The Work Agreement

What this document is

This is the agreement we sign before any work starts. It says what I am building for you, in plain words. It says what you can do with the result, and what I can say about it in public. Where your own numbers can show whether the work paid off, it also says exactly how we will judge that, before either of us knows the answer. It is signed by both parties, and neither party edits it afterwards.

The kind of work

A new site. [e.g. A new site for the practice, built before you pay]

The work itself

[e.g. A new website on your own domain and hosting, with the pages your customers need, a booking path that works on a phone, your Google Business Profile completed, and the follow-up that runs after an enquiry arrives.]

The one metric

[e.g. New booked appointments from new clients, counted in the practice booking system]

Why only one, and why this one

One main number, at the money end of your business. Not a dashboard of nine. The test we apply: you can log into your own system and count it, without any tool of mine in the way. The number is chosen because it matters to your decisions, never because it would look good published.

The baseline

[e.g. 38, 41, 35, 44 … per month over the last 12 months, from the booking system. Monthly counts listed in full]

Whose numbers count

Measurement uses your records, in your accounts, readable without me. Your Google Business Profile, your phone records, your booking or CRM system, your revenue. In that order of preference, ranked by trust rather than convenience. Never analytics I installed. Anything running on something I set up is my number, not yours, and grading my own work with my own instrument would reproduce the exact problem this document exists to solve.

The window

[e.g. The six months from launch, compared year over year to the same six months]

The comparison method

[e.g. Year over year, same window, which removes seasonality. Where history allows: organic and local channel segmentation, to isolate the surface that changed]

The confounder log

• [e.g. A second practitioner joins in March]
• [e.g. The competitor on Main Street has announced closure]

Why we log confounders now

A new hire, a competitor closing, a price change you have already planned. Things both of us can see coming that would move the number anyway. We write them down before the work starts, so the conversation afterwards is defensible instead of arguable, in both directions. Finding a new one later is allowed. Inventing one later to explain away an inconvenient result is what this log prevents.

The lift commitment

The monthly fee carries a performance term: a 15% year over year improvement in the agreed number, over the agreed window. At three months I produce a full measurement report against the baseline, with no fee consequence. At six months the test binds. If the lift is not shown, the monthly fee stops until it is. While the fee is paused, all the work continues, including hosting, maintenance and the ongoing distribution work, because that is the only way the lift arrives and the fee resumes. At twelve months, if the lift still has not been shown, we review together: continue, change the number, or part ways.

An honest note on the threshold

The 15% figure is a commercial commitment, not a statistical claim. For one business measured in monthly counts, a shift of this size cannot always be told apart from ordinary variation with statistical confidence. Anyone who tells you otherwise is overclaiming. I say it plainly here, because pretending the measurement is more certain than it is would be the very practice this document replaces. The commitment stands either way. If the number is not shown, the fee stops.

If the number comes back flat

If the number is flat at six months, the monthly fee pauses. Shei presents what he would change next, and does that work without a fee until the lift shows. Neither side treats a flat number as proof the work was bad before the confounder log is reviewed, in both directions. At twelve months, if the lift still has not been shown, both parties review together: continue, change the metric, or part ways.

What I may publish

Why I ask now

I ask at signature, with a name to use instead if you would rather not be named, because asking afterwards puts one of us in a negotiation the other controls. Agreeing now, either way, costs you nothing.

Changing your mind

You can withdraw this at any time, by telling me. Anything not yet published stays unpublished. Anything already on my site comes off it. My site reads your current answer every time a page loads, so a withdrawal takes effect straight away rather than waiting for me to get to it.

Document version

This agreement was produced from fixed template version 2.0.0, published at sheigoldberg.com/work-agreement. Acceptance records the version, so both parties can always establish exactly which terms were agreed.