211: Why Nobody Finishes Online Courses Anymore and How to Fix It

Foreign welcome to the Creators MBA Podcast, your go to resource for mastering the art and science of digital product entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desks, constantly live launching or worrying about the social media algorithms. I hope you enjoy our episode today. Hi there Destiny. Here today I want to talk about why my programs got a complete makeover and why yours might need one too. So I've been thinking a lot about our online courses lately, especially how so so many of them feel stuck in the past, even though your content might be solid. And a lot of times it really comes down to the support people are looking for to get the transformation. So let's talk about this whole quote unquote outdated course problem. So what I realized was that people were looking for more support. They needed more hand holding. What they didn't want was another course that would they would just, you know, sign up for but never do anything with. They wanted somebody alongside of them helping them take action. The other thing that they did not want were those painful two hour group coaching calls where you will just sit there and wait forever just to ask one specific question. So that is something that people do not want in 2025. So here's what I did in my programs and here's how I set them up. So in both of them, in the digital product growth lab and in the newsletter Profit Club, I added a private podcast feed where people can submit questions whenever they want and then I answer them on the private podcast so they can listen in when it works for them, when it's convenient for them, during their commute, while working out or whenever they wanted to. The other thing I did, I added live workshops with Q and A. And these live workshops are very curated type workshops based on the questions that I'm getting from the members in the program. So I wanted to make sure that I was addressing challenges that they are seeing right today, right in their business. And it's not some outdated course content that's not going to help them at all. The other thing I did in both of these programs for our yearly members is I added personalized growth plans because what I noticed is that a lot of people really weren't sure on what to focus on next. So then they would waste a ton of time really on stuff that wasn't moving the needle for the business. So people are wanting that more of that personalized support and you know, basically going back and forth, they want to be able to ask questions that's very pertinent to their business. And I will say that this is working so much better. People are getting results and this new format is working really, really good. So let's talk about why this is working so much better. So here's the best part of all of this. People are actually getting results. They're asking better questions and they're getting much better results because they're not wasting time waiting around for help or guessing what they need to do next. So here's what you might need to change in your course. So let's first talk about those massive PDF workbooks that nobody fills out. So let's be real. Most people are downloading them and they're never opening them up again. So what you might want to do instead is to create AI prompts that will help them and go back and forth. You could even do some AI chatbots with your knowledge base uploaded in there to kind of help them work through issues. That's working very, very well. The other thing you might want to look at is the Facebook group support model. So these are where questions get lost and see people feel awkward asking questions. You might want to consider a more private way for people to get help without feeling judged. Now there are some programs out there where these communities work very, very well and some programs out there that they just, you know, you probably don't need that extra headache there. The other thing is your content delivery timeline. If you have a course that keeps everybody moving along at the same time, that might work for, but for some type of programs, some people might want to sprint ahead while others need more time. So in that case, you might want to build some flexibility in there. I know for me in my newsletter Profit club and my digital product lab, I have people that are at all different stages. I have people in the newsletter Profit Club that have close to 70,000 subscribers on their email list and I have people who are just starting out, like literally probably 15 subscribers if that. So depending on kind of where they are. The other thing you might want to reconsider is a one way communication style where you're just delivering the content without, without getting feedback from folks. People want to be able to ask questions and want to know that they're doing it right. The other thing you can consider doing is using AI to make it all easier for you so you don't have to do all of this stuff manually. I have started using AI to help with a bunch of stuff in my memberships. One of them is using AI to create personalized learning pathways based on simple questionnaires that the students fill out. Still working on this and refining this. The other thing you can have AI do is help you draft personalized feedback on forms and assignments so that you can review and just tweak it and that'll help you deliver responses faster that back to your clients. You can also use AI to create summaries of common questions and answers that you get so you can send it out to everyone or put it in a place in your course platform. You can also use AI to help you update examples and case studies with current data and trends. The other thing you can do is set up AI powered chatbots that can handle basic questions which will free you up for the more complex stuff. The point of all of this is to meet your customers where they are and give them what they need so they can keep moving forward to get results. The programs that are doing well in 2025 are the ones that have adopted to help people actually want to learn and how they're going to get results. I know that once you make these changes and look at your entire container, you're going to wonder why you ever did it the old way. Because I could tell you using AI and having that interaction with your clients, it has actually been a game changer for me. So your students are going to be happier, you're going to be less stressed and everybody's going to get better results. So it's absolutely worth the effort to update things. Thanks so much for joining me today. If you have any questions about all of this or you know, questions about should I do this for my online course or my membership or my group coaching program, let me know. I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. Bye for now. Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you like the show, I'd appreciate a review on Apple podcasts and or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.