Why Clients Struggle with Your Course: The Crucial Course Design Step Most Creators Skip

Course creation mistakes are costing your clients before they ever start. If you're designing a course right now, there's a step most solopreneurs skip entirely and it sets clients up to struggle from lesson one.

In this episode, I'll show you the course design mistake that causes clients to hit a wall early, what it actually costs you when it happens, and the two-part fix that prevents it.

You'll learn:

• Why course creators unknowingly design courses from the wrong starting point
• What the curse of knowledge is and how it affects your course design
• How to use your ideal client knowledge in a way most course creators never think about
• Why clarity on your transformation is the key to setting the right prerequisites
• How to decide if your course is for beginners, intermediate, or advanced clients

Most course creation programs tell you to focus on your launch. But if your clients aren't starting from the right place, even great content won't save them. Course design that starts with where your clients actually are, not where you assume they are, is what separates courses that get results from courses that get refund requests. 

I'm Dr. Curtis Satterfield. I spent 17 years as a college professor building over 30 courses from scratch, and I help fully booked coaches build group programs that deliver real results for their clients and scale their business without adding more hours. 

If this episode got you thinking, check out The Handoff Method: An Online Course Design Fix for Low Completion Rates, find it wherever you're listening right now.

Note: This episode was recorded under the show's original name, Course Creation for Solopreneurs. The podcast is now called Program Design for Coaches. The name changed to better reflect what's actually working in the coaching space right now. Group programs where the coach is present and involved are what's selling, and that's the direction this show has moved. The instructional design principles in this episode apply whether you're building a course or a group program, so everything you hear still works. 

Transcript

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Some of your clients are going to struggle in your course from the very first lesson, and it won't be because your content is bad. After 17 years designing courses and working with adult learners, I've seen this cost course creators months of rebuilding work they thought was done. Today I'm going to show you the mistake causing it, the real cost of that mistake, and the simple fix. Let's get into it. Here's the thing about being an expert. The longer you've been doing something, the harder it becomes to remember what it was like when you didn't know how to do it. You've been living in your world so long that things that once felt impossible now feel like common sense. And that's the problem. There's actually a name for this, and you've probably heard it before. It's called the curse of knowledge. And it affects almost every course creator I've ever worked with. When you sit down to design your course, you're designing it from where you are, not from where your clients are starting. So you skip over things that feel obvious to you, things that are absolutely not obvious to someone who's just starting out. Here's what I know from the other side of this. In my 17 years as a college educator, I've developed over 30 courses from scratch. Every single time before I write a single lesson, I have to ask myself where my students are starting from, what they already know, and what they need to have in place before they can succeed in the course. That process produces a set of prerequisites, and those prerequisites exist for a reason. If a course lacks the proper prerequisites, students get lost and drop out. Most solopreneur course creators never go through that process. And the result? Your client hits a wall in lesson one. Not because your content is bad, not because they're incapable, but because they showed up to your course missing something they needed to even get started. Let me tell you a little story because I have experienced this firsthand as a student. When I was doing my undergrad degree, I needed calculus. The problem was I hadn't tested into it. I didn't really do a lot of math in high school and it showed. So I needed to take college algebra and trigonometry first. My advisor, however, was determined to get me into the class sooner rather than later. He took me to the calculus professor, which was a bit awkward, and I distinctly remember my advisor making a joke that I was dying from pneumonia the day that I took the placement test, and that's why I didn't score high enough to go straight into calc. So my advisor convinced the calculus professor to do an override so I could skip the prerequisite and jump straight into calc. Yeah, I should not have been in that class because I was lost from day one. I managed to get a C with a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth through the semester, and it was one of the most painful academic experiences I've ever had. Not because calculus is impossible, but because I was missing the foundation. Now, imagine one of your clients sitting down to take your course, excited and ready to go, and hitting that same wall. Not because your course is bad, but because they showed up without the foundation that they needed. That's what happens when course creators don't think through prerequisite knowledge and skills. So that's the mistake. But I want to show you what it actually costs because I learned this lesson the hard way in one of my own courses. A few years back, I built a course for makers, people who create handmade products and want to sell what they make. I spent a lot of time prepping the course. The content was solid, the lessons were clear, the structure made sense. I put my years as an educator to use. However, I assumed that anyone coming into the course would already understand the basics of finding their niche. That assumption was very wrong. It turned out most of my clients didn't understand niching at all. They were getting lost early on because I had skipped over something I thought was obvious. So I had to go back, add an entire section on niching, and rebuild part of the course from scratch. Not fun when you thought you were done. Oh, and adding to the pressure, it was a live call each week, so I only had a week to fix my mistake and build an entirely new module with the lesson and workbooks. However, after I added it, the section on niching became one of the most popular parts of the entire course. In fact, it delivered some of the best outcomes I've ever seen. One client increased their sales by 500% just by getting clear on their niche. Another client was able to achieve their dream and go full time with their woodworking business. All of that almost didn't happen because I assumed they already knew something they didn't. The content was good, but I had built the course from where I was at, not from where my clients were starting. When I fixed that, everything changed. So now you know the mistake and you've seen what it costs. The question is, how do you actually figure out what your clients need to know before they start your course? Now, most course creators here know your ideal client and they roll their eyes. They've heard it a hundred times, but there's a specific way to use that knowledge that almost nobody talks about, and it's the difference between clients who succeed and clients who hit that wall. Think about how college courses work for a second. You can't take French 102 without taking French 101 first. The prereq exists because the people who designed that course knew exactly where a student needed to be to succeed. They understood their ideal student, and they understood the transformation the course was meant to deliver. That's the same thing with my calc story from earlier. You can't get to derivations without going through angles first. That's a little math humor for my fellow nerds. When it comes to designing your course, you need to do the same thing. The first thing you need is a deep understanding of your ideal client. Not just who they are, but where they are right now. What do they already know? What are they struggling with? What have they already tried? And the best way to know all of this? Work with your clients one-on-one. That direct experience tells you more about where your ideal client is actually starting from than any amount of research ever will. The more you know the person walking into your course on day one, the better equipped you are to know what they need to bring with them. And you will learn that from your one-on-one coaching experience. The second thing you need is clarity on your transformation. What is your course's point A and point B? A is where they start from, and B is after the transformation you want them to achieve. What does success look like when they finish? When you're clear on that transformation, you can work backwards and figure out what your client needs to already have in place to get there. If you enroll a client in your course, what skills and knowledge do they need to start at your point A? Put those two things together and you can make a clear decision. Is this a course for absolute beginners? Is it for someone with intermediate experience? Or is this advanced material that requires a certain level of knowledge to enrol? That clarity doesn't just help you design a better course, it helps your clients self-select. The right people show up, they have what they need to succeed, and you spend a lot less time backtracking and rebuilding. If you're still in the design phase, this is the time to work through those two questions. Don't wait until your clients are struggling to figure out what they needed to start. If this got you thinking about how you're designing your course, check out my episode on the handoff method. Once you know where your clients are starting from, that episode will show you how to design lessons that actually get them to the finish line. You can find it wherever you're listening right now. You've been listening to Course Creation for Solarpreneurs. I'm Dr. Curtis Satterfield, and if nobody's told you lately, you've got what it takes to build your course. I'll talk to you in the next one.