06 — INTERVIEW PROTOCOL: Advisory Onboarding Kit

Consultant methodology — how to facilitate the live interview that produces the kit's input. This file lifts from the TPC-cohort draft at business-aos/cyp/tpc/drafts/tpc-advisory-onboarding-interview-protocol-draft.md and generalizes for the universal kit.

Purpose: Extract a practice owner's advisory-onboarding workflow at golden-example quality — step-ordered, with real-vs-aspirational separated, named delegation partners, named gaps, and named artifacts. This protocol IS the kit's input layer. Without it, the kit's output ceilings at patterns-input quality.

Source: Reverse-engineered from a 1:1 interview with a cohort member (2026-04-29). Cohort-internal artifacts (the source transcript, the cohort's reference data, the patterns doc) live in the cohort's working repo. Outside that cohort, the protocol stands on its own.

When to run it

Trigger: Practice owner shows readiness to have their version of the kit built out. Signals: they ask about kit specifics, they offer their materials, they describe their process unprompted in a 1:1.

Where: Inside an already-booked time slot — a monthly 1:1, a prep session, a check-in. Do not schedule a standalone "interview session." The protocol piggybacks on existing booked time.

Time budget: Plan for ~40 min of the booked slot. The interview is the bulk of the call, not a 20-min carve-out. If the 1:1 has heavy agenda items beyond the interview, push them to the next session or accept that some get truncated.

The pivot — how to offer it

Soft, optional, leverages the time you already have. Sample pivot language from the source interview:

"This is actually time directly related to what we were talking about on Monday... I think one of the things that could be helpful, depending on what you want to cover here, is we could, because we're on this call together, we could actually get you to walk me through what this onboarding looks like — from the moment they say yes, what you want that onboarding to be."

The move has three parts:

1. Connect to current group/cohort context — "what we were talking about on Monday." Anchors the interview in shared work.
2. Frame as optional — "depending on what you want to cover." The owner can decline.
3. Use the booked time as the asset — "because we're on this call together." Implies no additional commitment.

Sessions are recorded by default — no separate recording disclosure needed.

If they say yes, move directly into the first question. Don't re-frame, don't preface — start.

Positioning — protect the owner's special sauce

Before the first question (or as part of the pivot), name what the kit IS and what it ISN'T:

"We're using this to build a kit your colleagues in the group will also use. What we want is the universal spine — what every advisory onboarding needs — not your specific tactical edge. The parts of your practice that make you differentiated stay yours. We're after the structure all advisors need."

Two things this does:

1. Protects the owner's competitive advantage. Specific tax-strategy sequencing, exact pricing tiers, coaching-content depth — these stay theirs. The kit captures the structural pattern, not the proprietary content.
2. Frees the owner to share. Without this framing, careful owners hold back. With it, they describe their full process knowing the kit won't expose what makes them differentiated.

During the interview: if the owner describes something genuinely unique to their practice — a specific software stack, a unique offer, a proprietary methodology — capture it as their variant, not as the kit's spine. Note it as "[Owner's] version" or "[Owner's] institutional pattern" rather than as "the kit requires X." See file 01 (Special-Sauce Protection Rule).

The question arc

The order matters. Each question sets up the next. Don't skip; don't jump.

Q1. The trigger. "I'm going to start with a few questions, and this is just confirmation. How do you know an advisory client is now an advisory client? What has already happened that triggers this workflow? Think about this as a whole workflow — what's happened before to trigger this?"

• "Just confirmation" lowers the stakes
• "Whole workflow" forces upstream thinking (discovery call, presentation call, signed agreement, payment — pre-trigger steps that produced the trigger)

Q2. Read-back to lock. After they answer, restate it back: "Okay, so that triggers it. So basically, you've had a session where you show them what's possible..." — Listening pattern, but also a confirmation move. They either nod or correct. Both outcomes are useful.

Q3. The structural seed. Before going further, introduce the technical-vs-relational distinction:

"There's the technical onboarding — what are the things you technically need to have. And then there's the onboarding that onboards the relationship."

This is terminology-planting per file 02. The owner's later answers sort into these two buckets.

Q4. Technical onboarding scope. "What are all the things you're going to need, beyond what you've already collected in the initial discovery, in the technical onboarding in order to actually serve this client?"

Q5. The roadmap probe. "Would you anticipate wanting to show them something like, here's the roadmap of how we're going to help you implement each of the things for this tax/advisory year?"

• This is leading, on purpose. If they say no, you've learned their roadmap-aversion is real. If they say yes (most will), they've committed to producing the roadmap as the kit's primary artifact.

Q6. Cadence. "How many seasonal meetings? When?" — Force specific months/dates. Then pre-book the year: "I'm a fan of having meetings already pre-scheduled for the year, because it helps you lock in dates that work really well..."

Q7. The first-win mechanic. "What would be the quickest win you could get for somebody in [tax planning / advisory / coaching]?"

• Force a concrete example.
• Then push timing: "Within 30 days?" — anything longer than 30 days loses urgency.

Q8. The artifact form. "What are you giving them to say 'here is what you need to do, here's what I'm going to be doing, and here's what is going to happen next'?"

If they say PDF, ask: "Is it a Word doc, an Excel? How do you imagine your clients — knowing your clients — what do they interact with?" Force the artifact-format answer.

Q9. The 1-to-10 ease score. "How easy do you think it is for a client to get that package and execute on it? On a 1-to-10, super easy is 10, super hard is 1. What's the success rate?"

This is the move that surfaces the gap between what they have and what works. Whatever number they give becomes the kit's build target — the goal is to move them from their current score to 9+. A number in the 5-7 range is typical; if they say 9+ without prompting, probe whether they're underselling the friction (most do).

Q10. Failure modes. "What are some of the other tricky spots? What are some failure points you've typically seen when working with clients to implement [this strategy]?"

Their answer becomes the kit's "common failure modes" section.

Q11. The reframe. When their answer is "I give them a PDF" or "I send them a form," deliver the principle:

"How do we make it impossible for them to fail at doing this? That's how I want us to position the thing. We want 100% success rate."

"Make it impossible for them to fail" is the reframe to remember. It does two things: (a) names the standard the kit is built to, (b) makes the current state visibly insufficient without criticizing the owner's current setup.

Q12. Reverse-engineering the timeline. "When would [the action] need to happen for [the outcome] to be true?" Forces them to map dependencies backwards from the target date.

Q13. Follow-up + substantiation. "What proof are you needing? Who's checking in, and when? Who's reaching out a week before the deadline?"

Q14. Repetition / rinse-and-repeat. "Walk me through a July meeting" (the seasonal one). Forces them to articulate the steady-state, not just the kickoff.

Q15. Year-one structure. "What does a year-one client typically go through? Not all cookie-cutter, but the spine?"

Q16. Visual deliverables. "If you could say these are the three most important things I'm going to show them that will tell where they stand — what are those things?" Force the deliverable specifics.

Q17. The naming move (use when warranted). Not every interview needs this — use it when the owner describes a process or system without naming it, OR when they've borrowed a name from someone else's IP that doesn't fit what they actually do. Trigger phrases: "kind of like Profit First but…", "we do something similar to…", "I call it…".

When triggered: "Everything in your process needs to have a name. When we give it a noun, a thing, it becomes something the client can refer to."

If borrowed: "Is that still what you want to call it? Or would you like to call it something that's more in alignment with what you're actually doing?"

Skip when: the owner already has clean names, OR the process described doesn't need a brand-level name (most operational steps don't).

Q18. The objection-handling probe. "Are there any concerns in your mind if this is an existing client and you've never really pushed for these kinds of conversations in the past? Any feelings of 'I should have presented this to them before' or 'I feel guilty'?"

Surfaces emotional friction in rollout. Owners who plan to deploy this with existing clients carry this load. Naming it in the interview = naming it in the kit's rollout guidance.

Q19. Anything else. "What have we not talked about in terms of what you'd want in an ideal onboarding?"

Optional. If they're tired, skip. If they're energized, this is where the next-cycle ideas land.

Extraction moves (use throughout)

Switch from extraction to live design when answers get thin. If the owner can't answer a question concretely, propose a draft: "I'm a fan of having meetings already pre-scheduled for the year — does that resonate?" They react to your proposal faster than they generate from scratch.

Force concrete examples, not abstractions. "What would the quickest win look like?" — not "what's a win?" Tie every principle to one specific scenario from their practice.

Push the artifact form. "How do you imagine your clients interacting with that?" — Don't accept "a document." Push to PDF / Excel / video / one-pager / living tracker.

Plant the north-star feeling. A pattern that surfaces in interviews: the owner names a feeling they want the client to walk out with. Examples from the source interview: "Working with [advisor] is absolutely free" — i.e., the engagement pays for itself so quickly the client doesn't feel the cost. Find the equivalent for each owner. It becomes the test the kit's output runs against.

Catch real-vs-aspirational in real time. When an owner says "I would want..." or "I'd like to have..." — that's aspirational, not running. When they say "what I do is..." or "[Team member] sends..." — that's running. Capture them in different columns. The kit needs both, but they're different.

Reflect what they're saying — don't transcribe. Capture structure, not words. The recording exists. What you capture during the interview is the step sequence, named delegation partners, named tools, named gaps. Build the spine in your notes while they're talking.

What to capture during the interview

Not a transcription. A structural capture. Suggested columns:

The hand-off

Close with: "I'm going to be interested to see what the other people in the group come to the table with. I'm hoping some good ideas — there could be other ideas we're not even thinking of. We want to make these unique to how you want to be delivering this offer."

Two functions:

1. Signals this is one input among several — their version feeds the shared kit; it's not a one-off bespoke build.
2. Lowers the pressure of "did I give you everything" — they don't have to be complete in this one session.

If they're the first interview, name that: "This is the first one I'm running. The others will sharpen what we have here." If they're a later interview, name the others: "[Previous owner] walked me through their lean-team version. Yours will be the [institutional / coaching / hybrid] version."

After the interview

1. Write up the structural capture within 24 hours. Transcript can wait; structure goes stale fast.
2. Flag every aspirational item. These are kit-design opportunities, not commitments — but they reveal what the owner thinks "good" looks like.
3. Cross-check named proper nouns against the cohort reference data (e.g., business-aos/cyp/tpc/tpc-reference-data.md for TPC; equivalent file for other cohorts). Audio capture mis-renders names: "Adam" for ATOM, "Carbon" for Karbon, "Financial Sense" for Financial Cents, etc. The reference data wins.
4. Send the owner a one-paragraph thank-you within 48 hours that names what they gave you and what's next. Not a recap — a receipt.

What this protocol does NOT do

• Does NOT replace a written submission. The written submission is a different layer — patterns-input for surface synthesis across many practices. The interview is golden-input for building one practice's roadmap to ship quality.
• Does NOT produce the kit's deliverable (the roadmap) by itself. The interview surfaces the structure; file 05 (output skill) builds the deliverable from the captured detail.
• Does NOT work in writing. Tried-and-failed pattern: forms get minimum answers. The protocol is conversational extraction — the same principle the kit teaches the owner to use with their clients.
• Does NOT get repeated for the same owner. One interview per practice. If the first interview surfaces 80% of the structure, the remaining 20% gets closed by asking targeted questions of the group/cohort — not by booking a second interview. Group sessions surface patterns the single-practice interview misses.

Cross-references

• File 01 (Context) — the five patterns + package-design layer the interview surfaces
• File 02 (Terminology) — locked vocabulary the interview plants
• File 04 (Quality) — the blocking failures that the interview's output must clear
• File 05 (Output Skill) — where the interview's structural capture goes next
• Lessons-learned: business-aos/cyp/tpc/lessons-learned/lesson-input-methodology-mirrors-output-2026-05-19.md, lesson-special-sauce-protection-2026-05-19.md