How to Legally Protect Your Health Coaching Business

Melissa, integrative nutrition health coach and founder, Four Wellness Co. // Four Wellness Co. for health coaches: business tips and resources for health and wellness coaches, fitness instructors, personal trainers and other wellness professionals

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One of the most confusing but gotta-get-it-right elements of starting your own wellness business is navigating all the legal requirements to ensure you’re operating legally—setting up your business entity, keeping your content protected, and properly protecting the personal information of your health coaching clients and website visitors.

How to lEgally protect your wellness business

The internet advice of a fellow health coach doesn’t count as legal counsel, so the recommendations below are simply a starting place for understanding the types of legal compliance you’ll likely need to consider as a health coach—though the specific needs of your particular health coaching business may vary.

Once again, to be very clear: I’m not a lawyer. No part of this blog post shall be construed as legal advice.

That said, I am a health coach and a web designer, I’ve gone through this legal set-up myself in my own wellness business, and I’ve worked with many other wellness entrepreneurs who go through this process too.

So, let’s chat through some of the most common questions I hear from new health coaches or wellness professionals (fitness instructors and the like) regarding your health/wellness business’ legal needs:

As a health coach, should I be a sole proprietor or LLC?

Well, I can’t tell you which is best for you! But I can tell you a little about the difference between the two:

A sole proprietor is a business owner being taxed as a self-employed person. You use your legal name in your business operations. Your business is legally one and the same with your person. There’s no registration or start-up cost for this.

A Limited Liability Company (LLC) is a legal entity that establishes your business as being different from you, your person. This requires registration with the state you do business in, as well as registration fees and annual fees. It’s a more involved process (and costs some money), but provides the benefit of separating you personally from being liable for your business’ debts and liabilities. Meaning, if your business gets sued, your personal assets (home, savings, etc.) are not involved in that.

If your business is a single-member LLC (which most health coaching businesses are, as you’re the only “owner”), you can do “pass-through taxation” which means you can still file your taxes as though you were a sole proprietor (which makes them a little simpler), but you get the legal protections of an LLC. Many independent health coaches go this route.

What’s a DBA (& do I need one)?

DBA stands for Doing Business As. If you’re “doing business as” something other than the legal name your business exists under, you’re required to have a DBA (also known as a fictitious business name).

For example, if I have an LLC named Awesome Health Coaching LLC but I’ve branded my website as Really Awesome Health Coaching, I need to file a DBA that my business will be “doing business as” Really Awesome Health Coaching. Procedures for filing fictitious business names vary based on the state and county you do business in.

What legal policies do I need on my health coaching website?

As a web designer, this is a pretty frequent question I hear: What legal policies do I need on my website? I also, almost as frequently, am asked if I can write them (nope, I can’t!) or if my client can just use the same policy in use on my site (again, nope, that’s copyright infringement—see below).

So, here are some more details on the website policies that apply to most health coaches, and then we’ll get into how to draft them:

Website Privacy Policy

First is a big one you’ve probably been seeing more of recently. With a new-ish law called GDPR (more on that in a moment), this one is definitely a website “must-have.”

Your privacy policy defines how you collect, use and store the personal information of your website visitors. That could include the information they provide when purchasing from you, or simply the email address they submit when signing up for your newsletter.

What’s GDPR?

GDPR is the General Data Protection Regulation, an EU law regarding data protection and privacy. Does it apply to you if you don’t live in the EU? If you have a website, and people from the EU can visit your website, it applies to you. 😁

Do I need a cookie banner on my health coaching website?

Most likely, yes. If your website uses cookies (which most websites do) and your website is used by people in the EU, the GDPR requirements for “cookie consent” apply to you.

Okay, but what exactly are cookies?

Besides being delicious treats we health coaches like to enjoy sometimes too, cookies are little bits of data a web browser uses to keep track of visitor activity—for example, saving your password so you don’t have to log in each time you open Facebook, or leaving items in your Amazon shopping cart so they’ll still be there if you close the window and come back later.

By default, website platforms like Squarespace (my very fave) place cookies on visitors’ browsers to help your site run effectively. Certain types of cookies are required for specific functionality on your site (for example, customer accounts and the e-commerce checkout process require cookies to function). Other types of cookies are used to help your website collect analytics on how your website visitors interact with your site—information like your website’s traffic sources, unique visitors, conversion rates, and the e-commerce Abandoned Cart feature.

So, long story short, you most likely need a cookie policy and pop-up on your website.

Fortunately, Squarespace offers a built-in cookie banner that’s super easy to add to your site. Head to Settings > Cookies & Visitor Data > Cookie Banner and you’ll see the options for adding and customizing your site’s cookie banner.

Website Terms & conditions

Your Website Terms & Conditions is a legal document outlining the “game rules” of using your website or its content (like your blog posts, freebie downloads, paid health coaching programs and services, etc.).

There are a wide range of legal considerations here, which I won’t go fully into because I’m not qualified to do so, but it’s definitely important to have this document in place on your website, and to be very clear yourself about what it includes—so you know the game rules you’re playing by too!

That means things like your refund policy, intellectual property rights, rules for using your content (especially important if you have a membership program and you need to clarify that members are prohibited from sharing content with non-members), and more.

Website Disclaimer

In a field like health coaching, which lends itself to having health-related blog posts and “health tips” on your website, it’s a good idea to be explicitly clear that your content is provided for general informational purposes only, it’s not medical advice, and shall not be construed as such.

It’s also a good idea to include a similar disclaimer on any downloadable materials you use in your business that can be used outside the context of your website.

Affiliate disclaimers

If you belong to affiliate programs (where you earn commission on referrals you make to a certain product or service), you’ll need to properly disclose affiliate links wherever you use them on your website or other business materials.

We have an entire post on how to use affiliate links in your health coaching business—authentically, lucratively and legally!—so pop over there for more details, but the gist is: Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations require that you add affiliate marketing disclaimers anywhere (and everywhere) you promote affiliate links.

Copyright protection

Your intellectual property (any original content you create for your website or health coaching programs) is legally protected under copyright law. As you likely know, to replicate or use someone else’s original work without their consent is copyright infringement—aka, illegal.

You don’t have to do anything specific to be protected by copyright law, but it’s a good idea to establish your ownership of original content by using the copyright symbol © in your website footer, which applies to your entire website.

I also like to include the copyright symbol on any downloadable material offered (whether a freebie opt-in gift, or a client handout), again clearly asserting that the material is your intellectual property, and shall not be reproduced (nor shared without proper attribution).

It should go without saying that material you have plagiarized (copied from another source) is not your original intellectual property, and thus you have no rights to it. So, be sure if you’re “inspired” by someone else’s research or ideas, you’re interpreting and sharing them in your own words, with your own spin, and not ever copy/pasting and calling it your own.

Health coaching client contracts

Most of the items above are legal considerations for your website, but there are also very important legal requirements in your health coaching client contracts.

First of all, just like any form of freelance work, you should absolutely have a contract in place before providing health coaching services. The contract is in place to protect both you and your client, outlining your agreement for the exact services to be provided, the timing of said services, the fee associated and how that’s billed, and more.

As client work is likely the bread and butter of your health coaching practice, it’s important to have a legally protective document in place that you can use for all new clients. It’s also important that you make this document as clear and approachable as possible, so your clients can actually read and understand the terms fully before agreeing to them.

You only want to enter into a contractual health coaching relationship if everyone involved understands the rules by which you’re working together!

And, keep in mind you may need different versions of your client contract for different service offerings or types of health coaching programs.

Does HIPAA apply to health coaches?

And, once you’ve got your health coaching client contract squared away, there’s another super important detail to consider as you coach your clients: HIPAA compliance.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ensures that patient information is securely protected by healthcare professionals. This is important in virtual health coaching, or electronic data transmission and file storage, as you need to be sure the tools you’re using are sufficiently secure (aka HIPAA-compliant).

That’s why we recommend using a HIPAA-compliant tool for health coaching client management—a secure platform for all the messaging, intake forms, client surveys, etc. that would be considered personal health information. We have an entire post on the HIPAA-compliant health coaching platform we recommend!

LEgal templates for health coaches

So, how do you go about drafting the legal documents mentioned above if you don’t personally speak legalese?

Of course, one option is to hire an attorney to draw them up for you, specific to your health coaching business needs. That’s a great customized option, though also tends to be a bit pricey, and thus out of reach for many new health coaches.

Another option is to find free legal templates available for download online—there’s no shortage of websites offering this. But, you’ll just want to be careful that the free template truly covers your own health coaching business needs and operations and actually protects you under law (rather than just looking fancy).

And, a third option (and one we recommend often to our health coach consulting clients) is to purchase templates from a reputable legal template shop. For health coaches specifically, we recommend Sam Vander Wielen’s legal template shop—as a former health coach (and, of course, attorney) herself, she offers templates specifically designed for health coaching businesses. Things like your website policies (privacy policy, terms & conditions, website disclaimer), as well as health coaching client contracts, group coaching contracts, online course contracts and more.