BuddyPath

Mentor Agreement

The agreement between you and BuddyPath for mentoring on the platform, what you are responsible for, and how you are paid.

Version v1-2026-09

1. Who we are, and what this is

BuddyPath is operated by BuddyPath, LLC, a Florida limited liability company with its registered office at 1239 E. Newport Center Drive, Suite 106, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442 (“BuddyPath”, “we”, “us”). This agreement is between you and BuddyPath, and it governs mentoring on the platform.

BuddyPath is a technology marketplace. A mentee chooses you. The mentee pays for your time. You independently provide the conversation and share your own lived experience. We provide the technology that makes that possible — matching, scheduling, communication and payment — and nothing more than that.

You accept this agreement when you take the mentor role. If you also use BuddyPath to find a mentor of your own, that is governed separately by the Mentee Terms of Service. The Acceptable Use & Content Licence and the Privacy Policy also form part of this agreement; where they conflict with it on their own subject matter, they win.

2. You are an independent contractor

You are an independent contractor, not an employee of BuddyPath. This agreement does not create an employment relationship, a partnership, a joint venture, a franchise, or an agency relationship between you and us, and you must not represent otherwise.

Concretely, and each of these is a real term rather than a recital:

  • You decide whether to work. You choose whether to be listed, when to be available, which connection requests to accept, and which mentees to work with. You may pause or stop at any time, and nothing here obliges you to accept any minimum amount of work.
  • You control how you mentor. We do not direct the manner or means of your sessions, script what you say, or require a particular mentoring style. Our courses teach what is prohibited and what good practice looks like; within those limits, how you show up is yours.
  • You set your own rate, within the limits in section 6, and you may change it.
  • You provide your own equipment — device, camera, microphone, internet connection and workspace.
  • You may work elsewhere, including for competitors. Nothing here is an exclusivity obligation. Section 9 restricts taking a BuddyPath mentee off the platform; it does not restrict your work generally.
  • You receive no employee benefits — no wages, overtime, minimum-hours guarantee, holiday or sick pay, health insurance, workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance or retirement contributions — and no tax is withheld from what we pay you unless we are required to withhold it.

Calling something an independent-contractor relationship does not make it one; how it actually works decides that, and the terms above describe how this one actually works.

3. What you are responsible for

You are responsible for what you say and do. Your opinions, your experiences and your suggestions are your own. They are not statements, advice or recommendations from BuddyPath, and we do not adopt, endorse or stand behind them.

You are responsible for the accuracy of everything your profile claims about you, for holding any licence or qualification your own circumstances require, and for complying with the law where you are.

4. Share your experience. Don’t prescribe someone else’s life.

This is the central rule of mentoring on BuddyPath, and the one most worth reading twice. It is what makes peer mentorship something other than unlicensed practice of a regulated profession.

You may say: “This happened to me. This is what I tried. This is what worked for me. This is what didn’t work for me. This is what I learned.” Your credential is that you have lived something shaped like what your mentee is facing, and that you will say so honestly.

You must not:

  • diagnose anyone, or suggest what condition they or someone else may have;
  • provide treatment, a treatment plan, or advice about medication — including telling someone to start, stop or change a prescription;
  • present BuddyPath mentoring as therapy, counselling, healthcare, legal advice or financial advice, or present yourself as a licensed professional in a session unless you actually hold that licence and are acting within it;
  • guarantee an outcome, or promise that what worked for you will work for them;
  • tell a mentee what they must do, or press a decision on them about their health, money, relationships, legal position or safety.

Ask before you share. A mentee has come to be heard as well as helped. Ask what they need, listen first, ask clarifying questions, and ask permission before offering your own story — “would it help if I told you what I did?” — rather than assuming their situation is a copy of yours.

Know where your experience runs out. Say plainly when a mentee’s situation goes past what you have lived. “I haven’t been through that part myself” protects the match and your credibility far more than bluffing.

When it is beyond peer support, say so. If a mentee describes intent to harm themselves or someone else, abuse, or a crisis, do not try to counsel them through it and do not carry it alone. Encourage them to contact emergency services or a crisis line, and report the conversation to us at support@buddypath.com so we can follow up.

These duties are taught in detail in BuddyPath University, and the courses there are the practical version of this section. Completing them is a condition of being listed — see section 5.

5. Getting listed, and staying listed

Being listed is not automatic and is not a right. Before you appear in matching, in browse, or on our marketing site, you must complete the intake interview, clear our safety screening, complete the required BuddyPath University courses for your Life Path, and meet the score threshold for it. Depending on configuration, you may also have to complete an identity check against a government-issued ID.

A criminal background check by a consumer reporting agency is optional. It earns a badge, and it lifts the rate ceiling in section 6. If you ask for one, it is carried out under the Fair Credit Reporting Act with the disclosures and authorisation that law requires, and you will be told before any decision is taken against you on the basis of it.

We may change the listing requirements, and we may remove you from listings while something is under review. We will tell you why where it is safe and lawful to do so.

6. Your rate, our commission, and how you are paid

You set your own rate. BuddyPath’s commission is taken out of that amount rather than added on top, so the figure a mentee agrees to is the figure they pay; the current commission rate is shown in your payouts area.

We cap what an unverified mentor can charge. Above that ceiling a cleared background check is required. This is a marketplace safety rule, not direction of your work, and it does not otherwise limit what you may charge.

Payouts run through Stripe Connect and are subject to Stripe’s own terms and identity checks — you must finish Stripe’s onboarding, and provide the tax information in section 7, before anything can be paid to you. Earnings become payable a holding period after the session, currently 24 hours, which exists so disputes and failed sessions can be resolved before money leaves. After that they are sent automatically; you do not have to request a payout. What we send goes to your Stripe account, and Stripe pays it on to your bank on its own schedule, so the two dates are not the same.

What you are paid for. You are paid for the session time actually used, up to the booked length plus a short grace period, and never less than the booked length. If a mentee does not show up and you did, you are paid for the booked time. If you do not show up, you are not paid and the mentee is not charged.

Earned but unpaid fees are your money. Suspending or closing your account does not cancel what you have already earned.

Chargebacks and reversals. If a mentee’s payment is reversed, or we discover a session was fraudulent or did not take place as recorded, we may reverse the corresponding payout or offset it against future earnings. We will tell you why, and we will not reverse a payout for a session you genuinely delivered.

7. Taxes and tax reporting

You are responsible for your own taxes. We do not withhold income tax, self-employment tax or any other tax from your earnings unless we are required by law to do so. Nothing here is tax advice, and you should take your own.

You must complete Stripe’s onboarding before you can be paid. As part of it, Stripe collects the details needed to identify you and to report your earnings: your legal name, date of birth, address, the last four digits of your Social Security number (or, if you mentor through a business, that business’s taxpayer identification number), and your bank details. Stripe may ask for more — including your full taxpayer identification number or a copy of an identity document — if it cannot verify you from what you have given, or where the law requires it.

We collect this at onboarding rather than chasing it at year-end, and no payout can be sent to you until Stripe’s onboarding is complete.

We also ask you for a Form W-9, and we hold it. Stripe gives us only the last four digits of your taxpayer identification number, which is not enough to report your earnings. Because BuddyPath is the one that pays you, we ask you separately for the full number and your certification on Form W-9 — the standard IRS form for this — and we store it.

How we hold it. Your taxpayer identification number is encrypted in our database, is never shown back to you or to anyone else once you have entered it, and is never written to our logs. Only the last four digits are visible to us. Nobody at BuddyPath can look up your full number through the app.

You can complete the W-9 from your Payouts page, and you can replace it at any time if your name, address or tax status changes. Filing it is not a condition of being paid today, but a missing or mismatched taxpayer identification number can trigger backup withholding, and we may need it before we can report your earnings.

You must keep the information current. If the taxpayer identification details held for you are missing or do not match IRS records, we may be required to apply backup withholding to your payments at the rate the law sets, and we may hold payouts until it is corrected.

Where the law requires it, we will issue you an annual information return reporting what you were paid, and file the corresponding return with the tax authorities. You are responsible for reporting your income whether or not you receive one.

8. Confidentiality and your mentee’s privacy

What a mentee tells you stays with you. Use it to help them and for nothing else. Do not repeat it, publish it, post it, or discuss it with anyone — including in anonymised form, if the person could still be recognised — and do not use it for your own commercial advantage.

Do not record, transcribe, photograph or screenshot a session without the clear, advance agreement of everyone in it. Several US states require the consent of all parties, and recording without it can be a criminal offence as well as a breach of this agreement.

These duties continue after a mentee stops working with you and after your account ends.

The exception is safety. If you believe someone is at risk of serious harm, tell us at support@buddypath.com and, where it is warranted, tell emergency services. That is not a breach of this section.

9. Keeping it on BuddyPath

Do not move a mentee you met on BuddyPath off the platform. Specifically, while you are on BuddyPath and for twelve months after your last session with a given mentee, do not arrange or hold mentoring sessions with them outside BuddyPath, and do not accept payment from them outside BuddyPath.

Do not exchange means of direct contact with a mentee for that purpose. That includes a phone number, personal email address, physical address, social media handle, messaging-app identifier, a link to a contact form or booking page, or any other information that would let them reach you off the platform — including information that would let them find one of those through another source.

The reason is safety before revenue. Everything that protects both of you is on the platform: the identity check, the background-check badge, the reporting channel, our ability to act on a complaint, the record of what was agreed, and the guarantee that you are paid for the time you turned up for. None of it follows a mentee to a personal phone number, and the mentor carries more of that risk than the mentee does.

There is no fee to buy your way out of this. If a mentee asks you to go off-platform, decline and tell us at support@buddypath.com. A breach of this section is a material breach of this agreement and may end your account. None of this restricts who else you may work with, or what you may do with people you did not meet through BuddyPath.

10. Prohibited conduct

The full rules are in the Acceptable Use & Content Licence. In addition, and as a mentor specifically, you must not:

  • do any of the things in section 4 — diagnose, treat, advise on medication, present mentoring as therapy, guarantee outcomes, or direct a mentee’s decisions;
  • claim a credential, licence, qualification or experience you do not have, in your profile, in your interview, or in a session;
  • harass, threaten, demean or discriminate against a mentee, or make sexual advances of any kind;
  • form a romantic or sexual relationship with a mentee you are working with;
  • sell, promote, recruit for, or solicit investment in anything — including your own services, a product, a course, or a multi-level marketing scheme;
  • ask a mentee for money, gifts or a loan, or offer them one;
  • accept or seek payment outside the platform, or ask a mentee to circumvent section 9;
  • use someone else’s material as your own, or share content you do not have the right to share;
  • let anyone else use your account, or mentor on your behalf. Sessions must be conducted by you;
  • solicit, exchange or manipulate reviews, or offer anything in return for one.

11. Your profile, your content and our marketing

You keep ownership of what you write, say and upload. You give us the licence set out in the Acceptable Use & Content Licence to host and display it so the platform can work.

A mentor profile that meets the listing requirements is public. That means two things: it can be viewed by anyone on the internet at your profile link, and it can appear on BuddyPath’s public marketing website — your name, photo, headline, tags, rate, average rating and number of completed sessions.

You control this. Turning on the private setting under Security → Privacy removes you from both. Our marketing site keeps a cached copy of the mentor list, so allow up to 15 minutes for the change to show there.

Anything beyond that — advertising, social media, or a video testimonial — is asked for separately and needs your explicit agreement each time.

Some of what appears on your profile is written or computed by us — a summary drawn from your interview, tags, a Mentor Score. You can see it, and you should tell us at support@buddypath.com if anything about it is wrong.

12. Reviews

Only a mentee who completed a paid session may review you. Reviews are double-blind: neither side sees the other’s until both are in or the window closes, and only revealed reviews are shown publicly. We do not pay for reviews, we do not write them, we do not edit their content, and we do not suppress negative ones. We remove a review only when it breaks the Acceptable Use rules. If you believe a review does, report it rather than contacting the mentee about it.

13. Suspension and ending this agreement

You can stop mentoring or close your account at any time. Please honour sessions you have already accepted, or cancel them far enough ahead that the mentee can rebook.

We can remove you from listings, suspend you, or close your account where you break this agreement or the Acceptable Use rules, where you present a safety risk, where a background check or identity check produces a result we act on under the process the law requires, or where we are required to. Where it is safe and lawful to do so we will tell you why and give you a chance to respond.

Money already earned is still owed to you, subject to the reversal rules in section 6. Sections 3, 7, 8, 9, 14 and 15 survive the end of this agreement.

14. Disclaimers, liability and indemnity

BuddyPath is provided “as is”. To the fullest extent the law allows we disclaim implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement; we do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted or error-free; and we do not guarantee you any mentees, any bookings, or any level of earnings. Nothing we have said anywhere about what mentors earn is a promise of what you will earn.

To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or lost opportunity, even if we were told they were possible.

For everything else, our total liability to you for all claims arising out of or relating to this agreement is limited to the greater of (a) the commission we retained from your sessions in the twelve months before the event the claim is about, or (b) US$100.

That cap does not touch money we are holding for you. Your earned but unpaid session fees are yours, and a limit on our liability is not a way for us to keep them. Nothing here excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

Disputes with a mentee are between you and the mentee. You release BuddyPath and our officers, directors, employees and agents from claims, demands and damages of every kind, known and unknown, arising out of or connected with a dispute you have with another user. If you are a California resident, you waive California Civil Code § 1542, which says: “A general release does not extend to claims that the creditor or releasing party does not know or suspect to exist in his or her favor at the time of executing the release and that, if known by him or her, would have materially affected his or her settlement with the debtor or released party.” This release does not apply to a claim that BuddyPath failed to meet its own obligations under this agreement.

Indemnity. You will indemnify, defend and hold harmless BuddyPath and our officers, directors, employees and agents against claims, damages, liabilities, costs and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or relating to: your mentoring and anything you said or did in a session; your breach of this agreement or the Acceptable Use rules; your failure to comply with applicable law, including tax law; your negligence, wilful misconduct or fraud; your violation of a third party’s rights, including privacy, publicity and intellectual property rights; and any claim that you were misclassified, that you were or should have been an employee of BuddyPath, or any other employment-related claim arising from your own conduct or representations.

This does not apply to anything caused by us, and nothing in it limits rights you have that cannot lawfully be waived.

15. Disputes with us

This agreement is governed by the laws of Florida, and the courts of Broward County, Florida have jurisdiction. There is no arbitration requirement and no class-action waiver: if we cannot sort something out between us, you keep your ordinary right to go to court.

If you have a problem, please contact us first at support@buddypath.com — most things are faster to fix that way, and we ask that you give us 30 days to put it right before starting a formal claim.

16. Changes

We version this agreement rather than editing it in place. When we make a change that affects your rights we will publish a new version with a new effective date and tell you before it applies to you. The version you agreed to stays available.

17. Contact

BuddyPath, LLC, 1239 E. Newport Center Drive, Suite 106, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442. General and legal enquiries: support@buddypath.com. Safety: support@buddypath.com. Privacy: support@buddypath.com.

Copyright notices go somewhere else — to our designated agent, not to the registered office above: BuddyPath Copyright Agent, BuddyPath, LLC, 980 North Federal Highway, Suite 110, Boca Raton, FL 33432, support@buddypath.com, +1 754-253-0440. These are the details on file with the U.S. Copyright Office, and a notice sent to them is effective on delivery. What a notice has to contain, what we do with it, and how to counter-notice are in the Copyright & DMCA Policy.