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

6. From 'Lifetime Access' to Terms of Access: A Modern Approach

• Tamsen Horton • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Ever wondered why the term 'lifetime access' makes me squirm? Join me and my longtime client and friend, Jen Milius, as we unpack this conundrum, and reveal the seismic marketing shifts that have rendered this concept almost redundant. 

From sharing strategic insights on how to transition from a course you've offered as 'lifetime access', to outlining how to define terms of access if you're a newcomer, we've got you covered. Plus, we highlight the importance of having terms in place, and utilizing the technical elements of your platform to ensure compliance and agreement.

But wait, there's more! We delve into the legal aspects of offering 'lifetime access' and emphasize the necessity for entrepreneurs to invest in legal support. Traditional law firms can seem daunting and pricey, but help is at hand! We present BIZLEBOX, an affordable and user-friendly solution that takes the mystery out of legal support. Whether you're looking to protect members-only content, digital courses, or set up licensing programs, BIZLEBOX has it all. Don't miss this enlightening conversation with us!

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:

Today, the tables are getting turned on me and longtime client, bizzlebox member and dear friend, author and host of the Tough Fish podcast, jen Milius, is going to chat with me about a term that makes me cringe in the world of online business owners, and one that is incredibly important. That is, lifetime access. I wonder why it makes me cringe, what I wish people would do instead and how I really think the marketing shift in the last 5 to 10 years has made it that we don't really need it, like we did way back in 2010. Let's dive in.

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.

Jen Milius:

So this is going to be a fun episode because we are going to turn the tables on the host of Bizzlebox. I'm Jen Milius and I'm a member of PBK and I am excited to interview Tampson Horton. So, tampson, thank you for letting me turn the tables on you. I'm so excited. It's always fun when there's role reversal going on, and I would love for you to field for me, you know, lifetime access, because I mean, I've seen a lot of courses and content that say lifetime access and what does that really mean?

Tamsen Horton:

That term makes the estate planning attorney in me cringe like you wouldn't believe. And this is an instance where there's a marketing element of lifetime access. That's why online course creators and people selling their stuff in a digital format we're using it from a marketing angle. Hey, lifetime access, by my thing, overcome the objection, lower the risk, reversal all of those pieces. However, that has a real legal consequence. And when you say lifetime access, who's life? Is it the lifetime of you as the creator? I know, like I said, as a state planning attorney and estate planning attorney many, many lifetimes ago, is it the lifetime of your business? What do you do when you want to change, when you don't want to run it anymore, when something has happened, either again, from a decision standpoint, hey, I don't want to sell this thing anymore. Well, guess what? You sold lifetime access and you didn't have any purchase terms when people purchased it that defined what you meant by that term. You have a huge, huge mess on your hands when it comes to lifetime access.

Jen Milius:

So let's say I didn't have purchased terms. Let's just play that out a little bit more. You're right. Maybe I've got a course and maybe I said lifetime access and then I do want to sunset it for whatever reason. It doesn't fit my brand anymore, I'm not excited about it anymore or I actually am needing to close my business for whatever reason, but I need to change something. Is there a key thing or two that you would recommend that business owner do so that they can pivot from lifetime access?

Tamsen Horton:

Yes, there is. This will sound harsh, but I like speaking in metaphors because I won't forget it. Hopefully those of you listening will not forget it. Other than death, there's always a do-over. If you're in the situation where you're like, oh, I'd like to sunset this, there's a do-over. You have a do-over available to you. The do-over is and we run into this many, many times a day in our world as people and consumers you go to login to Netflix and there's a little button that says by continuing to login, you agree to the updated terms.

Tamsen Horton:

Very few of you are reading those, Myself included. I'm just clicking through so I can turn on Star Wars for the kids. When you continue to come to this gym, you agree to our new terms. The first piece is knowing, oh, I should take a look at this and more than likely I need to sunset this because I used it for a marketing purpose. However, now I know there's a legal consequence. I'm not okay with that legal consequence.

Tamsen Horton:

Second piece get terms in place. You have to have terms for someone to agree to. You want to make sure that you're using terms that you understand, that your people understand, that you're getting from someone you know, like and trust and having in your terms. This is what access means. You can still call it lifetime access, but the key piece is you're putting a definition in the purchase terms of what you're defining as lifetime access. You can say the company is offering this upon reasonable notice, maybe six months, maybe three months. We can terminate this program as needed.

Tamsen Horton:

This is what lifetime access is. Then you need a way to get it to the people that are using the course. So you use the technical pieces of whatever platform it is that you use. I use Kajabi, so there's ways that I can set up my tech. You've logged in. By continuing to log in, you're agreeing to these terms. That's how you pivot. One, know you need to pivot. Two, get the terms in place. Then, three, work with the tech that you have Such that you're getting the equivalent of the Netflix Yep by watching this movie. I agree to updated pricing or, in this instance, lifetime access.

Jen Milius:

What if I'm starting from scratch? What if I'm starting a new course or a new service where I have now heard this podcast episode and I realize I don't want to do lifetime access? How do I define the terms or define the duration so that I am communicating the duration of accessibility?

Tamsen Horton:

Anyone that does their purchase terms before they sell their course gets an automatic gold star from me. Yes, you have prevented a mess. You are doing so many things right. You are truly in the upper echelon of business owners as a whole. In your purchase terms, you define what the access is, and it can be as long as the company is providing this product or this access or this content. Whatever the thing is that you're selling, as long as we're selling it, you have access to it. Is it technically the equivalent of lifetime access? To an extent, yes. However, you can sunset it whenever you need to, or, which I highly advocate on.

Tamsen Horton:

In the realm of online business owners, there is very few things in your life that you paid for once that are then maintained and updated and refreshed. You continue to have access to them without ever paying another cent. Give access for a year, have a renewed access fee Everyone's constantly trying to find these new income streams, but yet I know I was definitely of the people I bought quite a few $2,000 courses way back in 2010. That person has never gotten another cent from me. That was a horrible business model. Much better to say hey, you know what. You have this course. You have access to it for a year and guess what? You want to renew it next year. It's 75% off, or whatever the case may be. So put it in your terms but, more importantly, really think about it from the business standpoint. Do I really want to provide this for the next 20, 30, 40, however many years and never be paid again, because that just doesn't happen in real life?

Jen Milius:

You know and you're saying that an idea has occurred to me. It's something that I do in my own business. But now I'm kind of curious what your thoughts are. Because so I have products and they have a six month duration, but when it's getting close to that ending timeframe for that person, I've set up automations. Like you, I use Kajabi and I have set up a little email sequence toward the end of their lifetime that says hey, your subscription's getting ready to expire. If there's anything else you want to, if you need to revisit any material, now's the time because you have X amount of timeframe.

Jen Milius:

So, and then, on the last day that it has expired, there's a little love note that says thank you so much. I hope this has served your journey type of thing. Because it was a reminder, because sometimes, to your point, you might have a year, you might have six months or however long it is, but then the person might forget about it. They might have, and it's not that it wasn't valuable, it's just I got what I needed. I had other things and I forgot that it had a duration. So to me the little nudge is just simply going, just in case. If not, I also communicated with you. So it was another way of communicating what was in the agreement without saying this is what was in the agreement.

Tamsen Horton:

Yeah, and that is absolutely. And I think now, when people are asked why aren't you completing this course, or why aren't you finishing this program, it's overwhelm, it's lack of accountability, it's these pieces that there has been a shift. So lifetime access, when nobody had any clue what digital stuff was, from a marketing standpoint, that made sense. It's not disappearing. It's not going to vaporize. However, we've lived through a pandemic. The entire world knows about Zoom. So many people know about digital courses and things can be handled on the computer.

Tamsen Horton:

Now, to me, the stronger marketing angle, because we're all in businesses. We're all running businesses. I firmly believe that legal should support and solve the business issues. Like you should never take your business and make it crunch into something that's legal. Legal should support the business. Well, one of the best ways for me, as you're supporting businesses, give someone a deadline. Guess what they get their stuff done.

Tamsen Horton:

So to me, it's not a I'm going to yank this back and this is a bad thing To me. This is the new. What sets you apart from a marketing perspective. You know what? Yep, you have a year and I am going to do my best to get you through this content and I'm going to check in with you. Hello, automations, it's not us personally doing it. In fact, if anyone's listening and you're like, oh, I can't believe Tamsen's not sending those personally, I'm not, they're automations so that I can answer questions. But I think that is now a differentiator, because we live in a different world and lifetime access was really to get over that hurdle of. I don't know what this internet thing is Like. Is it going to go away tomorrow? Like is it going to vaporize when I like enter my information in? We've checked that one off, so don't offer it. Like, really, it's a horrible financial decision and legally it will wreak havoc on your world unintentionally.

Jen Milius:

So what would you say to the business owner who's listening, as the next couple of steps that they should take in order to make sure that their business is legally zipped up as they think about lifetime access?

Tamsen Horton:

You need to hire legal, plain and simple. You're running a business. You hire people for your graphics, you hire tools Either hiring technology or you're hiring humans. You need to hire legal. You need to hire a business. I created it. It is business and legal in a box for out of the box thinkers, and it really was done in such a way that you're not paying for mahogany-clad offices of traditional law firms and you're also not up at midnight doing a panicked Google search.

Tamsen Horton:

There's this vast middle where you know it. You know these people are doing this. I know there's somebody listening that's like, oh crud, she knows it. Yeah, you see a post in a Facebook group and I'm like, oh my goodness, you poor person. It's midnight and you've had this horrendous thing happen because you didn't hire legal. Legal should be affordable. It should be accessible, it should be understandable, and I made Biddlebox. Biddlebox is the cat's meow. It allows you to have affordable, accessible, easy to use, so that you aren't the one posting in a Facebook group with 40,000 of your closest friends at midnight because something awful has happened.

Jen Milius:

So to your point about Biddlebox what does it include?

Tamsen Horton:

It includes everything and the kitchen sink it does. If you are running a business, it is, and this is why I can't. One thing that just drives me crazy. I don't know if it drives anyone else crazy. Where I go and I buy the thing that the person says, oh, buy this thing and it will solve the issue. I buy the thing, no problem, handed over by the thing. And then it's like, oh, but you're also going to need this other thing to make that thing actually work. Okay, I'll buy thing number two. And then, oh, did we forget to mention you actually need thing number three if you really wanted to do one and two effectively? Oh my gosh, at this point I'm ready to kill the person that I bought from that.

Tamsen Horton:

And I didn't become Jen knows this. I became a lawyer because I could not stand the lawyers I was encountering in the business realm. I did not have little girl dreams of growing up to be an attorney. I became an attorney out of necessity, because of the situation of take care of this, you take care of it. Oh, by the way, you need to do this. Oh, by the way, you need to do this. And that was infuriating me on the corporate end of business life.

Tamsen Horton:

So Bizzlebach includes what you need to take care of branding your websites, your copyright, protecting your memberships, protecting your digital courses. You decide you wanna roll out a certification program. We've got that. You hear about licensing in a post again, in a group of 40,000 of your closest friends. So that's where the entrepreneurs like to hang out Kind of a dangerous swimming pool, but we hang out in those swimming pools.

Tamsen Horton:

It has the pieces that you need to take care of immediate pressing issues. But also, when something comes up, you're not left scrambling for another solution. It's oh, okay, I did my digital course, but guess what? My digital course is so good. Now somebody wants to buy 200 copies of it for their employees. Well, now we're talking to licensing.

Tamsen Horton:

So if you're a Bizzlebach member, it's in there and it's simply a go here. I mean I answer questions, I show up all the time. Oh, oh, you mean I need to actually protect the trademark before I turn on the licensing program, because it means to have a protectable brand if I'm giving someone else permission to use it. So it quickly turns into these spider webs, which is why I know people legal drives them nuts, it drives me nuts. Most of you did not have the extreme reaction I did, which was fine. I will become an attorney because it's driving me nuts. Not most people would not have that reaction, but Bizzlebach is everything and the kitchen sink when you are running an online business that you want to make money and be legally secure.

Jen Milius:

I think that's well said because it is encompassing. There are there's templates, there's guidance, there's group interaction to be able to bring your question and bring your scenario, as you call it, facts and circumstances, and that does create the nuance that you know. Speak, going back to limited access or lifetime access, whatever those are. You could bring those type of questions to be able to say, okay, this is what's going on, this is what I've created, or what's going, what's happening? How might I, you know, change directions? How might I start this from scratch the right way? Or this did not go the way I wanted. Now what do I do? And it's a safe place for that. So you described it beautifully. This has been a blast. Thank you for letting me put you in the hot seat today.

Tamsen Horton:

Thank you for turning the tables on me.

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. Blow by.