You are a coach, and it is time to create your agreement with your client. You have gotten so much advice, seen so many templates, and are overwhelmed with figuring out what you are supposed to have in your coaching contract agreement. In this article, we will tell you exactly what you need to have in your agreement contracts and some items that would be nice to have.
Whether you are a life coach, business coach, health coach, or any other type of coach, these are the terms you want in your agreement.
- 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.
- Nice to have- This can be a short description of the type of coaching you do
- 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.
- The Coaching Relationship and Responsibilities: This should be a bulleted/otherwise list-form section that covers the following:
- Coaching Relationship Generally..
- Scope of Coaching.
- Scheduling, Payment and Assignments.
- Nice to have–Well-Being.
- Nice to have/depends on your services–Professional Relationship and Advice. This further defines the professional-client relationship, what coaching with you is designed to do, and what it is not designed to do.
- 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.
- Term and Termination. Here you will discuss how long your agreement lasts as well as your policies surrounding discontinuation of coaching.
- Compensation. You can reference a “fee schedule” in your Scope of Services or state your fees here.
- Confidentiality. This is where you tell your client that what she tells you and does with you is between you and her.
- Intellectual Property/License. This states that anything you create for this program is yours.
- Nice to have. Media Release.
- Nice to have- Disclaimers.
- Warranties. This is an ALL-CAPITALIZED SECTION basically stating that you are not making any express or implied warranties.
- Limits to liability. This section limits your liability, if any, to the amount of the contract, and no more.
- 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.
- Partial Invalidity. This is a clause that basically says if one clause is invalid, the other parts of the agreement are still valid
- Governing Law. This is important because your contract is governed by the law you want it to be governed.
There you have it. You may certainly have more than what is contained above, but these are the fundamentals to any solid coaching contract.
Now go and do what you love!
