Asking for money from a team.

[jdford]

So here's an situation I haven't been in before and I'm looking for some insight and suggestions from fellow fitness pro's.

This summer I was offered a position as strength coach of a Junior 'A' hockey team; the whole thing happened in about 15 minute, including meeting the coach and him confirming with the owner.

Needless to say I was stoked, my first 'team'. The coach mentioned that when we both returned to our cities of residence we would get together with the GM and owner and discuss things and that "money would be involved".

Fast forward to now. I've been working with the team since late August and have yet to seriously talk money with anyone. I did briefly discuss it with the GM at the very beginning. It was a small part of a conversation where he said "is this something you're going to do for the experience and to say you did it and we can help you start a business or are you going to want to get paid?"

I clumsily explained that while it was great experience for me and what was most important for me was to do a good job and have a positive impact on the team; I did want to get paid. Since then we haven't talked money at all. No contract has been signed.

It's a pretty big time commitment and although I'm having a great time with it; I need to receive some sort of compensation at this point because school is expensive and I need to pay bills. I'm trying to figure out what the best way of going about it would be.

1- Send an invoice, charging hourly?
2- Asking for an amount for the entire season.
3- Asking to sit down and discuss this with the GM/Owner further.

The communication has been poor at times on their end and things aren't all that organized, some other things that were supposed to happen didn't happen which is making me hesitate when it comes to this matter.

I'm open to comments, suggestions, anything!

[Paul Yost]

Josh,

It was good that you talked about compensation before starting the job. You just need to follow through with it. Sometimes it is a good idea to do a free trial or session to get business. Following that, payment must be taken from the client. Otherwise, and this has happened to me, they take advantage of you. In your case, you spend all your time doing a bunch of work for free. If it were an internship that would be one thing, but it's not.

I would be as professional as possible about the situation even though you may be really pissed off. Set up a meeting with the GM. From there, remind him of your earlier conversation and state that you must be paid for past and current services. Payment can be done all at once or in steady bi-monthly payments. Personally, from the sounds of things, your best bet is to get all the money they owe you at once. If they refuse or cannot, I would tell them you can no longer provide them with your services.

In this business, people will always try to take advantage of you. I'm not saying that giving things away for free is bad business. It can be a great marketing tool for your business. The problems come when that's all you're doing and get nothing in return.

Lesson to be learned: Take all payment up front or have a written contract agreement before doing any work.