The 'Now What?' Onboarding Sequence
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 8
- Confidence
- —
Jay Clouse argues most communities underbake onboarding, dropping new members into an empty playground at the exact moment they feel both peak excitement and peak anxiety about whether they just wasted their money. His fix is a chained sequence where every action a member takes is immediately answered with an explicit next step, so the internal question 'now what?' never goes unanswered. The sequence runs from the moment the card is swiped through a personal touch, a training page, profile setup, an onboarding course, an email and a personal message. He compares it to walking into a gym and being greeted, shown around, and introduced to someone rather than handed the keys to a room full of equipment.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Trigger a personal touch at the moment of purchase
The instant someone pays, surprise them with something human: in the lab, a scheduling link for a one-to-one call with Jay that members did not know was coming.
Pro tip If you cannot do the calls yourself, have a team member or an existing enthusiastic member do them, as Clubhouse did with peer onboarding calls.
Watch out This only scales at high ticket with small numbers; design the substitute deliberately rather than dropping the personal touch.
- 2
Send them to a training page, not the community
Before the door opens, walk them through what to expect, their dashboard and the next steps they should take, then give the link into the community.
- 3
Prompt profile completion on arrival
The invite link should land on a pop-up asking them to fill out their profile, so their very first act inside is small, easy and completed.
Pro tip Include a short clip on configuring notifications so the platform works for them from day one.
- 4
Hand them an onboarding course
Use a short course as the answer to 'now what?' after the profile. It trains people on how to use the tool to reach the promise and lets you watch their progress.
Pro tip Simple Loom recordings are enough; the point is direction, not production value.
- 5
Fire a welcome email in parallel
An automated email restates the first things they should do, so the sequence survives someone closing the tab.
- 6
Send a personal direct message
An automated DM that admits it is automated but tells them how to reach you personally makes the space feel staffed rather than empty.
- 7
Guarantee a response to their introduction
If you ask for an intro post, make sure the team and other members reply quickly. Alert the team the moment a new intro lands.
Pro tip Pipe new introductions into your internal team channel so someone always responds.
Watch out If you cannot reliably deliver a warm response, remove the introductions step entirely rather than let it fail.
- 8
Point them at their first live event
Close the sequence by naming the specific event they should attend next, so the habit of showing up starts in week one.
Pro tip Real-time contact turns a two-dimensional profile photo into a person members feel invested in.
In the wild
In Jay's membership, swiping a card produces a scheduling link for a one-to-one call with him. The member then moves through a web page explaining what to expect and the next steps, into a Circle invite link that pops up asking them to complete their profile, then into an onboarding course built with Circle's course functionality so Jay can see their progress. Simultaneously a welcome email and an automated direct message from Jay arrive, the latter telling them how to reach him personally.
→ Every step a member takes is immediately answered with the next one, at peak excitement.
Jay recalled that when Clubhouse was starting, you needed a personal TestFlight invite, and for the first several thousand users everyone had a one-to-one onboarding call, usually with another user who simply loved the product. He used it as proof that a personalised welcome does not have to come from the founder or paid staff to work.
→ A personal onboarding experience delivered at scale by enthusiastic members rather than staff.
Common mistakes
Handing new members an empty playground
Saying 'everything is here, have fun' produces overwhelm. People close the tab, build no habit, and may never return.
Asking for an intro you will not answer
An unanswered introduction is worse than none: the member has been vulnerable, spent ten minutes, and felt unwelcomed on their first day.
Measuring onboarding by hours spent
What matters is timeliness of response, not the number of hours the founder logs inside the community.
From the transcript
“where most communities really fall apart is they underbake the onboarding experience”
“every time somebody takes a step in their mind they thinking now what and you really just want to answer that now what question as…”
“when you just get thrown into an empty playground and say all right everything is here that you could want have fun with it people…”
From the episode
How To Build An Online Community - Jay Clouse
Jay Clouse