The Rudder Terms

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Terms of Service

10 September 2026Effective
10 September 2026Last updated

These terms govern your use of every website, program, platform, and product operated by The Rudder and Coach Lamar Pinson — The Protocol, Wise Counsel, The Crowned Retreat, books and written work, the podcast, and anything else we publish or sell.

01Agreement to these terms

These Terms of Service govern your use of the websites, programs, platforms, materials, and services operated by The Rudder, a single-member limited liability company organised in the State of Georgia, United States, through which Lamar Pinson trades (“we”, “us”, “our”).

By visiting our sites, applying to a program, buying anything from us, or taking part in any program or community we run, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree to them, do not use our services.

Read these alongside our Privacy Policy, Refund Policy, and Disclaimer. Together they form the agreement between us.

02Who may use our services

Our programs are for adults. You must be at least 18 years old to apply, purchase, or participate, and by doing any of those things you represent that you are.

You must give us accurate information when you apply and when you buy, and you must keep it current. Admission to a program is at our discretion and we may decline any application without giving a reason.

03The agreements that govern your program

When you are accepted into a program you sign a separate participant agreement covering the specifics of that program — its dates, its price, what is included, and what is expected of you.

Where that agreement says something different from these terms, the participant agreement wins for that program. These terms fill the gaps and govern everything else, including your use of our sites and materials.

04Applications and admission

  • Applying is not buying. Submitting an application does not reserve a place, create a contract, or oblige us to accept you.
  • We assess fit. Places are limited and we decline men we do not believe the program will serve. That is not a judgement of you; it is a judgement about the work.
  • Your place is yours. A place in a cohort or retreat cannot be sold, given, or transferred to another man without our written agreement.

05Payment

  • Prices are shown in United States dollars and are exclusive of any tax that applies where you live, which is yours to pay.
  • Payment in full or in instalments. Where you pay in instalments, each is due on the schedule set out at checkout and you authorise us to charge your payment method on those dates.
  • Financing. Affirm, Klarna, and Afterpay are independent companies. Using one creates a separate agreement between you and them on their terms.
  • Missed payments. If a payment fails we may retry it, suspend your access while the account is in arrears, and recover reasonable costs of collection. Suspension does not reduce what you owe.
  • Refunds. All sales are final, subject to the narrow exceptions in the Refund Policy.

06Your account and the platform

Programs are delivered through a private platform and, in some cases, a private group chat. Your access is personal to you.

  • Keep your login details secure and do not share them. You are responsible for what happens under your account.
  • Do not give another person access to program materials, recordings, or the community, whether by sharing an account or by passing material on.
  • Tell us at once if you believe your account has been used by someone else.

07How you must conduct yourself

The room only works if every man in it can be honest. That requires a standard, and it is enforced.

You will not:

  • harass, threaten, demean, or abuse another participant, or conduct yourself toward anyone in a way that would make a reasonable man reluctant to speak;
  • share, record, screenshot, quote, or repeat outside the group anything another participant says inside it;
  • use the community to sell, recruit, solicit, advertise, or promote anything without our written permission;
  • impersonate anyone, misrepresent your affiliation with us, or hold yourself out as coaching on our behalf;
  • post anything unlawful, defamatory, obscene, or infringing of anyone’s rights;
  • upload malicious code, attempt to gain unauthorised access to our systems or another man’s account, scrape our sites, or interfere with how our services run;
  • use our materials, in whole or in part, to build or deliver a competing program.

Breaking these rules ends your access without refund and does not end your payment obligation. Breaking the confidentiality of another man ends it immediately.

08Confidentiality

What is said in a group session, on a call, or in a private community stays there. This is not a formality. Men speak about marriages, failures, money, and faith on the understanding that it will not travel, and that understanding is the reason the work is possible at all.

You agree to keep confidential everything you learn about another participant through your program, during it and after it ends. This obligation survives the end of your participation and has no expiry.

It does not prevent you from talking about your own experience, your own progress, or what you personally learned.

09Recording

Coaching sessions are recorded and transcribed. You are told before recording begins and the notice stands on the program platform. Recordings are used to produce your recaps, to keep an accurate record, and to make sessions available to you to revisit. Section 04 of the Privacy Policy sets out the detail.

You may not record, screenshot, or otherwise capture any session, call, or community exchange yourself, or distribute any recording we provide you.

10Our intellectual property

Our sites, program materials, frameworks, recordings, written work, brand names, and marks belong to us or to those who licensed them to us, and are protected by copyright, trademark, and other law.

While your program is active, we grant you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to access and use the materials for your own development. That is the whole of the licence.

You may not copy, republish, resell, distribute, translate, adapt, or make derivative works from our materials, or use them to teach, coach, or train anyone else, without our written permission. You may print or download a copy for your own use, keeping all notices intact.

11What you post and share with us

You keep ownership of everything you write, record, or share with us — your posts, your check-ins, your journal work, your messages, and any testimonial you give.

We do not take ownership of your words. We ask for permission to use them, specifically, when we want to. Anything you share stays yours.

  • Inside the program. By posting in a community or platform we run, you give us permission to host, store, and display that content there, so the platform can function. Nothing more.
  • Public use. To publish anything of yours — a quote, a photograph, a video, a result — we ask you separately and specifically, and you may say no without it affecting anything. Section 07 of the Privacy Policy sets out how that works, including your right to withdraw it later.
  • What you warrant. That what you post is yours to post, that it does not infringe anyone’s rights, and that you have the permission of anyone else who appears in it.
  • What we may remove. We may remove anything posted in our communities that breaks section 07, and we are not obliged to host or display anything.

12Feedback

If you send us a suggestion about how to improve a program or a product, we may use it freely and without obligation to you. This applies to ideas about our business, not to your personal content, which section 11 covers.

13Copyright complaints

If you believe material on our sites infringes your copyright, write to contact@coachlamarpinson.com with Copyright in the subject line. Identify the work, identify what you say infringes it and where it sits, give us your contact details, and include a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorised and that your notice is accurate.

We will investigate and remove material where a complaint is well founded. We may also terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

14Third-party services and links

Our sites and programs rely on services run by other companies, and link to material we do not control. We are not responsible for those services or that material, and a link is not an endorsement. Where a third party’s service fails, we will do what we reasonably can to keep your program running, but their performance is not something we can guarantee.

15No warranties

Our sites, materials, and services are provided as they are and as they are available. To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that our sites will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free of harmful components, or that any particular outcome will follow from any program. What the programs are and are not is set out plainly in the Disclaimer, and you should read it before you apply.

16Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost opportunity, or lost data, arising out of your use of our sites, materials, or programs — even if we were told such damages were possible.

Where we are found liable despite the above, our total liability to you for all claims is limited to the amount you actually paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose.

Some states do not allow certain exclusions or limitations. Where that is so, they do not apply to you and our liability is limited to the fullest extent that state permits. Nothing here excludes liability for fraud, for wilful misconduct, or for anything that cannot lawfully be excluded.

17Indemnity

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless The Rudder, Lamar Pinson, and anyone working with us, against any claim, loss, damage, or reasonable legal cost arising from your breach of these terms, your breach of another participant’s confidentiality, your misuse of our materials, or anything unlawful you do through our services.

18Suspension and termination

We may suspend or end your access to any site, platform, community, or program at any time where you breach these terms or your participant agreement, where your account is in arrears, or where your conduct puts another participant at risk.

Termination for breach does not entitle you to a refund and does not end what you owe. Sections covering confidentiality, intellectual property, indemnity, limitation of liability, and dispute resolution survive the end of your access.

19Changes

We may change our programs, our platforms, and these terms. Where we change these terms we will update the date at the top of this page, and where a change materially affects your rights we will tell you directly rather than rely on you noticing.

Continuing to use our services after a change means you accept it. A change to these terms does not alter the price or the substance of a program you have already paid for — that is governed by your participant agreement.

20Governing law

These terms, and any dispute arising out of them or out of your use of our services, are governed by the laws of the State of Georgia, United States, without regard to its conflict of laws rules.

21Resolving a dispute

Most problems are solved by a conversation, and we would rather have one than a filing.

  • Talk to us first. Before starting any formal proceeding, write to us at contact@coachlamarpinson.com setting out the problem and what you want. Both of us then have sixty days to resolve it in good faith. This step is required.
  • Then arbitration. If it is not resolved, the dispute is settled by binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, before a single arbitrator, seated in the State of Georgia or conducted remotely. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court with jurisdiction.
  • Small claims. Either of us may instead bring an individual claim in small claims court where it qualifies. Nothing above prevents that.
  • Injunctive relief. Either of us may go to court for an injunction to stop misuse of intellectual property or a breach of confidentiality, without waiting for arbitration.
  • Time limit. Any claim must be brought within one year of when it arose, unless the law of your state forbids shortening the period.

22Individual claims only

Any dispute between us is resolved on an individual basis. You may not bring a claim as a plaintiff or class member in a class, consolidated, or representative action, and the arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person’s claims or preside over any form of class or representative proceeding.

If this section is held unenforceable, the whole of section 21 falls away for that dispute and it is decided by a court in Georgia instead.

23General

  • Entire agreement. These terms, together with the Privacy Policy, Refund Policy, Disclaimer, and any participant agreement you have signed, are the whole of the agreement between us and replace anything said or written before.
  • Severability. If any provision is held unenforceable, it is severed and the rest stands.
  • No waiver. If we do not enforce a term on one occasion, we have not given up the right to enforce it later.
  • Assignment. You may not transfer your rights under these terms. We may transfer ours if the business is sold or reorganised.
  • Events outside our control. We are not liable for failing to perform where the cause is beyond our reasonable control — illness, natural events, war, government action, or the failure of a service we depend on. Where such an event prevents a program from running, the Refund Policy says what happens.
  • Notices. We contact you at the email address on your account; keep it current. You contact us at the address in section 24.
  • Headings. Section headings are for reading convenience and do not affect meaning.

24Contact

Write to contact@coachlamarpinson.com.

By post: The Rudder, 1450 Newnan Crossing Blvd E, Newnan, GA 30265, United States.