12 | From Chaos to Clarity – How the Happy Client Map Empowers Coaches to Start Systemizing

OOH, I have something special for you today. We’re gonna talk about the Happy Client Map. This is something I take my clients through to get a bird’s eye view of how the client travels through your business from the very beginning, from how they hear about you all the way to the end when they exit your program. To prepare, choose one offer that you have and think of your favorite client, and I will take you through the seven sections of the Happy Client Map. Are you ready to work less and feel more organized and productive,

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streamline repetitive tasks, and implement systems that allow your coaching business to run smoothly even without you? If so, you’re in the right place. Welcome to the Organized Coach Podcast, your go-to source for practical tips and solutions. I’m your host, Tracy Hoth, professional organizer, certified life coach, simplifying expert, and most of all, down-to-earth fellow coach just like you. No matter if you think you’re missing the organizing gene, have ADHD, or just love anything organizing, I’m here to help you become an organized coach with a business that works for you.

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Pull up a seat and let’s get started.

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Let’s get a visual of how our client experiences our business. We’re going to look at the Happy Client Map. This is my signature process that I take my clients through so that we have this bird’s eye view. We have a clear picture of where clients come from, how they travel through our business, and then how they exit. And the point of making this is, yes, to see the client journey, but also then we’ll know where to set up systems, where we need systems in place to improve the process, and even to hand off part of the process to an assistant.

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How can we use this Happy Client Map, this customer journey, to improve our efficiency? Now, what we want to do first is just look at what we’re currently doing. We don’t want to create a Happy Client Map for what we think we should be doing or what we wish we were doing. We’re just going to look at what we’re currently doing. No pressure.

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There are no right or wrong answers. We’re going to look at what we are currently doing. So think of your favorite client and think of one of your offers. So we’re going to answer these questions based on one offer and your ideal client. If you have several offers, you can do the Happy Client map.

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You can answer these questions for each of your offers individually, but this looks at one offer at a time so you can answer those questions. Who is your ideal target client and what do you offer them? Start by choosing your main product or service, and then you can write down just a brief description if you want to. Or let’s get started with section one, their attention. How do you currently get your ideal client’s attention?

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Write down four ways. Maybe you have a podcast, maybe you use Facebook ads, speak and you get clients from speaking, or maybe you’re in networking groups or network in Facebook groups online.

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Maybe a big part of your clients gain your attention through referrals. Or another common way might be a webinar or a workshop that you host. So what four ways do your clients hear about you? Section two, how does your ideal client come into your world? So write how someone inquires to work with you or asks about your offer.

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How does this inquiry come into your business? With coaching and with what we’re taught, with funnels, I feel like one of the ways is through a free opt-in. We tell them about an opt-in, and then they join our email list. Or they could go to a sales page and they could click a button and they could set up a call, or you may have a launch and they fill out an application. So in this particular offer that you’re thinking about with this client, how does the client come into your world?

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So they hear about you. Now you have their attention. How do they come into your world? So write that down and write the answers as simple as possible. So it might be a free opt-in, and you can write the name of it.

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Or it might be scheduling a sales call and you write what page they pick. Where do they schedule their sales call? Is there a main page that they’re directed to? And then they schedule a sales call. So how does the client come into your world?

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That’s section two. Once the client is in your world, how do you nurture them? So section three is nurture. Write the steps from opt-in to a decision to purchase and just use the average client. Write down what the steps are that they go through, that you nurture them.

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So for many people, it’s an email, weekly email, twice-a-week email. That’s how you nurture them. It might be a free workshop. It might be in a Facebook group. You nurture them there.

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Section four is the money. How are you paid? Write how the client pays you. Do you send an invoice through PayPal? Do they click on a Buy Now button and it’s processed through Stripe or through Kajabi, thrive, Cart, or whatever other platform you use – how are you paid?

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And then section five is the client’s onboarding process. How do you onboard the client? Onboarding is setting up the client in your program. So what needs to happen so that you and if you have a team, have everything you need to get the client into the program or service? Do they fill out an intake form?

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Do you send them an email and you schedule their calls? How is it that you onboard the client? Do you send them something in the mail? Do they have access to your program,  or to an online course? How do you onboard them?

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What happens behind the scenes with the client tracker? If they fill the intake form and you hook it into the client tracker, you have all their information right there and it takes maybe five minutes to set up when you want to send things to them to schedule and take the notes in there that you need to. If you know your system is really down, you can optimize that. Once the payment is made, you can have a series of things that happens that are optimized automatically. You don’t have to do a thing.

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So in the beginning, I don’t think you want to optimize it till you know that it works and you have it set up the way you want to. But after that, you can optimize the onboarding process as much as possible. But what are you currently doing? What happens now? Not what do you hope to happen one day or do you think it should look like?

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And then section Six what are the steps to deliver your product or service? Think of delivery as doing the work. So write the steps that the client goes through as you deliver your product or service. Do they see if it’s one on one coaching? Do they see the appointments on the calendar they meet with you?

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What happens? Do you send them a follow-up email? Do you check in with them? How are they experiencing the delivery of your product or service? So what does that entail?

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Keep it simple. Write maybe three or four things down that the steps to delivering your product or service include. And then section seven is their exit. How does your client leave your program? Write what happens when the client completes your program.

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Do you make another offer, ask them certain questions, schedule a testimonial video, send them a gift, or add a tag in your CRM so that you know their client is complete?

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What exactly happens when a client exits your program? Then in the Happy Client Map, I just ask some others, like if you think of any questions, do you things you think you want to implement, another product or service you want to make for a Happy Client Map, maybe you have two main offerings. You would repeat this for your other program. Now you have a clear view of what’s currently happening in your business. How do you get your clients’ attention and then what happens in the time that they’re in your program?

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How do they get nurtured? How do they pay? What is your delivery process? How do they exit? I have a form that my client fills out with these questions that I ask and then it’s put into a flowchart, a really cool, clean flowchart.

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Simple words, not long paragraphs or sentences. So we have a really clear view of what’s happening currently in their business. The next step is just to ask them questions. What part of this do I want to systemize? Where should I start?

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Systemizing my business. And to figure that out, you might ask yourself what do you avoid doing? What do you really not enjoy in this process? Now, some of it you might have to do currently in your business, but looking at it and seeing what you tend to avoid, that’s where you want to start systemizing. Because if you can create a system for that, a process that you do that step in, then you can hand that off to someone else or maybe you can automate it.

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Another great question is if you are going to scale your business, let’s say ten times what it is right now, what is the first thing that’s going to break? And that’s where you need to start systemizing documenting your systems so that someone can come alongside you and help you do that process. Or you can automate that process so that it’s freeing up your time. And then you can go to the next section to automate that. So when you’re looking at your happy client map, what do you avoid doing?

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And if you are going to scale your business ten times what it is right now, what’s the first thing that will break? Let’s look at a few examples just to show you how simple this can be. The coach is someone who coaches one-on-one and she coaches women in midlife. Her program is twelve weeks long. So how do you currently get your ideal client’s attention?

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She networks in Masterminds she joins because she loves it. She speaks any place that she can get the opportunity that has women in midlife and she networks in local groups around her city where she volunteers in those groups too in leadership. Then the second question is how does someone inquire? How does your ideal client come into your world locally? They might ask her and she just schedules a consult call with them.

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She also has a button on her website for her VIP email list to get on her list. And she has a freebie Women in Midlife quiz where someone can find her online and get into her world. Then how does she nurture them? She sends a weekly email and she has a Facebook group. So she does monthly workshops and provides value in the Facebook group.

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Then the next question is how is she paid? She sends an invoice through PayPal. How do you onboard the client? She schedules their calls, sends them a link to Zoom, and then sends a gift. How is her delivery?

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She does weekly calls and she does Monday check-ins through Voxer. And then how does someone exit? She adds a bonus 13th call and half of the call is coaching for the client. And then the other half is a series of questions. She asks them to decide what is their next goal and how are they going to achieve that goal.

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They either sign on with her or they end it. And then she does a little testimony video at the end. That is her happy client map. Now. She has a bird’s eye view.

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She knows exactly how her clients get into her world and how they purchase and flow through her program. To systemize this, she might ask if she was going to scale her business. If she wanted ten times more clients, what would be the thing that would break? What should she begin to systemize or what things was she avoiding doing? And one of the things that came up was she did not like writing weekly emails.

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They seemed really hard. They took a long time. She procrastinated so much. So we wrote a system for her to write her weekly email. Now she had a checklist and she had it on her calendar and it was a much easier process.

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She can move through her Happy Client Map now and begin to systemize each section. Here’s another example. This coach has a group program where she helps women lose weight and build muscle. How does she currently get her client’s attention? She has a podcast.

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She guests on other people’s podcasts. She consistently makes reels for Instagram and TikTok. How do people inquire? How do they come into her world? One of two ways.

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She has a free, five-day meal plan that people opt-in for. And if they inquire or reach out to her, she has them get on the waitlist for the group. How does she nurture them once they’re in her world? Twice a year she does a boot camp and she does a weekly email with a little video. If they’re on the waitlist, she does extra bonuses for people on the waitlist.

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And so she also promotes that in her weekly email to get on the waitlist for the next group. Section four is money. How is she paid? This is automatic. She has it set up in Thrive Cart and so someone just clicks the button when the group opens.

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How are they onboarded? Once they click the button in Thrive Cart to make a payment, they are tagged. They are entered into an email sequence that drips out to them. How is the program delivered? There are weekly emails that are being dripped out to them and they have weekly calls.

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And then how do they exit? They actually have a six-month program. At the end of the six months, there is a party and they are offered a spot in the alumni group, and it’s a testimonial time where people share testimonies and they get graduation certificates. So it’s a big deal how the people exit the program. Okay, so if that coach is looking at the Happy Client Map, what part of it do they want to create and document systems?

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They actually have quite a bit of automation done. It’s set the way they want it and so it’s the perfect opportunity to write these systems down. So if something happened to them, if they want to take a two-month vacation, they have the systems in place so that someone can step in, follow the system, and have things go smoothly. Now remember, a system isn’t to create what you want your program to look like or how you want the process to be.

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It’s just to start with a raw outline of what’s happening now, so that you have what you currently do in writing, in video format, in a Loom video showing what you currently do, so that if something were to happen, if you want to take a break, if you want to hire someone, what has to happen is written down. This coach has quite a bit of that process figured out, and now it’s just documenting that process. So she could just start at the top and document what she does. What does she do to record a podcast? What does she do to pitch herself on other people’s podcasts?

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What does it look like to create a reel and how often does she do it? What is the process for the boot camp that she does two times a year? Write all of that down. What does someone have to do? What links do they need?

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What dates do they need to change? How many weeks in advance is that boot camp put on? That’s the perfect place to start optimizing or to start systemizing that in your business and get it really mapped out so that each time you do that boot camp, you get better and better. Someone could actually come in and do the boot camp for you, because you have every single thing mapped out, every date that needs to be changed, every step that needs to be taken is written down with every link that they need. It’s all there.

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Everything they need is written down. You can put that into a project management system, assign people tasks, and it’s just a beautiful thing to have everything systemized that you need to do in your business. Okay, so we did so much. We have a vision for what our client process is and the client journey is. I call it the Happy Client Map.

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Let’s review it really quickly. Pick one offer, your ideal client. Think about them. And section one is about how you currently get your ideal client’s attention. Section two is inquiries.

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How does your client come into your world? What happens when they reach out and ask about your offer? Section three, how do you nurture them? Once your clients are in your world, what do you do? What steps from opt-in to a decision to purchase?

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Step four is money. How are you paid? Write how the client pays you. Section five onboard. How do you onboard the client?

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How do you set them up in your program? What needs to happen? Section six, the delivery. What are the steps to deliver your product or service? This is where you’re doing the work.

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And then section seven, exit. How does your client leave your program? Right? What happens when the client completes your program? So fun.

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If you want help with this again, reach out to me. I walk clients through this, and I can answer all your questions. We can figure out together where you want to start systemizing. Or once you have this view, maybe you want to make some changes. Maybe you see, okay, this is not what I want to be doing or I want to improve it in these certain areas.

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What’s the next step? How do I either optimize this how do I improve this? How do I make it easier? We’ll set those goals and accomplish those goals. DM me on Instagram.

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Take a picture of your happy client map and send it to me. So fun. I will see you next week. Talk to you all soon. Thanks for listening to the episode.

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Please share this episode with your coaching bestie and tag me on Instagram at @tracyhoth. And of course, I would be so grateful if you could subscribe and leave a written review on Apple podcasts. It’s the number one way you can thank me. To thank you, go grab the File Naming Formula cheat sheet and watch the workshop replay 3 Secrets to Organize your Digital Files. Both are linked in the show notes.

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Until next time, have a beautiful week.