Systematize Client Transformation with a Proprietary Process

Transformation and results can be systematized—and they need to be if you want to reliably facilitate and deliver results for your clients while building a sustainable business.

Many clients I’ve supported through my coaching, consulting, and courses over the years have felt that they “have to” create entirely custom offers for every single prospective client. They believe they must conduct a discovery call, discuss the client’s needs, create and send a custom proposal, hope the client likes it, and then negotiate elements (often losing components they know the client truly needs but that seem superfluous to the client).

Others come to me with standardized packages already in place. However, these packages are often built around a specific offer structure—e.g. a 1:1 coaching package or a VIP day—rather than being centered on a transformational, results-driven process. This misalignment often leads to side effects like scope creep, overdelivering beyond what’s sustainable, and other manifestations of weakened boundaries. These often occur because the practitioner has unknowingly skipped critical steps in the transformational process, often due to the “curse of knowledge.” They know their work so well, themselves, that they make assumptions about what the client does and doesn’t need, bypassing foundational elements that seem obvious to them but require explicit support for the client.

The result? Clients don’t consistently achieve the intended outcomes of the offer. They might still get results of some kind, and they might even be satisfied with those results, but they do not reliably get or achieve the explicitly intended outcome that was sold to them when entering the offer.

To address this, we need to know how to create the conditions for reliable client success. That starts with creating AOM Alignment, which we’ve discussed in previous blog posts. Once that context is established, we then need to build our Offer Foundations. There are five Offer Foundations, and choosing how to structure your offer or what to include in your offer are foundations number two and three, respectively.

Which means that you must first build the first of five Offer Foundations, which is the Proprietary Process.

What is a Proprietary Process?

A Proprietary Process is an outline of the exact steps your Right Fit client needs to take to achieve the intended transformation or result of your offer. The “guiding question” I encourage my clients to ask when creating a Proprietary Process is: If my client were to achieve their desired outcome independently, without my involvement, what steps would they need to take?

It’s important to note that a Proprietary Process is not the same as the “signature framework” that many in the online business space preach as a necessity in any “successful” business. While a framework is often used as a marketing asset showcasing your process with snappy language and a cool diagram, a Proprietary Process is primarily for your internal use. Additionally, while you’ll typically have only one signature framework for your business, you need to create a unique Proprietary Process for each specific offer in your offer suite (free and paid).

How to Create a Proprietary Process for Online Services, Coaching Packages, Courses, and More

There are three components of a Proprietary Process:

1. “From,” or, where are they now (in relation to this offer)? 
2. “To,” or, where do they want to be (in relation to this offer)?
3. “Steps,” or, what steps would they need to take to go from where they are to where they want to be?

Key Points to Remember Before We Dive In

Your Proprietary Process is not messaging, so it doesn’t need to sound polished or perfect. As long as you understand it, that’s enough for now.

• Related Post: What is messaging?

The “from” and “to” should be specific to the offer you’re creating. For instance, if you’re a copywriter who has a course on using testimonials in copy and you also have a separate sales page copy template, the “from” and “to” need to be specific to each offer. e.g. the “to” in your testimonials course might be “I can use testimonials effectively in my copy” while the “to” in your sales page template might be “I can create effective sales page copy for my coaching package.”

Along those same lines, your “from” and “to” need to stay within the bounds of your expertise (and what work you desire to be doing). For example, if you’re helping people form their LLC (or register their business in general), don’t make the “from,” “I have no idea what business I want to build” and the “to,” “I now have a thriving, successful business.” Instead, it might be something more like, “From: I’m starting my own business and need it to be properly registered” and “To: I have a legally formed business.”

That’s a fairly straightforward example, but it’s something to watch out for in every industry, particularly if your work is of the human transformation variety. As an example: if you’re creating an offer that helps people feel confident using their voice, you might not say that the “to” is, “I’m a confident leader.” While feeling confident using their own voice might eventually lead to that outside of this offer or even outside of your work in general, if that’s not what you’re explicitly intending to help them do—and have the expertise to help them to do—then it’s “too far beyond scope” and you need to bring your “to” back, closer to the actual work you intend to do.

Finally, pay attention to the specific verbiage of the question in number three, after “Steps.” The question is: What steps would they need to take to go from where they are to where they want to be? You are not listing out steps that you, as the business owner, will take for the client. You are listing out steps that, if the client was taking this journey on their own, they would have to take in order to achieve their intended outcome.

This approach to creating the Proprietary Process helps us to exit the “curse of knowledge” (as much as is possible!), putting ourselves in our clients shoes and seeing the journey from their perspective. But it also does another very important thing: prevents codependent client-practitioner relationships.

The Proprietary Process Prevents Client Codependency & Practitioner Savior Mentality

True transformation involves both achieving and sustaining a new reality. If clients cannot maintain the transformation without ongoing support, they’ve experienced a breakthrough, not a full transformation. Breakthroughs are absolutely valuable milestones, and hopefully your clients will experience many breakthroughs throughout their journey in your work! But if we as business owners are in the business of creating Sustainable Success, for both ourselves and our clients, we have to facilitate true, lasting transformations. 

Otherwise we’re creating the conditions for codependency, where our clients feel they “need” us in order to be successful, rather than trusting themselves and having built their own capacity to sustain and/or deepen their results. Codependency is exhausting for everyone involved. It’s not only a disservice to the client who is now totally reliant on the business owner for ongoing “good results,” but often unconsciously sends the business owner into a savior mentality. The client feels they need the business owner, the business owner feels like the client needs them and so begins supporting the client from this mentality, the client is affirmed in their reliance on the business owner, and the business owner becomes the “savior.” Yes, it’s a bit of a slippery slope, but look around the online business world and you’ll notice that many of the systems we’re used to have unintentionally been set up to create this codependent dynamic.

It’s therefore extra important that we’re creating the Proprietary Process from the perspective of, what steps would the client need to take to go from where they are to where they want to be?, because this is how we ensure the offer is set up for the client to be able to maintain responsibility for their own success. As one of my mentors always says, “energy follows energy,” and so if you as the business owner go into offer building and delivery knowing that the client could take these steps without you, you’re much more likely to build the offer under the assumption that the client does not need you in order to achieve their intended outcome/s.

Of course, they’re hiring you as a catalyst who can speed up the process of their transformation. You bring a depth of knowledge, experience, and expertise that allows them to skip over the grueling years of study and trial and error—which you, yourself, have likely already gone through—and instead get on the simplest path to achieving their intended outcome. This is the primary value of hiring qualified service providers, coaches, and practitioners: the catalyzing effect. But there is a difference between a client WANTING your support and NEEDING it. It’s our job as business owners to remember that our clients are whole, complete, and capable on their own—and that belief has to be the basis of everything that we do, including how we build our offers. (This is part of how we cultivate credibility and become trusted leaders in our industry, too!)

Create a Proprietary Process

Now that we have each of those nuances clear, let’s create your first Proprietary Process. To start, choose an offer. This can either be an offer you’ve yet to sell, one that’s already a cornerstone of your offer suite, or anything in between. If you’re choosing an offer that’s already quite established in your business, be mindful to set aside any preconceived notions on what it “has” to look like, do, or include. When you do, you’ll often either find confirmation that you have built the offer how you needed to, or—more commonly!—you’ll find clarity on how to strengthen the offer and/or why some element of it hasn’t felt like it’s working how it’s “supposed” to.

Three reminders and then let’s jump in:

1. All of your answers in your Proprietary Process need to be true of your Right Fit client. Everything we do in the “offers” element of your Sustainable Success System has to be built on top of everything in the “audience” element. Without first knowing who your Right Fit client is for this specific offer, you can’t create a Proprietary Process that reliably facilitates results.
2. Nothing you’re writing right now has to “sound good.” This is not messaging. (Though we do build one of your messaging foundations, the Offer Overview, off of your Proprietary Process!)
3. Let yourself potentially not get this entirely “right” on your first go. You might nail it, but you might not! Use this as a practice session and come back and refine later.

Step 1: Where is your client now? (“From”)

Jot down a sentence or two, or at least a phrase, that communicates where your Right Fit client is in relation to this offer for the “from.” 

Step 2: Where do they want to be? (“To”)

Jot down a sentence or two, or at least a phrase, that communicates where your Right Fit client wants to be in relation to this offer for the “to.” 

Step 3: What steps do they need to take to go from where they are to where they want to be? (“Steps”)

Your goal here is to come up with approximately 5-8 steps that the client, themselves, needs to take to go from where they are to where they want to be. Any more than that, and you’re often either overcomplicating the process and/or some of the steps can be grouped together into a more “overarching” step, or you actually need to split this offer up into more than one offer. Any less than that, and you’re often stuck in the “curse of knowledge” and you’ve skipped over something that seems obvious to you, but is necessary to the client needing to take this journey.

Reminder: these are steps that your client needs to be able to take on their own. What we DON’T want is: “Step 1: hire me. Step 2: I audit your business. Step 3: I create a strategic plan for you. etc.” 

Sometimes business owners have difficulty conceptualizing how a client might take this journey on their own. For them, I reframe the question: If you were “where your client is now,” but you still had all of your current expertise and experience, what steps would YOU take to go from this place, to “where your client wants to be”?

Example Proprietary Processes

Here’s our Proprietary Process for our comprehensive business training program, EXPAND, as an example. Remember that a Proprietary Process is NOT intended as a marketing asset and it’s also not messaging. All that really matters is that you as the business owner understand what you’re saying. 

Which is to say: this example is literally pasted directly from my own behind-the-scenes documentation. Therefore, what I share below may or may not make full sense to you and/or you might not know what each piece means in practical implementation. That’s ok, because it makes sense to me 😉 

FROM: I have a business, it’s somewhat working, but it’s not sustainable for me to run over the longer-term (a lot of it has been built by stringing together other people’s strategies, but those strategies aren’t working for me, either because I don’t enjoy them or they actually aren’t producing sustainable results).

TO: I have the business-building acumen and deeply embodied self-trust to be a trustworthy leader of my business, I’m confidently building real, lasting Sustainable Success.

STEPS:

1. Identify the direction you’re heading in: Niche, Business Model, Financial Goals
2. Get an overview of what you’re building: AOM Alignment + Demand Generation = Getting paid to do work you love, in the way you love, with the people you love
3. Build AOM Alignment: Identify Right Fit client, Develop first offer, Craft messaging to attract RFC into right-for-them offer
4. Build and Implement Demand Generation System
5. Edit, iterate, expand as necessary and desired

“But wait, is my Proprietary Process too simple? What if it’s not actually ‘proprietary’?”

The Proprietary Process is going to be relatively simple or even “obvious,” especially to you, the expert in this work. Complexity in this case is not really a ‘good thing’ since our goal is to create a journey that your client could theoretically take by themselves, reliably achieving their intended outcome. 

Of course, if they were to do this on their own, it would almost certainly take them A LOT longer to transform than if they were to do this work with you. You’re someone who has already figured out the common stumbling blocks and how to preempt or manage them, who already has the depth of expertise to make each step simple, etc. To give an example: I could certainly learn how to do my own taxes, entirely on my own, without anything like TurboTax and certainly not a real, live human helping me. Do I want to become an expert in tax law, who knows how to use all the various systems, and what every single one of the terms mean, etc? Hell-to-the-no. Not only that, but trying to figure all of that out, entirely on my own, before the next tax season?? It’s not happening. Do I still want to do my taxes each year? YEP! (Well, sort of. You know what I mean.) So, looks like I’m investing in expert help.

Some clients through the years have had qualms with my usage of the word “proprietary” in this context, as it feels like this has to be something that they need to trademark, which is typically unnecessary since this is not a forward-facing asset in your business. If you dislike the use of the word “proprietary” here, that’s totally ok! Simply think of this as the journey that, from your experience and expertise, you know that your Right Fit client would need to take in order to get their intended result or transformation—and use whatever language to describe that journey that feels right for you.

The reason I use the word “proprietary” here is because the steps that you see that your Right Fit client would need to take are naturally going to be different than what a competitor or someone who does similar work to you would use. Said differently: the journey you are designing here is based on who YOUR Right Fit client is as well as what work YOU want to be doing, what YOUR expertise is, and what experiences and values YOU specifically bring to the journey. Therefore the journey that you design is naturally going to be different to one that someone else would design, even if they were supporting a client to achieve a similar outcome. It’s “proprietary” to you, not because you’re trying to make something that has never been done before, but because when you design this journey taking all of the aforementioned pieces into account, it’s naturally going to be unique. And even if you and another business owner who does the exact same work that you do with the exact same clients that you work with tried to follow your exact Proprietary Process, the way that they would do so would still be wildly different, because they are bringing their own expertise, experiences, and values to the table. 

Use the word “proprietary” or don’t. It really doesn’t matter so long as you still build out this foundation and understand this journey that your Right Fit client must take in order to reliably achieve their intended outcome.

Next Steps

Your goal is to get your Proprietary Process to 70-80% “done” through the process laid out in this article. That’s because the only way that you can really finalize it is through use. By guiding real, live, paying clients through it, you’ll discover if each component is correct and/or whether you need to add, remove, simplify, or expand any aspect of it. Trying to get your Proprietary Process “perfect” before use is an impossible task. Let today’s draft be an informed hypothesis, run an “experiment” (aka use it), and then come to your conclusions about it.

Once your Proprietary Process is 70-80% “done,” you’ll then need to create the next three Offer Foundations: your Offer Structure, Offer Inclusions, and Price Point. Finally, you’ll check in with Offer Alignment—the fifth and final offer foundation—which essentially boils down to: do you actually want to sell and deliver this offer? After that, you’ll create your messaging for this offer and then move into developing and implementing a demand generation system for it!

We do that—in full or in part—together across our core programs here at WholeCo:

The Aligned Niche, our 6-week authority accelerator which guides you through the exact framework to position yourself as the go-to expert in your industry so that Right Fit, ready-to-buy clients immediately recognize the value of your work and choose you—regardless of the competition.

EXPAND, our 9-month business incubator which equips you with the skills and self-trust to embrace your role as CEO, systematically setting your business up for long-lasting Sustainable Success.

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