BIZLEBOX™ Business & Legal In-a-box for Out-of-the-box Thinkers

2. The Unexpected Employee: Your Business's Privacy Policy

• Tamsen Horton • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Are you ready to see your business through a lens you've never considered before?

This eye-opening episode offers a unique perspective on how we view our tools, documents, and critical legal constructs like privacy policies, as if they were our employees. We'll explore together how this shift in viewpoint can maximize their potential and lead to unexpected paths of success for your business.

Did you ever think your privacy policy could be one of your most vital employees? 

This episode takes an in-depth look at how a privacy policy, when viewed as an employee, can not only protect your business from legal issues but also establish a secure environment where data is handled responsibly. 

Our discussion extends to how these policies, like employees, can have defined roles and access to data, fortifying your business's security. With a redefined perspective, discover how even legal documents can significantly contribute to your business profits and streamline your decision-making processes. Join us on this exciting journey to redefine the conventional and elevate your business to new heights!

Thanks for listening. Take the BIZLEBOX™ QUIZ ➡️ How Legally Prepared Are You

This podcast may be considered attorney advertising and is provided for educational and informational purposes only. This is not legal advice specific to any situations.

Tamsen Horton:

In today's episode, I am going to probably introduce you to an aspect or a way of looking at your business that you may have not heard before and I am a huge advocate of. There is team humans in our business and there is team tech in our business, and we hire both of them and Team tech. For me, tools are employees. Everything I have in my home, everything I have in my business, is part of One of those teams and, as I am an attorney, as I work with businesses all the time, one of the main ingredients that I'm dealing with our documents and proposals and agreements and All kinds of pieces of paper and, believe it or not, those pieces of paper are your employees. So this is going to be a series of bunch of different episodes where I really want you to get to know these employees that, if you're proactive, you already have them working for you.

Tamsen Horton:

Are you Allowing them to work to their full potential? Or, if you're just getting started, you're just opening up a new aspect of your business? You may not have even hired these employees yet, but more than likely you know. Yep, I need to get them at play. So Join me, I'm gonna roll all of this out and have a little fun with it. Because Everything you do in your business at least for me, when I'm looking at it through the lens of how is this helping me, how is this person or this thing working in the business helping me work on the business, then everything it just takes on a really colorful, delightful, enjoyable at times angle and it also makes decisions much easier when they're viewed through the lens of do I hire you? Do I fire you? Do I need to retrain you? How long is it going to take me to onboard you All of those pieces. When you view it as an employee, I think it gives us the ability to be more effective business owners, using all of the ingredients that make up our business.

Kip Horton:

Welcome to the Bizzlebox podcast, the go-to source for out-of-the-box entrepreneurs. Here you found business and legal in a box, all neatly packaged, how thoughtful, with entertaining stories and unforgettable metaphors from licensed attorney Tampson Horton to design and achieve a profitable and legally secure business that makes an impact and allows you to fully live on your terms. Can you ever have an attorney without a disclaimer? Nope, never going to happen. Here's one just for you. Bizzlebox provides high quality info on business and legal issues, but to get the best advice for your situation, find an attorney you know like and trust. Tampson is an attorney, but she's not your attorney. She is my mom. Now here's Tampson.

Tamsen Horton:

Now I am so all about business success, and my guess is, if you are listening to this, you are in some way, shape or form, connected to a business, whether it's your own, whether you're working in someone else's but this whole world of being involved in business is something that is exciting to you and intriguing to you, and that is where I want to introduce, in a lot of ways, what I'll call a Vujadeh perspective on a hidden employee of your company, and that is your privacy policy. Now, you might be wondering what is a Vujadeh perspective? Well, many years ago, I was in the corporate realm, working in a business, and we really needed the company to put aside all of the well. We've always done it this way. Well, that's the way it is. Well that you know. No, that's just the way it's done, because we needed them to look at things from a fresh perspective, to say what if we just put those things aside not saying throw them out, but what if we just put them aside for a day and let's talk about things from a fresh perspective? It is also what I named my first law firm back in 2011.

Tamsen Horton:

And that was Vujadeh law, which was simply seeing law from a fresh perspective and that's the perspective that I brought to Bizzlebox and that is the perspective that I want to share with you about a privacy policy, because I don't know about you, but it's a pretty dull, boring, pretty dry topic. In all honesty, it's a privacy policy. It lives at the bottom of a website, it might show up in some contracts but, honestly, the thing's pretty stupid. It just sits there, it doesn't really do anything. I, you know, you may have heard, you know sometimes, where people are being scary, like, oh my goodness, if you don't have this, the world, you know, could end or you could get all of these fines. And well, that's not entirely inaccurate. I think there are times, when legal is concerned, that a few too many fangs and fire what I call fangs and fire, which is nothing but a scare tactic. You know really big fangs and things that spew fire, those are always scary. It doesn't need to be.

Tamsen Horton:

And your privacy policy? Really, what I want to share with you is view this as an employee, as a very valuable employee, because I'm going to show you what this employee is really really bringing to your business and what it in a lot of ways, when you shift your thinking, when you look at legal from a fresh perspective, from a new perspective, from a slightly different angle. Suddenly they're like oh, that's that's not dull and boring and drab. That actually is making me money, that is making decisions more easy and that's what legal should do. I want you to have unbelievable business success. In the way that you define success on your terms, that is different for all of us.

Tamsen Horton:

But getting to your privacy policy, if you don't know what this is, it is a legal document. It basically is telling people how you handle data. It typically lives in footers of websites. It may show up in contracts. So for any of you didn't know what that was, that should give you enough of a foundation to easily, easily, follow along. So when we're meeting this new employee, we'll call her Ms, ms or Mr or it doesn't matter your employee, which is privacy policy. They are there to really help. You know your business and we know. Clear businesses typically sell more goods and services because they're not muddled, they know exactly where they're going, all of their efforts align and they stay focused.

Tamsen Horton:

Your employee privacy policy is asking you to know what is the specific data that you're collecting. So we're going to kind of go through this in sections of what the privacy policy employee does. One section is they tell people this is the data that I'm collecting. Now that's not dull, drab or boring. That is your opportunity to really know what am I collecting on my lead magnets? Am I collecting name and email and a phone number? Am I collecting questions about someone's business anniversary or what kind of food they prefer? Or, if it happens to be, let's say, what type of climate they live in if you are doing gardening type content, what stage of a pregnancy that they were in, what ages of their children? All of those seem like very innocuous pieces of data, but when personal data is concerned, that's what your employee privacy policy really wants to make sure that you know how to best serve your business by answering privacy policies questions to you.

Tamsen Horton:

And when we are collecting that data, we have to know what is it we're collecting and we want it to be safe. This is where I always like to tell people put yourself in the shoes of the person signing up or the person purchasing from somebody else's business. We definitely want to get the thing that we want. They have to have a location to send that. So in the case of a lead magnet, if someone has the top 10 tips in an area that you want, you have to give them a location to send it to. But on the one hand, you want to get what you want and, on the other hand, you want to know that that data, that location, piece of data, is safe, that they're treating it in a responsible, ethical way. That is incredibly important to us.

Tamsen Horton:

I don't want people misusing my data. I also want to get what they have. So there's this internal tension and that's why your employee privacy policy is ideally situated to help with those pieces of tension. So, in your realm, knowing yep, I am collecting name and email and phone number this is what I'm collecting. Well, that means I have to know my lead magnets and my offers. So it gives you again an opportunity to be crystal clear. Do you need to collect address information? Well, if you need that address information on your offer, you want to make sure that your privacy policy employee knows what your offer. I also consider those employees of my business that your offer is doing. So it's making sure that the metaphorical right hand knows what the left hand is doing.

Tamsen Horton:

Once we have that data. Another question that your employee privacy policy is going to help you focus in on is where is the specific location of that data going? This is a great time to make sure that one you have the tech in place to not only collect the data but to send it to a location where you can store it and use it. If you are running a business online, you know there are lots of different tools and there's nothing worse than when you think something's hooked up and it's not hooked up. So when you are answering your employee privacy policies questions and it you have to say, yep, here is the location. I have this tech, the tech is hooked up. I know that the tech is going to get the data from where I've asked for it into a place that I can store it and use it. That's a to me, this really valuable. I need to know that, when people are taking, for instance, the Bizzlebox quiz, that you can answer the questions, and when you're prompted for your name and your email address so that I can give you more information that you want, that I know in my case, it's going into the tools that I have hired for my tech team. So very, very important piece of information there. You also, if I've sent the information. Thank you, employee privacy policy for making me be specific about where it is going and you don't need to name the tool. I should throw that in right now. I, at the moment, I use almost all of the tools that are offered by Kajabi. That's where I've had my platform for very long time, but I do hire and fire tech when the tech employees are not behaving the way that I need them to or performing the way that I need them to. So you can have general while still being specific and, more importantly, it's for you to know yes, it's going here, I'm storing it here so that if someone asked you, you could easily tell them when you are storing this and you're using it and you get to the point where you are bringing other people into your business. This becomes really important, because now employee privacy policy is like okay, I'll use myself as an example. Tamsen, you need to be really clear who has access to this data and who gets to use this data. Now, data also comes in many shapes, sizes and forms and in this instance, I think it's really helpful. I always picture a bookshelf, so if you want to picture a bookshelf in your brain at the moment, on the far left-hand side. Let's make that the low end of data.

Tamsen Horton:

Something that, to me, I will define as low is an email address. The reason I'm putting in as low is someone can give me a junk email address. They won't get what they wanted, you know, in that instance, because they can't deliver it. But you might have two or three different emails. But when you're first getting to know someone, or when you're signing up for a challenge or you're entering a giveaway, you might give them what is a deliverable email, but it's basically a junk email. It's not your real email address. We all know that. You got the yep, you can have this one because I don't really care. And then there's the oh, I finally trust you, I'll give you that email address. I know this.

Tamsen Horton:

I have run an online business for over a decade and by the time someone comes in as a customer, they're like hmm, yeah, can we actually get rid of those other one, two, three or ten junk email addresses and you can actually now have the real one? So low end is an email address that you're not highly attached to, versus the higher end I am going to put health information, so your personal medical record. So that, to me, is the continuum when we're working with this, when privacy policy employee is helping you keep your business on solid foundation so that you can experience business success, it's really saying where on that continuum is my information? Because different levels have different laws at play and the entire reason law has to get involved is because people are not playing nicely, people are not doing what they're supposed to do with it, a loophole has been created, abuse has happened and that whole idea of I want my data to be safe, at some point in time it wasn't being handled in a safe way and so that's where the law steps in. And it's a lot of times where the disconnect happens between oh, this is just some dull like silly. You know policy that I need to have on my website because somebody said I had to have one. So I bought a template, I filled it out and we're done. Missed opportunity.

Tamsen Horton:

Booja Day perspective. Look at it from the fresh perspective of really thinking through where, how am I operating my business? Where are these pieces going? Because this is where employee privacy policy is designed to help you, quite honestly. It's there to help you and it is minimizing your exposure in terms of you don't want to be responsible for people who abuse, who misappropriate, who take advantage. You really want to put and I love using metaphors because they make it easy to remember things I really want my big business in that is beautiful and successful in all the ways that I have designed it and defined it. I want to put a nice fence around that business. I don't want stuff from the neighbors creeping in to my nice, designed, decorated setup business, and that's really another function of your employee privacy policy is to say, yes, here is this business, here is this thing that you're creating and designing and delivering and running and enjoying all of those aspects of it, and put a nice fence around it. That's really what. And we'll talk about other employees that I think are very, very exciting. I will introduce them to you in upcoming episodes, like terms and disclaimers and disclosures. I also think those are very exciting and dependable employees. They're putting the perimeter around and saying, nope, this is what's happening in this business and if you venture out because you like I, you're linking to other great resources.

Tamsen Horton:

I also know there's a whole realm of the internet that I couldn't even access that whole dark web and people that are, do you know, nasty, awful things. I don't want to ever inadvertently get pulled into a legal argument because I didn't have a fence up, like I could say, well, no, that wasn't in my yard, but if I haven't, didn't have the fence, it gives the legal people, the judges, the attorneys those are typically who's going to be involved. It just gives them an opportunity to say, well, was it really your yard? Like I'm going to argue that that that was. You know, that was in your yard, and I'm like, no, it wasn't in my yard. I'm like, well, where's the fence? Oh well, I was meaning to put that fence up. It really was. I was meaning to hire that employee privacy policy and it just didn't get around to it. So, or I put up a fence and I late night copy and pasted someone else's employee privacy policy because I was pretty sure their business knew what they were doing and they had their act together Also, not a really good thing to do, but that is where, to me, the law comes alive.

Tamsen Horton:

The law is so incredibly cool. And if you don't know this about myself, I didn't set out to be a lawyer. I became a lawyer because I was working in the corporate business realm and I didn't understand why the law just seemed like this mean ogre, like every good idea. It seemed like it just kept slamming it down and I didn't like that. I was like no, there's all these cool things we can do.

Tamsen Horton:

So having a Luja day perspective, seeing something that I think is often positioned as doled, drab, boring and like this is like. This is so stupid, like why do I need this stuff in my website footer? Does it really matter? I'm arguing and, I hope, introducing you to the idea that it does matter. It is a employee of your company. It gives you the opportunity to be very clear on your lead bagnets, crystal clear on your offers, very clear in job descriptions in terms of who has access to what and how can they use it.

Tamsen Horton:

Now, does that information live in the privacy policy? Because it does, but sometimes it lives in other areas of your business and for most businesses, the way that you include in in terms of oh, that needs to show up somewhere else in the business is because it's anchored in this privacy policy. So that is what I wanted to introduce you to. Is that your privacy policy?

Tamsen Horton:

Yes, what data are you collecting? Where is it stored? How is it used? What are you doing with cookies? How do you distribute it? How do you remove it? How do you disable access to it? All of those things, yes, are covered in privacy policies, absolutely. But, more importantly, it is a really, really valuable employee of your business in that it puts a perimeter around what you're designing, and it puts it around in such a way that you're also designing the perimeter. You're saying intentionally, yep, I'm putting this and this and this inside of my perimeter, and if it's outside of my perimeter, I'm not going to be, let's say, irresponsible. I'm not going to knowingly be irresponsible, but if something inadvertently happens, I'm also not going to be held responsible for things that are happening outside of the perimeter that my employee privacy policy has helped me create.

Kip Horton:

Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and share it with a friend. At Bizzlebox, we love helping entrepreneurs succeed. We offer a variety of reliable, easy to use tools. At Bizzleboxcom, our goal is to help you have a profitable and legally secure business so you can make your impact while living fully on your terms. Until next time, take what you've learned and put it to work for you.