The Creator’s Attorney w/ Tyler Chou

0:00You don't get to go to Best Buy and say, I'm going to take this TV and pay you in 90 days. right it doesn't there no one's gonna let you walk out of the store with it but yet we treat creators like that right we're like we're gonna take your content and we'll maybe pay you in three months maybe six months maybe a year hey Tyler welcome to the show how are you I'm so well I'm so excited to be here like we've been trying to do this for a while so I'm glad we finally got on the books absolutely and this is gonna be I know for sure a very valuable and interesting episode. It's the first time that we go in the ins and outs of everything.

0:37It's like, you know, all the legal, right, things around content creators. It is one of those things that many things, right, people don't think about. And so it's going to be interesting and very helpful for content creators, influencers, but I also would say for brand marketers, right? That many types might not see things about IP and other things, right, that creators can see on a daily basis. But before we get started, right, and we talk about all these interesting things, Tell us a bit more about yourself with the map that we use here on the podcast. Basically, it's divided in the mission.

1:08What do you aim to achieve with your work? The achievements, anything that you're really proud of, right? Notable milestone, career, or life, or both. And the last one is the purpose. So why do you do what you do? Hi, I'm Tyler Chow, the creator's attorney. I'm so happy to be here with Alessandro today. I am the CEO and founder of Tyler Chow Law for Creators. I also have an agency and management company where I manage 30 of the biggest YouTubers in the world. So my mission is to protect creators. And a year ago, that was my mission. But now I've expanded it a bit. And it's basically my mission is to protect creators and bring them to seven figure businesses where they launch products and they're in a position to be acquired.

1:51I'm currently in the middle of brokering the sale of one of my clients, big YouTube channels for eight figures. And that's something I want every creator and YouTuber to be thinking about. You know, how do you position yourself with multiple revenue streams so that you can be attractive to a buyer? My accomplishments, I've been an attorney in Hollywood for over 16 years. I've worked at companies like Disney, Skydance, BuzzFeed, where I was head of the creators program there, as well as big law firms where I was, you know, part of Tom Hanks' team and Marisa Tomei, as well as I've been the lead attorney on 22 feature films.

2:27So I've been, you know, featured in a variety as a top Hollywood attorney. And a year ago, I left it all behind because I believe YouTube is the new Hollywood. That's amazing. And then what about the purpose? Is there anything else on top of the, you know, you shared about the mission? What about the purpose? Sure. My purpose has always been to protect those who are vulnerable or voiceless. I'm an immigrant. I came here when I was seven. My parents actually still don't speak English. So I went to law school wanting to be a DA. I wanted to, you know, work in the justice system to protect those who couldn't protect themselves.

3:00My first summer in law school was at the DA's office, but LA County wasn't hiring at the time. So I was not able to work there. Long story, but I got myself into entertainment by working for free. And my mission and my purpose are very tied together. It's always about protecting those Davids of the world who go against the Goliaths. So that's sort of my mission and purpose. First of all, you know, congrats off your journey so far. I'm pretty sure that you have stories, you know, that there is so in these like, you know, years. And I'm also curious, before we get into, you know, what you do now, what influenced you to also, you know, getting a career in law?

3:38And how was it? You said that you're like, you know, an immigrant. You got here in the States when you were like, you know, very young. How was that? But I mean, it's never easy to do like, you know, getting too low, right? It's a lot of work, a lot of studies. So tell me a bit more about, again, how do you stay motivated in something that difficult? You know, I think it goes to my childhood. I grew up as the only Asian in my school. And I was unfortunately bullied and made fun of because we were very poor and because we were Asian. And I think that just like fired something inside of me that said, you know, kind of subconsciously, I want to do really well so that I can prove these bullies wrong.

4:16And I've always just loved academics. I love books. So learning is very natural for me. It's like I'm a lifetime learner. I went to Berkeley as an English major. I actually wanted to be a novelist, but I went to law school to to make a difference, to protect those who couldn't be protected. It was very hard. You know, I went to Berkeley on a scholarship. I waitressed my way through law school. I mean, it was something that I had to keep pushing myself. But I always saw myself as an attorney, as somebody who could help those who couldn't help themselves. So I think that vision of like what I was going to do in the future, like who I was going to help really kind of propelled me because that work hasn't stopped just because I didn't join the DA's office.

4:59I mean, for over 10 years, I have volunteered at a woman's shelter, helping women of domestic violence, leave their abusers, getting restraining orders and divorces. And so that has always been very central to who I am. So that motivation to just help those who can't help themselves, who can't speak up, that's, I think, what's always motivated me to keep going. That's very admirable, right? Because you have every single day you wake up and be like, I actually can make a difference, right? You got it like on your skin. You know what it means, right? Not to be treated like, you know, fairly or poorly.

5:33And then so I totally get that. And it's, you know, kudos to you for doing something that is that important. And I'm curious then what happened, you know, after, you know, going from the Hollywood, you know, world, right, to creators and YouTube. Was it something that you kind of strategized around that? Or did it happen that one time you were, I don't know, like maybe a conference, you know, could be a VidCon, VidSami, whatever. Then you start talking with these creators and be like, actually, this is interesting. Like, so I'm interested to see how much strategy was it, how much was like, this is interesting.

6:06money are getting there they they might need my help and support and let me let me try well it's a great story so i don't know if you know this but i actually have my own youtube channel it's called you know um and and so i started my youtube channel two years ago because i had a midlife crisis basically after about years of helping creatives achieve their creative visions i asked myself well what's my legacy right of course or my greatest legacy but i wanted to leave something behind. So I thought, well, you know what? I was a fan of Ali Abdaal's who has a course called the Part-Time YouTube Academy, and it's geared towards professionals who want to have a YouTube channel.

6:47So I, you know, being kind of a type A perfectionist, I said, well, I'm going to take a course. I'm going to figure out how to do this. So I took his course and, you know, Ali's advice is you upload a video every week, 52 videos, you should get to about a thousand subscribers. as we all know it's very hard to grow on youtube right and so i uploaded two videos and then got to about 200 subscribers like 280 and then i went to vid summit two years ago i met these two women emily and sarah the akito twins and they asked me hey there's this drama with the try guys and ned falmer and i don't know if you remember that but basically ned was like caught cheating on his wife with an employee and he was like known as the wife guy.

7:34And Emily asked, hey, do you know what's going on here? And I said, sure. Like they probably have an executive partnership agreement. There's probably a morals clause. And, you know, cheating on your wife with an employee is a violation of that morals clause. And they're probably exiting him right now. They're probably buying his rice. We're giving him a rev share. Like I kind of just broke it down. And she said, well, you should go make a video about that. So I went home. I made a three minute video after of that weekend, three minutes. And that video hit 400 ,000 views in the first few days.

8:03And that was from a tiny channel, right? Like two videos, 100 subs. And then I made two follow-ups. So those three Try Guys videos got me to a million views and 10 ,000 subs within that month. And then I was like, wow, there's like so much power here. Because after being in Hollywood for 16 years, I have sat Alessandra on like hundreds of films in development that will never see the light of day. Not because they're not good scripts or they're not good stories, but it's because like, oh, the studio will say, well, that other studio just released a film that was similar to that three months ago.

8:37So we can't make this film. And then like and then that film gets pushed down and down and down and it just never gets made. But the power of YouTube is if you have a story and you're willing to go on camera and say it or make that movie, like millions of people can see it. Like how amazing is that? So becoming a creator myself allowed me to understand the struggles that creators go through. You know, the constant hamster wheel of putting out a video every day or every week. Then, you know, seeing my fellow creators getting screwed by big companies or unfair contracts, it really kind of like stirred something inside of me that said, this is wrong.

9:15But you know, at the time, I was working on a private equity fund. I mean, I started my YouTube channel in secret. I didn't tell anybody in Hollywood about it. I didn't even use my full name. My channel was called The Hollywood Attorney when I started. And that was kind of what led me to understand, okay, there's a need here. There are very few traditional lawyers who are paying attention to this space who are representing creators. So a year ago, I had the chance to leave my fund. And, you know, I was laid off, actually. Like, I always, like, try to spin it pretty, but I was laid off, right? And I should just say that a bunch of people were laid off.

9:49My fund was acquired by MetLife because of the$2 billion fund. And, you know, my boss said no changes will happen. But, of course, three months later after MetLife went through all the numbers and realized, wow, you know, films don't really make you much money. So they shuttered the studio's division and I got a nice severance, but I said, what am I going to do now? But it was also during the strike, right? The WGA and the SAG strike. And I'm a very high level hire. Like no one was hiring anybody of my level. So I said, okay, I'm just going to start a law firm. Like I didn't think too much about it.

10:20I had a bunch of friends. I had a bunch of creators who had been asking me to represent them. And I finally said, well, I'm just going to try this out. You know, while the strike, you know, plays on, I'm going to see how it goes. And in the year that I've started my firm, Alessandro, it has exploded beyond my wildest dreams. Like I have so much inbound, so many new clients coming in that I actually, yesterday I received an offer to buy my business. I mean, so that's like, that's news. I'm still debating it. Like there's still so much that has to go into it. But like, but like my YouTube business, right?

10:52Like, so my fractional CEO and all of that, not my law firm, my law firm will stake, you know, nobody can buy a law firm. You have to be a lawyer to be a partner in a law firm. So it's all very, very exciting. And it just shows the need for creators to have executives on their team who are their lawyers, their fractional CEOs, and people who are actually some adults in the room, unfortunately. As we can see with Mr. Beast and Jimmy, you knew that. He has said himself, young Beast didn't have the right lawyers. And I think that's why he's in a lot of the trouble that he's in now. Now, he's got the lawyers now.

11:29I've read his complaints and I know that he's got big, big law firms, you know, representing him now. But that's, you know, that's because he's in trouble now. Yeah, I know. Exactly. Better to, you know, be on the preventive way, right? Like, you know, aside instead of just waiting for things to happen. And I also think that, you know, the creators that work with you also really respect the fact that yourself are, it's like, you know, yourself are creating like content every single day or like, you know, you know how to be on camera. you understand about monetization, you understand about editing, you understand distribution and followers and everything, right?

12:02And that is like, you know, that makes a huge difference between that and just saying like, oh yeah, I heard about something, you know, and now I'm going to tell you what to do, right? But you're the first one doing that. So that is definitely coming in handy. And so you said that many creators, right? They either sometimes they sign the wrong agreement, or maybe they don't even know about IP rights or they don't even know. There is so much, right? Because they are great at creating content. It doesn't mean they know how to establish an LLC. They might not know anything about accounting. Again, IP and so on.

12:37Have you identified any most, what are the most common legal challenges for creators? Is there a pattern out there? Is there something that you identified as, you know, coming over and over to you as either request by email or whenever you work on a case? So I would say there's a handful, right? One of the things is signing bad agreements, right? Having really egregious termination, like provisions where there's a fine, a charge, right? Like I had a client who was being told in order to get out of this really awful agreement where it was like a loan and then he was trying to get out of it, but he had to like keep up his cadence of uploads and he was just dying.

13:15Like he was just like, he came to me crying, like broken. Like he's just like, I want out of this, but they want to charge me$50 ,000 to get out of this deal. So I stepped in, I reviewed the contract. I said, you know, there are all these things that they've done that are just fraudulent. Like they took more money than they should have. And I said to him and I stepped in and I went to their CEO and I said, let's go. Let's go to arbitration. Let's go to trial. I would love to get you in front of a judge or a jury because I can show them everything you've done really illegally here. And, you know, I was able to get my client out without paying$1.

13:50And those are the types of deals that are really prevalent. There's, you know, agreements where they're signing over, you know, things in perpetuity or license deals that are just, they ask for so much, but a lot of creators don't think that there's an issue. Unfortunately, a lot of managers, there's a lot of great ones. You know, I co-work with some great managers, but there are some managers who really, when they redline a contract, they redline, right? Like they care about the deliverables and like the fee. They're not really looking at kind of the back end, like indemnity and morals clauses and cap on liability or, you know, weird, you know, things like turning off your monetization on a video, right?

14:30They're not really focused on that. But I am because I see all the issues that are coming in, right? I have a lot of IP being stolen right now, right? Like either videos being stolen or I have a client who sells a course for$3 ,000 and there are like 10 websites out there selling it for$29. I send out a lot of cease and desist letters, a lot of takedown notices, basically going after these bad actors for stealing IP or brands not paying, right? Like this is also very common. A lot of creators come to me when, you know, they're typically six-figure deals, right? When it's kind of like it really hurts to like, how many creators have you heard of that?

15:07Just like, you know, it's a couple of thousand. So I just let it go because they just weren't paying. And so I just like, what am I going to do? I'm not going to hire an attorney because I would just, that's the cost, right? And honestly, I've done a lot of letters for free because I hate bad actors like that. I'm like, I will just go after them or tell me about it on LinkedIn and I will just call them out. You know, I called out Captivate for not paying. and you know what? The CEO called me in 15 minutes because I was negotiating a current deal with a client and I made him pay 50 % upfront, right?

15:39So like, tell me, like I don't even have to represent you, right? I say this when I speak at VidCon and VidSummit, like just tell me, tell me who they are and I will call them out because a lot of creators don't wanna call them out, right? Because they don't wanna be known as the creator that makes a fuss and is difficult to work with. But at the end of the day, like these agencies, like, you know, these companies shouldn't get away with not paying. Like you don't get to go to Best Buy and say, oh yeah, I'm going to take this TV and pay you in 90 days, right? No one's going to let you walk out of the store with it.

16:08But yet we treat creators like that, right? We're like, we're going to take your content and we'll maybe pay you in three months, maybe six months, maybe a year. That's not okay. So those are kind of like the more high level emergencies that creators come to me with. Also another one is partnership disputes, right? A lot of friends start podcasts or channels together and we'll have an agreement in place. And a couple of years later, they're like bigger. And then they're like, I have a client who this actually happened to. She was giving her best friend 50 % of her AdSense. And a year ago, I said, this is not a good idea.

16:43Can we at least put this in a contract? And she's like, no, this is my best friend. I don't really want to. Sure enough, her AdSense hits six figures. And she's like, huh, I don't know if I want to give 50 % away anymore. And I said, yes. So we went to him eight months ago. It's taken us eight months to get through this contract because you know what he said, Alessandro, he's like, I own this channel. I own 50 % of it. I made you. But if you have no partnership agreement in place, how do you just, like, it's a lot of unwinding. You know, I wish creators could be more proactive and hire me to prevent the issues from happening.

17:22But they usually wait until it's like there's a huge emergency. Is your brand ready to amplify its reach? Well, the influencer marketing factory is here for you. We are a global influencer marketing agency helping brands ignite their growth. From influencer identification to campaign strategy, handling legalities and agreements to managing shipping and logistics, we got you all covered. We work with hundreds of brands across different verticals, from Fortune 500 companies to direct-to-consumer brands. And we don't just stop there. With detailed ROI analysis, we help brands like yours measure success, transforming impressions into conversions.

18:00You can find us at theinfluencermarketingfactory.com or just searching the Influencer Marketing Factory on Google. Yeah, and that's, you know, something that I wanted to see with you, right? instead of waiting for something to happen, how come the creators, right? What are the things that they should think about on day one? This is a great example when you say about partnership. How many times you start with your best friend, with your roommate, with your whatever, right? And of course, when your friend all the time is like, ah, this will never happen to me. We're best friends. Of course, we're going to be friends forever, right?

18:35And then similar to like, you know, rock band at a certain point, right? They start with the best intentions. And then when you start seeing money, people get greedy. And unfortunately, business is business, right? And many times, some people take their feelings away for a second. And they'd be like, you know what? I just care about this money. And I don't care if you're my best friends, if you're my mother or whatever, right? I just want to get this. And so what are some of the pieces of advice that you would say to someone that either want to start a partnership? So in this case, it would be interesting to see how to be sure that if things go well, financially speaking, everyone knows what to expect.

19:16And also the second is, in addition to that, is there anything else that many creators that you talk to, have identified anything that at a certain point always come up as a problem that they didn't do on day one and they just procrastinate for some reason? And then when it hits the moment, they're like, ah, if only. I'm curious about that. So yes, there's a handful. The top two are probably setting up an LLC, paying your taxes, right? Like I know so many creators for not paying their taxes and that's going to come back and really hurt them in the future, right? I ask clients, you know, have you trademarked your name and profile photo?

19:54You know, takedowns are a lot easier. We have to realize, right, Alessandra, that the flood of creators is coming. Every child in the world wants to be a YouTuber, right? Like that's their dream job now. It's not a doctor or an astronaut. It's to be a YouTuber. So if your name is a little more common, like someone else is going to grab your name. You know, I know of an agency that has a name and now they have to rebrand themselves because when they went to go trademark, they're like, oh, there's this other agency out there who's been using the name for 10 years. But they didn't think about it when they were naming themselves.

20:27I'm like, we could even vote even earlier, right? Which is like naming yourself. Like if you're going to name a company or podcast or anything, please do a trademark search. and see if there's someone else out there in the same category or class as you. This is something that's like really huge. General liability insurance, you know, media insurance. If you're doing anything that's like, you know, Coffee Zella is a great example. Like he is getting sued by Logan Paul. So he tenders his lawsuit to his insurance. And they're like, oh, defamation is excluded, which is criminal, by the way, because his broker should have understood that the reason why he bought E &O insurance was because he needed defamation coverage.

21:07And I think he's suing him right now, which he should, right? Like he should be suing the broker for malpractice. But if you're doing any type of content that's like reactionary or like doing reviews of people, even products, right? If you're doing reviews of products, like that can kind of be on the edge of like, if you hurt someone's business, could a company come after you for doing those types of reviews? Like you need to protect yourself. And then, you know, those are kind of what I think of rises to like, you should do this immediately. If you're like making a couple thousand dollars, right, making content.

21:38And then, you know, the further on is if you start getting employees, right, they should be under an employment contract or independent contractors as editors. You have to have language that states that you own their results and proceeds, right? Like anything they make for you is yours. If you don't have a piece of paper that says that, you could have an editor that leaves with a video and says, oh, no, this is my work. Like I came up with this concept or this tool or this, you know, element of your video. So I'm going to take that with me. They could because you don't have a piece of paper that says you own that result proceeds, right?

22:10So those are kind of like the ones I see for all creators. Now, when you get to more kind of higher level creators, right? A lot of my clients are in the million plus. Then we start, you know, looking at revenue streams and different things like that. So there's different protections that go into launching a product or, you know, we're working with private equity funds and getting equity. So it's like those get a little more complicated and might not apply to so many creators. Two points. Very important. The first, like the last one that you said about, you know, be sure that if you hire someone, there is all the agreements in place, all the contracts that is, you know, very clear about what our position and everything.

22:48And also that if they are doing something for you, right, it's your IP. That reminds me of, you know, one of the episodes of Silicon Valley is, you know, this TV show that was on HBO. Oh, I love it. You don't have to describe it. I know it. Yeah. Okay, okay. No, no. I knew for sure that you know it. It was for people that are listening that I realized that many people don't actually know about this show. Oh, I'm a total nerd. I'm a total nerd. Okay, love it. So, you know, and it reminds me, right, when there is the case about that they use the computer given by the company, but at the same time, there was like no agreement for this.

23:18So it was like a bit complicated. And at the end of the day, so I think that that episode was a great example of like being sure, right, that no matter if you are into, you know, the big Silicon Valley, or if you just started your new LLC, you should think about that. And the other one, it's about insurance. I think they are totally right. Especially when you start, it's one of those things that you're like, oh, I'm an artist, I'm a creator. I should not even look into this. This is boring, this bureaucracy. Or you think like, oh, this will never happen to me, right? All the time, someone else is going to get sued.