Coach User Guide — For Coaches

Create your coach account

Choose “Join as a coach” from the header or homepage. Sign up with email and a password, or continue with Google. You will be asked once to review and accept the platform agreements — the Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, Acceptable Use Policy, Payments Terms, Coaching Disclaimer and the Coach Services Agreement.

Once accepted, those documents are recorded against your account and are never shown to you again unless we publish a materially new version. You can re-read any of them any time from the footer or the Legal Center.

Complete coach onboarding

The onboarding wizard collects the essentials in a few short steps. You can leave and come back — progress is saved.

• Display name, headline and slug (your public profile URL).
• Your lived experience — the experience-first step asks what you have actually been through and who you are best placed to help. This is what clients respond to most.
• Biography — who you work with, your method, and what a first engagement looks like.
• Genres — pick every practice area that fits, across Life & Wellness, Professional Leadership, Money & Wealth, Sports, Recruiting & Youth Sports, Education (College Prep, College Readiness, College Tutoring, Academic Tutoring), industry and technical specialisms, and spiritual coaching. You can also propose a custom niche of your own if nothing fits.
• Location, languages and time zone.
• Base hourly rate and currency — the AI rate assistant suggests a band for your genres and you can chat with it to sanity-check your pricing.

Confirm your email, then finish the wizard

Sign-ups made with “Join as a coach” are flagged as coach accounts from the moment you register, so you land in the coach wizard and not the client one. After registration you will see a banner asking you to confirm your email; the wizard steps unlock once you click the link. If the email never arrives, an administrator can resend the correct coach confirmation from the admin Members tab.

Approval and going live

When you complete onboarding your profile is published by default, subject to the review setting in force. Admins can run approvals automatically or route new listings and material edits (name, bio, rate, genres, headshot) to a manual review queue. If something needs changing, the listing goes back to draft with a note explaining why, and you are notified in-app and by email.

Track your completeness score

Your dashboard shows a profile completeness score with a checklist. Profiles above 90% get significantly more directory impressions, because complete profiles surface higher and convert better. Work the checklist until it is clear.

Headshot and branding

Upload a high-resolution headshot — square, well lit, face filling most of the frame. You can crop inside the uploader. Your profile inherits the Mindlab Coaches design system automatically, so you never have to worry about contrast or layout.

Write offerings, not services

Offerings are the cards clients actually book. Each one has a title, description, duration, price and format. Give each a concrete promise and a clear scope.

• Single sessions — good for discovery calls and one-off strategy work.
• Series and packages — sell a multi-session arc at a set price; you control the sequencing.
• Intensive or workshop formats — longer blocks at a premium rate.
• Donated sessions — set the price to $0 to deliver pro bono work; the client receives a written acknowledgement of the donated time.

Custom niches

If your specialism is not in the standard taxonomy, propose it during onboarding or from your profile. Custom niches appear on your profile and in search, and popular ones get promoted into the shared taxonomy. A self-declared niche is your own description of your practice, not a Mindlab credential — keep the claim accurate.

Link your existing practice website

If you already run a practice, add its address in Coach profile → “Your practice website”. It appears on your public profile as a “Visit their practice website” link, so clients can see your existing business without leaving Mindlab. Linking your site is free and does not require a paid plan — a paid plan is what unlocks the Mindlab tools themselves (scheduling, messaging at scale, Coach Intelligence).

Add your social links

The Social links section of your profile editor accepts Instagram, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. Fill in only the ones you use — each populated field renders as a labelled icon button on your public profile, and empty fields are hidden entirely. Use full URLs (https://…) so the links resolve correctly.

Listing visibility and self-publishing

Your profile page has a Listing visibility switch. Published puts you in the directory and the homepage feed; Draft hides you from clients immediately without touching confirmed bookings, your subscription, or your earnings history. Flip it back on whenever you are taking clients again.

You can publish yourself as soon as your listing meets the readiness rules — headshot, headline, biography, at least one genre, a rate and a time zone. If the Publish control is disabled, the checklist on your dashboard shows exactly which field is missing.

Edit any time

Dashboard → Coach profile lets you edit every field, reorder offerings, add or remove genres, and preview your public page before saving. Material edits may go back through review depending on the current approval setting.

Set your working pattern

In Availability settings, define your working days, the time slots inside each day, your time zone, session buffer, and minimum notice. Clients can only request times that satisfy every one of those rules, so this is the single most important setting for protecting your calendar.

Connect Google or Outlook

Connect your own calendar so the Platform can read busy blocks and write session events. Existing events never leak details to clients — only busy/free is used. Disconnecting stops all future syncing immediately.

Time off

Add time-off ranges for holidays or travel. Slots inside a time-off range disappear from the client-facing picker instantly.

Choose your meeting tool

Pick auto-generated Google Meet links attached to the calendar event, or bring your own Zoom link. You can switch at any time after onboarding; the change applies to newly created sessions.

How a booking flows

A client picks a slot and submits a request. The slot is held on your calendar while the request is pending. You confirm or decline from Dashboard → Requests. Confirming writes the calendar event, sends a branded confirmation email with an “Add to calendar” invite to both sides, and schedules a 24-hour reminder. Declining or letting the hold expire releases the slot automatically.

Message threads

Every booking request opens a message thread pre-loaded with the session context. Threads are real-time. Keep the conversation on-Platform — it is your record if a dispute ever arises, and off-Platform solicitation breaches the Coach Services Agreement.

Request info leads

Visitors can send a “Request info” message from your public profile. You get an email and the lead is logged on your dashboard so nothing gets lost in an inbox.

Cancellations

Set your cancellation window (24 hours by default). Client cancellations inside your window are refunded automatically. Cancellations you initiate always refund the client in full and notify them by email with an updated calendar event.

Link your payout account

Dashboard → Payouts walks you through connected-account onboarding: identity verification and bank details, handled by our payment processor. You cannot receive funds until verification is complete, so do this before your first booking. The page opens with a step-by-step guide covering every requirement — legal name and date of birth, government ID, business or sole-trader details, bank account, and the statement descriptor — before you click through to the processor.

Payout readiness and reminders

Your payout status page breaks readiness into identity, bank details and capabilities, and shows the last event we received from the payment processor for your account, so you can see exactly where onboarding stalled.

If you have not finished onboarding, the Platform emails you periodic reminders. The Payout reminders page shows whether the latest reminder was sent, when the next retry is scheduled, and any delivery failure. You also get in-app notifications when that status changes. Administrators can trigger a manual resend if a send fails.

Escrow and release

Client payment is captured at booking and held. When the session is marked complete, the net amount — session price less the platform service fee — is credited to your earnings ledger and becomes eligible for transfer.

Earnings ledger and reports

Every credit, refund, fee and transfer appears in your earnings ledger with a date and a booking reference. Export it for your bookkeeper. Dashboard → Payouts also shows your verification status, next eligible transfer, and payout history. You are responsible for your own taxes; the Platform does not withhold on your behalf.

Donated sessions and acknowledgements

You can discount any session or offering to $0 as a donated session, either as a standing option on your profile or inside an active campaign. No payment is captured, no platform fee is charged, and the session runs exactly like a paid one. The client receives an acknowledgement document recording the donated professional time and the fair value you stated, available under Receipts.

An acknowledgement is not a cash-donation receipt and is not tax advice — contributed services are often not deductible. Say so plainly if a client asks, and point them to their own adviser.

Your subscription

Your practice tier (Free, Pro or Elite) is billed monthly or annually — annual is two months free — and your tier sets your commission rate, which is displayed on your own profile. Upgrades apply immediately and prorate; downgrades apply at renewal. Promotional codes can waive some or all of the fee for a period, after which the plan renews at the standard price. If a renewal payment fails you enter a grace period with an in-app banner and email reminders before anything is suspended.

How ratings work

Clients leave a 1–5 star rating with written feedback after a completed session. Your profile shows the average and the individual reviews, sortable by newest or highest-rated.

Visibility controls

You can hide the review section on your profile entirely, or hide individual reviews. Hidden reviews are invisible to visitors but remain visible to you and to platform administrators. Visibility controls exist for context and fairness, not for hiding a pattern — administrators may override a hide that would materially mislead clients.

Reporting abuse

Anyone can report a review. Reports go to the admin queue, where a moderator can hide or remove the review. Do not respond to an abusive review in public — report it.

Publishing resources

Publish articles, worksheets and recordings to the content library. You choose whether an item is free, members-only, or restricted to a paid tier. Library items are a strong lead source — clients who read your material book at a much higher rate.

Licensing

You keep ownership of everything you publish and grant the Platform a license to host and display it. Clients receive a personal, non-commercial license to view it — redistribution is prohibited.

Connect with another coach

Dashboard → Coach network. Search the directory, send a connection request, and the other coach accepts or declines. Connections are mutual — nothing appears publicly until both sides agree. Accepted connections show as a “Works with” strip on each of your profiles, which is a natural referral path when an enquiry is outside your scope.

Create or join a team

A team is a named group with its own description. The coach who creates it is the lead and manages the roster; you can only invite coaches you are already connected to. Teams start as a draft, so you can build the roster privately and publish when you are ready. Any member can leave a team at any time.

Build a joint offering

Dashboard → Joint offerings. Attach an offering to a team, add the collaborating coaches, and set each coach's revenue share. Shares must total exactly 100% — the Platform will not save an offering that does not balance. Joint offerings appear on every collaborator's profile with a joint-session label and the names of the coaches involved.

• Only accepted team members can be added as collaborators.
• One coach owns the booking and the calendar hold; the others are paid from the split.
• Set custom pricing on the offering itself — a joint session does not have to equal the sum of individual rates.

How a split gets paid

When a client pays for a joint offering, the escrowed amount and the platform fee are divided by your agreed shares and posted as separate lines in each coach's earnings ledger. Each coach is paid out to their own connected payout account on the normal schedule. Refunds reverse every line of the split together, so no one is left holding a share of a refunded session.

Merge sessions into a team event

On a joint offering you can switch booking mode to “team event”. A team event is booked once and held on every collaborating coach's calendar at the same time, so nobody double-books. Pick a lead coach whose availability drives the offered slots, and use the shared booking notes to tell clients who attends, how the time is split, and what to prepare.

Referral links and attribution

Dashboard → Referral links. Create a code for each partner or campaign and share the short link. When someone lands through it and later signs up, the signup is attributed to you, and their first purchases are credited as conversions. Referral analytics shows clicks, signups, conversions and attributed revenue per code.

• A coach cannot refer themselves, and the first code a person arrives with wins.
• If a booking is refunded, or a subscription is canceled or charged back, the matching conversion is reversed automatically and shown separately as reversed credit.
• Deactivate a code instead of deleting it when you want to keep its history.

Approvals, alerts and etiquette

Every connection request, team invitation and joint offering publication is written to the approval activity log on your dashboard, with who acted and when — so both sides have the same history. Choose whether connection, offering and referral alerts reach you in-app, by email, both or neither under Email preferences → Network alerts.

Agree the split in writing before you publish, and revisit it if the balance of work changes. Do not add a coach as a collaborator who is not genuinely delivering part of the engagement — misrepresenting who delivers a session breaches the Terms and can suspend the offering.

Goals, assessments and check-ins

From a client record you can set goals, send short assessments, and schedule check-ins between sessions. Responses build a timeline you and the client can both see, and feed the progress report you can share or export.

Session notes and visibility

Every note carries a visibility setting. Private notes are your own practice record and are never shown to the client; shared notes appear in the client's progress view. Choose deliberately — a note marked shared cannot be un-seen once the client has read it.

Organisations and sponsored seats

Where an employer sponsors a client's membership or credits, the sponsor sees seat status and utilisation only — never your notes, messages or session content. Bill and deliver exactly as you would for an individual client.

Awareness campaigns

The Platform runs admin-controlled awareness campaigns — for example Breast Cancer Awareness Month each October — which change site theming and surface participating coaches. You can opt in by offering donated sessions or pledging a share of proceeds during the campaign window; participation is shown on your profile.

Promotional codes

Admins issue codes that waive or discount coach subscription fees for a set period, including founding-member offers. Codes are tied to your account, are not transferable, and the plan renews at the standard price when the promotional period ends.

Referral links

Your referral link attributes new coaches and clients you bring in. Attribution is recorded at signup and visible from your dashboard.

Discounts applied by an administrator

Administrators can apply approved subscription and commission discounts to your account. When one is active you will see the reduced subscription price at your next renewal and, where applicable, a lower commission rate on your profile billing card. Discount changes are recorded with a date so both sides can see what was applied and when.

Being featured on the homepage

The homepage hero runs a featured coach carousel curated by administrators. Complete, published profiles with a strong headshot and clear offerings are what get selected, and impressions and click-throughs on each featured slot are tracked so the rotation stays honest.

Get a suggested band

During onboarding, and any time afterwards from Coach profile, the rate assistant proposes a rate band based on your genres, experience level, location and format. It explains the reasoning so you can judge whether it fits your market.

Chat it through

Open the assistant chat to test scenarios — packages versus single sessions, introductory pricing, or moving upmarket. It responds in real time and never changes your published rate on its own.

Adjust later, whenever you like

Edit your base hourly rate at any time from your authenticated coach profile, and set per-offering prices independently. Existing confirmed bookings keep the price the client agreed to; new bookings use the new rate.

Your client workspace

The Clients hub holds your roster and a detail page per client with their coaching record, session history, goals and documents. Everything here is scoped to you: no other coach can read, search, export or generate AI content from your clients or files, and direct navigation to another coach's client pages is refused.

Session notes and templates

Write notes against each session using structured templates, or free-form. Note assistance can tidy, summarise or expand what you wrote, and you always review before saving. Visibility is per note — private stays your practice record, shared appears in the client's progress view.

AI session prep

Before a session, generate a prep brief that pulls together the client's goals, recent notes and check-in responses into talking points and suggested next steps. Prep briefs, trends and next actions also surface in the Insights card on your coach console.

Document imports

Upload intake forms, assessments or prior notes to a client record. Imported documents are parsed into the client's history so prep and note assistance can use them. Only upload material you are permitted to hold, and tell your client what you keep.

Who has access

Coach access requires two things at once: video production enabled on your account by an administrator, and an active Coach Elite entitlement. If either lapses, the studio locks and your existing projects are preserved.

Record with the teleprompter

Write or generate a script, then record in the browser or on your phone with the built-in teleprompter — adjustable speed, font size and mirroring. Retake as often as you like before you commit a take to the project.

Jobs, progress and retries

Rendering and transcription run as jobs with a per-project status page: live progress, error detail if something fails, one-click retry, and cancellation. Jobs that stall are reaped automatically rather than hanging forever.

Branding QA before you finalise

The branding validator lists exactly which logo, URL, call to action and end-card assets were applied. Finalisation is blocked if a required brand field is missing or does not match — this is deliberate, so nothing goes out unbranded.

Export or upload a finished cut

Export the project assets for editing in your own tool, then bring the finished file back into the same project with Upload finished video, so the final cut lives alongside its script, takes and branding record.

Navigate on desktop and mobile

Desktop: sign in, then use Learning and Beta Lab in the top navigation. My Learning is also in the signed-in navigation. These links are in the header, not dashboard cards.

Mobile: open the menu. Content appears near the top; My Learning, Messages, Calendar and Account follow; Clients, Video Studio, Learning and Beta Lab appear farther down. Beta Lab shows only modules your exact active entitlement permits.

Expertise Profile

Coming Soon — currently available only to invited beta testers

Private beta only. From Beta Lab, select Expertise Profile, then review confirmed facts and optional discovery answers. Save only truthful expertise information; nothing here publishes or shares it.

Learning Studio

Coming Soon — currently available only to invited beta testers

Private beta only. From Learning, create or choose a Brief, Class, Course or Series; organize modules and lessons; add authored lesson material; and use private preview. Building does not grant publishing, listing, selling or public release.

Course Architect AI

Coming Soon — currently available only to invited beta testers

Private beta only. From Beta Lab, select Course Architect, choose one of your products, review credits and jobs, chat about curriculum, then review a proposal before applying it. AI generation remains unavailable whenever its platform gate is off.

Publishing and Storefront Preview

Coming Soon — currently available only to invited beta testers

Private beta only. Choose your own product to rehearse its storefront and profile Learning Library presentation. The preview is read-only: it cannot publish, list, index, enroll or charge anyone.

Learner Journey

Coming Soon — currently available only to invited beta testers

Private beta only. Choose your own course and create private self-access, then test curriculum, lessons, progress, completion and certificate rules. No checkout or public enrollment is opened.

Marketplace, Search and SEO

Coming Soon — currently available only to invited beta testers

Private beta only. Search your own non-archived products and inspect result and SEO previews. The page reports real marketplace and publishing gate states; no item is listed or indexed by the preview.

Series, Reviews, Analytics and Downgrade

Coming Soon — currently available only to invited beta testers

Private beta only. Select a Series to inspect organization and owner-only analytics. Review behavior follows verified learner rules. The downgrade preview explains what would become draft if plan eligibility lapses; products, enrollments and certificates are preserved.

Creative, Marketing and Video

Coming Soon — currently available only to invited beta testers

Private beta only. Select a product to inspect its creative brief, Marketing source preview, improvement suggestions and lesson video links. Recording or upload uses the existing Video Studio and all its plan, production and release gates.

• HeyGen is optional per relevant beta module. Accept or decline without losing module access, instructions or feedback.
• If accepted and separately enabled, connect your own HeyGen account from Account → Integrations by signing in at HeyGen — there is nothing to copy or paste into Mindlab. Videos use your HeyGen account and credits, and your HeyGen subscription and usage are governed by HeyGen.
• After every module test, return to its Beta Lab page and enter feedback in that module's Beta feedback panel.

Screenshot references

Screenshot pending controlled beta capture. No safe entitled coach/client capture identity was available for truthful desktop and mobile screenshots in this revision; no mock or fabricated image has been substituted.

Stay inside your scope

Coaching on this Platform is educational and developmental. It is not therapy, medical care, or licensed professional advice. Refer out when a client's needs exceed your scope, and be explicit with clients about what you do and do not provide.

Insurance and credentials

Keep your licenses current and carry professional liability insurance of at least $1,000,000 USD per occurrence. We may ask for a certificate of insurance.

Email preferences

Dashboard → Email preferences controls which notification categories reach you. Network alerts — connections and teams, joint offerings, and referrals — can be set to in-app, email, both or off, independently of each other. Transactional messages tied to a live booking always send, because they are operationally necessary.

Getting help

Email support@mindlabcoaches.com for product issues, legal@mindlabcoaches.com for agreements and enforcement, and privacy@mindlabcoaches.com for data requests.