Episode 66: Copyright and Your Marketing with Lisa C. Alvarez

Kendra Corman: 

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. I'm your host, Kendra Corman, and I am very excited to be here with one of my good friends, Lisa Alvarez. 

She is a California attorney and nature conservation photographer. She's based near Sacramento. She helps independent photographers protect their creative work by teaching legal topics critical to controlling the use of their images and earning a living with them. 

She's a member of the intellectual property section of the California Lawyers Association and its copyright interest group. She's worked as an appellate attorney for the California Attorney General's office, a litigator in federal and state courts, and as counsel representing clients in elder law and estate matters.

So she's got a ton of experience and I brought her here today to talk to us about copyright. Welcome, Lisa!

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

Thank you, Kendra. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for inviting me!

Kendra Corman: 

So, I'm excited to have you. And the reason I invited, just for all your listeners out there, the reason I invited Lisa to join me today is because I wanna talk about copyright. Not from necessarily, the photographer's standpoint, where Lisa usually is talking to her clients, but more so from the marketing standpoint.

I think that there's a lack of knowledge of the fact that you can't just take images off of Google search. If you search for an image, you can't just use that in your business no matter how much you like it. It's not necessarily "free", and I'm using air quotes for that. 

So, there’s a lot of things that go on with copyright law and permissions and things like that, that I don't fully understand. I just know I don't take any images off of Google. 

So, Lisa, let's just jump in. How do I know if an image I find has a copyright? 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

Well, and I'm gonna preface everything that I say here, because I am an attorney and no attorney is ever complete without issuing some sort of disclaimer. But that I'm here to give information, but it's not legal advice. 

Because in order for it to be legal advice, you and I would have to be talking privately, not in a podcast setting and talking about specific circumstances. But anyway, getting that out of the way. 

Really the best practice is just to assume that any photo you see online has a copyright. And that's because the vast majority of newly created photos have a copyright. And when I say newly created, what I'm talking about are photos that were created after January 1st, 1978. 

Photos that are older, it gets a little more complicated and we can get into that in a second. 

But anything created after January 1st, 1978, which is a very long time ago, for most of us the law changed at that point. And what the law, the Copyright Act did, is give anybody who creates a photograph a copyright the moment that they click the shutter. 

So whoever clicks the shutter even, and that's, you know, important for even photographers to realize, but whoever clicks the shutter when you're making a photo or create, you know, taking a photo owns the copyright for that photo.

And a copyright essentially is a property interest in the photo. Just like you have a property interest in your car, your house, your belongings. A copyright gives an ownership interest. 

And as a result, you can't just see a photo on Google. I mean, you can, the technology is there clearly, but you can't use that photo legally unless you have the owner's consent. So that is just super important. 

So that's the first place that you need to start. You need to say, okay, I'm gonna assume that this has a copyright there. As I mentioned earlier, there are some exceptions, but so the, so the next thing you need to do is you need to find out, well, who is the owner? 

And one thing you can do is many photos, if they are, even if they're created by an amateur photographer, you see this a lot. They'll have what's called a watermark on the photo, and it's usually in the lower. Right or left corner of the photo. And it will either have their name or their photography business name.

And another thing you can look for is if there's an image credit. And a lot of times the image credit has the owner's, the copyright owner's name, the photographer's name that's hyperlinked to that person's website. So that's the next thing. 

Now, if none of those things are visible, you, but you see, for example, the name you can just Google the name to try to find, you know, who the photographer is. But the great thing about Google, since you mentioned, and I'm gonna assume that we're talking about Google here, because I think, you know, that is the, it's the easiest search engine to talk about because it is so incredibly large and pervades the search marketplace. 

But Google actually since 2018, and it's just getting better and better, but they, in their Google image service, you know, it's a, it's basically an image search engine. They are now making licensing information available.

And so that is really cool if the photographer's done the right, you know, has been providing the right information in something what's called metadata, which metadata is basically a bunch of information about the photo that's electronic. It's associated with the photo, but it's not visible immediately when you're looking at it. 

But if photographers include the right information, something called a Web Statement of rights or it's also called a copyright info, URL. Google will display a licensable badge on the photo and that will let you know that you can license it and a license, just so people know, it's akin to renting. 

You're never gonna, I mean, if you wanna buy the copyright, that's a whole other topic that's gonna be really expensive. The vast majority of small business owners who are just trying to put, you know, something on their website or they wanna use it in a slideshow, a pamphlet, whatever, you don't wanna buy the copyright. You just wanna use it. 

And so, what photographers will do is they will license the use of that photo. So it's, you know, think of it like renting. You're renting, you know, if you rent a car, , well, the term in photography's called license. 

Any rate, so you'll see that badge licensable, and that tells you that the photographer is willing to let you use that photo. Maybe for a, you know, it could be free, it might not be. So, you need to do further work. 

If they also added their URL, which basically their link, you know, a link to their website on how to get information. Then you can also click on that. 

Now, to kind of, I know this is a lot of stuff, so I'm gonna just really kind of summarize here. There’re three components to what you'll see on Google Images. The first thing is the licensable badge I just talked about. 

But inside the image viewer, you'll see this licensed details link and that will direct users to a webpage that will explain how they can license the image. Now, if the photographers go on even farther, there'll also be a link that says, well, the first thing will say, get this image on, and that's another piece of information that Google will give you inside the image viewer. And that's a link that directs users to a page from the owner/ photographer. It will lead you to a page where the owner, supplier, if I use a larger term, is allowing you to go right ahead and license that photo.

So sometimes you'll see a photo in, it might say Shutterstock or what have you. So that's an example of an image supplier, a licenser. And so that could potentially lead you to Shutterstock or Adobe stock or whatever stock company that is. And then you can license that photo that way. 

And if you're like many of us who don't necessarily wanna pay for the photo. There is actually a way inside Google images that you can filter out for particular licenses. Like for example, there's something called a creative commons license, which is when the photographer, the image owner has decided they do want people to use the image. They're happy with that, but they have certain requirements that you have to follow.

So Google does have a usage rights dropdown filter in that search page where you can search for different kinds of images, free images. what have you. 

So that's a very long-winded answer, but I hope that gives you what you need to know. 

Kendra Corman: 

If you're using the Google search though, always go for the most restrictive license possible that's available is free.

Is one thing I'd encourage you to do because I know, and I haven't looked recently, so I'll have to look and I'll post it in the show notes, I'll post a screenshot. But like they used to have for commercial use with editing, and for commercial use without editing.

Just always pick commercial use with editing if you're using it in a commercial setting. Because it's just, it's just easier to make sure that you don't forget anything later. 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

That's good advice. And the key thing here and, what that relates to, are license requirements. And really, there's even a broader piece of advice here, and that is pay close attention to the licensing requirements.

Because if you don't, even in these creative common licenses, there's six different kinds of licenses. If you don't comply, then you can be accused of copyright infringement, even though you're thinking, well, wait a minute. It's Creative Commons. I can, you know, I can license it for free. 

Yes. But there's going to be requirements.

And the requirements generally aren't too onerous. Like what you just mentioned. There may be a requirement that if you're doing it for commercial use, they don't want you to edit it. 

Okay, fine. Don't you know, don't touch that. 

It may not be because editing, I'm assuming in their definition of editing, it's gonna include cropping which means you may just want a portion of the photo and they're saying you can't do that. So if that is something you need to do, then don't select that photo. 

Kendra Corman: 

Yeah, and I think it's really important what you're talking about here, because you have to look at the terms of the license, even if you're paying you have to look at the terms of the license. 

I had one client that was, that we bought a couple images off of Getty. We bought the licensing, cause I have a Getty Images subscription, but we bought some licenses off of Getty and like there was a limit with our license that it could only make like 50,000 copies if we used it in print or something like that.

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

Mm-hmm. 

Kendra Corman: 

Well, we didn't update it, and then I was like, Remember, I'm like, I put a little reminder on my calendar for their reorders that just said, Hey, if we reorder this, we might have to step up the license. And we actually had to renew and get a new license so that we could use it for another 50,000 copies.

So there's a lot of little things in there. Some of the licenses won't let you put it on a shared drive if you have a team. That's why I pay Getty images, a lot of money for my subscription because I'm allowed to put it on a shared drive and my team can use the images. So, it's very, very specific. Each term and license and the free ones, all of it.

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

That's right. And that actually reminds me of something that I'll explain what you're talking about. There are actually two kinds of licenses, larger categories of licenses, and that would be royalty free and rights managed. And what you're talking about had a rights managed license because they're telling you can't use it forever.

There's a limit on how many prints of this that you can make. And so that's just something, like you say, that is really important to be aware of. That some photographers, myself included, I don't license my photos currently, but I do plan to in the future, and I'm not gonna probably be royalty free. 

I might select some of my images to be royalty free. Which means royalty free essentially means that when you license it, there's very few restrictions on the use. The major kind of restriction you're gonna get with a royalty free photo is gonna be on size. Can you use it? Is it gonna be used on the web and therefore it's not high resolution? Or is it gonna be used in print and therefore needs to be high resolution?

Maybe it's gonna be a high resolution photo, is gonna be a photo that you can enlarge and it'll still look good and it won't look all blurry and what we call pixelated. And those are gonna be more expensive. But you know, within royalty free, those.

And I'm not gonna speak for every license that's out there because you do need to read them and see whether or not they meet your needs. There's gonna be fewer restrictions with royalty free licenses. 

Now, rights managed license is gonna be more restrictive, and they're gonna wanna know things like, how long do you wanna use it? How big of a photo do you need? Where will it be displayed? And like you mentioned, how many times are you gonna use it if it's in print, that kind of thing.

Another point that you brought up is about commercial use, and I wanna give a tip here. And that is if you are using it for commercial use, which in the context that we're discussing here, I think your audience for the large part is gonna be using it for commercial use. They wanna use it in promoting their business.

If there is a person in the photo that's identifiable, not just the back of their head. An easy case is someone where you see the face and you can see who that person is. You need to be sure that when you license the photo, that whoever took that photo got a release from the person because you need what's called a model release.

You need a model release if you're using a photo in a commercial context. So, you don't wanna get yourself tripped up with that. The licensing agency or the photographer who wherever you're getting this from, should provide you with that information upfront. But as we all know, sometimes that's not done.

And so be proactive and ask. If it's not immediately clear, be sure to ask. Because you don't wanna have some person who appears in the photo come back at you and say, Hey, you're, you know, you're violating my right to publicity and all this other stuff. 

So just make a note that when you are, if you have a photo with someone in it, be sure that the photographer has gotten a model release for commercial use.

Kendra Corman: 

That's a great tip, and I'm hoping that people are getting a little bit scared of searching for free images on Google. It's just not a good practice, okay? So just sort of stay away from it, if at all possible. 

But if there is something that you find and you're in love with it, you know, Lisa's given us a lot of great tips on how to reach out, how to find out who owns the copywriter, who has the copyright on the image.

if I wanted to reach out to someone and say it linked to their website or I was able to find the watermark and I reached out on their website and I'm like, Hey, I'd like to license your photo, what should I be asking? 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

The first question I would wanna know is, do you do royalty free licensing or are you rights managed?

So that would be the first general question. The next thing, and I would include this in the email as well. Tell 'em what you wanna use it for. A book or a website, printed material, what have you, how long you wanna use it, how big of a photo you need. 

So otherwise, is it gonna be online? And it may be, it's just gonna be maybe a quarter of a page, or no, maybe it's gonna be the, you know, above the, what do they call it, above the fold? It's gonna be, you know, your banner photo on your website. 

And again, where it will be displayed. And by that I, I don't just mean where is it gonna be in the medium that you're gonna use it. But the geographical area, because in a rights managed license, they're gonna wanna know that.

Is this worldwide? Is this just basically going out to California? Like in your situation where you were for a client, you were reproducing something, I don't know if it was a pamphlet or what have you. And then you know, that might have just gone to your local area. 

And then of course let them know whether you're using it in a commercial context or not. Or what is called editorial but that would only be the case if you were, you were really like writing a news article or whatnot and or an article like if you were a freelance writer perhaps.

But if you're using it, you, you need to let them know whether or not you're gonna use it in a commercial context or not. And then I would also, again, tack in there, you know, Do you have releases for the photo? If there's a person in the photo. 

Kendra Corman: 

I think those are great tips, and I know some of you listening may not know exactly how you wanna use the photo and things like that, or for how long and things like, because I mean, I get tired of seeing photos sometimes, so I get it.

But do your best to let them know, and find out. And if you don't know, I'd say, I don't know right now, I'm planning to use it for the next five years or something like that until I update my website again or whatever that happens to be. 

Cuz I think a photographer would rather have you give them the best amount of information you have available than try and like steal their work, right? 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

Absolutely. Absolutely. Completely. 

And you do, you know, and I know it's frustrating on the photographer end when people just email them and then they say, well, you know, I just wanna use your photo. And then the photographer will, in all likelihood, if they're actively licensing their photos, they're gonna come back and ask you these questions anyway.

And if you can't give them, you know, you can talk to them too. And maybe between the two of you, you can come up with something. But again, that's why it's good to ask upfront, do you do any royalty free licensing? 

And that could take care of a lot of that problem because a lot of photographers are doing that now. They're just because of the market. They're finding that's the case, but it just really.

I shouldn't, you know, I haven't done any polls. So, that's just my observation. So, I think you, 

Kendra Corman: 

there's the lawyer with the disclaimer, right?

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

Right. With the disclaimer. That's right. That's how you know I'm a lawyer.

Kendra Corman: 

Exactly. Disclaimer, everything. 

Okay. So, say I go to their website, I give 'em all this information, I fill out the form on the website or wherever I do, and they don't respond. Can I use it anyway? 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

No, no, do not do that. The no response is No. 

Kendra Corman: 

Okay. 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

It's a no. 

Kendra Corman: 

Good. 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

They don't respond. It's a no, and you may not like it, but you really have to say to yourself, okay, you know, I love this photo, but there's so many photos out there right now in the world, you don't need this one photographer's photo. The likelihood of finding another photo that is gonna work for you is very high. 

So don't get yourself into hot water by reaching out, not getting an answer, and assuming it's a yes. You can't just say, oh, by the way, I'm gonna use this photo and if you don't respond, I'm gonna use, you know, if you don't respond in five days, I'm gonna use it.

That just does not cut it. You need affirmative. And that's another point I'd like to bring up is that when you, anything that you're doing to get a photo...document what you're doing. 

And I don't mean you don't have to spend, you know, four hours documenting something, take a screenshot, save the email, print it out, scan it someplace. Just be able to show the efforts that you made.

And not, and I'm not saying, oh, well I emailed them and they didn't respond. I'm not talking about that, but I just mean keep the email correspondence. And also, I would recommend that you communicate by email as well, because it's all written down. If you communicate by phone, then it gets, you know, people may have misunderstanding.

Somebody may say, no, I never said that. You get into a, he said, she said, so try to have everything in writing. If you do talk to somebody over the phone, be sure to get a written license. 

And I would say in all cases, get a written license. Don't use somebody's photo just from an email exchange. Ask them for a written license or they're granting you the right to use it and that relates to something else that maybe we wanna talk about.

If somebody later claims that you're using their photo and you never obtained permission. You wanna be able to show that you did. And so that's the advantage of keeping records of, of what you've done. 

Kendra Corman: 

Yeah. So, I have an agency I used to partner with that was a digital agency and they've gotten those cease and desist or bills from some of the larger image services and things like that.

And they purchased the images back when they were royalty free and Creative Commons license. Every so often they download the terms on the site that they're on. They download the date, you know, to make sure that they have it because they have to keep that trail so that they can say, no Getty Images, you bought that site after we had purchased our images. 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

Exactly. You wanna be able to do that. They're unfortunately as well, they're, and I have learned about this from other lawyers and also, I think you had an experience with it where these are actually fraud attempts.

You'll get a cease and desist email or letter and it turns out it's what I'm calling a takedown shakedown, which is they're trying to get money and figuring that you are just gonna be scared and intimidated. 

Unfortunately, there are people who, who get scared and intimidated. 

But that's another good reason to do exactly what you just described, and that is be sure you document the terms of your license from Getty or wherever be sure that you have a copy of that and can show the date and just keep it together in a file.

What I'm really talking about is somebody who's trying to commit fraud. The take down shakedown artist who's gonna come to you and say, Hey, you're using my image. I didn't give you permission. Here's a $300 bill. And you know that you licensed it from an agency and you can prove it. 

So that's the situation I'm talking about. Not where the agencies to blame, but where somebody is trying to shake you down. And in that case, you don't have to panic because you know what you did. You have it documented and you can tell them to go pound sand. , but, 

Kendra Corman: 

so, I, yeah, I've done it. So I have, again, I've got a Getty license subscription.

Sometimes I'll use Unsplash and some other sites too with royalty free Creative Commons licenses. And when I do those, I take note of it also. 

So I think it was an image that I had gotten off of Unsplash and my client was getting emails saying, you've used my image, you didn't pay me for it. This is illegal, therefore you owe me like a thousand dollars.

And just taking it down now doesn't resolve the issue so you can take it down but you still have to pay me. And they sent multiple emails. The client forwarded it to me and I'm like, ignore it because I have the license and I know when and where I downloaded it from and everything like that, and it's all good.

And then they kept getting more emails and so they, my, the client was getting nervous and freaking out about it. And so finally I reached out to support at Unsplash and gave them the information. They said not a problem, we'll take care of it. 

Because it very well could have been the photographer, right? You know, trying for it later.

But it was very interesting because yeah, it made people nervous and I'm like, no, no, like I, we have this and we're okay to use it. So it was just very interesting that they took over.

That is a huge argument on my side and, and I'm gonna say like a pro for actually buying image and licensing the image because then you truly know you have the right to use it and whoever the photographer, the service, if it's Shutterstock, Getty images, iStock, whatever it happens to be, they'll defend your license for you. 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

Right. 

Kendra Corman: 

So, 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

right. 

Kendra Corman: 

I know a lot of people are on a budget, so are there suggested or set fees, like if I was reaching out to someone like you and you haven't licensed, you know, you're not actively licensing. Or maybe it's, you know, a hobby photographer, not a professional like you.

What should I be offering if they said," yeah, I'll be happy to, to give it to you to use? What were you thinking of paying?" 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

Right. Well, if again if you know, it's hard to say that if it's a rights managed licensing that they wanna get into. There is a program that many, many photographers use to determine the value of their photo. 

And as a matter of fact, photo shelter has a version of that program that is part of their platform and that's a platform I'm moving to this year, and that's why I love it because it does, they do the research for you. That's for rights managed photos though. 

Now if it's royalty free, I can give you kind of a range. I can't say that I've looked at it too recently, but basically if you're looking for just a small low resolution file size for the web, I would, you know, offer between 50 to a hundred dollars for that kind of. 

And again, for perpetual use, you're, you're looking for royalty free, not looking for big lot of restrictions on your use. If you're looking for something that's larger, full size, high resolution, something that you're gonna print out, it could be, you know, up to like 100 to $500, depending on the use is what I think you could expect to pay.

And then another option for you, if the photographer's not gonna do the work for you, is to go to those sites that you just mentioned. Go to another site and look at the kind of photo and look and see what the prices are, because that's sort of a buyer beware, buyer caveat emptor. 

Do your, do the research to know what is the market value of what it is you're looking to purchase, and then that's gonna give you, you know, some negotiation ability.

But again, that's for royalty free. Rights managed, you're gonna get into there because there are so many variables, it's really hard to say. But if someone's on, I know at least with photo shelter and they're licensing through photo shelter, they're in all likelihood going to be pricing their digital photos based on the program that photo shelter is using to help them come up with a market value.

Kendra Corman: 

Okay. That's good to know. 

So, I usually recommend that my clients that have a little bit more of a budget, if you have a bunch of money, get your own photos taken. I'm a big fan of that, but I think it's important again to note when you're scheduling your photo shoot that the photographer, the person who presses the shutter button owns the copyright.

And 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

you're right, 

Kendra Corman: 

I tell this to my clients, make sure you read the contract with the photographer because sometimes it's like you can get 10 of the images, I take for an all day shoot. You're paying them like $2,500 for an all day shoot and you get 10 images. No, like if you want more and you want all of the photos, that's fine, but you just have to make sure that your agreement with the photographer doing the shoots got the same type of terms for what you need, and you need to make sure that they're gonna provide you a release for the photos that they give you.

Right? 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

Yes. And again, it's about negotiation. And that is something you would wanna ask them before you go and hire them. And that is what, what packages do you offer? What are the terms? And if they're, if it's not a term that meets your needs, either try to negotiate that or find somebody else. 

But you are correct, and people do have a hard time with this. Or they say, well, wait a minute. I paid this person $2,500 to take pictures of me for a whole day, and now they're telling me I don't get all the photos, or I don't have the rights to all the photos. And this is because photography is a hybrid service and product business. 

You are hiring them to take photos. That's true. But the photos themselves, because of copyright laws are their property. Now, some photographers will be happy to sell you the copyright, but you're gonna pay a price for that to own, to acquire the copyright. That is because it's their property. 

And so, if that's something you want, then you may be able to negotiate that, but just remember, it may not be worth it. Just figure out what you want ahead of time and negotiate it with the photographer so that in the end it's all about what you paid and what you get. 

And don't, you don't wanna get too caught up in, well, I think I should be able to do X, Y, and z. We all have different ideas about what we think we are entitled to, so it may not be too productive to go down that path and instead try to find somebody who is going to meet your needs.

Kendra Corman: 

And there's a ton of photographers out there that will match the style that you're looking for, that have the eye that you're looking for, and just a lot of great things. So just find somebody that you're comfortable with that will give you what you need. And I think again, it's down to, you know, what you need and what you need to do with those images.

So, there are. Great free resources out there. unsplash.com, pixabay.com, pexels.com. I'll put links to those in the, the show notes. Canva's Pro subscription has access to free images and I'm using free Cuz you're sort of paying for it. 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

Yeah. 

Kendra Corman: 

Through other ways. I think it's just really important also though, to think about those, and again, those licenses are limited, so even though it's free, I'm using air quotes again, it's not really free, so you need, you need to monitor again, what the terms of that agreement are. 

I know Canva, if you try to start doing a logo, they'll put up a disclaimer going you can use our fonts and things like that. But it's the second you use one of the icon images from their gallery, you can no longer trademark it because that image is copyrighted. 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

Right. That might be a good preliminary. You know, like using their fonts, what have you for preliminary logo. But yeah, you may wanna just hire somebody to create it for you. 

I have another suggestion for free resources, and it also brings up a topic that I'd like to point out. It's called Open Verse and it's actually, it has more than 600 million creative works. Stock photos, images, and audio. 

It is part of wordpress.org now. They acquired it I think in 2020. And the photos in there all have creative common licenses, which we talked about earlier. 

And in case somebody is still confused about what that means. Creative common licenses, there's six different kinds, creative Common is actually a nonprofit project, and the photographer owner of the copyright can decide, hey, I'd love for this people to be able to use this for free, but you know, I have certain requirements which you'll see in the licenses. 

Sometimes it's just give me credit. 

And so what open verse does is it includes all those photos with creative common licenses. The other thing it does, which I think is really great, is it has photos that are now in what's called the public domain. 

And the public domain are photos that don't have a copyright anymore because a copyright term is not forever. It is, depends on the owner. But it can be anywhere from 70 years after the death of the copyright owner, or excuse me, the photographer creator of the photo, or 120 years from date of creation. So just say it's a long time. 

However, there are things that come into the public domain every year, and there's even websites dedicated to them. But what happens when it gets into the public domain is it is free. It's free to use. No longer carries a copyright and an easy way to find out if you know there's some public domain photo that you can use is to go to this open verse.org and search 600 million images, stock photos, images and audio.

I mean, hey, that's a lot, and these are going to be free, albeit with requirements you still have to pay attention to, if it isn't public domain. Public domain will not have restrictions on its use. It's available for everybody to use. But if it's a creative commons licensed work, there will be one of six licenses attached to it.

So yes, you still gotta look and see what is required, but I think that's a really good option for people who wanna do things legally and they just aren't at a stage in business where they can't afford to pay. 

Kendra Corman: 

Yeah, and I think, again, there are options for you, so that's great. We'll put that link also in the show notes.

Now my understanding is, and I'm gonna surprise you with this question, cause I didn't tell you I was gonna ask you this one, cause that got me thinking. So, Mickey Mouse, right?

Lisa C. Alvarez:

 Mm-hmm.

Kendra Corman: 

Is supposed to enter the public domain, but was filing for an extension of the copyright because in Steamboat Willie first appeared in 1928, and depending on the date of the product, some of those are expiring.

Lisa C. Alvarez:

 Mm-hmm.

Kendra Corman: 

So clearly Disney is applying for an extension, right? 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

Of course. Well, Disney has a whole team of lawyers who, to get it as long as an extension as they can. 

Kendra Corman: 

Well, and I think it's just, I think it's just very interesting. So again, better be safe than, sorry. License any photos that you need, whether they're creative commons, whatever it happens to be.

Do not just screenshot something off of Google or Facebook and, 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

no 

Kendra Corman: 

use it. Do not, do not trust that. So, I'm, I think that's really important.

Now Before I let you go, cause this has been really helpful. I think, you know, again, the takeaways are, get a license, whether that license is a free creative commons license and know the terms of that license because you do not wanna be infringing on anybody's copyright because you wouldn't want your work stolen from you.

And ultimately infringing on someone's copyright is stealing their work. 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

It is. It's stealing. Absolutely. 

Kendra Corman: 

And I know. It's innocent in a lot in, I would say most cases, but I wanted to have this conversation because as people are going through and updating their websites and updating their collateral and updating everything that they've got, working on social media posts, all that fun stuff, I get that it's there. And sometimes it's just easy and quick and you're just not aware. 

But just know that all of those photos out there are somebody's work, and they want it respected like you would want yours respected. And I think that that's important. 

So, but before I let you go, I always ask everybody one question, and that is, what has been your biggest marketing lesson learned since this is imperfect marketing?

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

This is, and I am certainly an imperfect marketer. So, I'm right there in your target audience. And it's, I actually have two related lessons that I've had to come to terms with. 

And that is, first of all, as a solopreneur there's a lot of advice out there, and I am a research maven. I do deep dives into research and get all this great advice, but I realize, and I, and it's incredible that it took me this long, but I need to translate that advice to where I am in my business.

It makes no sense to compare where I am today to somebody else who's been doing it for 13 years. And so, when I hear about, oh, you need to be at this platform and that social media platform, and this is what has to be on your website.

Okay? But I am only one person right now. I don't have a team. I can't do it all. 

And to that end, the other big lesson that again, took me way too long to learn and that is, I need to play to my strengths. And if something that I'm trying to do, You know, you and I have discussed before the blog writing.

I can write, I'm a lawyer and I know how to write, but it's turned out to be an obstacle for me, so I need to do things differently. And so that would be my second lesson, and that is to. It's related in the sense that I need to look at my circumstances and do what's appropriate for my business at this place in time and my own strengths and what and weaknesses and to really take all that into account.

Kendra Corman: 

I love those. And the reason I love those is because they're not about things that you shouldn't do or can't do. It's about adjusting. You know, it's about realizing the hardest, hardest, hardest thing that I find is I am always comparing myself. Always comparing with, I'm reading a book called Comparisonitis, hopefully to get rid of it, but it's truly about not comparing your beginning to someone else's middle. 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

So smart. 

Kendra Corman: 

Even if they've been doing it for two years, they have a two-year head start. 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

Yes. 

Kendra Corman: 

You know, so it's really, it's really, really important. I think I say that all the time and partially because I'm trying to remind myself about it. 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

Exactly.

Kendra Corman: 

But I think it's so important and it's really helpful I think to reiterate that. And again, you know, we're only a single person. Even if you have a small team, it's only a small team, you know? There's only so much you can do. You can't be all things to all people and everywhere. 

Be everywhere your target is. Have them see your message multiple times. Have them feel like they're seeing you all the time, even if they're not, and even if you're not everywhere, I should say. 

So again, be so selective. Don't be scared to focus. I think that that's, that's great. And I love playing on your strengths and adjusting. I used to have a blog, I used to blog once a week and sometimes I'd take off some time and it would fall to the wayside. 

And it was just because I knew what I wanted to do, but I didn't always have the time to do the level of work that I wanted to. Right. So I moved to the podcast and it was sort of just like, yeah, let me just test it out since everybody's talking about it.

and I couldn't be happier. I'm a lot more consistent. I bring in experts and so that I don't have to be the one creating the content all the time. Of course, I have my imperfect marketing briefs, which are mine every, 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

which I love, 

Kendra Corman: 

every Tuesday, thank you, every Tuesday. 

But then I'm able to bring in experts like you, Lisa. And have you share your knowledge and your insight and your angle, because marketing is anything but perfect. That's why it's called imperfect marketing here. 

And because it's called imperfect marketing, the key to it is it's not gonna be perfect. You can adjust, you can change. You know, you can.

Different people are going to have different advice about the exact same topic, and both of those pieces of advice could work. Just depends on you. 

Lisa C. Alvarez: 

It depends on you. Absolutely. And that has been a real wake up call for me. I don't, like I said, I don't know why it took me so long, but I think we all have these ideals in our head about how we wanna be in the world and how we wanna be perceived.

But if it's keeping you from being in the world and, and not showcasing what you know, then there's really no point to it. So, I that. Something I'm working on this year is to allow myself to experiment, play to my strengths, iterate all that stuff and to, to not well, and to realize that much of the advice that's out there is really for could be for people at a different stage in business than mine and I need to take what's said and filter it by what is doable. 

Kendra Corman: 

I think that that's fantastic. Thank you again so much, Lisa, for joining me. Thank you all for tuning in. I hope you got a lot out of Lisa's presentation and information. I know I did, and I know a lot about copyright, at least from the user side because I'm always very careful to respect that.

And again, I appreciate it. If you did get something out of this, I would encourage you to do me a favor and rate and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, and I will see you next week on another episode of Imperfect Marketing.