The intake form questions that do the work before day one

The intake form looks like a formality. It is not. It is the single most important document in the whole 5 day build, and it is the reason Monday can be a copy day instead of a discovery day.

Before a 1WeekSites project officially starts on Monday morning, the coach has already filled out a 35 question intake form. The answers to those 35 questions are not background reading. They are the raw material for about 80 percent of the copy on the finished site. The copywriting on day one is mostly rearranging and cutting, not generating from scratch.

These are the questions that do the most work, and why they are in the form.

"Describe your ideal client in one sentence"

This is question one, and the one sentence constraint is deliberate. A sentence forces the coach to commit to one client. If the coach cannot get it to one sentence, they have not picked a niche yet, and the 5 day build is going to expose that, not fix it.

The answer to this question becomes the "who this is for" block on the homepage, usually word for word. The coach already wrote it. The coach just never put it on their homepage before.

"What do your current clients call their problem, in their own words"

Not what the coach calls the problem. What the clients call it. This is the single most valuable answer in the whole form, because the words clients use are the words that convert on the homepage.

Coaches consistently use the wrong words. A fat loss coach calls the problem "metabolic adaptation". The client calls it "my body being broken". The first phrase goes nowhere on a homepage. The second phrase sells the page.

The question is phrased the way it is because it forces the coach to stop and remember actual sentences clients have said, rather than writing what they think the client's problem should be.

"What is the thing you keep having to explain on sales calls"

This answer becomes the FAQ, every time. It also usually becomes the "why most solutions fail" paragraph on the about page. It is the thing the coach has already written, in dozens of voice notes to prospects, but has never put on the website.

This is the question that most coaches find surprising, because they have not realised that their homepage could just contain the explanation they already give on every sales call. The reason it does not is that nobody asked them to write it down before.

"Who is this NOT for"

The who is it not for question is the single biggest trust move on the finished services page. Most coaches have never written it down, and they have to stop and think for a long time to answer it. The answers are almost always gold, because they reveal the coach's actual operating principles.

A fat loss coach who says "this is not for anyone who wants to lose weight in under 8 weeks" is signalling a whole philosophy in one sentence. That sentence ends up on the services page in bold.

"Tell me about the hardest client you have had that worked out well"

This is a Trojan horse. The surface answer is a case study. The deeper answer is a map of the coach's actual methodology. When a coach describes the hardest client who eventually succeeded, they implicitly describe the process they use, because they cannot tell the story without mentioning the key steps they took.

Those key steps become the "how it works" block on the services page. Again, the coach has already written it. The coach just thought they were telling a story.

"What do you wish more clients understood before they booked"

This answer becomes the about page opener, usually. It is a pre-emptive education move. It says, in effect, "here is the frame I wish every client came in with". On the finished site, this turns into the about page first paragraph, which is the sentence that makes the visitor read the second sentence.

The questions that do not make it into the form

There are questions the form deliberately does not ask. It does not ask for a detailed site map. It does not ask what colour the coach wants. It does not ask about navigation structure or how many pages they want. None of those are copy questions, and copy is what day one is for. The design questions get answered on day two, when there is copy to design around.

The form is the product

Coaches occasionally push back on filling out a 35 question form before they have paid their deposit, or they try to answer it in a single sentence per question. This is the moment the project is most likely to go wrong, and it is why the form is gated behind the discovery call rather than sent out cold.

By the end of the call, the coach understands that the form is the product. It is where the thinking happens. It is where the language gets pulled out. Without it, the 5 day build cannot start on Monday, because there is nothing to write from.

What to do with this

Even if you are never going to hire a web designer, the intake form is a useful exercise in its own right. Pick five of the questions above, block out 30 minutes, and answer them properly. You will end up with raw material for your next homepage rewrite, whether you do that rewrite yourself or hire someone to do it.