What Do I Need To Legally Protect My Coaching Business?

 We LOVE our business coaches at In The Know Legal.  Yes, coaches, plural. We know we couldn’t have even dreamed of, let alone built, In The Know Legal without their guidance, support and accountability.  And because we know and appreciate how important the right coaching services can be for entrepreneurs (and really anyone who needs some support and accountability), focusing our first set of business templates and packages squarely on coaches was a no-brainer.  It’s our way of supporting our coaches – and any and all coaches – as they work to build and grow their own businesses. If you are ready to become a business coach, how better to serve your clients than by first making sure you are walking the walk and not just talking the talk?  Whether you are offering health & nutrition, life and personal, or business coaching services there are some integral, yet easy, steps to take to get your coaching business off the ground and flourishing – all while protect...

  Coaches , can we talk honestly for a minute?  You have set up a business surrounding education, empowerment, and encouragement for your clients and you offer a valuable service. While you are focused on taking care of your clients, who is taking care of you and your business?   We get it, contracts can get a bad rap as somehow being adversarial.  That couldn’t be further from the truth.  So let’s bust that myth now: a clear and concise agreements sets the tone, expectation, and the professional relationship boundaries in a positive way demonstrating that you care about the coaching relationship.  Since  professional coaching  has a wide range of objectives, tools and means of achieving goals, your agreement should also reflect those tools and means of achieving goals. Your agreement also plays an important role in educating the client about what coaching is (and is not) and what they can expect from the coaching process.  Essentially, ...

 At In The Know Legal , we teach you what your contract is,  what it does, what the language means, how to customize it, and what the important next steps are. But there are a lot of things that happen before you enter into a contract, and we want to talk about some of that.  Negotiations and communications before entering into the agreement called “parol evidence.”  Now, you may be wondering why I am talking to you about anything that has to do with parol.  Don’t worry, this isn’t crime and punishment  we are talking about – “parol” is actually a French word that literally means “word or speech.” While originally referred to verbal speech, in medieval times, it was also used to refer to legal pleadings.  So, the word “parol” actually refers to both verbal and written correspondence. In law, we use it to refer to words and correspondence outside an Agreement. The Parol Evidence Rule limits the extent to which discussions or writings made prior to, or c...

Contract Basics At its core, a contract is the written agreement of a bargained for exchange between two parties.  In any contract, there must be consideration for the agreement to be enforceable.  Consideration is the underlying exchange between the parties that supports the contract.  Consideration is whatever a party gives the other – money, goods, services, or promises.   A mutual nondisclosure, or mutual confidentiality , agreement is just a contract where the parties are agreeing to keep certain information confidential. A mutual nondisclosure agreement (mutual NDA) is one where both parties share confidential information with the other, and each agrees to keep the other party’s information secret, so the consideration is the mutual promises that each party makes to keep the other party’s information confidential. Terms of the Mutual NDA What terms should be included in a mutual NDA? Clearly describe what information will be shared and will be considered ...

At In The Know Legal, we teach you what your contract is,  what it does, what the language means, how to customize it, and what the important next steps are. But there are a lot of things that happen before you enter into a contract, and we want to talk about some of that.  Negotiations and communications before entering into the agreement called “parol evidence.”  Now, you may be wondering why I am talking to you about anything that has to do with parol.  Don’t worry, this isn’t crime and punishment  we are talking about – “parol” is actually a French word that literally means “word or speech.” While originally referred to verbal speech, in medieval times, it was also used to refer to legal pleadings.  So, the word “parol” actually refers to both verbal and written correspondence.  In law, we use it to refer to words and correspondence outside an Agreement. The Parol Evidence Rule limits the extent to which discussions or writings made prior to, or co...