#229 - Why issuing your contract feels off
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Why Your Client Contracts Might Not Feel Quite Right
Have you ever sent out a client contract and felt that little flicker of unease? Not because you can point to one obvious problem, but because something about it just does not feel right. If that sounds familiar, you are absolutely not alone. I have had this conversation with so many business owners over the years, and the issue is usually the same. The contract does not feel clear, aligned, or fully theirs.
The real issue is usually clarity
When a contract feels uncertain, the root problem is often a lack of clarity. If you are sending out an agreement you do not fully understand, or one that does not properly reflect how your business actually works, that shows. And when there is a lack of clarity, confidence disappears quickly. Not just for you, but for the client reading it too.
A lot of business owners are working from agreements they pieced together from an old workplace template, borrowed from a mentor, or downloaded years ago and never properly updated. On paper, it might look fine. But if it does not match your process, your offer, your boundaries, and the way you deliver your services, it is going to feel off for a reason.
Your contract should reflect your business, not someone else’s
This is where tailored contracts matter so much. Even businesses in the same industry can operate completely differently. Your client journey, your scope, your payment structure, your communication style, your boundaries, all of that is unique to your business. So when someone says, “Just use my agreement, it will be fine,” the answer is usually no, it will not.
Your agreement should feel like a continuation of the client experience you have already created. It should sound like your business, support your process, and reinforce the professionalism your client has already bought into.
Misalignment creates friction
When your contracts are aligned with your business, they do more than protect you. They build trust. They create confidence. They help clients feel safe saying yes. But when there is a gap between what your contract says and how your business actually runs, that is when friction starts creeping in.
That might look like clients pushing back on invoices, feeling unclear on what is included, questioning boundaries, or disappearing altogether after work has been delivered. Often, the issue is not just the client. It is the documentation gap sitting quietly underneath the whole relationship.
If you do not feel proud sending it, pay attention
This is usually the simplest test. How do you feel when you send your agreement? If the answer is anything less than clear, confident, and proud, it is worth paying attention to. Because your contracts should not feel like a weak point in your business. They should feel like one of your strongest assets.
Take a proper look at where your agreement came from, whether it has been tailored properly, and whether it still reflects the business you run today. If not, it may be time to stop patching it up and start fresh.
Your legal documents should support growth
Client agreements are not meant to be intimidating documents that sit in the background collecting dust until something goes wrong. They are active business tools. They support conversion, delivery, boundaries, and trust. When they are done properly, they help your business run more smoothly and make it easier for the right clients to say yes.
So if your contracts have been feeling a bit off lately, trust that instinct. It is usually telling you something important. And fixing it is not just about legal protection. It is about making sure every part of your business feels as strong, clear, and professional as the work you actually deliver.
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Tracey: [00:00:00] If something doesn't feel quite right when you are issuing your client contracts, you're not alone. I have this conversation a lot with business owners who say to me, [00:01:00] something feels off. I've got some doubt. It feels uncertain, or I'm not quite sure. They talk to me about this feeling and the way that things don't feel quite right when they're issuing their client contracts.
That's part of the work I do. Welcome to today's episode of the podcast. Thank you for joining me. I'm gonna talk to you today about why it is that when you are issuing your client contracts, things just feel a bit off. Something doesn't feel quite right, and I'm drawing on so many conversations that I've had with business owners over the last seven years.
Around their contracts and the uncertainty that they have. We've just hit seven years in business in TM Legal Atelier, and I can't tell you how much joy it brings me to be able to say that, to be here doing the work that I love. Seven years in The conversations I have with business owners are very, very similar.
Business owners reach out to me and they say oh, not quite sure if they serve my business. I cobbled something together from a few things that I'd seen in my previous workplace.
A mentor gave me a copy of their agreement, or I [00:02:00] bought a template. There's a whole host of things that they say to me when they're explaining where their contracts have come from and why things aren't feeling quite right. The most common theme amongst all of these conversations that I've had over the years boils down to clarity and confidence.
There's a real lack of clarity in the documents, which means the business owners aren't confident. That's not how it's supposed to be. I wanna share more with you in this episode about what it's supposed to feel like and why things are feeling a bit off. If you're a longtime listener, you will know that I have a real passion for contracts and I love what I do, and I accept wholeheartedly that very few people feel that passionate or excited about the contracts, and I don't take any offense.
My backstory though, as to why this is such a passion area for me is my earlier career in litigation. So I spent the first 12 years of my career as a litigation lawyer. So I was in court most days acting for business owners who were either suing or being sued. Most of the time it was over money [00:03:00] mostly.
And whilst that part of my career was great and exciting and and fabulous for me as a young lawyer wanting to immerse herself in courtroom drama. It really wasn't like tv, I'm sorry to say, and it really was an exciting, intense, and stressful time for my career. But there was no excitement or joy or passion for the clients.
Most of what I saw back then could have been avoided, and it could have been avoided if the business owners had have had the right advice. Or the right documentation, but the right people around them because we don't know what we don't know, and none of those clients set out to end up in court. That's the truth So taking all of that experience, fast forward to now. Seven years into a business where I have flipped the script and I now work with business owners to set themselves up for success by providing the support and advice that they need and developing contracts that work.
A part of developing contracts. That work is tailoring and it's tailoring to the business. It's taking [00:04:00] the time to understand a business and a business owner and what's important to them and what they do and how they do it I can say with absolute certainty that no two businesses are the same.
You might think that most interior design businesses will be the same, or most business coaches will operate in the same way, or most,
people in my industry do it like this. The reality is that's not the case. You might think that that's the case, but it's not because you don't have visibility over how someone operates internally, how they onboard their clients, how they deliver, what their processes are.
You don't, and you can't, so we can't assume that our business is the same as the next one or the next one, or the next one. So when someone in a good hearted moment or a gesture of goodwill says, here, use my agreement, it's fine. You can't assume that it's going to work for you the way it works for them, but you also can't assume that it's good or that it does all the things that it needs to, because unless you're a lawyer specializing in this, in which case you wouldn't be asking for their agreement or you wouldn't be accepting it if they offered.
You [00:05:00] don't know. And that's the thing, much like my litigation clients earlier in my career. We don't know what we don't know. So when somebody offers you these things, you take it with full faith that it will do all the things it needs to. You think the businesses are the same and you think it'll be okay, but as you go along.
Whether you've borrowed it from someone or got it from someone, or you've purchased a template or whatever it might be. As you go along, little things come up, the client pushes back on a clause, or the client suggests to you that they didn't expect to be charged for that, or they didn't realize your timeframes were set in stone, or they didn't know that that was a deadline.
That's of little things start happening and you start to think, oh, geez, I didn't know that. That wasn't in my agreement or was in my agreement or something like that. And doubt creeps in. And then you might find yourself in a situation where a team member is having a bad experience with a client because the client's frustrated because their expectations haven't been managed.
Or you've got a client who pushes back on invoices and says, oh, I'm not paying that. Didn't know I had to, you should have told me. Alright. And then you've got clients who [00:06:00] ghost you after you've completed the work and don't pay the final invoice. More and more of that starts happening over, time, which causes you to doubt, to doubt the documentation, to doubt your processes, to doubt yourself.
You wouldn't be alone if you're nodding along to this right now because this is a conversation I have so often with business owners and they reach out and they say something like, it doesn't feel right, something's not quite right, or I think it's okay. I'm not sure though, or. Geez, I've just issued a proposal to a really big client and I didn't feel great attaching my service agreement.
Those types of comments are comments that I hear fairly regularly given the work that I do, and the reason it doesn't feel quite right is because there's a lack of clarity in your documents, which has a flow on effect to a lack of confidence, both for you and for the client reading it.
That's why things feel off. It's pretty simple when you've got documentation that is a continuation of the touch points that that client has had with you. So whether they've seen you on social media, whether [00:07:00] they've been to your website, they've had a discovery call, whatever it might be, they've had some touch points with you before they get to the point of receiving your agreement.
When they're receiving an agreement that is a continuation of those touch points, both in terms of the language, the clarity, the branding, it feels good. It feels good for them because of that continuity, and they can have confidence in you because your documentation is a tool for building trust and credibility.
They receive the documentation, the proposal, the quote, the agreement, however it is that you. Issue your onboarding documents. They have confidence they can say yes to working with you with so much ease, and then you go forth, deliver beautiful services in a really aligned way. You operate the way you say you will in your documentation.
You've not just met client expectations, you've exceeded them. So when you off board, you've got a really happy client. You're likely going to have repeat work, you're going to have positive word of mouth, referrals, [00:08:00] reviews, all the things. That's how it should be. But that starts with the documentation.
Doing all of those things, being tailored for your business, understanding how you work, articulating your processes in a way that you operate. And so when you issue it, when you issue your documents, you feel confident. You feel really proud because you know this is how you roll. This is how I do what I say I'm gonna do, and this document reflects it.
Flip it. When you don't feel like that, it's because the document's not doing that. Simply put, the document doesn't do what it's supposed to do. If you are feeling not quite right, if you are feeling like something's off, that's because it is, and the documentation is not serving you. Because if done well, your client agreement or your design agreement, or your service agreement, whatever you call it, the documentation you have with your client.
Will be one of the most powerful tools you have in your business to convert prospects to clients, to set you up for success with delivery, to get you paid, to manage scope creep. So there's a really clear variation [00:09:00] process to get your clients all the way through to completion and to be really happy.
Expectations exceeded repeat work, positive word of mouth, all the things. That's how it happens. So when a client comes along and says to me, I don't feel right, something just feels a bit, mm, it's been okay. Haven't had any big issues yet, but oh, it's not feeling quite right. There's limitations there. And we have no way of knowing the extent of the reach of those limitations. How many prospects have said no because. They're not feeling right or they're not feeling confident in the agreement that you send, how many opportunities have you lost? Because the tool that's meant to be building trust and credibility being your client agreement isn't building that trust and credibility.
So people have ghosted, you fallen away, said no. How do we measure it? How many times have you not followed up with somebody? You didn't feel quite right issuing the agreement and the vibe wasn't there, so you lost your mojo and you didn't go any further How many times? All of these are really [00:10:00] unfortunate little moments of sadness in the business journey where we've got lost opportunities as business owners that we shouldn't have.
These can be avoided. They don't need to be there. They don't need to be part of the business experience for you. So let's flip it around. If I ask you, how do you feel when you send out your client agreements? If you answer anything other than really proud, confident, and clear, I reckon your agreements need another look.
Let's go to the next step then. Where did your agreements come from? How long have you had them? When were they updated? Were they tailored for you properly? Did you work with someone you trust to develop them? Do you know how to use them? What is your process and system around integration and implementation?
How do you issue them? We need to examine those things to then understand whether or not your documents need a refresh, a redo. A rebrand, a redraft, or whether they need to be redone altogether if we get the documentation right. Tailored for you consistent with how you operate on brand. The right message.
A [00:11:00] fabulous continuation of the touchpoints for the clients that you're talking to so that you are proud every time you send them out so that when you're sending them out, you are not feeling a bit off, you are not feeling a bit uncertain. you're feeling proud and confident every time that will come across to the client that confidence and clarity.
Makes its way to the client so the client can gain absolute confidence from the clarity in the documents. That's how we flip the script, and that's how we make sure that when you are issuing the documents, you feel really good every time. That's how it's supposed to be, in case you didn't know that's how it's supposed to be.
It's not supposed to be a, this is a legal contract. No one really feels good about them. No one really understands what's in them there. It'll be right. It is not supposed to be like that. So if that's you, that's a hard no. Now, you know it's supposed to be the opposite. Fresh, empowering, clear, and confident so that you are converting more prospects to clients [00:12:00] every time, and so that you are able to successfully deliver and exceed expectations so that you are facilitating and nurturing those relationships.
To achieve growth in your business, to achieve repeat work, positive word of mouth referrals, all the things, they're all the things we want as small business owners, and you can have them. I'm hoping that by listening to me talk about this, you've got a clearer understanding and or a clearer appreciation.
For just how powerful your client agreements can be when they're done well, and just how much of a powerful tool they should be in your business. They're an asset. Your client agreements are absolutely a business asset. So you need to treat them like one and make sure we've invested the time and the energy into getting them right, into setting them up into making sure that we have smooth processes and systems in place every time we issue it.
So nothing falls through the cracks. It becomes a rinse and repeat system so that the positive experience that your clients have every time [00:13:00] they receive your quote or your proposal and or your client service agreement, whatever that looks like for you. So that all of your clients have the same positive experience because you are clear and confident every time, which means by extension the clients can be.
I hope you can tell how much I'm loving recording this for you. This is a real passion area of mine and I love sharing this message with business owners so that more business owners know the power of the documents and why they are so important. They do so much more than protect you.
They absolutely do protect you if done well. Yes, but they do so much more than that, and I've loved sharing more about that with you in this episode. If you have friends, colleagues, business besties that you think will also appreciate hearing just how fabulous your documents can be and just how powerful a tool they can be for you and your business.
Please share the episode. I would be so grateful because together that's how we get the podcast into the years of even more business owners. As always, thank you so much for joining me. I'll catch you next time. [00:14:00]
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