Stack #3: The Lunar Lawyer

How Maria Spear uses tech to scale her legal expertise for high vibe solopreneurs 🔮

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Maria Spear is of The Lunar Lawyer is not your typical online business lawyer.

Let me make my case:

🙄 Most online business lawyers speak to the masses.

🌿 Maria serves a niche of spiritual entrepreneurs. Think energy healers, herbalists, and astrologers. (This aligns with her own passion for spirituality.)

🙄 Most online business lawyers go by their own names.

🌿 Maria created The Lunar Lawyer brand to attract and connect with her ideal audience. She’s “your friend with a law degree." No judgment or intimidation.

🙄 Most online business lawyers sell legal contracts in Word or Google Docs.

🌿 Maria created The Legal Apothecary. This is a library of mad lib-style, fill-in-the-blank contracts generated by smart software.

I've gotten to know Maria well over the years. First, I was her client. Then, we became online business besties. And above all, we're Bravo confidantes. (Fun fact: RHONJ is her favorite franchise.)

She's my expert for all things legal, including trademarks, IP, copyright, and contracts.

CASE CLOSED. The verdict confirms that Maria is a lawyer you should definitely know. 👩🏻‍⚖️

Meet Maria, your friend with a law degree

Inside this Newsletter

Behind the Business

A nod to my past work as an online business strategist, I like to break down a business by the marketing funnel. It has three parts: awareness, engagement, and sales.

📣 Awareness

Maria uses many channels to attract her potential clients, including:

  • Organic social posts on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

  • Guest speaking at podcasts and conferences (one of my favorite ways to reach a new audience.)

  • Affiliates! Since many clients came from referrals, she decided to launch an affiliate program. This incentivizes her community to refer new clients.

  • Meta ads to bring new people to her freebie, a website disclaimer footer. (ad example 👇)

One of Maria’s freebie ads on Meta

💬 Engagement

Maria shares important legal tips and news via her weekly email newsletter. She's very good at distilling confusing concepts into plain English—no law degree needed.

She also hosts free workshops on practical topics for her audience. The title of the last one was “The 4 Biggest Legal Mistakes I See on Websites for Coaches, Healers, and Experts.”

A great thing about her workshops is that people can ask her questions. They get a taste of her approachable, welcoming vibe.

Maria’s workshop earlier this month!

💰 Sales

As The Lunar Lawyer, Maria offers the following:

  • A la carte services like trademarks, custom contracts creation, contract reviews, copyright registration and LLC formation.

  • VIP days for intensive projects.

  • Personalized ongoing support with access to Maria via email and/or voice messages.

She also operates her contract template shop, The Legal Apothecary. Maria has 16 contract templates, from a Coaching Agreement to Astrology Reading Session Legal Terms. And she’s always adding more!

Each contract is $444 or you can get the entire library of templates for $1222.

Btw, you can save 20% on ALL contract templates right now through 11/14/24 via Maria’s pre-Black Friday special. No code needed—the sale prices are reflected on The Legal Apothecary site.

As an affiliate, I’ll make a commission if you buy her templates via any of her links in this post. 😘

A peek at The Legal Apothecary contract templates

To Sum it Up…

Maria’s genius approach to focus on spiritual solopreneurs means she can create products just for them. When they discover The Lunar Lawyer, they 100% know they’re in the right place.

Her customized, auto-generated contracts are tailored to the unique professions and use cases for her community. It’s personalization at scale.

The Lunar Lawyer’s Tech Stack

Below are the tools I discovered in my research! FYI — this isn't a complete list of everything the business uses. Some links are affiliate links for tools I have experience with and recommend. 💕

🆕 = tools that haven’t been featured before

Software Tool

Description

Affiliatly 🆕

The software that Maria uses for her affiliate program. I recommend this to my clients who are setting up affiliate programs!

(The only thing that drives me bananas is the company leaving out the “e” in their name 🙄)

Canva

Maria designs her beautiful logos and graphics using Canva.

Flodesk

Email marketing software with unlimited sends and contacts for $38.

Gavel 🆕

The automated contract management software that powers The Legal Apothecary.

Shopify

The website builder for The Legal Apothecary. (Why does she have two builders? Read our Q&A below!)

Squarespace 🆕

The website builder for The Lunar Lawyer site.

TextExpander

Save keystrokes for things you type all the time. Maria says this is THE app that saves her the most time! It’s featured in our Hidden Gems Database too #nogatekeeping 😉 

Voxer 🆕

Voice chat app for Maria to provide one-on-one support to her clients.

Zapier

Automation software that connects all of your apps.

Zoom

Maria uses Zoom Meetings for her workshops, which give them a personal feel. Attendees can unmute or turn their video on to ask questions.

All in, Maria spends roughly $480/month on her tech stack. Not bad at all considering she can sell a single contract template for $444!

Maria takes the stand… 🤣

Maria graciously agreed to geek out with me for a few questions!

Q: What's your favorite tool that most people don't know?

A: Gavel. It's so niche, but it's incredible and allows me to share my entire suite of digital products.

Q: What’s one tool you initially thought you’d never use or didn't know existed, but now can’t live without?

A: I don't know if Zapier existed when I started my practice in 2015, but if it did, I didn't know about it. I definitely can't live without it now!

Q: When it comes to tech, what advice would you give a newbie online solopreneur?

A: Spend some time learning how to use Zapier! It’s worth it to automate what you can in the beginning rather than pay for 20 tools and try to fit them together later.

Q: Why did you move The Legal Apothecary from Squarespace to Shopify?

A: Squarespace has limited functionality around payments. Specifically, I didn’t see a way to create payment plans inside Squarespace (only recurring memberships).

Also, on Shopify, I have so many e-commerce options and plugins available. It integrates really well with Affiliatly.

Hidden Tech Gems

Ready for some tools you probably haven’t heard of that you should definitely check out? No gatekeeping here—dig in!

💎 Lawyer-Approved Website Disclaimer

Get this FREE website disclaimer for your footer. Try Maria's brilliant MadLibs-like tool. It helps you create a custom, legal work in minutes. It was so easy to do, I even made mine while holding a crying newborn. | Legal Disclaimer Creator, free

It’ll take 60 seconds. (Seriously.)

💎 Brandfetch

I spend A LOT of time looking for brand logos (like for this in particular 🙃). I used to Google Image search “[brand name] logo” and cross my fingers that a decent logo would appear.

But now, I use Brandfetch, a website and free app inside Canva. Nine times out of ten, the logo I need is there and only a click away from my design project. | Brandfetch, free

Find and add logos to your Canva designs instantly!

Featured Workflow:
Get Custom Notifications for a Sale

When Maria sells a contract template, The Universe sends her an email with the subject line: “YOU ARE AN ABUNDANT GODDESS ” .

Emails from The Universe? Definitely not junk mail.

This is the workflow you never knew you needed until now.

In fact, I used to get sales notifications in Slack and on my phone from “Chef Cheddar”—and I freaking loved it!

I'll admit, this isn't a must-have workflow. But why not add some positivity to your inbox?

The automation is so simple to set up using Zapier:

Here’s how it works:

  1. Purchase made: Your checkout software (e.g. Shopify, Squarespace, ThriveCart) triggers the workflow when a product or service is sold.

  2. Select your events: Inside Zapier, you can choose what you want to happen after the trigger activates. In our example, you can send yourself an email, a Slack message, or a SMS text (not shown below).

What I love about this workflow:

⭐️ It reminds you to stop and celebrate. Being a solopreneur is tough! 🎢 Oftentimes we forget to celebrate good news because we’re already moving on to the next thing. A sale notification can be that little reminder to pause and pat yourself on the back.

️⭐️ It's so easy to set up and customize. After a simple two-step setup, there are endless ways to customize it. You can name your sender (e.g. The Universe, Chef Cheddar). You can add product sale details, like the $ amount. And you can write a message that reminds you to keep on going!

That wraps up this week’s stack! I hope you are as inspired as I am by The Lunar Lawyer and her clever use of tech tools. Next Tuesday, I’ll be back in your inbox with another featured stack!

Always stack smarter,

Cynthia

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