By Elise Foreman Carter, RN, BSN, NC-BC

LEGAL PROTECTION for your innovative work is a matter of protecting your HOLISTIC HEALTH!

That is what Lisa Fraley, JD, Attorney and Legal Coach (R) says and I believe her.

Why? Because if you are a deeply empowered nurse who is called to make lasting change to improve your life and the lives of others, that drive produces work that permeates your self-care, home life, work life, activism, business and public affairs.

Once you catch the entrepreneurial bug, it is the kind of bite that feels just right to re-energize the unique expression of your work as a NURSE. That makes your business become both professional and highly personal. You have your character “trademark” for how you show up in your LIFE - because you are YOU. The passion project becomes the self-care practice that keeps your eyes and mind alert and your blood pumping.

Maybe you are:

• Publishing your book
• Practicing as a nurse entrepreneur
• Researching, reading and crafting your life's work
• Buying a website domain and establishing your business entity
• Or working as an employee for a hospital or other healthcare organization

In all of these places YOUR PASSION, YOUR WORK and YOUR INVESTMENTS MATTER.

This was me in 2013 with my Nurse Coaching practice. I was eating, breathing, and living Nurse Coaching and private entrepreneurial practice… and experimenting with practice models that didn’t even exist yet!

A FOOLS TALE

There was a lot I did not know back then, and my sensibility rarely meets pure passion. I did not know specifics on protection of intellectual property. I did not know how, when, or what to report if there was a violation. I did know that trolls, content divers and internet pirates are a real thing.

My website was hacked. My Facebook page with a rapidly growing following was rendered inaccessible and unrecoverable. My groups were hacked. These more minor infractions began at first as easily recoverable incidents that gradually grew into something far more sinister. Eventually, not only was my online intellectual property stolen, many of my personal interests and identity were harvested through fraud and manipulation, too.

PREVENTION IS KEY

Baseline legal protection for your business is a matter of LIFE and HEALTH!

Don’t make my mistake and normalize any of these violations as a necessary part of online business. The emotional, financial and energetic damage can be too vast for a small business owner to handle. Know the proper actions to take to protect yourself proactively and what to do when your boundaries have been violated.

Lisa Fraley, JD is 100% on point with her CE course “Copyright, Trademark, and Website Protection for Nurses” (2020). This course is a clean and gentle continuing education course to cover these crucial legal protections for nurse educators and business owners. It includes handy tip sheets and audio downloads for easy learning and reference. The material is also uniquely integrated into chakra work!

It is so important to set up your legal protections in the pre-launch phase of your business. As Lisa advises: CLAIM YOUR WORK and take the appropriate actions from the ONSET!