Privacy Policy

Clayton David Wood (“we”, “us”) provides coaching services. This privacy policy explains what personal information we collect from clients and prospective clients, how we use it, who helps us process it, and the choices you have. We use CoachTide, a practice management platform, to run our practice, and this policy covers the information handled through it.

Information we collect

• Contact and identity details. Your name, email address, phone number, and time zone, plus any other contact details you give us (such as a mailing address). If someone else pays your invoices, we also keep their email address for billing.
• Intake and coaching information. Your answers to any intake questionnaire, your goals, the notes we keep from our sessions, commitments and action items, and any progress notes or measures we track together. This can include personal details you choose to share with us.
• What you add in your client portal. Your messages to us, the takeaways and reflections you write, and anything else you choose to add there.
• Scheduling information. The sessions you book, reschedule, cancel, and attend, and how you heard about us if you tell us when you book. If you reach our booking page through a link that names where it came from (for example a newsletter or social post), we note that place only if you book; visiting without booking does not record it.
• Billing and payment information. Invoices, amounts, and payment status. If you pay online, your payment is handled by our payment provider and we do not store your full card number.
• Communications and consent. The emails and portal messages we exchange with you, the text reminders we send you, and a record of the preferences and consent you set (for example, whether you have agreed to text reminders).
• Agreement signing details. When you sign a coaching agreement or another document online, we record your typed name, the date, and limited technical details (such as your network address and device) to confirm the signature.
• Feedback and testimonials. If you give us feedback or a testimonial, we keep your words and, for a testimonial, how you want your name to appear and where you agreed it may be shown. We show a testimonial only where you agreed, and you can withdraw it at any time.
• Testimonials left through our share link. If we share a public link for testimonials, anyone can use it, including people who are not our clients. When you leave a testimonial through it, we collect your email address (to confirm it is yours and to send you a link to withdraw your testimonial), your words, how you want your name to appear, and where you agreed it may be shown. As a record of your agreement we keep your network address and device details, as we do for a signed agreement. To limit misuse of the link we also keep a scrambled code (a salted hash) of your network address and of your email address, never either one in readable form, for 30 days. If you do not confirm your email address within 7 days, your testimonial is deleted and nobody sees it. Once confirmed, it is kept until you withdraw it or we delete it; the record of what you agreed to, and of any withdrawal, is kept as proof of your consent.

How we use your information

• To provide coaching and support the work we do together.
• To schedule sessions and send you confirmations, calendar invitations, and reminders.
• To keep session notes, track goals, and follow up between sessions.
• To send invoices and receipts and to process payments.
• To communicate with you and respond to your questions.
• To send you our newsletter, if you are on our mailing list.
• To meet our professional, legal, tax, and accounting obligations.

Your choices

Email and text reminders are optional. Text reminders are sent only if you agree to them, from a shared number that does not receive replies other than STOP and HELP. You can opt out of text reminders at any time by replying STOP, or ask us to stop sending reminder emails. Essential messages, such as your coaching agreement and your invoices, are always sent so we can work together. Our emails do not track whether you open them or click their links.

If we send a newsletter, every issue has a one-click unsubscribe link. If we added you to our mailing list because you are or were a client, we stop sending it two years after our work together ends (six months after you first got in touch, if we never worked together) unless you tell us you want to stay on the list.

AI help in your client portal

If your client portal offers AI help to put your reflections into words, using it is your choice. The AI is Claude, made by Anthropic, the AI provider of our practice management platform, and it runs in the United States. Only what you write in the helper and the name of the list it is for (with your name taken out of it) are sent, without your email or other account details, and only to suggest a few lines. Our practice management platform does not store what you write in the helper; only the lines you choose to keep are saved, on your list, where we can see them. What you write is not used to train AI models, and Anthropic does not keep it after answering, except where the law requires it or to investigate misuse. Anthropic does keep the results of its automated safety checks, which flag possible misuse.

Your client portal

You have a private client portal, set up using the email address we have for you. Depending on how we set it up and where we are in our work together, it shows things such as your sessions, invoices, documents, goals, and messages with us, and never anything about anyone else. There is no password: emails that lead into your portal carry a sign-in link that works once and for 72 hours. After you sign in, your device stays signed in for 30 days after your last visit, and never more than 180 days in all, unless you tell it you are on a shared computer, in which case you are signed out when you close your browser. The portal uses only the cookies it needs to keep you signed in, and no advertising or analytics cookies. You can sign out, or sign out of every device at once, from inside the portal. If someone else pays your invoices, they receive invoices and receipts only: never a way into your portal, and never anything about your coaching.

The takeaways you write in your portal are yours. You add, change, and remove them, and we can read them.

Saved cards and automatic payments

If you agree to a payment plan or a recurring fee, you may save a card so that our payment provider can charge the amounts you agreed to automatically on their scheduled dates. Your card is held securely by our payment provider: we see only the card brand and last four digits, never your full card number. You can stop future automatic charges at any time from your client portal, and you can ask us to update or remove your saved card. Stopping automatic charges does not cancel any amount you already owe. If we raise a per-session rate you agreed to, automatic charging pauses until you authorize the new rate.

Group coaching

If we run group or cohort programs, we keep your participation private. The other members are not told that you are in the group, and you are not shown who they are. You see only your own progress, your own attendance, the materials we choose to release to you, and the updates we post for the group. We hold the roster and decide what is shared with the group.

Who helps us process your information

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for advertising. We share it only with the trusted service providers we rely on to run our practice through CoachTide, and only so they can perform their service for us. Depending on the features we use, these may include:

• Secure hosting and a database (Supabase, where your records are stored, in Canada, and Vercel, which runs the app and your client portal on servers in Canada and delivers pages through its global network).
• An email delivery provider (Resend, to send confirmations, reminders, sign-in links, and invoices, and to match Interac e-Transfer notices to invoices if you pay that way).
• A payment processor (Stripe or PayPal, on our own account, if you pay online).
• A text-message provider (Twilio, if you agree to text reminders).
• Google, for our calendar (if we connect one, and if it sends you a calendar invitation it receives your email address) and for spam protection (reCAPTCHA) on our booking page and website forms.
• An AI provider (Anthropic, in the United States, only for the optional AI help in your client portal, and set so that what you send is not retained by it or used to train AI models).

CoachTide lists every service provider it uses, what each one handles, and where, at coachtide.com/subprocessors. If we meet by video, the video service (such as Zoom or Google Meet) handles the call under its own privacy policy; CoachTide stores only the meeting link. We may also disclose information if required by law, or to protect the rights and safety of you, us, or others.

Where your information is stored

Your records are stored in Canada, and the application servers of CoachTide, the practice management platform we use, run in Canada too. A few specialist services it relies on, like email delivery, card payments and AI help, process the specific information they need in the United States, and some also operate in other countries, so your information may be transmitted outside Canada in the course of providing our services. Every one is listed at coachtide.com/subprocessors. We handle your personal information in a manner consistent with applicable Canadian privacy law, including PIPEDA and British Columbia’s PIPA.

How long we keep it

We keep your information for as long as you are a client and afterward for as long as we reasonably need it for our records and to meet our professional, legal, tax, and accounting obligations. When information is deleted, it is removed from active systems and then from backups within a short recovery period. If you unsubscribe from our newsletter, mark it as spam, or ask us to delete your details from our mailing list, we keep only your email address, on a do-not-email record, so that we never add you back or email you again without a new sign-up from you.

Security

Your information is held in an access-controlled system and encrypted in transit and at rest. The database itself keeps each practice’s records separate, so no other practice can see yours. CoachTide requires two-step sign-in for coach accounts, so a password alone does not open your records. The keys that connect our payment and calendar accounts are encrypted a second time and kept in a separate vault. CoachTide has no tool that lets its staff sign in to our account or look inside our practice; its engineers can reach the database only to keep the service running, and they do not open client records to read them. No method of storage or transmission can be guaranteed perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information and to limit who can access it.

Your rights

You may ask to see the personal information we hold about you, to correct it, to receive a copy of it, or to have it deleted, and you may withdraw your consent to optional features at any time. Much of it you can already see in your client portal, and we can export a copy of your records for you. We will respond to your request as required by applicable law.

Children

Our services are intended for adults and are not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Changes to this policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. The current version is always the one posted on this page.

Contact us

If you have questions about this privacy policy or your information, or you want to exercise any of the choices above, contact Clayton David Wood at claytondavidwood@gmail.com.