Your client onboarding should take under an hour — here's the build
A practical walkthrough of the five-piece onboarding flow I use to start new coaching clients in minutes, not weeks.
Most coaches treat onboarding as a series of emails they'll write when the next client signs. That's how a five-minute task becomes a two-week drip of forgotten attachments and repeated questions.
Start with the intake form. Keep it to seven fields maximum: goal, current obstacle, timezone, preferred contact, payment confirmation, and two questions specific to your niche. Anything else belongs in the first session. I use a simple form tool that pipes answers into a Notion database, so I'm never copying and pasting.
Next is the portal. One link, one login. It holds the welcome video, the first module, and a calendar link. I stopped sending PDF welcome packets after realizing no one opened them. A single page that updates is more useful than a document that goes stale.
Then the automation: when the form is submitted and payment clears, the client gets a welcome email with the portal link, a calendar invite for session one, and a short note on what to prepare. I built this once in Make and haven't touched it in eight months.
Last piece is the handoff message. Write it once, keep it in your notes app. Three sentences: here's what to expect, here's when we meet, here's how to reach me between sessions. That's the whole flow. Build it this week and you'll stop rebuilding it every time.