The chances are your first contract will be issued to someone you already know. It could be a friend or former colleague.
It can feel embarrassing getting all formal and issuing paperwork when everything else you ever agreed to do was done on a handshake (or even a quick exchange of emails).
But if you want to keep your friend a friend then you are both going to want to avoid misunderstandings. The quickest way to break a friendship is to have misunderstandings about money and work.
So how do you introduce a KoffeeKlatch contract to someone you already know (and may even be working with already?)
The first thing is to read the contract and make sure you understand it. Your friend is going to want to ask you questions and if you tell them things that aren’t true it is going to make them uneasy. So start by reading your agreement and highlighting things you don’t understand.
Go through the onboarding videos and see how many of those things you can now tick off as understood. For the rest go to our customer support group and ask.
When you are fairly sure you know what you are sending to them,you need to think about how it is going to feel for them to receive this document.
You don’t want to just email it to them and say – sign this.
That could feel a bit like a slap in the face.
Give them a reason why you need to get more formal.
Bonus Content – here’s what you can adapt to say to your friends
We must get a lot more formal about data handling and who does what. This seems like a good moment to send you our new agreement. It is designed to protect you and us, and set out a clear way of working.
Apart from data handling, it sets out all sorts of things from payment terms to confidentiality and copyright. In the age of AI we are all heading towards, it is so important to be clear about who or what is creating what and who owns it.
I wouldn’t want to damage our friendship by having any misunderstandings down the road. So let’s be sure we are on the same page.
Please read through the agreement. If anything does not reflect how we are already working or what seems natural going forward, please get back to me and ask questions.
The idea is that we have a proper agreement to go forward, so we can carry on happily without either of us having to worry too much about the legal.
Issuing contracts is not about whether you trust your friends and colleagues. It is about whether you both respect each other enough to protect yourselves from the predictable arguments and frustrations of working with people you’re close to.
Have a look at our growing range of terms of business (the contracts we have for you to issue to your customers). Just click here
