Meet Brittany Ratelle | Small Business Lawyer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Brittany Ratelle and we’ve shared our conversation below.
Hi Brittany, do you disagree with some advice that is more or less universally accepted?
Conventional advice: “You can just run your creative business as a sole prop…you don’ t need to be an LLC until you make more money.”
I disagree with this advice (commonly handed about by well-meaning but misinformed accountants, business coaches, and other “professionals”) because an LLC does a few CRITICAL things for your business. 1) It sets up a firm asset protection boundary in your business between your personal money and business money — and boundaries are SUPER sexy, especially when they involve your money. 2) Setting up an LLC will force you to take some other “big girl” steps in your business like get a EIN, set up separate bank account, start tracking your incomes and expenses, and help you price and value yourself better. 3) Incorporating as an LLC in your state is like having a business birthday and while the outside world may not notice or care — YOU will feel a difference, an evelevated swagger and boost of confidence as you have officially drawn a line in the sand and declared, “I OWN a business.”
Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I got started serving the creative industry by accident. I was a licensed attorney doing family law when I had friends approach me and beg for help when they started getting “real” contracts in their businesses and not having a clue 1) what they said or 2)where to go for approachable legal help from someone who actually understood what their business was like. I went from a “naptime attorney” and mama of 4 to an attorney for creative entrepreneurs who loved serving woman business owners as they built businesses on the back of the creative economy. I was told to “dial back the pink” and that “no one wants to hire a lawyer who dances on the internet” — and I ignored it all. It turns out that making legal information BORING doesn’t make it better — so I have doubled down on injecting lots of personality into my content so that I can better edutain the people I care about — passionate women business owners.
Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I’d like to give a shout-out to Alison Faulkner aka “The Alison Show”, one of my first creative clients, who trusted me with her business and who dropped my name an embarrassing amount of times to all of her friends and colleagues. She never took herself too seriously (says the mom of 3 who went viral for gyrating as a business owner on IG before anyone else was), but she knew that she had value and wanted to make sure her contracts, events, and dreams were protected and I was honored to help!
Website: brittanyratelle.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brittanyratelle/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittany-ratelle-a4563232/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDArjxoxKxbqWObigQxlqRA