“I wrote a Claude Skill to analyze that and give me coaching notes for me. Detailed prescribed coaching notes on each one of the participants, and then I had it create a kind of upbeat, futuristic-looking, personal profile insights for each individual.” — Don Back
Session context: 2026-04-30_Mastermind — Don shared the complete onboarding pipeline he built for his new 16-person group coaching program, including the participant response the morning after delivery.
Core Idea
The onboarding process is one of the most underused coaching assets. Most coaches run it as intake — collect information, establish context, set expectations. Don Back turned it into a three-output intelligence pipeline: coaching notes for himself, personalized profile insights for participants, and a growing VOC (voice of customer) research repository.
The assessment battery:
- Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
- OCEAN (Big Five personality dimensions)
- Career Claimer Index (Don’s proprietary instrument)
- Standardized 6-question, 15-minute interview
Output 1 — Coaching Notes (for the coach): The Claude skill analyzes all four instruments together and generates detailed, prescribed coaching notes per participant. Not a summary — a coaching plan. What to watch for, what to address, what approach will land. This is the judgment-amplification layer: the coach’s expertise defines what matters; the AI applies it at scale across 16 participants simultaneously.
Output 2 — Personalized Profile Insights (for the participant): “An upbeat, futuristic-looking, personal profile insights for each individual” — how we’re going to help them. This went out the day before the first session, individually, to all 16 participants. The morning-after response: “Oh my gosh, how insightful this is.”
This is the difference between telling someone you’re a good coach and showing them before the first session starts. The personalized profile functions as a lead-on — it builds trust, sets tone, and creates anticipation for the work ahead. It makes the participant feel seen before they’ve said a word in the group.
Output 3 — VOC Repository (for future content and marketing): The same data that produces coaching notes and participant profiles is also a rich source of avatar research. Patterns across 16 profiles build a living map of the audience’s language, fears, aspirations, and decision drivers. Don is building this repository so that future content, proposals, and messaging can draw on real participant data rather than assumption.
The architectural insight: a well-designed assessment battery doesn’t just serve the coaching relationship — it produces multiple outputs simultaneously. Coaching notes and participant profiles have always been worth producing; most coaches don’t produce them at scale because it would take days. The skill reduces 16 personalized profiles to a single session.
Lou’s observation: “If you add, when you store that into your avatar vault… based on the conversations I’ve had over the last month, what are things that I should write about, or should be talking about, or should be publishing that people seem to be experiencing? You could start looking for patterns.”
Practical Application
Build your own onboarding intelligence pipeline:
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Design your assessment battery. Include at minimum: one validated psychometric (MBTI, OCEAN, StrengthsFinder), one proprietary or domain-specific instrument you’ve built or licensed, and a structured intake interview (5-8 questions, 15-30 minutes, recorded or transcribed).
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Write the coaching notes skill. Describe: what each assessment reveals, what combinations you look for, what coaching approaches map to what profiles. This is your judgment encoded.
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Write the participant profile skill. Define the format (Don’s is “upbeat and futuristic”), the sections (strengths, growth areas, how the program will serve them), the tone (affirming, specific, forward-looking). Make it feel like it was written by someone who knows them.
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Add a VOC extraction layer. After running the full pipeline, ask the skill to identify: what fears/frustrations appeared most frequently? what aspirations are common across participants? what language did they use to describe their situation? Save this output to your avatar vault.
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Send the participant profile before session one. Not as intake confirmation. As the first coaching deliverable.
Coaching Question:
“What would change about my onboarding process if every intake assessment automatically produced three things: coaching notes for me, a personalized profile for my client, and new data for my marketing?”
Related Insights
- Insight - The Multi-Instrument Client Profile — AI Meta-Analysis Across Diagnostic Data — the predecessor insight that established the multi-instrument analysis approach; this insight extends it into a complete pipeline with three distinct outputs
- Insight - Raw Client Language Outperforms Marketing Copy as AI Input — The VOC Advantage — the strategic reason to add the VOC extraction layer: participant language is more valuable than crafted messaging
- Insight - Skills Encode Judgment Into Persistent, Composable Intelligence — the architecture that makes this pipeline repeatable: the coach’s judgment about what each assessment reveals is encoded once and applied to all 16 participants
- Insight - Turn Every Conversation Into a Content Engine With AI Synthesis — the same multi-output pattern applied to conversations; here applied to assessments
- Insight - Trust Before Automation in High-Value Relationships — the guardrail that makes this work: the AI produces the profile, but the coach reviews it before sending; the relationship is always the final layer
Evolution Across Sessions
This builds on Insight - The Multi-Instrument Client Profile — AI Meta-Analysis Across Diagnostic Data (2026-04-09), which established that combining multiple diagnostic tools gives AI the data it needs to triangulate meaningfully. The new development is the complete pipeline with three distinct outputs (coaching notes, personalized participant profiles, VOC repository) and the live evidence of its impact — participants responding “Oh my gosh, how insightful this is” before the first session. That response data is the proof point the earlier insight was missing.