What Do I Need To Legally Protect My Coaching Business?

Whether you are a life coach, business coach, health & wellness coach, or any kind of amazing coach – you need a   client services agreement .  But you already know that!  And, since you’re reading this, it’s safe to assume you want to get an agreement in place or get your current agreement up to snuff.  Maybe you “borrowed” it from a friend or colleague, or -gasp- downloaded a free sample from some shady website.  You can’t be sure that its adequate, or even appropriate for your   coaching business .  But no fear, we are here to help!   DIY LEGAL CAN WORK FOR COACHES DIY legal is totally okay in many cases; so long as you have the right guidance and foundation.  Online  legal  templates from can be a great resource.  Templates that are vetted and provided by coaching certification programs can also be valuable.  But the best practice for DIY legal, regardless of the source is this: Get your templates from a trust...

  I know many Coaches who are absolutely amazing at what they do.  Their clients (like me!) love them, rely on them and credit them to much of their success.  Truly, Coaches can be a real gift to a business owner.  But not all Coaches are walking the walk when it comes to their own business.  How so?  They shy away from a lot of the “back-office stuff” because they love the client work and want to get to it– but they do so at the expense of getting themselves set up correctly. What am I talking about?   Contracts.   Agreements.   Dreaded legal documents.   Contracts get a bad rap, but they shouldn’t.  They best way to set clarity on expectations and boundaries in a professional relationship. So, let’s talk about some of the kinds of agreements a great coach needs in her coaching business. The Client Service Agreement This is the most basic, and most essential, agreement that a Coach should have in her business....

Calling all Coaches – life, business, health and wellness: how are you protecting your intellectual property (IP) – all those hand-outs, workbooks, methods and processes that you worked hard to develop for use with your Clients?  How are you showing your Client’s that you respect and protect the sensitive and personal information they share with you? There’s one document that can do this and give you each peace of mind – a nondisclosure agreement (sometimes also referred to as a confidentiality agreement). Types of Nondisclosure agreements : When one person or business is agreeing to keep information private and confidential – this is a unilateral nondisclosure agreement.   When two people (or businesses) agree to share information, and each keep the other’s confidential – that is a mutual nondisclosure agreement . So, are you a Coach ready to implement a mutual confidentiality agreement or a Client being asked to sign one?   Here’s 5 important things to include or...

  At In The Know Legal, we LOVE coaches!  Why?  Because coaches are amazing.  But it’s really so much more than that. The Shared Mission Our mission is to empower women entrepreneurs to achieve success in their business.  But we know that time, money, and understanding what they need for a solid legal foundation in business and personally, can be stumbling blocks.  So we created ITKL to help minimize or eliminate those obstacles. Coaches do the exact same thing for their clients – helping their clients achieve their goals while helping them eliminate obstacles that can hold them back.  Whether they have its business coaching , life coaching, or any other areas, coaches guide their clients to turn obstacles into opportunities or lessons, help them navigate a clear path, and give them clarity and perspective.  All of these things help empower their clients to achieve their success.   You can’t pour from an empty cup A common lesson coaches...

 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...