02 — TERMINOLOGY: Advisory Onboarding Kit
Locked vocabulary for this kit. Use exactly as defined. For proper nouns (member names, firm names, tool names), cross-reference the cohort reference data.
Terms Used in This Kit
| Term | Locked meaning | NOT this |
|---|---|---|
| Trigger | The event that makes a prospect an advisory client: signed agreement + payment received. | Not "signed paperwork," not "verbal yes," not "intent to engage." Both must be true. |
| Onboarding | Everything that happens AFTER the trigger. | Not the discovery or presentation calls before signing. Not the sales/scoping process. |
| Pre-onboarding | Everything BEFORE the trigger — discovery, presentation, scoping, signing, payment process. | Not "prospect work" or "sales process" generically — the term names the structured pre-trigger phase specifically. |
| Package-design layer | The upstream definition of what's in the advisory package vs. what's a separate project. Specified before the trigger. | Not pricing alone. Not scope-creep response. The structural definition of what the engagement covers. |
| Technical onboarding | The infrastructure setup: tool access, document collection, payroll/bookkeeping integration, the operational handshakes. | Not the relational/welcome experience. |
| Relational onboarding | The relationship-building flow: welcome experience, first-win identification, mutual responsibility, roadmap presentation, kickoff agenda. | Not the technical handshakes. |
| Roadmap | The single client-facing document showing what's happening when, what the client sees, what winning looks like. Visual, not text-heavy. Living, not static. | Not a checklist. Not a PDF questionnaire. Not an organizer the client fills out. |
| First win | A concrete, dollar-measurable result the client gets within 30 days of the trigger. Identified at kickoff. | Not "early engagement." Not "value demo." Not a feeling — a specific dollar amount the client can name. |
| Cadence | The pre-scheduled seasonal meeting rhythm — booked at onboarding, before the work starts. Shape flexes; pre-scheduling is the spine. | Not "regular check-ins" or "as-needed meetings." Pre-booked, on the calendar before the engagement begins. |
| Mutual responsibility doc | The written, signed document that says what the firm does, what the client does, by when. Format flexes (one-page action plan, expectations doc, formal sign-off); commitment doesn't. | Not the scope of work. Not the engagement letter. A separate, more granular document the client receives during onboarding. |
| Completion gate | The criteria that signal onboarding is complete and the engagement moves to steady-state. Criteria-based, not time-based. | Not "after 30 days." Not "after the first win." A specific set of conditions both sides can verify. |
| Living document | A document the firm owns and tracks, visible to client + advisor + team, that updates over time. Replaces static PDFs that get filled out once. | Not a one-time form. Not an organizer the client fills out. Not a checklist locked at delivery. |
| Welcome experience | The first communication the client receives after the trigger — before any logistics or forms. Reinforces the buying decision. | Not the kickoff meeting. Not the engagement letter. The space between "I'm a client" and "we're working together." |
| Spine | The universal pattern that every advisory onboarding needs (the five patterns + package-design layer). | Not member-specific tactics. The spine is what's shared across practices. |
| Variant | A practice-specific implementation of a spine element. | Not a deviation or a one-off. Each spine element has multiple defensible variants. |
Forbidden Terms
These must NEVER appear in client-facing output produced by this kit. Some appear in advisor-internal interview material; they get filtered out at the audience boundary (see file 01).
| Term | Why forbidden | What to use instead |
|---|---|---|
| "Profit First" (used to describe a system that isn't actually Profit First) | Proprietary name for a specific methodology. Borrowed loosely, it confuses clients and may mislead them about what they're getting. | "Cash allocation system" or the advisor's own named system. See file 06 — interview protocol Q17 (the naming move) for how to surface this in extraction. |
| "Onboarding" when referring to pre-trigger activity | The kit locks onboarding = post-trigger. Using the term for pre-trigger activity breaks the vocabulary lock. | "Pre-onboarding" or "prospect process" or "intake" depending on the specific activity. |
| "Just fill out the form" / "Send back the organizer" | Violates the kit's principle (file 01, pattern 2 — living document, not static PDF). | "Let's talk through this together" or "Here's the working document — let's build it." |
| AI patterns ("It's not X — it's Y," double-em-dash constructions, "leverage" as a verb, "synergy") | Brand voice rule from business-aos/reference/core/voice.md. | Direct, pattern-revealing, grounded language. See voice file. |
| Consultant jargon ("touch base," "circle back," "bandwidth," "deliverable" used as a noun in client-facing output) | Client-facing documents are for the client, not the advisor. Jargon makes the client feel managed, not served. | Plain language. "Let's plan to meet in July." "Here's what you'll have at the end of this." |
Proper Nouns — Cross-Reference
This kit does NOT redefine proper nouns. They live in:
- Cohort-level:
business-aos/cyp/tpc/tpc-reference-data.md— member names, firm names, tool names across the TPC cohort. Includes the transcript-misspelling table (ATOM not "Adam," Karbon not "Carbon," Financial Cents not "Financial Sense," etc.). - Per-member:
business-aos/cyp/[client]/members/[name]/[name]-reference-data.md— team members, firm-specific tools, client-specific terminology.
Rule: When the kit produces client-facing output, ALWAYS cross-check proper nouns against the reference data. The transcript renderings produced by Otter/audio capture are unreliable. Reference data wins.
Forbidden Pattern — Transcript Renderings in Client-Facing Output
If the output contains any of the following, it's a blocking failure (see file 04):
- "Adam" instead of ATOM
- "Carbon" instead of Karbon
- "Financial Sense" instead of Financial Cents
- "Mike Mylons" or "Mike Michalowicz" instead of Mike Milan (Cash Flow Mike — Clear Path to Cash)
- "Kwang" / "Kuang" / "Wong Kwong" instead of Kwong
- "Tax Dome" (two words) instead of TaxDome
- "Smart Vault" (two words) instead of SmartVault
- Any member name rendered the way the audio captured it instead of the way the reference data spells it
This list is not exhaustive. The reference data is authoritative.