How to Offboard Students From Your Online Course

Creating an online course feels overwhelming sometimes. That’s because entrepreneurs overthink the process and get caught up in the details. Onboarding and offboarding your customers and students is no different.

While the details are important, WHEN you focus on them is what helps you move quickly and easily toward the finish line. So often I see entrepreneurs who want to create online courses putting the cart before the horse: you spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to sell your course…but you haven’t built it yet. Or you focus on how to bring students into the course…but again, it’s not built yet.

What happens when you put the cart before the horse?

Your cart doesn’t go anywhere.

In fact, the opposite can happen: the horse hitches to the cart on the wrong end and you end up going backward. If this sounds like you, keep reading. In this article, I’m going to share with you three things you need to think about when it comes to onboarding new students to your online course and they aren’t what you think. 

Number 1: You Don’t Need to Think About Onboarding Students to Your Online Course Until it’s Built. 

Sorry to burst your bubble right out of the gate (again, but you probably knew I was going to say this), but unless you’ve got a course on the shelf that you can sell already, you shouldn’t be thinking about how to create a student onboarding experience just yet.

Yes, the onboarding process is vital to the student experience. It’s so important that your student feels welcome and understands how to move through your program with confidence, but if you haven’t built it yet, it can feel impossible to gain clarity in this area.

There’s that horse before the cart again: you need to build the course before you build the student experience.

I work with entrepreneurs, organizations and non-profits to create online courses quickly and easily. As part of that process, I show you how to onboard students, but not until it’s time for that. 

Number 2: You Don’t Have to Reinvent the Wheel When You’re Ready to Move

Second, once it is time to create an onboarding process, you don’t need to waste any time trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t work. Because you’ll have spent time talking to your students and developing a course that they told you they want to buy, you’ll already have insights into how to support and prepare them for the programming you’ve created.

I speak to a lot of business owners who have no idea how to get their employees to learn. It seems obvious, but so many leaders/owners/organizations are not asking people what they need to get to the next step.

Instead, we focus on teaching for teaching’s sake. And leave the most important information on the floor: the student or employee’s input. Instead, we favor our own expertise. It’s not how things work now.

You’ll create an onboarding process that your customers need. And then we’ll talk about offboarding.

Number 3: Onboarding New Students is Important…But the Offboarding Process Might Be More Important

What’s an offboarding process? It’s the process of saying goodbye to your students. Entrepreneurs and organizations try to create online courses put put the cart before the horse. And you might also be jumping the cart while you’re at it.

You might be looking at creating your online course as a one-trick pony. You just need to get people in there and then get them out. But that “getting them out” process matters as much – if not more – than onboarding new students. That’s because you get lots of chances to make a first impression. But you only get one chance to make a lasting impression.

Last year I signed up for an 8-week course and at the end, I was cut off. I didn’t have any kind of offboarding process and it’s not the first time that’s happened.

Leaving a lasting impression is vital for recommendations, referrals, and solid testimonials you can use to continue to build your course business.

But You Have to Create Your Online Course First

But you know what? None of this matters if you don’t yet have a course to build an onboarding process for…or an offboarding process. So let me be frank: if you’re finding yourself putting the cart before the horse, book a call with me now. I can help you get your thoughts organized and onto the page faster than you think is possible, easier than you imagined it could be and get you moving with the confidence you’re really here looking for. 

I can help you create an online course.

Let me show you how it’s done. Quickly.