What do I need to legally protect my coaching business?
All right coaches, now is the time. You have set up a business surrounding education, empowerment and encouragement for your clients, and you offer a valuable service. You are taking care of your clients, but who is taking care of you and your business?
As a coach, you need agreements that detail the professional relationship with your client through mutually agreed upon goals and expectations. You also want your agreements to play an important role in educating your client about what coaching is (and is not) and what your client can expect from the coaching process.
Most importantly, you want to have a positive organized way to delineate your services.
Since professional coaching has a wide range of objectives, tools and means of achieving goals, your agreements should be in line with your objectives, tools and means of achieving those goals.
So here is a list of documents that will help legally protect you and your coaching business:
- A detailed Client Services Agreement for one-on-one coaching with all of the necessary clauses that protects both you and your client.
- An Amendment Agreement for when you and your client need to change the scope of the Client Services Agreement
- A Cancellation Agreement that sets the clear terms of the cancellation and any obligations that survive the termination of your Client Services Agreement
- A Privacy Policy for your website that covers all of the major national and international regulations concerning collecting data
- A Terms of Use Agreement for your website on how your client can, and cannot, use your website
- A Terms and Conditions for your website if clients can purchase services directly from your website
- A clear Group Client Services Agreement for group coaching that specifically addresses the group environment
- A COVID Liability Waiver and Indemnification Agreement for any in-person coaching or retreats
- A comprehensive Membership Agreement if you offer online memberships
- A comprehensive Retreat Agreement if you offer retreats for your clients
- A Media Waiver so you can show off those fabulous picture from the above-mentioned retreat
Everyone needs a coach in their life, so it’s time to protect our coaches!
