Audio file
CR Podcast Audio Episode 86.mp3
Transcript
00:00:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m Joanna Lindenbaum, a coach, ritualist, and all-around transformation nerd who is obsessed with helping clients go deep to create more change and results with their clients.
00:00:19 Joanna Lindenbaum
I created the Coaching Revolution Podcast to share with you coaching skills, tips, and advice, as well as a deeper understanding of human behavior and of yourself.
00:00:30 Joanna Lindenbaum
so that you can do even better client work and group work, grow your business organically, and know that you’re making a real difference in the world.
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This is about creating a revolution in the transformational industry so that more practitioners feel amazing about what they do, and so that more of our clients experience life-changing shifts.
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Let’s get started.
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So friends, today’s episode is about something really, really important.
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It’s so important, and yet most practitioners don’t realize how important it is, and that it is so essential to helping your clients to grow, transform, and achieve their goals.
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We’re not going to be talking today about a somatic technique or a shadow method, though if you know me, you know I love those things and I can talk about them all day long.
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But instead, what we’re going to be talking about today is all about onboarding new clients.
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And in particular today, we’re going to be looking at a particular aspect of onboarding new clients,
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Welcome packets.
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Now, before we go any further, if you’re listening to this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, go ahead and hit subscribe so that you don’t miss any future episodes.
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Now, when I say onboarding new clients, I’m actually talking about a whole slew of things.
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I’m talking about
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how you get clients signed up and then set into your work.
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I’m talking about what you include in your welcome packet, in your session scheduling process, in your payment process, how you ask clients to prepare for their first session.
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And also onboarding is about what happens in your first session as well as in between your first and second session with a new client.
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All of these things might sound like small, insignificant administrative details, but master practitioners know that this isn’t the case.
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We know that how you start with a client
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how you set the container of your work together, including the administrative details and the communications.
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All of this is actually vital to your client’s success, to the success of your work together.
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And there’s a couple reasons why.
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So first of all,
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When you set a container really well, when you onboard in a masterful way, it builds more trust and confidence from the get-go.
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So that period immediately after when a new client says yes to working with you, that wonderful moment, right after that, period after that, up until and really through your first session,
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is very important.
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It’s critical.
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During that time period, clients are, new clients are often excited, but they can also feel a little nervous or even start wondering if they made the right decision.
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That’s human nature.
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And I’ll tell you, this happens to me when I buy coaching or other kind of support.
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I say yes, and I’m really excited, but at the same time, I’m a little bit like, should I have spent money on this?
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Is this going to work for me?
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Right?
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So when you’ve got a clear and warm onboarding experience, it reassures new clients that they made an excellent choice in saying yes with you.
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And when you’ve got that clear, warm onboarding experience for a new client, it communicates to them that they’re in good hands.
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right?
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It lets them know that you have a process, that you’ve thought about their experience and what they need from the get go, from way before you even get to your first session.
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And all of that early trust becomes the foundation for the entire coaching relationship.
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So I often say to my sacred depths,
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students, when we start to look at setting containers and how to do it, and when we start to look at upholding containers, ending containers, all of that, I often tell my sacred depthers that from the outside, the work of setting and upholding containers, the work of onboarding, it doesn’t look sexy, but actually, it’s super sexy.
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Because
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It’s all about the sacred container that you’re creating with your client.
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It’s all about setting the stage for doing the absolute best work that you can do together.
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And that starts, I was going to say it starts from the moment that a prospect says yes, but it actually starts from the moment you get onto an enrollment conversation with them, if you’re having an enrollment conversation with them.
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When you’ve got a great onboarding process, it also creates safety for your client and it reduces anxiety.
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Okay, so what do I mean by that?
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How is it that something like a contract or scheduling instructions or a welcome e-mail can create safety and reduce anxiety?
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Well, because
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When assets like that are done well, they create clarity inside of the relationship with the client and confirmation around expectations inside of the coaching relationship for both the coach and the client, right?
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So for example, we’re going to be meeting at this time, making payments look like this.
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is what confidentiality looks like in our container.
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et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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And when you are able to create clarity around expectations inside of the container, that creates a sense of safety for your new client.
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So think about it.
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When you know what to expect from someone else and from a relationship, and when you know
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what is expected of you, it kind of reduces the cognitive load of not knowing how are things going to work out?
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What is this about?
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How is this going to work?
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Right?
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Instead, you can settle in.
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You can relax.
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You can get really present to the container.
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You don’t need to worry.
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Is she going to be there for me in this way, or is that not allowed in this work together?
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Am I supposed to show up in that way or not, right?
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There’s a sense of peace and safety and reliability when all parties know and agree upon expectations and when those expectations are reinforced throughout the relationship.
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The other thing
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is that when an onboarding process is done really well, then it also begins the transformation, right?
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So transformation for the client can absolutely start getting seated and set.
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before the first session.
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So we’re going to talk about it more in a few minutes.
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But I highly recommend that if you have a welcome packet– well, first of all, I highly recommend that you have a welcome packet when a new client starts with you.
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And I recommend that inside of that welcome packet, one of the things is a questionnaire that has questions for reflection.
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When you’ve got a questionnaire and reflection questions that a client will fill out before your first session, this helps your new client shift from being a passive consumer into an active participant well before your first session.
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So instead of waiting for transformation to begin at session one,
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With that welcome packet, they can start engaging with the work that you’re going to do together and with themselves in their own inner process immediately.
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Oh, and before we get into some of the details of a great welcome packet, because that’s where we’re going in today’s episode, I want to say one more thing about the onboarding process in general that I think
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kind of gets lost a lot in the shuffle.
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When you’ve got a really, really great onboarding process, it 100% starts to set you up for retention, renewals, and referrals.
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Now, at first, that might sound like a little bit of a stretch,
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Right?
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It’s like someone’s going to renew based on the onboarding process.
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Someone’s going to refer based on the onboarding process.
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But hear me out for a moment.
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Human beings remember how they are welcomed in.
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Right?
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First impressions count for so much.
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And a warm and caring onboarding experience, one that is high touch, one that is done really well, helps clients, new clients feel valued and supported from moment one.
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And when clients feel held from the absolute very beginning, they’re more likely to stay engaged.
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They’re more likely to complete the work with you.
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They’re more likely to renew their work with you when the package is done.
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And they’re also more likely to recommend you with others, recommend you to others.
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Most practitioners think that renewals and referrals come down to, oh, I need to know how to market better, or it just comes down to luck.
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Renewals and referrals actually come down to the results that your clients achieve through their work with you, as well as the quality of the containers that you hold, including the unglamorous structural stuff in the beginning and throughout, really, that most practitioners skip or don’t do as well as they could.
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Creating a client who becomes a referrer and a renewer isn’t just because of one breakthrough session.
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It’s because of the entire experience with you, not just what happens in the sessions.
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It’s because of that entire experience starting from the way beginning and that it all felt exceptional.
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So if your referrals, renewals, and testimonials still aren’t where you want them to be, you want to be looking at your skills, for sure, always.
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But you also want to be looking at what we’re looking at today, your containers and onboarding.
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Now, if you’re a seasoned practitioner, you’ve probably got a welcome packet, and it’s probably solid.
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But here’s the thing about many practitioners who are seasoned and masterful.
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They’re never done refining their skills or refining the container.
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There is always deeper to go in order to get even better.
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And the ones who stop working on their skills or capacity or stop tracking when their welcome packets need updating, those are usually the practitioners who kind of plateau.
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So we’re here today.
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with ways to make your welcome packet, which is part of that onboarding process, work even better for your client results, for your client transformation, for safety in containers, referrals, renewals, all of that.
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So there are a lot of components that go into making a really great welcome packet.
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There’s lots of bits of information to include in the welcome packet, questions to ask, issues to cover.
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It really takes a little bit of time to create a thorough, effective welcome packet that’s tailored to you and your business and your ideal clients.
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Inside of Sacred Depths, we go through this piece by piece.
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I share all of my templates so that you don’t have to start from scratch, and you can really adapt from all of my years of refining.
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Most practitioners use a generic template that they found online or copied from somewhere, but they never really adapted it to their actual
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ideal client to the work that they do.
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And for a welcome packet to be effective, you want to get really clear on exactly how to adapt it for your needs and your ideal clients.
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So there’s a lot that goes into this.
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And in today’s episode, what I’m not going to do is go over all of the details and the pieces and the questions and the issues and all the things.
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that’s for a deeper training, that’s for sacred depths.
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But what I’m excited to do is to really hone in on six really specific details that I often see are missing from standard welcome packets.
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And I’m
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I’m tossing them to you so that you can consider including them in yours.
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So we’re going to look at six really specific things.
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Now, before I share those six things, let me take a step back for a moment and tell you a little bit.
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When I say welcome packet, this is what I mean.
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It’s a set of documents that
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new clients should get right after they’ve committed to working privately with you, or oftentimes in groups as well.
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And the welcome packet.
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So once someone has committed to working with you, have, once someone has put paid you or put down the deposit in, in my business, that’s when we then send the welcome packet.
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And it consists of a couple of documents.
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I want to tell you what they are.
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So it’s a contract for your work together.
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It’s a welcome questionnaire.
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And also I like to include a one pager that’s kind of like quick view of all of the program protocols.
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So those are the three things that we send out in welcome packets.
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Actually, there is a fourth thing that we send out in my welcome packet.
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I’m not really going to talk about it today, but I call it a pre-call questionnaire.
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And it’s different than the welcome questionnaire.
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It’s a couple of questions that I ask my clients to fill out before each of our ongoing sessions.
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And I’ve got like a standard template for that pre-call questionnaire, but I also tailor it and personalize it for each client I work with.
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So I will share with you that in my 25 years of working with clients, I feel like I can say pretty confidently that all of my new clients have really appreciated
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the welcome packet for all of the reasons that I mentioned earlier, because it builds confidence and trust right away, because it creates safety and reduces anxiety, because it starts the transformation before the first session begins.
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And I
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I’d also say that most of my new clients over the last 25 years, not all, not all, there are a couple of outliers or people who have been really busy, but most of my new clients have also really, really loved filling out the welcome questionnaire that
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I share with them.
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It’s a way for them, like I said, for them to start the work.
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It’s a way for them to connect in with themselves, to get clear on what they want and what their priorities are, who they are, what they need support with, et cetera, et cetera.
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And I’ll tell you, when I am on the client end of things, like when I hire a coach or a practitioner, if they’ve got a good questionnaire, I always love to fill out a good questionnaire.
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Plus, when a welcome questionnaire is done well, when you really ask the right questions inside of it,
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it helps the practitioner also to really get to know very quickly some vital things about the human being that they’re going to be working with.
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So there’s not a one-size-fits-all to contracts, to welcome questionnaires, to that one pager of protocols.
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that I shared about, you really want to adapt and tailor it again to you, your business, the way that you work, and to who your ideal client is.
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Okay, so without further ado, I am going to share those six things that I have often found aren’t in some welcome packets.
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So
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There is, again, there’s so much that goes into welcome packets.
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I’m not going to cover all of them.
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It would take us way too long.
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But I do want to share like these six things that I’ve cherry picked for today that really do make a big difference.
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And oftentimes even seasoned practitioners don’t have them in there.
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Okay, so let’s get into them.
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The first is
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please, somewhere in that welcome packet, and I would include this both in the contract and in the one pager, include your scheduling and rescheduling policy.
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So what I mean by this is how can someone schedule, when should they schedule, how often should they schedule,
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And what is the protocol or policy if someone has a session scheduled and they need to reschedule it?
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In other words, are they allowed to do it last minute?
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Do they have to do it 48 hours before?
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Et cetera, et cetera.
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You want to take the time to really be clear on all of the scheduling and rescheduling instructions
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and protocols.
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I cannot emphasize how important this is so that your incoming clients feel a sense of safety and trust and relaxation in knowing how it’s going to go with that, how they can schedule, what happens if they need to reschedule, et cetera, et cetera.
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Now, different practitioners
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I’ll just give you this as a little bonus thing.
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Different practitioners schedule in lots of different ways.
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I’ll share with you that for many, many, many years now, one of my protocols when it comes to scheduling is that when a client signs up for a package of sessions, let’s say six months worth of sessions, you know, it might be
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15 sessions or 18 sessions over six months, I invite them to pre-schedule all of those 15, 18 sessions out ahead of time at the very, very beginning of our time in our work together.
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And the reason why I do this is because it really helps for engagement
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when those sessions are prescheduled.
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It almost becomes like a matrix that helps hold the container.
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We already know ahead of time when we’re meeting.
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We already can see, and your client can then see in their schedule, like, oh, I’ve got her in the schedule right through August, or whatever it is.
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It already creates more commitment a lot of the time.
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Now,
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I have a busy schedule and things change just like my clients do.
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So it’s not like we schedule things out six months in advance and then they’re written in stone and they can never change.
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Sometimes something changes on my end or something changes on their end.
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And I just, I have a rescheduling protocol.
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for that, they know upfront.
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So my clients really, really appreciate having this.
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Anyway, whether you schedule all of your sessions out ahead of time or not, I really want to recommend including this in your welcome packet.
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Here’s a second thing, finer point, but it makes such a big difference to communicate this ahead of time.
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have somewhere in your welcome packet what your protocol is for e-mail response or whatever, however you communicate with your clients in between sessions.
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So for me, when somebody hires me as their coach,
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They don’t only get sessions.
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I don’t just think of it as this amount of sessions.
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When someone hires me as their coach, I see that full six month or 12 month container and they get sessions with me.
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They get support.
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from me in between sessions, et cetera, et cetera.
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And the main ways that I support my clients in between sessions, I’m very high touch.
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I like to be in touch with them and all of that.
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The main ways are through e-mail and then through Voxer, which is kind of like a walkie-talkie voice messaging kind of app.
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I don’t do text with clients.
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It just doesn’t work for me and my boundaries with e-mail inbox, or I can control more when I check them, et cetera, et cetera.
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Anyway, whatever it is for you, whatever the policy is about communication in between sessions, be crystal clear about it in your welcome packet.
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in your onboarding process.
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Because for example, let’s say that it takes you generally two to three business days to respond to an e-mail from a client.
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But your client doesn’t know that.
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They think you are online all the time and you’re going to respond right away.
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And end of day comes after they’ve sent an e-mail and they haven’t heard from you.
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They may end up getting triggered, like angry, right?
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Oh my gosh, she doesn’t care about me.
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Why didn’t she respond?
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Or they may end up worried or, you know, feeling like, she doesn’t care about, right?
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Whatever it is.
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Or
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let’s say part of your communication policy in between sessions is that you’ll respond to shorter emails, but if it’s a longer involved situation, that’s going to be saved for the next session.
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Don’t just rely on your client to know that.
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You want to communicate that clearly so that if they don’t know that, just on their own going in, and they send you a long, complicated e-mail thinking you’re going to send a long, complicated response back, and you let them know, oh, let’s save this for the next session, they don’t get insulted or angry because they didn’t understand from the get-go how it worked.
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I’ve heard of
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stories from other practitioners who made the mistake of not being clear on what their communication policies are in between sessions, that they’ve ended up also having clients who thought they could never get in touch with them, or, oh, I’m being too much.
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if I e-mail you more than once a month or whatever it is, and then the client didn’t get as much value from the coaching container.
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They didn’t take as much advantage of that coaching container because the coach was open to give more, right?
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So just whatever your policy is there, be clear on it.
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Okay.
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Next piece that I’ve cherry picked to just make sure that you include inside of your welcome packets.
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This is one that I chuckle a little bit as I say it, because it is very obvious, but I have seen a ton of welcome packets that don’t include this.
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So I’m including, I’m sharing it here in today’s episode because just in case your welcome packet doesn’t have it, I want you to.
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Make sure you get all of your new clients’ contact information, including their phone number.
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So I know in today’s world,
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Most of us meet on Zoom when we have private sessions or something, some kind of platform like that online.
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And a lot of communication in between sessions happens online.
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And a lot of people these days don’t use their phones so much.
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I know this.
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And every now and again, you may need your client’s phone number.
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right?
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Maybe you have to cancel very, very last minute on a session because you’ve had an emergency come up.
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Maybe people don’t check their emails as often as they check their phones or their texts, right?
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Or maybe there’s been a little bit of
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a rupture in the container with the client and you want them to hear your voice.
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Maybe you won’t necessarily go and just like call them and have them answer, but you want to leave some kind of voice message for them to see if you can get on a call, right?
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Because every now and again, that happens.
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So front and center in a welcome packet,
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Make sure you’ve got your client’s full name, e-mail address, home address, phone number.
00:31:35 Joanna Lindenbaum
I happen to like to ask for my clients’ birthdays because sometimes I send little gifts or I remember to say happy birthday to them.
00:31:45 Joanna Lindenbaum
And
00:31:47 Joanna Lindenbaum
I also ask if they have any significant others in their lives, whether it’s romantic or a parent they’re taking care of, or children or like someone that they may mention regularly in session.
00:32:03 Joanna Lindenbaum
I know their name, right?
00:32:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
So sometimes I’ll ask that.
00:32:08 Joanna Lindenbaum
in contact info.
00:32:09 Joanna Lindenbaum
Not really, that’s not really contact info, but kind of like general info.
00:32:13 Joanna Lindenbaum
Now, as an aside, this is something I learned the hard way.
00:32:19 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I mean, it’s pretty obvious.
00:32:21 Joanna Lindenbaum
I don’t know why I didn’t include it for so many years, but I just didn’t.
00:32:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
And then.
00:32:30 Joanna Lindenbaum
I did because we had an incident.
00:32:32 Joanna Lindenbaum
But so I’m just going to pass the tip along to you.
00:32:36 Joanna Lindenbaum
If you are holding in-person retreats where people come in and you are with them in person, I highly, highly, highly recommend beforehand not only getting their contact information, but asking for an emergency contact.
00:32:57 Joanna Lindenbaum
So a name and phone number that you can call should, God forbid, may have an emergency while they’re at the retreat.
00:33:08 Joanna Lindenbaum
So I’ve been leading retreats for decades, and for decades, I didn’t ask for an emergency contact.
00:33:16 Joanna Lindenbaum
It just didn’t even occur to me.
00:33:18 Joanna Lindenbaum
And a couple of years ago, probably like seven years ago now, I was leading a retreat
00:33:27 Joanna Lindenbaum
And inside of the retreat, in one of the evenings, someone had a medical emergency and they had to go to the hospital.
00:33:40 Joanna Lindenbaum
And both me and my assistant went with them and took them to the hospital and were with them.
00:33:47 Joanna Lindenbaum
And my onsite assistant stayed with her for a while.
00:33:51 Joanna Lindenbaum
She was okay, she wasn’t in critical condition necessarily, but she was, it was pretty big.
00:33:56 Joanna Lindenbaum
for a little bit, a little touch and go.
00:33:58 Joanna Lindenbaum
It had nothing to do with the retreat itself.
00:34:00 Joanna Lindenbaum
It was just like a separate medical thing.
00:34:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I didn’t have I knew she was married and I did not have a phone number to contact her husband.
00:34:13 Joanna Lindenbaum
And that was big, big learning for me on that.
00:34:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
So I just passed that along to you.
00:34:22 Joanna Lindenbaum
All right.
00:34:24 Joanna Lindenbaum
Here is another thing I’ve cherry-picked, something to make sure that you include in your welcome packet questionnaire.
00:34:34 Joanna Lindenbaum
Make sure you ask a question about the goals, inner and outer goals, that your new client would like to achieve.
00:34:48 Joanna Lindenbaum
Now, if you’ve had a sales conversation or an enrollment conversation with them, of course, you probably spoke about what they want to achieve, what their vision is, what their goals are, etc., etc..
00:35:00 Joanna Lindenbaum
It is not overkill at all to ask them to them, then write down their goals for your work together in the welcome questionnaire.
00:35:14 Joanna Lindenbaum
And in fact,
00:35:16 Joanna Lindenbaum
it’s super helpful because even from the time of the sales conversation to when you start, their goals may have evolved a little bit or shifted a little bit, right?
00:35:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
You don’t want to just go in assuming 110% that what you discussed in your enrollment conversation is
00:35:42 Joanna Lindenbaum
exactly matches what they want to achieve once you start.
00:35:48 Joanna Lindenbaum
Now, inside of Sacred Depths, I teach advanced visioning skills.
00:35:55 Joanna Lindenbaum
And there’s a lot that goes into visioning skills more than most coaches.
00:36:02 Joanna Lindenbaum
are taught, it’s not just like simple goal setting.
00:36:06 Joanna Lindenbaum
And one of the things, the little things that we look at that I’ll just share with you, while we’re talking about goals, is that sometimes a client’s goals can change through your work together, right?
00:36:19 Joanna Lindenbaum
They’re not necessarily static.
00:36:21 Joanna Lindenbaum
They may shift.
00:36:22 Joanna Lindenbaum
If your client grows, evolves, transforms, they may hold that same vision throughout the entire work
00:36:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
together or it might change, right?
00:36:31 Joanna Lindenbaum
And you want to, as you work with someone over time, you also want to be tracking to see if the goals change.
00:36:41 Joanna Lindenbaum
Okay, this next one is one of my favorites.
00:36:45 Joanna Lindenbaum
And again, I just want to remind everyone, I’m not going through everything to include in a welcome packet.
00:36:52 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m just kind of cherry picking a bunch that often get
00:36:57 Joanna Lindenbaum
left out that I often see even seasoned practitioners don’t have.
00:37:02 Joanna Lindenbaum
So this next one is, it’s one of my favorites.
00:37:07 Joanna Lindenbaum
And it’s a question that I ask in the welcome questionnaire.
00:37:13 Joanna Lindenbaum
And you can decide how you want to phrase it, what phrasing makes the most sense for you, who you are, and your ideal client.
00:37:23 Joanna Lindenbaum
But essentially, the heart of the question is, when we’re working together, how would you like for me to call you on your stuff?
00:37:36 Joanna Lindenbaum
So this is the kind of question that separates a standard coach from a true depth practitioner.
00:37:50 Joanna Lindenbaum
It tells you so much about whether a practitioner is willing to go to the real depths with a client or whether they’re going to stay safe and surface level when things get hard and some things need to be called out in loving ways.
00:38:11 Joanna Lindenbaum
So a question along the lines of how would you like for me to call you on your staff?
00:38:18 Joanna Lindenbaum
Master practitioners preemptively ask this on purpose in the welcome packet because they already know ahead of time that they want permission to be able to go there later, right?
00:38:35 Joanna Lindenbaum
When the tough things come up.
00:38:39 Joanna Lindenbaum
So consider including a question like that in your questionnaire.
00:38:44 Joanna Lindenbaum
And then number six, I always like to end off my welcome questionnaire with an open-ended question of, is there anything else that you’d like for me to know?
00:38:57 Joanna Lindenbaum
Now, I love this question.
00:39:00 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’ll tell you sometimes the answer is no.
00:39:03 Joanna Lindenbaum
You’ve asked all the right things in this welcome questionnaire.
00:39:07 Joanna Lindenbaum
I don’t have anything else to share with you, but thanks so much, right?
00:39:12 Joanna Lindenbaum
But other times there are things that are just outside of the standard questions that I ask that are just outside of the box for a client.
00:39:27 Joanna Lindenbaum
but they really want me to know about it, right?
00:39:30 Joanna Lindenbaum
It might be about a particular tricky situation in their family life.
00:39:35 Joanna Lindenbaum
And even though I’m supporting them on their business and on their transformational skills,
00:39:43 Joanna Lindenbaum
they want me to know about this tricky family situation or a medical thing as another example, or, X, Y, Z, right?
00:39:56 Joanna Lindenbaum
So I always like to ask, is there anything else that you’d like for me to know?
00:40:02 Joanna Lindenbaum
All right, so those are, I got a bonus one for you too.
00:40:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m going to tell you in a moment, but first let me review the six cherry-picked things.
00:40:12 Joanna Lindenbaum
Matt, I want to invite you to include in your welcome packet.
00:40:15 Joanna Lindenbaum
So #1, scheduling and rescheduling policy.
00:40:19 Joanna Lindenbaum
Number 2, communication.
00:40:22 Joanna Lindenbaum
How do you communicate in between sessions?
00:40:26 Joanna Lindenbaum
How do you, what’s the e-mail response?
00:40:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
Do you do text?
00:40:30 Joanna Lindenbaum
Do you not do text, et cetera?
00:40:32 Joanna Lindenbaum
Number 3, contact information.
00:40:37 Joanna Lindenbaum
Number 4, goals.
00:40:39 Joanna Lindenbaum
Number 5, how would you like me to call you on your staff?
00:40:43 Joanna Lindenbaum
Number 6, is there anything else you’d like for me to know?
00:40:46 Joanna Lindenbaum
And then I’ll just share one other piece for right now that I think most practitioners, even seasoned practitioners, don’t really think about when they’re putting together their welcome packets, but I think it is really valuable to include.
00:41:07 Joanna Lindenbaum
And that is to include information about your coaching philosophy.
00:41:16 Joanna Lindenbaum
So I’m not talking about a bio here, and I’m not talking about results that you helped co-create.
00:41:24 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m talking about sharing about your coaching philosophy.
00:41:31 Joanna Lindenbaum
Because the reason why this is can be so valuable
00:41:37 Joanna Lindenbaum
from the get go in a welcome packet is that it’s another piece of information that lets your client know how the container is going to operate, how the work is going to go, and what the expectations are.
00:41:59 Joanna Lindenbaum
So as an example,
00:42:03 Joanna Lindenbaum
one of my coaching philosophies is that change doesn’t happen overnight.
00:42:11 Joanna Lindenbaum
And this is something that I preach, right?
00:42:13 Joanna Lindenbaum
Like my marketing and enrollment conversations.
00:42:16 Joanna Lindenbaum
The welcome packet isn’t the first time my client, my new clients hear this really, but I still write about it in the welcome packet because it is such a
00:42:31 Joanna Lindenbaum
It’s such a foundational piece in the work that we’re going to be doing together.
00:42:39 Joanna Lindenbaum
Another one of my coaching philosophies is that even though I’m an expert in a whole bunch of things and a really masterful coach, my clients always know best about what is right for them.
00:42:55 Joanna Lindenbaum
and inside of our work, that I am always going to prioritize that as well as their agency to make the decisions that are right for them.
00:43:08 Joanna Lindenbaum
So I will consult, I will share my wisdom, my experience, my expertise, but I want them to know that I trust their wisdom on themselves more than the expertise that I have.
00:43:24 Joanna Lindenbaum
Now, of course,
00:43:25 Joanna Lindenbaum
I don’t just say it and then let it go.
00:43:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
I also have very specific coaching skills that I use inside my sessions that back this up.
00:43:37 Joanna Lindenbaum
So what are some of your coaching philosophies, and what would it feel like to include them in a welcome packet or an onboarding process?
00:43:53 Joanna Lindenbaum
Okay, so I hope that you are starting to see what I meant when I said earlier in the episode that onboarding isn’t sexy on the surface, but really,
00:44:15 Joanna Lindenbaum
incredibly sexy.
00:44:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
I hope that you’re able to see that every single one of those six plus the 7th bonus thing that I cherry-picked for the welcome packet, those are actually depth practitioner moves in disguise.
00:44:35 Joanna Lindenbaum
Those are not just administrative things.
00:44:39 Joanna Lindenbaum
That’s part of your skill and your mastery to include those.
00:44:43 Joanna Lindenbaum
That’s part of the transformational experience that you’re providing for your clients.
00:44:49 Joanna Lindenbaum
Now, again, as I said, it’s just so important to emphasize that the tips that I gave you in our episode today are just a small piece of what you want to be considering in your welcome packet.
00:45:07 Joanna Lindenbaum
Okay, so
00:45:09 Joanna Lindenbaum
Here, if all of this is resonating with you, I’ve got some next steps for you.
00:45:16 Joanna Lindenbaum
I wanna invite you to review all of your onboarding components.
00:45:25 Joanna Lindenbaum
I want you to review how you handle your enrollment conversations.
00:45:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
I want you to review, in particular, your welcome packets, since we spoke about those a lot today.
00:45:36 Joanna Lindenbaum
I want you to review how you navigate first sessions and what your protocols are for first sessions, because that’s still onboarding.
00:45:46 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I want you to review any type of communications or emails that you have with your new clients before their new sessions.
00:46:02 Joanna Lindenbaum
And
00:46:03 Joanna Lindenbaum
The invitation is to look at all of these assets, not from the lens of, well, these are just administrative assets and things that I need to do.
00:46:15 Joanna Lindenbaum
They’re boring, they’re surface, but instead through the lens of,
00:46:21 Joanna Lindenbaum
Each of these components are actually part of the work that I’m doing with my client.
00:46:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
These are pieces that help both me and my client feel safe and settled together.
00:46:36 Joanna Lindenbaum
They’re vital parts of the container that I’m creating for my client so that my client has a strong foundation for transformation in their work with me and for achieving their goals in their work with me.
00:46:52 Joanna Lindenbaum
And as you look at all of your assets, I want to ask yourself, I want to invite you to ask yourself two questions.
00:47:02 Joanna Lindenbaum
Number one, did I create these onboarding assets from my real master practitioner skills and instincts?
00:47:18 Joanna Lindenbaum
Or did I just copy
00:47:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
something online or what I thought looked professional?
00:47:24 Joanna Lindenbaum
That’s the first question.
00:47:25 Joanna Lindenbaum
And then here’s the second question.
00:47:30 Joanna Lindenbaum
Does your welcome packet actually invite your new client into depth?
00:47:39 Joanna Lindenbaum
Or is it just that it looks professional and organized?
00:47:44 Joanna Lindenbaum
Because there’s a big difference between an onboarding process that’s polished
00:47:50 Joanna Lindenbaum
and an onboarding process that’s actually building trust for the deep work to come.
00:47:59 Joanna Lindenbaum
And then from there, treat your onboarding components the way that you treat mastering A transformational skill or technique, because they are another element of your coaching mastery.
00:48:15 Joanna Lindenbaum
And really,
00:48:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
look at what do you want to tweak or change or add inside of those assets in order to create more clarity or more warm communication or more safety or more depth.
00:48:37 Joanna Lindenbaum
I would love to hear what that review
00:48:41 Joanna Lindenbaum
brings up for you, what ideas you have.
00:48:44 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’d love to hear what you loved about today’s episode.
00:48:49 Joanna Lindenbaum
As always, thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here.
00:48:55 Joanna Lindenbaum
If you are listening to this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please give us a five star review, a testimonial.
00:49:06 Joanna Lindenbaum
Go ahead and hit subscribe so that you don’t miss any episodes.
00:49:10 Joanna Lindenbaum
And if you have a friend who you know could really benefit from today’s episode, please share it with them.
00:49:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
As always, again, thank you and I will see you next time.
