The Ultimate Business Coaching Contract Guide

Who Needs This Guide?

If you are a business coach, thinking about being a business coach, or are expanding your business coaching services, this Guide is for you! 

Every entrepreneur needs a business coach. Entrepreneurs have special minds that need to be looked at from an objective, experienced business coach.

And every business coach needs a contract for every entrepreneur she helps. So what does a good business coaching template have

We get it, contracts get a bad rap as somehow being antagonistic, confrontational, and contentious.  Well, here is a myth buster: Your agreement can set the tone, expectation and rules of the coaching relationship in a positive way  that demonstrates you care about the coaching relationship. 

What Role Does Your Coaching Contract Play?

Since business has a wide range of objectives, tools and means of achieving goals, your agreement  should also reflect those tools and means of achieving goals.

Your Agreement also plays an important role in educating the client about what business coaching is (and is not) and what they can expect from the business coaching process. 

Essentially, a coaching agreement is  positive and organized way to delineate your services. 

Now you are ready to create your coaching agreement. 

These are the terms you want in your agreement:

1. The Parties. Is it your business and an individual? Your business and another business? You and an individual and another individual? This you will want up front.
2. Nice to have-Introduction. This can be a short description of the type of coaching you do
3. Services. Here, you can either refer your client to a Scope of Work that further defines your services, fees, and packages, or you can define your services here. 

We usually suggest a Scope of Work if you have different kinds of services.

1. 1. Scheduling. This is where you want to discuss how sessions are scheduled, by whom, what notice is needed for cancellation and rescheduling, and any other policies you may have surrounding scheduling. 
   2. Term and Termination. Here you will discuss how long your agreement lasts as well as your policies surrounding discontinuation of coaching.
   3. The Coaching Relationship and Responsibilities: This should be a bulleted/otherwise list-form section that covers the following:a. Coaching Relationship Generally.
      b. Scope of Coaching.
      c. Scheduling, Payment and Assignments. 
   4. Compensation. You can reference a “fee schedule” in your Scope of Services or state your fees here. 
   5. Confidentiality. This is where you tell your client that what she tells you and does with you is between you and her. 
   6. Intellectual Property/License. This states that anything you create for this program is yours. 
   7. Nice to have- Disclaimers. 
   8. Warranties. This is an ALL-CAPITALIZED SECTION basically stating that you are not making any express or implied warranties. 
   9. Limits to liability. This section limits your liability, if any, to the amount of the contract, and no more.
   10. Entire Agreement. This states that everything in the agreement, including any attachments, is the entirety of the agreement, and there is nothing floating out there. 
   11. Partial Invalidity. This is a clause that basically says if one clause is invalid, the other parts of the agreement are still valid
   12. Governing Law. This is important because your contract is governed by the law you want it to be governed.

Ready Set Coach

There you have it. You may certainly have more than what is contained above, but these are the fundamentals to any solid business coaching contract.

Now go and do what you love!