LMScast with Chris Badgett

In this LMScast episode, Chris Badgett welcomes Mark Szymanski, co-founder of MJSTV, to discuss various aspects of content creation, agency work, and the WordPress community. Mark Szymanski is a co-founder of MJSTV and a dedicated WordPress Consultant and Digital Educator. With extensive experience in creating tutorial videos. He specializes in the WordPress environment, helping individuals and businesses effectively harness the platform’s potential. Mark has a strong interest in exploring new markets and emphasizes the value of sharing personal stories through engaging content. Through his business, he aims to help people navigate the complexities of digital marketing and communicate successfully in the ever-evolving world of the internet. Additionally, Mark discusses how page builders, such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, and others, have made it easier for non-developers to quickly create websites. However, he also highlights how these tools can become somewhat ‘tribal,’ with strong loyalties forming among users of different platforms. Here’s Where To Go Next… Get the Course Creator Starter Kit to help you (or your client) create, launch, and scale a high-value online learning website. Also visit the creators of the LMScast podcast over at LifterLMS, the world’s leading most customizable learning management system software for WordPress. Create courses, coaching programs, online schools, and more with LifterLMS. Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014. And be sure to subscribe to get new podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide Episode Transcript Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program, I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co founder of Lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end. I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show. Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMS cast. I’m joined by a special guest. His name is Mark Szymanski. You can find him at MJSTV. com. Mark and I just met in person at WordCamp U. S. I came across Mark in many places just on social media and videos and through Matt Medeiros and stuff. We’re going to talk about content, we’re going to talk about agency, we’re going to talk about WordPress, we’re going to talk about page builders. But first, welcome to the show, Mark. Mark Szymanski: Chris, it is an absolute pleasure. It was a pleasure to meet you in person. Been following your stuff for a while too, man. Love what you’re doing. I cannot thank you enough for having me on the show here. Chris Badgett: Yeah, you bet. It’s fun to chat. It’s this, a thing happens here in in WordPress land and digital entrepreneurship land. Specifically around WordPress is you come across like other content creators and we’re a niche within content. There’s a lot of channels and podcasts and things that get it. A lot more views that are more mainstream. But this kind of niche world we live in of building sites for clients. Building solutions, helping people build websites, particularly with WordPress. It’s a niche. So whenever I see another content creator come on the scene and you’ve been on the scene for a while, I’m like, I gotta get that guy on the podcast. So I’m glad you’re here. Hell yeah. When did you fall in love with creating content? Mark Szymanski: Oh, man. I would say I’ve been creating YouTube videos for a while. I’ve had a little bit of a, I would say like a past life. Like when we, just as an example, when we bought our house here, I was like renovating some of it and I was just like documenting it. I think one of the biggest things was I found. Most people have heard like Gary Vaynerchuk when he was like really big. He’s still obviously a popular guy, but it was just about documenting, putting things on social media. Just building your personal brand. I can’t, I have all this written down somewhere. But I feel like it was probably in 2016 or so, or maybe while I was building the agency, like 2018. I was just like, I just want to document this even just for myself. If nobody watches anything, I just want to document it. So I started doing some of that, and then I started getting involved in WordPress in 2018, building the agency. And very quickly I was like I’m learning things very rapidly, and I know there’s other people out there that could potentially benefit from that. So I did a little bit of like tutorial content probably in 20 20, 2021, 22. But I was still like just working and trying to build websites for clients. And then just over a year ago, I would say is when I discovered the WordPress community, which is a whole thing in and of itself. Like you could use WordPress for your entire life and never really jump into that realm. But I decided to, and I don’t regret it. And I was, that’s when I started specifically making content with guys like Matt. And like whether it was technical news oriented, business oriented. I’ve just continued to try to find my way there. And yeah, I guess it’s that’s the, been the trajectory to this point. Chris Badgett: What kind of content do you like to consume? Great question. Mark Szymanski: I feel, I don’t know if anybody else has gone through this, but I’ve gone, I’ve noticeable, if I look back at my, I have a big Excel spreadsheet of all, like the big events that have happened in my life that I can remember that I feel like were pivotal or just like in general, if I go back through there, there are actual periods of time. Like I consume an unbelievable amount of content on a specific topic, right? And I think I’m not, I’m definitely not unique in this fact, but I don’t hear too many people talk about it that often. So I remember I can’t remember the order, but I remember I was in college and I was like, okay I really want to like, know more about like money. Like maybe it was around the time I had my first job. So I wanted to, I went super deep into like finance content. Dave Ramsey, Graham Stephan, like all these big, YouTubers, right? And it’s funny, and you know this, Chris, because you know how these algorithms like suck you in as soon as you get into one thing. It’s you’re going to see videos forever until you get into another, hobby or topic. So finance was a big one. That was probably a couple of your stint. I feel like you go from not knowing anything to knowing like 75, 85 percent of it in if you really go hard, you can go like pretty quickly, maybe six months to a year. And then you know way more than the average person, but then you got to get burnt down. You’re like, I’m tired of listening to this. So it was finance was one of those. Business, general business stuff was one of those more recently it’s been golf it’s just crazy. And then as soon as, it’s like now I don’t see really much any finance stuff, but I get the golf stuff. Obviously WordPress has been a huge part of that for the past year or two. But yeah, those are my big ones right now. I would say right now it’s, that last year it’s been heavy on WordPress and the golf thing. Yeah. Golf is a lifelong game, similar to WordPress, maybe. Chris Badgett: Yeah. Yeah. I can definitely relate to the binging on niche interest content for a period. Could be months, could be years. And a funny thing happens. Like I remember before I, stepped out of my shell when I was just building some websites for clients and trying to figure out how to build an online business, I would listen to Matt Medeiros podcast, The Matt Report. And there was a handful of other WordPress podcasts, and I just binged all that stuff. And then ultimately I got into the whole world and stepped into the community and started creating content myself. So it’s fun to, uh, listen to somebody and then all of a sudden, now you’re talking to them. Now you’re shaking their hand. Mark Szymanski: Exactly. Chris Badgett: It’s wild. It’s so surreal. Mark Szymanski: Yeah, I was like, we were talking before we went on guys like WP crafter and like Paul Charlton, WP, like WP. That’s I was, I’m 28 now. It’s I think back, I was just looking at this seven years ago, I was like just 21, like still in college. I’m like thinking about like websites and WordPress and stuff. And I’m watching their videos back then. Then I go to WordCamp and it’s cool. It’s so cool in this community where you can just go to an event like that and you just start meeting the people that you’ve been. Watching and all that stuff for so long. And it’s, it is absolutely surreal. Chris Badgett: Yeah. It’s like finding your niche. If the niche is focused or small enough, even though WordPress is big in terms of usage, the people that are really, I think Matt Medeiros used to call it small C, big C community, like the ones that are really on the inside. It’s small if you think about it so you can run into those people. What do you feel like your niche is in WordPress? If you had to pick one thing, what would it be? Or you’re more in exploration phase? Mark Szymanski: Yeah, I think it’s so big that I feel like I’m still exploring and I actually had some good chats with people at WordCamp US and I think that, I feel like there’s a there’s two ways you can do it. You can try to find your own niche, or you can just put stuff out there and see if people create one for you, so to speak. And, I feel with that, the latter option there, I feel like people have pretty much, almost, pretty much, pinned me as the guy that like is asking questions and is trying to explore. Cause I’m like new here, but I also love making content. I’m like, just always like like curious and everything. And some people express that to me, Jamie Marsden being one of them, just saying Hey, just lean into the exploring thing. You know what I mean? Like just go in and just try to explore stuff and be curious. And people love that because they’re You’re documenting your journey. They’re, they’re learning alongside you. And I just, I think that comes really naturally to me. So I would say that’s probably my main niche right now. The other, the only other things I would say are like, I really do love like process and operation stuff. Because I think that there’s a lot of people out there that I feel like I’m a very organized individual for the most part. And I think that’s one of the reasons I’m entrepreneurial. So I think that there is definitely a place for that as well. Like I used Exactly. Yeah. Systems like setting. I love the setup phase. I love the idea of setting up new businesses, business ideas for people or, like the technical pieces of getting everything all your ducks in a row from I’m not a lawyer, but the legal standpoint the financial standpoint, the marketing standpoint. I’ve often thought about I could probably productize that somehow. But yeah, I would say that exploring and then like building those pieces are some of the things that I’ve thought of, over my time doing it. Chris Badgett: A framework for that is you can be the role model or the guru, but you can also be the researcher and both of those stories are cool. Like you might be the role model and okay, these are the systems for this type of business or whatever. And then the researcher just, It’s fun to, go explore with Indiana Jones as they search for whatever. I will say one of the interesting things I’ve seen on YouTube, particularly our views don’t, our videos don’t get a ton of views, but the videos that have been most successful are when we do like a use case video, which involves tools made by lots of different companies, usually. As a product company, I’m often like really focused on Lifter LMS. But if I actually think about the person watching YouTube and somebody says, I want to build a website like you did me with WordPress. It’s not just a lift or pitch video. I’m bringing in these other like affiliate partner management things like Siren and, some web hosting considerations and email marketing CRM. You build like an actual business like Udemy, which Udemy has 240 million in funding or something like that. And you could do it for a thousand bucks with WordPress. Like it’s, those videos get the most views. We had a similar thing with. That one got 5, 000 views. The how to build Netflix with WordPress got 9, 000 views. So if you’re not married to one company or brand, I think that’s some of the most, at least in terms of reach you can get, but individual product tutorials are also cool too. You can go a million different directions. Mark Szymanski: Yeah, there’s a lot of avenues. If you’re trying to make content, which is like where I’m at now played the agency game. It’s good. I love the clients that I’ve had. But I think that I’m more suited for we’re talking about offline. That’s I think we’re really more where I’m going. And I think, yeah there’s a weird thing and I’ll be completely transparent, like I’ve always wanted to be like, okay, I have an agency and I have these tools set this is my stack. I only want to talk about these tools and stuff like that. And while that does make sense. And I feel like it’s like admirable to do that. It’s not super scalable. It’s also like a little I feel like it’s definitely, it would be limiting myself because there are just because I don’t use a tool. Or I didn’t use a tool. Doesn’t mean it’s not worth looking at. You know what I mean? Like it’s, what I’ve learned is it’s not really that binary. I tried to simplify because I was running something and I don’t want to have 16 different stacks that I have to manage. But at the same time, like if people are, if you have like agency owners or DIYers or whatever, like looking at your content, you should probably tell them there’s some options out there too. That’s the beauty of WordPress. So I’m always mixed on that, and your point on the type of engaging content, that’s 100 percent true, like we’re like a big community, so to speak, like WordPress is big, but it’s, there’s like a phenomenon where the people that actually care about this stuff is like smaller, and the people that like are researching and know where to look and know who like the sources are and everything like that is like small. Okay. So trying to reel them in as a content creator is, it can be difficult at times, but those types of things are great. Like I love the idea of rebuilding, like a Netflix or whatever, because it shows the power of what we can do in WordPress. Because sometimes I think people don’t get far enough into WordPress to understand how powerful it is. So it’s a lot there. Chris Badgett: Yeah. Let’s talk about page builders. So like I came in before page builders and I’m not a developer. I can’t write a single line of code. So that’s why I partner with developers and have team and stuff. But So for me, in the early days of WordPress, it was really hard to make a great looking site. You couldn’t even do columns without writing code and stuff like that. And and then for me, I was at a time when I discovered Beaver Builder. And We started using beaver builder internally and making some tutorials with it and stuff like that, cause it made it possible for non developers to build great looking sites. Elementor came on the scene and then, but I was already all in beaver builder and a lot of people use Elementor and lately we’ve gone to a more of the full site native editing approach that we still very much appreciate. Page builders and their different takes on how to do things. But I have noticed like page builders get tribal every, lots of companies and brands do, but, um, there’s a lot of friction in WordPress between page builders, classic editor, native, the new full site editing Gutenberg thing. You’ve got newer builders on the scene bricks, oxygen, etches getting ready to come. Like, how do you, what’s your view on page builders and how do you think about it? Mark Szymanski: Yeah. So I think there’s a couple of things like the first bit of it is I came in. As Elementor had already existed, but I want to say maybe it was like at a million or 2 million less than definitely less than 5 million like installs when I came in. So I came in and paint the picture. I come into WordPress and I’m like, okay, how do I work this thing? And then I see themes and then I install one of the, one of the themes that were on. I can’t even remember what it was at this point, but it was just, I was looking at the pictures, cause, Oh, what do I want? I don’t mind. And I’m looking at the homepages and stuff and I install one, a free one from the repo and I’m like, okay, cool. And then I’m like, oh wait, I can, I can’t like move anything around. I can’t like, affect anything. I have to just like basically replace text, replace pictures. What if I want like something? What if I’m looking at like a website that I like on the internet, like a Tesla website or something at the time, how can I build that in this theme? I’m not, I didn’t realize I had to become a developer. And then I found like an Elementor and I was like, Oh, wait a second. This is way better of an experience. I wasn’t even a designer. Like I’m not a designer. I just want the freedom to do whatever. So I find Elementor, I realized what that is and how you can build in the templating system and all that sort of stuff. I’m like, okay, this is fantastic. So I use that from like 2018 to 20. About a year ago, like 2023 or whatever. Great product and everything like that. But now that I’m looking back on it, as I like switched more to bricks, and I would say that’s my main page builder, I want to get closer to core and I’m on the advisory board for etch. So there’s like a lot, there’s still, there’s a lot happening. We’re not nearly at the end of the cycle of all that, but it’s interesting to look back. It’s interesting to look back from a product perspective, because this isn’t, I don’t think this is unique to WordPress page builders, but it’s like the people that innovated the Elementors, the Beaver Builders, I wasn’t here for all of them, right? Like WP bakeries, like they innovated. But now you have a Bricks, or an Oxygen, or a Breakdance, or whatever, that we’re able to just be like, Okay, we can learn, we can go so much further so much quicker because we learned from all like the, any mistakes that like an Elementor would have made or whatever. And I just feel like that’s really interesting to see it all. Now it’s a little unfortunate that it gets a little tribal at times. I wish that in an ideal world, software wouldn’t divide us like that. But I also think it’s like human nature. Like people really enjoy the things that they use. And that are honestly, and for a lot of these people, like a bricks, for instance, is literally driving their livelihood. Like it’s, so you can you gotta understand that okay there’s a reason that they’re so like passionate about it. But, it’s I don’t know. I don’t know how we change that or anything, but I think that the page building space has been quite interesting for the last seven or so years. And I’m really interested to see how Core continues to evolve because I do think that if we can do things, I’ve always said if the core of WordPress could for some way, you wave a magic wand and it could do all those things. I think a lot of people would go there because they’re not just using page builders for no reason. They’re using page builders because it’s easy to do the things they want to do. So I don’t know. I don’t have a crystal ball, but it’s always an, it’s always a fun topic. The whole idea of page builders and just WordPress in general regarding that. Chris Badgett: You, you made a good point like Earlier you said like training around your agency stack So when you get comfortable with your tools or your form plugin or whatever Page builder you use it’s just you just get used to it But you’re you like to explore and stuff too, which is great I think having a percentage of your time where you’re just testing and trying things is a you got to stay sharp It’s really easy to get stuck in this world and Not evolve in the sense that you have to evolve, but there’s innovation happening everywhere yeah, Florida a little bit Mark Szymanski: Yeah, it’s tough when you got to be careful how complacent you get I feel like in that and And one quick Like example of what you said there is I never, right away when I was in the agency, like maybe some of the listeners can empathize with it. As soon as I got into the agency life, like really, and I was like actually trying to build websites for multiple clients, all that sort of stuff. Immediately, depending on who you’re talking to, you’re going to get requests to do like really intricate stuff. Like when I say intricate, I know people that don’t use like dynamic data and that’s fine. They don’t have clients that don’t need to use that or what, like they don’t use custom post types. They don’t use any of that. But the first project that I had, I didn’t know how to do any of that, and it, and I look back on it now, I’m like, that would have been, that’s a perfect example some sort of website with articles, white papers announcements just a bunch of those things, right? And I look back and I’m like, wow, I really enjoyed trying to figure that out, even though I had no idea what the hell I was doing at the time, and I was trying to just use taxonomies and all this crazy stuff. But I look and I’m like, that was the thing that I was naturally driven to do. I was naturally driven to see like where WordPress could go, like how much I could do with it, like with dynamic data and conditions and all the sort of like logic and everything. And. There’s a model that a lot of agencies have where they just want to pump out like the same, like quick brochure websites for a few thousand bucks, 5, 000 bucks, whatever. And I am like, by all means they should do that if they want to do that. But I just never spoke to me. So I was always in this spot where like I wanted to do agency stuff, but I want to do really complex stuff. And it’s very hard to do complex stuff by yourself at scale and for the amount of money that you need to do, you need to, Be paid in order to do those things. So I was finding myself just wanting to do complex things, but at the same time, like just, it just didn’t, the calculation and the way I had it set up just didn’t all work. Like I didn’t think I could scale it super long term. So I’ve pivoted slightly because this is like a new. Place that I could be in where I could constantly explore, provide value and potentially do like website builds as well. But I really just like building my own stuff. Really, and that’s an end educating people along the way. Chris Badgett: So that’s fun that that kind of happened to me. I was just naturally decent at marketing and sales. I get a project and they’re like, can you do this? I’m like, I can figure that out. And then I’d go try to find a tool if I couldn’t. Oh, I think I might need to hire a developer to help me with this. So I do that. Oh, this is beyond my. Capabilities. I need to get some real designers on board here. And next thing I have had a big agency, but it’s, it was fun the whole time. And when you look back on it, it seems wild. Wow, you said yes to a lot of stuff that you had no clear path on how to get there, but you got them there about being resourceful, Mark Szymanski: 100%. Yep. Chris Badgett: Definitely. Let’s talk a little bit more about how your like YouTube process, like how do you think about that? Cause I know a lot of people, some of this audience are like course creators and they’re like, I need a YouTube channel. And they need to build process around how to do that, how to commit to it, how to like source topics and things like that. Tell us about your YouTuber evolution. Mark Szymanski: Yeah. I was, like I said, I was making YouTube videos for a while. Like just like older stuff that just didn’t have anything to do with WordPress during the, I want to say the COVID lockdown times and all that. Like I was actually like just doing a daily live stream, just like at night, just like at my desk, just going over like my. daily recap of what I was doing and thinking about some stuff. Nobody was watching at all, but I just really enjoyed that. What do you like about Chris Badgett: going live? Mark Szymanski: I have no idea. I think, I like going live. I think I like going live because I, the, there is zero editing. Like I just don’t like, like I hate video. I don’t hate video editing, but I really dislike it. I’m not a video editor. So I don’t like the idea of taking the time to do it. And I never hired an editor. So I don’t take like the time, the idea of trying to do it. And then edit it. I feel like that’s just tough. The other thing is This is super counterintuitive. Kind of, I feel so much less pressure when I’m live than when I’m trying to make a prerecorded video, because I’m trying to, I’m in this mindset when I make the prerecorded video, especially if it’s for another channel or for a brand or something like it has to be like good like when good, like almost perfect. I’m not stuttering. And I just feel like I get in more of a flow, as you can tell here, because I love to talk. I just get in more of a flow when it’s live. And I just, I don’t know, I just have a it’s just, I don’t know, maybe it’s just a skill I have or something like that. But I just, that’s one of the things, is I’m just like, way less pressure. When I’m just like, yeah, let’s just go live, let’s talk. It’s like you’re talking to somebody. That’s the thing I love about WordCamp US. It’s we watch everybody on YouTube on X or whatever. And then we get to talk to him in person and everybody’s, a lot of people are the exact same. It’s just, you’re just talking to him in real life. It’s like you’re on a live stream with him. I don’t know. It’s cool. But I think that’s a big part of it. I think there’s some people doing it really well. Yourself included Kevin Geary. Obviously, like I was watching his live streams before I started doing mine. I think the live aspect. Is really valuable because if you’re trying to build any semblance of an audience or community, they can engage with you one on one. And again, like in a digital age where we don’t get super opportunities to meet up, like altogether, like we did this past week, it’s very vital to build those connections. And I think the live setting as well is a really good one. It’s a little different than the YouTube comments. You know what I mean? The live chat is a little more synchronous, so that’s a huge thing. As far as like the video content that’s not live, I would say that my, my strategy there is pivoting to a degree trying to go more like affiliate and sponsorship routes while also covering, any sort of like news stuff and things like that. And educating just in general, but it’s just, if you’re going to play the content game, you have to, you literally have to be cognizant of making money. So without hopefully shilling stuff, there’s a fine line there. So yeah, I would, that’s where, I don’t have a hard and fast answer on the process for the video side necessarily, because I’m still feeling it out. But yeah, that’s the overall process I would say at this point. Chris Badgett: What gets you excited about Etch? Mark Szymanski: So I think the thing that gets me excited about Etch is, one, I met some of the developers this weekend, Andrea and Mateo of Kevin’s team, and I love those guys. And I think the thing that I’m most excited about Etch is, one, I do believe in Kevin and his team. They’ve done great stuff. They have a track record. And they actually care about moving things forward, regardless of whether you agree with Any of the approaches, I feel like they’re a team that like, they want to do, they want to do better. They want WordPress to continue to succeed. They’re bought in. They’re not just here for whatever. The bigger thing though, I think about at just more little meta is that I’m actually really excited that it’s not like a page builder, like another page builder, so to speak. And that’s no disrespect to Elementor, Brix, Devi whoever. That’s not disrespect there. It’s just my thing was when I moved to Brix, I was like, Okay, this is better, in my opinion, for what I was doing than Elementor was. But it’s not really there yet because it’s still like super it’s still like disconnected, proprietary the stuff is in the database rather than flat file, like whatever you want to say, like flat files, like whatever you want to say. So I’m like, I want to use, like I want to use the core experience because I feel like most of the time the native way is the best way from a Like a cohesive experience, if you had an, if you have an iPhone and you use like a native Apple, like app versus a third party app, it’s probably gonna be better generally. It just does like a silly, analogy there. So I wanted to use that, but at the same time, like it’s not there as far as everything you can do with the page motor. So what I think, and again, like we’re in the, we’re in the building stage of that right now, the team is building it. I think. I know what the vision is and the vision is to build a UI and extend the block editor and extend the core piece of it that will, create a better working experience, a better unified development environment, everything like that, but also not lock things away. The idea would be that you can build with etch and you can just take it away and you’re still good. There are probably some other products that are doing that to an extent. But, I don’t think we’re talking about like custom, we’re talking about custom blocks like core blocks, but they’re not like, we’re not dropping in blocks that you can’t utilize your, if you get rid of it, then those blocks are gone, stuff like that. And I don’t know every single detail cause I’m not like a hundred percent like the limiting, I have a limiting, limited experience within direct core, which is one of my. My next endeavors here. We’re going to dive in there full throttle. But but yeah, that’s just, those are some of the big reasons I’m excited about it and we’ll just, we’ll see how it goes. Chris Badgett: What are you excited about or how do you use AI with websites? Mark Szymanski: So I’ve used chat GPT. I think I have a pretty sure I have a subscription to chat GPT and Claude currently. And I’ve used. The cool thing. Okay. So I made a couple of videos about Claude. So Claude, I love like their artifacts thing where you can type it in and then it’ll give you a big synopsis. It’ll give you the code. You can see it right there. Sometimes if it’s like a website or whatever, like it’ll even run it. Like if it’s like some HTML or whatever, but what I really love about Claude is you can build like literally plugins with the thing. If you give it the right documentation, you could create like a custom plugin that adds like conditions to like bricks or something or whatever. So again, a couple of videos were like. When I’m alive on YouTube, reach out to the YouTube API and, make a condition that like dynamically shows or hide hides this section on my website that says, Hey, I’m alive. So something like that, right now it’s tough not to go off on a tangent with the AI thing, but it’s tough because if you’re not like a developer, you have to really have a developer’s touch to make sure that it actually works and like debug and all that sort of stuff. But it’s normally pretty good, especially if you feed it the right information. So I would say that’s a big thing that I’ve used. That I’ve experimented using AI with for websites, maybe some image generation to the tough part. I feel like we’re in right now and it might level out or might continue to just exponentially go crazy is everything’s moving so fast. I’m wondering like, Hey, what’s the best, what’s the best model? Is it Claude? Is it GPT? And then they come out with new models and it’s where am I, where am I getting the best information and things like that from? Copywriting, image generation, code generation, there’s just a ton out there. Then the one other thing, I feel like this is a little bit of a, Less talked about one is like something like 11 labs. Where you can clone your voice and you can clone different things about that. Now that’s, we start to get a little scary, as far as the AI thing goes. But I think that I would really love, cause if you had a community. Those people like once your knowledge and they watch your YouTube videos and they see this stuff, their stuff, your time, eventually as your community scales, you have, and this, you have less time because you have more people seeking that time. There’d be a really cool thing. I know a couple of people that are already trying to create like AI’s of themselves, like AI knowledge bases. And you could basically chat, like you could chat with Chris. You could chat with Mark and it’s you’re basically going to get similar answers. Chris Badgett: All your content. Mark Szymanski: I would love that. You know who had that first is not exactly this, but like you could search anything from all of Gary Vee’s content, like the Gary Vee search engine. I don’t know this guy, he like announced it, but a long time ago, but I don’t know how much it ever went, but it’s probably crazier now. Cause it’s way easier. He had it before. Like anybody was talking about this. You could search any word, any phrase, like, where did I hear that? And it would search like all of his Tik TOK is. Instagram, YouTube or whatever. And it was amazing. I was like, I need that when I have more content, because again, the, this, I know, this too, like we’re, we we run in the same circle of content here. There’s so much good content. That is deep, buried and it’s just how it is. Like it’s buried in the channel. That’s really good. And people would care about it. How do we resurface that, how do we recycle that? How do we reuse that? And then that all of that coupled with this is I need to leverage this more. I, the problem with the live content is not everyone wants to sit through a two hour thing or they don’t know, right? That’s an investment that they’re not willing to make. We need to, the clips are like of the utmost magnitude. And there are some really good AI tools that are doing that now. I’m just not leveraging them well enough. Opus clip, I think is one that I’ve tried. I don’t know. That was a big rant there, but I would say that there’s a lot of these tools that are actually just taking what people were doing manually and just making it easier and the people that leverage them are going to, it’s going to get pretty far ahead because they’re going to have way, way more efficiency built in. Chris Badgett: And that’s a reason to become a content creator. Mark Szymanski: Yeah. Chris Badgett: I joke that I started this podcast around the same time as Tim Farris. So I did 10 years ago and I’ve interviewed a lot of people with a lot of great stuff. A lot of great conversations, but it’s like discovering the old stuff is really hard for the regular user. And I don’t know, I think 2, 000 videos on our YouTube channel, if you count into lives, there’s a lot of content. A lot of good content Mark Szymanski: in there. 100%. Chris Badgett: And then if the AI could mix and match Oh when he was interviewing Mark, he said this about this topic and this other person and this other person and amalgamate that into it’s, yeah it’s going to get really interesting. It already is, but it’s going to get really interesting, but that’s why it’s important to create original content. Mark Szymanski: A hundred percent. Yep. Chris Badgett: Awesome. I wanted to ask you for the agencies out there from your agency experience. I know you’re doubling down on content, but what was working for you in terms of a niche, like what types of sites like e commerce, WooCommerce sites, main street businesses, membership sites, like what, what was, what were some of your favorite agency projects that paid well and the client was really happy with? Mark Szymanski: Yeah, so I the one I would say I go a couple different ways here. I would say the one that I fell into was more of like complex sites, so to speak. The biggest like one of the biggest projects that I did was like, I did a website for a like a wealth advising firm, basically. Kind of like a redesign, rebuild, and stuff like that. And then they were like, okay we want to take, All of our knowledge is a really meta thing that happened here that we want to take all of our knowledge that we have and we’ve built in our firm and we want to create a another website, another brand that teaches and educate other wealth advisors. So I’m like, all right, that sounds pretty cool. So it was like a, it was like, and this was years ago, a few years ago at this time. And it was like, okay, we’re going to create a website. That’s going to be obviously members only marketing side on the front, but obviously like the actual website is members only. It’s subscription based. Everything that you do on a day to day basis, Chris, I’m sure like a learning management platform. Like they actually initially pitched it as we were like looking and researching other things they were looking at some other ones and it was using like a, like almost like a buddy boss type platform where there’s a lot of like social pieces too. Cause you know, this is again, a couple of years ago at this point, maybe you go with a circle or maybe you do like a lifter element. It was just, it was like, There’s so many, there’s so many options, right? So what do you do? What, what features do you want? Not one. Cause that’s huge, right? If you don’t want the social stuff, then maybe you don’t put all that overhead in there, right? You already have to have subscriptions, memberships, the e commerce piece, the actual courses just custom posts and stuff like that. Cause there was a podcast involved and it’s just it’s a lot of stuff. It’s like literally just take all the buzzwords and just throw it in. And I loved building that. Like I loved the challenge. But the problem is that I ran into maybe the agency owners won’t run into this. The problem is if you don’t, if you, it was one of those projects where I had not done stuff like that to the nth degree yet. And when you’re in that spot, you don’t know how much to charge. And you don’t know how much of, you don’t know how much of a pain in the ass that’s going to be to figure all that out. That is a real hurdle. So always charge more, but it’s difficult. It’s a double, double edged sword. It’s hard to say more and then not get it because it did teach me a hell of a lot. And I know all that now, but once you have one or two reps, then you start to feel it. So I don’t know if that was exactly an answer, but that would be the niche that I found myself in was those more complex ones. What I did also have though was more, and I would actually recommend people try to more go this way is. more repeatable things that still potentially scratch that itch for you. And I found like the best, probably the best client project that I’ve had was one of my more recent ones where it was like a small to medium sized business in a, in a industry that, makes money. Yeah. Meaning like a, like nothing like, Oh, your buddy has a an idea for a apparel store. Spin them up a terrible idea. Like just tell them to go to Shopify or something. That’s probably blasphemous, but just, yeah, be careful. Just tread lightly there. What I’m saying is like something in like a tried and true thing. Like lawyers, obviously people have different ideas about whether you should build sites how that industry goes, but like lawyers or like maybe doctors or like oil and gas like engineering, like those types of things, those big ones like that, where that is a, is an industry where like it, in order to succeed there, you have to be making money. Like if they’ve been in business for 50 years, 10, 15, 20, like this company I was dealing with, like 50 years, like they’re established. You know what I mean? And they’re probably technologically Chris Badgett: behind, right? Mark Szymanski: Exactly. Exactly. They’re established and they need you. And they have some money. Now, I’m not saying I’m not saying charge them an arm and a leg, go create don’t like gouge them, but I’m saying like, if you want to sell like websites or more, I feel like if I was going to redo everything, I’d probably focus on those types of people and we could talk about how you get those types of people. Cause there’s a million ways for that too. But I’m saying like, those are the ones I would really look out for because the startup game is tough. The the new age businesses are tough, even younger businesses, younger people are tough just because. Like they’re either starting out or they, the whole WordPress thing could be like confusing to be like, it’s just, those are the ones that I feel like are really good because they, it just, I just feel like they fit extremely well and they normally have the money to pay and they’re normally pretty, pretty chill people. Depending that’s super generalization there, but if you manage that process well, I think that’s probably been some of my best experiences to be honest. Chris Badgett: I’m smiling laughing a little bit because Matt Madaris just dropped a comment. I don’t know if you saw it. I can tell you guys are friends This guy yeah, you’re breaking the flow Matt you’re breaking yeah, come on man And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Go to LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide The post WordPress Content Creator and Agency Life with Mark Szymanski appeared first on LMScast.

In this LMScast episode, Funk Roberts shares insights into his journey as a fitness influencer and entrepreneur. He also shares strategies for building strong online communities by focusing on results and tribe-building techniques. Funk Roberts is the founder of the multi-million dollar Over 40 Alpha Brotherhood, co-creator of the Tribe Method, and co-author of the Tribe Secrets book. He’s a certified digital marketer and community expert with over 20 years of experience in building thriving online communities and membership sites. Funk has shared the stage with industry leaders and recently won an Expy Award from the National Association of Experts, Writers, and Speakers. His mission is to help course creators and membership site owners grow their audience, improve retention, and create engaged, lifelong customers through proven psychological strategies. Funk’s unique Tribe Method focuses on retention and engagement by fostering deep emotional connections, shared identities, and transformational experiences within communities. Frunk gathered almost 15,000 members to his society, of whom over 10,000 made monthly payments. He also highlights that he’s developing a certification program for people to train men over 40. If today’s conversation on retention and engagement resonated with you, don’t miss out on grabbing a copy of Funk’s co-authored Tribe Secrets book, where The Twins and I dive deeper into the 27 proven psychological strategies to build thriving, engaged communities while turning your customers, clients and students into a Tribe of loyal customers that never leave you, then Head to www.tribemethod.com to get your copy and start transforming your course, brand or membership today! Here’s Where To Go Next… Get the Course Creator Starter Kit to help you (or your client) create, launch, and scale a high-value online learning website. Also visit the creators of the LMScast podcast over at LifterLMS, the world’s leading most customizable learning management system software for WordPress. Create courses, coaching programs, online schools, and more with LifterLMS. Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014. And be sure to subscribe to get new podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide Episode Transcript Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co-founder of Lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end. I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show. Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMS cast. We’re joined back again on the show with Funk Roberts. Funk is a fitness influencer. He’s an internet marketer. He’s an entrepreneur. And he’s one of the most charismatic people I know on YouTube. Welcome back on the show. Funk. Funk Roberts: Thanks so much, man. Thank you, Chris, for having me. Thank you for all those listening. I’m really excited today to yeah, just share some knowledge. Chris Badgett: We’re going to talk about your online education fitness empire, but we’re going to zero in and focus on building community, building tribes, being a tribe leader, designing tribes. But first before we get into the tribe aspect, give it, if someone hasn’t met you before, what did you do on the internet? Funk Roberts: Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah. So I so I was a professional athlete before then I got, became a, did the nine to five stuff, but I was always in fitness, loved fitness. And then when. Probably 2007 when the YouTube started to take off, I, started to dabble in, blogging and then putting videos up on YouTube. And I went away to Thailand to train for Muay Thai and realize that a lot of fighters out there who were MMA fighters didn’t really know how to work out. So I created funk MMA. com cause I came back with a, with my mind’s okay. I’m going to create a website called funk MMA. com and this website is going to be where any fighter on the planet, no matter what. They do can go there and get strength and conditioning came home, funk, MMA. com launched, and it was just posting workouts and videos and all kinds of things. And I had a little, I had a program and that went really well, that, that brand of funk MMA really grew. And. Throughout those years, I’m learning about, I’m launching other programs. I’m also a metabolic trainer. I would do metabolic training workouts for men and women. So I just throwing out workouts here and there. And then somebody said to me, Hey, you need to do a membership. You need to have a membership site. Put everything in and that’s that monthly revenue. So I created funk university, funk fitness university. And that went well at first, but I had to, it fell, it crumbled. We don’t have to go too deep in that, but it crumbled because I was using a, the wrong strategy. And then six, seven years ago, I created the over 40 alpha brotherhood. I moved from strength and conditioning for fighters to. specifically men over 40, because I had a story that, that was similar to a lot of men who were struggling, right? So they were struggling with their weight, low testosterone, et cetera. But I looked on the website and the internet and there was nothing out there. So I created the Over 40 Alpha Brotherhood, but this time I focused on transformation. I focused on helping them get results. So I built out a one year program, workouts, follow along workouts, nutrition, but really focusing on the brotherhood part of it. And all of a sudden people were getting there when I first launched it, it wasn’t really good. So I asked these guys to come and help implement some, tribe secrets, et cetera, that we’re going to go into a little bit later. But then I, after 10 months of training, there was 700 people who were still in the membership going, Hey, what do we do next? So I had to create another 12 months and then another 12 months, three years. And the point I’m making is that memberships have been a big thing for me. Of course I’ve done certification courses. So that’s why I use LMS life for LMS, which I love because I created a certification course for trainers on how to train men over 40 and I also created a certification for metabolic training. So using all of those tools online to. Stay in my niche, but fill it up as much as I can where the weather where there are holes, if that makes sense. So I’ve been online since 2007. I’ve been In the, following the big, the greats throughout the years and in the fitness industry, I’ve been around forever. Yeah. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. And tell us just a little bit more about the results of over 40 alpha. For example, I think I saw you got a two comma club award from click funnels. You have 740, 000 people on your YouTube channel. I think I got that right. Can you tell us more just about, cause I want people to know we’re going to talk about building community, the scale of the community that you’ve built. Funk Roberts: Okay. Yeah. Okay. So the over 40 alpha brotherhood program has brought me three two comic club awards over, I think almost, we’re hitting almost getting to the eight, eight figure mark. I have over 15, 000 members. So these are 15, 000 members and not all of them are paying members because some of them became lifetime members because I would run a lifetime. By the way, this is tip number never run a lifetime membership promotion. Because with a membership, do not do that. Do not do that. Anyway. So I have 15, 000 active members, about 10, 000 of them or 11, 000 are paying every month between 29, 39 or 49 a month. So you can, it’s almost 300, 400, 000 a month that the membership’s bringing in. And it’s based on. This method, right? Because I, and also the key for them, the reason why I built this membership, the way I have and why it’s so successful is because I focus on the results that these guys are getting, not on the transactions on. Bringing people in because that’s what I was doing before. Oh, let’s bring people in. Let’s bring people in. I’ve already built out the memberships. I don’t have to worry about those people. But they’re the ones that are going to, they’re going to cancel. So when I switched my focus on being inside my membership and implementing some of these things, that’s when everything changed. And now, to this day. I created my own supplements. So now we’re talking about different streams of revenue because of the membership. I have my own supplement line that I only sell to my members. And that’s a seven figure business just because of the, because I have a lot of members and they trust me because I’ve got them results and they want supplements. Also, I have my resistance bands and I have my weight vest because that makes sense for my members. Some people want to move from. Dumbbells to resistance bands easier on the joints because I’m working in the 70s. So you start to see oh, wait a minute. I have all of these I can add more streams of revenue when I have a Membership that’s retention based right? That’s really truly. Getting results for people and helping transform and including something that, that creates more than themselves, right? Like they’re doing this for more than themselves and that’s what keeps them going. So that’s been great. I’m literally in the beginning of next year, we’re going to be creating a certification for. For people to train men over 40, but more than just the regular shirt. It’s literally you’re going to be a coach. Because now I have guys in my membership who won’t become coaches. And I did not expect that either, when guys start to retire, they want these and they know so much and they’ve transformed and they’ve learned so much from hearing me every single week for six years. It’s you know what? I think I can do what funk does. And I a hundred percent, they can, they just need a little bit more guidance. So I will be using life for LMS again to build that coaching certification. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Let’s talk about the audience or the tribe selection process. You’ve, for example, like one question I have is how did you go from MMA to men over 40? You also mentioned, it was like you you’re over 40, your own. So you’re working with a market you understand cause you’re in that spot too. But tell us about what it means to pick the right audience and how do we do that? Funk Roberts: Oh my God, this is the most important thing. This is where you have to check your ego at the door like 100 percent but you have to have faith to know that if you’re only targeting the exact people that need what you. Are going to provide to them, believe me, you’re going to not only get them results, but they’re going to stay. So the reason why I moved from fighters to men over 40, it was because I did that when I was about 46, 47 years old. And I started to think, okay, fighters don’t have a lot of money. So I’m just going to be spinning my wheels here, trying to generate a ton of money on fighters. No disrespect to any fighters. Cause I do work with the UFC as well, but So I thought, okay let’s go on. Let’s, men over 40 was still something that was in the back of my mind because a lot of my friends were, are now in their forties too. And people are now that are in their forties are asking me questions, but I wasn’t really digging too deep into that at that time. But then I went online. So I went online to see what was out there for men over 40. And there was still nothing. There was only one other person doing anything for men over 40 at this time. And I went back to my own journey. Because here’s the other thing. When people see me, I’m 40, when I’m launching this, let’s go back to 47 when they see me, I’m lean, I’m ripped. So guys in their forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, they’re not going to relate to me because they’re going to think, Oh, this guy’s the next professional athlete. Of course he’s ripped, but I can’t get, he’s not gonna, he’s not going to understand why, but I had a transformation journey. And this is important when it comes to building and attracting the right person, if you have a story of transformation. So for me, I suffered from low testosterone. I was heavy, like a 39 years old and a big belly. It was 215 pounds. I’m usually 185. I got deep into a depression because the girl I was leaving. Living with, she left me, I started going, partying, doing drugs, and I got really very bad from it. And it wasn’t until I went to the doctor that he told me, Oh, you have low testosterone. You have testosterone of a grandfather. And I didn’t know what that meant at the time. I didn’t know that testosterone had everything to do with my health, me losing weight, losing fat, muscle energy, feeling better, having that drug because I’d lost all of them. So when he told me that, and obviously he wanted to provide me with drugs, but because I was a professional athlete, I know I knew all of the negative effects of using steroids. So that wasn’t an option for me. I started to talk about, I asked him, can I do this naturally? He’s a hundred percent. You just do this, and this. And then I went deep down and I transformed my body at that time from what, 215 pounds to 185. I was in the best shape of my life, which is why I went and trained Muay Thai. I fought Muay Thai. So my forties were like. I was in the greatest shape, I got married in my forties. I started this business in my forties, but again, I was still doing the MMA thing because, that’s where my heart was at the time. So I just went back to that and I realized that first called my program over 40 shred and it wasn’t. No one was joining and I couldn’t understand why. And then I realized, Oh, wait a minute, men don’t want to be shredded at this point. They just don’t want to, they got to get rid of this belly fat. They got, they want more energy. They’re maybe if they’re in the gym, they’re having problems building muscle or they’re, they’re skinny fat, they’re very soft. So I had to change like, what about being over shred? It’s about, being where they’re at, understanding, okay, wait a minute. But I also went through what these guys went through. I had a big belly, I had no low testosterone, I was getting injured. I was having a hard time building muscle. And I had no energy and drive and I was suicidal and I had depression. So that’s where all these guys are at. And so I changed everything. I changed my message and I made sure that the people who I was targeting, the men over 40, were not the men over 40 that were in the gym because I also realized that those guys already have, Yeah, doing something. So why would I waste my time trying to convince? I don’t want to convince anybody, right? My goal here is not convincing you to come join. My goal is I’m going to help you with the pain, with your struggles, with your thing, with, whatever challenges you have, but I’m going to create, I’m going to give you a program that you’ve never done before. Cause that’s the other thing. So first and foremost, I’m really dialing in on who I’m targeting based on my. And my experience, if you have a transformation story, the reason why you’re creating courses or whatever, that’s what you need to lean on. And that’s what you need to target, right? Or if it could be a story that you helped someone very close to you, but you also have to dig into what struggles they were going through, right? Because that has to connect with people. So when I’m talking about my struggle, so many guys, when they came into the program Oh my God, like I didn’t realize you had that you were, Literally again, speaking to me, I could totally relate to you when you said that you’ve masked your manhood. Cause that’s one of the things I did. I masked my manhood by going out to strip joints and getting hookers and doing all that stuff because my girlfriend left me and I could, my libido was low. So what do I do? Let’s go to strip joints because that’s going to make me more of a man. Not right. Obviously not, but that’s as men. Sometimes we do very irrational things. So I can relate to them and I’m very open with everything. So that I think is another thing. I’m just myself. I’m not trying to be a somebody I’m not. So that’s the second thing, just be yourself because you’re going to connect with the people who connect with you. Not everyone connects with me when I’m, not everyone connects with me. And that’s amazing. There’s other over 40 programs out there where you can connect with other guys who are going to help you. I only want the people who are going to, who, are going to connect with me who connect with my story. And Yeah that’s the first thing is really making sure that you dial in your target. And here’s another amazing tip is survey your list. It doesn’t matter if they’re your current customers, hopefully you’ve built a list. So survey that list and ask them questions about what their struggles are, what their, what their pain points are, what their goals are, and that will give you a very. A clear picture of what the top things you should be starting to using in your ads and on your sales page, in your marketing, when you’re talking to people in podcasts, et cetera, that’s how you really dial in on targeting the right audience. Chris Badgett: Awesome. We’re going to come back to it at the end, but I wanted to plant the seed for later. Can you go ahead and give us a quick summary of your new venture tribe method. com. So you built a fitness empire and this transformation for men over 40. What’s tribe method. Funk Roberts: Sure. We just, we have a book that we, myself and the twins, these two twins, Mike and Rick Tielmans, they’re the ones who really gave me more clarity when I launched my over 40. When I first launched over 40 shred, they were the first to say, you can’t call it over 40 shred. You got to give it a name that will give an identity to somebody. Who are they going to become? So they have these 27 psychological strategies. And throughout the years we have, massaged it to create the 27 tribe secrets. These are the things that if you implement these into your brand, into your membership, into your courses, you will be able to create lifelong customers, like a collective, a tribe of people who will never leave you. And so not only have we done it with my membership, but we’ve helped other people to do it just, on the side, giving them ideas. And now when you go to tribe method. com, you can get this book. This is the foundation. It gives you the psychological, each secret, for instance, to give you an example, shared beliefs and values. That’s a secret. You should create shared beliefs and values based on what you have and the value, and they’re going to have those same shared beliefs and values because that’s who they are. My over 40 alphas, we are different from other men over 40, because we, Treat women right. We look for solutions, not problems. We, there’s certain things that we do and that we believe in. We’re here to provide, protect, procreate. That makes us different. And we all share that same belief. So we’re all on the same, all 15, 000 of us are on the same. We know what’s going on here inside the brotherhood. So they will, they talk about the psychological Reasons and why that works and how other companies use that same strategy And I in this book will literally show you this is exactly how I used it inside my brotherhood. So this is a foundation book it’s a pdf and then then we move into helping People build their tribes build their tribes. Yeah, and i’m excited about that Chris Badgett: Yeah, so go check out tribe method. com. We’ll talk about it more as we go through this, there’s a framework I use funk. That’s about like what you need to be successful as an online education entrepreneur. And you check all these boxes. I call it the five hats problem. You basically have to wear five hats or build a team around these challenges. The first is being a subject matter expert. You’re obviously a fitness expert. The second is being a teacher. You are already like a coach and like you had teaching skills and speaking skills and kind of curriculum or training program design skills. Then you have to be an entrepreneur. You got to build a business. And you got to market, you got to sell, you got to build systems. You got to go get all up in the weeds of technology whether that’s ads and websites and email marketing and all kinds of stuff. But the fifth hat is the one that’s least understood and that we’re talking about today Which I call community building Which is the tribe thing and I look at it before and after the sale like the tribe might be Like part of the product but also you’re building all this community on the front end and goodwill like in all your free stuff and everything Tell us more about just, like the mistakes people make when they’re like, all right, particularly if it’s going to be part of their program okay I’m going to have training, but I’m also going to have a community and I’ll just create a Facebook group, but there’s so much more that goes into it. Tell us about it. Funk Roberts: Okay. So listen, when I’m talking right now, everybody listening, I’m not. I’m, it’s not your fault. And I’m not like, I’m not hammering you. Okay. I’m just, but I’m the type of person I’m going to tell you exactly what’s going on. So what are the mistakes? The first mistake is thinking that you just need to put the community up there and people are going to come. That’s that will never happen. People may join. What are you, what do you expect them to do if you’re not telling them what to do? You’re just putting it up there. And this is probably one of the biggest the biggest challenge that most people have with community. This is probably one of the biggest I’m part of the membership Academy, which is a membership for membershippers. And that is one of the biggest challenges. How do I get people to engage in my community? So number one, the biggest mistake is just putting out there, not. Doing anything. So what do you do instead? You have to, when you put that community up, whatever you use, I use Facebook, there’s a few things you got to think about in order to ensure that you get engagement. Okay. So first you, again, we’re thinking, we’re talking about transformation, right? You have to have a transformation mindset when you’re building your courses. That means that you’re not. It’s not about transactions. It’s about what are we going to, what am I going to do to make sure these people get results and that community is going to be very important. The first thing you want to do is you have to be inside the community. Which means you have to post and what you have to post. What you post is what you want everybody else to post. So if, for instance, we have rituals, okay. That’s another thing, create rituals. Okay. Because. Remember, I have a lot of people in my Facebook group the community portion of it. So I don’t have to keep, I don’t ever post Hey guys today is I don’t know, workout Wednesday or, Hey, I got a question for you or, we never that never happens. In fact, we had 60, 000 posts likes comments last two months ago. All organic because we have rituals. Rituals, what are they? So for instance, of course, accountability Sunday, right? So account, but the rituals have to make sense. They’re not just random rituals. The reason why we do accountability Sundays is because if they are accountable, that means they’re planning for the week. They pick their go to foods. They know what days are the days are going to work out that week. And they know what challenges are. So the accountability is actually a template. What they do is they’ll take a picture of themselves. They’ll post the picture hashtag accountability Sunday, and they’ll go through, okay, this week I got I got a wedding to go to, so I got to watch out for this here are my carbs. I’m going to buy this week, my protein. So that’s. And everybody does. Everyone does accountability Sunday because the people who do accountability is basically the people who get the results. So that’s one ritual that’s already on Sunday. We already have people posting. The second thing I have, we have is called sweaty selfies. Okay. What’s a sweaty selfie? A sweaty selfie is after every time you work out, you’re going to just take a picture. With our sign, cause we have signs too and post it. And generally what happens is these guys post the picture. They just say, Oh, I did workout day 12 phase 22, blah, blah, blah, workout, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it’ll just be a picture. I’m so you, if you went to our Facebook review scroll and you’ll see a whole bunch of guys, like looking like they just got beat up, but they all are sweaty. That’s called a sweaty selfie. That’s a ritual. We also have alpha meals. Why do we do alpha? So why do we do sweaty selfies? Because accountability, right? Like I got my workout done and it also keeps them accountable. Hey, I want to show everybody else. I got my workout done too, right? The meals, alpha meals. So people post their meals and they break down the carbs, the proteins, the vegetables. That’s called alpha meal post. Why do we do that? Because I know people post their meals and what foods they’re eating. They’re going to be more successful with nutrition. And. If you go to our Facebook group, you’ll see all the meals there. So again, that’s another post. We have birthday burpees. When someone has a birthday, they put up their video camera and these are men, 40, 50, 60, 70. These are young guys. They’ll put up their phones, right? Not most, not the most technically savvy crew, but they’re getting better. Because they do use their phones more and they’ll do their burpees. And and the only reason why they do that is because I do the same thing. I post my accountability every Sunday. I post my sweaty selfies, I post my meals. And I do everything like I’m part of them. So funk is the leader, right? This program is not about funk, but funk’s our leader. So if funk’s doing it, we’re going to do it too. So that’s why That fosters the engagement already because everyone is posting, you have that many people, they’re going to be posting all the time, right? They’re going to be posting their sweaty selfies, et cetera. And then the comments, oh my God, comments. So many people are commenting because remember we’re all on the same journey. So of course, Hey, great. Oh no, maybe someone had a challenge, right? And they had a challenge that, Oh man, today was a tough day. I didn’t feel like working out, but I still got it done. It wasn’t the greatest. Okay. Awesome. Jim. Oh, that’s amazing. That’s awesome. That’s amazing. So that’s how you show up for your community. You have to be right. You have to mirror what you want your members to do. And then it’ll just start. That will just start to happen, but you have to be in there for a while. Cause when I first did it, it was, okay, there’s hardly anybody here, but then you’ll get a couple that start to do it. And everybody has that FOMO, right? Everyone has that fear of missing out. They don’t want to be left out when they’re in a collective community of people who are getting results. So that’s the first thing you want to try to create rituals. The second thing, and I advise every single course creator on the planet to do this is to. I would say weekly coaching calls or lives or whatever you want to call it inside your member Hub, which is for me facebook or bi weekly, but just get on there have a topic just a short topic Okay guys, so we have our brotherhood hangout hanging in the hood every friday 9 a. m Every single Friday, 9 a. m. We’re in the hood. We’re hanging out. I come with some type of a topic and then I answer questions. So that’s another thing that invokes a lot of a lot of engagement, right? People show up. That’s a ritual. We’ll show up inside your program. Yes. They have a ton of workouts. Yes. They have all that stuff. But what is your goal creator? You want them to go through the course you want them to finish the course you want them to transform. So showing up for them inside your community makes sense. I don’t spend a lot of time inside my. My, my membership was only 10 hours a week. And, but the amount of stuff I do in there, we also have something called ask fun. So whenever someone has a question inside the Facebook group, they will put hashtag ask funk. And of course the guys in there will answer the question. We got guys that have been in the, we got alpha OGs. We’ve been in there for a year. We got alpha savages. We’ve been there for two years. Dream Kings. We’ve been there for three years. We’re going to most likely answer the question, but what, this is a, another great thing for you as a course creator. I, every week I get the questions and then I shoot a video and I answer the questions like podcast style. Okay, question number one Jim, great to see you, Jim. This is a great question. Jim asked blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then I answered the question. Okay, great. Next next. So this week, I think we have 11 questions I got to answer. Sometimes there were 30 questions I had to answer, but we, then we repost those. That video and the questions inside the Facebook group and tag everybody. Oh my God, I can’t believe. Wow. So I answered my question. I imagine if you’re the creator, of course, or you are a creator or a brand, whatever, and the people who are taking your program, you are the one answering their questions that you wanna talk about co the connection that person has to your brand when you can take the time out and it doesn’t take long. Plus you’re answering questions, right? Plus AI is. Is going through the roof right now. I’ve answered so many questions that when the next chat GBT comes out, I’m going to load all those questions up into the chat, GBT, and the answers and the videos, all the coaching calls and everything I’ve done, and now I’m going to have a AI, I don’t know, bot or something that will be able to help me. Get, give people answers because they’ve also asked me for that. They’ve said, Hey, do you have some type of an FAQ quickly that people can use to get questions answered right away? Because we’ve done a lot of ask funks. Like they literally tell like me, I’m like, don’t worry. Chat GBD five. So let’s all. Again, the engagement that you have and the value that you put inside of your community is what keeps your community strong. And then of course the connections, right? The other good thing is if you use zoom zoom, I do all zoom coaching calls as well with our group. And this is not extra, by the way. None of this is, Oh, you’re going to be in this tier. Oh, you got to pay extra because right away, you’re putting a barrier in front of what you want people to get, which is a transformation, right? Remember transformation over transaction. Don’t always try to monetize every single thing that you have in your courses or in your program until you have a strong tribe, right? monetize everything before they even have any connections like this guy wants me to pay even more to do this. And I got to pay this level. No, man, make sure that you get them the information. Believe me, they’re going to stay with you. I have, we are one of the guys in our 90 day tribe. This is my other thing that we’re doing to help people build tribes is Rob, big up to Rob. Rob, my membership five years yesterday, Rob said, one of the things that I was, I started to realize with funks, Membership. Of course, I’ve used the workouts. I’ve transformed my body. I feel amazing. But I felt my, I found myself buying things all the time. Like I was always buying things from funk. I didn’t know. And I didn’t even know why I was like, Oh, okay, I’ll buy it. Yeah. And then he realized, Oh, wait a minute. There’s more going on here. There’s more going on behind the scenes. And so he has his own business. He wanted to find out what that was. Yeah. Literally what happened, people will be like, okay, you got this new thing. Sure. Sure. But what happened? That’s what happens when you have tribe, like I’m an Apple person, right? The new Apple phone, iPhone came out. Of course I’m going to buy it because I don’t care what it has. I don’t care if it’s, yeah, I don’t care if there was no update. I’m going to buy it. Or do we are Jeepers, right? We own a Jeep. If you own a Jeep and you drive by someone with a Jeep and you do this, they always. This is a jeep wave. It’s called a jeep wave. And whenever somebody in the car, they don’t know what that is. They’re literally blown away. It’s every single person and we drive our jeep all over North America. And it doesn’t matter where we are. As soon as we see someone that cheap and we do this, they do it back. And we also have a bag of ducks in the back of our car. Chris Badgett: Cause this from another jeep owner. Funk Roberts: Yeah. Duck, jeep, baby. So this happened about six months ago. This woman, right? She, her and her friend are in the back. And they’re just talking. They’re just outside of their Jeep. And we pull up for coffee and my wife goes in to get coffee. And I see this Jeep. I’m going to give them, I’m going to give them a duck. So I got my duck out. Now these girls, these women, like totally the opposite. Like I’m this black guy, tank top. You know coming up to them. They don’t know who I am And i’m like who owns this jeep and one girl’s a guy on the jeep and I just gave this to her She was like, oh my god I can’t believe this. Thank you so much. And then we had a connection and her friend It’s just like standing what the, why is he talking to this strange black guy like they know each other, right? And that, the connection that we had based on just giving her the duck and then talking about our Jeeps and just we had, it was such a strong connection. I had a strong connection with that girl. I probably will have a connection with her forever based on the fact that she has or had a Jeep, right? And that’s how tight, A tribe is a community is even if people don’t know who you are if you do something like we have this as our sign I know that the other day I was outside and a car flew by my house Right and put their finger up like this and said funk and I had no clue who it was And then it came to i’m like, oh my god that person must be in the brotherhood because Only people in the brotherhood would obviously they’re driving. So they can’t do this, but would know to do this. And so the next week I’m on my coaching call and it was James Eberhardt who lives right over. I didn’t have a clue. He’s Hey, that was me, by the way. I’m like, I knew somebody. So that’s how powerful focusing on you being inside your community so that you can foster that connection inside the community and you should want to be there. Like, why would you not want to be there? Chris Badgett: Let’s talk about being a tribe leader. You’ve already said a lot. One of them is you practice what you preach, you participate in the rituals, you like hold the space, like for the call or the community. What else is involved in really stepping into that tribal leader role, particularly because I know. Many creators suffer from imposter syndrome or, fear of failure, fear of success, whatever. How do you, how does one really step into that role? Funk Roberts: You have to create, you have to know what your values and beliefs are as a person. Because those values and beliefs are going to be this the things that you will show and let people know and share with your community, because if I value health and fitness, if I value integrity, if I value helping others, if I value. Laughing at yourself, like not being so serious, but also, stepping outside your comfort zone. Those are the things that I value. Always challenging yourself to be 1 percent better. Always being able to, fall and fail, learn from those failures. Those are all things I value. Be transparent let people know where you’re at. Those are just all my values. So those are the values that I instill inside. My membership, so the people who are coming in right off the bat, they read the manifesto, they read the virtues, so they already know what they’re getting into. Now I can just be my, myself, right? And as a leader I’m not, it’s not about me. So again, my program is not the funk Roberts program. It’s the over 40 alpha program. It’s their program, but I need to lead by again, just be by living by my values. And my virtues is number one. Number two, transparent. If you don’t know something, Hey, you know what? I don’t know that right now, but I’m going to, I’ll find out for you. Cause that’s what a leader does, right? You focus on what you’re doing. I’m going to go get that answer. Or if you’re wrong about something, there’s been times where I’ve been totally wrong. The very next coaching, I’m like, guys, I was totally wrong. I’m super sorry. That’s a man. I messed up. I messed up and I’m sorry, but that’s what a leader does. They come to the table and say, listen, I messed up, man. I thought it was this, but it was actually this. I’m gonna make, I’m gonna, I’m gonna make the changes or whatever. Be yourself. That is because wearing a mask is so exhausting, right? Because one day yourself is gonna come up behind that mask and you’re gonna say something that they’re not gonna expect. And that’s gonna be like, what? I didn’t know what the hell, I didn’t know that. I thought you were, but you’re. And then you’re going to lose people. If you’re just who you are, you’re only gonna, you’re going to attract those people. And then you can be, you can focus on those people leading with your own integrity, leading, knowing that, Hey, if I make a mistake, guys, don’t worry. Listen, I’m going to probably make a mistake, but I will make sure to correct it. Or, so that’s number one. That’s another thing as a leader, having values, beliefs, and making sure that the people who come in have those same values and beliefs in regards to whatever program I’m not talking about because remember you don’t know this, but in my program, I have men from all over the world. I have people who have different religions, different race, different sizes, different backgrounds, but we don’t talk politics. We don’t talk religion. And we don’t do pop culture. We don’t do any of that stuff. We just focus on. Getting each other in the best health and shape and mindset that we can be all of those things are removed. And we only focus on the commonalities and not the differences that as a leader, I can really truly focus on building an environment and a program based on that. The other thing is, you have to listen. You have to listen. Not here, but listen to what your members or your students are saying. And if they, one or two or three or five students are saying the same thing, okay, we got to change something because everyone’s saying the same thing, or we got to add something, or we’ve got to, when you listen to your students and then implement what they’re asking for, it is, it’s unbelievable. They’re like, I can’t believe Funk heard me say that we need this. And now. We have it. Oh my God. This guy’s really cares. Yes. And that’s what a leader does. A leader cares for their community, for their tribe. And so a lot of times, even if you think you’re an, here’s the thing about the imposter thing. If all you have to be is like two steps ahead of everybody in your, and I’m not even joking when I say that. Chris Badgett: Yeah. Like I figured this thing out last week and they’re getting question and it’s I got it. Funk Roberts: You don’t need to be the expert in the world. You just need to know. Enough about and continue to be open to learning more. So let’s say you’re just new to, and you only know a few, enough to build your course out, maybe have this one course. And then all of a sudden six people who finished that course say, Hey, I’d like a course on this, and this. And you’re like, Oh, yeah. I don’t know too much about that, but what are you gonna do? You’re gonna go and learn about that, learn what you need, and then as the leader, you’re gonna create that mini course, and you’re gonna give them enough to get the results they want, right? But the point I’m trying to make is don’t, that can never be a barrier, because you’re gonna know more than everybody joining you, and that’s all you need to do, but if there’s more for you to learn, continue to learn, and this is why. I don’t post on social media and I don’t do that because I don’t have time to, I don’t want to be, why would I, and again, no disrespect to anybody using social media content, no disrespect to content creators. Okay. Cause I love you’re all amazing, but I’m going to tell you for me, I, I don’t. Understand why I would put and put so much effort into tick talk and Instagram and reels and shorts and all those things to people who I don’t even own, because remember, you don’t own the tick tock followers. You don’t own Facebook. You don’t own YouTube followers, Instagram, you don’t own those people. The email that I gather, I own, and I can take those emails. And I and here’s one thing I say listen, if you to pay your mortgage today. You couldn’t go to the bank and show the bank teller, the grandfather, right? Facebook, Oh, I’ve got a million Instagram followers. So you need to pay your mortgage, but you know what I can do? I can shoot an email out for a new program and I can get 10, 000. No problem. Shooting an email out for a program or just have a program that I have. Shoot an email out. Hey guys, the sale for this program and generate revenue. Take that money and go to the bank. Because I’ve built an email list. And so the point I’m trying to make is when you don’t own those people, but you’re putting so much effort, you’re 80 percent of your time is content. I got to put out content. No. I got to put out content. I got to know wait, I got, listen, we just shot 13 videos. We’re going to slice them up. We’re going to throw them out there. And meanwhile, you got all these people who are paying you. Waiting for you. Oh, why is he out there in Instagram with people who aren’t even paying him? Why is he out there on Tik TOK? People aren’t even paying him. Why he’s spending so much time over there and not time with the people who love and support and are giving him money. That’s, that was my, when I built the over 40 alpha brotherhood, that’s a hundred percent what I said is I don’t want to be posting out there. So we only have one ad running. The ad runs to the page. And when people come in, I make sure we onboard them properly. ’cause I gotta make sure that they transform. ’cause I got a $1 trial for 30 days. I have a free one, but I also have a $1 trial. Those people who take that $1 trial, man, they, 60% of them will convert at the end of the month because usually it’s about 60% who start. Because people who start. They’re in. So our whole focus is the onboarding piece and making sure that those people, get results. And then if I have to learn other things and figure things out, again, I’m here with the people who are paying me and not out there. So I don’t know where I was going with that, but the point I’m trying to make is really think about, I don’t know where I was going with that. Chris Badgett: We were talking about leadership and stuff. It’s a, Funk Roberts: yeah. Spending time to improve yourself as a leader so that you can lead your group. You can only do that when you’re focused internally. Not saying not to do any of that stuff, but a lot of times people start to only focus on the things that aren’t really bringing them revenue because the stuff that brings you revenue is hard, right? Sometimes it’s very difficult. It takes a long time to build things, but you want that dopamine, right? So let me. Post something because I know that I’m supposed to post content. I don’t know if I’m supposed to, but I post the content and then you’re looking at how many likes he got. Oh man. It’s so fresh. You guys know what I’m, I know if you’re listening to, exactly what I’m talking about. Chris Badgett: Yeah. Likes aren’t dollars or enrollments or members. No, Funk Roberts: do a podcast. That’s what I always say. That, if that is the best way to, to connect with potential people, to get out there, to practice, research, Chris Badgett: like you said like maybe you’re gotta get better at something. So you interview a guest about that topic and Funk Roberts: yeah, totally. Chris Badgett: Awesome. Funk is one of the best community builders I know on the internet. So go check out tribe method. com and get the tribe secrets book. Funk Roberts: It’s seven bucks guys. Like literally this, it’s not the physical book, but it’s seven bucks. You get a lot of great bonuses, but more importantly, this is like the foundation. And I’m telling you right now, if you go through this book, you will find something there that you’d be like, Oh my God okay, that, that makes sense to me. And it’ll start to give you more clarity. on why certain things in your business may not be working and what you can do in order to implement some of those things. If you need more help, obviously you can connect with us, but this is the foundation. I’m telling you it’s going to be the best 8 U. S. 7. 95 that you spent in your entire life. But specifically if you have a business or a course and don’t have to have a membership. Just as a course creator, it’ll give you so many ideas. And it’s it’s amazing. Amazing. Chris Badgett: Awesome. Funk. Thank you for coming back on the show. Go to tribe method. com. Get the book. I’m going to get a copy and we’re going to have to do this again sometime. I love touching base with you as your business evolves and as you help all these people and all this it’s really awesome, but thank you, funk. Funk Roberts: Thank you so much. And again, thank you for a Lifter LMS, man. Cause that’s been a game changer for me. So I really appreciate you with that as well. Chris Badgett: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at Lifter LMS. com forward slash gift. Go to LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide The post How to Build a Tribe Around Your Online Education Business with Funk Roberts appeared first on LMScast.

Kurt Von Ahnen, a Lifter LMS expert from Manana No Mas, shares his insights on scaling online education, particularly in the B2B space. He highlights the importance of identifying true customers beyond just end-users, focusing on the organizations that can pay for training. Kurt discusses the value of creating scalable, group-focused courses and shares strategies for effective partnerships. He emphasizes pricing value and viewing sales as opportunities for authentic connections, backed by his journey of transitioning markets and networking.

In this LMScast episode, Education Entrepreneur Bradley Morris shares his creative journey, beginning with a low time when he operated a t-shirt business and dropped out of college, which helped him learn the importance of thankfulness. His artistic career started in 2007 with the release of his viral “Gratitude Dance” video. Bradley became interested in meditation throughout the years, leading seminars and retreats before turning to recording meditations for an audio library that brought in passive revenue. Bradley Morris is an education entrepreneur and creative visionary known for his innovative approach to building meaningful projects. He is from Majik Media. Bradley discusses how he prefers to work in teams to complete projects rather than working alone. He strongly emphasizes the value of collaboration and relationships, utilizing the abilities and skills of others to further his goals. These stories were the basis for a children’s book publishing business and an entertaining audio storytelling app that aims to foster creativity, instill morals, and ignite the imagination in young listeners. If Bradley Morris’s journey inspired you, don’t miss out on his Signature Workshop training, where he dives deeper into building a fulfilling and creative life. Click here to learn more and sign up. Here’s Where To Go Next… Get the Course Creator Starter Kit to help you (or your client) create, launch, and scale a high-value online learning website. Also visit the creators of the LMScast podcast over at LifterLMS, the world’s leading most customizable learning management system software for WordPress. Create courses, coaching programs, online schools, and more with LifterLMS. Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014. And be sure to subscribe to get new podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide Episode Transcript Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co founder of Lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end. I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show. Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. I’m joined by a special guest and friend. He’s back on the show. His name is Bradley Morris. You can find him at magic media dot com. That’s m a j I k media dot com. He’s a prolific creator, everything from dance videos to meditation training to all kinds of different things with kids, the magic kids. We’re going to talk about that. But first Bradley, Take us on a tour of how this all started. I know it started with the gratitude dance video that went viral. Tell us how your creator journey sparked. I would say my creator journey sparked with rock bottom. I dropped out of College after my second year to start my first business, which was a t shirt business. and we sold really offensive t shirts on the internet, my buddy and I, and within a year, my life became what was written on my shirts. And, and that set me off on the path of trying Get my act together and make some positive changes and the process I discovered the power of gratitude and my buddy and I, two buddies and I won out and created a video called the gratitude dance. This was back in 2007, right at the early days of YouTube. And so this was the first video. I ever posted on YouTube and it went viral. and my buddy and I went on a speaking tour around North America for the next couple of years, teaching workshops and speaking on stages. and in that time, I got really into meditation. after my tour, I went back to Victoria, British Columbia, where I was living. And I started teaching meditation classes based on the request of a friend. And that led me to, teach 500 workshops over the next three years. It was crazy. I was teaching all the time. I started doing retreats in Peru and Mexico and Hawaii. and by the end of those three years, I was tired of teaching meditation, to be honest. And that was when I wanted to go all in on, on creating on the internet. I wanted to basically clone myself so that the teachings I was sharing with people that had changed my life could reach people. Millions of people. And that’s what I did. I produced a world class audio library of meditations. we started with 48 tracks, each with custom composed music, and I started licensed those to a whole bunch of different apps and I ended up going. Up through the ranks of Mindvalley’s Omvana app and I was number one on there for six years straight and through that a whole bunch of other apps started approaching me and as a result, over the next coming years and still now my work just keeps spreading, but I’ve reached millions of people. It’s generated hundreds of thousands of dollars of purely passive income. I’ve never had to build a meditation audience. The apps do it for me. and then I could, I retired from teaching meditation. I went on to teaching creators how to bring their life’s work to the internet, how to create courses, memberships, and communities, how to do proper launches, how to use where, which is where you and I met, how to use entertainment as a vehicle to teach and transform and how to use gamification to get people to actually get the results that they’re trying to get in their programs. So that has led me on this whole other journey for the last decade plus. And, Just three years ago, my son Soren’s eight, we’re unschooling him. So we’re supporting his educational path by following his interests and pulling in mentors around him and what he wants to do. And as a result, we launched a kids publishing and story company three years ago called Magic Kids. Him and I have, co written 17 stories, a graphic novel. We’re working on our first audio movie together. he has been a part of our comedy writing team, our advertising and marketing team, and, we just launched our magic kids app in March. And we’re working on producing the best audio stories on the planet. We have a team of producers that score all the music and sound effects. We’ve worked with over a hundred voice actors, most of which are from my Island on salt spring Island, where I live. we’ve licensed over 700 kids songs from musicians around the world. We have kids meditations and we create curriculum with every story so kids can have a whole bunch of fun integrating the lessons and themes from our stories. And then, I just launched my, new enterprise with a buddy of mine, just This morning called play cheap all. com, which is a new sport. We’re bringing to the world. So I have been, as you said, I’m on the forever path. Some people play the long game. I’m playing the forever game like you. and so it’s part of my philosophy just always be creating. and I’ve tried to build a career around following my passions and interests and to keep my artist self and my entrepreneur self happily married. Chris Badgett: Wow. That’s amazing. You’ve done a lot of great work. And one of the things I hear in your journey is that you’re not doing it alone. And tell us a little bit how you think about that. So for example, you are not trying to build, you didn’t try to build a meditation audience. people were like, wanted you to come lead workshops and stuff, but you went to the platforms that do guided meditation to distribute for you. You didn’t have to figure out that piece or spend a bunch of time focusing on that. How do you think about team around projects and community and people? Love that question. you hit the nail on my exact business philosophy. so I left social media 8 years ago. I have a master class called thriving in business without social media where I teach the 19 relationships based marketing strategies that I’ve figured out or an implement magic media, magic kids, and all the things that I do, but you hit the nail. it’s relationships. our tagline at magic media is leverage your life’s work. And so many people struggle and suffer in their business because they’re trying to do it all themselves. They think they have to do everything that themselves, and they think they have to keep reinventing the wheel. And so what I look for, what are the leverage points? How can we leverage what we’ve already created? And how can we leverage our skills? How can we leverage the relationships that we have surrounding us? And so I’ve built everything through partnerships. I’ve always had collaborators to support me because I’m not the best designer. I’m not the best video editor, I’m definitely not an illustrator. I’m definitely not a web designer or a techie. But I have the clear vision of what I want to be doing. I have the enthusiasm to enroll talented people and that’s what I try and do. And then it’s to figure out the win when you and I met, we were launching the Grady course adventure, which was essentially like Indiana Jones meets Saturday night live and a business development course, which is still available in our magic mind community. It’s still just as epic as when we made it. And back then when the idea struck, I didn’t have a couple hundred thousand dollars to invest in hiring my buddies who were very talented designers and producers. So I enrolled them in a business partnership. Same goes when I produced my, my, meditation library. I didn’t have money to hire my buddy for a year to produce and compose all these beautiful tracks. So I made them a business partner on it and paid them a share of the revenue that we made. I’ve always been one who looks for the opportunities to collaborate with other people. And I feel like that’s where alchemy happens is like when you and somebody else combine your magic, that’s when like super magic happens. That’s when, you share the responsibility, you share the workload, you share. The revenue that happens, you share the marketing like it, when we can share that weight, it’s no longer all just on us. And I do that really well with what we’re doing for magic kids. We have several hundred artists who are contributing to everything that we’re doing inside of the magic kids realm. And it’s just trying to find. What are the fair ways that we can all be compensated for our talent and time? Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. That’s really cool One more thing on that just so I feel like this is another important one. So five six years six years ago I think it was now. I got really burnt out from magic media doing these big client partnerships and so instead of taking clients money of 50, 000, 100, 000 to do a project with them. We started doing partnerships where they would pay us a retainer for 12 months, and then we would get a revenue share for two to three years. We would do these like longer term projects with them that would have this bigger ramp up. And, it’s been amazing and life changing, it’s just been so much better and more fulfilling for me to go on these long arc projects with people. My entrepreneurial spirit feels more satisfied than like typical client work where it’s we do the project we’re done. It’s okay, goodbye. We’re done with the thing we said we would do. and so that’s been another way that I shifted my business model to just. Lean into partnerships and relationships. Chris Badgett: Yeah. I love the incentive structure there and how that, how you’re just sharing responsibility and revenue. you also are clearly a visionary. this is a funny question, but what’s your process for vision or does it just strike you? Like where did magic kids come from? It usually is just it strikes me. it’s a conversation. it’s, something that repetitively shows up in my life. So with magic kids, for that 1, my son and I were always just making up stories and he’s been growing up with very limited screen time. He gets 1 show a week. He’s eight now. He just doesn’t complain about that. That’s just the reality he knows. And he’s cool with it, but he gets audio stories. So he’s grown up with audio stories and I found a lot of the audio stories that we were finding were basically junk food entertainment. They were funny, but they weren’t like. helping him to learn values or life skills or lessons or think about the world differently. The ones that were more holistic in nature were just boring and lame. And so I wanted to combine what we’ve learned at Magic Media about, like, how do you use entertainment as a vehicle to teach and transform? In my opinion, audio is one of the most transformational mediums we have because you can get inside of people’s minds and you can take them on a journey. You can activate imaginations. And that’s what we’re trying to do at Magic Kids is like, you take kids from the screen time where they’re being fed Through this like strobe light effect, whatever it is that the screen wants to tell them or show them versus an audio story where it’s activating their imagination and they can feel and they can each kid is going to have their own experience of a story that we’re trying to share with them. they’re going to imagine it in a different way. They’re going to see a character in their mind differently. If you get. 30 kids to all draw the main character of a story. They’re all going to draw it differently. And what was the question again? I was about where vision comes from. Oh yeah. so yeah, that with magic kids, it just, we were making up stories. And then, so I’ve had this men’s group I started years ago called man ventures and every Tuesday we get together and whatever guys show up, choose what the adventure is the following week and we’ve done. Amazing things. You’re not allowed to do the same adventure two weeks in a row. So on one dark and stormy October night, we had 12 men in my office and we all wrote children’s stories. Then we read our stories to each other. I wrote a story called the master’s Apprentice about a wizard who looks for his apprentice. And then the apprentice shows up and it’s all rhyming. And, really, I thought it was really cool story that kind of ingrained the, philosophy that to go from good to great practice every day and that when we’re starting out at something, it’s very frustrating. But if we just keep practicing, we become a master. And that story the next day after I wrote that, I was like, I want to publish this. I don’t want to go the traditional route. I’ve gone traditional publishing routes before. It can take two to three years to get a book on a shelf. I’m going to get 6 percent of the revenue that’s made. They’re going to pay me in advance, which is a debt to the company. I don’t want any of those things. So we’re going to start a publishing company and it’s going to be called magic kids. And it’s going to be a fair pay publishing company where we pay 50 percent of the revenue back to the artists because I’m an artist and I want to be paid well for my work. And so that was the beginning. We did three or four months of research. I hired two different friends to who had publishing experience to just get me all the facts and all the information. Everybody told me not to do it. I raised a little bit of investment capital to get the first, 12 books paid for with the audio stories. I thought the audio stories would be, or the books would be the thing that made money. And I was dead wrong. We lost a lot of money on books, but that led us to build the app. My son Soren actually had the idea to build the app. Vision struck him one day. We had a marketing meeting, six of us in my office, and he’s at his little desk whiteboard wall. And we’re mapping out all the ways that we can get more books sold. And he walks over with his little whiteboard with Chris Badgett: A rectangle and a circle in the middle of the rectangle. And he said, listen up everybody. This come from a six year old. What we need is a button and he holds up his little whiteboard over his head. Button buddy. And he’s we need a button. Kids just push a button and a story pops up and starts playing. Oh, like an app. He’s yeah, we need an app. We’re all just like jaw dropped and it was one of those moments where the universe spoke to us and we’re like, okay. We erased everything on the whiteboard and we said, what’s the magic kids app? And that was when we started working on it and that was two years ago. and then he walked back, Mike dropped moment. He didn’t say another word. He walked back to his desk and kept drawing and we’re just, what was that? Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. And that’s M a J I K kids, magic kids. That’s right. And for anybody out there listening, who’s a parent, or knows a kid that might enjoy this, like what’s the. Target age for Magic Kids 4 to 10 is what we’re going for, but we have friends and customers that like the whole family gather around to listen to stories. We release new stories every Saturday morning to help replace cartoons. Our stories can be 15 minutes. They can be 25. We have 490 minute audio stories that we’re working on that are like audio movies. yeah. We’ve got several that are around 45 minutes. So there’s like something for everyone. And the way that we’re trying to do the stories is kids are geniuses. So treat them like geniuses. So a four year old can fall in love with the story because the characters and the sounds and the humor that’s in there, the occasional fart joke, and then the parents and older kids fall in love with them because there’s these, Deep life lessons that are being taught through the character’s journeys in the stories. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. I want to dig into something you mentioned about quitting social media eight years ago. I think it was, tell us more because I think that. That can almost sound impossible to an entrepreneur, particularly a digital entrepreneur. but you’ve pulled it off. just give us the story there. Okay. It’s a good story. I wanted to leave three years before leaving, so I created a evacuate Facebook group. I could feel the toxicity back then of what it was becoming of just this, like there was these mixed signals that I was getting. In the space that just weren’t congruent. The idea of, instead of friends, we’re getting followers, the anxiety, people were feeling the loneliness, the screen addiction that was happening for me, my work days were on average 12 hours a day because I was spending three of those hours wasted on social media every day. there was a lot of things, but I had one, one particular moment. We just had our kids soaring. So he was a baby. We were just launching the Grady course adventure. And I was up on a mountain watching the sunset by myself. It was a beautiful moment. Just reflecting on, I was feeling really lit up in my life at that time. I was like, first part of my career where my artist and my entrepreneur self were perfectly married through the delivery of the Grady Course Adventure. I was stoked. And so as I’m watching the sun go down, I suddenly started to notice my mind pre writing what I was going to post on social media. In that moment, I realized my brain had been hacked. My thoughts weren’t my thoughts. My experience was no longer my experience and Mark Zuckerberg essentially owns that experience now, and it felt so out of alignment with the life I want to create for myself and for my son and the freedom that I seek in all of my experiences. That I went home and I told my wife what happened and I said, I’m leaving. I’m pulling the cord on social media. I’m deleting my account tomorrow. So I messaged all my friends that matter to me most and I deleted and what happened next was the reason why I think so many people don’t leave and I’m grateful for the experience, but it was hard as hell. It was crickets. It literally felt like I got erased. I erased myself from the Matrix, I no longer existed. And I wasn’t having friends text me. I wasn’t having people call me. Nobody reached out and said, Hey, dude, what’s going on? Is everything okay? Why’d you leave? I saw your account’s gone. I saw your goodbye poster. Nothing. No party invites. No potluck invites. Nothing. I just spent 10 years developing a following on the internet and it was all a lie. None of it mattered. So that was when I realized I needed to focus on real-world relationships. And so my whole philosophy on life and business changed as a result of being erased because everything that I thought was real, all these followers, it was all not real. That was when I started my men’s group. My wife, I felt super lonely. So I started this adventure club. my wife started a group on our Island for a handful of moms who all had kids the same age that grew into a group. There’s over 1200 moms in it now from our Island. Our population is only 10, 000 people. Like it’s the grandmothers of the Island, the mothers of the Island, and they, it’s become this incredible hub for collaborative support on our Island. and so that led me to 19 relationships based marketing strategies and how do we come back to the old fashioned way of valuing relationships and my philosophy when I left was like, I wanna have wealth in my life. I want to do well. And I was convinced that in order for me to do really well with my work, I don’t need 10, 000 followers. I don’t need 10, 000 people on an email list. All I need is 10. Chris Badgett: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at Lifter LMS. com forward slash gift. Go to Lifter LMS. com forward slash gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide The post Education Entrepreneur Bradley Morris Shares His Creator Journey appeared first on LMScast.

In this LMScast episode, Shahjahan Jewel shares the story of how FluentCRM started as an internal tool for WP Manage Ninja before becoming a full-fledged product. He also shares insights about marketing automation Shahjahan Jewel is the owner of WP Manage Ninja, a business recognized for developing well-liked WordPress products including FluentCRM, Fluent Forms, Fluent Bookings, and Fluent Support, was founded and is led by Shahjahan Jewel. Shahjahan highlights that FluentCRM offers powerful marketing automation and CRM functionality at a far cheaper cost than SaaS options like ActiveCampaign since it was developed with small businesses, creators, and WordPress users in mind. Additionally, he emphasizes how crucial it is to integrate CRM features directly into WordPress so that users can handle all facets of their business including customer interactions and courses in one location and not depend on third-party systems. Shahjahan also covers the difficulties of using WordPress to manage a CRM, particularly for bigger email lists, and how Fluent CRM is designed to meet those needs. Shahjahan also discusses FluentBookings, another WordPress Manage Ninja product that draws inspiration from Calendly and Cal.com. Here’s Where To Go Next… Get the Course Creator Starter Kit to help you (or your client) create, launch, and scale a high-value online learning website. Also visit the creators of the LMScast podcast over at LifterLMS, the world’s leading most customizable learning management system software for WordPress. Create courses, coaching programs, online schools, and more with LifterLMS. Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014. And be sure to subscribe to get new podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide Episode Transcript Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co founder of Lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end. I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show. Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMS cast. I’m joined by a special guest and friend. His name is Shahajan Jewell. He’s the founder and CEO of WP Manage Ninja, which creates a lot of products. Fluent CRM, Fluent Forms, Fluent Bookings, Fluent Support, and much, much more. This is going to be a fun episode. We’re going to talk about tech. And we’re going to talk about entrepreneurship. We’re going to talk about WordPress. The first welcome to the show. Shahjahan Jewel: Hi, Chris. Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m really excited to chat with you today. And I think it’s a long time. We chat last time. I maybe that was in Taiwan. Chris Badgett: Yeah, we had some good chats in Taiwan. And I remember, I think I first met you in Greece in person. Yeah. And I think sometimes when entrepreneurs get together, they have a lot to talk about. So it’s very easy to talk to you in this unique world that we find ourselves in. But first I wanted to get the story behind fluent CRM. And the reason why this is really important to you out there watching or listening is. In the learning management system space, you can do a lot with an LMS and a CMS like WordPress, but you need a CRM too, to do more marketing automation, broadcast emails, do more advanced stuff with your contact records. Can you tell us the story of how Fluent CRM came to be? Okay. Shahjahan Jewel: So it’s a bit different. It was not intended to be a product actually. We started, selling press plugins back to the 18 and then when we released an update then we had to let our customers know. That we have an update or, promotional email and those type of things. And first we tried, MailChimp MailChimp is really great, simple. The problem was actually like every time we have a sale, we have to, custom coding or, export the CSV and import those of the thing. And we are not like marketer, but, we are all the developers. So we, we thought okay, How what can we do? Maybe we can just, have a very simple page where you can just type the subject and the body and hit send, and it will send those emails. So that was like the very fast version. And, we are using it and, our developers and me too. Added use features like one of the, struggle we had like when someone actually send us an email or give us a support ticket, then actually we had to find, which products they bought or what attributes they have in the other system. Then then we made a system like, okay, if I search by an email. Or, name, I will get all the details of that user. Then actually it became okay, it’s having shape and then actually work for a year on top of that. Then we see that, okay, this is something that we can actually release as, open source and people can use that. That’s the behind the story. After, really the first version that was like, pretty fast version. When we released to the public we have a very minimal features and then people actually started using it. Give us, lots of requests. Like I need this integration. And then actually okay, let’s org on it. We had a very, loans of Fluent CRM. And what we did actually, we reinvested all the money that we got from the loans campaign into it, and then we made it a really big so that’s the backstory of Fluent CRM. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. I, one of the things that fascinates me about a WordPress based CRM and email marketing automation is how affordable it is. As an example, I’ve been using active campaign for a long time. I have a somewhat large email list and the pricing got up to around a thousand dollars a month. And then I reduced the level of the plan I had cause I wasn’t using all the features. And then just this month they raised the price on my plan, another 100. So it just keeps coming. And I’m like, it’s like you mentioned MailChimp. It’s great. We recommend it. It’s a, it’s got a free, easy way to get started, but once you scale it, it’s challenging. And I find it really impressive with Fluent CRM and a lot of your other tools to how Like fluent support is an example. I pay help scout a lot of money every month. And I just want to get how you think about that. Cause you’re really disrupting the market in terms of providing in many ways, a more powerful solution at a much cheaper price. How do you think about that and design for that? Shahjahan Jewel: So in a sense, like actually, we, I never reinvent any wheel or we never invented anything new. The idea behind, all of our products actually, that is, we want to build products that will help the, small businesses like us or a, a shop owner, or, a creator who is, building a course or selling something like that, and, all those tools that exist. Okay. So like you, you mentioned like active campaign is great. Like fluency RME is very inspired by ActiveCampaign. We actually used ActiveCampaign for months to understand ActiveCampaign, how the automation work. So we tried to mimic the ActiveCampaign automation into Fluent CRM. And so our idea is actually, there has lots of tools in SaaS services. And many people actually like us want to use self posted services. They want to reduce the cost. They don’t want to give tax for success. Like when you have 2000 subscriber, MailChimp is free, but when you have 10, 000 subscriber, you are paying hundreds of dollars per month. So that’s the idea, actually, like all the tools we want to. Build those tools. So it worked in self hosted it, use your server and it was great. It integrated with everything. So like fluency and our idea is actually like when you install that in your WordPress, I know you have say like a lift elements in store, so I will, so all the data of library limits into the same red database. So I can actually easily, query those data. And when you see a customer, you can actually see who is courses this user enrolled, or I want to see who is my contacts are completed is a course or purchased a course. Those type of things like you are hosting your, e commerce, you are hosting your learning management system in WordPress, but you are, managing your contacts in a another server, another instance. That’s not a, I think, ideal experience for a business owner, because you have to go back and forth to many places. So that’s our idea is actually like you are managing your, entire online business in WordPress. These tools should be in WordPress. So that’s by personal view about the self hosted open source and everything. Chris Badgett: I love that. I think we, we think very similarly, like at the beginning of Lifter LMS in WordPress. So this is like in 2013 even the inside of WordPress, you had to get, All these different solutions to create a learning management system, like a separate membership plugin, separate e commerce, separate engagement, gamification stuff. So we started with this philosophy of how can we just make it easier on the user and kind of consolidate? And I think that. With learning management system websites, almost all of them would benefit from a CRM. Why not have it in WordPress? And that just, it makes a lot of sense. I wanted to ask you a technical question about it. I get asked this a lot and I’m hoping you can help me I can learn from you on how to answer it better. But when you do like you have a web hosting account, you put WordPress on it, you start adding other tools that send emails, a CRM and email marketing automation tool like FluencyRM, especially if you’re doing a broadcast email. Can you explain the limitation of just WordPress by itself sending email and then maybe using Fluent CRM as an example, how do you give people the confidence that it’s going to handle the email? Shahjahan Jewel: Yeah, so this is the, this is our Kind of challenge and not technical challenge, but it’s to educate our users. It can handle your your server can handle , something like that. So IGA is actually for last couple of years, uh, the, we like many users actually, open support ticket okay, I want like friends CRM, but I’m really afraid that, something will break my email will something will be, will go wrong, something like that. So only thing I actually like say to customers Look, you are selling your products from your WordPress. You are using WooCommerce. WooCommerce is really big and your server can handle that. You can actually host your email marketing tool this way. And the way we build Fluent CRM. It very like we had to really do lots of overengineering to build FluentJRM. So something like that, say say you have, you are sending like, 50, 000 emails. And you are getting lots of traffic too. And if a friend said, I’m see that your, server memory is up to 70%, it will stop sending email. We had to do, lots of background things. If we, if it would be a SAS solution, then we could actually easily, solve this technical challenges from our server because we don’t have any, control over the server. So that’s why we had to do this thing. So influential and we like this, like we have a very powerful automation. We had to find out what’s the super optimal way we can do that. How we can manage something like we want to run only our code when these things happen. So yeah, definitely that’s like challenging. Sometimes we find like someone actually sending say 50, 000 emails. And it’s say, they’re saying like, okay, how, why is. Taking one day or 12 hours or 15 hours. Then we had to, explain that when we asked them, we suffer you are using, so maybe they are using a like a shared server, like 5 per month server. Then we had to explain that okay, you are, managing 50, 000 Contacts you are. sending these emails. So better, at least you are, buy a VPS like 20 per month and host that and you will get the full power and there will be no issue. This type of things like educating the users. That’s currently challenging, two years ago, the things we, faced about this issue. Now it’s much less. I think more of most of the users are more educated now. There has, lots of good software management tools like they they let you connect your VPS. So some, so there is lots of things, not like shared server, but there is lots of, new server management tools. They also help the overall ecosystem. I think after a few years, this will not be problem because, the servers are getting more powerful, less expensive. Yeah, I think it’s a good thing. Chris Badgett: Yeah, and I think the market is maturing too and realizing the difference between a five dollar a month shared hosting account for a brochure website or a Platform that needs more resources and there’s so many great hosts out there that are Doing better and offering, more resources. If we look at what I call an education entrepreneur, somebody who’s selling courses and coaching, and if we look at coaching specifically the, there’s the booking element of Hey, I’m ready to book my coaching call with the coach. And I love this one because you’ve basically taken what tools like Calendly or acuity scheduling. Do but you’ve brought it into WordPress. Tell us about that. Like how the About fluent booking. Shahjahan Jewel: Yeah, so I am a big fan of Cal. com so we used both cal. com and calendly And then I saw there has no plug in wordpress Like this smooth Calendly or Cal. com, WordPress. And also we are our marketing team actually planning to do sales call. So our idea was actually when someone actually purchased one of our license, select French CRM, then we will do a sales call. They can just, come to our site and then they will, fill up the form and schedule a call. And then as I am very much, develop developer mindset and, it’s not actually, I would not say it’s a good thing, but, that’s what I am. So okay let’s, build that build a very minimal version just for our use and we can do that. Then, we the first version we started using it we, and then then we said okay, let’s build this as a project product. And then we like work like seven, eight months. And, we try to. You can say we are really inspired by cal. com. I really love it I love the company how they operate and they are also like open source. They but they’re you know you need you know, lots of things to set up and everything and So that’s you know, like we built fluent booking And I think you know now, thousands of people are using it. So it’s good Chris Badgett: Yeah, that’s awesome Another one, and I’m starting to detect a pattern here that, yeah, so you’re scratching your own business problem. Shahjahan Jewel: actually, like all of our for most of our product, we are the biggest user. A few months ago we released F Boards. I think we are the, second largest user of that product frameworks like. alternate of, Trello. And so our whole company runs on that in fluent boards as a project management tool. And so fluent support, that’s the same kind of same story. We want to host everything ourself. So when we do, we, we try to find a Open source or paid version of that. And then we see that if that, what’s for us so the fluent support before print support, we are using, awesome support. It’s a WordPress plugin. We’re using the premium version. The problem is actually they stopped, developing that plugin. So it was like the world is style custom post type thing. And, our, uh, we could not use those data effectively and as well as it, it just slow for our, support agents. Then we built the fluent support and we tried to optimize that every millisecond level. Like the idea was actually if I, save one second we get like 300, 400 tickets per day and then it will actually help us a lot save time. So that’s the idea of our products philosophy is actually. We need that. Let’s build it and then make it, sophisticated and then release for the public. And get the feedback as much as possible from the users and all on that. Chris Badgett: I love that. And just to go over that fluent boards is like Trello, which is project management, which most course creators, coaches, education entrepreneurs need. And Fluent support is similar to help scout or free scout so that you can manage email with teams and stuff like that, which is super helpful. These are tools we as business owners use every day. What’s your recommendation? Let’s say there’s an, a small business entrepreneur out there. Do you recommend they put it all on one website or have subdomains or how do you? Like what’s your advice there? We get this question a lot. We see people do both. They like have a site with everything or they move things out. If you could advise, how would you advise? Shahjahan Jewel: It’s just contextual, right? Different people on to manage different type way, but I can share what I, we do, we host everything in our main domain.  The leisure is actually, like our shop is in our main domain our user account also there. And our support also there, our CRM is also there because if we, I would, host our CRM and subdomain, then it could again got the disconnect connection, right? We could not use all the data, all the events happening in my main store. If you go to, our store, buy FluentCRM, I can easily actually, run an automation. I can send the welcome email series for you. I can check if you purchased, FluentForms or not. Then I can, send an email about the FluentForms. And, try to educate you about those type of things. Now I can actually. Easily feature like who is who are our, main top paying customers, which products they’re using. So that’s for that. We use actually everything together in our main domain. So it’s less moving part. So that’s my, personal preference. That’s how we actually, design these things. Chris Badgett: I like that. I started with more separate stuff, but over time, they’ve all been coming back to just keep it simple and just get good hosting and you’re good to go. Shahjahan Jewel: If we, if I need to upgrade my server, I can easily do that. Because even if I do that, all the things in different servers, I had to buy multiple servers, right? So instead of buy the multiple servers, I can, buy the big server in it and use it. Let’s talk Chris Badgett: about some of your entrepreneur journey stuff. Did you, a lot of people in our field start as an agency and building sites for clients. Did you do that or no? Shahjahan Jewel: Okay. Yeah. So that’s the, my story is the same. I started WordPress back in 2019. So I just started my university graduation engineering. And then, I I started building websites for myself like how to build the website. I had no idea. Okay. So I started with if you want yeah, so there was like blogger. com was really like blogspot from Google. So that was like really popular. Then I can customize it. How I can, build something that I can customize. So that, I heard about WordPress. And then I, in 2011 I started my first like agency business. In that time mostly we would we are working with, few different, agencies in USA, basically, and USA, one was USA and another one is in health sector. We were, building the tools for them. So mostly those project or with Laravel and Laravel just started like version three and people started using it we also, loved it the Laravel. And then I kept that business for, I think 17. And after that, then I see that okay. I built many things. I want to now build the product. It’s like the problem was agency business in that time for me you know, lots of projects coming. I am working on a project after three, four, five, six months. I have to move to another project. And then the same story goes every time and when I stop, working like, my revenue stream is not actually that that way it’s not, anywhere. So that’s, then I realized that, okay let’s try to, build product for WordPress. Because I, in that time, I have a very great experience with WordPress. And that, that then I started, my first plugin was in 2018. And that, that was Ninja Table. Chris Badgett: That was which one? Ninja Table. What was Ninja Table? Shahjahan Jewel: So you say it is a very, it was, so it was another story actually. So in my, agency, I so I was working on a with the bank. And that bank actually, they have to show some data in their office site at the front end was the banker bank’s front end website was and the idea was actually they have some data and they have to, manage that easily and show that in the front end and that need to be very searchable and also mobile friendly. So then I could not find a, single plugin that can do it in WordPress in that time. So I think that is like 16 or 17, something like that. I built that plugin very simple like you can manage the data in the backend and it will show on the front end. Then actually I from that, I worked a couple of months and then, released us free. Within just a few months, it got 5, 000 active installation. I was getting like lots of emails. Like I need this feature. I need this feature. And some people email me, okay, I am using this, plugin. I want to donate you. How can I donate you something like that? And then I thought okay, now. Maybe this can be my first product Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. You have over or somewhere around 110 team members How did you?Let’s look at today Like what percentage like where are the people in terms of like developers designers marketers? Shahjahan Jewel: Wow. Yeah. So around 30 percent 35 percent are developer. And another 30 percent is marketer. Then we have support. So we have lots of support people. I think around 20 to 25 percent support. So that’s the distribution. And, I think it got crazy big. I know even I I don’t know how it got crazy big. So I think most of those hires actually happened in the COVID. So when COVID started, and. We are getting, getting crazy. Like we are having lots of, sales, support, everything. Then actually, so when COVID started, our team members were like 25, 20 or 25. When we reopen our office, then our team members are like 60. And wow, so then, we try to, so another thing is actually like why we are, we have, lots of people the thing is actually like is a product is actually like a startup. Normally we don’t share resources. So like a developer, we’re working on friends here and he will never work on fluent homes. And so that’s why every product is like a startup and they have a team. So there, those are like cross functional team. So from developer, marketing, and also the support. And from this three department, we call it a team. And they have a like team lead and he’s the, managing everything. He’s the general manager of that product and he managed all the things when we, release update from the marketing, how we will, market these things, something like that. And I think that’s why. It got big. If we share the resources, then maybe we would not be that big because same person would handle multiple things. But the problem is actually like when a person actually handle multiple things. Then he get distracted. So sometimes a product, uh, is not getting enough attention. So we want all the products to be succeed. And so that’s that’s where we are, so many people. Chris Badgett: So at your current stage, how do you see your role in what you do day to day or monthly, Shahjahan Jewel: Developer, I told you, like I am, I still try to, code as much as possible, but I don’t get much time to, code. So that I said, so all the, People are managed by, his team. And in the last couple of years, I tried to build those team. I tried to build those leaders from his, team. And then I, we also have another level that is like department wise. So like from the developer, I have, I have the engineering manager. From marketing, I have CMO and also for big product, I have like marketing lead of that specific product from support. I have several leads So in the last couple of years, I tried to build this thing. There’s a structure. So even when I normally every year, I, I love traveling. You already know that. So when I, go to traveling sometimes I, I never, check my emails or I never check my discord channel what people are doing because they are like autonomous, they are, self sufficient. So that’s that was, I think in my entrepreneur yeah, that was the hardest part, to make those structure. Chris Badgett: Very cool. Very cool. In terms of marketing and growth, And maybe speak in generalities or specific stories, whether somebody is a course creator or any kind of small business owner or a WordPress professional, what have you found in your growth, like some marketing things that tend to work well for WP managing? So Shahjahan Jewel: for us the one thing really worked for us and that is word of mouth. Till last year we had zero marketing paid advertisement budget. We never run any ads this year. We are like testing some, ads social media ads, Google ads, those type of thing. But auto mount, that really helped us a lot. So something like, so think about it. Some like that, week, one of our customer asked a feature for influence CRM and this week we we had a, a schedule, real estate, and then I asked the team, okay, let’s, try to, build that feature and ship it. And we shipped it. I think several people asked for that feature, Facebook community. And after we release those user was really happy. And I think this type of experience when a customer get from a from a, plugin vendor on something like they never forget those things. So when someone will ask for a recommendation or something, he will actually say that. Okay, use the friends here and we’re playing forms, something like that. So that helped us a lot. Another thing really helped. And that is from our support we try to, extra mile for a customer. So sometimes our support engineers actually like to spend several hours to solve a problem. Even it’s not, our support scope and that is something really, helped us. And and when we, give better support and listen to our users communicate very clearly transparent way. Then actually they purchase, all of our kind of follow up products. We have lots of customers who, purchase more than three products from us and our retention rate is really high. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. I love the saying that the best marketing is a good product and that creates, word of mouth. And then we get that too at Lifter LMS, cause we try hard and support that like people talk about that. It’s a differentiator. Support is literally a feature of the product. So treat it like that. How do you think about growing so fast? And you also just have like, when you release something, I noticed there’s a lot of integrations. You just seem to have a lot of speed. So tell us about Shahjahan Jewel: speed. It’s also a, our own power really, poor thing. So all of our way from the very first in WordPress, lots of the, companies or things there has, they, there has a big, very established business model that make really, lots of money for the company and that is tire based pricing, like if you. Purchase this then you will get certain add ons. If you purchase, higher, you will get all those features. And the starter is that it’s a pro, but it does not have many features. And that’s really helped for a company to make more money. The problem is actually it’s not the, I think it’s very, my personal thing. Okay. That it’s not a best expense for you. So from the very first from all, for all of our plugins, what we did actually, we don’t lock any feature for different pairs. So like when you actually, like if you, our, flint share and pricing is, it starts with 129. If you purchase on 29, only restriction is actually like you are getting the license for single license. Someone is purchasing like 499 is agency. You will get like 50 site license. So that’s the only different and we don’t have any add on. When you actually purchase, fluent ceramic install that if you have lifter if you have WooCommerce EDD or any plugin that we have integration that will be automatically activated. And that’s the, experience I want to give, I want to give the, very frictionless experience for the user. And I think, that is that also help they get better experience. We get less support ticket and yeah, that is we really like core thing. I know, if we had like tiredness, We could make more money. Maybe our revenue would grow like 30 percent or 40 percent but that’s the this is the path we choose awesome. Chris Badgett: I heard you say in another interview that Money is not the most important thing to you. So what motivates you? Shahjahan Jewel: Yes, that’s true so my theory is actually say I am making X amount of money now next year, if I make five X amount of money, my lifestyle will not change. I like it will not, it’s not like I have to buy a jet or I have a Tesla or something. The lifestyle I am living that’s the, that’s like constant I will do that. So when I had I have not lots of money. Maybe I, I had a level of my lifestyle, but it’s now it’s the like max, I don’t have anything like, I don’t so it’s not something like I cannot do that for money. So what really motivate actually, like when I get a review, when I get a good word from a customer, or when I go to an org camp, I meet people and. They are excited about my product. They know me, that’s kind of thing like that really, motivate me. So another story is actually, I think, two years ago I got a very good offer. Someone wanted to, acquire the whole company. And they really offered an amount of money that, I could go to retirement. I don’t have to, work a single day. And then I realized. Say, I am, selling the company, I am going to determine what I will do, what will my deal look like? And I see that will be really boring. And I can’t, live without the life I am having. I cannot live with the team member I am interacting with every day. So that’s really very important for me. Like I, I want to, do things that I really love every day that make me like alive, feel alive. Chris Badgett: So yeah. Creators have to create. So be careful with your company. What in this line of thinking and particularly for you with a large organization, how do you think about company culture and staying positive? Cause it’s easy. There’s challenges when you work on the internet, for example you may have some angry, probably every day there’s an angry customer in support or there is. A team member who’s maybe burning out or having challenges or you’re having challenges in your life or so. You strike me as a positive, optimistic person, but like, how do you shape a culture? That’s, and it’s okay to have bad days and challenges and everything, but how do you think about that? Cause that really matters in a company. Shahjahan Jewel: Yeah, definitely. So yeah, what culture or, environment is really, matter for a company. Or our company, we have very, some core values. So these are values we hold whatever happens, these are super, super important and all of them is actually, we must have to respect each other in our organization. Orchestrate space. Okay, we have to make sure that it’s really work friendly for everyone. Okay. So that can be, sometimes we get really, very, angry customer from support. And in that case, sometimes I say that our support people, we say that okay, for those customers, assign me those tickets. And sometimes I had to. Tell my customer like, okay, you are interacting with a human being, so please, if you want, I can, instantly refund you, but please, be social. We are here to help you. Okay. We are not, rob your money or anything. So that’s I try to help my members, I try to understand what my, what my team, what specific team member want what’s their goal, and then I try to help them with their, career wise. Sometimes, we have, many developer many people in my developer team who started their career support and then they moved to, diff team, and that’s the culture. Anyone can access anyone. So anyone can, come to my, room anytime and ask me a question or anyone can say something. It’s not like that I say something in my office and everyone must follow that. If someone thinks it’s not the right thing to do, they can definitely, argue that they can definitely tell me that, okay, maybe we can do. This way this is a better way. This is not the best way. So that’s the culture from every step in my office that I I built, and I think that’s very important. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. You’re obviously a visionary and an innovator. Is there anything that you’re you’d like to share about the future or what you’re excited about now, or new products you’re working on or anything like that? Shahjahan Jewel: Yeah, so yeah, definitely. So we really, invest Almost from the, when we started the company, we always all the money we make profit or revenue. Most of them actually, goes to reinvestment and I did not, start another business or anything, but within this business. And from to R and D to, hiring more people working on new things, solving problems. We are working with some exciting things and I am really excited for this year. Yeah, we will have. I think few new product this year. And those are something like really big, like we are working for the last two years for a product. And I am excited. Chris Badgett: One last question here. How do you think about the small business customer that you’re building for? Who is that person? And I know it’s you guys so it’s easy. You just scratch what you need, but any other ways you think about that when you’re. Innovating or designing product. Shahjahan Jewel: When we like building a new product or anything our, ideal persona is actually a small business. So that is a creator. or someone who has a online shop, who was like, say, you can say maybe the yearly revenue is, a few million dollars 10, 20 people in that team, they’re working something. And that’s when we design something we always think about them can they use them? And so that’s the thinking we use to design like everything. That’s really help. Like when you have like specific category of the people, like I’m building only for them, then it’s easier to target easier to, create those type of experience. Chris Badgett: Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s Shah Jahan Jewel. And I want to encourage you to check out WP managed ninja. com that has all the products. But particularly check out Fluent CRM Fluent Booking, Fluent Support, and Fluent Forms for if you’re looking for a form plugin. And it’s a, it’s an honor to catch up with you. I always enjoy our chats and I’m really excited for what you guys are doing and the way you’re doing it in the world. Keep up the amazing work. We’ll have to do this again down the road. Thanks so much. Shahjahan Jewel: Thank you. And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Go to LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide The post Marketing Automation in WordPress with FluentCRM and More appeared first on LMScast.

In this LMScast episode, Brian Hogg shares about his career journey. His journey is a combination of technical expertise in teaching and community development for the software development area. Brian Hogg is a developer at LifterLMS. He started his career at very young age and gained experience of 20 years in technical area by traditional education in computer science, self-learning and its practical application. Hogg highlighted his passion for creating accessible and actionable online courses with LifterLMS, the leading learning management system for WordPress. He developed and lead the project like the Event Calendar Newsletter plugin for simple need for his local community which indicates the importance of solving real-world problems and evaluating user feedback and experience. Brian’s career story showcases us the value of networking, continuous learning and teaching with in-depth understanding and keen interest for growth in teaching industry. Here’s Where To Go Next… Get the Course Creator Starter Kit to help you (or your client) create, launch, and scale a high-value online learning website. Also visit the creators of the LMScast podcast over at LifterLMS, the world’s leading most customizable learning management system software for WordPress. Create courses, coaching programs, online schools, and more with LifterLMS. Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014. And be sure to subscribe to get new podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide Episode Transcript Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co founder of Lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end. I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. I’m joined by a special guest. He’s back on the show from seven years ago. His name is Brian Hogg. That’s hog with two G’s at the end. Brian’s a developer at LifterLMS. He’s been with us for how long has it been? Brian Hogg: About six months. A little over six months, I believe. Chris Badgett: Yep, six months. He’s an amazing developer. We’re lucky to have him on the team. He’s also the creator of event calendar newsletter. You can find that at event calendar newsletter. com. His personal site is at Brian hog. com. That’s hog with two G’s. Welcome back on the show, Brian. Brian Hogg: Thank you very much. Yeah. I can’t believe seven years. I had a little more hair back then, but yeah, I’m not sure. Chris Badgett: It wasn’t a pro tip for you introverted folks out there. I came out of my shell and started going to some WordPress conferences, I went to something Chris Lima put on called Cabo press. And I think I went six times. I think the first one I went to, or the second one I met Brian Hogg and that’s how we connected first met in person seven years ago. And then I had a podcast. So I started interviewing some of the interesting people I was meeting at conferences. So pro tip for networking out there. And here we are seven years later working together. Brian Hogg: Yeah. And I can’t believe we’re reconnected off. I think a tweet and I’m not even really on social media, but I just happened to see it there and I’m like what are the odds? So yeah, no, it’s a small world. Chris Badgett: It’s cool. Before we started recording, Brian and I were talking about omnipresence and being in a lot of places, which is really hard to do as a course creator or a WordPress professional or entrepreneur, you’re very busy, but sometime, the name of the game, especially in the AI world. Relationships matter. People are mad matter. People are behind the internet. So connecting with people and getting out there is important. And it’s stress reducing too, which we can, we’ll talk about a little later. The first Brian is prolific. He’s done podcasts. He’s an entrepreneur. He has his plugin event calendar newsletter. He creates courses, which is what made him a really perfect fit for LifterLMS, because he’s already in the space. He’s created courses and he does a lot. He’s an amazing engineer and does things like mob programming, which we’ll talk about in a little bit. But first let’s start with the e learning thing. What attracted you and made you fall in love with the idea of creating courses or teaching on the internet? Brian Hogg: Yeah. So I for a couple terms, a couple of years taught at a physical college and so got the experience there actually working with students in person and so it was like design. It was a last minute thing. It was like design with some development WordPress in there. A general course for a second year students at the college. But yeah, seeing the it was restricted, obviously, that people are only able to teach or take the class in person and see it there. And just the idea that someone, you could put out content on the internet that people are able to access from wherever they are. Even if they have a slow connection, right? It’s if it’s not a live thing, they’re able to access the content, the videos like that. Download it might take a little longer. But that anyone in the world, like just with nothing but a laptop and they don’t even need a laptop, they could go to a library and access it there is able to gain access to that content, learn from it at, in, in. The big difference between a physical college and online is, oh, a course might cost you X dollars compared to thousands and not just the cost of tuition, but also the cost of physically getting there and everything else. That was a big draw is that just the reach that you have and that you can really get to the point like physical colleges tend to. a little more, it feels and so you’re really able to just hone in on, this is a actionable skill that you can apply in your daily lives, whatever that might be, quickly. And just seeing the power of that was a huge job. Chris Badgett: How did you learn engineering? What was your development as a computer scientist? Brian Hogg: Woof. So I think I started coding when I was like 10 or 11 or something. Had a book it’s holding up the monitor right now. See, by example, it’s a little broken. It’s been there a while. Learned that over a week, it was just had, had was fortunate enough to have access to, a laptop, decent internet at a younger age just people in my life. Used to play racquetball and. Friend’s father, was at the university of Rochester, one of their head tech people. He had access to tools and software and knowledge that, that really just sparked a lot of it. And yeah, no, it’s been an interesting journey and it was 16 or so launched like an online bingo game that, which became very popular. And yeah, definitely more recently after meeting like Mike little when I lived in the UK and I was going to a PHP conference there. Yeah, just getting more into the WordPress space and attending more camps. And and here we are. Chris Badgett: So how did, I think it’s a challenge for some aspiring developers to learn WordPress and get going. It’s, there’s this whole ecosystem and like what advice do you have for a developer that wants to grow and how to think about it? Cause You can’t really like all, almost every WordPress developer I meet, it’s like a windy road and they figure things out. Some are have like academic computer science training. Some are completely self taught or it’s a hybrid. Like how does one, if somebody wants to get involved in the WordPress development arena, What’s your high level advice? Brian Hogg: Yeah, obviously you just need to go to plugins for beginners. com. Purchase my course. No, it’s it probably always will be a windy road. I don’t think there’s any straight line. But I think the biggest advice is just having a project of a tangible project in mind. It might not be for a client. Ideally something that, that maybe you would use so that you, you’re more invested and interested in it, but just literally this is a thing I want to accomplish by the end of creating this plugin or the seam or whatever. So it just has more structure to it, obviously throughout the process. That working on that project or or just in general, you might be just learning random things here and there, blog posts, whatever, but just having that tangible thing, which hopefully isn’t so huge, you’re not, I want to make YouTube for purpose. I don’t know. Yeah. Some things relatively small that you can just sink your teeth into it, it directs the learning a lot more. As you’re figuring out how to do that thing you’re looking up some more specific things, not just like. How to make a plugin in WordPress. Cause that will tell you. Any number of results, which may or may not apply to what you ultimately want to do. Yeah, I think just having a project in mind I did do university a five year program, software engineering and management. But to be honest with most of that content. Was, if you’re working on a nuclear power plant or an elevator or something, like there were some useful skills, but most of it, like you said is the, or we were talking about before is the personal relationships that were built there and. The learning how to learn. And you can do that either at the university or online on your own. But yeah, being part of a local community is, it’s helpful as well. Cause then you can ask questions and things that AI and Google might not come back with someone with real experience who’s an actual human would able to answer for you a lot quicker and save you a lot of time in your So Chris Badgett: what’s as you go through, I imagine. Engineering is like a lot of things. It’s an infinite well and everything’s always changing, but what’s an example of the epochs for 20 plus years and engineering that. Something you learned recently that you weren’t ready for in the beginning, as an example. Brian Hogg: Not sure. Cause yeah, it’s funny how much things have changed, but yet a lot of things haven’t, if statements are still if statements while loops are still while it was like a lot of the fundamentals haven’t changed a lot. So now I’m struggling to think of like something, that I’ve learned more recently that maybe it wasn’t ready for. And maybe it’s harder as you go down and that’s almost where teaching. Comes into play as well, right? There’s some expression, right? Where if you can teach someone something you’re, it, it shows you’re an expert in it, or it shows that, it’s really the true test of whether you understand and know something and just seeing what questions that students have really like prompts like, Oh shoot. Yeah. I never thought of that. I assumed that I knew that. And obviously 23 years ago, I didn’t know that. But you forget. over time. Yeah, teaching and being involved in the community and hearing some of the questions that people are having keeps you more, grounded, or able to actually see what opportunities there might be to further everyone’s learning, including your own. Chris Badgett: Yeah the learn do teach. It sounds like a simple framework, but it’s super powerful. And that’s, it’s you’re teaching in a lot of ways. You might be making a course, but you might also be writing a blog post or a piece of documentation or a social media post, and you’re like, Oh, wait a second. I’m not fully formed. My idea isn’t fully formed here yet, or I don’t have all the details I need. Brian Hogg: We’re just working with more junior developers. However you define that. Yeah, it’s super, super helpful to just see where they’re at in their journey and and also be able to to do one thing at a time, right? That’s the biggest thing you can do probably with learning or or teaching is giving too much information at once. That’s the benefit of having more years of experience is that you can just, yeah, so you could explain in depth as to why, like you would do this versus this, but it’s just giving a solid piece of, and then if they ask questions or want a little more explanation, great. But if you fire hose it, it can really. Detrimental to the learning process. I find Chris Badgett: the other, we just recently on this podcast, one or two episodes ago, we were interviewing a teacher. And she was talking about the concept of scaffolding of not giving them too information. We need to build this foundation before we go on to this higher level thing. And that scaffolding can be giant. It can take years or decades. So one step at a time. Tell us the story of events. Event calendar newsletter. That’s it. Event calendar, newsletter. com. How did that happen? Brian Hogg: How did that happen? I was involved in the software and Hamilton community when we lived in Hamilton and the organizer of software Hamilton. com had events as obviously as part of it. It was a demo camp and whatever other events. And I just would notice that the emails coming in sometimes would have, the link would be wrong to the event or the date would be wrong, right? Like you could tell that, Oh, he was probably copying and pasting it from a previous newsletter and forgot to update the date or time or venue or whatever. So I just said, Hey, are you doing this manually? He’s yeah we’ve become really good friends since. And yeah, it was after one, I forget which event we, we just hit it, hit up a restaurant bar across the street. Like a few of us had my laptop and a couple hours created, the first version specifically for the calendar he was using doesn’t exist anymore, but yeah, that was the story of they’re here’s a physical need that I’ve noticed that That Kevin Brown had and was able to create a solution for it. That great. Now you can copy and paste it. And then from there, just hearing suggestions and feedback from users and Hey, it’d be great if I could automate this. And you’re looking into it and you’re like, Oh, okay, shoot. You’re going to have to add an API to every single mail sender out there. It’s wait, if we do it with an RSS feed, that’s pretty universal and allows us to integrate with a lot of different services. different email providers. And that was added and that created the first pro version and the way we went, but yeah, that was the origin story to that. And after creating the initial version for him, added support for a couple other popular calendar plugins, put it on WordPress to Oregon. It grew over time. That spawned through that the events calendar short code plugin by taking some of the learnings from developing that and how to customize calendars and then be able to speak about it at work camps and that led to meeting someone who had that plugin, who wasn’t looking to maintain it anymore and then taking it over and then growing a pro version off the back of that. One thing led to another from that. Chris Badgett: Talk us through like the mechanics for somebody who is wanting to do events, like how this works, what are the pieces? So for example, I was in a software entrepreneur coaching program for a couple of years and there were courses. But there was virtual events every week on zoom. There were three live events per year at different locations, different cities around the U S and Canada. And I could see and in the world today of like infinite content, community and events are important part of the learning stack. You don’t have to have them. But if somebody wants to add, I want to more easily organize my virtual and in person events. What are the components that come together to make? Event calendar newsletter work. Brian Hogg: Yeah, the core of it is really any number of WordPress calendar plugins. So basically they’re, that plugin is the way that you’re able to add the events, whether they’re in person or virtual. To your site. So from you, by using that plugin, adding events, specifying the location, the time, the date what are some of those top plugins? Yeah. So the events calendar, I’d say far and away is like the most popular one in terms of like customizability and feature set and support and everything else. Yeah, so they’re one of the big ones. There’s a simple calendar is one that is less supported. I knew the previous owner of that one and that one’s great. If you have a Google calendar and your events are within there it’ll import those but the events calendar also has an option to to import events from various sources. Get them into WordPress. Then from there you can use event calendar, newsletter, any number of other add ons to, to promote and advertise the the events there. And there are a few other ones, but yeah, honestly, and more recently, we just had a support for event prime, which is a smaller plugin, a few hundred users or so, but really good support that we’ve seen so far. But yeah that’s usually because the events counter has a free version, relatively feature rich doesn’t have recurring events and stuff unless you get the pro, but that’s probably the first place I would say to start and see how you like it. Chris Badgett: And then how does the newsletter aspect work with the MailChimp or ActiveCampaign or AWeber and some of the other ones you support. Brian Hogg: Yeah, so from there if you have event calendar newsletter, you can either use the free version and just have the events and then you’d be manually copying and pasting it into AWeber, MailChimp, whatever you use. But if, yeah, with the pro version, you’d be able to create what’s called, saved template. You can specify what details do the events you wanna show venue time. Change the font size, all that stuff, how you want the events to appear, and then you save that template that generates, essentially a feed URL, which you can use as a, an RSS URL in MailChimp or active campaign or any other ones that support RSS to email, and then the content of that RSS feed is your list of events. Yeah, you would just include that in your newsletter, either just Have that and nothing else, or if your email program supports it, or if you just want to manually type around the events content, you can then add, blog content or any other number of content or any other content that you want to add into each each newsletter or just automate it so every week it just automatically sends the list of. However long upcoming events, two weeks, three weeks a month, you can specify and even specify by category, get really fine grained if you want to have, certain subscribers only get events from certain categories. More of a MailChimp thing to have those conditional interest based conditions, but it’s definitely possible to do something like that with my colors. Chris Badgett: What one of the things I’ve noticed that’s important for events, like if you’re building community or you’re doing a lot of events is the key to show up. Is getting people to add it to their calendar that they’re using. And I think the airline industry figured this out. So like now when you buy an airline ticket. It ends up on your calendar automatically, the time zones converted, even if you move around, whatever, like the calendar, heavy lifting just happens automagically. Do you have any tips around helping people understand how all that works and how to get events from the website to locked on their personal calendar, whether you’re using Google calendar or the Apple version or something else? Thanks. Brian Hogg: Yeah, most yeah, like iCal most calendars give you, like WordPress calendar plugins, give you the option to show or have a link, right? Add to calendar, right? And then you pick Google or iCal or whichever one that you use. And so that would be how you get it from the website equally because it’s like a list of events, right? Like something sent by, say a newsletter wouldn’t, just add Oh, here are the next like 10 upcoming events. We’re just add them all to your calendar, right? It would just be a show having a link, a similar link in there to be like, Hey add this to your your calendar, or you’re just linking to your website and then from there they have a link, right? To to add some, when you RSVP then would send you essentially a calendar invite and then that calendar invite would be like, an airline or a doctor’s appointment, like whatever appointment or calendar invite you would normally get. And most email providers like Google would parse that and then automatically add it to your calendar. Either as an event that you like accept. To attend, but it still shows up there. You get reminders automatically and stuff. So yeah, having it within your calendar is pretty key. And especially if you have it, yeah, as an RSVP, I haven’t tried it. Cause I’ve run events in a while, but yeah, if you have it as an RSVP and then you update it, like that’s the magic of it too, right? Is that it updates in their calendar automatically. Yeah, definitely. If you can set that up, that’s huge. Chris Badgett: Nice. And for somebody who’s let’s imagine the most simple use case, let’s say they just have a blog post or a page on their website and they want to just have a link, like to add event to your calendar. Is there actual, like just code you can write to the link to add all that? Or is it. Is that not even possible? Brian Hogg: Oh, it is. Yeah. I’m trying to think if our default template has that and it may not, and it may add it after this. But yeah, like basically we’re using like say the events calendar shortcode or a show code that’s provided by whatever calendar you’re using. A lot of ones come with one out of the box. Yeah, if you have a blog post and you want to promote like a specific event related to the blog posts or what have you, or say the next event that’s happening in a category related to the blog post then you would have the output of that event right there and ideally include a link within it to add to your calendar. So no, it’s absolutely possible because yeah, the data is already there on the same site as the blog. And so you’re adding the the event information, right? Within your blog content, either at the bottom or in the middle, depending as a call to action to get people there, especially if you’re running, yeah, say a webinar or a virtual event that you’re trying to use as like a lead into your e learning. Yeah, that’s definitely key and having it update automatically is key. So that you’re, you have this kind of evergreen content that’s in your blog posts, you have now you’re automatically updating as you’re adding webinars over time, or, maybe you’re running them every week or twice a month or monthly, it’ll just automatically update that content within the blog posts or at the bottom. And then more people will get into your funnel that way. That’s Chris Badgett: awesome. So what for event calendar newsletter? If somebody is like really interested in what we’re talking about here. What’s the. way for them to start and dive into these waters. Brian Hogg: Yeah. I think it’s event calendar newsletter. com. It’s got a demo video in there. There are a couple of courses on like I have a full course on the events calendar specifically and event espresso, I believe I’m on YouTube, so you can search for it on there and that’s end to end on like setting up the plugin and setting up, either shortcode to promote them within the site or event column or newsletter to promote it by email. Set all that up and yeah, I can definitely reach out if there, are there any questions on that? Chris Badgett: Awesome. Switching gears, talk, go into personal life stuff. Okay. What is. Let me back up and say, I see a lot of burnout in our industries, whether that’s entrepreneurship, web development, marketing how, for, when somebody has done what you’ve done for 20 plus years, and perhaps you’re like, I don’t know, I haven’t figured this out, but what What tips do you have for somebody who’s either struggling with burnout or kind of feeling a little worn down? How do they keep going or fix the issue? Brian Hogg: Sure. Yeah, it can be a lifetime thing and a thing to check up on all the time. No I’ve always been an active proponent and talk about this to anyone I can on the benefits of therapy or speaking with someone, I, obviously you can speak to family and friends, but having that therapist or someone you don’t need to invite to Thanksgiving to go through any struggles that you happen to be having in your life. And it can take a few tries, to find one that’s a good fit, which can be tough. Especially if you’re not in the best spot, right? If you are experiencing burnout or fatigue or whatever, right? It can be hard to know is this, is it just, is it me? Or is it like, or is it just the relationship between the therapist? That therapist is just not a good fit for me. Like it can be hard to know the difference. But luckily after I think four or five times, yeah, I found someone who I still check up on or with every month or two to just go through any challenges that, that I’m facing. And But a huge component has been, exercise, which is obviously a common thing, but just last few years getting into running has been awesome. Not just from, the physical benefits of running, but also some of the social aspects of being part of a run crew or participating in races or what have you squash before that as well. Kind of haven’t played it recently, but before COVID, so just having some or multiple ideally outlets to, step away from, the computer if the burnout is caused by work or what have you and just have that kind of your own space to rejuvenate, like clear your mind, what have you and work through things. But yeah, it is something that You need to consciously keep up on, right? Cause it could be so easy to be like, Oh, I’m good now. I don’t need to do any of this. And then, a few months later, weeks later, even it can hit you and then it can be harder to recover from versus just keeping it as a maintenance thing that you integrate into your daily lives, ideally for the rest of your life. Chris Badgett: Awesome. And related to that, one of the things I enjoy working with you is Positive person. There’s a lot of like negativity and tech and social media or whatever. But you’re a positive person and you like, you communicate well, which I’m learning is coming from a lot of that’s coming from the teaching background. Maybe. Brian Hogg: Yeah. I would say it was a most social computer nerd you’d ever meet. Yeah. Even as a younger oddly. Yeah, It was it’s just always been the thing for, Chris Badgett: there’s a tool I use a lot called assume positive intent, intent and you seem to embody that and like working through issues or brainstorming or whatever, but how, is that just your personality or have you worked on crafting that outlook? I think that’s also just part of. Being online and there’s so much information and data and it’s all overwhelming that it is easy to get negative or burned out or overwhelmed. Or anxious how have you developed that or, yeah, what are your thoughts on positivity and communicating well virtually? Brian Hogg: Yeah, being on, I’m not really, like I said, I’m not really involved in social media anymore and that’s probably a big reason for it. There’s just a lot of not solely negativity, but just a lot of stuff that can feel like it. It should, and I hate the word should, affect your life more when it really, if you want it to, you can choose it too. But a lot of times it’s completely unrelated and not important and distraction or stressor or whatever. Yeah, I’m not sure. Like when I was younger, I had a huge anger and you’d never know it now. Like anger. Problem, right? Or, and maybe related to ADHD. Like I’ve seen kind of friends with kids and stuff that seem to have that. And that seems to be a more prevalent thing. So yeah, through therapy and medication for ADHD that’s certainly helped. But even before that, just letting go of some of that anger, just consciously, and just not being so quick to, to anger, has created a huge And yeah, I think that’s right. I didn’t coin a term over it, but yeah, definitely assuming the positive intent in people has been massive. Cause yeah, most people are just trying to, fix an issue or help someone else or whatever. Yeah, that and just being helpful as, and it, I think at one point I was too far on that spectrum, right? Like obviously you do want to be helpful and help people wherever you can, but it is okay and good to be selfish as well sometimes. Cause if you don’t take care of yourself, you’re not going to be helpful to other people for very long. So that finding that balance has been a more recent thing the last few years, I would say. Yeah of knowing when to say no, that it’s okay to just say no, not oh maybe I could do that one day for you if blah blah blah because that leaves the door open and then it’s still in your brain and everything else but yeah sometimes it’s no I can’t help you with that I’ll, but I can see if I can find someone who can or I know this person who can and setting them up that way. Chris Badgett: It’s a strange like conundrum or whatever where In my experience, I’ve similarly, like as a guy who’s run an agency before some of the best agency people are super helpful and also tend to learn the lesson the hard way about being over helpful or always available. Sure. We can solve that problem too. You thought about this, and this, and next thing you know, you’re like inventing the business model for this person. And you were just hired to build a website, but at the end of the day, that’s what makes you an awesome agency person, but it’s a lesson. A lot of agency freelancers, helpers just learn those boundaries and stuff. One more on the personal side. Working online either as an entrepreneur or as a developer, designer, marketer, sometimes people get isolated and that causes some of the other mental issues. And I know you don’t live alone. I don’t live alone. I have a family and stuff, and that definitely helps. We talked earlier about meeting at an event. Which was like away from the computer which that starting to do that really helped me Feel less isolated and quote find the others like other helpers helpful people and creative people and problem solving people and that was really great, but What’s been what’s your advice and story with isolate isolation working remotely, or how have you figured that can of worms out for sure? Brian Hogg: Yeah. Mob programming, which we’ll talk about later was certainly helpful. Especially, moving here. Three acres near a small kinda city, , , and then covid, right? Like we moved 2020. That was a great way to avoid is a lot of the isolation because you’re on a Zoom call with people, three, four or five hours a day working through problems and chatting and whatnot. I’ve just certainly, I have a handful of people I regularly schedule, virtual calls with if I can’t get together with them in person or go and visit. If I can and that’s just maintaining those relationships. Even if it’s via text message, sometimes just to avoid said isolation you’re sharing kind of moments in your life. And I find, yeah, like either hopping on a call, visiting someone in person or a direct text message or a group message, whatever. A lot more effective than social media, right? Cause social media is you’re. beholden to the algorithms to know like whether someone’s going to see it even and obviously someone just might be tired or busy or scrolling when they’re about to go to sleep. So then, you could start to think, Oh, this person saw, but they didn’t hit the heart icon or whatever. And so that can add to, I think the isolation factor. Though it has its benefits. I’ve had a lot of really cool people via social media in the past. So that can be really good, but yeah, it does need to be a conscious thing to go out and yeah, it takes effort, right? And especially with the run crew, right? Like you jumping into the water as being like, how fast are they going to run? Is this going to, how’s this going to work out? But pretty much every time especially if you go in there, you’re not going in there to like, Sell a group of people on something, right? You’re going there to learn, to be helpful, to meet new people and learn about them. Pretty much always it’s going to be a positive experience that is energizing. But yeah, I could see that being a struggle if you’re less extroverted than others. But yeah, it’s worthwhile. I think. Chris Badgett: Picking up the thread on mob programming. One of the challenges with being a solopreneur, freelancer, working alone and stuff, but collaboration is really powerful for learning and problem solving. Tell us, I hadn’t heard of mob programming until I met you. So tell us about it. It’s really fascinating and interesting. Brian Hogg: Yeah. It’s basically structured pair programming with more than two people, right? The typical way you would run it is you have what’s a navigator and a driver. The navigator’s job ideally is so before you start, you come up with some goals like this, at the end of this one hour or whatever session. Ideally we would, a good day would be we’d have this done, a great day would be we’ve had this done, and if, holy crap, this is an amazing day, we would get this done. So you have, you spend a few minutes at the beginning getting that all in line, and then you can just randomize, who’s in what spot. So then someone starts as a navigator, someone’s a driver, the rest of the people are just in the mob, and ideally they’re not. They’re not shouting. This isn’t like a lynch mob or anything where everyone’s trying to do everything at once that doesn’t work. And it’s all on one computer. So it’s not like everyone, obviously people can use their own if they’re in the mob and they’re looking stuff up, but all the work is done on one. So ideally the navigator would just say, Hey, like my high level intention is to do X, Y, Z is to make it when you click that button. It’ll do this. It’ll save this form or it’ll whatever, and that’s it. And then they just say, stop talking give the driver a space. The person who’s on the keyboard space to figure that out. And ideally the driver is speaking, and that’s a learned skill for sure. Cause most developers will just throw on headphones and type and not say anything. But ideally you want to be talking. While you’re trying to figure out the solution so that others know your thought pattern and whatnot. And then obviously if you have questions, you can be like, Hey, I don’t know how to do this specific thing or whatever, but the navigator and the rest of them, I really needs to resist the temptation to just be like, Oh man, you Got to do this, type this, you silly, you dummy, right? Like ideally, like you don’t want to be doing that because that will very quickly reduce the confidence of the person at the keyboard and just everything in general, and it’s just chaotic and stressful and not fun. Yeah, so that’s the thing. And it’s really powerful in that. Something that you might spend a day or more, multiple days on a stock or not realizing a certain path or taking a whole other path, like a misinterpretation of what the task is or whatever through that environment, you’re, nine times out of 10, someone in the mosque and be like, Oh, are we sure that’s what we want to be doing? Not like when you’re planning, right? Oh, is that the and that saves a bunch of time or you’re trying to figure out some technical problem and someone in the mob or whatever. knows the solution, right? And on their term, because you’re only doing four or four or five minute turns. You rotate that way. Someone’s gonna have the solution for that. Other people see that solution being implemented, learn from it. And over time, they just, you just see a dramatic improvement. And the knowledge sharing and technical ability and just team atmosphere through that. Yeah, it’s a really cool way to work. But obviously there’s benefits as well to struggling on your own a bit sometimes so that you actually really understand hopefully by the end of it, what you’re doing and the issues that you had along the way. Chris Badgett: Awesome. Awesome. Last question for you. And let me try to frame this in. When you joined Left 4 LMS, one of the things that I was really impressed about was your ability to gather context quickly. And it shows six or so months in with your ability to quickly Let help a support team member troubleshoot something or troubleshoot something on your own. You’re like, Oh, I didn’t even know we had this. And now I’m in it. And you’re like, get to the answer. To me, it looks very fast and speedy. So one, I’m just admiring you for that. But to your troubleshooting ability, if somebody is watching or listening to this, and let’s say their website, isn’t doing what they want, or they have some kind of conflict, or maybe they’ve Just bloated it out with too much stuff, too many plugins, two plugins doing the same thing, all kinds of stuff. Like I’m wondering if you can package your troubleshooting wisdom and into some rules of thumb that can help people, whether they’re building a site for themselves or for a client and they’re hitting issues. How can they slow down and troubleshoot a little better? Brian Hogg: Yeah, I think big part of it is, yeah, I isolate one thing at a time, right? Like whether it’s troubleshooting something on a website or programming or whatever, if you’re trying to figure out why these five things aren’t working together, it’s going to be really hard. So yeah, slowing down it’s a very common thing where, oh, you have a problem with this thing, deactivate all other plugins and install a default theme and activate that. And now you’re in this environment where it’s this is the only thing, that’s affecting anything, unless you have some other really wonky issue or something, but So yeah, drilling down because, yeah, a lot of the times I found it’s this isn’t happening when I do this and, and and throwing out all this information that, it’s not directly related to the one problem that we originally started with. And so just backing up and being like, okay, what are the steps to reproduce? What you think is like an issue, right? And just through the act of going through that and actually not just saying this doesn’t work or, I want to do this. It’s what are you, what are, what physical steps are you doing right down to might be right down to install and activate this plugin. Go to the settings, right? But what are the, what are you clicking on? And that’s where video can be like super powerful ’cause or, ideally hopping on a call, but. If not a video of just seeing and especially them talking through the issues that they’re having, right? Like you can actually physically see what’s happening. But again, that’s less helpful if they don’t have, or if they have everything activated and they’re trying to do everything at once, like you’re still not going to be able to tell is this causing the issue or is this causing the issue or what? Yeah, just having things as isolated as I think it’s the biggest thing and just, yeah, just asking questions like how do you reproduce that? Like, how can I do that thing that you’re trying to do step by step? And a lot of times when they’re going through oh shoot. Yeah. I didn’t go through this step, when they’re trying to communicate that they’ll usually, it’s like what the rubber duck thing, right? Oh, what is she already having? I’m having this thing. I was like, Oh, shoot. Yeah. I missed this. I missed step four in what I was trying to do. Yeah, a high level of whatever, but every challenge that comes in is is different and that’s the nice thing about it where, yeah, there’s so many out on so many different use cases that there’s never a dull moment. And it’s great to just see that you solve, that either bug or, lack of documentation or what have you or pointing to the right documentation and then they’re able to. It just cascades, right? They’re able to finish the course and then people are able to take that course and then they’re able to learn. And then ultimately maybe they’re teaching things one day, right? Like it’s a really cool cycle. It’s not just, Oh, this is a bug. And this is they’re the users trying to be difficult. It’s no, like at the end of it, there’s a goal in mind and they’re trying to be helpful. And by you solving that you you you enable that for them and it’s it’s really cool. Chris Badgett: As a as you were talking, I was thinking of really learning the difference between correlation versus causation and so a classic like support thing for that or tech support thing is I I updated your plugin recently and now this thing doesn’t work well, that’s likely correlated, but not causation. Brian Hogg: It could be necessarily, it could be, but it’s Chris Badgett: I like to think of it clinically like a doctor almost like I’m trying to diagnose what’s going on here. And yes, you just turned 40 or you did this yesterday, but I’m not sure I need to go through and, measure and find all these things. details to actually find the cause of what’s going on here. Exactly. Brian Hogg: No, it’s can you reproduce it in a separate environment? And if not, then that’s probably something unique to that environment. And then you can go back and, Hey, do you have a backup? Restore a backup? Oh, does it work now? Great. Okay. Let’s see the difference, like it was getting to a working state. Which is a huge thing with if you’re developing, hopefully you’re using some kind of version control, ideally get, and yeah, just using something like get a bisect. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s just so powerful because it’s just Oh, this version it worked, this one is broken and it’ll just, it literally bisects, it’s like, cool. All right. Halfway through. Does it work here? Yes. Okay, great. So it’s probably, so it’s fine. So this is fine. Let’s go here. Okay. Does it work here? And I’m like, no. And then you can isolate the very, The exact spot where it broke. Or at least one of the spots it broke. You might have broke it, fixed it, and then broke it again. But at least you can find one spot where it broke and then look at the difference between that and diagnose the cause and not the Chris Badgett: The other cool thing there, like related to what we were talking about with learning and teaching and experience is the cool thing is if you’re patient over time, you start to have pattern recognition. You’re like, Oh, I’ve been in this kind of thing before. So your instincts are better and your speeds faster. Or it’s I’ve seen exactly this pattern before. I don’t even, I know exactly what it is because I’ve seen it 10 times. Exactly. Though it can be Brian Hogg: a detrimental sometimes where, yeah, I’ve caught myself a couple of times where like assuming too soon. Exactly. Yeah. You assume too soon. Oh yeah, it says to see this. It’s so I really try to never just ask at least one or two questions to verify that the assumption is correct in some way. And then always it’s often, it’s if you do this, it will be fixed. It’s I think, or I believe that if you do this, it’ll likely fix it and let me know, if it doesn’t, right. And then, yeah, that solves that avoids any any issues there. And obviously it just continues to show that you’re willing to help. Chris Badgett: Awesome. That’s Brian hog. That’s G’s. You can find him at Lifter LMS. Go check out eventcalendarnewsletter. com if you’re thinking of adding events and community virtual in person events and make that whole show run better on your website. Go to eventcalendar. com. Brian’s personal site is brianhog. com. That’s hog with two g’s. Brian, thanks for coming back on the show. I really appreciate it. We’ll have to do it again. Not we won’t wait seven years, but we’ll have to do this again. Any final words for the people or anything else you want them to check out? Brian Hogg: No, I think yeah. Fenn counter newsletter. com Brian hog. com. I’d like to say social, but yeah, like I said, I’m not really on there anymore. Yeah, those are the best avenues for sure. Chris Badgett: Awesome. Thanks for coming on the show. Brian Hogg: Thank you for having me. Chris Badgett: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Go to LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide The post Meet LifterLMS Developer and Entrepreneur Brian Hogg appeared first on LMScast.

In this LMScast episode, Matt Medeiros from The WP Minute shares that formative events he experienced as a child inspired his passion in music and radio. Matt became motivated to engage in these interests by his uncle’s passion for building his own radios. And his father’s profession as a radio presenter. His choice to start a podcast was influenced by his history, questions about possible income sources. And want to establish ties within the PHP community. Matt knows artificial intelligence can evaluate and reproduce data; he is not confident about its present use for podcasting however. Having personally interacted with artificial intelligence systems, the author can confirm that these tools have a propensity to ignore the most important podcast episodes—a typical issue in the marketing field. Though he is enthusiastic about the future uses of artificial intelligence. He feels that the already used applications fall short of his expectations. He claims that the popularity of the podcast “All In” has been continuously rising. That its hosts, wealthy and powerful businessmen in venture capital and information technology. He was trying to make the point that it is difficult to reproduce the popularity of a celebrity’s podcast. Particularly if it gets lots of money and attention. Still, he underlines that lonely podcasters may thrive by improving their technique. And finding a unique audience niche for themselves within the online community. Here’s Where To Go Next… Get the Course Creator Starter Kit to help you (or your client) create, launch, and scale a high-value online learning website. Also visit the creators of the LMScast podcast over at LifterLMS, the world’s leading most customizable learning management system software for WordPress. Create courses, coaching programs, online schools, and more with LifterLMS. Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014. And be sure to subscribe to get new podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide Episode Transcript Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co founder of Lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end. I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show. Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMSCast. I’m joined by a special guest. He’s back on the show. It’s Matt Medeiros. Matt is one of my, a good friend and one of my favorite people in the WordPress community. Before I knew Matt personally, I listened to his podcast, The Matt Report. It’s how I kind of first discovered that there was this community behind WordPress and these entrepreneurs trying to figure things out. And, it had a huge impact on me as in becoming a podcaster and becoming more involved in the WordPress community. Matt does a lot of things. You can find him over at gravity forms. He has a podcast called the WP minute, which is awesome. It’s one of the ways I keep up to date. On what’s going on with WordPress news and in the community. And then he has podcast story, which is, or no, sorry, podcast setup, which is all about the gear. He’s a gear head. If you’re watching. If you’re listening to this, as you see him on YouTube, dude, always upstages me with his technical equipment, his lighting. He’s he’s a, he’s a podcaster I look up to, and he’s working on a new podcast called our. Beloved medium, which is about how radio changed the world and some stories you haven’t heard from that. But first welcome back on the show, Matt. Matt Medeiros: Thanks Chris. Thanks. Thanks for the depth of an intro. I really appreciate it. Chris Badgett: You know, this episode is going to be about the power of podcasting. Matt and I have been podcasting for over 10 years. So you’re, you’re listening to 20 years of podcasting experience here. But one of the reasons I know you so well is because I’ve probably spent 95%, maybe more. Probably like 99 percent of time, not getting to know you by listening to you and my earbuds. Listen to you, interview people, listen to you, tell your story and stuff like that. But if you could give us like an overview of like how you became a podcaster. I know a lot of people want to, and it’s funny to me right now. So In the sense that it’s podcasting is really huge and it’s only getting bigger. But how’d you get into it like a decade ago? Matt Medeiros: Yeah. So, before I started the agency, the digital agency that I ran with my father. Which is why I had started a podcast. I, you know, having answered this question over time, it sort of dawned on me that even before the agency. My, my family owned car dealerships, uh, down here on the South coast. And my dad would always be on the radio. So like when I was young, I remember going to radio stations and there’s. I was trying to wonder like, why, where was this affinity for audio, radio and presentation stuff like that come from. And I think it, you know, it goes back to then when I was. You know, watching him go on the radio, talk shows, recording commercials and stuff like that. And. My uncle used to, his brother would always like build, into CB radios. But he would like build me a radio, uh, with like a toilet roll with copper wire. I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, Chris, but it was like toilet roll, copper wire as the antenna. And then you could tune it with a. Lead from a pencil on a razor blade. It was amazing. You show me how to like build all this audio stuff. And then when we started the agency. My father and I was looking for a way to, you know, meet the community. And understand what opportunities were out there in WordPress. Because I, I wasn’t a developer, right? I saw Jake Goldman and all these other people building their agencies super fast. How are they doing it? It was because they were connected to the community. Which was tiny back then, but still very important to have that connection. And then, that’s how I started podcasting at the time. I was listening to Andrew Warner for Mixergy. I was like, maybe I’ll try to be like the mixer G of WordPress. Since he wasn’t covering like all these WordPress folks, that I was seeing. Uh, and that’s, that’s how it kicked off. It became a sales tool for, for the, for the agency. And then I just started doing it more and more for the love of it. Even once I was out of the agency game, spent a couple of years in the audio industry at a podcast hosting company. Really started to see podcasting from, you know, the customer’s perspective. How do I start a podcast? Why do I start a podcast? the importance of open source. Podcasting, you know, so it doesn’t just, you know, get scooped up by Spotify’s. The apples of the world and why, podcasting district, open podcasting distribution is so important. You know, to now continuing to do it for gravity forms with the breakdown podcast. With my stuff at the WP minute. And of course now this new project with our beloved medium, Yeah, I love, I love podcasting. There’s a tons of, importance and opportunity in it for business owners. And just for like open source NIS, like open publishing. Do you love WordPress? You should probably also love, if you love the idea of open source WordPress. You should probably love the idea of open source podcasting as well. Because there are two open source channels that, help us humans get the word out about our stuff. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. We’re going to go all over the place with this conversation. Cause we both are just complete geeks in this industry. I’ve been thinking a little bit about AI and large language models. So if we look at the, like why podcasting is important for business or building a personal brand. Or just getting your message out in the world. I’ve been thinking about, you know, on this podcast, LMS cast. We’re approaching 500 episodes and that’s like 500 hours of content where it’s mostly me interviewing smart people. About what they’re up to as a course creator in the WordPress community. So there’s just so much raw material there to, and I learned from you. I saw you launch a custom GPT that was trained on a podcast. I’m like, how’d you do that? Then I figured it out and then I did it. And I was interviewing this AI about. You know, gems from the LMS cast podcast, but what’s your take on AI, large language models and podcasting? Matt Medeiros: Well, Chris, unfortunately I’m not as big of a fan of it as you. And, you know, no, look, I think there. I think there will be a layer of coolness, you know, this stuff. Like creating it for us to either do internal research on the past that we’ve produced. You know, and I think about how, how crazy, like all of the recorded content that I’ve ever made. Just like yourself, 500 episodes, me, probably the same amount in audio plus video. And what does that mean in a world where, you know, you could feed all of this content about how. I communicate with other people, reactions, laughter, crying. Cause I’ve cried on a podcast before, you know, all kinds of emotional stuff. And I think about that. I was like, I was actually thinking about this the other day and. This is a side note and it’s actually going to sound like I do love AI. But, I was thinking about like, wow, all of this content could be like, there could be an AI version of me. Much more easily reproduced than a couple of my friends who’ve never recorded a podcast or shot a YouTube video before I have all of this content and. What it would it be like when. I’m not here anymore and maybe my kids can interact with me as if I were alive. Amazing, just crazy stuff can could happen with AI. Because of all this content that you and I have both put out or another podcasters and content creators have. So yeah, there’s like this, Crazy futurist world where it might be pretty cool. But in the right now in the moment I don’t love it because it’s a lot of it is the, the, the marketing stuff. The, let me clip my podcast quickly. Let me pull the excerpts from it. And it just never really hits for me. Like it’s not like a lot of these AI marketing platforms, even my favorite tool, Descript came out with a big update and like, Oh, you can clip your content. Now. And the clips are never the clips I want. They’re never the clips I want. If you don’t, I guess if you don’t care about that stuff. If you’re looking for a quick, easy way for marketing, okay, it works. But if you’re really trying to punch in to like the great stuff. Or the great moments, in my opinion, anyway, AI. It still has a ways to go. And everyone says it’s going to get there six months, a year or two years. I’m sure it’ll be better. But right now I. I’m not all in on it. Because it’s just not effective for me. Perfect example with Gemini. So I, I watch a lot of my city council meetings on YouTube, where I live. So the other day I was like, a two hour video came out from the meeting. I was super busy, had a bunch of stuff going on. So I’m like, you know what, let me just ask Gemini, who’s YouTube’s AI or Google’s AI, which owns YouTube. I’m like, give me like the, the top 12, points from this, from this video. And I fed it the URL that came back with like three things and none of it was important. And I’m like, it’s just not ready yet. Like you guys are throwing a trillion dollars at this thing and this is all it’s given me. You know, so I, I, I just don’t find it useful for me. Right now, but in the future, maybe it’ll come up with some, some good stuff. As I, that was a cheap way out of your question. But that’s how I feel about AI right now. Chris Badgett: Yeah. No, good points. Do you happen to listen to the all in podcast? Matt Medeiros: I do. I’ll, I’ll jump in and out of it, depending on the topics. Chris Badgett: I think perhaps this, Friday when they record. I’m guessing, but I think they’re going to, interview Donald Trump on the. Or have him on the panel for the podcast. And I watched those guys start up and during the beginning of COVID. It was just a thing for them to get together. And now they, within two years or three years, it’s like this super influential. Podcasts where they’re literally bringing on like world leaders and famous folks. I mean, they’re, they’re like predominantly venture capitalists and startup community stuff, but they’ve, it’s grown into something much bigger. What, how do you think about that? Like in terms of why is the all in podcast? Why has it risen to what it is? Speak a little bit to the power of what can happen with podcasting and conversations and what makes the ones work that work. Matt Medeiros: So this is, a deep topic for me because like. I, I see how like money moves in. In the podcasting space, and I think first you have to look at it, from like that perspective. So for instance, when Joe Rogan went premium only through Spotify. Or it was, you could only get his access through Spotify. So he was open podcaster, open RSS feed. He was on YouTube as well, but he had an open RSSV that you could tune into his show. Then Spotify bought the rights and you could only listen to him on Spotify until earlier this year. Where he went back to open RSS in YouTube. He is still a Spotify show. He’s now openly distributed everywhere. Through COVID, the audio space and the podcasting space saw a huge boon, like a lot of us did in tech, but it saw a huge boon because everyone was home. Everyone wanted to start a podcast. And then you started to really see the money start to move. You start to see, you know, every celebrity get a podcast, start a podcast. Every comedian, start a podcast, money was flowing into it. And, you know, folks like the guys at smart list podcast was acquired by Amazon’s company. I forget the name of their audio company and 80 million bucks after running for a year. Or something like that. Now they’re doing roadshows. It’s, it’s crazy. But the point is, you see a lot of money in the podcasting space going to that traditional, what I’ll call Hollywood celebrity, right? Again, the smart list guys, Kevin Hart, tons of celebrities, tons of big comedians, and it’s all just doing it the same Hollywood way. I can guarantee you that their numbers, like their downloads are nowhere near what they’re getting, what they’re getting paid because it’s the traditional. Celebrity slash Hollywood business model. So like there’s all this attention, all this stuff, cause they’re, they’re a celebrity. Oh, they’re getting paid millions. It costs millions to produce this thing. But then there’s folks like you and me that whatever, you can pick up a hundred dollar microphone and start the show. But nobody’s tuning into us because we’re not that celebrity status. And we certainly don’t have a marketing machine behind it. And, and I think when you look at the industry as a whole, you’ll, you’ll see those spikes of interest. Uh, you know, this show is great. But it’s Conan O’Brien. He was on TV for two decades or three decades, whatever it was. You know, it’s really hard to find celebrity shows really winning. And what I’m getting at is when you look at All In, it’s somewhere in the middle where they’re, they’re not like household names for sure. But, But they’re billionaires, right? So there’s already an, like, there’s your interest level already. Oh, there’s, there’s two, there’s two billionaires on this show, right? I think Saxon and Chamath are probably the billionaires. And then you have Jason who, who has that, like, again, 20 years of podcast and media or 30 years podcast media expertise, and he has an audience. So it was like this perfect infusion of. Oh, these guys are like super interesting because I know a couple of them are a billion couple of billionaires and they have like these, these really extreme points of views that like mesh together. You know, but I don’t want people to get distracted by that. A lot of people sort of look at it and go, Oh, I want to do an all in type podcast, or I want to do a Joe Rogan style podcast, super hard to replicate those personalities in that sort of, uh, energy in the, in the, uh, pop culture. guys can bring to the table. But it is amazing how fast they grew. Uh, and now they’re turning it into the same thing, events, event, uh, once a year or twice a year in Miami that they’re doing it. I know they constantly say that they’re hiring a CEO. I don’t know if that’s just like, I don’t know if that was banter, if that was true. And it can turn into a big business and it doesn’t always have to be about, you know, audio, you know, and I’m sure they, they, most of their views on, on YouTube. But, yeah, it’s amazing how fast they expanded it. And there’s tons of opportunity when you start a podcast to go in multiple directions, you know, as you’ve seen with, with them, you have to, if that’s just like, if that’s what you’re trying to monetize, you have to be able to split it up, but, Yeah, I don’t know if I answered your question there, but I just see it from like a, a broader perspective of like interest and, uh, you know, where the money’s going. Chris Badgett: Well, in a more narrow perspective, like this audience is mostly education entrepreneurs, subject matter experts that want to build a brand and teach online and make money with information products. And then we also have. You know, the WordPress professionals, the agencies that build sites for clients, no matter what I do, focusing on one avatar or the other, they both show up. But if I’m an aspiring course creator or a you know, I build websites for clients type person, how should I get motivated and think about podcasting and why I should do it? Matt Medeiros: Oh yeah, that’s, that’s great. Because for me, when you, when you talk about AI and, I know this has been in the, in the Twitter ecosphere, a lot, a lot of people saying like, Oh, you know, AI is going to start taking our jobs. And I’m sure you have a strong opinion on this too, Chris, but I just, Now’s the time to inject the humanity into your service. And to me, audio is, is the most affordable way to do that. The other tug of war that’s happening in the audio space. And I’ve written about this on the podcast setup is a lot of people are saying, YouTube’s the, Oh, YouTube’s the new home for, for podcasting now, because everybody wants video with their podcasts. But to me, that’s okay. But you’re starting a YouTube channel. You’re not starting a podcast when you’re doing that. And I’m not one of those guys that say, Oh, you can’t. You can’t do both or you shouldn’t have both. I’m just saying, well, it’s two different paths, two different mediums, and then there’s two different approaches. You could do a recorded show like we’re doing now, where it’s largely two talking heads being recorded and sent over to, to, to YouTube. Or you’re actually like doing a Mr. Beast type production, which is. It’s insane, right, to do that, but where do you want to live and where do you want to compete on, you know, on the YouTube world? Uh, but creating the audio, it’s the most effective and affordable way to have that literal human voice, uh, for your customers and for your brand, right? When I do the breakdown podcast for Gravity Forms, it’s behind the scenes at Gravity Forms. It’s not another, it’s not competing against, you know, uh, your show, Chris, not competing against my show. I’m not doing WordPress news, I’m not interviewing WordPress entrepreneurs. I’m taking you behind the scenes of gravity forms, interviewing something that’s happening with the team, something that’s happening with the product. And then I’ll bring in like our the people in our ecosystem, gravity, whiz, gravity kit, those guys bring a man, what are they doing with their products, et cetera, et cetera, quick bites, short form, uh, and put it all together. It’s a variety show. So there’s plenty of different ways that you can make audio work for your brand. Uh, for your listeners. And then I think the next question that most people say is like, well, how many downloads should I, you know, how many downloads should I get? How quick should it grow? it’s not about that on the audio sites, especially not on the audio side. You should look at your hundred downloads an episode show as a win.Especially in the audio space, as long as you’re slowly ticking up, which could literally be one more subscriber every month, you’re doing a good job and you’re, and as long as those people are still tuning in, your 100 downloads per episode show is doing a great job, uh, because those are 100 committed people who are connecting, you know, with you, you. Every week or every two weeks or every month, whatever it is that you publish. Um, and those are, they’re going to be your best, those are going to be your best community members, your best customers, your best amplifiers. Um, you know, and I’m just a huge proponent on, you know, connecting at that level, uh, with your brand. And then you do all the other stuff. If you want Instagram, Tik TOK, YouTube, blogging, email, all that other stuff. Um, but I love podcasting because it’s such a connected and committed audience. Chris Badgett: Yeah, and I agree with you. It’s not about the size of the podcast, like This podcast is so niche around course creators and WordPress and technology and stuff like that, that even though we get relatively low downloads compared to the all in podcast or whatever, we’ve still built like a huge, you know, substantial business around that. And I would say the same thing about our YouTube channel. I don’t care if my video about how to create a dynamic certificate with this certain type of merged data only has. A hundred views. Every one of the people that watch that are probably a customer. So it’s a hundred customers, a lot of customers. Matt Medeiros: Yeah. And the audio in the podcasting space specifically, this is another tug of war that folks like you and me are, and thousands, tens of thousands of other podcasters are not represented in, um, when you look at monetizing, uh, a podcast, because when you go, if you were just like, how do I monetize a podcast? You would come up with. The typical advertising rates dumped onto us by, you know, Nielsen, I heart radio, like all these like big corporate places that have TV shows, movies. So they just look at it from how can I get 1000 people listening or 10, 000 people or a hundred thousand people listening to this audio? And what are we going to pay in advertising? And the, and the, I think the average CPM right now costs per thousand that advertisers will spend is 26. Right. That’s the average CPM. Now that’s a thousand downloads , right? You and I, I know you don’t do sponsors on your show. Uh, but I do. And uh, if I was only charging $26 that , the WB minute would not exist. Right? So it’s way more than industry average because of the audience. And in your case, you’re funneling that. back into your business. It was just making X amount of thousands and thousands of dollars on the back end of people knowing who you are and buying your product. We’re just not represented in that, in that equation. And that’s the biggest tug of war in the space is these big platforms come in and they say, Oh no, You need, you know, in order to make a couple hundred bucks with your show, you need to have a few thousand downloads. You’re like, how am I going to get to that few thousand downloads to only make a couple hundred dollars? You know, that’s, that’s nothing. So you have to look at it as a business and you have to say, well, maybe I can bring them into a membership. Maybe I can bring them into merchandise. Maybe I can sell them a product. You know, so as a side tangent, but the industry at large is really, really tough on, um, making money with your podcasts. If you’re not thinking creatively, or if you don’t have a business, like maybe like many of us listening to this too. Chris Badgett: There’s probably something about your and my similar personality types where I hear these stats that like 90 percent of podcasts don’t make it past 20, 20 episodes or something. And I’m like, for me, it’s felt frictionless the whole time getting up to 500. Like I was just a natural fit for the medium. But I, so I think a lot about podcast failure, cause if you are going to commit, you should really get married to the idea and be a pot, become a podcaster. Like your identity is changing. You have to make space in the calendar. Um, but I think one of the things that holds hangs people up is not really getting clarity on who the listener is, the avatar, like the reason you’re doing it and stuff like that. How, like if someone’s like, let’s say a subject matter expert, In jujitsu or something like that. And they want to, they’ve been doing it for 20 years and they want to create courses and they want to create a podcast. How should they think about the avatar of the listener? Cause I feel like all, all I am as a representative for the people that I know are listening to the show. And I’m, I’m asking questions, not just for me, but for them, you have a pretty good sense of who they are, but what’s your advice around that whole. Avatar listener clarity. Matt Medeiros: Yeah. The podcasting space, again, when you look at it from the business perspective, it’s one of those things that’s super hard to, to measure it’s it’s success. Or I hate to use the worst thing you could say is like ROI of podcasting because it’s like immeasurable on how to get to that, but, um, it creates that surface luck area. People know you, they listen to you. Even if they don’t listen to every episode. Even if they don’t listen to any episode, but they just know that you continue to put out the podcast immediately in their mind, you’re the guy or the gal that does that thing. And you’re already winning from like a brand perspective. I know they put in the sweat equity to continue to do this crazy podcast. Therefore I respect them at, you know, at some level I’ve given them a little bit more than the other, Competitor who might not do that or the other person who might not do that. And you have to start like, so the technical advice I’ve always given somebody about podcasting is, yeah, start with the goal. What’s the goal? What do you, what do you really want to get? And then let’s walk that back because a lot of people are just maybe a little overambitious, um, or have the wrong setting at the wrong sites, but once you are set the goal, you start doing it for yourself first and that 20 Mark, 12 episodes, 20 episodes, that’s when you love it. That’s when it’s great because you got 20 friends, you got 20 colleagues and it’s easy to get them on the show and interview them and do all that fun stuff. And then it’s after that, you realize, I’ve got no more friends and nobody else wants to do a podcast with me. That’s when the, when the real work starts and that’s when you maybe look back and even 20 episodes is still far too early to, to look back on your body of work and say, who’s, who are the people listening to this? Um, but you do get a sense of it. You know, up until that point, even if you’re 20 episodes took you six months to get to or whatever the number is. You kind of know what’s happening in social. And you see the, the stuff that’s connecting with people. You see the retweets, the likes, the comments, you know, what type of content is starting to work. And you can kind of start to form that opinion on, on who the person is who’s listening to your show. You’re getting the DMS, you’re getting the, Hey, great episode. Oh, I love this episode from Chris. Um, in fact, I interviewed, I listened to your episode with Alex Staniford who launched, uh, Siren, uh, affiliates. Yeah. Um, I was actually listening to your episode and then the next day he emailed me to come on my podcast. Uh, but I was listening to your episode and I was like, wow, you know, this guy’s got a great product. Really, really liked it. You know, and you start to form those opinions on who your avatar is and then you need to move at some point. And move into actually communicating and connecting with that audience as fast as possible. Here’s a survey, uh, you know, if you like this thing, join this newsletter, um, have a open office hours, air quotes, open office hours about your podcast. Hey, jump in. Uh, let’s just talk about the shows that you like. Do a live stream. Live streaming is great for connecting and, and learning who the people are that are listening to you. Bye. It is important. But me, in my opinion, I’m like 50, 50, 50 percent of this is me wanting to do this. And 50 percent is. serving the, serving the audience, right? certainly if somebody is outreaching to you and they’re like, Hey, I want to be on your podcast. That decision is like 90 percent the audience. Do I want you in front of my audience? So I protect my audience. But when I’m creating my content, I’m largely thinking, okay, 50 percent is serving the stuff and the ideals that I want to push forward on this. And then I start to think, okay, will the, will the audience actually want this kind of content? Uh, but you got to connect with them as fast as possible. Surveying Social interactions, live streaming, and start getting the pulse of, of who’s listening. Chris Badgett: Related to the audience, I think beginning podcasters have a decision to make, and I’ll frame it in, I think, the way Gary Vaynerchuk describes it. Uh, or it might have been Tim Conley or somebody else, I can’t remember, but there was this idea called the two audience approach. If you start a podcast or YouTube channel or whatever, and one audience is like your customer, your prospects, your target audience for your business. But then there’s this other audience, which is other people in your industry. So. I’ve seen the emergence of a lot of the build in public ethos. Some people make podcasts about just how they’re doing in business and how they’re growing, or maybe a couple of founders get together and interview each other. You know, Brian Castle does a lot of that. And I really like his content because it’s. I’m like an industry insider. So I learned from that. What’s tell us your thoughts around building public as a podcasting decision. So instead of like maybe targeting my ideal customer, I just want to share the journey. Matt Medeiros: Yeah. Yeah. That’s the, that’s the surface luck area. Um, and that’s the stuff that’s really hard to measure. in podcasting, um, the stuff that doesn’t go into the formula of, you know, the value of an advertiser spot, 26 CPM, because you could get a part, you could land a partnership deal. You could get a customer, you could get a job. Like when I left my job in the audio space, I was able to get a job because I hadn’t, I did not stop podcasting the whole 10, 11 years of my life. It is, it creates opportunity that it’s just not on that is not on paper all the time. Somebody refers you, somebody recommends you, somebody trusts you. They know that you’re available to hire and they reach out to you because of all this work that you’ve put in, you know, over, uh, the You know, over time and building in public is certainly another Avenue that allows that to happen. That’s the way that I’ve always done it. Like I’m not a. Big SEO guy. I don’t do any, I do zero SEO, even my YouTube videos. I don’t, I S I don’t do it. Uh, it’s foolish. Like I get it. It’s foolish for me not to like pay attention to it, but I just want to put out the content. That I, that I like to create serving that avatar that I know is in my head. And if you watch it, great. If you listen to it, great. If you don’t, I don’t stew on that. Um, sometimes I do where I’m like, I should have a bigger audience or I would love to monetize more, but largely like I’m doing this because I love it and I’m hoping that the other people on the other end, it was consuming this also loves it. I know they do because they, I see the numbers, I see the downloads and I get the feedback loop. Um, but building in public is a, is a fantastic way, uh, to do that. It’s probably an easier way. It’s actually a more welcomed way than, than maybe interviews in the beginning, because interviews can come a challenge after those 20 episodes, right? Now, what do I do? Who do I get? Then it’s the logistics, it’s scheduling. It’s making sure that that other person on the other side knows how to do a podcast, or if you’re just doing something where it’s just, you know, reporting on the work that you’ve been, that you’ve been up to great, fantastic. You know, and it’d be, it’d be great if more people in the WordPress space did, you know, did that as well. For a podcast, uh, medium or, or a YouTube series or something like that. Yeah, so I’m, I’m all in, to steal that phrase. I’m all in on, on the build in public stuff. I think it’s, I think it’s great. It’s smart. It builds the brand. It builds that human brand. Again, that might get overtaken by AI because it’s your story. It’s your lessons, It’s your successes. It’s your failures. Chris Badgett: So I like it related to build in public. something all podcasters or content cradle creators struggle with, which is imposter syndrome. So the first fear I would have around building public public conversation is, Oh, what if I talk about a challenge in my business or a challenging customer or something like that? And then that person hears it. And then I’m in, I’m in my head. So what, what’s your advice for, uh, Battling imposter syndrome, particularly to get through those 20 episodes and keep going. And I find like with you talking with you, it’s all very, it’s very easy and very natural. I don’t get nervous at all for, uh, podcasting. Sometimes I do, if I I’m getting interviewed on a big show or something like that, but. So I’m, I’m human too, but, and I still struggle with imposter syndrome. But, uh, what’s your advice to get over that initial mountain of imposter syndrome? Matt Medeiros: Yeah. Like a sort of like technical strategy is you’re just never getting ahead. What’s the term? It never getting ahead of your skis, right? Like you’re never taking on something that, uh, if you’re actually like creating content. You’re, you know, uh, the whole fake it till you make it thing, yeah, kind of works. But if you’re recording a, a podcast, you know, weekend and week out, or you’re doing a, a word, a word, WordCamp presentation or any presentation, you know, you know, that feeling when you’re like, I don’t, I don’t want a hundred percent know this content. That could be something like, don’t create content that you’re, I know this sounds like crazy, but Super like obvious, but I’ve been in the situation to like doing a presentation or, or recording an episode that I didn’t fully understand this topic. And I was, I was getting nervous. And then when I was getting nervous, the content coming out was not good. Um, so understanding like where you’re, where your, uh, uh, zone is for content, a hundred percent is where you should start because that’s already going to give you the confidence to focus in on the stuff that you’re really good at. And one of the things that I always fall. Uh, uh, fall trap or fall into the trap of is doing too much, like presenting too much content, uh, for one topic. And that is something that I, I always struggle with, especially like in creating YouTube videos. It’s like today, I’m going to show you how to set up a template inside of, uh, 2024 theme. But first let’s talk about the history of templates. And then it’s just like, yeah, but the way you should really be doing it is, and the way we did it in the past was functions, PHP. And you find yourself just tumbling down this Hill of like all of this other content. So from a technical standpoint, Like, how do I get out of the zone of imposter syndrome? Making sure that I’m always dialed in to not going above my pay grade and staying as focused as possible. The flip side, like you, which happens to me, um, like Jason Calacanis, perfect example. When he came out with his book, Angel, Angel, which was, I don’t know how many years ago. He put out a tweet and he said, Hey, I’m taking podcast interviews, tech shows, talking about my new book. So I DM’d him and he said, great, I’ll get you in contact with my producer. So I was like, oh shit, that was easy. Then, so then the producer reached out, she sent me an email, asked me a bunch of questions, podcast downloads, all this stuff. And then she’s like, great, we’re going to book him for, I don’t know, a couple of weeks from now. I was like, wow, this is great. Then the day of. Uh, she’s like, I need your phone number because I’m going to text, I’m going to text you when he’s ready to go live or to record it wasn’t live. And I was like, wow, this is like, now I’m like, now I’m getting nervous. So it’s like, she sends me a text. She’s like, all right, hey. Uh, he’s going to be in back into his hotel room in like 10 minutes. And now I’m like in my office and I’m like, Oh my God, like, what do I do? Like, this is so weird. And then, uh, she’s like, he’s going to, he’s going to, uh, text you from his number, from another number when he gets there and then just, you know, go to this link or something like that. And then I remember getting on and just being super nervous. Um, but that’s, that’s the, um, That’s how you know you’re human, that’s when you’re really pushing the boundaries and imposter syndrome there is okay because you’re really pushing yourself to an extreme. You’re nervous because you want to do a good job. You’re not nervous because you’re lying, right? Like, I’m, you know, I’m pulling the cover over, you know, some people, which, you know, happens in, in WordPress and in, in internet at large, right? Where it’s just like, here’s how you make 10, 000 in a weekend kind of person. Uh, but you’re, you’re nervous because you’re taking on a new challenge and you just want to do good. Um, which is totally normal. Totally different. Those, I don’t really have a tactical advice other than breathe and just be confident in your past work to understand that, Hey, this is just a casual conversation. But you know, focusing in when you’re creating that content, definitely like don’t get ahead of yourself and don’t go ahead of your skis and really focus on what you’re doing. You know, be as focused in as possible. Chris Badgett: I think a fun way to do this last part of the show is I know that you are an avid podcast consumer as am I, and I almost don’t even read books anymore. I listened to audio books, but I would actually prefer a podcast interview with the author. So instead of a four hour book, I can get a one hour interview and get like the gist of it. That’s kind of my filter for committing to a full book on audible. But what are some of your, let’s talk about us as power podcast consumers. I think I listened to eight podcasts this past weekend and a lot of them were long. And, uh, but what are some of your, let’s start with what are some of your favorite podcast shows? Matt Medeiros: So I listen to every WordPress podcast, uh, because it’s, it’s, I have to write for, for the work that I do with the WP minute and certainly what I do with gravity forms like that. That’s, that’s how I stay in the know, um, of what’s happening, uh, with, with WordPress. Um, so I have to listen to every single one. I might not listen to every single episode, but I’m subscribed to every single one. Depends on the topic. Chris Badgett: About how many are there? Oh Matt Medeiros: God, at least 20. Yeah. It’s at least 20, that, that cover WordPress and. You know, mixed in with like YouTube series and stuff like that. So I tune into all of that stuff. And then I’m all on the flip side, on the podcasting side. I listen to at least half a dozen podcasts about podcasting. I don’t know how I have the time for it. But, I do, because I, and again, it’s not every episode and the power tip there is I’ll do the thing that a lot of people in the podcast industry hate, which is I’ll listen to it at, you know, one and a half times speed, right? If it’s something like I need to get through. I’ll listen to it at one and a half times speed and podcasts and people hate that. It’s, you know, it’s their art and they want it to be consumed. At the right speed, which I totally agree. But sometimes I have to plow through them. Cause I need the news information. Like I need to know what’s happening. Chris Badgett: Somebody is listening to this right now. Matt Medeiros: At 100%, you know, and there’s like, there’s apps, like, if you’re an overcast user. They have special, he has a special formula on how to speed up the show. So he cuts out the gaps and then there’s literally like the one and a half times button that you can click. So that’s how I, I plow through it. And then the other podcast that I listened to is just for like entertainment wise. I listened to a couple of comedians and I listened to, um, I’m going to forget the name of the whole series now, of course, but, uh, Sounder sounder productions has like a ton of like history podcasts that I listened to. So of course the typical like World War II stuff, and a lot of, real dictators is a fun one for those of you that want to know, uh, the history and the impact of, of dictators throughout, uh, human history. But those are fantastically produced. Podcasts, right? Sound design, uh, voice actors, script, those I listen to for more of like that entertainment side of things. And I’ll also admit that I go to bed sometimes listening to those podcasts and fall asleep listening to those podcasts. So I try to, to get as much done. Professionally through the podcast, uh, the podcast about podcasting and the WordPress stuff every week. So it’s about like, at least a dozen episodes, a dozen individual podcasts every week that I’m churning through. You know, I just try to do as fast as possible. Chris Badgett: Yeah. I mean, I’m also, you know, educate myself through podcasts. Like I didn’t go to business school or entrepreneurship school or whatever. Like I would say 90 percent of what I’ve done that’s been effective. I learned from a podcast interview. Matt Medeiros: Yeah. Chris Badgett: It’s such a helpful, helpful thing. And like you as well, it helps me turn my brain off at night to listen to a podcast. Uh, you know, before bed or leading into bed, which is, uh, and I like to, in the, in that time period, I like to go, cause I spend so much time in business and entrepreneurship, I like to go outside of that. So maybe the recent Joe Rogan interview with Terrence Howard. Is a perfect late evening podcast for me or, Alex Friedman interview with somebody about some big topic that’s, has the potential to change the world or already is, or how to make peace in the world or whatever it is. Those are some of my favorite. And I look at like the all in podcast is sort of like my news. I don’t do a lot of news. And, um, but like, okay, like the, the things that are surfacing there in general are things that are good to talk about. And I think that’s one of the things they’ve done well is they’ve kind of divided it up to like politics, science stuff. Some big business news thing, investing advice, like a lot of cool. How’s the economy doing? Matt Medeiros: Yeah. Chris Badgett: How’s what’s going on in society? What major events happened? Matt Medeiros: Yeah. I think Chris Badgett: that makes that podcast really special, which is why I’ve kind of been hooked on it all the way through. Matt Medeiros: There’s a podcast. God, I’m going to forget it now too. But if you’re ever, if you ever can’t sleep, oh, here it is. So it was called. Northwoods baseball sleep radio. This guy, my producer, the producer that I’m starting the other show with, he helped this guy produce some of the show or no, he interviewed him for a show that he used to do. And all it is is a mock baseball game from like the 1930s. This guy, this guy has built like a whole universe of baseball teams and he just played and it’s just, he plays out a whole baseball game. Like you hear the, the crowd, the announcers. The, the organ playing like advertisements, running fake advertisements and eat the whole score. Like, all right, he throws the pitch, hits a single and he runs the first page and you listen to the whole thing. But if you’re trying to fall asleep, it’s the most like calming thing. Cause it’s just like background white noise. And it’s an old, old school baseball game. It’s crazy. Uh, the power of audio and the mix of content that’s out there. Chris Badgett: There’s another one similar. Well, in the sense that helps with sleep is, um, there’s this podcast, forget what it’s called about ancient civilizations and how they collapsed. It’s really interesting, but it’s so soothing. And the storyteller is so good. It’s not a hardcore history, which is also good, but it’s something else. Uh, last question. One of my biggest frustrations as a podcast consumer. Is when I find a great podcast and it’s, um, and I’m like, how did I not know about this? It’s been going for four years and this content’s awesome. I check another couple episodes. I’m like, great. Now I have a full other, like, or at least pay attention to going forward. I find that podcast discovery is hard, especially as there’s more and more. And, you know, I have a lot of different interests. How do you surface good podcasts? Do you find it on Twitter? Do you just type in a search somewhere? How do you find good stuff? Matt Medeiros: Yeah. I mean, the technical answer is maybe like where to find other podcasts. There’s a, um, if you’re just purely like, I need to find stuff, um, good pods. It is also a podcast app, but it’s also a app slash podcaster community. So good pods, you can use that as a tool to search for stuff. And then they have like community aspects, features to the app. So you maybe see like the ones that have the most comments there’s, you can create groups there as well. If you’re the podcast creator, you can create a group there and people can jump into that group. So that’s like one way to reverse engineer it. There’s a bunch of, like trailer. Podcasts that are out there, um, pod news, which is the, the five minute daily podcast that I listened to for all my podcast news, James Cridlin, he has a whole podcast trailer podcast. So you can just subscribe to that and hear new trailers that come out as long as they submit to submit to his trailer, uh, thing. You know, you’ll hear new trailers there. So that’s another way to get discovery. And of course, like just combing things on social, you hear somebody talk about a show, you tune into it, you check it out. But podcast discovery is also one of those things that’s super like in the podcast space, that’s like one of the more challenging things. That’s why everyone’s like, yeah, let’s just give all our content to YouTube because they’ve got a great search engine, you know, and we can discover more podcasts there. It was like, yeah, but you’re forgetting what you’re doing when you’re giving up the open RSS distribution. Um, when you go that route. Uh, so it is one of the more challenging things in the podcasting space because there is no central network that ties RSS feeds together. There should, but there isn’t. You know, and, and, you know, things like good pods and there was another one pod chaser used to be a thing, but they got bought out by a bigger company. Um, so you might be able to go to pod chaser. True fans, T R U E, truefans. fm is put on by my friend, Sam Sethi. He has a whole, like, network of, uh, podcasting 2. 0, uh, podcasts that are there. So that, that’s another great way. Podcastindex. org is, uh, The open source alternative to the Apple index. If you’re interested in exploring other podcasts there, yeah, it’s a, it’s a manual curation process, unfortunately. As soon as you give it up to an algorithm, that’s when the commercialization comes in. Then we’re all back to promoted and sponsored podcasts. Chris Badgett: Well, thanks for the those tips. It’s been a great conversation. We should have done a Joe Rogan style and gone for three hours. Because I know we could at some point I want to do that. I was just like, I want to talk about something for three hours and not stop till it’s done. Might go to four, whatever. Can you, lay out where you out there watching or listening can, know what you’re up to and where to find Matt Medeiros. Matt Medeiros: Yeah. I’ll, you can go to my, primary site craftedbymatt. com. It has all my stuff there of everything that I do. If you want to see what I’m up to at Gravity Forms and tune into the Gravity Forms podcast. It’s gravityforms. com slash breakdown, uh, and then wordpressnews. com. TheWPMinute. com is where you’ll find me most. And if you’re interested in, uh, the impact of radio, uh, throughout human history, it’s OurBelovedMedium. com, um, starting that. That will launch in 2025. Uh, I’ll have another interesting story to tell because I’m trying to raise a hundred, we’re trying to raise 100, 000 to get it produced to come out summer 2025, so about a year from now. Um, voice actors, sound design, original music, like we’re trying to. Scope all that stuff out. And the a hundred thousand dollar mark is like super cheap compared to like, if you were to go to like a big network show, it’d be hundreds of thousands of dollars to get this stuff done. So it’s a shoe spring budget, even though it sounds like a lot to small podcasters, but that’ll come out 2025. Chris Badgett: Awesome. Well, thanks Matt for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. And it’s always good to reconnect with you. Matt Medeiros: Yeah, man. Same here. Chris Badgett: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Go to LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide The post Podcasting For Business Growth Masterclass with Matt Medeiros appeared first on LMScast.

In this LMScast episode, Dale Berkebile discuss about his goal to get people to own creativity and make the world a better place. He says that the main goal of his work is to help people become creative and forward-thinking leaders, because he believes that change can’t happen without leaders. Dale Berkebile’s website is “Brandwise“. Dale was moved to write about his search for meaning in life after reading “Start with Why” by Simon Sinek. He worked on his vision for five years to make it better so that he could get the right people and turn away the wrong ones. His emotional and work lives are meant to be balanced, and he wants to make a difference in both. He also talks about how he spent his time going to online classes and networking. Dale began making lessons in 2010 or 2011. He wanted to connect with people on a human level through his work, help his business grow, and give current and potential clients something of value. He looked at a lot of different LMS options and chose LifterLMS because he thought it gave him more power and fit with his goals. Making a change in the world, teaching, and talking to people are some of the things that drove him to work in online education Here’s Where To Go Next… Get the Course Creator Starter Kit to help you (or your client) create, launch, and scale a high-value online learning website. Also visit the creators of the LMScast podcast over at LifterLMS, the world’s leading most customizable learning management system software for WordPress. Create courses, coaching programs, online schools, and more with LifterLMS. Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014. And be sure to subscribe to get new podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co founder of Lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end. I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show. Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMS Cast. I’m joined by a special guest and a good friend. His name is Dale Berkebile. He is over at Brand Wise. The website is get brand wise.com. Welcome to the show, Dale. Dale Berkebile: Thanks for having me, Chris. Chris Badgett: I’m excited to jam out with you today, particularly around building LMS websites for clients and your journey, your story. It’s going to be a fun episode. And by the way, we did an older episode with Dale where he did a guided meditation first time on the LMS cast podcast. We did that. It’s really cool. Go search the LMS cast website for the past episode we did with Dale. But I wanted to start us here, Dale. You’re one of the reasons I love hanging out with you is you’re very purpose driven. You have a vision, the world you want to live in and the world you want to create for you out there listening, Dale, what’s your purpose? Dale Berkebile: All right. Thanks for having me on again. And and give me a shout out to the previous episode. I appreciate that. So my purpose is to challenge people to become innovative leaders so that we can change the world together Chris Badgett: And what’s on top of that? Let’s unpack that. Dale Berkebile: Okay. So I think it’s leaders that change the world. And so part of what I do is help people. Become innovative leaders that, people that are maybe cutting edge or doing things a little bit different. And I think there’s a whole lot of leadership out there. That is sketchy. Maybe they could use some leadership support or direction or purpose, potentially. And yeah and I was in business probably about 15 years or so, when I clearly defined that purpose and why I’m doing what I’m doing and what I want to be doing. And it was to beyond the marketing and all the stuff that I was doing, helping businesses grow, actually help businesses and make an impact out in the world as well. So that’s that’s where I get really excited. If you’re looking to make an impact and you want to do all this stuff that gets exciting. So Chris Badgett: tell us more about how you found that clarity. Dale Berkebile: Oh gosh, that was a journey. You hear about creating mission statements, vision statements, all that kind of stuff. And creating your why it came from Simon Sinek inspired me a little bit with his start with why and just, it was something that I wanted to do for my business to gain more clarity, more focus maybe attract more of the right people. And also refine the marketing that I was doing and Whatnot so yeah, so the right people could maybe find me or Instantly scare away people that have no interest In doing what I want, you know what i’m doing. So that’s a good thing too. We don’t want Prospects or clients that are not going to be a good fit. Think I, I was probably went on that journey trying to define that for probably, I don’t know, about five years, I put something out and I’m like, and then, worked it and. Put something else out, worked it, work it, put something else out until I finally got to something that encompassed encompassed what works well for my business, my personal life and everything I do. So it’s the North star that I, set my compass for. And that’s where I’m going. Chris Badgett: So Dale is a member of the LFTR LMS experts program. He’s built a lot of LFTR LMS sites. One of the things that I love about you is that you are also like a course creator, a coach, a community builder. How did you find your calling to use those tools, creating courses and creating communities and growing those things? How did you get into this? Dale Berkebile: I did a whole lot of marketing for my own business. I eat the dog food, so to speak. I’m telling clients all day long, you have to do this kind of marketing, that kind of marketing, you have to get these kinds of results, whatever. And I’m like I gotta be doing this stuff. And I was looking for a way to offer a lot of value to my prospects. First off, to get to know me a little bit better to experience something. And then a lot of value to my customers even on a smaller scale that can, get into the game a little bit, get a feel for what I do. And also offer some scalability for my own business. So that I didn’t have to be billing per hour. I was able to create something that was out there working by itself and making some money. So that was the initial reason that I got into the game and I worked with, different LMS is over the time, whereas I was trying to figure out my way or how to even build courses and all that stuff. And gosh, I probably started. Trying to think when I started probably 2010 or 11 or something like that is when I first built my, built my 1st course. And I was creating ebooks and different things like that as a way to educate people. But I love the idea of creating a more. User experience connecting with me, even if I’m not there, if they have a video of me, they can connect with who I am and either or dislike me again, making it easier to further the relationship or cut things short, quick which is a good thing. Yeah, and then I found lifter and. This is the platform for me, and I do think again, it goes back to the why do I do online courses? Because I believe in it. I do it for brand wise and I do it for my other stuff because you can really make a difference. And there’s some of the impact I’m trying to make is. Online education. Chris Badgett: Why’d you choose LifterLMS? Dale Berkebile: Honestly, I think I saw you on some videos ages ago and it, you just seemed like a good guy and knowledgeable. And I think the previous, I tried a couple of different platforms and they had all of these great things. It sounded miraculous and whatever. Then I was just in over my head and it was costing me a fortune and whatnot. And I’m trying to think Lifter, I think was, I started at the the original, I guess the smaller level. I don’t know if I did the free version first. I think I started at the the beginner. Chris Badgett: You probably came in on the universe, bundle universe funnel. Dale Berkebile: Yeah. I think, or maybe Actually, maybe I did come on the free version and I bought the Stripe, whatever, to just feel my way out and see if I could get it working. And once I started doing some stuff yeah, it just felt really good because it was on WordPress. It was I already knew WordPress and things like that. So it was easy to do what I needed to do. And I think I knocked out a course pretty quickly. And so I was like, okay, yeah, let’s see what we can do. Chris Badgett: Do you remember what year You first loaded up WordPress on a website. Dale Berkebile: Oh, geez. I would say that was probably around 2009. I think I would guess if, I don’t know for sure, but I think that’s about right. Chris Badgett: Yeah, that’s awesome. You have deep history. And that’s about my story. Like 2008, I got into WordPress. What in your client work, what is your perfect fit client? What are they like? Dale Berkebile: Oh really, so there’s a couple of different types of clients that I can work with, but my ideal customer would be someone that is, has either bought into Lifter LMS or trust me that, we’re going to use the best tools out there. And they don’t question it. This is where we’re going. We’re going to do it. And then next one to either want to build something that they can, manage the backend stuff a little bit at a new course or edit courses or something like that, but not really Two, two into the back end and messing around too much. But one ongoing support and including marketing to fill this, fill the classes because that’s one of the things that with any website, I think sometimes people think it’s a field of dreams. And just because in their mind, the idea is brilliant you build it and they will come is not really the case. You got to do some work. To fill the class, you got to do some work to get found all that kind of stuff. But it’s amazing when you get there. And so someone that’s willing to commit that online courses is where they want to be and what they want to do. And they’re going to do ongoing courses and they’re going to do marketing to support it. Chris Badgett: I love that. Cause a lot of this is one of the things that makes you really special in the space is some people who provide services or just like technical implementation or even customization, like adding functionality that doesn’t exist, but then there’s the whole thing of you need marketing too, and you can do both. And that’s and you need both. And when the, when both hands are connected to the same body, It tends to go a little better. I remember one of my first clients who became the first there’s, so the way Lifter was born is I was involved in the infusion soft community, which is a lot of marketing automation and stuff. Dale Berkebile: Right. Chris Badgett: And these people needed LMSs. So this is back in 2012 period. And, we were piecing all these different things together. WordPress didn’t have a great solution. So we built it and that’s where Lifter was born out of, but sometimes like in that kind of infusion soft error. The marketing automation space was being born. They might’ve even coined that term possibly, but what ended up happening is a certain type of person. And I’m this type of person. And so are you could start visualizing all these like. Funnels and flows. And if they do this infusion soft had this thing called a decision diamond. And you could create all this like marketing automation, combination of emails, web pages, forms, all these different things. But it takes a while to get like really good at that. And at the end of the day, you realize Oh maybe I should just keep it simple and still do all those stages of the customer journey, but not over complicated. And I think sometimes with clients, they get really focused on like this one piece or this one strategy they heard about, or this one tool. But like part of it, and I’ve seen you do this well as advising people to be like, let’s focus. Do you have your first course ready, do you have your content ready? Do you have an interest list? And do you have, are you using community, which is like a thing that’s only becoming more and more important, especially in an AI automated world. But tell us how you think about marketing and creating information products and take us through the whole customer journey that you’ve You advise your clients to do to have the highest odds of success and you can help them with that. Dale Berkebile: Yeah. I guess it depends on how established people are where they’re at and that sort of thing. But, ideally I’ve gone through the automation, world to probably right around the time when I started getting into WordPress 2009 is when I really started getting heavy into that and some of it is defining the the buyer persona, the avatar, the person, right? Who are we going after? Do you know that? And it’s funny, and I’ve been Build guilty of this myself in different areas. How few businesses have a clear, focus on who they’re going to go after. So they just are going to go after everyone. And that, and I’ve been guilty of this myself. But the issue with that is then. It’s very difficult to get what you need. And so clearly understanding who we’re going after fleshing out what their problems are and how you solve them or, how people talk about them and that sort of thing helps you, the 1st steps of marketing that you need to do, where are these people hanging out? Are they online and communities, Facebook or LinkedIn or different places and how you get there and how do you entice them and track them and different things like that? I’ve come from the, I used to do a lot of direct mail back in the day and at that point we would create a list and we would know who we’re going after and what the problem is. And then we would send out offers and different things like that. Over the years it just move to online. So it could be connecting with someone else’s audience. And that could be through different avenues or could be building your own audience. Do you have an email list? Do you have a group that you manage or are a thought leader in that sort of thing? And so how can we reach them? Or do we just, blog like crazy, put some content out build an email list, do some email and different things like that. I think it depends on the client and their specific needs. But overall, we needed to find who we’re going after, what the problem is, how you solve it and where do these people hang out and start being there and, building relationships and rapport building trust, right? Because no one does any anything unless they know and trust you. So we got to be there doing that, whatever that looks like. So it could be email marketing. It could be direct mail back in the day, or just showing up and engaging in a community. If it’s, A Facebook group or something like that. Chris Badgett: Speaking of community, I’ve seen you do a lot of great community work. I’ve seen you build your own communities. I’ve seen you get involved in other communities that you feel called to and also do partnerships and find clients in there. I know you’re, you’ve done a lot like in the yoga and meditation space. What do you see is the right way I’ll put that in quotes, the right way to do community. These days, and ultimately if it’s for you or you’re helping a client do it, how does somebody build like a real sustainable community, both for lead generation, but also having a nice fulfill experience as possibly a community as part of the course or coaching program? Dale Berkebile: Me personally, I’m passionate about the community piece of online learning. I think that I do a lot of online education myself. So I go through all kinds of courses in all kinds of areas that I’m interested in and things like that. And so I join communities and see all kinds of different communities that. Are done well or done poorly. And I can tell you that the learning that I do when I go through a a course that has really good content is connecting with others that are going through similar experience, right? So we can share like what the heck is going on or, Hey, I’m having problems with the course can anyone tell me, how to find blah, blah, blah, whatever, and to me. I would almost I would highly recommend that people find a way to add a community as part of their online education experience because, people are, I don’t know where we’re what’s the word I’m looking for? Just like people that connect, right? There’s something about humanity that wants to connect. And so creating a community that allows you to connect and share your experience and, you can be in there sharing, you can be the person offering the advice oh, here, go here and this, whatever, or try this and give some advice. If you’re further along, or if you’re the newbie, you come in and if you ask questions and whatnot, you can get a whole lot out of it. It’s funny. I have I have some different programs that I’m going through now, where the community is like a huge piece of the gold as far as I’m concerned, because you connect with a lot of people people that are at your level and you can learn a lot. Not just from the expert. That’s, teaching you, but from the users that are in the trenches going through this stuff. So I don’t know if that answered the question or whatnot. But I do think building, of course, is important. And there’s a whole lot of value that you can get from it from a user experience. But then from a from a an educator, right from the person who’s doing the education, the teacher. For the instructor, the coach, whatever man, you can build some relationships. You just set yourself up for success and you get closer to the person. And then if it’s a solid program, I don’t know. I feel like. I don’t know. It’s a really great way to build customer loyalty. And at the end of the day, we want people that are going to stick around. And you don’t get any better than, weekly showing up and doing something that offers value and then sharing some things throughout the week that shares value or having a team that’s there to support the people in need and ask questions and whatever. I get super fired up when, as a user, if the coach or the trainer or whatever has great content, and then they have a course that’s amazing and they have a team that’s supporting and there’s one that I’m in now where the team is really amazing and they support, and. It’s interesting seeing that it’s there’s groups that work and groups that don’t and the ones that don’t add a whole lot of value to the to the overall learning experience. But the ones that do, man, it’s just, know, hopefully that answered the question or help. Chris Badgett: Oh, that’s very cool. Related to that, one of the things that makes you special as an online community builder and participant in communities is that you seem to have a good relationship with technology and balance and stuff. So for example, you were, you’re remain positive. There’s a lot of. Buzz on the internet about people are saying like, Oh, I’m quitting Facebook. I’m quitting Instagram. You on the other hand, like sometimes when I post stuff and like our, one of our Facebook groups, I really appreciate it. When you take a second to hit the like button or drop a comment, you’re just like an engaged participant and you help people, if you have the answer to something you you chime in. And in some of the communities that you’ve built, I’ve seen you’re very comfortable. You’re doing things like live streaming meditation together. And I think I even saw one where you were in the shower. Now you weren’t you were clothed and everything, but or yeah, it wasn’t like that, but you’re just very comfortable. On social media and a lot of people are overwhelmed and you know have like either imposter syndrome or just fear a lot of fear or just a negative relationship with facebook as an example, how do you Cut and i’m sure you’re it’s not perfect like sometimes I spend too much time on social media and stuff like that. But how do you, for such a long period of time, stay positive, create value, be yourself, remain engaged? Dale Berkebile: So I, I love that question. Part of, you asked a, this is a multi tier question to some degree but let me just start with the people look at Facebook is, whatever. I’m getting off Facebook and stuff like that. You have to do what you have to do. And I think work life balance is really important. And so if Facebook is dragging you down or whatever your platform is, I use Facebook quite a bit. So I say Facebook often if if it’s dragging you down, then yeah, we got to set boundaries and things like that so that we can have that work life balance or success in our life or not, go into anxiety mode or depression or all that kind of stuff. And there’s all kinds of negativity and divisiveness out in the world and political stuff and all kinds of stuff, right? That can be very ugly. And so I understand when sometimes people want to we’ll say that Facebook or social media or whatever is a mess. And I’m like, in my life, I believe that you can either be part of the mess or you can work to fix it. I am a believer that you be the change you want to see in the world. And so instead of showing up like, a jerk on Facebook or getting into Ugly banter back and forth show up in a positive way, just I don’t know. I probably about I don’t know, 11 years ago or something like that. I struggled with depression and different things like that. And as I was creating my purpose. I wanted to change the world in some way. I’m like, I’m going to change the world. So I just showed up, started showing up and do post positive stuff and whatever. I’m like, I don’t know, someone might need to hear this and whatever everyone else, they will scroll over it. And I mean, any pretty cool person who is offering value, because again, I’m looking for, I’m looking to be the person I want. What am I looking for? When I get in there, when I join a group, I start, it’s funny. Facebook has these ratings now how top performers are top, whatever. If I’m in a good group, I start plowing through the scoreboard of sorts because I get engaged and I start. Sharing and asking questions and doing whatever, because I want to be an active member. And that’s where the real value is. It’s, that’s where the value, it’s a lot of value for you as the student, but it’s a ton of value also for the the owner of the group, because you’re asking valuable questions and, or ideas that, I had a one of the groups that I’m in, I shared something and I’m like, this would be awesome. And then two weeks later, the owner. Of the educator or whatever is like, Hey, we’re going to try, but I’m like, Oh, Hey, I knew where that idea came from. And think for me, it’s just showing up in a positive way. What do I want out of the community and be the person That I would want in my own communities, right? And I have to be it before I can expect a bunch of people to come into my own community and be that person. Model the behavior, to some degree. So that’s awesome. Chris Badgett: I know a part of you, in addition to being an excellent web designer and course creator coach yourself. You seem to find some balance from meditation, yoga, painting, art. How did those things play into your life and work? Dale Berkebile: Oh I think for meditation was one of the things that helped me get out of the depression that I was in. And once I went down that path and I said, holy crap, man, this is really Helpful to me. I wish I again, I wish I knew this before. I feel a little bit obligated to help others with it. Yoga was something I added. Not too long ago. I started on yoga a little bit and it was partially to you. Add an exercise sort of program to my life because again, I was trying to like, balance out all these different areas to live. The. Best life, the most healthy life, that sort of thing, the hell of good life. And Sunny, how that was something to get me active because, sit behind a computer all the time. You’re not always active depending on, what you do. And I wasn’t as active as I wanted to be. So I added that as part of the mix. And then I really dove into that community. And art, I’ve always been creative and for about a year, I was like kicking around getting back into doing some painting. I hadn’t done painting for 30 years since I was in college and very little at that. And I was like, this might be something that’s fun. So it was a curiosity thing but I was, hesitant. I kicked it around for a year and I’m like, Oh man, I gotta buy supplies. What if I suck? And all this kind of stuff, we get hung up on all this kind of head trash. And then I was just like, screw it, pulled the trigger and started painting. I’ve been painting. Really consistently since October and knocked out, I don’t know how many paintings, quite a few of paintings. And and what I found was after a few months of doing that, I’m standing there and I’m looking at 1 of my paintings. I’m like, man, this brings a lot of joy. This makes me really happy. And so I’m like. That is awesome, right? That’s what we need to find is things that just bring joy without any sort of I don’t know, goals or expectations or, whatever else when it comes to work life balance, we got to tap into some of those things that just fill the cup, so to speak. And yeah, painting certainly done that for me, but I’ve always been creative and I see, creating courses and websites and all the marketing, all that stuff is creative as well. But this is a more pure creativity without any purpose necessarily. I’m not intentionally trying to sell or whatever. I just started doing it for fun. Chris Badgett: You’re also a husband and a father. And what are your, tips based on your lived experience with the craziness of entrepreneurship and being a creative person and including family and the work life balance, like I see you doing cool stuff with your family on social media and stuff like that, but what are some ideas or approaches you have to family? Dale Berkebile: Yeah that can be challenging. I think I think, on some level, you just make time for it and you commit to just like you would commit to meeting, with a client or whatever you commit to time with family and stuff like that. And sometimes it’s easier said than done. There are times where I’m working on the computer and sitting in the living room or whatever, and we’re together, but. Yeah. But I am certainly working, there are times when I’m on Facebook and I’m doing some different things. And, I’m there with family. And so I’m not really there with family too. Ben, like yesterday, my my son’s birthday was on Wednesday. And yesterday we had a we went to, my wife. Set up a swim party or whatever. So he had a bunch of friends over and I just, took the day off and we went and did this big swim birthday party thing and stuff. And that stuff is important. I think at the end of the day, connection with family and all that stuff is important. As important, maybe more important than all the business stuff. Making time for it and doing the best you can, I have two kids and I’ve been trying to make a group time and one on one time. And, if you’re doing all that stuff, making time for the wife, making time for each one of the kids, making time for the whole family, that stuff can Add up quick too, and then it can go to overwhelm and burnout with work and art and like all that stuff. I think sometimes finding ways to incorporate different things together can help so for the art stuff, we did a little paint party together a couple 2 weeks ago, I think, and that was like great quality time. Together and we were doing, something that I love and something that the family had a whole lot of fun with. Finding those overlaps where everyone is having fun or whatever my son. Here’s a funny 1 recently to my son wanted to have a game night, so I’m picking them up after school or whatever. He’s can we have a game night? Whatever. And I’m like, yeah, we can. No, we had this, our coffee table was had all the stuff on it. And it was like the kid’s toys and all kinds of stuff. I’m like, we got to clean this stuff up. We can’t have a a game night or whatever, family night or whatever. And he’s okay if I clean this stuff up, I’m like, okay, get at it. So sure enough, both of my boys went in and they started cleaning it up and stuff like that because they had a goal and they wanted to do stuff. So I think I don’t know that was really my just fell into my lap a little bit, but having them fired up so that we can do fun stuff as a family wanting to do fun stuff, maybe trying to set the tone for that. I don’t know, I don’t know that. I have a great wisdom there, but try Chris Badgett: awesome. Let’s talk a little bit more about your agency brand wise. What do you like? What kind of things do you do for clients? You mentioned marketing website, LMS building, but what are some of the details within all of that? What’s on offer at brand wise. And that’s a, by the way, that’s a get brand wise. com. Dale Berkebile: Yeah. I started out in the design space. Doing any kind of graphic design, whatever. But what I found was I wanted to evolve and get more into the branding side of things because I, what I found was to get results in the marketing, we had to do things. We had to keep doing things. We had to stay out there in front of people and things like that. So the design is really the core and where I think A lot different than a whole lot of people. But but then over the years, so it’s been in April, it was 25 years. What I found was getting results is important. So I’m looking for how I can help scale businesses, right? What I ran into in my own business was I wanted to scale it. I wanted to get to the point where I had employees. I wanted to do all these different things. Some of that took scalability and so building things that were getting results. And that’s part of the reason I was doing direct mail. Then I moved to the marketing automation cause we could do that through SEO and different things like that. But it’s all about getting found and then making offers that get results. And beyond just the beauty of building the brand If we can build a system that goes from start to finish and gets people, gets the cash register ringing. And also the customers happy and getting results because they need to get results too. Because if we’re not doing it for them to get results, then our results don’t really stick around that much. And that’s one of the things that I love about, online online learning is it’s a great way to connect with people. It’s a great way to build that customer loyalty. It’s a great way to service people in an amazing way. And build a relationship over time instead of a lot of one off stuff. That was what I used to do in the past. Yeah. Chris Badgett: One of the biggest challenges with working with LMS website clients can be, and it’s true for all web design. And actually. Getting the content from the client is quite a challenge, even if it’s just text for the about page, or if somebody has a dream of making millions, teaching online through courses and coaching programs I’ve seen you. Have an extremely high output of videos, live videos, writ writing, social media posting. So what are your tips for just being a prolific content creator? Cause sometimes getting, that first course or a lead magnet, whether it’s a PDF or a free mini course out, sometimes clients have trouble getting the gears turning and getting the content together. What would you advise? Dale Berkebile: Yeah, I think that you have to see the value in it, right? If you’re not committed to it, that’s where I was saying earlier about commitment to things. If you’re not committed to blogging or, giving it a fair run blogging for a year, and usually I recommend twice a week and, whatever Two articles a week and then pushing it out on social and doing all these different things. Like it’s some work. It’s a commitment. And if you’re not willing to do it, then maybe you find another Avenue. I don’t know what to tell you. But what I do know is if you want. A great community, then you have to be out there. If if you want to make some real money with the courses or whatever offerings that you do, you have to be out there. So how do you get out there? And, it’s doing videos is good, doing live is good. Different things like that are a great way for people to see the, the real person, I guess behind the brand. In the old days we used to network at Chambers and different things like that to, to be out in the front of, connect with people. But we hid behind the brand, right? Like we would put up a, whatever we did. And I did some work before, before the internet. We would, create logos and business cards and marketing materials and stuff like that. And the company, the real people would hide behind this brand that we make. Now we’re able to connect. And so the videos, I think are an awesome way to do that. But At the end of the day, we still need to be out there. However, we’re doing it. And I think it’s just being committed to it. And at the end of the day, it’s committed to yourself, right? Your own company, because if you want success, you got to be out there doing it. So that’s awesome. Chris Badgett: Yeah. Yeah. It’s a commitment. I knew when I started a Facebook group, I was in there every day. And that’s been almost a decade now. And I knew what I was committing to. Dale Berkebile: Yeah. And your Facebook group is awesome. It’s huge now. It’s been, it’s awesome. And seeing it grow. Chris Badgett: Yeah, I think it’s around 9, 000 people and I’m the one that the biggest one. And I’m like, people ask me how’d you do that? I’m like, I showed up every day. And with a helping mindset. Dale Berkebile: Yeah. Giving value. Chris Badgett: That’s Dale from BrandWise. Go to GetBrandWise. com. In the spirit of community, how else can people connect with you, Dale? Dale Berkebile: So you can find me on Facebook. That’s where I’m fairly active. You can I run hella good life is another company that I run. You can find me on Facebook for brand wise and for a hell of a good life on Twitter. But really Facebook is where I’m active. You can find me on LinkedIn searching for my name or brand wise, or I don’t know about how a good life maybe, but Yeah. You want to interact and engage, you can find me on Facebook. That’s usually the best way to do a search for my name. Chris Badgett: That’s Dale Burke, a bottle from get brand wise. com. And just as the final words of this episode, could you say your purpose statement again? Dale Berkebile: Okay. So my purpose is to challenge people to become innovative leaders so that we can change the world together. Chris Badgett: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Go to LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide The post LMS Website Developer and Community Builder Dale Berkebile From Brandwise Tell His Story appeared first on LMScast.

Experienced WordPress pro and BuddyBoss expert Chris Lassiter shares tips on mobile app integration, navigating BuddyBoss independently, avoiding dependency on developers, and optimizing website efficiency. He discusses product names, web hosting recommendations, pricing strategies, learning from mistakes, staging sites for testing, and GPT customization in Lifter LMS projects.

In this episode LMScast, Erica Nash has taught the creation of courses, web design, and design in general for a long time. Erica Nash, an web designer and course creator with a lot of experience. She is motivated by her passion of learning and her conviction in the potential of education to change people’s lives. whether she is teaching high school or operating her own company. She shows you where to go and she shows where to go. Erica emphasizes the importance of creating actionable and engaging courses tailored to the learners’ needs, highlighting strategies like scaffolding to build confidence. Erica also discusses her brand-new Course Builder Live tool, which leverages AI to accelerate course production, making subject-matter experts more helpful and easily accessible. Her technique emphasizes on providing students with current, meaningful knowledge at the appropriate moment to help them learn and interact with one another. Here’s Where To Go Next… Get the Course Creator Starter Kit to help you (or your client) create, launch, and scale a high-value online learning website. Also visit the creators of the LMScast podcast over at LifterLMS, the world’s leading most customizable learning management system software for WordPress. Create courses, coaching programs, online schools, and more with LifterLMS. Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014. And be sure to subscribe to get new podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide Episode Transcript Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co founder of Lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end. I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show. Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. I’m joined by a special guest. Her name is Erica Nash. You can find her at Erica Nash. com. This is going to be a great conversation. Erica is a combination of a teacher, instructional designer, website building, professional designer, and she’s a course creator and coach, but first welcome to the show, Erica. Erica Nash: Thank you for having me, Chris.  Chris Badgett: I consider you really lucky in the sense that you possess, all what I call all the hats to, you know, be successful as what I call an education entrepreneur. Um, and you really have developed in all those areas. Can you tell us kind of your story of. You know, learning how to teach, learning how to build websites and do graphic design and then becoming a course creator and coach yourself. I know that’s a big story, probably, but let’s, let’s get into it. How  Erica Nash: did we can dive in for sure? Um, I guess at the root of everything, like if I was going to sum it up in one sentence, it would just be that I love to learn and I believe that education is really, really powerful and it changes people’s lives, and we just live in a time where we have access to all of this information, and so I’m like, why would I not learn how to do this? Like if I’m interested in this over here and that over there and that over there, why would I not learn how to do those things? And so that’s probably the, like, I don’t know, seed of the entire story. Um, but Yeah, my, my, um, my 1st career, I guess you could say was as a teacher. I taught high school. Well, I taught I’ve taught K through 12, except for 7th grade. Uh, I taught for 10 years and it was a blast. I loved it so much. Um, the majority of my experience was with high school students. And so I got to see how they were. I taught culinary arts. And so my goal was always to teach them, uh, life skills. So it was like, when you leave this classroom, are you going to be able to cook for yourself? Are you going to be able to start a business cooking for others? Are you going to be able to work in a restaurant? You know, your life requires that at any point. Um, and so it was really awesome being able to see how close they were to leaving home and using the skills that I was teaching them and truly putting them into practice, whether it was working at a restaurant as a high school student, or, um, you know, going on and, and using those skills after they left, whether it was for, you know, survival and that they were making themselves food or they were earning money doing that. And so. That was kind of the beginning of, um, my desire to like, okay, how, how can education continue to affect people long after they leave the classroom and not just in a classroom setting? Like, you know, we can learn in any setting and it doesn’t have It doesn’t make it more, uh, powerful or better if it’s in a classroom, like we can learn from YouTube. We can learn from TikTok. We can learn from anybody who creates a course or educational content and, and you put it, puts it out into the world. And, uh, and so that that was sort of that piece, and I have always been, uh, creative. I love, I’ve loved drawing since for as long as I can remember. And, uh, I started designing, um, When I was in high school, and so I have been designing for a really long time, and, uh, it wasn’t until I, I don’t know, probably my mid 20s that I was that I thought to myself, oh, this could really be something. Like I could really use this to create income to help other people. Um, because before then I really didn’t see it as it was just a hobby. It was just something for me and it was fun. Um, there’s been a long journey of that. We, we don’t necessarily have to get into it, but like, that’s really kind of where, where that started. And then I was creating businesses, um, like for myself. So I was creating my. Branding my website and stuff like that. And then people were seeing what I was doing and were like, Hey, like, you know, how did you do that? Or can you do that for me, Or can you help me with that? or like, you know, sort of those sorts of questions. And, uh, there’s been a lot of ups and downs, you know, as a teacher, it can be kind of challenging to see life outside the classroom. And so it was, it, there were points in there where it was like. I don’t know if this is actually possible for me to create a life for myself outside of teaching and, and really fully living a creative life that creates a sustainable income. That was really challenging. But fast forward to 2021 life sort of at its own plan and I had to leave the classroom, not really by choice. It was my 10th year was having some health issues. It’s the height of cobit. Right? Things were just wild. I was sort of forced to leave by my because of my health. I was like, okay, like, we’re just going to go all in on, you know, this, this, um, graphic design, web design stuff. Found some amazing people, a community that, um, you know, really supported me along the way and my development and, uh, that transition was really difficult because sort of had a little bit of an identity crisis because I left the classroom. And now it was like this creative business owner that I was never really sure I was going to get to be. I, in theory, it always sounded great, but now that it was reality, it was like, I have no idea what I’m doing. And, uh, so, so in the sort of process of figuring out, you know, now where I fit in the world now, what do I call myself? Like those sorts of questions. I figured out that my teaching experience. Didn’t have to just sort of end and go by the wayside. And so I, um, continued to do the design and, and, you know, the graphic design, the web design and all of that stuff. But I also found a space where I was like, able to pull in my teaching experience and in creating my own courses and things like that. And saw how valuable that was to, I mean, I had been purchasing, this was in 2021, I had been purchasing online courses to learn different things since like 2013. And so it was like a light bulb moment because I hadn’t really made that connection before. Like, of course I could help with that too. And so, uh, at the end of 2021, uh, that’s when I sort of made that like. Sort of half pivot into into that area and, um, a coach that I had, uh, Shannon matter, and she became a client and we worked on her curriculum and then it turned into, um. A client success coach position and, uh, and now I also help coaches with client success in their programs as well. And so it has been quite a ride and it is, and you’re right. It is a lot of hats, but it’s been so incredible to be able to enter business and engage in business as my whole self.  Chris Badgett: Oh, that’s awesome. What a cool story. And I know what that feels like. Uh, you know, it’s the imposter syndrome. I don’t know what I’m doing. You’re building the airplane on the way down. And I think it’s really cool. You found community and reshaped your identity. These are all like really hard things.  Erica Nash: Yeah.  Chris Badgett: Um, now I have a bunch of questions based on that story. Okay. So To help people who are, uh, you know, outlining a course and they have no teaching background, what are some fundamental concepts of instructional design? If you, if you could just pass along, you know, some key things for Like, okay, I’m an expert in gardening or cooking, but I’m not a teacher. How do I create my course outline? I know on your website, I see the register for course builder live. So feel free to mention what that’s all about. But I see a lot of experts, subject matter experts challenged with actually. Teaching and kind of getting through that roadblock. What are some tools and ideas to help with that?  Erica Nash: Oh, my gosh, this is such a good question. And I could talk about this forever. Um, the 1st thing I would say is that the major problem that I see when it comes to figuring out how to put a course, whether it’s a course outline or or, um. Like, creating all of the content for the course is that there’s too much information and it typically happens for 1 of 2 reasons, either just out of, like, a sense of generosity. Like, they truly just want to, like, give their audience the best and the most information. Um, and then on the other side, where it’s just as an expert, sometimes we, we see all of the connections with all of the pieces. We deem them important, but they might not be important to the audience and the specific goal that they’re coming to you for. So you have to figure out which pieces are not necessarily relevant immediately and and get rid of those. It can be so difficult. Like that. That is, I think, truly the most challenging part of putting a course together. Is this idea of not being married to all of the ideas that you have about this specific thing and how it should be taught and really, and like, this would be another, like, sort of step 2 is really getting to know your ideal client and talking to them and asking them. All kinds of questions and really getting to the root of. What it is they’re coming to you for and like, okay, how can we streamline this in the most efficient way possible? So that it is the least amount of information they need to achieve whatever it is that they are, you know, joining your course for and so really kind of looking at. their end goal and working backwards and only including, you know, what is necessary. So those would be, those would be the top two things. Um, Course Builder Live is, this is, so this is, today is, what is today? June 11th. And so this is happening on June 13th, so Thursday. Um, and I, so I love, Being really efficient and, uh, minimizing the time it takes to do things. I am just very conscious of my own time and, you know, my clients, they’re, they’re busy, ambitious people. And so it’s also important for them to be able to sort of collapse the time it takes for them to do things. So Course Builder Live is, uh, a live demonstration Of course, outlining process I built, uh, earlier in the winter, I built a, uh, custom that is a, it’s essentially my instructional design brain inside. Um, the GPT and it, it, it, I have fed it with all kinds of research based educational practices, my specific course building process and the things that I ask and look for and, and the way that we put it together. And, uh, I have successfully tested it. It has been, I could get really nerdy about it, but it’s been really fun. And it’s, it’s such a cool. It’s such a cool way to take the course planning process. I’ve taken what could take weeks, what has taken weeks in the past, this sort of back and forth with clients and figuring out this outline and, and sort of what’s best. And I’ve gotten it down to under an hour, a lot of times half an hour, but under an hour. So it’s been really cool. So that’s what that is. That is a live demonstration of that. And, uh, and, you know, that that’s, and I’m going to preface this also by saying that chat GPT using chat GPT to outline a course is not always going to be super helpful because. A lot of times it’s going to be like that expert and give you like the super, super bloated, not really targeted outline of information. Some of it may or may not be relevant. And so, so the difference between, you know, the 2 is that, like, this is specifically designed to, like, minimize. The information and get really targeted and ask really specific questions. Um, and so we can talk more about AI if, if you’re interested in, in kind of talking about that regarding course creation. But, um, as far as tools, it can be a great tool. If you know what information to feed it and what questions to ask it.  Chris Badgett: Could you provide an example there? Like, let’s say I was an investor and I wanted to teach people how to invest for retirement. If I just go to chat GBT and I’m say, write me a course outline for a course about investing for retirement. What’s an example of your custom GPT and how it would, you know, not just take out where you wouldn’t just go for that five second response and be like, cool. I got the outline.  Erica Nash: Yeah. So. You know, with the sort of five second response, it’s going to give you, it’s going to give you so much information and it’s going to be really general information. So it is going to be for, um, it, it, it may be for high level investors that maybe have multimillion dollar, you know, like budgets, it might be for, you know, the, the newbie investor that is just learning what. You know, terms are and things like that. And so it’s going to give you like a huge span of, uh, of information and it’s going to be maybe not as, uh, as, um, I don’t know what other word to use in education, right? We use the term scaffold it. And so. It might not be as scaffolded as it needs to be and like building on each other. Um, and so with mine, um, for example, the part of the key is the information that you feed it at the beginning. And so the input, um, it’s going to ask some questions about your audience. It’s going to ask some questions about the goal of the course. We’re going to get, um, some ideas on like, okay, what lessons do you want to include in here? And so we’ll kind of sort of look at that. We’ll look at, um, you know, is there a specific structure that this course needs to take, um, and, and, you know, some other general information. And so we’ll feed it that information up front and then instead of giving us sort of this, like, bloated, really, really broad information, it is going to, um, Keep it really succinct. So it’s going to give us information that’s specifically targeted to whatever audience we have put in. Oh, and it also, um, is going to ask questions about their, uh, like their level of learning. So in this specific topic. Are they a beginner, Are they intermediate? Are they advanced? You know, where are they in this? And it’s going to take that into account. Um, and then it’s also going to kind of look at the lessons that we have included in. Okay. Like we, we definitely want to include this and this and this. It’s going to fill in any gaps that there might be with those lessons. And then it is going to give us within each of those. It is going to make suggestions for, uh, things that might be necessary for students to have access to, uh, in order to implement whatever it is that, you know, they are, uh, trying to, trying to achieve. Like, for instance, I believe that all educational content should be actionable rather than, like, theoretical. It is always going to, uh, Create lessons that are actionable lessons. So, like, what is the student going to do in this lesson? Like, what are they working towards? And it will help, you know, sort of set that up. And then from that, what materials, tools, resources are they going to need in order to do that? So it’ll give you kind of a list. Of things to like, maybe create it is going to generate some ideas on. Okay. Here are some possible student obstacles that may come up when they’re trying to do this. And then here’s how you might be able to mitigate that. So that if we know ahead of time that that’s coming up, we can maybe put in some things in place to avoid it completely. Or if not. We at least know like, okay, here’s like plan B if you know, that does come about. Um, and it’s really just going to look at the course as a whole and sort of place these things in a logical learning order and sort of where it’s scaffolded and they can, uh, they can build on each other. Chris Badgett: I love that. It’s too bad. This isn’t the Joe Rogan podcast. Cause I feel like we could go for three hours. Um, one more question on the instructional design point. You mentioned scaffolding and structures. Can you give us some examples of like some different thematic structures that could be used? And I think those frameworks kind of help people who have the writer’s block going on how to think about structure. Erica Nash: Yeah. So one example that I really love to use, um, is in terms of like fear. And so whenever you’re asking your students to do something, um, we kind of, you can kind of look at. Fear on, on a, uh, sort of a spectrum. And I guess it’s not necessarily just fear, but it’s like, what would be the best word? So let’s say that you were asking your students to, uh, let’s say the goal of your course is for students to grow a business. Um, there are a lot of scary things involved in growing a business. You have to like really get outside of yourself. And so if one of the things that, uh, you know, you have your students do in order to like grow your business, their, their business is to do a live TV interview. You’re not going to ask them to do that the 1st module, because what’s going to happen is they are going to get so scared. They’re just going to like, peace out. I’m done. Like, we’re not and they’re going to totally disengage because that’s too that’s too scary. That is not something that you can safely ask them to do at that stage of business, because they more than likely, and it obviously it depends on like who this audience is for, but if they’re like new business owners, they have not yet developed their capacity for risk for that yet. So a way to scaffold that and, and to lead up to that, because you don’t want to necessarily, like, if that is part of the process and framework, you don’t want to. Just remove it completely. You want to build up to it and make it the logical next step. So what you would do first is you would do something like, okay, say in module one, uh, the goal is going to be to set up a, uh, one on one interview with a peer inside of the program. And you just talk to each other. And then in module two, it’s going to be, um, you know, you are going to pitch yourself. Or a, uh, like a guest blog, uh, article or whatever that you, that you write. And so we’re, we’re increasing the capacity for risk just a little, they’re not showing up on camera, but they are having to talk to someone new and, and pitch their pitch, their whatever topic it is. Uh, and then, like, let’s say in the next module, it is, uh, you know, they’re, they’re then pitching themselves for a podcast interview, but maybe it’s not 1 that’s on video. Maybe it’s just audio or maybe it’s not live, you know, that then that would be the next step. Sort of a live podcast interview, and then the next step would be very natural, right? A logical next step could be a live TV interview. So that is a really, really basic sort of breakdown of scaffolding and what that looks like. And so really you just have to think about, you know, uh, engagement as this spectrum and sort of a healthy dose of not fear, but If they’re too afraid, they’re going to disengage. And once students disengage, it’s so hard to bring them back. Um, but if they’re not motivated to do it, then obviously it’s not going to get done. So there has to be, it has to be a happy middle. Um, and part of the, the way that we reach that happy middle is that we ask them to do things that are outside of their comfort zone, but not so far that it pushes them all the way over into fear and paralysis. Essentially,  Chris Badgett: I love that. So we’re not just delivering content. We’re delivering confidence and building on it. Exactly.  Erica Nash: Exactly.  Chris Badgett: One more structure question before we move on. And I know this is a, it depends answer question, but, um, you know, what part of the experts curse is like you said, building a giant library of Alexandria with everything, you know, in there, what’s like a good length for a course number of lessons or how do we, how do we know when we’re hitting the wall? Like, another way to think about it is. Maybe I should create a membership with multiple courses versus this giant 100 lesson course or whatever. Like how do you think about length and depth of an effective course? Yeah.  Erica Nash: No, that is such a great question. And like you said, there is no one answer, maybe a, uh, um, not a better way to look at it, but another way to look at it. It’s lesson link. So Sometimes I will get into, you know, be like auditing a course and I will be looking at the lessons and they might range anywhere from 20 minutes to 90 minutes. That can be really challenging for, uh, for people who have busy lives. We, we are all, you know, whether it’s. That we’re also, you know, running businesses or maybe multiple businesses or businesses and jobs or businesses and jobs and kids that are doing all of the things, you know, so, so keeping in mind that more than likely your audience is ambitious. It has a lot of things going on. So keeping in mind that, you know, their time is limited. In general, the sort of best length, and this is research based, I don’t have the information with me, but, uh, the, the sort of average, like, top length of time you want your lessons to be is about nine minutes. Um, and that really just comes down to, you know, like, how long attention span and like, what are we asking students to do? And, and are we able to, well, this, this goes back to this sort of library of Alexandria thing. Like, is the, if my, if my lesson is 90 minutes long, does it truly need to be 90 minutes long, is the first question. And then the second question is, In that 90 minutes does every single bit of that of relevancy towards whatever objective it is that we’re trying to achieve with a specific lesson. If the answer is no, then some of that needs to be removed. More than likely, and this is, this is not necessarily true across the board. So, you know, obviously there are lots of factors here, but more than likely, if you’re looking at your video analytics for a 30, 60, 90 minute lesson, engagement is probably dropping off pretty quickly, you know, it probably is a pretty steep downward trend. And so in terms of, you know, how do you know what your length is? It really comes down to knowing your audience and knowing what data you have available to you. And so kind of looking at, okay, let me go in, let me look at my video analytics. Let me see what the numbers are kind of doing a little bit of a deep dive. Um, you know, auditing, auditing your own program, auditing your content, auditing your, uh, Uh, your videos, talking to, uh, talking to your members, um, and really kind of asking them the hard questions that might kind of hurt a little bit whenever you get the feedback and being okay with whatever it is that they tell you and being willing to take that information and, uh, and implement it in a way that is going to serve you, but also them, you know, and so. I can’t say that there is a recommended sort of number of lessons or even length of time because it really does come down to the material itself and, uh, and your audience and what it is that they’re trying to learn if you have a really, really engaged audience and they are huge fans of, like, I want to sit down with this person. For 90 minutes and I want to learn from them, then that is cool. And if that works like more power to you, it’s just important to know who your audience is and what works for them and what they want out of it. I will say that 1 trend that I am seeing, and I think is probably here to stay is many courses, like, really targeted pretty short. Like, we’re doing 1 thing. You’re going to come in. You’re going to learn. And it’s probably going to be, you know. Under an hour, under two hours, like get this done really fast and you’ll be on your way, um, creating results. And so that is something that, like, I think is worthwhile to consider, like, you know, what pieces of this can I take and create. That is not going to be a ton of work for me, but it’s also not going to be a ton of work for my students, but it’s still going to get them the results that they’re looking for.  Chris Badgett: I love that. I saw a great mini course like a year ago where somebody, the whole purpose of the course was to set up your home video, audio, like content studio thing. And it was very, it was a very specific thing. And I saw how popular the course was. like, yeah, clear problem, clear solution quickly. Okay. Buy exactly these things, set them up in this way. And, and yeah, um, one, you mentioned goal orientation or, uh, get your students taking action, which I’m a big fan of, you know, there’s templates to fill out like spreadsheets and tools you can make. There’s like assignments, like before the next lesson, go do X, Y, and Z. How do you get your, a course to be more action oriented and outcome driven?  Erica Nash: Oh, that’s a good question. So, um, you know, I think there’s a couple of different ways to go about this. So if I, if we’re like, setting up a brand new course, so, like, let’s kind of look at it on that side. If we’re setting up a brand new course. We’re going to start with the end goal in mind. So, looking at do what  Chris Badgett: the learning objective? Yeah. Yeah. So, like, what  Erica Nash: is what is the big what is the big goal? Like, by the end of this course, they are going to be able to do. X, Y, Z. And then taking that and working backwards into like, okay, why can’t they do that right now and giving whatever answer that is and then doing that with that one. Okay. Why can’t they do that right now? And then just working all the way backwards to where they are, and then that’s essentially the goal of each of each module of each lesson. So, you know, if they’re unable, like setting up their, their home video or whatever. Uh, set up, you know, why can’t they do that right now? Well, they don’t have the equipment. They don’t know what equipment. Why don’t they have the equipment? They don’t know what equipment to buy. Why don’t they know what equipment to buy? Well, there are a ton of options. And so, you know, just like working backwards from there and like, getting really, really, like, each 1 just gets a little more targeted and a little more targeted. And so then that’s how it starts to be scaffolded naturally. Because you’re building backwards. On the flip side, if it’s a, if it’s a, uh, course that is already like built and it’s already students are already taking it and all of that stuff, you know, kind of, you can, you can work backwards that way, but that’s going to be a lot more disruption and interruption to the current students. And so, in that case, it would almost be kind of working, like, doing an audit looking backwards. Right? And like, you know, where, where are the. Where are the gaps? But then almost working forward, like, okay, in this first module, this first lesson, you know, what are we asking them to do? If the only thing we’re asking them to do is to listen, is there some, like, does that really need to be there? And if the answer is yes, then how does it connect to, like, when is the next time we’re asking them to do something? How does that connect to that information? Like, can, can that be combined, you know, in some way? And so really orienting everything to the student task. What are they doing with this lesson? Because whenever we are just asking them to listen and learn, it’s just not as easy. Um, and I think that’s the most engaging as when it’s like, okay, you’re going to, you’re going to listen and do something along, you know, with me or take notes so that once you finish this, you can go do this thing and doing this thing is going to be necessary to move on to You know, the next piece, um, and 1 of the reasons why that’s so important is because 1, it’s engaging, but 2, it just allows them to to win faster. It allows them to reach their goals faster. And like, that’s the whole reason we’re making courses. That’s that’s what we want people to to. Get results. We want people to, you know, see their like dreams realized. And so by getting them to take action, that’s great for them. But it’s also great for us too, because that’s where our testimonials come from. That’s where our results come from. And so we get to share, you know, those wins then and, uh, and create a bigger impact. By marketing, you know that like our course is actually working and here’s the proof  Chris Badgett: very cool Uh, let’s talk about coaching a little bit I call it Like in the instructional design aspect a support mechanism design so You know, you’ve got your content and you’ve got your action steps, but not everybody is one size fits all. I’ve really come to realize that, you know, when it comes to something like pricing, masterclass, you can learn comedy from Steve Martin for 10 a month, but he’s not going to help you with your jokes or he’s not accessible. Yeah. And you can do like. Private coaching group, coaching calls, you can do email support, text messaging support. You can create a community. There’s a lot of things you can do to create a support mechanism as part of your offer, but particularly with your background and teaching and helping people when they get stuck or designing your own support mechanisms. What do you find really works there? Cause I think it’s a under focused area when designing this project. Well, what, what happens when people get stuck or have questions? Like, what do you do? Yeah.  Erica Nash: Yeah. And it’s such an important question to ask because well, and I think since 2020 people are really, have really been seeking support. Like, I don’t think. Not, and again, not to say, like, this is not like a blanket statement, but I think the majority of the time, uh, people don’t want just a court, like, a do it yourself, self paced, like, with no community, no support, no, nothing. Um, and maybe sometimes feel cheated because they’re like, I can go find that on YouTube or, you know, whatever, like, even though that’s not necessarily. It’s not going to be the same way. Like, you know, there’s a lot of, of nuances there, but I think that’s the way that they feel a lot of times. And so I think it is so important to be asking the question about support and, and how to offer support. I’m a huge fan of creating and offering whatever type of support though is appropriate for your current life situation. Uh, I don’t think anybody should feel pressured to. Um, you know, every day, all day long, I don’t think anybody should feel pressured to have, you know, any kind of like, you know, 1 on 1 calls if they don’t necessarily have the time or space for that. I don’t, you know, there’s nothing that I, I feel like should be in a program other than there should be some avenues for support. But what that looks like gets to be up to the course creator. Um, again, I think it’s really, really important to talk to your people and ask them what it is that would be really helpful for them. But only after you’ve asked yourself, what do I have these for? And what do I really want to do? Like, not everybody is interested. In, uh, having a Facebook group, and that’s fine. That doesn’t necessarily have to be there. You know, are there other other avenues? Is it, is it that it’s the group itself and Is it that it’s on Facebook? Is it, you know, like, what are the pieces that you’re like? Oh, I don’t really want to do that. And if there are another avenue that maybe fits, whatever it is that you’re looking for. So, really kind of looking at, you know, what is sustainable for me? What am I interested in engaging on? What’s easy. I’m a huge fan of doing what’s easy and like not making it harder than it needs to be. Um, kind of thinking through, obviously thinking through like budget. Are, is this a paid tool? And do you need this fancy paid tool? Or are you just doing it? Cause that’s the like trendy tool at the moment. Um, there are lots of great tools out there. Paid and unpaid and so, you know, you get to, you get to do whatever it is that fits your, uh, your budget. Um, and I mean, as far as different types of support, like you said, you know, there are all kinds of different types. Um, I would recommend choosing a few from, um, not necessarily tiers, but like 1, that’s like, you know, how can the community engage with each other? How can the community engage with each other and you and then how can the community engage with you and that last 1? I don’t believe it has to be like, well, they can schedule 1 on 1 calls with me X amount of time. It doesn’t have to look like that. Like, but if they’re stuck and they need, like. Some a private check in or whatever, you know, can they email you or like, what does that look like? And being very, very clear about the boundaries and, you know, the expectations for that, like, you can email me, but if you email me, here’s what it needs to look like. Here’s what it needs to sound like. Here’s when you can expect my response and, you know, so on and so forth. And so, um, I hate to say that it also depends on that, but it does  Chris Badgett: a solid advice. Um, let’s talk about the avatar, the ideal customer profile, your people. How did you, I see some people like, well, I have a lot of interests and they can’t, they avatar. And then they’d need to, like, choose a problem to focus on or a goal. And maybe you’re into multiple things. Um, or I would ask you too, in your transition from teaching, how, what have you learned in, like, getting to know your people, but even before that, like, Taking what to focus on because it starts with the who right? Like, who am I helping here?  Erica Nash: I am going to be super transparent and saying that that has been a wild ride. It  Chris Badgett: has  Erica Nash: been a journey. It’s probably if I, if I’m being super honest, it is probably just this year that I have felt somewhat settled. Like in who I’m talking to. So I think in the beginning, I mean, even though I had. I already had experience working with people sort of as a designer, as an artist, uh, I was viewing, excuse me, I was viewing this very differently. And so it was almost like starting over. And I think just like anyone in the beginning, it was like, I was talking to whoever would listen. I mean, it was just like, I, like, I don’t necessarily know exactly who I’m talking to. But if you’re listening, I’m talking to you. And over time, you know, as I honestly, as I just started talking to people. I was figuring out the ones who I just sort of had an easy conversation with. I think that I think that was probably the, the thing that I was like, oh, okay. Like these, these are my people. And then as I continued to, um, and, and, you know, this is for me as a business person. And I think it’s, I think it’s a similar thing. Um, as a course creator, you know, it’s the, it’s the people who you have a lot in common with. It’s the people, maybe the person who you used to be, you know. It’s the people that you are able to really help on a different level. Um, but I, I think the key is. Having a lot of conversations and talking about what it is that you’re doing and what you want to do. And I think being curious is a gift. It’s a really important piece of being able to figure out for yourself sort of where. And I say this in quotations, but like where you fit in. In your own little business world with the knowledge that you can fit in anywhere you want. And you can, you can be anything you want, and you can help anyone you want. And me, what it comes down to is not necessarily. An industry, but a type of person and that’s really where I once I figured that out. I became really, really settled into who I was helping. And so the things that are important to me are also important to them. You know, I education is important. Oftentimes they put out a lot of educational content, whether or not their coaches. You know, things that are important to me are like, just the fact that we’re able to make an impact by having an online presence and like, they, they want to do some good in the world. So that’s, you know, that is really important to me. It’s really figuring out these people who are very ambitious. That’s, that’s my ideal client avatar. They are ambitious entrepreneurs who want to change the world. And, you know, whether they have a course right now or not, they probably will down the road. And so, you know, just really kind of being open to, I don’t know, letting it flow a little bit. I think, I don’t think in the beginning I would have guessed that this is where I would be. but looking back I’m like, oh no, like that, that makes so much sense. Cause it’s who I am as well.  Chris Badgett: I love that your vibe attracts your tribe. And, if you, you know what you love, lifelong learning, being ambitious. Making the world a better place, being entrepreneurial, like those are the people you want to hang out with.  Erica Nash: Exactly.  Chris Badgett: Sir. Cause you understand then, um, shifting gears to design. I heard this framework once and it just stuck in my brain and never left it. And this is more for like a software company like we have at Lifter LMS, but, um, there’s the three halves of being the hipster, the hacker and the hustler. So the, the hipster designs, the hacker codes and the hustler markets and sells and that kind of thing. Um, but the hipster piece, the designer, let’s say somebody doesn’t come from a design background. I see a lot of people get hung up here. Around either,just overdoing design, like on a website for courses and coaching and stuff. Or, you know, kind of hitting a plateau of like, man, they should really professionalize this design. A lot of us, we all think we’re designers because, you know. We, we like certain designs and stuff, but it’s really an art. Even my, my design is not my strength either. So, like, when I go into Barnes and Noble, sometimes I’m like. I’m going to find that book about design that can just help me be think like a designer better. I just don’t find the section in the store. And, uh, it’s just 1 of those things, but everybody should level up and design. So how did that happen? You said you’ve been doing it, I think, since you were 13, what are some core concepts in the digital world to create a tight design and, and just level up in that department?  Erica Nash: Oh man, that is such a good question. I think, I think probably above all, well, Above all is simplicity. I think just keeping it simple is going to do wonders or whatever sort of design ideas that anyone has. You know, a lot of times in trying to stand out, things get really complex and it allows them to stand out. But not necessarily in the way that they had hoped. And and so I think simplicity above all is just. So important and I say that as somebody who loves to design, like, really fun and funky stuff that sometimes gets complex. But it’s like, we have to look at it in a way of like, okay, I can create this really fun, funky, complex design, but at the base, how can I, how can I make it so simple that it can continue to work in black and white, that it can continue to work, you know, as the most simplified piece of it. And, uh, and so I think that is, is probably like, if I had any advice, it would be that like asking yourself, like, how can I make this more simple? And then the other piece is watching other designers work. I have, there is so much to be learned. And like I said, like we can learn anything anywhere. Right. And so one of my favorite places is to talk, to watch other designers Like their process videos, they’re super fast. I’m not having to watch like an hour long YouTube, like walk through of their process or anything. Um, it’s usually something really fast and they do something and I’m like, and like, I’ve been using illustrator for, I don’t know how many years. I’m like, oh, my gosh, I didn’t even know you could do that. You know, like, and so just learning how to. You know, either either tighten your process or, uh, learn how to do something a new way or, um, just visualize differently through the eyes of other people is such a fantastic tool and resource for, um, just for learning design for getting better at design. Um, it just, you know, constantly improving, which we all, we all have room to constantly improve.  Chris Badgett: Awesome on that on the hacker front. The technologist had, um, you said you’d been building websites for a while. I think how did you, uh, How did you get into that? And what do you recommend for, you know, leveling up in that department? Erica Nash: I, how did I get into that? I, so, um, so I, my daughter is about to turn 16 and whenever she was three, she was diagnosed with autism. We, so obviously that was a really long time ago, totally different world in terms of like the discussions about autism and, uh, there’s the acceptance, uh, about, you know, people on the spectrum and all of that stuff. So totally, totally different world. We lived in a really, really small community and the prior. I use this with air quotes with the prior knowledge that this community had, um, about autism was very limited. And so my husband and I were like, okay, like, what can we do to. Help educate our community so that not only are they a little bit more compassionate towards everyone else that they might come in contact with on the spectrum, but that they’ll understand, you know, our daughter, our family, and sort of like, how we’re going to, um, you know, just engage with life from here on out. And so we, uh, started, um, we, so we started this fundraising campaign. I would design a t shirt and it was like every year in April, which is autism awareness month, I would design a campaign or I would design a t shirt. We would run a campaign. We would raise money, sell the shirts, we’d raise money. And then we would give the money to like, uh, I lived in New Mexico, so it wasn’t necessarily look, we lived in a really, really rural area, but in a sort of local statewide, like, um, uh, foundation. So we did that over the period of, um. Like, 5 years, and in the middle of that, I had a friend reach out to me and he was like, hey, like, you’re doing some great stuff here. I think you could do even more. Uh, I thought about, like, building a website and I, at that point, I was like, no, like, I’m not I don’t know how to. I don’t know how to code, you know. And, um, he was like, well, I don’t think, I don’t think you necessarily need to code. I put this like site together for you. Uh, on this was like, after Wix had first come out, he’s like, I put this site together for you on Wix. Um, like, do you want it? And I was like, sure. Like, okay. And so I took it and just started sort of playing around with it and clicking buttons and trying different things. And, uh, that was the 1st, that was the 1st 1. I sort of took what he started and, like, finished it out. And then from there, it was like, oh, the, the door has opened. The possibilities are endless and we can build any site, any site that we want. So. I know that it has been frowned upon in the past that the majority of my experience building is on Wix and, uh, and it has served me pretty well. It’s, you know, it served our, our, our goals. Well, um, and so that is that is kind of how that started. But again, I think in terms of, like, you know, figuring out, like, sort of leveling up. Honestly, I think the biggest piece in leveling up in your web design is finding a community of like minded people who you can learn from. And so, you know, finding a community of people who either are learning the same builder that you are. That you want to level up in or find a good community of people who are leveling up in business, who maybe know a variety of builders, and, you know, if you’re interested in learning, you know, A different builder or, you know, additional, additional skills from there. So, I think community is probably the most important piece  Chris Badgett: and what just real quick. What is, what have you liked about working in Shannon matters community?  Erica Nash: Oh, my gosh, that that community is just incredible. It’s seriously 1 of the best places on the Internet. And, um, I mean, as far as, like, the best thing, I mean, it’s the people, it’s the people it’s getting to help. It’s getting to, see real time, I’m overcoming really hard stuff and reaching their goals in spite of. Life throwing all of the things at them that might keep them down. Um, so it, it’s just been, incredible, you know, to like, to work with all of them, learn from all of them, work with and learn from Shannon and, and just continue to be part of a community that truly, really cares about people. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. That’s Erica Nash. Go to Erica Nash dot com register for course builder live and thank you for coming on the show. Erica. I really appreciate it. Is there any other ways for people to connect with? Erica Nash: Yeah, oh, my gosh. Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And, always enjoy talking about this kind of stuff. So I appreciate the opportunity. Um, I, so I am on Instagram, but I’m getting ready to like, wind that down. Um, but right now I have started, you can get on my email list. I’m there a lot. Um, when you can just like sign up on my website, but I am also on. And, I’m starting to share some things there and you can just search my name and it will come up. Chris Badgett: Awesome.  Erica Nash: Yeah.  Chris Badgett: Thanks for coming on the show, Erica. And thanks for, you know, just being a great example of what I call an education entrepreneur, unicorn spinning all the hats and, helping other people on the journey. Erica Nash: Thank you so much. Chris Badgett: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Go to LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! 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