 1:38
Absolutely. Hi, everyone. My name is Amira Irfan, I am a business lawyer, blogger, and a coach now. I had been practicing law for over 10 year and then I was working one on one with clients, but I wanted to take all of that into the online space, and I found Create and Go through a YouTube video. I decided that okay, let me start my blog. Because before that I didn’t even know blogging was a way to make money online. So I started my blog, Aselfguru.com by purchasing Create and Gos’ pro blogger bundle at the time. And my blog, helps entrepreneurs protect themselves legally through Affordable Legal templates and services, like working one on one with me. I also share my own blogging journey and my success to help you become your own boss.

Lauren 2:34
That’s awesome, great example of taking your real experience, knowledge experience from what you do in your everyday life and bringing it online to reach more people. So that’s so awesome. Now, Amira, if I remember correctly, I always like to say that you, I mean, you honestly did have success quicker than almost anybody. I mean, you made your first $1,000 within the first month or two, right?

Amira 3:01
Correct. Yes. So what happened was that I took your course, and I started creating products right away. So I earned my first $1,000 through affiliate marketing, as well as selling my own digital products within my very first month of blogging.

Lauren 3:17
I love your story, because people ask us so often, how long does this whole thing take? How long does it take me? How long will it take me to earn some money with my business? And it’s like, you know, it’s, it’s kind of up to you. I mean, and I use you as an example so often, and I always say, “Amira is not the average, she’s far from it.” But you are the example of what is possible when A) you really care you really want it really badly. And B) you also just dive into it.

Lauren 3:49
Because so many people are afraid to create their own products, or, you know, maybe afraid is not the right word, but we feel this fear and overwhelm to put ourselves out there and to create something not knowing if it’s going to succeed. And you just did it, you did it and you earned $1,000 In your first month, which is just absolutely insane.

Amira 4:10
Yeah, it was unbelievable, because I still remember to this day, when I purchased your bundle, and I started my blogging journey, Lauren. I remember telling my husband at the time, like, I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know if this is gonna really work out. So he told me well just do it, stop thinking. I think a lot of times our biggest problem is, I don’t know as business owner is that we think too much, right?

Amira 4:36
We overanalyze, were our own self critic, and I just listened to his advice. And I still remember he’s like, “Just do it. Think of it like a hobby. And if you make $1,000 in six months, it’s a success. You know, what do you got to lose?” So I think when you put things in that perspective, and you just put in the work and you just believe in yourself and stop having the self doubt creep in and the fears creep in, then you’ll be amazed at how much you can achieve, you know?

Lauren 5:04
Yeah, for sure. It’s, you know, getting into all that imposter syndrome and limiting beliefs. And I think I’m actually going to do a podcast episode soon on comfort zones as it relates specifically to business, because that’s exactly what it is, right? We just like to stay inside of our comfort zone and getting out of that, and putting ourselves out there in a way is just so difficult sometimes, but at the end of the day, it’s like you just said, it’s like, what is the worst that can happen? I fail, but it’s some wasted time, but the best case scenario, if you can end up making that kind of income that quickly. I mean, it’s a no brainer, right? We just don’t tend to think of it that way.

Amira 5:45
Yeah, exactly. Because you think of it like, “Oh, I’m making an investment, I’m purchasing this course, whatever the amount is, am I gonna recover that money? But then when you take action, and you actually do it, you know, I recovered more than that in my first month. So for me, your ProBlogger was completely worth it, and since then, everything is history. You know, I’ve made more than a million dollars from my blog, and I never ever imagined that, you know. Yeah, it really comes down to believing in yourself and just taking action.

Lauren 6:18
Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, and also, if I remember correctly, you took a little bit of a different approach when you first launched, because you really went hard into the networking, if I remember correctly. And that’s kind of how you had a list of people or you had an audience to actually launch your product to righ? I think that you launched as also as an affiliate program, and you had been networking. Is that right? Do you attribute a lot of that to like your quick take off with this first product?

Amira 6:51
Yeah, I think so. I mean, that definitely helped. I don’t like to work in like all by myself, because blogging can be a lonely experience, right? I wanted to network with other bloggers, other entrepreneurs, like you and other successful entrepreneurs that I admire. I wanted to, plus they had my target audience, right? I created legal templates that all bloggers and entrepreneurs need, not just bloggers, but outside of the blogging, you know, freelancers, coaches, everybody needs these templates to make sure that their business is legal, and their website is compliant.

Amira 7:26
So it made sense for me to collaborate and network with other entrepreneurs that had my target audience and put my name out there. So whatever I needed to do, as far as guest posting, podcast interviews, or just having video interviews, or whatever was needed, I did that. And yes, that definitely put my face and my products in front of a bigger audience than let’s say, if I was just working in my own little corner, and you know, what I mean? So it would have would have probably taken a little longer is, instead of just networking.

Lauren 8:02
Yeah, because driving traffic and building your own audience takes time. But what’s so cool about your approach, and it’s one that I’ve seen other bloggers do as well, by networking with other people, they’re able to launch their products right away. And when you’re able to, A) make those initial sales, which the money helps, right? Especially if you are incurring expenses with your business, but also just being able to get the first foot of sales and get your first initial testimonials to put in your sales page, you’re able to kind of establish yourself very quickly, without having to do all that traffic yourself building the audience.

Lauren 8:39
Of course, you still need to do those steps to build your own audience, but you’ve already kind of gotten a foot in the door there. And so yeah, it’s really awesome. I love that you just kind of took our strategies and you know, ran your own way with them in this way and found success so quickly.

Lauren 8:56
Well, let’s talk for a minute about what you sell, and that’s those legal templates. Tell us a little bit more about that. And at what stage bloggers and business owners should be worried about this sort of stuff or making sure that you know, they are covered here?

Amira 9:14
Yeah, so at the bare minimum, when you start a blog, you before you launch, you should have like three legal pages on your website, they’re called first one is privacy policy. It’s a legal statement that informs the visitors on your website that what kind of information you’re collecting from them, and how are you going to use that information. So for example, if I come to your blog, Lauren, and I give you my name, and my email address, I have now just provided my personal information to you. So I have the legal right to know like, what are you going to do with that info?

Amira 9:47
That’s what the purpose of a privacy policy page is on your site. Then the second page that you should also have on your site before you launch your blog is a disclaimer. So disclaimer is basically a legal statement and document on your side that serves to limit your legal liability for the content that you publish. So as bloggers, talking about even myself, as a lawyer, I’m publishing a lot, a lot of legal tips, but I don’t want that information to be construed as legal advice by people.

Amira 10:19
Same way, if you’re let’s say, in the medical or health niche, you want to make sure that you protect yourself and you don’t want people to take that information and use it against you. Because the reality is that working as a lawyer for so many years, I’ve seen lawsuits in all shapes and sizes, and it’s so easy to get sued. So you just want to protect yourself, that’s the purpose of the disclaimer. Also, if you’re using affiliate links on your website, then you also have a legal requirement under the Federal Trade Commission to disclose your affiliate relationships, you know, that’s something that’s required. So your disclaimer page kind of outlines those policies as well.

Amira 10:58
Then the last thing you should have on your website, is what’s called Terms and Conditions. Think of them as your website rules, like what you permit, what you don’t permit. It also works to protect theft, copyright and intellectual property. Also like, kind of tells your visitors that what are your policies towards your products and things like that, like if you have a refund policy or no refund policy. So it has a lot of important information in that page.

Amira 11:30
Those are the three essential legal pages that you should have on your website before you launch, but it doesn’t really stop there. When I first created my product, that’s the first product I created, because I know bloggers were struggling with writing those legal pages on their own. But once you start growing your business, no matter if it’s a blogging business or not, you’re going to need additional legal templates, depending on what you’re doing. For example, you know, I remember as a blogger, when I hired my virtual assistant, I needed a virtual assistant contract, you know, some sort of a freelance contract to protect myself as a client and things like that. So you’re gonna need additional templates and if you visit my legal store, you’ll see tons. Like, I don’t know, like 25, or 30 different legal templates available to you for different reasons.

Lauren 12:17
Yeah, and y’all, Amir’s templates are awesome. We are affiliates for her templates, of course, because we have all these blogging students who who need help with them as well. I can tell you that the alternative is pretty expensive. I’ve had my accountant write up various contracts and stuff for us in the past and we’ve also, at some point, paid lawyers to help us with documents, and it’s expensive. The other alternative is you just google search these kinds of templates and you get templates that often just aren’t good enough, or they don’t cover everything.

Lauren 12:51
Amira is very good with knowing really being on top of what bloggers and these types of business owners need. And, we’ll be linking all of her resources and her legal templates in the description, if you’re interested in checking them out, but highly recommend them. She’s very thorough with them. Well, awesome. Amira. Let’s see, what else do I want to ask you about? What about your traffic? What does your traffic scene look like? Where do you get a lot of your traffic? Or where are you focused most when it comes to traffic?

Amira 13:24
So in my first and second year, I really focused only on Pinterest, and it was going really well. But then with Pinterest, there’s always algorithm changes and traffic goes up and down. So I realized like after like maybe six months into blogging, but that was a mistake to just focus only on Pinterest, I so I started focusing on SEO as well. That’s one of the mistakes I admit I made, is that I didn’t focus on SEO right away, because again, I got very busy with trying to launch products of my own, and then writing blog posts. And so I had a lot going on, plus, I was working full time as a lawyer at the time when I started my blog.

Amira 14:04
My time was like awfully limited, I would only spend like two to three hours a day and then sometime on the weekends, that’s all I could do. So SEO just kind of got neglected. But then when I realized that it relying on Pinterest or just Facebook, but one good thing I did do is I created my own Facebook community, so I do get a decent amount of traffic from my own community too. But then I started focusing on SEO later on, and so those are really the two primary sources. Then once the business scaled to the first year, scaled to six figures, then I knew I had some money to start investing into Facebook ads and paid channels. So I started you know, in my second year of business, I started running ads and tried to get traffic that way as well.

Lauren 14:55
Awesome, awesome. Yeah, sounds like a very similar trajectory to us for sure. You know, it’s like we can beat ourselves up for not focusing on SEO from beginning but like you said, you honestly just can’t do it all. You just can’t keep your focus on everything and it’s like we teach, we actually teach not to do that, because you’re gonna end up dropping the ball in other places, if not SEO, you know, you would have taken longer to create your products or whatever. So it is what it is. I think that there’s a reason whywe do things when we do them. t sounds like it’s been working, great for you. Well, my next question is, what is next for you? What’s next on the agenda? Do you have more products in the pipeline or plans to expand into other traffic channels? Or just to chill?

Amira 15:42
Yeah, no, that’s a great question. I remember even the last time when we spoke Lauren, and when you and I had done the interview, you had asked me this question and I remember answering that, “Whatever my audience wants.” At that time, I didn’t know it was like maybe a couple years ago, but that’s exactly what I’ve done. Every single template, every single product, every single thing that I’ve done with my blog has been what my audience has asked for. So none of the templates are there just for the sake of being there, right.

Amira 16:13
I don’t waste my time creating something that I know no one’s gonna buy, no one has interest in, so that’s really been my goal and that’s what I’ve been doing. It’s just, for example, I remember afew weeks ago, a lot of my email subscribers and customers started reaching out because they were worried about ADA, American with Disabilities Act. So as you might be aware, that is also a law that where we have to make our websites accessible to people with disabilities. So I just launched as a matter of fact, today, a new ADA bundle.

Amira 16:47
This way people get the guy, they get the checklist, they get the template for their website, they get the plugin recommendations and things like that, so that they can make sure that their website is compliant. Again, I wouldn’t have launched this product if none of my customers reached out to me. So my point being that that’s the goal, that’s what I’m going to keep doing just creating products, and making sure that focusing more on these SEO efforts. SEO, as you mentioned, is a big thing, it takes time. So just making sure that I’m doing things in terms of SEO correctly, and just having these products in the pipeline.

Lauren 17:30
Awesome. Well, it sounds like you’re on the right track, and congrats on launching the latest ADA templates. I will say that this is no joke, y’all these ADA lawsuits. It’s something that I haven’t yet openly discussed with my audience, because, to be honest, I didn’t want to scare anyone. We have more of a beginner blogger focused audience and I didn’t want to freak people out about lawsuits from the moment that they get started. But Alex, I did get hit with one of those lovely love letters from the guys over in California that are sending out all these slap suits to everybody.

Lauren 18:11
We had to hire a lawyer earlier this year to help us get it resolved, and it was really horrible. I just did an interview with Debbie Gardner, and we also were discussing it after the episode. She was telling me that she knows a lot of different bloggers that it has happened to so it sounds like it’s just becoming more and more normal. It just makes me really sad to see people getting hits with these lawsuits. And you know, I don’t want to go all into it now, because I actually do want to do a whole episode about it, just to kind of raise the awareness for people. But I think it was perfect timing that you came out with that with everything going on.

Amira 18:50
Yeah, absolutely. I also have lawyer friends in New York is one of the biggest states and then California, you know, all the big states are your there are a lot of predator lawyers out there. Right? So their whole sole purpose is to slap you with these letters and lawsuits. So yeah, you’re absolutely right. I have been seeing a lot of that and I’ve been talking to my fellow lawyers, and he actually had a case where they settle for $50,000. So it’s no joke, you know, it’s definitely a large amount. Again, lawsuits come in all shapes and sizes. So yeah, you’re right. It is something that we have to be now concerned about and make sure that our website is compliant.

Lauren 19:29
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, man. Well, all right, on that sour note, it just honestly leaves a pit in my stomach when I think about people being taken advantage of. You just said it so correctly, like predator lawyers. These poor business owners that just don’t know any better, you know, and they’re, they’re exploiting a law that is designed to protect disabled people. And it’s just really, really sad.

Amira 19:57
Absolutely, yeah. That’s why I wanted to create solution for it. I’ve seen a lot of bloggers also get sued to even in the Facebook groups, you know, complaining and things like that, that’s why I wanted to create this bundle. So that I could help people avoid that, because it’s a complicated law too. You know, it’s not black and white. So I hope this bundle will help a lot of bloggers.

Lauren 20:22
Yeah, absolutely. Well, there you have it, y’all. There’s so much to the legal side of blogging and having a business like this, and we tend to not think of it as being that big of a deal. We tend to think that we’re flying under the radar, and that if we do the bare minimum or do the basics, we’ll be okay. But at the day, you really don’t always know and it’s important to make sure that you are legally covered that you have all your bases covered. It’s worth it to spend a little bit more money to invest in those things in the beginning, especially when you have something, when you have a business that’s of any value to you whatsoever. You need to make sure that you protect it. We are all grateful for people like Amira who are helping us keep our blogs legally protected. Well, Amira, tell our listeners where they can find you.

Amira 21:13
Absolutely. So the easiest way to find me is in my Facebook group, ASelfGuru’s blog community, if you want to have instant access to me or otherwise, you can always visit my blog at ASelfGuru.com. You can help yourself with tons of freebies that I have, and also hundreds of blog posts on all kinds of business and legal tips for free. So you can check out the website for more information.

Lauren 21:39
Awesome. Y’all, of course, I will link these resources and Amir’s templates and everything in the show notes. Well, thank you so much Amira, for joining us today.

Amira 21:48
Oh, it was my pleasure, Lauren. Thank you so much for having me.

Lauren 21:52
All right, y’all. That’s it this time, I’ll see you next time.

Lauren 21:57
Thanks for listening to the Launch Your Blog Biz podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes. Please share the love by leaving us a review if you love this episode. If you want to learn more about how you can launch and grow your own blogging business, make sure to check out our website at CreateandGo.com