How to give Michelle better coaching context

Michelle gives you better answers when she knows more about you. If her suggestions feel generic, her drafted messages miss your voice, or her recommendations don't quite fit your niche — the fix is almost always the same: give her more context. This guide walks you through every lever you can pull to make Michelle, Coachful's built-in AI assistant, feel less like a chatbot and more like a co-pilot who actually knows your coaching business.

What "context" means for Michelle

Michelle is an AI co-pilot that lives inside your Coachful coach dashboard. She can answer questions, draft content, help you build programs, suggest session notes, and execute actions across the platform — but her output quality is directly proportional to the quality of information she has access to.

Context falls into two broad buckets:

• Static context — who you are, your niche, your coaching philosophy, your ideal client, your brand voice. This is set once and updated occasionally.
• Dynamic context — the specific client, program, or task you're working on right now. This is supplied in the moment, either automatically by the platform or manually in your prompts.

Getting both buckets right is what takes Michelle from "pretty useful" to "I can't coach without her."

TL;DR — Quick answer

• Fill out your Coach Profile fully — niche, bio, methodology, ideal client avatar.
• Write a Michelle Context Note in your dashboard settings: a short brief about your coaching style, tone, and business model.
• When chatting with Michelle, open with role + goal ("I'm a career coach helping senior engineers become managers. Help me write…").
• Reference specific Coachful objects by name: your program title, client name, squad name, or offer name so Michelle can pull real data.
• Correct her once, clearly — she adapts within the conversation and remembers patterns you reinforce over time.

Step 1 — Complete your Coach Profile

Your Coach Profile is the single most impactful thing you can do for Michelle's output quality. She reads your profile before every interaction to understand who you are and what you do.

1. Go to Dashboard → Settings → Profile.
2. Fill in your coaching niche (e.g., "executive leadership coaching for first-time VPs in tech").
3. Write a bio paragraph that explains your methodology — not just your credentials. Mention frameworks you use (e.g., GROW model, positive psychology, somatic coaching).
4. Add your ideal client description. The more specific the better: "B2B SaaS founders, 2-10 person team, pre-Series A, struggling with hiring their first executive" is far more useful than "entrepreneurs."
5. Set your tone preference — warm and conversational, direct and data-driven, motivational, etc. This shapes how Michelle drafts emails, program content, and session notes on your behalf.

Coaches who complete all five profile fields consistently report that Michelle's first drafts need far fewer edits. Think of the profile as a style guide Michelle consults every time she writes something for you.

Step 2 — Write a Michelle Context Note

Your Michelle Context Note is a plain-text brief — think of it as a short onboarding doc you'd give a new assistant. It lives in Dashboard → Settings → AI Assistant → Context Note.

A strong context note covers:

• Your business model — 1:1 coaching, group programs, cohort cohorts, digital courses, hybrid?
• Your signature program — name, duration, key outcomes. E.g., "My flagship is a 12-week program called 'Executive Edge' for new VPs. Clients go from overwhelmed to confident leaders who retain top engineers."
• Words and phrases you love — and words you hate. If you never say "hustle" or "crush it," tell Michelle now.
• Your client communication style — do you use casual language in the chat? Formal language in emails? Different voices for different channels?
• Off-limits content — topics, advice, or framing you never want Michelle to suggest (e.g., "I don't give financial advice" or "I don't recommend journaling as a standalone tool").

Pro tip: Paste in a sample of your best-performing email, program welcome message, or social post. Tell Michelle: "This is an example of my voice at its best. Match this tone in everything you write for me." A concrete example outperforms any abstract description.

Step 3 — Reference Coachful objects by name in your prompts

Michelle is deeply integrated with your Coachful workspace. When you mention a specific program, client, squad, or offer by its exact name, she can pull live data from that object — enrollment numbers, task completion rates, upcoming sessions, outstanding payments, and more.

Compare these two prompts:

• Weak: "Write a check-in message for my client."
• Strong: "Write a check-in message for Alex Chen, who is in Week 4 of my 'Executive Edge' program and has completed 2 of 3 tasks this week."

The second prompt gives Michelle a named client, a named program, a specific week, and a completion metric. She can personalize the message in a way that feels genuinely tailored — not templated.

You can reference:

• Program names — Michelle can summarize progress, identify at-risk clients, or draft module content.
• Squad names — she can draft a group announcement or suggest an engagement activity for a specific cohort squad or community squad.
• Client names — she can pull session history context and draft session prep notes.
• Offer names — she can help you write sales copy or a follow-up sequence for a specific pricing tier.

Already using Coachful to run your programs, bookings, and client messaging? Sign in to your workspace and open Michelle from the dashboard sidebar to put these tips into practice right now.

Step 4 — Structure your in-conversation prompts for maximum clarity

Even with perfect profile setup, the way you phrase an individual request matters. The formula that consistently produces the best results is:

1. Role: Remind Michelle of your coaching context if the task is outside your usual work. ("I'm running a 6-week group fitness coaching program…")
2. Goal: State the specific outcome you need. ("…write a Week 3 welcome message…")
3. Audience: Describe who will read or use the output. ("…for a cohort of 12 mid-career women returning to the workforce after a career break.")
4. Constraints: Add length, tone, format, or off-limits requirements. ("Keep it under 150 words. Warm but professional. Don't mention the word 'hustle'.")
5. Example (optional but powerful): Paste a sample of what good looks like.

You don't need all five elements for every prompt — a quick question to Michelle doesn't need a full brief. But for anything creative or strategic, this structure pays off immediately.

Step 5 — Use Michelle iteratively, not just once

A single prompt rarely produces a final output. Michelle is designed for back-and-forth conversation. Give her a first draft, then refine with follow-up instructions:

• "Make the second paragraph more empathetic."
• "Add a specific call-to-action to book a session."
• "Rewrite this in bullet points for the squad message board."
• "That's the right tone — now apply it to a 5-email welcome sequence."

Each correction you give within a conversation is registered as context for that session. Michelle uses your feedback to calibrate her subsequent outputs — so the longer a focused conversation runs, the better her suggestions get.

Best practices for ongoing context quality

Audit your Context Note quarterly

Your coaching business evolves. If you launch a new signature program, add a new niche, or change your pricing model, update your Context Note within the same week. Stale context produces stale outputs. A quarterly review — set a recurring task in your own Coachful program if you like — keeps Michelle sharp year-round.

Use Michelle to help Michelle

Ask Michelle to write her own context note based on a conversation you've had with her. Start a chat, describe your business out loud as if you were pitching it to a stranger, then ask: "Based on everything I've just told you, draft a context note I can save to my settings." Edit the result and paste it into your AI Assistant settings. This is faster than writing a note from scratch and often surfaces context you hadn't thought to include.

Match context to task type

Different tasks benefit from different context emphasis:

• Program content creation: Emphasize your methodology, learning outcomes, and client transformation arc.
• Client messaging: Emphasize tone, the specific client's situation, and where they are in the program.
• Sales copy for offers: Emphasize your ideal client's pain points, the transformation you deliver, and your pricing philosophy.
• Admin tasks (session notes, scheduling drafts): Keep it brief — Michelle handles these well with minimal context once your profile is complete.

Troubleshooting — when Michelle still misses the mark

Her tone feels too formal (or too casual)

Your tone preference in the profile may be set too broadly. Go back to Settings → Profile and add a specific example sentence in the tone field rather than a single adjective. "Write like this: 'Hey Alex — great work this week. Let's dig into what made Task 2 click'" is far more actionable than "casual."

She keeps suggesting things I've told her I don't do

This usually means the off-limits content is in your conversation history but not in your saved Context Note. Open Settings → AI Assistant → Context Note and add explicit exclusions. Michelle reads the Context Note on every new session; conversational memory doesn't persist across separate sessions the same way.

Her program content suggestions don't match my curriculum structure

Open the specific program first (Coach → Programs → [Your Program]), then start a Michelle chat from inside that program view. When you launch Michelle from within a program context, she loads the program's structure automatically — weeks, days, tasks, and existing content — rather than working from a blank slate.

She doesn't know my clients well enough

Michelle can access client data when you reference clients by name and are viewing their profile or program progress. If you want richer client context, make sure your client profiles include notes, goals, and any intake form responses. The more structured data you store in Coachful, the more Michelle has to work with.

Her drafted emails sound like me, but the subject lines don't

Subject lines have their own conventions — curiosity gaps, personalization tokens, brevity. Add a line to your Context Note specifically about email subject line style: "Subject lines should be under 7 words, no emojis, and lead with a question or a number."

She gives the same suggestions every time I ask a similar question

You're likely hitting a pattern where your prompt is too similar to previous prompts. Try explicitly asking for variety: "Give me 5 different angles, none of which are variations on accountability." Breaking the pattern in your prompt breaks the pattern in her output.

Ready to get more from Michelle?

Michelle is only as powerful as the context she has to work with — and now you know exactly how to give her what she needs. Start with your Coach Profile and Context Note today, and you'll notice the difference in your very next conversation. Over time, as Michelle learns your voice, your programs, and your clients, the time you save on drafting, planning, and admin compounds fast.

If you're not yet using Coachful, Michelle is just one part of an all-in-one platform built for serious coaches — with structured programs, built-in scheduling, Stripe payments, group squads, and a drag-and-drop website builder all in one place. Start your free trial at Coachful and put Michelle to work for your coaching business today. Already a member? Sign in to your workspace and open Michelle from the sidebar right now.

For more guides on getting the most from Michelle, browse the Michelle documentation or explore the full Coachful Help Center.