LMScast with Chris Badgett

Calvin emphasizes the significance of overcoming emotions of inadequacy and having a significant influence while offering insights into the transforming path of business as a spiritual quest. He discuss about coaches and course creators in this episode. Calvin Correli, co-founder of Simplero. He provides entrepreneurs with useful tools and community assistance via Simplero’s integrated platform. He emphasizes how courses, coaches, and communities may help entrepreneurs on their path to become their second hero by offering them both spiritual and practical assistance. Calvin provides ways for combining pre-recorded information with live coaching sessions and organized courses to provide a full learning experience. Calvin advocates for simplicity in systems and spirituality. In addition, he talks on the need of continuous involvement in a community that is encouraging and adopts an iterative approach to coaching and content development, constantly refining his views based on questions posed by participants. 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. He’s back on the show. It’s Calvin Corelli. He’s from simplero. com, which is an online platform for delivering coaching, consulting courses and building communities with a super sweet angle of being an all in one approach. So you don’t end up with this software Frankenstein of all these different tools. Welcome back on the show, Calvin. Calvin Correli: Thank you, Chris. It’s great to be here. Yeah, I really appreciate you having me back. We had a conversation. What was it like three years ago or something? And I’m super excited that you’re having me back for another chat. Chris Badgett: Yeah, I think this is going to be a good one. So Calvin and I have both been in this industry for about 10 years, basically helping people with something to share, to teach Calvin in our pre chat was describing it as like a second act. where somebody figures something out and they want to then take that knowledge and skills and experience and package it up and create a bigger impact and build a business around that with Simplero. Let’s start there, Calvin. Tell us more about the this kind of perfect fit customer for Simplero and, really just this movement of people that. Maybe a little later in life, decide, you know what? I want to give back to those who are further back on the journey. Calvin Correli: Yeah. So I’m inspired by Joseph Campbell’s story of the, hero’s journey, like the arc that, basically all myths from throughout history follow the same arc. It was what inspired George Lucas to write star Wars based on the hero’s journey. And is this idea that You’re living your life. And then something happens that, that makes life as it used to be untenable. It doesn’t work anymore. Like you’re, like overweight. And I like your doctor says, you’re going to get a heart attack if you don’t do this, or you’re going to get diabetes or whatever it is, like something, something has to change, right? Back against the wall. You need to figure out how to make some money. You may figure out how to make the money. And so we go on this journey. We, first refused to call everybody, refused to call though. Like I want to change, Oh God, then I don’t want it. And then we find a mentor and some helpers and there’s going to be some enemies and some fights, and then we go to the innermost cave of. Battling our own demons and all that stuff. We come out, there’s more struggles and fights and more help. And then we return to where we came from. But now we have what he calls the elixir. We have the fountain of life. We have this like magic potion that we can use to help others because we figured out how to combat pre diabetes or. Or being overweight or whatever it was, and we solved it for ourselves. And now we’re in a position where we can be the mentor to the next person. And I find, that most of the people that we work with are people of that sort. Now they have the elixir and they’re like, I got to share this thing. Everybody in the world needs this. This is about most amazing thing ever. And then they’re like, why aren’t people just beating down my door to want this thing? And that’s when they realized. Oh crap, I need to go on another hero’s journey complete with another refusal of the call and another mentor and helpers and, enemies and opposers and going to the dark night of the soul and the innermost cave and all of that stuff to go to figure out how to actually get this to other people. And that’s where we come in. We come in, we’re at that point where we help them on the second hero’s journey. They might already, have tried some things, right? They might have tried gluing together, like you said, nine different software platforms, email marketing and website and a shopping card and video hosting and membership site and community and affiliate tracking and surveys and, schedulers and funnel builders and like all of the things. And they’re like, Oh Chris Badgett: God. Calvin Correli: complicated. So we help them on that journey on the technical side of things. And also on the, like the inner game thing, because it’s like 80, 90% it’s a, like the strategies and tactics and all that stuff is very important, but that’s. The least of it. It’s all about the mindset, the beliefs, the believing yourself, believing that you’re worthy of having a business of having a following, daring to be visible in the world, like all of those are all the things that people everybody, battles and myself included. And so that’s why we do the software and we do the coaching for people. Chris Badgett: Awesome. Tell me more about the coaching side, as a software company with Simplero, how do you deliver the coaching? Is it part of the package? Is it like a value add, Is it an upsell? And then what does it actually look like? Calvin Correli: It’s a separate program. And it’s not only for people who are using the software. It’s also for people who are not using the software though, like it’s. It’s most of the people are come from the software. Cause that’s the, majority of how we’ve marketed so far, but it’s really for people outside of some players as well. And the, idea behind it is very simple. Being an entrepreneur is a spiritual journey. Every, every problem in business is a personal problem that happens to show up in business. And every personal problem is ultimately a spiritual problem. Like it’s, about who we are being in the world. Who what’s the truth about our nature? And the reason I say spiritual problem is because What happens is that we all have this feeling deep inside in our personality that says I’m not enough. I’m not, I’m inadequate. Someone somehow, right? It’s whether it’s I’m not rich enough or successful enough or famous enough or skinny enough or fat enough or sexy enough or whatever it is, it’s I’m not enough. And so we try to go into Personal development, teach me how to work out, teach me how to lose weight, teach me how to build a business, all those things, which is great. It’s very valuable, but we reach a point where we realize it’s never going to fill that void of feeling not enough because that lives at the personality level. And that’s why when we go to the spiritual level, that’s where we can actually come to terms with the fact that we are already enough at a spiritual level and we’ll never feel enough at a personality level. And then we can operate from that energy. So, that’s the work. Like for me, it’s all about making it simple and it’s about bringing in this, like it’s the simple systems and then it’s the spirituality and it’s bringing the two together to actually get where we want to go. And the coaching. So it’s, like I said, it’s an add on to, is an additional, like it’s a separate program, if you will. And and the format is. What I see as the most effective format in the market right now. And I am curious to hear what you see out there, but it is, we do a weekly group coaching call. It’s 90 minutes where I present a framework upfront, 15, 20 minutes or something. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer, but I present a framework and then the rest of the time is open Q and a either about that framework or really about anything that people have. And so that 90 minutes is where we meet every week. Same time every week. That’s where I get to meet people. They get to meet me and they get to meet each other. So by showing up vulnerably with a question on that call, other people on the call, see them, everybody’s cameras on. And then the recording lives in the community site portal forever. And so over time we build up this catalog of, knowledge, right? Both the models and all the Q and A’s. And then we have a discussion forum online and. Alongside those recordings. And because people meet each other on the calls, now the community works a lot better. So is that like content together, the group calls with the community and with some content, we have some, pieces that are pre recorded in addition to the coaching calls, put all that together, that format works really well because people can support each other. In the community get a lot of value they can meet you they can get direct answers to those questions and It’s because they can see each other and they get all the models and frameworks And it’s very efficient for you as the coach because you show up for 90 minutes a week and then maybe a few hours Throughout the week, where you engage with the community and answer some questions, etc And I have a person On my team that manages the whole program. So I just essentially just show up for 90 minutes a week. Chris Badgett: Wow. That’s awesome. I would agree with you just in my experience and what I’m seeing with users that mix of content, whether that’s courses or live coaching and, community and actual like real conversational coaching is that’s where the magic happens. Yeah. The question I have for you. I usually don’t ask two questions at once as a podcaster, but they’re related. So I’ll ask them together one. If you’ve been doing it for a while. Don’t you sometimes get to the point where your body of work has, is covered the hero’s journey or all the stages and problems. So that’s one. And then the other one just inverse to that is I’m sure you’ve found a few areas or specific models or problem areas that are red, hot, and very popular. I’m curious what those are. Calvin Correli: Yeah. So to answer the first I haven’t gotten there yet. And I’ve also gone back to certain topics to give a fresh take on it, a fresh perspective based on what I’ve learned in the meantime or just to sharpen it with people. So I think that’s Fine too. The what’s great about it too, is that the questions that people ask, give me inspiration for what else to cover. And so I will, if there’s like, all right, here’s something that I see a lot of people struggling with. I actually don’t have the answer. Let me go out and research the answer and find the answer from some of the smartest people in the world that I happen to know. And then I bring them. Or, just from books or whatever research I do. And then I bring it to them and I’ll be like, Hey, this is something that I haven’t yet implemented, or I’m in the process of implementing. So I don’t know, I can’t tell you about, I am not talking about this from my personal experience of what I’ve done. I’m saying, this is what I’ve gathered. Here’s where I’ve gathered it. Here’s why I believe that’s one of the best answers out there right now. Because of these people or what I’ve seen or heard or, this place in that place. So I love that because it like, I, if I try to sit down and create content and come up with stuff like in a vacuum by myself, it never, ever works. It never works. What works is always. Meet people, answer their questions, listen to their questions, see where they’re at, figure out what they need, and then deliver that either in the moment, or I’ll give the best answer I have in the moment. Then I’ll make a note and go back and research and go deeper next time. And your second question was, what are the hot topics right now? Chris Badgett: Yeah. Favorite greatest hits. Calvin Correli: So the. The model, this is something that, that I’m curious what you’re doing, but for, lead generation and conversion, right? Every business has three, three main parts. You have the, you need to generate leads. People are interested, right? If you have a hot dog stand, it’s like the people who walk by or whatever, the potential prospect, right? Then you need to engage them in a conversation where you can have a chance of converting them. So sales So that’s when they’re step up and they’re interested. I, you try to sell them a hot dog and maybe a soda as well. And should you want a pretzel with your hot dog or whatever upsells, whatever you have. And then delivery. So where you actually deliver the hot dog. Give them the hot dog. And then they hopefully eat and enjoy it. And it reminds me of it’s crazy. I just, a book that I’ve read recently, which is on unreasonable hospitality. It’s freaking incredible. If you’ve ever read it we can double pick on that later. There’s a great hot dog story in there. Anyway, so. lead leads, conversions or sales and fulfillment leads tends to be the thing that everybody wants more of. How do you get more leads or, and conversion to how do you convert those leads? But generally people want more leads, right? That’s the number one thing. And something that I’ve been struggling a lot with, like, how do you get good leads? You can do It’s basically like people talk about organic partner and paid. Yeah. So organic is you put like SEO and SEO SEO is optimization, but SEO which I personally have always found excruciatingly boring, but. I know it works really well for some people, but then when you have chat dbt and Gemini and are we going to see a move away from search results and all that stuff. So questions on that. And then there’s like posting organic content, which was great, like five, six years ago. And most of these platforms, mostly now it’s really hard. Yeah. Like real TikTok shorts are where you get the chances of distribution, but the games has gotten like a lot harder, So organic is difficult. Partner can definitely work. Like that’s affiliate programs, referral programs of different kinds, partner programs. Ambassador programs. It’s definitely one of the things that have worked well for us, but we found it so far, it’s been tricky for us to really scale it. Like it does, it works well, but we don’t have a lot of levers to pull on it that we’ve been able to build, like acquiring new people or getting existing new partners or getting existing partners to promote more. Hasn’t really done move the needle for us. Then there’s paid running ads. That is getting harder and harder as well. Like four years ago during, the pandemic. Everybody flocked to their computers and as we’re working on gangbusters, if it’s always been a game of that. You have to know what to do and how to do it. You have to be a little bit smart, but like they generally worked really well. And then it’s just getting more and more expensive and more and more hard. Even back the whole reason that ClickFunnels exists is because of funnels, which is because like you couldn’t, you can no longer make the math work if you just ran ads to an offer. And that was it. You need upsells in order to pay for the traffic in order to make the math work. And and, even with the most, the deepest, most advanced, most clever funnels, like it’s harder and harder. To make ads work. Russell did a podcast. Russell Bronson from ClickFunnels did a podcast end of December where he was like, I don’t know what to do. I’m at Whitson. Like all our funnels are just not working as well anymore. And he was going to go hard on organic content as, the way to the, to To do it. Because if if you look at Alex, I’m always like what he’s done has been really, successful. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of effort. You have to be really good at it, but it really works when you do it. So my conclusion is like a long answer to say my conclusion is that the best way to get attention these days. In general, and for me specifically is podcasts, which is why I’m here. So by going on podcasts, the right podcasts, of course but by going on podcasts, I get a chance to be in front of new people, new audience. And those people that are attracted to like it, they end up spending like 45 minutes with me, which is fucking awesome versus an ad where they, or exactly where it’s five, 45 seconds or 60 seconds or whatever it is. Now they’re spending a lot of time with me. And then I’m going to invite people to then follow me on Instagram at Calvin Corelli on Instagram, go follow me there. And then DM me if you DM me the words 10 K I’ll send you my super simple blueprint for how you can scale to 10 K a month as a coach, like the simplest possible. Path that I’ve come up with. So that’s my CTA. So now I’m getting people on Instagram, getting a DM and then on the DMS, I am going to spoiler alert. I am going to chat with you and see if you’re fit to work with me either on some players as a client on some layer, or as a client on my co in my coaching programs and player Academy. And that’s. I found so far is the model that appeals the most to me. I’m not paying for ads. I’m actually getting to spend like 45 minutes an hour with someone that I like and that I care about. And I talk about stuff that I care about for people who are interested enough to spend the time to, to listen to it. So that to me is the hot topic right now is like that combination of podcasts or like stages in general. So being can be in a physical stage, can be a summit, it can be whatever, but you’re on someone else’s stage talking now, and then you get people onto your social media. I like Instagram a great chat DM platform. YouTube doesn’t have that. Facebook does. LinkedIn has a chat. So I like where we can actually. Converse with people. Cause that’s the, transaction happens in conversation, that conversion happens in conversation. Not it’s harder and harder to get like a landing page to work. And so with this model, you don’t need funnels. You don’t need landing pages, you don’t need, any of that stuff. You can just over chat and roll people directly into your programs at 5k, 10 K, 20 K, 30 K. Like it’s there’s really no. Like you can enroll people into very high ticket programs over chat without a call without nothing else. So that works really remarkably well. And so it’s that combination podcast to get new eyeballs, Instagram, or whatever your preferred social is to, nurture and convert those people. And that becomes a funnel, right? That becomes the funnel. That’s your podcast is your top of funnel. And then Instagram becomes your middle of funnel and your bottom of funnel. So you don’t need. Yeah, no complicated software and tech and all that stuff. Chris Badgett: I love that. And podcast too, gives you a lot of brand awareness. That’s not tracked. Like you don’t always know, but yeah, that’s still matters. Calvin Correli: A hundred percent. It’s what’s in people’s heads. I remember a conversation I had with Gary Vaynerchuk years ago, where it was like, everybody else is like. So obsessed with the emails and the followers and they want to have all the, you’re like, I don’t care about that. I just want to have that position in your mind, I want to have the, shelf space in your mind. So you’re going to look me up on Instagram whatever. Cause I like, I’m already in you and that’s that’s so powerful when you do that well. Chris Badgett: Yeah. And you mentioned the podcast 45 minutes, I’ve heard it called portable content of it. I’ve been podcasting for 10 years. I started my podcast at the same time as Tim Ferriss. I’m just a lot less known, but the whole thing with portable content is you’re only competing with three things. Audio books and music and podcasts. Other podcasts. And Calvin Correli: you also portable as in people listen to it while they’re walking or driving or whatnot, doing the Chris Badgett: dishes, whatever. And, you have that long time, like po at least probably the small podcast is like 12 minutes. A long one’s three hours. Yeah. So you, have a lot of attention without as much distraction as like on a screen per se. Yeah. So that’s for course creators and coaches in particular. I think podcasting is absolutely great because not only can you sharpen your expertise. By interacting with other leaders in your field and representing the best interests of your client. Calvin Correli: Yeah. Chris Badgett: But you’re building that partnership relationship at the same time, where cross promotion, joint ventures or whatever can happen. Exactly. And that’s Calvin Correli: a huge thing too. I’m glad you brought that up. Cause yeah, like you and I being, on this chat together, like now we’re refreshing a relationship that has been dormant for a few years. And now Oh yeah. Chris is top of mind. Calvin’s top of mind. So. it’s really that opportunity for, relationship building is awesome. And so my strategy is I have my own podcast as well. I don’t use that for new, for Legion, right? Because that’s not going to happen like that. If people are not going to I might, if I get really good at SEO, whatever, like people might search the park, Apple podcast directory and find my podcast, but probably not. That’s more once they heard about me. On your show on LFTR LMS what, is the podcast called? I forgot Chris Badgett: it’s LMS cast Calvin Correli: on LMS cast. Once they found me, once they hear about me on LMS cast, they’re going to follow me on Instagram and then they might go try to look me up on YouTube or just podcast, and then they’re going to find my podcast and get spent, spend more time with me. But my, that’s not even like the primary thing for my podcast is, number one, building relationships. So getting people on my podcast that I want to build a relationship with, that could be for potential referral partners, or it could be potential clients that I want to get in front of. And secondarily for content. So we’ll take the content off of the. My podcast as well as this podcast, and then put that into what I call my content machine that then finds snackable bits that we can post as TikTok, YouTube shorts or reels, and also longer, like YouTube clips as well. And so those are the two purposes of my own podcast fulfills, but it’s not a lead gen tool. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Yeah. I, in my opinion, podcast is like the super, platform that can go a lot of places and do cross functional things. Totally. For the course creators and coaches out there, we’ll go ahead. You had another Calvin Correli: thought. It’s just like when I started podcasting and I haven’t been super active, but I’m getting back into it now. But when I started, I was really worried about but, I don’t have much traffic. It’s been, I think I’ve had one person ever that I asked to be on my podcast that were, was interested in that number. People don’t give a crap about how many downloads you have on your podcast. Generally, they’re just like, they want, they’re excited to chat with you and emailing people and saying, Hey, will you be on my podcast? It’s such a better ask than, Hey, will you be a referral partner for me? Or do you want to like, can I sell you my software or my coaching program or my thing? My course, it’s a much better ask to say, Hey, do you want to be on a podcast? And then, Oh, by the way, now we can have a conversation. Chris Badgett: I love that for, me. Course creators and coaches who I know this is a hot button issue in our industry. So I wanted to ask your take on it, who have, who are wanting to do marketing. They’re getting that imposter syndrome of getting out on the stage, taking on the role of the mentor in, as in the hero’s journey framework for others. And they’re like, who am I to be Gandalf or Obi Wan Kenobi or whatever that comes up. And then also just literally getting into creating information products and making video content videos and YouTube channels and take talks and all this, especially from your perspective as a spiritual teacher, how does one get moving and get past that imposter syndrome Calvin Correli: by making it about them, not you. When you’re like, Oh, I, who am I to, and I don’t have, and what it like, that’s you making it all about you. The more you can make it about serving other people that, that just totally goes away. Cause it’s not about you. It’s about them. So put your focus there. It’s actually my, my my first book is show up and serve for that reason, right? Show up and serve, just show up and serve and not. Don’t be so focused on yourself. Focused on the difference that you can make for other people. It’s not even about so a hot topic along those lines are, you allowed to coach people on stuff that you haven’t yourself you haven’t. Fully mastered yourself. And I think it’s fair. And I think like Gary Vaynerchuk likes to harp in on 22 year old life coaches. Dude, you haven’t fucking lived life. Get out of here. My take is that, that if you’re. If you’re on the path and you’re doing the work and you’re figuring stuff out, like you can even if you’re not, honestly, if you have the skills to actually help other people achieve their results, then go do it. Just be honest about where you’re at. Forget the, like the fake like. all all those like fake private jet photos and, like fancy cars and all that bullshit. Forget all of that. It’s about you being just as, real with people as possible. One of my friends is Gay Hendricks is author of, the big leap and, many other books and been working on relationship, et cetera. But he coached Michael Dell at Dell computers, for example, it’s not like he’s built a billion dollar. Tech company, right? It doesn’t have to, in order to successfully coach Michael Dell, because he knows how the mind works and knows to get Michael Dell to the, like, wherever Mike needs to go. I don’t know the details of their conversation. I just know that they work together. So it’s not that you have to have the exact results. Is that you have what it takes to actually help people move forward in a genuine way. I think the trick is to, when we make it about ourselves Oh because I, like you’re, like, I need you to, for me to feel good, like about myself, like you become a proof that I’m like the bad ass, the bad guy the baller or something, right? Like that whole like ego place, that’s where it gets a little bit tricky. You’re coming from a place of genuinely wanting to serve people, then go fricking serve those people. Like they, they need you. The other piece of that is like the further along you are, the harder it can sometimes be to remember what it felt like to be where you were like 10 years ago or something. So when you’re closer to where your, clients are, you might actually be able to help them better. Chris Badgett: I love that. You just gave me a new insight as a deep Joseph Campbell, study or myself, which is that the mentor like Gandalf, he didn’t get the ring. He helped Frodo get the ring. Morpheus didn’t stop the matrix. He hadn’t done it, but he was a great mentor and guide for Neo to figure it out and find a way. The mentor is not necessarily a God. They’re just they just know how to bring the best out of people. That’s, a cool insight. Let’s talk about masterminds. I know that’s some of your users that’s in Plero or wanting to build masterminds as because they’d love community, but it can also be a powerful product that it can be life changing and really send a ripple of impact out into the world. But how does one construct one of those? Calvin Correli: Yeah, I mean masterminds is an interesting phenomenon, right? Cause it’s it feels so originally the idea came from Napoleon Hill. He writes about it in law of success. He writes about it in, in think and grow rich law of success. By the way, I only heard about fairly recently, like a couple of years ago and it’s Amazing. You haven’t, if you read thing and grow rich, but you haven’t read law of success, I highly recommend getting into law of success is just incredible. Lays it out like very clearly. But so the idea of the mastermind is that you grab, gather a handful of people or a dozen people, whatever it is that have a shared outcome. And we’re, working together towards that goal in our industry. Mastermind has been, morphed into this idea, Concept where it’s just like, we meet like three, four times a year maybe. And then there’s some coaching and then there’s some or not some coaching, really more, more content. There’s some talks and then there’s some you can chat around the tables or in the breaks or whatnot. And then there’s an online component where you have the recordings from the live events, and then you’ve got a community where people can use each other. I have found that I think, honestly, that model maybe has peaked. Because I think what people want and need are is like more, of the coaching, more of the relationship building. I’ve, what I’ve seen is that usually the online component isn’t working as well. For people in those programs, as in some other programs, I don’t know what you’ve seen. But I, really like that coaching format where someone is actually taking lead and saying, Hey, I’m on, I’m coaching and there’s a community where people can, use each other. But I have a point of view. I have frameworks. I have a a direction here that I’m coaching people on because I think people come to you a lot because they want something that you have. They want to be like you in some way, and that’s what attracts people. And then you can help people with that. But then. Really the bait and switches that you that a good coach will help people be themselves like they’re attracted to you because there’s some part of themselves that they have disowned that they’re seeing in you and they want some of that, which is awesome as you can help them reclaim that piece and then really. Put the spotlight on them to be who they are, not be like you. Chris Badgett: In my experience, I’ve I’m a huge fan of masterminding and I’m in some that have been going for four years meeting regularly and the best ones. They really, it’s not part of a product. It’s just people at a very similar spot with very similar goals, trying to do similar things, get together. It’s outside of a product that doesn’t cost anything, It’s just a group of people. To me, that’s been. Calvin Correli: Yeah. Chris Badgett: The most sustainable and successful. I think when you try to productize that, Calvin Correli: yeah, Chris Badgett: I think you’re better off, like you’re saying, doing the courses and the coaching and then encouraging your members to form masterminds on their own, and that might, that can actually benefit your business by being a part of that connection and all that. But it. It is tricky to turn it into a product that to have the long term benefits of a mastermind. Calvin Correli: Yeah. The simple answer to your question is once you have five people, you have a group. Chris Badgett: Yeah. Calvin Correli: So, if you want to start a group, like a mastermind or group coaching program or whatever it is, once you have five people, you have something and then it’s just building from there and getting, success with those early people and making sure that they love it. And then they refer their, friends to it because it’s so great. And then you build on that. Chris Badgett: Yeah. Let’s talk more broadly about the industry. What do you see in these past three years? Say if we go back to the early days of like online courses and internet marketing and like 2, 000 courses that were just videos with a bunch of bonuses. Where are we at today? In terms of a better stack or this person called for the second act to do something, there’s all this overwhelm that comes with like tools and like what you’re actually offering. What would you advise that person to simplify and get focused and give them a frame to step into? Calvin Correli: Yeah, I think that the whole. Like the concept of the value ladder, like you have something cheap and then something a little bit more expensive, a little more expensive, like that, that, like all those steps on that ladder is a little like outdated. We don’t need that the same way anymore. I think the people who come to you, like the leads are hottest when they come right in the door. I think we’ve all been there where we, were searching something over the weekend and we looked at, and then we like reached out to someone on Instagram and got in the DMs or whatever the process was. And then. Like we didn’t hear back. And then by the time like Monday, Tuesday rolls around and we got a response, we couldn’t remember what was it? Why was I like, really so keen on that? And then I forget so there’s like a halftime half life of, leads. And I think that the danger is like if you give people something like cheap and need to walk them up the value ladder, like the best clients are just going to go find someone else who will get them like what they really need at the point that they’re willing to pay, which is I hire probably and, give their money to that person. So I think it’s more, what I’m seeing is like the, all the free social media content, marketing stuff, and the quality there keeps getting up, right? The bar keeps being raised for the quality of content that you need to put out there to be really heard and seen if you want to build a big brand and then So the free stuff and then a low ticket subscription, like for us, it’s the simpler or the software, but you’d also be like a low ticket 50, a hundred dollars, 150, maybe 200 a month community paid community. And then a high ticket thing after that. So that could be more of like the eight, 10 K a year kind of thing. And then, or 15, 20 or something in that range, even 30, 60, and then you can go super high for Though one on one VIP experience, right? I’ve seen people charge two, 300, 000 for one on one coaching and a year kind of thing. But so there’s still a value ladder of sorts, but it’s more like your cheap membership is really just a way to get to like your new lead nurture that you get paid for and what you want to do. And it’s helps you offset some of your. Advertising costs. There’s always going to be costs associated even with while you’re doing his podcast and still cost you money to do your time and all that stuff. So it helps offset some of that. And then and, weed out the prospects that are not interested enough to pay you, like it could be as little as 10 bucks a month, right? Like it can be really low ticket, but it’s enough to get, have some skin in the game and say, Hey, these people are interested and now you can. You can ascend people into your quote unquote real programs and then have that eight, 10, 15 K annual program as your main bread and butter business. Chris Badgett: If you could wait, wave a magic wand, would you advise somebody to build, say, a lower cost recurring community first before building the high ticket program or opposite? Opposite. Yeah. Calvin Correli: Build the like eight, 10, 15 K a year program first, because that’s where you’re going to see. The most traction, the most value, you’re going to make the most money from doing that. And you’re going to prove that model works. And then you descend from that into, a cheaper membership later, but you, should be able to get just at least a handful of people in there. without too much effort. And then, and you can lower the price on that and you can do it for free and say, Hey, I just need some case studies. The only, I’ll do it. It’s normally 10, 000 or 5, 000 or whatever it is, but I’ll do it for you for free. If you will promise that if you like it, offer me a testimonial and and, refer to her friends or something like that. Because we want, we need to get started. We need some case studies. We need to show that we actually can deliver results for people. And so if you don’t have that, you can do that to get started. Chris Badgett: Awesome. I’m sure you see this too. So I want to get your take is education, entrepreneur person, but also a spiritual person. Sometimes there’s really talented people out there that have a lot of interest. Maybe they got really paid really well at their job doing X, Y, Z, but they hate it, but they’re actually really into like yoga and alternative healing or, and like some kind of fitness program. And they’re just, they can’t pick a topic or an avatar. And they’re just like, they’re really excited about entrepreneurship and marketing and they want to do this thing. But their, topic and avatar selection is just a mess. What do they do? Calvin Correli: Pick one for sure. Pick one and pick one that you know, and right? Someone that you would enjoy working with, whatever that avatar is that you. That you, have to really love the clients that you work with. You have to love working with them. So that’s a given. And then if that still leaves multiple options, then I would pick the ones that are, have the most money to pay you or for whom, like for whom, what you can offer for them is. Is value valuable to the extent that they want to pay a good money for it, that they have the money to pay you for it, and that you can close, you can find them, you can target them and you can enroll them fairly easily. So those are the factors, right? You want to be like high average price point fast time to close when people to easily identify and target those people. And then really enjoy working with them. Chris Badgett: Solid advice. And just to jump on the other side of from leads over sales to fulfillment, what is unreasonable hospitality? You peaked my interest earlier, so I got to find out what this Calvin Correli: is. So it’s a book about 11 Madison park, which is a restaurant like right up there on, on the upper East. That was the number one restaurant in the world for many years. And the book describes what they did to just. Over deliver on people’s expectations as patrons of this restaurant. And what I love about it, like it’s something that we at Simplero, we over invest in customer success. And if something, if you look at our reviews online, almost all of them mentioned our customer support, our customer service, just cause we, really care and that just comes from me. Cause I just love great customer service. I hate receiving terrible customer service experience. I hate being like talked down to, or not heard properly. And there’s so much garbage customer service out there. So something that we really invest in. And so when I read that book, I was like, it was one of those things where three people were recommending that book within two days. It was like, okay, she’d probably read it. I read it. And then now I’m getting the whole team to read it. Cause we’re already good at this. And I want to like just double, triple down on that. And so one of the examples in there. Is that the they would be so attentive to their guests. One of the waiters was overhearing some two couples that were visiting the city and they’d eaten at all the top restaurants in the city and they just had a great time and this is not, they didn’t share this with the waiter. They just, the waiter happened to hear this and they’re like, their only regret was that they didn’t actually. Get to visit a New York city hot dog stand, like the total opposite end of the spectrum from all these gourmet restaurants. But they were just like, they just wanted to have that experience. And so the waiter hears it. Runs out the door to the hot dog cart on the corner buys a New York hot dog for them brings it to the kitchen and has the chef prepare it. So he chops this hot dog into four pieces, puts them on separate plates and then does some like chef magic, garnishing, whatever. And then they serve that as like an extra surprise dish to the group and they’re just ecstatic over the moon. And that level of just attention to people, to care, to just like running with it and like the chef in the story was like, what the fuck are you talking about? He’s no, Trust me. Like we’re doing this. And then they went through with it. I just love that. It was like a couple of other examples. There was a when, people come show up at the restaurant, they’re Ready for their, for to T they will have looked up everybody who reserved a table, they’ll have looked them up on Google. If you have the photo on the internet somewhere, they’re going to find that photo. So when you step in the door, they greet you by name, right? Half an hour, 45 minutes before your reservation comes up, they review those photos. So they’re ready for you by the time you come in the door. And as you’re entering, someone is signaling to. The, host, whether your table is ready or not. And so they don’t need to look at the computer. They can just say, Hey, like here, they can just take you to the bar to wait or take you directly to the table. They don’t need like these, be with you the whole time when you’re at the table and they’re asking you, do you want still sparkling or tap water. They’re going to, the waiter that asks you is going to signal some hand signs behind his back. And then someone else comes in instantly, like just gives you the right water. So it’s it’s just thinking things through like little details like that. That’s just. For me, I just for me, I love that. I love that stuff. Chris Badgett: Wow. That’s amazing. It’s, and I just want to confirm, it’s definitely part of your brand. Like that care and that empathy and that great support. I have a friend near me. Who’s a cook and a chef. He’s actually. Use some Plero and I remember him talking about your just the, vibe and the support and the experience of the company. And I’ve just noted that’s just no implanted in my brain with the brand of some players, like these guys go above and beyond and support and actually really care about their customers. And the fact that you have the the coaching as well, it’s just an indication. Like we’re just, we’re not just trying to sell you software. We want you to be successful and remove blockages and stuff like that. Calvin Correli: Yeah. And doing the coaching for me has been just remarkable. Like I see coaching. As a force multiplier, I get to be with my audience every week, experience exactly what they’re struggling with so that I can take I just ingrains my people, my avatar into my brain every single week. And it aligns me with the people that I’m serving in such a deep way. It’s been really helpful for me, like really profound to do that. And it’s crazy because I was like for many years, I was so busy doing the software and so busy feeling like I was not worthy and imposter and all of the stuff that we all struggle with that I didn’t do the coaching. And it was actually one of my friends that, that. Whom sidebar I met at a food truck in Washington Square Park over there some years ago, right at the beginning of COVID. He was the one that, that got me to do a coaching program. I’m so grateful because it’s been, yeah, game changer for me and for the company and for our people. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. And it ties back into your last point, which was that. If you’re having trouble selecting a topic or an avatar or a niche, who do you want to spend time with? Because if you’re going to be really good, you’re going to be spending a lot of time with these people and you got to like them and get them and want to keep understanding and going deeper. Calvin Correli: Yeah. And an added bonus for, me too, has been with this coaching program, I’m doing exactly what my clients are doing. I’m doing the same thing using the same software. Guess where Simplero Academy runs? Of course it runs in Simplero. Everything runs in Simplero. And so that’s why too, I like doing it externally as well. So we’re not just doing, working with Simplero client, Simplero members, but also with people who are not on Simplero yet is really helpful because that. Is me doing the things that I like that my clients would be doing. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Calvin, thanks for coming back on the show. I really appreciate it. He’s a simplero. com. He also has a personal website at calvincarelli. com. Is there any other way you mentioned mentioned again, the The, Instagram DM thing. Calvin Correli: So follow me, go follow me on Instagram at Calvin Corelli, C A L V I N C O R E L I two R’s one L very confusing. Calvin Corelli at Instagram and then DM me the there’s 10 K and say that you came from, LMS cast the podcast. Then I’ll, know that this is where you heard. You discovered me and then I’ll send you over the link to the like the video where I break down how to get to 10, 000 a month as a coach. And and then, yeah, see how, if we can support you either on some Blair or in similar Academy or just some other way. Chris Badgett: Awesome, Calvin. Thanks for coming back on the show. We’ll have to do this again sometime. Calvin Correli: All right. Appreciate it, Chris. Thank you. 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 What’s Working Now For Coaches and Course Creators With Calvin Correli appeared first on LMScast.

In this LMScast episode, Miriam Castilla shares insights about wealth, abundance, and the relationship with money in the conversation. Miriam Castilla works as a coach, speaker, and businesswoman. Her engineering education gives her a distinct viewpoint in the areas of plenty, wealth thinking, and money management. She uses her personal experience of being able to travel for four months out of the year without worrying about money to illustrate her definition of wealth and abundance—having options beyond money. Where money doesn’t limit what one can or cannot do. She introduces her “Magnetic Money” group coaching program, which is intended for those with variable incomes or those who want to improve their money management. It focuses on combining energy and mentality with realistic financial techniques. Miriam draws comparisons between the relationship with money and that with a significant other, emphasizing symptoms of an unhealthy relationship as avoidance, bad emotions, and dread related to money management. 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 from the other side of the world down under in Australia. It’s Miriam Castilla. She’s from miriamcastilla. com, two L’s in Castilla. Welcome to the show, Miriam. Miriam Castilla: Hello. Thank you very much for having me. Chris Badgett: I’m really excited to get into it with you today. We’re going to be talking about creating wealth mindset around money, abundance, entrepreneurship, your course creator journey. There’s a lot we’re going to get into. But let’s start with a question I’ve seen you ask in your videos, which is what does wealth and abundance mean to you? Miriam Castilla: Oh, nice one. To me, it’s really all about choices and not having money be the thing that defines what I get to do. So it’s actually about moving beyond money. And not even having to think about money. For example my husband and I now spend about four months of the year just traveling and not, thinking about money. So that’s what wealth and abundance means to me, having those kinds of choices. Chris Badgett: Awesome. Tell us a little bit about what magnetic money is. Miriam Castilla: Okay. So magnetic money is a group coaching program Mainly for small business owners or really anyone with irregular income or who wants to try and figure out how to make their money work best for them. And the thing that we do there that’s really quite different to other money programs out there is we do what I call marrying the magical with the practical. So we, we look at how do you organize and best manage your personal finances? Cause no one ever teaches us that stuff, especially when you have fluctuating income, what does that actually look like? What bank accounts do I need? What do I do with my money when it comes in? How do I decide? What goes where? So we cover all of that and we cover the mindset side as well as the energetics the way you feel about your money. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. I think we’re going to unpack a few of those things. Let’s start with an unhealthy relationship to money. What are some patterns, mindsets, behaviors with an unhealthy relationship with money and wealth and abundance in life? Miriam Castilla: Yeah, so the word relationship I think is really key to helping people figure that out. Because what’s a sign of an unhealthy relationship with your significant other? It’s when you start avoiding each other, talking badly about each other behind each other’s back start having less than pleasant feelings towards the other person and maybe not always expressing those. So it’s It’s the same with money and I say to people sometimes if money were a person in your life and they knew how you really felt and thought about them would they want to hang around you? And it’s, having that, if you notice yourself having that love, hate relationship with money you want more, but you feel let down by it, or you’re uncertain or uncomfortable even dealing with it managing it. Sometimes people avoid looking at their banking all together because they just fear the worst. And when we actually finally do, they go, Oh. It’s actually quite okay, isn’t it? So I think if you mirror it to human relationships that quickly lets you establish whether it’s a healthy one or an unhealthy one. Chris Badgett: I love that. Let’s go a little deeper into the magical or the energetic aspect. What is, tell us more about that, like energy around money and we’ve got the law of attraction and all that stuff. Take us as a guide through this world of. Energetics and money. Miriam Castilla: Yeah it’s, an interesting area. So my background originally is as an engineer. So this whole law of attraction thing, it took me a long time to get to a point where I thought, Oh no, it’s a real thing. And you can use. It’s all different language to describe it, but we all know people where money just flows to them easily. Everything goes really well. One thing leads to another and it’s like they’re blessed or something. And then we all know people, or sometimes we feel like we are the people where it just It doesn’t matter how hard you seem to try. It’s just not wanting to flow. And so that’s what we’re talking about when we’re talking about the energetics, because ultimately you want to be in a state where you do just allow that money to flow. You basically become magnetic to it, which is why I called my program magnetic money. And so it comes down to sometimes the harder you try, the worse it gets. That’s because we start focusing on the lack of it and the frustration around it. So that’s when all those feelings around, Oh money’s driving me crazy dah, And you just start worrying and fearing. You can look at it from all these different levels, like even your brain will shut down and you’ll stop thinking clearly and you’ll stop being Solution focused and open to ideas and creativity and ways to move forward and energetically, you literally shut down. So your focus is then on there’s not enough and hey, presto, that’s what you tend to then attract more of not enough. It’s not working whatever you focus on expands basically. Chris Badgett: Tell us more about that. Like getting into the the attract attraction aspect of it. I remember I watched the movie, the secret when it first came out a long time ago and I was really into it and I’m, like it’s, it makes sense and I don’t know, I start seeing it everywhere, like your vibe attracts your tribe is a saying like what you put out there, usually more of that comes back to you, positive or negative. What kind of behaviors and stuff can we do to really turn on that law of attraction or at least make it even more powerful than it is in our lives? Miriam Castilla: Yeah, totally. So a little back story with the secret. When that came out, I was going through what I call my broke single mum phase, and I used to have it just playing all the time in my house. My kids were going nuts. And one of the teachers I really loved on that was Mike Dooley. And I used, because he would just sum it all up by saying thoughts become things. Which is really the crux of the answer to your question. And I used to think, wow, that’s so simple. So cool. Imagine if one day I could teach something like this or work with someone like that. And I actually do now. I’m part of Mike Dooley’s team and we actually deliver his infinite possibilities trainer program. Thoughts become things. And so what can we do? It’s, I think it’s if you want to sum it up, it’s about being clear on these desires without being so attached to them that we completely lock ourselves down and get in our own way. And when it comes to money, it’s really about. Something as, it’s as simple as focus on the abundance that’s all around you and how much you enjoy it and how much more you want of it and all the cool things you can do with it. And it opens you up energetically to attracting more of it and to actually seeing and becoming aware of all the ways that can happen and what tends to happen for a lot of people. And they don’t even realize it is because they want more money in their life. They are actually inadvertently focused on because it’s not enough. It comes down to what you focus on expands, but if you focus on the lack of money and that you want more because there’s not enough, that’s what you get more of. And. You need to be able to turn that on its head and it does feel a little counterintuitive sometimes because by focusing on what you’ve already gotten, how much you love it and what it gives you, you actually then attract more of that energy. It’ll go more money to let you do more cool things. Does that make sense? Chris Badgett: That does make sense. And I think just to maybe clarify it a little more, could you speak to how it works in personal relationships? So for example, if you want, if you’re looking for a life partner or you’re looking for more friends that lift you up instead of pull you down what would you need to do to attract those things? Yeah. Miriam Castilla: So you’ve got to be that thing first, right? If you want to attract really cool, fun people to hang around with, you’ve got to be one of them yourself. If you want to attract a really loving, caring partner, who’s got their act together and doesn’t come with a whole lot of baggage, let’s say, then you’ve got to figure out your own stuff and. Be really grounded In yourself, if, and we all know this we tend to have like different places, different faces, same problem. And that’s because we’re bringing ourselves along and maybe we haven’t grown and evolved yet. So you’ve got to become the thing first to attract the thing. And it goes for relationships, friendships you can insert any topic, even down to health. If you focus on your wellbeing and how much you appreciate it, Your body is going to start functioning better because number one, you’re not in a stress state and you start. Attracting more opportunities and good health into your life. So it works on every single level of life. Chris Badgett: That’s, wonderful. Zeroing in on that. If we look at a pattern that a lot of people end up in, especially when they’re first starting as an entrepreneur, particularly if they’re, let’s say in a more of a business niche Sometimes there’s a, there’s this advice of fake it till you make it kind of thing. But so how do we, with authenticity become what we want to be first, even if we’re not quite there yet with our business or our income or whatever it is, give us some nuanced advice there. Miriam Castilla: So I think the fake it till you make it, it can be a little bit of a slippery slope because sometimes people feel like they need to pretend there’s something they’re not, and. It’s not really about that. It’s more about confidence that it’s all going to work out fine and really putting yourself in that space and into that energy. And fake it till you make it is about being open to all the cool ways that can happen and actually training your nervous system and you’re literally laying down neural pathways that see that as your normal. I’m big on visualization because I’m also a hypnotherapist. And visualization is a wonderful way to condition your body to feeling success abundance, all those cool things. You’re literally training your body chemistry and getting your body addicted to that state. And then you will naturally unconsciously keep seeking out more ways to make that happen. And also on the level of neural pathways, you’re laying that down and it becomes a routine track that you drank. Brain travels down. So when you think about the future of your business and your goals, you see yourself accomplishing them, you see yourself achieving them. And it becomes an acceptable state. It becomes a first response. And then you naturally, unconsciously tend to act more and more in accordance with that. So to me, that’s what Fake It Till You Make It is about. And it’s about really thinking about Believing in yourself, starting to see it starting to believe it and, elevating your self image. So I think a cool way to sum it up is I heard Bob Proctor long time ago say, you cannot outperform your own self image. And that’s what it comes down to, right? Chris Badgett: Wow. This is very good. I noticed on your website and for you out there, head on over to Miriam castilla. com money habit archetypes. What are those? And yeah, take us to school. Miriam Castilla: Okay. So a lot of people will say, Oh, I seem to have all these money blocks or must have lots of limiting beliefs around money. Now I’m fundamentally lazy and also I like to make things really simple. Rather than thinking about a million limiting beliefs that get in our way, if we actually go a level above that, it’s all just part of a greater story. So how do I know what this story is that I’ve programmed myself with? Look at what you do with your money because that’s the ultimate expression and end result of whatever’s going on internally. So it’s, really simple at the end of the day, that the easiest starting point is to look at your general habit pattern around money and begin there and then work your way backwards. So money habit archetypes are the way you, tend to naturally and unconsciously treat your money and I break it down to just 3 categories and then we go from there. And the 3 categories are overextender where there’s always more going out than coming in. Spender where it comes in and whoops, there she goes and accumulator, which is the person that no matter how much or how little comes in, they will manage to swirl some away. And that’s their default programming. So that’s what the money habit, archetypes are all about. Chris Badgett: Is the goal to like take the best parts of all three or just become an accumulator? Miriam Castilla: No, look, the goal is not necessarily to become the goal is to become, to have a healthy money pattern. So my belief is I think the only one that’s really not going to serve anyone is the overextender because you’re going to keep going to more debt, but you can be a really healthy spender money habit archetype You know, you just living in the flow of abundance where money comes in and it goes out again, you spend it, you invest it, you give it away, whatever. But it’s not coming from a place of because I don’t deserve to have my own. It’s coming from a place of there’s plenty for everyone. It might be a little bit of a utopian dream of mine that’s actually possible. I think for most people, it’s about becoming more of a healthy accumulator pattern and healing really the unhealthy belief systems that keep them stuck in an unhealthy pattern. Because having said that most people think I need to be an accumulator. And the thing is that most of the people that are actually attracted to me and my work are accumulators. And what’s driving them is an unhealthy fear or belief that it’s still not enough and what I don’t want. To perpetuate is what I call broke millionaire syndrome, because there are plenty of people who’ve got loads of money and are really stressed about it. So you don’t have to have loads of money to feel like a millionaire or even to live like a millionaire for that matter. So a healthy towards the accumulator kind of pattern, archetype and expression and relationship with money is the ultimate goal. Yes. Chris Badgett: How did you in your life get this focus on money and abundance? Like, where did the passion for this area of life develop for you and your story? For Miriam Castilla: how long have we got Plenty of time. So I think the lights went on for me around this. I went through a divorce, I mentioned my broke single mom, kind of period. And I went through a divorce and that was when I heavily got into the secret and really embraced that sort of spiritual side of life. And I, dug really deep. But at the same time, I think being an engineer and Being half German and, all of that made me really take good care of my money as well. So I did it instinctively. Then the interesting thing is that what was born out of that period in my life was a business in finance. And that meant that I got to see other people’s finances and where they were at. It was a really huge eye opener because the people who had large incomes were often the most stressed about money. Just because somebody had a great income didn’t mean that they were financially stable or were building their wealth. Sometimes it was the people on quite modest incomes that actually had assets and that kind of financial stability. That was a huge eye opener where I thought, Oh, it’s not just me. And from there, I got really passionate about helping people understand that it’s what goes on in here as well as having the skills. That you have to bring together at the end of the day, if you want to have a healthy relationship with money and actually not just have the money in the bank, but also feel great about it and feel like it’s enough and feel safe and secure. So that’s the short version of that story. Chris Badgett: Very cool. Tell us the part of the story of becoming a course creator. For example, I see on Udemy, you have over 4, 000 students over there. How did the okay, I’m really passionate about this topic to, I want to teach and I want to figure out how to put that on the internet. Where did that, how did that happen for you? Miriam Castilla: So I initially started coaching people one on one and quickly realized You know, can only help me reach so many people and there’s only one of me. And also I find that unnaturally I love teaching. I really love, maybe it’s because I love talking. And I don’t know, but I love teaching and I like breaking things down into simple actionable steps. I think that’s the engineering background. And so it just lent itself naturally to building a course and being able to reach more people. And I think the other. Cool part not only does the course help you leverage yourself, your time build this beautiful leveraged income and reach a whole lot of people. It also helps those people find a community. And I think that’s a really important thing too. It’s not just me telling them something. It’s them being able to interface and connect with other people on the same journey who they can maybe relate to even better than myself. Because often what happens as, the teacher who’s lived it and been through it all, sometimes you seem a little removed to the student. And so having somebody nearby who’s maybe just one step ahead of them is a really great thing. And it just happened naturally. I think it just seemed like a no brainer to be honest, to build a course and just reach more people. Chris Badgett: Awesome. On the course topic specifically and as it relates to becoming your most authentic, positive, abundant self. I see a lot of people get hung up on figuring out what to focus on, like what niche or what should I make my course about? What part of. Creating an abundant life. Can you offer some advice around selecting your focus and your like your topic for your course or your website or your coaching program so that it’s in alignment and has the highest odds of success for that individual. Miriam Castilla: I like that. You said the word. in alignment because I think that’s really critical. A lot of people will create a course because they think it’s going to sell or it’s, just a very economic decision. And for some people that may work out okay, but I find most people who want to create their own courses are actually driven by something a little bit deeper. They want to make an impact. They want to. make a difference in the world. And so tapping into that and the way that truly lights you up, I think is, really important. So it has to feel in alignment. There’s an exercise I take some of my VIP clients through called your unconscious core values. And we do it using hypnosis so that we actually get past the, this is what I think should be important to me to, Oh, this is what is actually important to me. If I’m completely honest with. And it’s those things that naturally drive us internally. If we can tap into those, the things that just light us up, that we’re really passionate about, what’s going to happen is that we get, we forget about ourselves and we move beyond ourselves in creating the course in the marketing of the course in the showing up, it lets you tap into an energy that feels a bit more limitless where. You can get your rant on when you talk about your topic and get really passionate. And I think if you just selecting a topic, because you’ve done your market research and it says that learning how to knit scarves in three different colors is the course. And then you go research and create a course I’m not going to say it can’t work, but I think if you really want to love your business and love everything you need to do to make it a success Choose the niche that you feel really passionate about where you do know your stuff and you know it’s going to make a difference as well and you can really get behind that. Chris Badgett: Awesome. Let’s, talk about getting results for clients and students. You’ve worked with a lot of clients and you’ve had students and readers and a bunch of people around your work there’s courses, there’s coaching, there’s community. What kind of pieces, if you could advise somebody who’s trying to help others with this in a specific area of life what, components make an effective program in your experience for the, in terms of learner results Miriam Castilla: in terms of learner results, I think for me, it’s been a really interesting journey and I would actually say stay open and pay attention to what your people are saying, what the feedback is and what works for them, because I think every community Will be a little bit different, and it doesn’t mean that the large building blocks need to be different. It’s more about how do I bring it all together? For example, in magnetic money, we’ve played with lots of different things, and I give myself permission to change it. So we will have practical workshops. I offer little 15 minute focus sessions. sessions with myself one on one, which not a lot of group course creators will do, but it works really well for my community because it’s not a full coaching session, but it’s just a quick check in. Things like having accountability tends to work really well for my people. For others, it may not work well. So I think it’s really important to Be tuned in and not to lock yourself in too hard into those little ancillary pieces of the puzzle, but as far as the actual here’s the course log in, watch the modules. The 1 thing that I think will work for everybody. Keep it simple, keep it short, break it down into little steps. Chris Badgett: Awesome. And I noticed you Miriam Castilla: agreed with that. Chris Badgett: Oh, I do. I love the first part you said actually about staying open. Cause these are human beings and yes, we’ve got technology between us, but ultimately it’s about a human connection and a transfer of knowledge and, then people are different. And then you start seeing patterns of what works or where you can improve. And I love that you take the you offer some 15 minute one on ones and stuff like that, because I heard this saying once that. People like, how do you charge more or whatever? It’s really what people are paying for is access. So there’s this website called masterclass where you can learn from all these famous people, but they’re not going to help you. They’re not around to help or anything. It’s just content. So that human connection is, super important also amongst the community of learners as well. So I, like your approach there. Miriam Castilla: And I think as long as you stay in alignment and you stay in that positive energy that we’ve talked about, you, these ideas will come to you because I, don’t want to coach everybody one on one in my program. It would burn me out. Really fast, but this idea of, Oh, no, I can just offer 15 minutes slots and they’re limited. And we, talk about that. Please don’t hog them we have an understanding that this is for the people who need a hand and. Let everybody have it go. It works really well and it. I even see people talk about, Oh I’ve, canceled my 15 minute spot with Miriam because I’ve worked it out myself. If anybody wants it, there’s now one available again. It actually helps people look after each other. So there’s a million ways of doing things and we just need to give ourselves permission to be open to it. Chris Badgett: I love that. What’s working for you from a marketing perspective or attracting clients or, getting clients? Or, learners or customers, whatever you want to call them, how, what’s working for you as a coach and course creator these days. Miriam Castilla: Yeah, that, that’s also an, ever changing thing because technology changes the market. Changes the algorithms change. What tends to work really well for me is things, I’m going to give you the energetic answer, is things that feel really easy for me and that I really enjoy doing. With content, for example I do create content, but I’ve stopped sitting down once a month to create a block of content because I find that when it goes out there, I might be in a different space, so I’ve created something when I wasn’t in the right space. So I’ve given myself permission to do it in a way that feels more in flow for me, which means sometimes I’ll create it on the day and just put it out there, or I will create a whole batch. I’ve allowed myself to be a little bit more fluid with that. Coming on as a guest on podcasts was like. Because I love talking. I love meeting people and it’s a wonderful way to tap into a broader audience. So I still don’t have my own podcast. So I think again, what works is yes, you’ve got to look at what makes sense strategically, but you also have to look at. What’s going to work for you? What’s going to feel good? That’s sustainable for you. And having said that, I have started running ads again, because I finally figured out a system that is going to work okay for me. And now we’re up and running with ads again, but I hadn’t run any ads for about two years. But I think ultimately what works for my audience is and what works for me to bring people into my world is for them to just like even today, we’re talking to have a little experience of what I’m all about. If I just put ads out there with stock images, it, I don’t think it would be the same because that’s not the kind of people that tend to come into my program. The kind of people that come into my program are people who really want that connection and need that little bit of. I’m going to say mothering and support to go. It’s okay. You’re not the only one. You’re not broken. And we’ve got this because money is a very emotional topic for people, and it comes with a lot of stuff, right? Yeah, again, it’s tuning into. Yeah. What, what’s going to work for me that’s sustainable, that feels in alignment and also what makes strategic sense and then finding those matches between the two. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. I think you would make a great podcast host, by the way. Miriam Castilla: it’s on the list. It’s on the list, Chris. Chris Badgett: I didn’t realize the wisdom of it for me at that time, but I’ve been podcasting for nine years and it’s, really easy for me and I enjoy it. I get a lot out of it, I learn. I meet amazing people, I help the community. It’s good marketing. It’s a really cool format. A money question for you. And maybe you can give us both an energetic and an engineering answer. I see people get hung up a little bit on pricing of an online learning program. And particularly I noticed sometimes some of the best people that are really good are they have the most self doubt or imposter syndrome or whatever. And their pricing, it’s just hold a finger up in the air and just guess or I don’t know, but since pricing is a money and a value issue, what would you advise people? Miriam Castilla: Yeah, that’s huge. So I mentioned before that we run some workshops in my community. The most popular one has been the one on magnetic pricing because. And so one of the big things, it is a huge mindset issue for starters, because what’s the right price for a course? There is no correct answer, right? It’s whatever the purchaser believes is equivalent of its value. And so if you’re the person selling the course, you’ve got to believe that yourself to begin with. So I think a huge issue with pricing of courses is people come into it with this employee mentality still of thinking about charging by the hour. And then leveraged product where really You’re not working. You are working. You’re working your butt off to market the thing in the background, but you’re not mark. You’re not working to deliver it., you’re not standing up in front of the class. And so they have this disconnect where they think I’m, not deserving it. I’m not Earning this money. And so the first thing is stop thinking about hourly rate, forget it. And look at the value you’re delivering and the difference that makes in people’s lives. What’s that worth? If you help people save their marriage with your course. What’s that worth? Just even on a hard practical note, what’s the bloody cost of a divorce? Let alone the emotional aspect and being able to continue in a relationship that’s gotten through a rough patch. That value is enormous. You can’t, and if you ask people who’ve been through that, and and have maybe come out the other side of it, We’ve got a strange crackly thing. I don’t know if you can hear that. I can’t hear that. You can’t all I’m just going to keep talking. I just didn’t want to be talking over the top of, oh, there you go. Sorry. So where was it? if you ask somebody who’d been through that other side and come out the other side of it and said what was that worth to you or somebody who’s going through it and wants to save their marriage they would tell you, I don’t care what it costs. If you think about it from that point of view, it quickly shifts your perspective on what the value of your course is. And If you also think about if you can help people achieve an outcome in a shortened period of time, what’s the value of that? We’re all used to paying extra for express for an express delivery or yes, I want to get my whatever fixed, but can you please get it done in two days instead of two weeks? We’re happy to pay extra for that. So sometimes when people Can create an outcome in a short period of time, or in just a few modules, say, they think, Oh, but there’s not a lot of stuff there, but really, that’s more valuable, right? Because you’ve created, say, six modules of learning and you deliver an outcome. If you made people sit through 20 modules to get the same outcome, you would probably lose. Some of your audience along the way, and so it’s actually more valuable. So it’s about actually shifting your mindset from that employee kind of thinking. We’ve all been conditioned into growing up and really looking at what’s the value of the outcome I’m delivering? How well and efficiently am I delivering it? And that’s valuable and. Just not making it about ourselves, I think is the bottom line not making it about our self worth and our sense of being deserving. It’s about disconnecting from that, shifting the mindset and going to do the work on why do I feel like I’m not deserving of having an awesome multiple six figure income from a course I created three years ago? What’s that about? And when you work on that, a lot of the Kind of questioning of the value and the pricing of the course will just drop away and you’ll be able to look at it much more objectively. I’m not sure if I answered your question. Did I answer your question? You Chris Badgett: did you a hundred percent. Moving a little further into the journey, let’s say the, course is working, there’s some health and things. What I see happen to a lot of entrepreneurs is they end up on this infinite growth mode, sometimes sacrificing their health, their relationships. Even just the things they used to do for fun or friendships or whatever. What advice do you have around that for if somebody is like accumulating, but they never, they’re like in this like battle fatigue where they just. Keep charging and they don’t stop and smell the roses or enjoy life a little what’s going on there. And how do we fix it? Miriam Castilla: Yeah, I think you actually just said it because you said they’re in that accumulative space, right? That so they’re being an accumulator in terms of it’s still not enough. I haven’t done enough. This can’t be All there is to it. So they keep going, they keep pushing. They keep driving from a mindset point of view and a sort of what’s the story you’re telling yourself point of view. It’s, that it’s not enough. I’ve not done enough. It’s not good enough. So I have to keep pushing and driving. So it’s actually about feeling deserving of taking the time out. It’s also very much it becomes a. a habit and an addiction, like we talked about being addicted to having to sit at your desk, to having to check, your phone notifications or your emails as soon as you wake up in the morning. Being able to break all of those patterns and working on actually feeling deserving is, really critical. So I that you can set up structures to help you with that. You can put apps on your phone that don’t let you open things up to begin with until maybe you’ve done your morning meditation or whatever that thing is. So one of the things I teach people is, and this is. It’s really It’s related to what you’re asking about. But it actually is very helpful in what you’re asking about as well. I teach them a process or I guess an approach that you, I call start high, stay high. Now I’m not asking them to smoke a joint first thing in the morning. I’m asking them to get on a high vibration first thing in the morning to get in the space of feeling good and just feeling good. Being grounded and centered, so you make that first part of the day about you getting into a good headspace and it means don’t look at your phone don’t Start with maybe a meditation or a walk or some stretching or some exercise, like something that gets you really connected to you and grounded. And when you can get started like that and get some momentum going. It helps you carry that into your day. And then things like just working maybe to a Pomodoro timer and then forcing yourself to get up and have a break. What works for me because I do have my kind of. recovering perfectionist and inner workaholic that still like to mess with me, is I will just book things out of the office for half the day. And then I know I’ve only got three hours in the office today. What’s actually important, what does need to get done. So then I focus in and I actually do the important work rather than just the busy work. So setting ourselves up. And self managing goes a really long way. And then at the same time, looking into those deeper belief systems and patterns around, why do I think that I have to work my ass off to deserve this? Why do I feel like it’s never enough? What’s that all about? And if you need to work with a practitioner, work with a practitioner. But just starting to ask yourself those questions, maybe journaling around them, spending some time pondering them as you go for a walk will go a very long way towards unraveling that stuff. Chris Badgett: All right. Two more questions for you. One of them is around relationships. What happens when somebody develops a more healthy Relationship with money, let’s say their partner is stuck in the old place where they were. Of course you want to help your partner experience the, things that you’ve figured out or the ways you’ve grown. But maybe sometimes it’s, not, there’s just like a different money archetype there or whatever. And they’re, not interested. What Cause I know money is the root of issue in a lot of relationships. So talk, to us about relationships and money. Miriam Castilla: Yeah this, is huge. And so what I found in the past, people would come into my program and two, three weeks into it, they’d say, this is awesome. I’m really noticing the shifts. I’m feeling so much better already. Now what do I do about that? And I would be like, ignore them, please ignore them, keep doing the work for yourself. It, is a really challenging thing. it’s for that reason that we’ve actually now opened up the space and said. Bring your life partner for free if they’re ready and willing, because they have to be ready and willing. And even if you don’t have that opportunity of bringing them into a space where they’re learning what you’re learning. It’s really important to stay in your own lane. As you especially do this work around money, feeling deserving, opening to receiving more. And just getting comfortable with the idea that, yeah, I’m. earning great money, or I’m on my way to earning great money. And I don’t have to work my butt off to, to do it. And you’re getting comfortable in that space. You’re still a little bit fragile, right? You’ve still got these old patterns and these old belief systems that want to pull you back into the cave of safety. Because we all have that reptilian lizard brain still that just wants to keep going. Keep us safe and keep us small. And so it’s really important to stay in your own lane. Do your own work, ignore them as best as you can. Because as you become stable and this becomes your new normal, and we talked about your own self image. As you solidify that and really get stable and unshakable in that, then you’ll become infectious to them. But while you’re still wobbly. They will infect you and you’ll end up in. I don’t know, maybe a money argument or they’ll convince you that there is things to really be worried about and what’s going on with you. You’ve suddenly got rose colored glasses on and you’re not being realistic or whatever they may accuse you of, right? So it’s no, just stick with it. Do your work. And it will automatically become infectious. It just happens. So it’s actually not your job to try and fix them if you do. You’re just opening yourself up to being toppled off the perch that you’ve just managed to put yourself on. Chris Badgett: I love that. I saw it on your website too, the bring your spouse for free. And I was like, Oh, that’s such a nice touch. It’s and that comes from a place of abundance. You’ve already paid. You’re not like 50 percent off your spouse. You’re literally like, here’s an olive branch to help if it’s helpful. I love that. Miriam Castilla: Absolutely. And treating them as a fully fledged member of the community, I think is really important as well. They’re, I think it really helps the relationship. As well, because now we’re not just asking our members to be the messenger. We’re saying no, bring them in if they’re ready and they want this we’re going to welcome them with open arms. And so it’s actually shifted. My community was women only in the past and now it’s not. And I think that’s a beautiful evolution of my program as well to say, no, this work is bigger than gender and, any of those kinds of things. It’s, important for everybody. Chris Badgett: Tell us more detail about Magnetic Money and who the ideal person is for the program. Miriam Castilla: So the ideal person for Magnetic Money is somebody who’s a small business owner who maybe has been going for at least a year. Usually they’re they’re usually still in the first five years of their business. Not always. And they find that money is an issue. They don’t really know how to manage their money and manage that irregular income. And it’s a bit of a red hot mess. And also they have these mindset issues around, how much do I charge? Oh my God, I have to put up my prices. What if all my clients leave me or what if my program doesn’t sell? So it’s somebody who wants to get their money organized because it’s actually a very important part of their life. Resolving a lot of those mindset issues, it actually helps. So it’s definitely somebody who wants to get their money organized, wants to create financial stability and step into a space where they’re not thinking about the money or held back by the fear around money, where they can just move forward and serve their community and know that it’s creating abundance and financial stability for themselves. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Go check out Miriam Castilla. That’s C A S T I L A dot com. Thank you for coming on the show and thank you for doing this work. In some ways, money is a taboo subject. And like you said, it’s a very emotional hot button issue. So it’s great to dive right in and. And help people in that way. But yeah, thanks. Thanks so much for coming on and I appreciate all the wisdom you’ve shared with us today. Miriam Castilla: Thanks so much, Chris. I’ve really enjoyed our chat. It’s been awesome. 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 How to Make a Bigger Impact and Build Wealth with Miriam Castilla appeared first on LMScast.

In this LMScast episode, Brandon described how you can easily sell your online course and membership to people in China with China payment plugin. He shares the details about the China Payments plugin and its integration with LifterLMS. Brandon Ernst is the founder of Gaucho Plugins. The China Payment Plugin is also developed by Gaucho. He clarifies that the China plugin makes it easier for non-Chinese companies or organizations that utilize Stripe outside of China to conduct online transactions while selling to Chinese consumers using WeChat Pay and Alipay. Course developers may easily enter the Chinese market with the plugin, which takes use of Stripe’s connectivity with these widely used payment methods. Brandon also provides insight into Chinese consumer behavior by stressing the prevalence of WeChat Pay and Alipay in both online and offline transactions. He highlights how Chinese customers are accustomed to and confident in these digital payment systems, which strengthens the credibility of companies that provide these payment choices. 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 Brandon Ernst. He’s from Gaucho plugins. Today, we’re going to be talking about chain China payments plugin. You can find it at China payments, plugin. com. Gotcha. Plugins also has some other plugins that we’re going to talk about, but first welcome to the show, Brandon. Brandon Ernst: Thanks for having me, Chris. It’s a pleasure to be on the show with you. Chris Badgett: Yeah. And thank you for integrating the China payments plugin with Lifter LMS checkout. We really appreciate it at a high level. Can you describe what the China payments plugin does and how it could fit into an education entrepreneur stack selling courses or memberships or coaching or whatever with Lifter LMS? Brandon Ernst: Absolutely. If you’re selling online courses to China, the most commonly accepted payment methods or most widely used payment methods in China are WeChat Pay and Alipay. And so Stripe has created an integration with those payment methods that we’ve taken advantage of in the plugin that allows any non Chinese business or Stripe supported business outside of China to sell to Chinese customers via WeChat Pay and Alipay. online. It’s a really useful mechanism. If you have any customers who are in China and want to make those payment methods available to them for your online courses. Chris Badgett: If somebody help us understand kind of the boots on the ground in China as a consumer, if you’re in China and you’re looking to buy a course made by somebody in the United States or Canada or Europe or Africa or wherever, what like what’s their e commerce reality? Cause my understanding is like they, approach e commerce differently. You have these super. Super apps like WeChat and Alipay. What’s, tell us a little more about that world of the Chinese consumer. Totally. Brandon Ernst: It’s much more common in China to have a bank account at a traditional bank and a debit card. And not necessarily having a credit card in addition to that. Whereas in the US or Europe it’s much more common to have a credit card Asia as well. But as a consumer in China outside of that WeChat Pay and Alipay have become the most dominant methods of transacting in China for brick and mortar stores as well as online. You can’t really go anywhere in China without Meeting WeChat the app in some way. And then also the WeChat pay mechanism allows you to pay for pretty much anything, anywhere whether it’s a hotel, a flight service online or a meal at a restaurant. It’s not so common for a Chinese consumer to go online and punch in their credit card. and purchase something. It is, it does happen. It’s not uncommon but it’s, definitely not the dominant method that people would use. And from a familiarity perspective, which I think is probably the most important aspect of this if you’re selling to a Chinese customer for them, WeChat pay and Alipay are completely familiar, so it’s going to offer your business a great deal of legitimacy that you’re offering these payment methods on your website. It’s going to target to them directly, make them feel like they can trust your business because then they’re protected by WeChat and Alipay’s dispute mechanisms, all of that kind of stuff as well, which aren’t really used very widely either. But the point is that they’re familiar with that kind of tool and they’re more comfortable using that than giving their private credit card number to some service on the internet that they may not be completely familiar How to Sell Your Online Courses and Memberships to People in China: with. Chris Badgett: I’m just curious or like WeChat and Alipay, more of a mobile first experience or they, are they more likely to engage from a phone than a desktop or laptop computer? Or do you have any thoughts around that? Brandon Ernst: Yeah. Yeah. So that’s been one of the most interesting aspects of working on this plugin actually, is that WeChat Pay and Alipay are definitely mobile first experiences. So on your website on the checkout flow for WeChat Pay, a QR code is actually generated. And the Chinese customer must physically scan the QR code with their phone. They can’t like even if they’re on their phone, for instance, trying to make the purchase, they can’t even extract the QR code or read it that way. It’s actually required that they would have to physically scan the QR code with the WeChat pay app, and then they can complete payment that way on their mobile device. And then the website will update and display that they’ve completed payment. So there are a few limitations and tricks like that, that are important to understand about how these integrations work for the Chinese market. And so that’s been an interesting journey getting to know the, user experience from our Plugin users, for instance who are selling to Chinese customers and integrating their Stripe accounts and all of that, all the way to the to the end user who’s in China who’s trying to figure out how to actually make the payment with this mechanism, which is becoming more and more widely used. And so Alipay is also pretty similar. It’s, a little bit better of a flow. It will work on mobile as well where it just redirects to the Alipay website and then they can either scan a QR code if they’re on desktop using their mobile device again. So if they’re visiting the website on desktop, they’ll have to pull their phone out of their pocket and then scan the screen or they’ll get redirected to the Alipay app. Which is a flow that we chat is having built out with Stripe and next it’s on their, roadmap from what I, understand. Yeah, they’re definitely mobile first experiences and it’ll either be scanning the QR code or redirecting to one of their apps in order to complete the payment. Chris Badgett: I know you lived in China for a little bit. Is there like how else is it different from, let’s say the United States is it more of a paper cashless world or just when it comes to e commerce or exchange of money for goods or services. Like how is the culture and the way people do things different? Brandon Ernst: It’s definitely become a mostly cashless society. Cash is used for some things. There’s still definitely many rural areas of China and many people who don’t necessarily have access to technology like we chat as often or frequently as most people in cities would. So the vast majority though I’d, say would, be using WeChat, Alipay, these kinds of digital methods of transacting rather than physical currency of any kind. Yeah. Chris Badgett: Yeah that’s, interesting. It’s a big world out there and there’s a lot of different ways to do e commerce and The world is a big place. So when it comes to selling education thinking globally is a really good idea. I want to encourage you out there listening to go to China payments, plug in. com and check that out. We also have it listed on the Lyft or LMS website. You can find it there. Let’s talk a little bit more about Gaucho plugins. Tell us what you guys have on offer over there in addition to the China payments plugin. Brandon Ernst: Yeah. So we have a few kind of niche products that I’ve either been inspired to create with my team or adopt actually from the WordPress repository in the last few years. So one of the more popular plug ins is domain mapping system, which is a really interesting tool that allows you to map multiple domains to a single WordPress site. And that might be a standard WordPress install or a multi site. So if you’re looking to create, for instance, a store under a different domain or brand and you have a different section of your site for that, you can just map a whole other domain to that without having to log in, log out of your site and kind of manage this new micro site within your existing WordPress site. So it can save you a great deal of time for a wide variety of use cases. That’s been a really fun one to work on in the last few years. There’s also payment page, which is a payment form plugin that makes it extremely easy to start accepting subscriptions and donations through your site. You can import a template connect Stripe or PayPal, and then start accepting payments. And the templates are the design of the payment form is totally customizable. That was actually my first foray into WordPress, you could say. I started WordPress in 2011 and building websites for clients as a consultant. And the first thing you need to do is start accepting payment online in a reasonably fancy way without having to deal with invoicing or other, things that are just kind of barriers. Or at least automating those processes. So I struggled in finding a really nice looking payment form plugin out of the gate. And yeah, that was a while ago, 2011. It was a different time in WordPress as well. But even today I scan the, repository, look at some competitor plugins there are great designs and you can definitely customize them, but I haven’t seen any that really offer like an import. Tool for templates that just make it like zero to 100 really, quickly. So that’s that’s what is a little bit unique and fun about that one is the playful designs that you can create with the payment form. And I’ve seen all kinds of cool. Designs like retro gaming sites and stuff like that have taken advantage of it. And it’s been really fun working on that one too. I think Chris Badgett: just on that one, I think that it’s, that’s a great solution for if you’re just beginning your course journey and you just want to validate the idea or whatever somebody give me money for this training I’m planning on doing, or maybe I’m going to do some private coaching first with three trainings and it’s a hundred dollars a week or a month or whatever to try to flesh out your course curriculum or something like that. You could literally have a WordPress site and payment set up really quickly. That’s, Yeah, that Brandon Ernst: was what was if I were able to use this plugin starting out it would have been perfect to have that kind of thing. My main goal was just at the beginning to be able to start accepting one time either hourly or project payments or subscriptions out of the gate. And so that, that really set the, my Web development business on fire to, to begin with and then moving into the plugin space later on. Chris Badgett: Let’s talk about this split pay plugin. And again, these are on gaucho plugins. com G A U C H O plugins. com. What’s the split play or split pay plugin. Brandon Ernst: I do that all the time too. It’s a bit of a, it’s Chris Badgett: a tongue twister. Brandon Ernst: Yeah. But the split pay plugin is very useful for Woo store owners who want to transfer a percentage of sales to any Stripe connected account, which would usually be a vendor for instance, or a partner of some kind to your business. This, to make it relevant for courses, for instance, let’s say you have a bunch of teachers and you have an agreement with your teachers that you’re giving them a 75 percent cut of the course cost and you’re taking a 25%. What you would do is just install the split pay plugin, go to that product in WooCommerce and set up. The exact percentage that you wanted to transfer for each sale of that product. And then you would designate a connected account to your Stripe platform, which is a really easy tool in Stripe to set up. You can create a Stripe platform with any Stripe account and then start onboarding accounts to your, it’s called a connect platform. And so then you designate which account you’d like to transfer that percentage or fixed amount of each transaction to and then it automatically will work after that. So it’s a really useful tool in, those kinds of situations. It’s also great for vendors. For instance if you’re if you have vendors who are doing product fulfillment on your site and you want them to receive let’s say a percentage for the product itself. And then also for maybe covering shipping fees, you can designate each of those independently as well through the plugin. So that’s, a really useful tool. Chris Badgett: That’s really cool. About 30 percent of Lifter LMS users use our WooCommerce integration. So that’s literally something you could start doing today by going to Gaucho plugins and get the split pay plugin. Brandon Ernst: We do have a, update coming up on that plugin in the next few weeks to ensure that it does work with all products in Woo, especially those generated by third party plugins that. Aren’t like the default WooCommerce product structure. That is, it is doable, but maybe not with the current release. So it will be in the next one to two weeks. I’d say. Chris Badgett: My guess is it probably works out of the box because Woo, Lifter Woo ties a course or membership enrollment to a WooCommerce product. We don’t modify the product or create it. It’s just perfect. Okay. So I think it would likely work out of the box. I could also see another solution where. For example, in Lifter, sometimes courses have multiple instructors. So if there were two, you could then split it 50 50 or whatever. Brandon Ernst: Yeah it’s, I love that, plugin. It’s actually one that we adopted. I’ve adopted domain mapping system and split pay plugin a few years ago and worked on them with a couple of different developers. And it’s just been so fun because it’s not ideas that I came up with originally, but I’ve been able to add a bunch of my own ideas to this, kind of this niche and actually build out these niches in WordPress that didn’t really exist before. There are plugins that do domain mapping. There are plugins that do marketplace functionality and everything like that, but not in such a simple and easy way. Intricate way that I’m trying to get these plugins to do. And so it’s been a pleasure to adopt them rather than invent or come up with my own idea or business that I would hope would just succeed. So it’s, humbling in a way to come up with, take someone else’s idea and just build on it and make it Something that really contributes to the WordPress space. No, it’s Chris Badgett: like a bottom up as opposed to top down Oh, I’m going to build a marketplace. It’s what’s the first part? The the payments, like that’s the main goal. Brandon Ernst: Huh. Huh. Yeah. And, for payment page that was more kind of my idea that came from my own struggle in WordPress. And so it’s it is more of a top down thing. What’s my idea and I’m hoping others will like it and use it. And I have received good feedback on it, but of course that space is so competitive that it’s it’s, it just takes time to, to grow a plugin in that area and get people to, to know about it, to hear about it and because there’s a hundred other plugins that might be. Used as well. But, that one’s also been fun and it’s come with its own challenges and everything like that too. And you just meet so many people in these different kind of niche spaces and find out different business models and you come up with different ideas. So it’s the plugins are a different variety, a different, you each have a different flavor, but that’s what makes them so great and fun to work on and also some of them do align together in a pretty interesting way. Chris Badgett: I love the e commerce focus. That’s one thing I found accidentally, but. The closer you are to the money, it’s like they really want, the market really wants that solution if you’re helping them get paid, basically. And then there’s all those nuances around that. There’s a lot that happens when money changes hands through the internet. Does the split pay plugin work with WooCommerce subscriptions? Brandon Ernst: It does. Yeah. The way woos subscriptions works is basically it will just initiate the transaction over again your WordPress site. So it’s a bit of a different approach than creating a subscription in Stripe directly. Woos subscriptions will basically just replicate the Transaction details. So if there was a transfer involved in that transaction, then it will happen again for each renewal. Chris Badgett: That’s also good news for people using Lifter LMS with WooCommerce. Cause many do subscriptions. Yeah. And can you tell us about variations as well? You, does it work with variations? Brandon Ernst: Yeah. So it’s been a complicated journey with this plugin because it was a very simple plugin. Product to begin with the features we’re really limited. So with all the feedback we’ve received and ideas we’ve gotten from everyone who’s come across the product. And the plugin it’s been really fun to pick and choose what we should build out. So one of the things that we’re finalizing right now, also in this upcoming release is a fallback approach. So where you have three layers of products in WooCommerce, you have this. Global layer that is unseen. You can set these kind of global transaction details, which is the first layer in our plugin. Then you have the product level where you can edit details on the product level and then the variable product level. So if you wanted to split payments for five it doesn’t matter how many you can do multiple Stripe accounts. But let’s just say five Stripe accounts for one product for, and that might be because you have Five different teachers. Maybe a different teacher was selected to teach that, that course or something like that. I’m there’s so many different ways to set it up, but the point is, if you want to split up a transaction between multiple connected accounts, it can be one product. It can be multiple products. You can go into the product level or the variable product level and set each connected account on that. Specificity. So it’s actually really useful. On that, on those levels, I’m a micro level for managing even a small amount of a transaction let’s say, a few dollars to different vendor that you wanted to give a commission to, for instance or, a teacher that would get a larger percentage or fixed amount. So the way it works if you have settings configured on a variable product level or global level, is that if there’s any settings configured on one of those lower levels, let’s say the variable or product level, they would override the global settings. So while you might have a 25 percent transfer amount for your store, for every transaction that goes on, you could also set these additional settings that would override that amount for specific courses or specific courses. Products that you have in woo even at the variable product level. So it’s and that’s one of the, biggest areas of feedback we’ve received that people want to have that control at all of those different levels they want to have a fallback approach as well. So if shipping is needed to be transferred on one for one product, for instance. But not on others, that they can have these rules set up in place quote unquote rules, because they’re really just Values that you set at each level but the way they work sets up a rule based system for your entire store for how transfers work. Chris Badgett: I love that. We’re really nerding out here on the details as e commerce guys. I think one of the ideas is swimming in my head. As you’re talking is Like in online education. Sometimes there’s like a variable product that has a course like DIY, do it yourself. And then of course, plus coaching, some people call it tutoring. Some people call it like they actually sell in the classrooms. And there’s a specific teacher that’s teaching that course on that variation or whatever. And I can totally, how you’re just automating a lot of that manual accounting that people do on the back end. If you, that you could just set up with the split pay and very variable products and all that. That’s, really cool what you’re doing there. Brandon Ernst: Yeah. It’s, definitely an interesting use case to, to come out to come on the podcast. Now think about all that. I was going to say something about subscriptions because we, Started with China Payments plugin. That’s one of the limits as well with WeChat Pay and Alipay that should be mentioned is that unfortunately they’re not subscription based. They’re all one-time payment methods. So it would require, if you’re selling a renewing course a subscription based course for each renewal the Chinese customer would have to manually make a payment again. But it’s most useful at this point for kind of lifetime or one time sales. If you’re going to renew I would suggest having a longer time period to make it less of a hassle for the Chinese customer to have to log in and keep access every 24 hours, for instance, or something like that but, yeah those things are. Also being hopefully built out by Stripe and WeChat Alipay so that there’ll be an easier mechanism for Alipay subscriptions in the future. And then WeChat pay subscriptions mechanism as well. So Chris Badgett: yeah, that makes sense. So if you’re thinking in subscriptions, most common being monthly subscription, it’s probably for trying to pay payments to think more like an, it’s an annual price and then they have to re up every year if they want to. Yeah, and that’s another thing Brandon Ernst: as well touching back on, on kind of China and how e commerce works there is that subscriptions are not really a common thing in China as well. There are, they exist, but it’s not as common here like. It would be in the US or in not any, country outside of China, really for services like Netflix or Spotify. Or other kind of online streaming services. Platforms, they’re just not as the, I think the businesses don’t succeed as well in China because just subscriptions aren’t received as well by consumers. Chris Badgett: So how does like a streaming video service as an example, like how do they approach that market? Is it more like a, it’s good for a year or it’s a lifetime access price or what? Brandon Ernst: I think they’ll, offer a lifetime plan or a limited time offer. They will also offer subscriptions. Alipay itself does offer subscriptions but not through, not easily through the Stripe integration. But domestically they can do it. But for foreign businesses to accept subscriptions from a Chinese customer in particular would be really difficult to, find at this point. It’s a bit of a barrier in that regard. Chris Badgett: Tell us where the name Gaucho comes from. Brandon Ernst: So my mom is from Argentina and the original team was pretty much all based in Argentina as well. And so I had the inspiration, I go, what should I name the plugin business? We’re all working together and I just love the theme and have some fun designing the website. There’s some kind of cultural. Icons of Argentina on the website, like the, obviously the couch. All logo and icon, and then the horse at the bottom of the site. Then on the about us page, there’s a girl drinking or having having a picnic. And having some empanadas stuff like that. So it’s, been I’ve had some fun with WordPress over the last few years. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. And you mentioned something earlier I wanted to double click on, which is the idea of adopting a plugin. Can you tell us more what that means and how you went about that and how those situations emerged? Brandon Ernst: Yeah. I, also heard about it. In the last few years, and that’s I heard about it and then jumped on a few that were available at the time on the WordPress repository. There’s a tag that you can have tags on plugins. If you’re, if you have a plugin listed there, and as the, as a WordPress user, you can go and see the tags as well on the. I believe on the Listing the profile listing page for the plugin. One of the tags I believe is adopt Me or, Adopt Hyphen Me, something like that. So those plugin, you can search for that tag and you can find the plugins that are available for adoption on wordpress.org. And these are plugins that are just simply no longer maintained by their original developers or don’t have any updates happening to them. And the developers want to. Pass them on to you hands that will maintain them or take care of them or add features. And so for many people that can be a business opportunity. I, I wouldn’t adopt a plugin and then take it off the repository. Which could be done I would look at it as an opportunity to adopt the plugin, build out more free features, make sure it’s working really well. And then and then create a. A paid version of the product. If you wanted to invest in the product in that way, and you were receiving good feedback from the users. And so that’s how a plugin business can get started. If you don’t if you’re not a developer or if, you don’t want to necessarily hire If you don’t have development skills out of the gate and you see a good business idea already out there on WordPress and you want to get into it, you could adopt a plugin, hire a developer to help you maintain it, build it out, and then create a product from it. And it’s, a totally doable and reasonable process. It’s not rocket science you get much more to the complicated aspects of it. When you’re talking about marketing the business. And growing and everything like that. Which is WordCamps are all about and all of this fun community based stuff that we were talking about before the, call here got started or the podcast got started. By the way to everyone watching, there’s WordCamp Asia coming up in Taipei. Chris and I will both be there and it’s going to be really fun adventure. And I think this is a very timely update for the plugin for WeChat Pay and Alipay. Although they are targeted to the mainland domestic Chinese market and not necessarily to the. Taiwan Taiwan consumers, but it’s, just timely for that region as well. So I’m looking forward to, to actually seeing you there face to face for the first time, Chris. Chris Badgett: Yeah. Yeah. And I love my team. I don’t know if we’ll find any maté in Taipei, but maybe we could have some maté. They Brandon Ernst: might have an Argentinian steakhouse somewhere around. Chris Badgett: That would be great. Awesome, Brandon. Thanks for coming on the show. You out there listening, go check out China payments, plug in. com. Think about selling your training into China. And also check out all the other cool things that Brandon has going on over at gauchoplugins. com. The particularly a payment page for validating your course idea and split pay for getting creative with partnerships. Or kind of teacher or coach vendor splits. If you’re using Lifter LMS with WooCommerce. Thanks for coming on the show, Brandon. I really appreciate it. And I look forward to seeing you in Taipei. Brandon Ernst: You too. Thanks for having me and look forward to hopefully connecting with some of the viewers here. Hope you guys enjoy the, new features that we got with China payments plugin. Thanks so much for taking a few moments to listen in. 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 How to Sell Your Online Courses and Memberships to People in China appeared first on LMScast.

In this LMScast episode, Sally Crewe shares her journey and the evolution of NurtureDash, an all-in-one business solution based around a WordPress website. She also discussed about Health Practitioner Business. Sally Crewe a background in graphic and online design and is an accomplished designer and entrepreneur. She is well knowledgeable about WordPress and its features. When Sally saw that practitioners, especially those in the field of nutrition therapy, needed more straightforward answers, she decided to venture into the internet business arena. Sally set out to establish NurtureDash, an all-in-one business platform centered around a WordPress website, motivated by her love of technology and design. She wants to give practitioners a streamlined and integrated way to handle their online presence, courses, and client interactions using NurtureDash. Sally takes a customer-centric approach to business, concentrating on comprehending and resolving the particular difficulties encountered by practitioners. In addition to being a computer specialist, she views herself as a helpful mentor who assists practitioners in navigating the intricacies of WordPress and online business tools. 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 rejoined by a special guest. Her name is Sally crew. She’s from nurture dash. com. This is going to be a really exciting episode. We’re going to talk about basically taking all the power of WordPress and removing all the hassle and providing a solution for heart centered entrepreneurs and particularly practitioners. Which is what Sally has been working on and working in that industry for a long time. But first welcome to the show, Sally. Sally Crewe: Thank you. It’s great to be back. Thanks for having me. Chris Badgett: Yeah, it’s fun to have you back. And I love seeing like one of our company values is continuous improvement and you embodied that, like you’re just iterating and iterating. For those of you. Unfamiliar with the term WAAS, that stands for website as a service. So that’s where you basically provide a full website solution. Sally’s even gone further than just the website with marketing and all kinds of stuff. So we’re going to dive into it today at a high level. Can you describe for us what nurtured dash is? And. You out there listening, go check out nurturedash. com. But Sally, what’s NurtureDash? Sally Crewe: So NurtureDash is an all in one business in a box with a, based around a WordPress website. So I’m a designer at heart. I started with graphic design that turned into web design that turned into how the heck do I get this thing online, which turned into learning about web hosting, which turned into running a hosting company. We’re talking like back in the late nineties. So I’ve been at this a while that turned into a I was a, nutrition therapy practitioner for a while, and I saw that a lot of my colleagues We’re interested in doing, creating online courses for their clients. So I helped them. I taught them how to do that. I had a training course that taught them how to do that. When we got to the module about setting up the tech and the website, which was actually the best part for me, that was the most exciting part for me. A lot of them just like froze. So it, it became apparent to me that was what they needed to help with. So I, I developed that into a bonus for my course called the practitioner platform, which was an all in one website. And I basically cloned my course website, which was running lifter and gave that to my Colleagues, my students for them to fill in the blanks and put their own nutrition courses, et cetera, into it. And fast forward to today, like that, that, that platform, which is what we talked about on the previous time I was on a few years ago. What happened there was I found that. Okay. Everybody loved what they had. They had a website, They had the ability to sell courses. They had the ability to book. Calls. But because it was all built on WordPress and back then things weren’t quite as evolved and cohesive as they are now with the word WordPress ecosystem. I was finding I was potentially, I was basically spending a lot of time playing whack a mole with plugins. And as an earlier entrepreneur, I was still struck with the syndrome of, trying to please everybody. And when you have WordPress as your main tool you can please everybody. Someone would come and say, Hey can you I have a podcast. Can we make this a podcast streaming site instead of course? And I’d be like, the true answer is yes, we can. We could, we always can if we’re using WordPress. And I loved that part of it as a pseudo developer at heart. Yeah. So I, got a little bit off tangent with that and we ended up building a bit of a sort of a homer car. I don’t know if you remember that Simpsons episode, but it had a little bit of everybody’s input and, got further and further away from being a platform, which is supposed to be everybody has the same thing. So we’ve briefly partnered up with go high level to provide so that we could stick with a true WordPress website and then just hook into go high level for the CRM and the email marketing and all the other tools that people were using. They were using different tools for those. So instead of me having to try and learn how to integrate ActiveCampaign, MailChimp, all these other things into WordPress. I now just had one place to send them and integrated with that. It worked for a little while, but we ended up then with two platforms. We had what we were calling Nurture Dash, which was a white labeled LMS. And then we had Nurture Sites, which was the WordPress hosting platform. So I gathered all the kittens together late last year and decided, Having taken another look in the WordPress ecosystem and seeing how far things had come. I’ve always loved working on WordPress. I’ve never gone away from it myself. But for a while it didn’t seem like the best choice for running like. Email marketing, funnel building, CRM suite, or even booking. But that changed with a lot of the newer plugins. And I tested out a lot of the fluent suite plugins like fluency or influent booking. And found out, yeah, not only were these. Good enough to where they were actually simpler and doing a better job at what my clients needed than the everything, all singing, all dancing, and often all breaking bigger platform that we were trying to plug into. So yeah, late last year, I rethought it, decided to put both of the parts of the nurture brand, the dash and the sites back together. And it coincided with. Being reintroduced to the guys at wild cloud who I know you’ve had Roger on here, but they, do a fantastic multi tenancy WordPress platform. So now we are true. We are basically, we’ve basically finally created what I was trying to create seven years ago, which is you go to a website, you click a button, you give them the domain name that you want for your website. Five minutes later in your email is a link to log straight into your website. And it’s all set up as a CRM, there’s a booking calendar, there’s a bunch of different templates to choose. It’s a really easy page builder. So that’s, yeah, that’s the little winding story of NurtureDash and how it came to be, how it is now. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. I love how customer centric you are, cause you have this practitioner that is trying to basically build the online interface for their business and there’s all these different things they need and tell us a little more about what their current reality is like without nurture dash. And let’s say they’re not working with you. What are they doing to run their business and trying to get clients and nurture clients? Their Sally Crewe: current reality until they. Cross paths with me is a lot of moving parts. They probably have a WordPress website that is either half built or out of date or is precariously teetering with an unupdated plugins that they’re scared to push the update button on. They probably don’t know where their domain. Where their website is hosted. They probably don’t know the difference between a domain and a website. And this is also with, a lot of love for these people. It’s just, that’s not there. That’s not their world. And they’ve come into this world as a necessity at various points in the business journey. And so they’ve got. A domain name over here on this platform, they’ve got a membership site over here on this platform and they’ve tried to hook them up together. They’ve joined a training program by a marketer who’s recommended another platform. A lot of them are paying multiple subscriptions for multiple tools that overlap and do a lot of the same stuff, but are not talking to each other. So they come to me and I, my, my joke is like, it, a lot of people. When they come to me and we I have what I call tech audits for my discovery calls. And I come in, I’m like, basically just open up your bag, put everything out on the table. Let’s see what we’ve got. And a lot of the time it, looks like a raccoon just got into your fridge. Like it’s just like all kinds of dead ends and funnels that don’t work and affiliate links. And it’s just, and I totally, I, this is my world. I love this stuff, but it makes me overwhelmed. So I can totally understand how a lot of practitioners and coaches will say, I hate tech. I’m not good with tech. So my job that I’ve given myself and I’ve, I have a website called the website Sherpa. com, which is where I do my blog and my free training. And that, name came about from somebody calling me that. It’s my, my, I feel like my job here is to guide them through this the, dusty trail of like tech, WordPress, where does WordPress end? Where does your website end? Where do these other platforms begin? What are you actually paying these subscriptions for? There’s a lot of unraveling. To be done. And, to be fair, we’ve, a lot of us in this world have been have grown up with tech, so we’ve got older versions of, features that were locked into because we’ve got a lot of content on there and then we’ve got newer versions. And if somebody is coming in today, straight out of the gate and starting an online business, they’re not going to probably have this problem because there’s so many all in one tools now that keep things More organized, but a lot of people have come at this over the years and have gathered a a bit of a mixed bag of tools with various incompatibilities. So I’m basically in the service. So we, talked about last time we taught you, you’d mentioned the phrase friction removal business. Yeah. That’s still very much true. And I also, I think of myself as a tech therapist as well, because there’s a huge, Mindset component to this, especially with a lot of my clients and customers are, first of all they’re first and foremost, health coaches, practitioners. They don’t even want to be in an online business, but it’s 2024. They have to be online. Second of all they, have a bit of like tech trauma and WordPress trauma. I’ll see them if I’m on calls with them and they’re sharing the screen and I’m telling them where to click, they will get what I call button blindness, I’d be like, click the button. And there’ll be like, Chris Badgett: yeah Sally Crewe: or they won’t see there’s maybe there’s just one they won’t see. And it’s, that’s I’ve done a little bit of, trauma work and it’s it’s a fight or flight state that people get into an anxiety state and they can’t see, they can’t see where to click because they’re, Their bodies in a sort of panic. And it it sounds a little funny, but it’s, I bet if you put probes on someone and measured their heart rate and stuff, while they were trying to look around the backend of the WordPress site that hadn’t been updated in two years. It would probably be not a healthy state for them to be in. So I’ve like I’ve said I’ve, started saying it’s, like tech therapy. I’m trying to be like, first of all, let them know that I’m here to help them that they’re not stupid forgetting themselves in this situation. Much like an accountant for somebody who’s behind on their taxes or bookkeeping. The first thing you need to do is to say, no shame. You’re here now. Let me help you. And so that’s where I come, at things. I, have a lot of calls with people who will get into that state where you can see their kind of clouding over with the tech talk. And they will say, I want to, I’ve not, I’ve no idea what, you do, but I want to work with you. I basically, I feel. I feel like you’re going to be the person who’s going to save me from this big tech dragon. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. I love that. It’s, not just providing a solution. It’s being a guide and even a therapist, like you say on there. I love the Sherpa analogy as a guy myself, I’ve actually spent some time in Nepal and hung out with some Sherpas. And part of that whole thing is a, Connection to the earth and navigating the landscape. And you have a kind of environmental component to your platform. Can you tell us about that? Sally Crewe: Yeah I’m, from the UK. I’m from Sherwood forest. I do some volunteer work for the pagan Federation. So I identify as, a Druid. I’m a lover of animals, I’m a lover of nature. I’m an animist, which means I feel like everything has energy. I’ve always felt that way since I was just a small child. That’s just how. Okay. I perceive the world as, someone who feels energy. So I had stuffed that side of me down. Until I’m in my late forties now, and you start to find yourself again. And that kind of came back around and I realized how important it was to me and with the with the climate crisis and everything. So we partnered with One Tree Planted and there’s another similar. Company that do this internationally. And basically we just for every, subscription payment that comes in a certain portion of that goes to towards planting trees. So when somebody signs up for if they sign up for a year for, with a platform, we will send them a certificate to say, Hey, congratulations. You have planted 12 trees. Chris Badgett: Nice. Sally Crewe: And people love it. And it’s not I’m not literally out there with a shovel and a bag of acorns we’re just partnering with this company, this initiative that does it, but people really I’ve got a lot of feedback from people being like, Oh, that’s it makes me feel so good. And it, and because we’re, all internet friends. We don’t often actually meet people in real life. So to know that this business decision that they made, The dollars that they could have spent on Kajabi or Teachable or Thinkific or just another, or just a WordPress site on their own, they choose to use it with us. It doesn’t cost them any extra. They’re helping offset carbon emissions and everything. Chris Badgett: That’s great. I love it when values are baked into a brand and backed up with action and that sort of thing. Sally Crewe: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it and, also through the, sort of the political climate that we’ve just. Been through and are still in. It, personally to me felt like a, my way of saying, Hey, this is what I stand for. And for some people that they’re like, Oh, I’m you’re not the right platform for me. And that’s fine. But a lot of them have come over to me rather than give their money to like the big tech bros because they want to support a female independently owned business who supports the climate and who, donates to trees. I think it’s more than ever people can vote with their wallets and with their business tool choices. Chris Badgett: So a hundred percent and people are hungry to do business with people, like real people behind the screens and all that. Sally Crewe: Yeah. We, have a blurb on our site. That’s about basically we support LGBTQ plus rights. We support a woman’s right to choose. We support this, and this. And I know it’s a, it’s for some people, it’s be like, Nope, getting out of here. That’s fine. I wouldn’t want to work with that person anyway. So it’s it’s I’m a musician. So my, former life was, as a musician and I still do that for fun. And it feels the most punk rock thing I’ve ever done. Put that on my webpage of here’s what we believe if you don’t. Okay, fine. But we’re not the choice for you. Chris Badgett: That’s there’s that saying in marketing that great marketing should be polarizing and really attract the your, vibe attracts your tribe. Yeah. Sally Crewe: And I’m a I’m a peacekeeper. I’ve, always thought of a people pleaser and wanted everybody to get along, but this was something I felt strongly enough. It’s about to actually be like, yeah, this isn’t just a marketing shtick. This isn’t just to try and put my brand somewhere. This is actually, you get to work with me as a person. Things are going to go a lot smoother if we are aligned on the sort of fundamentals of moral standings on things. Chris Badgett: You’re, also a tech wizard. So I wanted to dig a little bit on the on the tech stack here. And you’ve mentioned a couple of things, so let me just cue it up. Use wild cloud, which is like hosting multi tenancy. It handles the payment element of people signing up and getting started with the site WordPress site. It has a front end on it so that people aren’t just dropped into the WordPress admin with a million options. And you’re using certain tools to deliver solutions to different business challenges, like fluency RM for the, email marketing, the broadcast emails, the marketing automation. You’ve got fluent bookings, which is very important for a service based business to have automated bookings. That’s a, I don’t know how many times I deal with a service industry and. I can’t, I have to end up in this email chain to get something on the calendar. I just want to link to book. So that’s awesome. And then you’ve got Lifter LMS for if they want to do the education piece. Which I want to dig in on specifically in a little bit of how they use it, but could you tell us any more just nuance or detail of what’s in the tech stack that brings this website kind of online platform as a solution to that? Sally Crewe: So the big difference with this I’m talking at first more to the other sort of WASP type of providers or other web developers, but we’re using wild cloud, as you said which is a multi tenancy deployment platform, which essentially allows you to have your own like Squarespace or Wix or something. Chris Badgett: Which is a huge idea. That’s a huge idea right there. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s that’s just the hugest thing. Sally Crewe: And that’s just like what The first part of the first ingredient in this recipe we’re using a UI press pro, which is an admin theme plugin. And I was lucky enough to have gotten on the lifetime deal for unlimited sites. So that was, and I did that with a couple of the fluent plugins as well. So I’m cashing in on my. My earlier futurism we doing that. And, that’s really enabled me to, when you log into this. It looks like it doesn’t look like WordPress. We don’t even have a menu bar down the side. I took the decision after a bunch of research of users that having a menu across the top your, computer’s this shape, I know you can use things on your phone, but for the most part, my practitioner clients are, you are on their laptop. It’s postcard shaped and I took the decision to rather than have a menu down to have it along the top. So it’s always in view and you’ve got that much more real estate to play with. And one thing I’d noticed from my previous onboarding calls, when we did have the menu down the side, was that a lot of people didn’t understand how to scroll. So I I’m on a, I’m on a huge website person monitor, but if you’re on a smaller laptop and you’ve got 15 things down the side on the menu, and I’m saying, okay, go down to settings. And they’re not actually understanding that this stuff that’s beyond the page. And this was it’s another thing that sounds a little silly, but for people who aren’t in WordPress or in tech or in websites all day long, like we are, it isn’t something that’s, that goes completely intuitive. So I wanted to remove as many of those friction points that give every time there’s a bit of friction, it makes people. It makes people stressed, It makes people feel like an idiot. It just makes people like clench up and, not be as comfortable. And we talked last time about me trying to make my website templates, be a spa like experience that when you go to the website, even if you don’t understand the basics of design, you can. On a subconscious level tell this is a nicer place to be than that place because it’s organized and there’s white space to breathe. I tried to take that to the back end of WordPress as well. So when they log in, it’s a nice place to be. It’s like going to a spa or back to your house when someone has been there and tidied it up and cleaned it all up and put new plants up. And and there’s a little button there that you can take a break and it takes you to an embedded video of the ocean for five minutes. And just things I’ve learned from my own journey of, working too much. Being a workaholic, working too, late, not taking breaks because I was really enjoying what I was doing. So I’ve tried to pull all of that experience, not only as a creator of a website or somebody who knows how to help people sell courses and book, discovery calls, but as somebody who’s an online business owner who’s who’s realized the perils of, looking at a screen all day long. And I I, I also build, I use it for my own business. I think they call it is, I think it’s called dog food. I was like, did I make that up? Yeah, I do it because it’s got all the tools that I need and I don’t see a better way for me as the creator of this thing to be really on top of what’s needed and where the problems are. And, to know how to tell people how to do stuff than to actually be using it for my own business. Yeah, I couldn’t Chris Badgett: agree with you more. We’ve learned so much just having our literature on this academy and a quick start course. We use our own tool. No Sally Crewe: I think really you’re doing a massive disservice to people if you’re not like it’s, and especially if it’s A curated collection of WordPress plugins. Like I’ve said to my folks yeah, we, this is a curation of the best plugins for the job, as far as I’m aware. And I’ve been at this for 20 plus years. I’m a research hound. If something isn’t right, if something isn’t doing what we want it to do, or if something comes along that does that thing better or adds a new feature that we haven’t even conceived of yet, I will go and find us. And you plug in a notion, notice the word as not you this is the platform. And so I’ve got this mama bear thing going on. I’m going to look after them. They’re sharing that we’re all using the same tools. I’m keeping ahead of the curve. That’s a whole other bunch of stuff that they don’t have to have in their brain. What plugin should I use, what platform should I use? What this, do I need to be doing this on social media? Do I need to be doing that? I’m just basically saying, How to Simplify Your Health Practitioner Business Technology Stack With the Website Sherpa: shush, Sally Crewe: shush. Don’t worry about that. I will trust me to to be the guide for that part of the business. And, part of that is not just showing them the tools that they should be using. It’s part, of it is saying, don’t need to worry about that. You don’t need, you don’t need to do that. You don’t need this particular bell or whistle that, some other guru was telling you that you need. And because it’s all on WordPress now they can really sense the the integrity behind that because I am choosing other, I’m sure I’m, piggybacking on your talents and your team’s talents by using Lifter. And I’m telling them I’m not saying this is Nurture LMS, I’m saying this is Lifter. It’s what is the best, as far as I’m concerned, I’ve tried them all. This is the best one for you guys. And here’s how to use it. And I, will support my clients but they do know what these tools are. I’m not hiding that fact. I’m not pretending that I developed everything myself. So I would warn anybody doing this, not to do that as well, because the ego gets in the way and the ego wants to take the credit, but the flip side of that is. If something breaks with that plugin, you’re the, you’re now the, yeah. Chris Badgett: Tell us more about how your users use Lifter LMS, like in their practitioner use case or in whatever they’re doing what, brings them to need an LMS, how do they use it? Sally Crewe: There’s, that’s a good question. There’s a few different levels of it. So you would typically think of it just as for people who want to. Sell courses as a starting point on memberships. What I actually do is I have recommended to people the idea of, so everyone’s familiar with the idea of you, you have an, a landing page, you have an email, a magnet, a list, building magnet. Nobody wants a to think that someone will sign up to the list, get sent a PDF and then that thing gets downloaded. Never to be seen again, never to even be looked at or printed or anything. And also trees, we shouldn’t be printing as much as we do. So what I’ve started telling people is a great idea is for everybody. Even if you don’t have a membership or a course yet, have a members section. When somebody joins their list, your list, it will send you into the membership section and here will be your download. It will also be a very exclusive. Feeling you feel if you give them the keys to somewhere, you feel like you must have either been a really special client or that you’ve paid money for that experience. And they haven’t, they’ve just joined your list, but it just really elevates and then people can come in and they can also see. Maybe they’ll see some other things that are, Oh, I might go buy that. I might go download this other freebie. Maybe you’ll have a community there. So I’m just trying to, everyone’s trying to get people off Facebook. I think this is a really good way to do it. And also if you want to. Rather than just emailing your list, another link to another landing page, you can be like, Hey, I’ve just loaded this into your, into the membership portal and have tiered membership. So yeah, people are using it as basically a a content vault for free content. For, subscribers to feel like they are kind of part of your world, and then they’re using it for traditional courses, memberships. And the other side of things, I’ve got practitioners who have courses and memberships where they’re at the level now that they have other people instructing using their material. So another thing we’re working on this year is the ability for the, these people to have their own. Platforms. So they will have their they, will have a version of what Notre dash is on wild cloud. They will have a website with the ability for other practitioners, other coaches to say, Hey I want to, teach your material. I want to, take people through your course. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, I don’t want to rip you off. And I don’t want to some people are really good at creating content and teaching. And they really don’t enjoy. Supporting individual clients through that process. And then you’ve got a bunch of people on the other side who really enjoy the coaching and the one on one handholding, but they’re not necessarily interested or very good at creating a course or. Material for that. So I’m trying to put these two sides of people together. What they both lack usually is the desire or inclination to, to figure out all the tech. So I’m it’s not exactly a marketplace. It’s more of an individual. One practitioner has something, they have other practitioners who are interested in instructing. In that particular modality and just putting those guys together with, this fantastic new tech that’s available and basically giving give your instructors a business in the box. Everyone wins. The instructor can hit the ground running with their own. Course platform CRM, everything already to go can be preloaded with email sequences that sell the product. There’s any number of ways to spin it, but the ingredients are all the same. It’s the same plugins. It’s the same tech idea, It’s just moving it up. Chris Badgett: It’s like a fractal. It just keeps going. And I totally get it because the there’s like an individual startup practitioner, but then they have team. Sally Crewe: We’re calling it a digital franchise. Chris Badgett: There you go. Sally Crewe: Cause I do have clients that I’m. That I’ve built, or I’m in the process of building custom websites for custom membership sites. And they are at the stage where they’re like, okay, we’ve realized our demographic isn’t actually health conscious parents. It’s actually other practitioners or other nutritionists. And they want to be able to guide their clients through my material. How do we do it? And here’s how, and we could also give them a CRM and a booking link and. Chris Badgett: Very cool. Yeah. Very cool. I also love that that idea for a lead magnet to just become a member and now you just have one login. Yeah. And then if you want other, resources become available and it’s, more like building community. Exactly. Yeah. And you can bring a download. Sally Crewe: You can build community without even actually having a traditional. Community chat area. You can have communities like here’s everyone gets the email. They all get in there and see see the new material. And it just really when I’ve mentioned this to, to customers as a way of doing it, they, everyone’s, everyone likes up. Like they love the idea of, cause they can visualize that experience from their side. We’ve all got a hard drive full of things we’ve downloaded that we haven’t seen before. Looked out, I can’t find. And this way you can keep the material updated. You can give, you can leave little cookies for them. You can be like, okay, rather than just bug somebody who’s on your list to go do something, you can say, Hey, I left you a, I left you a little treat or check out the members area Chris Badgett: I love that. And if you’re out there watching and you’re new to LFTR LMS, some people don’t realize it. So I’ll say it real quick here. LMSs are used for courses, but LFTR LMS is also has a membership component. So which can control access to other parts of the website or even pieces of pages and things like that. So that’s such a cool innovation you’ve done there, Sally. I love that one. Can you tell us a little more about like for if someone’s feeling inspired and they’re watching this, and let’s say they’re in some niche and they’re, they want to really double down and build a platform for that niche. And I really just let me side note and say, it takes entrepreneurs like you to do that because the software providers, as an example They’re really focused on like their slice of the tech pie. So we need these platform entrepreneurs to assemble the tools. Mama Barrett, as you say, to make sure it’s the right thing and adjust over time and protect your community and really provide the perfect solution for those people with that stack. But once you, my question is, once you have. You’re kind of niche and the problem you want to solve for them with a platform or collection of problems. How do you get clients? Like, how do you get known in a niche? Like you’ve gotten known in the practitioner niche. Sally Crewe: In my case, it’s been a very organic word of mouth thing. I’ve, got like I’ve said I’ve got practitioners who now teach other practitioners. So that’s a ripple effect of other Potential clients. And I get really good recommendations from people because I’ve got the technology, but I’ve got the knowledge of their business model and they just know from their experience that the end of the day, yeah, not everything’s going to work perfectly all the time at the end of the day. I’m here and I will do them right. So I think that’s it’s, weird at the one, side, my business is scaling and getting more automated, but that’s freeing up time for me to be more boots on the ground available for people. Versus in a few years ago it was less automated, but that meant I was having to do a lot of the manual setup and everything, and this sort of frees Much more available at a higher level for people. So yeah, what the, but to answer your question as I started this with, education, so I’m bringing that back to the forefront and I have a, course that we call unblock your tech chakras that is and I did it, I did a little bit of as a free training last year as well as a list building exercise. And we have a quiz and it’s it’s cute and fun, but it’s actually. Brings together. The the, line that I’ve been talking about is like the tech trauma and the mindset and seeing your, business holistically, especially as a solopreneur seeing that, yeah, there’s elements to do with the different energy levels of the body that relates your business and how you show up and what you’ll get out of that part of the business. So I take them through Unblocking their tech chakras. And those, levels are tied to certain parts of the platform. So it’s a, it’s quite a high level overview of what the tool does. But there’s two ways you can get it. You can either sign up for the platform and you get access to the course, or you can purchase the course and you get access to the platform for a year. So whichever, feels more value loaded for you. Cause it really depends. Some people. Our tool first and they, feel like spending money on a tool, but not on a course and other people are the other way around. So Chris Badgett: that’s wonderful. Marketing like getting your target audience, like around the problem before they’re a perfect fit for your, solution or whatever, and educating. And I love that. That’s cool. Sally Crewe: And it helps just bring everybody to the same place and everybody realize get rid of that kind of icky. It’s only me like embarrassment, shame element and saying, look, this is difficult. I’ve been at it for 27 years. I still have things that don’t work, I still have things that go wrong. I have, I still have things that I don’t do perfectly. We’re human. Here’s what we can learn from it. Here’s the best way to look at it. And it’s, yeah, it’s turned like into a much more of a sort of mentorship coaching mindset type thing than I would ever have realized or imagined would be the case. Chris Badgett: That makes sense. Yeah, there’s tactics and strategies and tools, but there’s the human element has the, mind and the emotional component. One thing I want to highlight, you mentioned, which I think is really cool. I’ve heard of this idea of where you actually have two audiences. There’s, and you mentioned it with your practitioners. There’s like the clients that come in for help, but then there’s the people who are in their industry. Mostly not as far along and like both groups are watching. So that’s really neat. How for you. You’re getting word of mouth growth through that kind of second, less obvious audience of other practitioners of the practitioner you’re helping. That’s really, Yeah. Sally Crewe: And I’ve, grown with them. Like I started, my default was to start with people who were. Didn’t they like the idea of an online course, but they didn’t know what to do next. And this was back in 2015 when online courses were a little bit less known. And, but those, a lot of those guys have succeeded. Gone on to grow and gone on to become instructor platforms for others. So it, they they’re literally, I know it’s a cliche, but their success has been my success. Cause they’ve brought people back to Hey, this is, she helped me out. Or they’ve moved off my original platform and gone to one of the big guys and then come back and being like why, did I think that this was like, I think they, because I helped them in the beginning, a lot of them thought that was like, I was the kindergarten teacher and they didn’t realize that I was also teaching college classes. Excuse me. So they came back. A lot of them did that, came back around and I was like, yeah, I can help you with all that. Chris Badgett: Very cool. I noticed on your pricing, there’s a couple months free, which there you go. Again, is removing some friction, help people like try it out what’s your advice there on creating something where. People get, can get into it and develop the trust. And how’d you come up with that strategy? I’m not asking you a clear question, but just tell us. No, I get it. It, I Sally Crewe: think it comes from, so my original businesses were hosting businesses, so it was very much paying by the month for me was something that was just always, there was never a switch to a subscription model for me. That’s what it was always there. And it was often if it’s 50 bucks a month. Then 500 a year. It’s just the two months discount for the bulk purchase. And I just think it’s, a nice, easy calculation and it’s something people have come to expect. And I I can, I also now tying in the There’s various offers that run at the moment, it’s the, courses comes if you sign it for the year. There’s other times when it’ll be we’ll do a one on one setup. We’ll do wire everything up for you versus you just following the instructions. So it depends. And I’ve, road tested a few different ways of doing it and they’re all they all work for different audiences. So I tend to rotate them. So some people like love the idea of what we have, but they’re terrified of the setup as easy as we make it. There’s still like on the edge of the diving board like this. So once a year we’ll, often do a promotion where it’s okay, sign up for you, we’ll do the setup for you. And that’ll a certain sector of, the audience will, go crazy for that. But for others, it’s more of waiting for we don’t, we’re not doing any kind of price reduction discounts anymore. It’s usually just value, added. Services or bundles of things. And like I said, it’s the automation side of things. It’s not giving me that much more room to spread my wings as an educator. And I come back to, Realizing that I’m actually really good at that. And I do really like it. Chris Badgett: Awesome. And last question for you, you mentioned it in passing earlier. So I want to come back to it cause it’s it’s valuable for really any entrepreneur. You mentioned there’s a thing you do on your discovery call. Some people call it a sales call strategy call. What’s the choreography of that? And what’s, I know you have a ton of wisdom here of like how to sell ethically and gracefully and make it a great experience. So take us to school, Sally. Sally Crewe: Yeah, we call them tech audits. They, are it’s nothing like it sounds like an IRS thing. It’s basically people like the person I’ve described that has a lot of, Bits and pieces of their business or various iterations of their business spread out over lots of platforms. And we just say, Hey, come in, no shame, dump it out on the table. And we go through and the, it tends to be a rhythmic cadence to the conversations and it ends up being like this, they say, I’m using this. Can I cancel that? Yes. Can I, do I still need this? And we go through and it’s not designed as a money, a monetization type of exercise, but it always ends up coming back to, yeah. So all the benefits of working with somebody, you see the stress drain from them when they realize that somebody’s Oh, I’m going to take these. Issues off their plate. And then they look around and they’ve Oh, and this is either going to cost me the same as I’m paying now, or it’s going to save me 30 bucks a month. And I get all this. So it really takes it into that sort of, it sells itself territory. And the exercise itself gives them a really good experience of what it is to work with, me, who’s someone who’s going to help them. With the tech and make decisions for them. And I, can’t be anyone else other than I am. I’m just, I am who I am as Popeye said. People a lot of people, the right people do, gravitate towards that, they pick up on my energy and they, know that I love what I do and that I’m really interested in helping them fix these issues and streamlining, you It all for them. And they usually can’t wait to pass that over to me. Like I said, a lot of them will just write after the call and be like, Oh, you’ve no idea how long I’ve been waiting to find you. Cause they’re just, they didn’t realize how stressed. All of this stuff was making them. Chris Badgett: I love that. And that’s really the ultimate goal of sales is collect connecting a problem with a solution and making, and like, why not make that fun and like trauma relieving experience? Oh yeah. It’s like a little Sally Crewe: bit of a game. And I I love, I’m like a problem solver. So I, But actually genuinely okay, what else do you have? Any of this? And I do I have had more money to save. Yeah. And the end of the day it’s, guaranteed. It’s either the same or it’s less because they’ve often got multiple tools doing different things or they’re not using with, I’ve got, what is this? What’s this? I don’t like they’ve signed up for something. They don’t even know they’re not using it. Do I still need this? So it’s great. I can be like whack a mole and just get their bills down by, but also relieve stress and and get them on the platform, which at the end of the day, I’m running a business. So Chris Badgett: that’s awesome, Sally. Thanks for coming back on the show, go check out nurture dash. com and see what Sally’s done there and how she’s solving platform level challenges, which is no small feat. Thank you for being a shining example of an education entrepreneur and somebody who continuously improves and iterates and cares about your customer, cares about learning and technology and innovation and the planet at the same time. Sally Crewe: Takes one to know one. Just like Chris Badgett: we’ll keep up the great work and thank you so much for coming on the show. I’m really excited to do another one in four years and see where we’re at. Sally Crewe: Hopefully, Yeah. Hopefully we’ll both still be around and we won’t have been replaced by robots. Chris Badgett: A hundred percent. All right. Thank you, Sally. Sally Crewe: Bye, Chris. Thank you. 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. 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In this LMScast episode, Barbara Thomason shares insights about social-emotional learning (SEL) within the niche of preteen education and development. Barbara Thomason is a social-emotional learning (SEL) specialist and the creator of Joy Circles, an initiative that helps preteens build confidence and vital life skills. Barbara also talks on the unique difficulties preteens have in today’s world, emphasizing how incidents like the COVID-19 epidemic affect their mental and social health. She highlights the need of specific programs and qualified facilitators in this specialty to help preteens navigate these difficulties and acquire critical SEL skills. In talking about the Joy Circles facilitator certification program, Barbara lists the perfect candidates in the niche, which includes school social workers, guidance counselors, and anyone with the empathy and communication skills needed to help preteens in their SEL journey. In response to the niche’s need for current and easily accessible information, Barbara decided to make the facilitator training program available online. She makes sure that her curriculum reaches a large audience of educators and facilitators committed to promoting the social and emotional development of preteens by utilizing online platforms such as Lifter LMS. 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 LifterLMS, 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. Her name is Barbara Thomason. She’s from joy circles. com and she helps facilitators and the people that are helping help preteens with self confidence. Reading all kinds of skills, but first welcome to the show, Barbara. Barbara Thomason: Thank you, Chris. Thanks for the invitation to come share.  Chris Badgett: Yeah, I’m so excited to chat with you today. It’s cool to build an online business, but it’s also, in my opinion, even better to create a positive impact in the world. Tell us, let’s get to the root of it. What is social emotional learning, which is part of the joy circles program? Barbara Thomason: Sure. Social emotional learning has an acronym like a lot of things do. So I may refer to it as S E L and social emotional learning has been around actually since the sixties, but has had a recent rebirth out of need. Mostly. Some people think of it in terms of character development but I prefer the SEL moniker because it’s more descriptive of what happens. It is a child learning to understand better their own emotions, understanding themselves and how they interact with others. It helps them as they move into those very special developmental stages and how they interact with the wider world. So it essentially better prepares them for the world of, work. world of relationships. So it’s very important and important that educators learn to recognize its importance.  Chris Badgett: So what happens? I like to keep it positive. But what happens when there’s stunted development and social emotional learning? Like how? How does it play out or and create challenges in a child’s life? Barbara Thomason: I think it’s been obvious in recent years because what we’ve noticed has been the result of, COVID isolation when when young ones have not had the social interaction. They struggle a little bit with coming back in to society in learning situations and in working with the team and collaborating. They tend to become very techno dependent. And I think that it takes time to begin to assimilate back into their, age group. Social and emotional skills are critical for academic learning. A young one who isn’t really comfortable with themselves and each other must be comfortable. They have to be comfortable with themselves in order to be able to be comfortable with learning. And research bears this out that young ones who score high, I guess you could say on SEL make greater gains in the academic areas, such as math and reading and sciences. So it’s, just very important for all over development.  Chris Badgett: You mentioned like a scoring system or what, types of, what are examples that would cause a higher score in SEL?  Barbara Thomason: I’ll speak to a specific series of studies. There is a, Dr. Gerlach and some of his research has been most cited. And what he found is of course there were certain gains after social emotional learning. I think he looked at several hundred. SEL programs of different types. And of course, the children that were exposed to SEL learning, as opposed to control groups, certainly saw gains in social emotional learning parameters, but What they didn’t expect, but they did see, was an 11 percent increase in academic gains. That was rather amazing, and a wonderful finding, because what that communicates to educators is that it is worthwhile to spend instructional time on social emotional learning, because it’s a, Wonderful expenditure of time with a payout at the end for academia.  Chris Badgett: Awesome. I love the name joy circles. Tell us about the name and the circles.  Barbara Thomason: That was both inspiration and I guess you could say a little bit of science too. There are a couple of researchers and of course their names have escaped me, but I have their book on the shelf that produced programming called the circle way. And they have programs around the world that are a lot of them for adults and they have. Shown how important the circle is, that is putting people in circles. And of course they go back to almost prehistoric times to demonstrate how circles are used in adult gatherings and how, when you put people in a circle, everyone is on equal footing. Everyone has a say, everyone is heard. And so this concept. It was extremely important to me in that when you enter into the whole process of social emotional learning, it’s important that you establish a circle in order for children to build trust with whoever is working with them and in facilitation you might notice that. Whether it’s therapists or school counselors, when they’re dealing with a child who may be unregulated or in trauma, they tend to get down on the level of the child. They may kneel down or even sit down eye to eye with the child. It’s the same concept with Circles, everyone is seated on the floor or if, excuse me, if everyone is in a chair, so is the facilitator. So everyone is equal. Everyone is heard. There are activities within the program that enable the circle to really be born out. There’s movement to music. So we’re doing that in a circle. There are times based on Cliff Derby’s program called Heart Talk, where you have a heart and you pass it around the circle and whoever is holding the heart has the privilege to speak at that moment about their deepest feelings. So that is a use of the circle as well as there are other things, of course, that we do within the circle, but the use of the word circle is, very critical. Joy, of course, I think is inherent in, the name of the program because that is intended ultimate outcome. It was a perfect marriage of, two concepts really to create this program. And I have to say it was somewhat divinely inspired.  Chris Badgett: Awesome. Yeah. I love that. Love the name and the backstory there. You mentioned therapists and perhaps guidance counselors and educators before who is the best fit for the joy circles facilitator certification program. Cause you’re, going to the educator, not directly to the student. Who are, who is, who’s the best fit?  Barbara Thomason: That is, that’s a great question because I think there are personal and skill characteristics that make the best facilitator, not necessarily a job title. So there may be someone without all of those credentials that could be a gifted facilitator. Like a camp  Chris Badgett: counselor, perhaps. Barbara Thomason: Yes it could be someone without an advanced degree. It could be someone with an associate’s degree. It could be someone with no degree. Although that’s, I think, a little tougher to establish, but if I were to go into, a school district, I would most likely start with guidance counselors simply because they are most likely to get it most easily get the concept. The school social worker is most likely to understand this. For the most part, they’ve had probably. 25 to 35 to 50 percent of the learning that I am offering in the facilitation program. For them, a lot of it is repeat or review for them. So they are wonderful candidates for this program. Teachers, only if maybe they they’re in a special situation where they have instructional time to do it and they have the skill sets and understanding. But for the most part, they are very focused on the instruction, the area of instruction that they are required to deliver. And they’re usually under a lot of stress to deliver it. And that’s not a good place to be in order to deliver joy circles and social emotional learning.  Chris Badgett: All right. Tell us about the desire to and the story of putting this online and how you made it to the point where you wanted to have a website for this and, create the online certification program for the facilitators. Barbara Thomason: The, Joy Circles program itself, the, what is delivered to the children, of course, is not online, that is a live program, but it was important to me that the facilitator training be available really around the world certainly across the nation, so that the program could be delivered Widely as quickly as possible. So that was the way to do it was to, place it online and make it easy, easily accessed and make the interaction between those of us that deliver the program as impactful as possible and make it. Self paced for the learner as well as we could punctuate this, class with periods where we could have live sessions. So built into it, or a couple of times when we would have what you might call check in sessions and coaching sessions with those that are going through the program. And at the very end, there’s a capstone session where they would do a practice facilitation with a live group but it was important to be able to, deliver this in a widespread way. It’s also wonderful to be able to edit the program as we go. I attended a all day conference yesterday delivered by the Texas Teacher Counseling Association and went to a number of wonderful workshops and got some great content and thought as I came back yesterday, I need to put that in my, facilitation program so I can go in and edit. Happily change the program and it’s, done I don’t have to go back to a printer and have a lot of expense, have any expense at all to make those edits.  Chris Badgett: Tell us about the instructional design aspect of it. Like how did you figure out how to structure? The course and the content, and you said that it’s awesome that you can make it better as you go. But how did you 1st encapsulate the program?  Barbara Thomason: Well, a little spoiler alert. I, have a master’s degree in human resource development. I know a little bit about instructional design and training and development. But I had never created a course and put it online. You guys make it easy. This drag and drop simplicity the training courses that you all provide it’s hand holding all the way. And I it just made it, it just made it painless. I did it over the Christmas holidays, essentially, and and knew, of course, that as I went along, I could just slide another lesson in or slide another unit in as I went along. It was. It was so much easier than I thought it would be. So thank you.  Chris Badgett: You’re welcome. I’m, glad that makes me happy. What was your experience with WordPress or getting into the tech of it all? Cause it, it’s not always easy. WordPress is infinitely customizable, but what’s your WordPress journey? Barbara Thomason: I have a webmaster. And they’re the WordPress experts. In fact, they’re the ones that they gave me a list of 3 LMS companies and you all were 1 of them. And so I reviewed the 3. I ended up with you all. I’m glad I did. I always knew that I had. A fallback. I could go to my web master people and they could save me if I screwed up. But it was, you just appeared on WordPress it was like, I didn’t know it was going to happen. And there you were. That’s how dumb I was about WordPress. I just found you there and just started clicking around. I could find what I needed just by clicking on courses. And it was easy to find. And I, found that I didn’t mess up my website or anything. Yeah it was great.  Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Do you remember, you said you were looking at three different LMSs. What, ultimately led to choosing LifterLMS?  Barbara Thomason: I can’t remember all that went into the decision. I will tell you that I think it was the support that you provide. Certainly the, instructional support, the fact that we can call on you any, time I think that you were, you had a special going on and it was around Thanksgiving. That certainly helps. Everybody likes a, deal. I think you enabled me to try it, I don’t think I did. I think I just signed up all the way at the beginning. There were probably other things. I think I liked the look the look and feel of LifterLMS sites. Certainly there were good testimonials there, there really wasn’t any reason not to sign up with you all. And some of the other sites gave me pause. Chris Badgett: Okay. Here’s a question for you that we get asked a lot for it. It’s one of the reasons we have this podcast. It’s outside the scope of the software, but. How do you get clients or how do you, get facilitators interested in the program and get the message out there? Barbara Thomason: That’s been tough. This is, I’m a new launch, so my best way is for example, going to a conference, a professional conference yesterday. I reach out to school districts one by one and attempt to make appointments either with. An instructional leader whoever’s heading up the counselors and just have that conversation, see where they are in their SEL programming. We talk about who would be ideal facilitators just that sort of thing. It’s just the outreach. I also have an e newsletter. And so I have a pretty robust list of schools across the state of Texas right now. So reaching out to them through my e newsletter, which is quarterly. I had an info webinar in January and invited quite a few people to that. So it’s just a lot of those, ways that, you outreach to your publics.  Chris Badgett: Thank you. I call that the ground game. You have to get out there and yeah. One conversation at a time. You mentioned checking in with districts on where their cell programming is. Is it already kind of part of the flow where, it’s educational institutions have some kind of social, emotional learning mandate or process and flow, or is it sometimes a new thing for a school? Barbara Thomason: This is tough for me to answer because I don’t want to be negative. Chris Badgett: a circle on the online right. Barbara Thomason: Now, having said that I met a wonderful ones. Program creator, former professor yesterday who has a high school program, which is partially online. And I think that’s perfectly wonderful. As long as they do have the live component, but, I would say that there are many other states that are head and shoulders above my state, the state of Texas, and I’m afraid that we fall far behind. Many of the administrators, superintendents still view social emotional learning as something that steals away from academic instructional time. They’re not familiar with DURLAC study and, others, and don’t realize the importance, especially in this post COVID time. And I do my best to educate it. I’m just one just one person, but. I’m hoping that over time they will see the benefit of it. Some of the programs that I saw yesterday especially those that are online just don’t seem to me to be impactful and they’ll, say that they’re evidence based, which is the key word in, social emotional learning, but they can throw that word around without. Necessarily having to prove it. I think that it just depends on, what school district and what state that you’re walking into as to how far they have come with social emotional learning.  Chris Badgett: For the other folks trying to impact within the educational system, who is, who’s like the decision maker on the program that you mentioned districts, but then there’s individual guidance counselors. Is it more likely the kind of district lead gets buy in and then encourages their staff to join? Or is it more likely a. Specific guidance counselor, as an example that gets really into it. And I call that land and expand and then others start getting interested, which is a top down or bottom up. Barbara Thomason: That’s the question. That’s what, how is going to respond? It depends on if it’s top down or bottom up. Sometimes a new superintendent comes into his position and wants to make his mark. And if his mark is one that is pure academics, then social, emotional learning may go by the wayside. And, that’s what I have seen in the very district I’m sitting in. While another may be one that is very open to listening to his professional staff and we’ll take their recommendations and if they believe strongly in a, sound social emotional learning program, then he or she will say let’s, invest in it. So it just depends on what kind of leadership is there and how willing they are to listen and take a try on a program.  Chris Badgett: Awesome. You mentioned creating impactful training. What are some examples of how to make the facilitator training more impactful than let’s say other things that are out there and with your background as a facilitator and instructional designer, how does one do that? Barbara Thomason: I think that in addition to having good content and one of the things that, that I try and do, it’s not always the fun part is, having sound. Resources and insight the sources, but to also have use your tool for what do you call them? It’s like homework and use the tool for creating quizzes. And so, you’re getting feedback for each unit or lesson if you choose to do it that way so that they’re really assimilating that information and trying themselves out on it. I think too, the more that you can have. more interaction during the learning, the better it can be. So, an example might be a lesson assignment where they join together with one or two other learners to work on a project, a group project, or they have to go out and do some research on their own and report back on that. Something that’s a little more interactive than just reading and spewing back information I think is, going to be more impactful. Knowing too that the learning is something that is going to make a difference in how they perform. On the job. And I think just pointing that out throughout the lesson, for example, giving them tools on how to work with the child who may lose control. During a session and why they are that way and tools that they can use to, bring that child back into into self control, those kinds of things. Chris Badgett: What’s an example of a tool like that? Where the child loses control and how can you  Barbara Thomason: help? There’s a model and I’m not going to go into the model, Chris, because it’s, not an attractive model, but it’s called the polyvagal theory. And it basically shows where we move neurologically in our brain. where we start out maybe feeling pretty good and we’re in a certain part of our brain and then we go into the flight or fight, fight or flight mode or freeze mode and call that our reptilian brain. And that’s where a child goes if they may be a child who has been subjected to abuse or neglect or any other form of trauma, they go there more readily, and through acts of, ensuring trust and so forth, you can move them from that part of their brain into a more calming place. There was a strategy I learned yesterday, and just I’m going to build this into my program. A lot of parents learn how to conduct time out, right? A child who has been neglected. or abused, time out would be very problematic for them because what they, don’t need to be felt like they’re, rejected. They need to be brought in and, feel closer and connected to. A trusting human being so this particular theorist called it time in and I just thought it was a beautiful thing. And she demonstrates how she brings the child who has acted out in to a chair fairly close to her. She continues to do her thing whether it’s grading papers or, cleaning up at a sink or whatever, and allows the child to maybe do some art or something, but be thinking about how he or she might have performed that behavior differently, not decide what you did wrong, but how might you have done that differently if you had a do over and, then when you have decided that when you figured that out, just say, I’m ready. And then when the child says, I’m ready, then get down on their level, I level and hear what they have to say. And it’s just great. Let’s try it that way. And I just thought that was a beautiful strategy to bring maybe a child that is high emotionality down to a calm level where they can move from that. Panic area of their brain to calm thinking logical area of their brain and have learning take place So I just thought that was a beautiful strategy. I’d never heard before yesterday time in I love that. Chris Badgett:Where does your passion and motivation come for this subject matter and impact you want to make in the world? Barbara Thomason: It’s funny when this lightning bolt inspiration came to me, I did not want to do this. I’ve had businesses before. I didn’t want to do another one. It was like. No, thank you, God, I don’t want to do this, but it just wouldn’t leave me alone. The day that my daughter was born, and this was pretty long time ago, it was a little over 40 years ago, when I brought my daughter home from the hospital, there was a front page article about a little boy named Tommy Lott, and Tommy Lott had been, had a long, he was probably only 5, 4, 5 years old, but in his short life, he had been really tortured and abused. And the front page article was that Tommy Lott had been killed by his parents, essentially, by being scalded in hot water. And this horrifying story, the day I brought my sweet baby home from the hospital, Sat in my gut and influenced a lot of what I did. I volunteered for a child child abuse prevention agency for years. I worked directly with child abuse At risk families I almost became a social worker at one point and decided I didn’t want to have my career fall into that area. It’s too depressing, but anyway, Tommy Lott has been in the back of my mind off and on throughout my career and I. I have gone on to do other things community development work, economic development work. It’s all been very gratifying, but but, kids are where it’s at and I’ve never wanted to be a teacher. I’ve never wanted to work in a daycare. I’ve never wanted necessarily to have that direct contact. It was enough to be a mom, but but I have this creative motivation to create and this is the facilitator program guide that they work from create the program and maybe have a little wider impact than I would have just working for the classroom or was always something appealing to me. And I felt would have would make a difference. It would make a difference in the world. So that’s my motivation. Tommy lot.  Chris Badgett: That’s fantastic. Barbara. For those of you listening, Barbara just held up a workbook. Is that it’s like a binder. Does that come up, does that come with the program, the online program? Barbara Thomason: Yeah, this would be something I would ship to the facilitator. And as they go through the online program, this is like lesson plans. And maybe someday these would go online as well, but right now because this is something they might take with them into a classroom, I just wanted it to be a little bit more portable and mobile now, we didn’t want them to have to depend on a laptop or a tablet to carry that around. Yeah, that’s the program facilitator guide.  Chris Badgett: I love that. I actually really like that idea. I call it clicks and bricks. You have some digital stuff and some stuff in the real world and it all just works together For the program. Yeah. What’s your vision for the future with joy circles? Like where, do you want to go with it?  Barbara Thomason: I want to go across the country. No, I want to continue to offer the, creative leadership of the program. I want to build a program. One thing that I haven’t emphasized really today is the fact that it It, combines reading reading skills development with social emotional learning. The young ones in the group will read contemporary novels that are age appropriate. For example, one of the novels deals with some kids that are dealing with bullying. And so we read the book together. As we read in the group, the kids build their reading skill, because they’re reading out loud. But we also stop and we have a series of discussion questions. Have any of you been bullied? What does it feel like to be bullied? What constitutes bullying? Or what is teasing? What’s the difference? So it’s sometimes easier to talk about Somebody else’s bullying experience before you talk about yours. And because of that. Joy circles has an infinite number of possibilities in that there are an infinite number of contemporary novels for various age groups. So right now we focus on fourth through sixth grade. I’m going to go down to third grade eventually at the recommendation of some school principals, and I may go up a grade or so the other direction as well. And then, of course, create depth in terms of more and more novels that we might introduce into the program. So, I could stay very busy and just working with developing the program with the addition of literature, KIDLIT as it relates to the different topics of KIDLIT. of bullying and race and socioeconomic differences and developing friendships and dealing with parents and all of those issues that children in this age group are just exploring and dealing with. So on a micro level, that’s where I want to go with it. On the macro level, I do hope to bring Other professionals in to help me expand this business and to help it grow. I’d like to see it in schools across the country and that’s my vision to make a difference across, across the country. Chris Badgett: That’s amazing switching back to the instructional design hat. If somebody is. Working on something similar or tangentially related. I’m, just curious, did you create the physical binder of lesson plans first or the online course, and then there’s also this reading list which comes first, the chicken or the egg? What would you advise somebody?  Barbara Thomason: I, created the program, the lesson plans first, but I. I had in the back of my mind, this outline for the facilitator program. The lesson plans are one thing, but the, facilitator training is why do we use circles? Why do we use models? That’s another thing that makes us unique in that we, use graphical and word models. No other program does this, that Helps bring concepts to the young ones that will remain in their mind There’s one model for example called Sarge, and it’s this ugly kind of sergeant graphic and it is about the type of communication style that you might hear from a sergeant or another kind of authority and but it’s necessary in an emergency or a certain situation. So sometimes children have a hard time distinguishing between what’s appropriate and what’s inappropriate communication. So this is a kind of communication model that we teach them. And then we talk about other kinds of communication like eye messages and, how to structure an appropriate. I statement I feel concerned when you talk to me in that tone of voice. All of this is, and there are more models that are in my head that need to be developed as we move into sixth and seventh grade levels. So program first, then the facilitator training will evolve as well. Chris Badgett: I wanted to try to extract a, some wisdom from Your experience around a lesson plan for a T for somebody who’s not trained as a teacher, like what is the lesson plan?  Barbara Thomason: It’s a flexible script. And it’d be hard for you to see for me to show you, but it. It provides a theme for this particular day or period of time together. It provides going, as an example? Like communication or leadership or self management or visioning. And it provides maybe a list of materials and equipment. That you may need to gather together to have for that session so that it helps them get organized and then it has the list of activities you start with movement to music and joy circles has its own. Recordings of music we’ve, secured the services of a local musician who has provided a soundtrack for us. So it’s very upbeat, positive music that, that he’s created for us. So we have movement to music and of course we’ve taught them in the facilitator training how to do this in a way that’s open and fun. And then we move right into what we call Soda straw breathing. Where they transition from that movement to music that helps them focus down to a calming state where they they might even have a soda straw and we teach them how to breathe in through their nose and out as if they’re breathing through a soda straw. And we do that several times, so it’s self calming. And then we go right into reading, where we are in the novels. They take turns. If a child doesn’t want to read, maybe they’re not comfortable with their reading, they can pass or we might say why don’t you read the title of this chapter so that they’re comfortable with just a few words and we reinforce that great. That was helpful. Thanks, Steven. And then. After we read whatever the chapter is that we’ve decided to do that day, we have our discussions. Why do you think why do you think she ran out of the classroom in that chapter? Have you ever felt like doing that and why? So we take whatever the action was and bring it down to their personal level. And then we might introduce our models for the day. And a lot of times they’ll track with the action of the book and then we’ll have some kind of a closing circle as well. So it depends on the amount of time that the hosting organization has allowed. If it’s 30 minutes or 60 minutes or 20 minutes how much we can accomplish, but. That’s, what a lesson looks like and this scripts it for you, but we allow lots of flexibility for a facilitator once they’ve been trained to make adjustments. There may be an activity like creating emoji sticks so that they have a collection of emoji sticks that shows different kinds of emotions that we would use throughout our semester together. So all kinds of things that, that the lesson plans can provide them with ideas. And then we welcome them to submit their own ideas so that they can be shared among our facilitator community.  Chris Badgett: Wow. I love that. I think the, what I’m hearing, the really big thing there when creating a learning experience is multiple, These in the body, breathing music through the ears, reading arts and crafts. It’s not like you said earlier, it’s not just receiving content and spitting it back on the test. That’s what makes engaging learning experience. So I say like one of the frameworks or models that I have for for people who create these kinds of online learning platforms. Oh, it can be challenging or difficult is because you got to be five people in once. You have to be a subject matter expert, you have to be a teacher slash instructional designer. You have to be a community builder, both to get clients. And then also inside your program, you have to be an entrepreneur. You have to start a business and accept money through the internet and marketing, and you have to be a technologist who can work with hardware and software and websites and everything you’ve, put all those pieces together, both yourself. And you mentioned earlier, you had a webmaster that helps on the tech side. What advice do you have for somebody that’s struggling with having to wear those five hats? That’s what I call my model is the five hats. Cause you were able to get it and get it launched. Like what, advice do you have for wearing all the hats? Barbara Thomason: I would say get the help you need retain those things that you know, and love. And try as much as your budget allows to delegate the rest. If you don’t like doing your bookkeeping try and find somebody else to do it. If, you don’t like building a website, it’s easy to find people to do that. I have the most wonderful web people, and they were not terribly expensive, and I have just, I have them on a retainer now to, So rescue me when I need them to do things on a monthly basis.  Chris Badgett: So how do you find that person? I’m just curious because people ask.  Barbara Thomason: What’s that online shopping place? Upwork or freelancer? It’s Upwork. Yeah. I found them on Upwork. Great, place to go. Yeah, that’s where I found them. And it wasn’t necessarily that they were the the lowest price or anything, it was a gut feeling of a good match and I was right. I would just say, that keep the things that you’re good at and that you love to do and try and, Carve out the other things and see if you can find others to do. I, there are things that I really am ready to delegate but I’m not ready budget wise. I’m, I’ve created a job description and I’m, poised and ready to bring somebody else on as quickly as I can when the time is right. But, but the time isn’t quite right. I’m just ready.  Chris Badgett: It sounds like also the having your strong vision, mission and purpose helps carry you through all those challenges. And what I’m hearing too, is the team aspect of it. You even mentioned like in your vision to bring in other Subject matter experts to add even more value to the platform, which is awesome. Barbara Thomason: Yeah, I look forward to that time. It’ll it’s also a challenge too. It gets messier when you bring other people in Yeah.  Chris Badgett: This has been a great conversation Barbara She’s at joy circles. com. What are, what’s the best way for people to connect with you? And particularly if somebody is working in education and social work or guidance, what should they do to connect  Barbara Thomason: with you more? They can find me through the website. I have an email, Barbara Thomason at joy circles. com. I’m on social media Facebook, LinkedIn, and just reach out.  Chris Badgett: Barbara, thank you for being a shining example of what I call an education entrepreneur, creating a positive impact in the world and, using LifterLMS as part of your tech stack I really appreciate it. And I wish you all the best on your learning platform journey. And thanks for coming on the show.  Barbara Thomason: Thanks for having me, Chris. Take care. Keep up the good work. 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. 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 Create a Niche Education Facilitator Program appeared first on LMScast.

In this LMScast episode, Madame Alexa describes how she went from working as a teacher in a program that immerses students in French to launching her own online language learning website. She decided to make her own interactive games and activities to fill the resource vacuum for younger learners in French immersion programs, with the goal of helping them acquire the language more successfully. Alexa is owner of Madame A’s. She talks about how she creates classes using a combination of interactive features, video tutorials, and other activities to keep kids interested and learning at their own speed. Madame Alexa also discusses the technologies she uses, such as Elementor for WordPress website design, Genially for interactive activities, and recording tools for providing voice instructions. Madame Alexa also reveals that her husband suggested WordPress to her as a versatile platform that would enable her to personalize her website and incorporate necessary capabilities like translation using the Polylang plugin. She created a full platform with an LMS for children’s language learning, even though she was new to WordPress. According to Madame Alexa, she did a lot of research before finding LifterLMS, and she thought it was one of the few platforms that let her tailor her services for both individual parents and classroom environments. 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 LifterLMS, 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 Madame Aize. She’s from madameaize. com. She does language learning teaching over the internet. It’s French immersion from home. Welcome to the show, Madame A. Thank  Madame Alexa: you so much. You can just call me Alexa for this interview. That’s totally fine. The kids called me Madame Alexa. I have a lot of different names.  Chris Badgett: Awesome. I’ll do it. I’ll do Alexa because my French is not that good. No problem. I did spend a, I was in France this past year. I spent some time in the Chamonix Valley area and had a ball there, but I also spent a lot of time in Canada. Quebec’s an awesome place as well.  Madame Alexa: Perfect. It is lovely. I do really enjoy living here.  Chris Badgett: Awesome. Tell us the origin story of how you started teaching French in online or in person. Like where, did the website Madame A’s come to be?  Madame Alexa: Absolutely. I was a teacher for seven years in the French immersion program in Quebec. So for anybody who’s not really familiar with that, it’s basically a school program in French, where most of the students that will register either don’t speak French at home at all, so they’re from an English household or their parents might speak French at home, but they absolutely want their child to be bilingual. A little bit of a background on the education system here in Quebec specifically, you when you are in the francophone system, you have about one hour of English a week. You can imagine that a lot of people are not becoming bilingual with that program. And in the English program as well, they have about one hour of French a week. So again not, great if you want your child to be bilingual. So the immersion program is really everything is completely in French for the most part. And you have one hour of English a day. And when the kids get a little bit older, like in grades five and six, they actually have six hours a week. So you, you get that additional hour as well in there. I taught on the French side of a French immersion program for seven years. And I got to live the pandemic teaching online with a grade one class, which is very interesting. So most of my colleagues were ripping their hair out trying to figure something out online and I’ve always really enjoyed. technology and educational technology, and I really saw this as an opportunity to teach differently. I was going online, I was creating these self paced plans for my students, which is not something that’s doable in a classroom, but I’m like, hey, we’re online, we could do this, let’s do it. And I was finding that there were very few resources made, especially for younger learners. And even more so when we fell into French immersion. So what usually happens with French immersion is that they’re not second language learners, so it’s not as basic, but they’re not necessarily at the level of a mother tongue French speaker either. So we have this very large middle area. That’s rarely covered. And not a lot of material has been created for that level, so I decided well, this isn’t out there and I need it, so let me create it myself. I think I’ve got the skills to do this. I started creating these little interactive games for my students and they responded extremely well to it. So well that during my last year of teaching I replaced all of my homework with these interactive games. That was their, lessons, their review. They would be doing it through these activities. So they would learn with me during the week and then they would go home and practice through these games. And the parents really appreciated it because they used to tell me I always have to fight with my kid to do their homework, to practice this language, but. Every time it’s your games, it’s never an issue. So I saw that there was something to do with this. So I decided to leave teaching entirely at the end of the last school year. And I’ve been doing this full time since July. So all of the activities are now online and here we are.  Chris Badgett: Wow. That is really cool. Tell us more about the games, like from an instructional design standpoint, like what are  Madame Alexa: they? Yeah. I try to do a mix of a lot of different things. It’s important for me to lay the foundations first. Usually what I’ll do is I will have an interactive kind of image that the child can click around and can listen to my voice. So they’re like discovering through doing and then once, So instead of having a teacher just talk them through what they need to learn, they get to explore it themselves. In other instances, I’ll also have video lessons if it’s really a concept that’s important that, that is explained to them. I’ll have it in a video and I, find it nice. especially for the younger ones who don’t necessarily have that attention span to be able to come back to it, hear it as many times as they need to, take a break in between the lesson if they need to. And then what I do is I’ll have a couple of different activities that can be scrambled letters, it can be a word search, it can be a quiz I really try to vary it so that they never know what to expect and it keeps them on their toes. And then I take what’s been taught and I have them apply it to a bunch of different concepts. So very pedagogical. Wow. And they really get to use their knowledge in a bunch of different contexts.  Chris Badgett: So cool. I wish I had you as a French teacher when I was younger.  Madame Alexa: Thanks. I would have loved that. It’s never too late to learn. Don’t worry.  Chris Badgett: That’s true. That’s true. Tell us about your technology stack. What tools do you use to deliver all this?  Madame Alexa: Yeah this is a little bit complicated because I do not have a background in programming or anything like that. And what I was finding with most of these LMS tools is that they were designed for adult learners, right? We know that online teaching is extremely popular for adults in higher education, but it hasn’t been exploited as much, I think, as it could have for children. So that was something that a big problem that I was running into was that these, LMSs are very busy. They’re very they have a lot of things that children don’t know how to handle or it’s not valuable to their learning. So I needed something that I would be able to really edit a lot. But at the same time, I it’s got to be if, we’re talking about coding, I’m, it’s very limited what I can do. So I use a bunch of different programs depending on what I’m doing. If I am doing a an activity, then I’ll often go with Genially, which is an amazing tool. So that really lets me add a bunch of interactive elements. And, put in the designs that I want, which is really nice. And then I will use a bunch of recording tools as well, so that I can add my voice to all of those interactive elements. Because a lot of these students don’t necessarily know how to read, so they need to be able to hear the instructions versus doing them. And for the design of the website, then that was Elementor that I was using. Which was extremely helpful for somebody like me who has never done a website in her life. So really appreciated that Lifter and Elementric could work together.  Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. It may surprise you, but I’m not a coder as well. I I, work with WordPress and tools that you move around. And yes, luckily for me, I have engineering talent on the team and partnership, so I’m able to make it happen. But I’m really impressed with what you’ve been able to do, both from a design standpoint and just making learning fun, I think that’s really the most important thing. Madame Alexa: Thanks. That’s really the, ultimate goal, right? Is to make sure these kids can have fun and learn at their own pace. I’m so reassured that you say that because I’m like, look at Chris accomplishing everything and he doesn’t have a background in programming either. So it’s all good to go.  Chris Badgett: I don’t need it. WordPress is for everybody really. It’s, the main goal was to democratize publishing and we just build on top of that with democratizing education is, there can you tell us a little bit about your WordPress journey?  Madame Alexa: Yes, I’m sorry. I seem to be having a bit of a problem with my camera. Just give me one second. I’m gonna try to fix that.  Chris Badgett: Yeah, no problem. Your audio is still coming through just fine.  Madame Alexa: Okay, that’s good at least. Let me keep talking while I try to fix that. Sorry, what was your question?  Chris Badgett: What was your, like, how long have you been involved with WordPress as a technology? Madame Alexa: So I, this was my first stint with WordPress actually. So yeah, it’s completely, new here. Oh, there we are. Yeah. What I had done originally with the website is that I had taken a a platform that had the LMS and the website together. But it didn’t work out for me because I needed, like I explained, I needed to modify so many different things and it just was not letting me do that. And my husband works in, tech, and he’s the one who originally suggested WordPress because he’s you need to be able to adapt a bunch of different things and still have a skeleton. So this seems like the ideal situation, right? This is, the ultimate tool to be able to do that. That’s how we got involved with WordPress to begin with. The original issue I was coming across was that I couldn’t translate my website with the other platform I was using, which is a huge problem in Quebec. Everybody expects things to be available in French and in English, even if it’s a French learning program. For kids clearly designed to English marketed towards English speaking parents. You will absolutely get judged if your stuff isn’t also available in French. So that was something that was extremely important that I needed to do quickly. That’s what pushed me towards WordPress. And then when I saw how much I could adapt to what I wanted to do and find the tools to really fulfill my vision, I was like, all right this is it. This is where we need to go.  Chris Badgett: Do you know offhand, like how that French English button on your menu works?  Madame Alexa: Do I know how it works?  Chris Badgett: Yeah, like what tools you’re using to make that happen or anything? Madame Alexa: Yes, I do. It’s called, it’s a plugin called Polylang. Okay. Yeah, so it’s, not magical. But it does let me have basically every time that I create a page I can, Tell WordPress like this is the page in English and then duplicate it and explain this is the page in French and then translate the entire thing. So I still have to do the translations myself but it lets WordPress know okay, when the person clicks this button, we’re going to this, the version of this page that’s in French, basically.  Chris Badgett: Awesome. Yeah. Very well done. Thanks. I’m impressed this is your first WordPress site. It’s pretty awesome. Really? Oh,  Madame Alexa: thank you. It’s so nice to hear because I’m always worried that it’s not it’s not as good as it could be. So it’s, always nice hearing  Chris Badgett: that. It’s it’s, not just like a static website for a business. It’s like the whole thing. And you’re using advanced tools like translation and LMS. And yeah, it’s there’s a lot going on. So it’s impressive.  Madame Alexa: Yes. In the beginning, it was a little bit overwhelming. I think now finally I’ve got it somewhere that I, like it. So I’ve been able to spend a bit less time on the website and a bit more time on my actual content which has been really nice. It is definitely a big a big challenge in the beginning because you’re, learning a bunch of different. new tools at once. But yeah, I finally got it to I think where I want it to be. And I think it’s really nice to have all of these. It feels like limitless, right? All of the options that you can have with the plugins. So I know that when I’m ready to crank it up a notch or add something else there’s, a ton of different tools out there that I could potentially add.  Chris Badgett: Do you remember how you found LFTR LMS or how you got, into that whole world? Research  Madame Alexa: Research Yeah I, at first I was like, there’s gotta be a business up there doing LMSs for children. And there are. But it’s almost as if, as soon as you’re talking about doing something for kids, they want to really restrain what you’re able to do with it. And none of them I feel like the, concept of my business, obviously it’s not revolutionary. There are online games and online platforms for, children learning languages. But none of them do exactly what I do, which is really a mix of a bunch of different types of activities. It was really important for me that everything was in one place so that if the child wanted to do it independently, they could. And I think that’s something that really hasn’t been exploited much. So every single thing. tool LMS that I was finding was too restrictive one way or another. So that’s how I ended up doing a bunch of research for different different LMSs that would really let me customize. And that’s how I came upon LFTR and saw, okay, there’s a bunch of different things that I can do here. And my service can be bought directly by parents. Who just want their child to have an additional tool at home, but they can also be bought by schools. So classroom access where you’ve got a teacher with a group of 30 students who are all advancing at different paces. And it was difficult to find a tool that would let me have. Those two worlds working parallel with each other. And LFTR was one of the only ones who were letting me do that the way that I wanted to. That’s awesome. Yeah, but it was months of research comparing and trying things out.  Chris Badgett: Yeah. It’s a little overwhelming with how many, there’s 500 LMS is out  Madame Alexa: there. There’s a lot. Yeah, there’s a lot. There’s a lot. Yeah. But I think that my vision was so clear and detailed and I knew exactly what I needed. So it was fairly easy for me to go through them and be like, okay, no, this one’s not going to work. It doesn’t have this. This is a non negotiable for me. So I had a couple of points like that, that I knew. If this is not available, there’s no way I can do this. There’s no way I can put my eggs in this basket and I knew that it was going to be a huge commitment because I’m, trusting this platform to, hold all of my content, to hold my business in their hands and, not let me down. Let me do what I want to do, because this, is literally my entire product. So yeah you, guys, this is Came in and got me there. I was like, oh, yeah, I feel like I can trust these guys and Will is amazing Every time I was stuck I could go look at a video that he’d done and I was like, alright I feel like somebody’s holding my hand here at all times every time I need him So it’s like a running joke between me and my husband When I don’t know how to do something, he’s have you checked a will? I’m sure. And then when I get really stuck, if he hasn’t, then he’s joined the lives a couple of times, cause he’s I’m so interested in, the way that they do things you’ve inspired. He’s a I’m going to try to get his title, right? He’s a product manager in a tech company. And he’s enjoyed the way that you’ve done certain things so much that it’s inspired. His job. And he’s gotten things implemented in his business that because he thought you guys were doing it so well. So like the lives, for example, he’s we should do something like that. This is amazing. So thank you. You’ve helped two different businesses with lifter.  Chris Badgett: That’s amazing. Thanks a lot for saying that. And I’ll definitely pass that on to will as, well. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. One of our philosophies is. We don’t hide behind the website which, you don’t as a language learner or teacher, you can’t, but like some tech companies, it’s just like this faceless org and we’ve, intentionally went a different path. So I appreciate you saying that.  Madame Alexa: Yes. And it’s, I think ultimately that’s what convinced me. To go with lifter versus all of the other LMS is, that I, saw that through you. I saw that I can be the teacher that I want to be online and they’re going to let me do that.  Chris Badgett: Awesome. Is there anything else on the lifter side that you like about the tool or the features or anything? Madame Alexa: So many things. The number one thing is really how customizable it is. The, only thing I would say is that I wish I could customize even more. But yeah, to be able to in, the courses page, when you’ve got a student going through the activities it was really important for me that. It’d be very uncluttered because the more buttons there are for a child, the more chances the kid has of getting lost. I had to remove a bunch of buttons like the mark is complete. I had to figure out a way for the system to recognize that. Yes. Okay. This activity was done. And we can move on to the next one without counting on the child to be like, yeah, okay, I’m done cause that’s, they’re not all able to do that, unfortunately. So I, really love that, that I could take out what I didn’t need. I could embed what I did need. That was really amazing. And it worked seamlessly with the different tools that I was using.  Chris Badgett: We, we get a lot of questions about making interactive content. So I think you mentioned was it called Gina Lee or something?  Madame Alexa: Genially? Yeah. Yeah. It’s an amazing tool. Explain how you  Chris Badgett: did that inside of a lesson and Lifter LMS.  Madame Alexa: Yeah. Yeah. What I do is through my genially account that’s really where I’m creating the activity. I, have one part that’s the design. So I do the design of the activity the way that I’ve imagined it in my head. I upload that into Genially, and then from Genially, I can make those different elements interactive. And so I can add a recording to it. I can make it so that when this is clicked, this happens and all of that stuff. Then once my activity is complete, then I generate like a a code to, So that people can, actually use it. That’s a bit like a private code. Then I go into Lifter and under my lesson what I’ll do is I have to actually go through WordPress to do this. So I’ll go to WordPress. I will add an embed block and within that embed block, that’s where I put my link to the activity and there we go. Nice. Nice. And then I make sure that it’s only accessible to the ones who are enrolled in the course.  Chris Badgett: Perfect. Yeah. Tell us more about the school or the classroom versus individual learner. How do you do that?  Madame Alexa: Yeah. I use your groups Add on, I guess we can call it that. Yeah. So I had to define the teacher role a little bit because my teachers are a little bit different than most teacher roles within higher education organized. Because most of those organizations want their teachers to upload content and manage certain things, which is not the case for me. The content is entirely made by me. I don’t want the teachers to be playing around with that or adding their own content. That’s not really the goal, right? I want to be an additional Like fully formed tool. I don’t want to add any additional work to them. So I really wanted it to be there and they, just have to add their students and then their students can do everything. On their own. So I have this teacher role who’s able to add her students, who’s able to see the progress of her students into the different activities. And then each student just has their own login and is able to just go in and do the activities either in class or at home. So if the teacher wants to use one of my lessons to present it to the whole group and then have them do the follow up activity on the classroom iPads, then they can just log in and do that there. Or she runs out of time. She wants them to do it at home. During the week when they have time, they’re able to do that.  Chris Badgett: Wow. That’s super cool. Super impressive. Inspiring too, to think of lifters up inside of a classrooms and  Madame Alexa: delivering all this on the smart boards directly. Wow.  Chris Badgett: Yeah. Tell us, there’s a common question we try to help people with on this podcast, which is how do you get students or clients or classrooms in your case? Like, how did you get your learning platform to get traction in the  Madame Alexa: market? It’s very difficult. When I originally started, I was marketing it to schools so I was exclusively doing classroom access and the education system in Quebec is extremely complicated. I think in the United States as well, this is something that you’re grappling with. But especially when you come in as a private institution, as a private business into a public institution, you’re seen with a wary eye, unfortunately. I think because they’re thinking, Oh, this person is trying to just make money and exploit my students for their business when it’s really not the case. My ultimate goal is to just teach these children and make, French fun. And obviously we all need to make money to make our, businesses. Keep, surviving but I’m never going to be putting a student’s success at risk just so I can make a few more bucks. That’s, not the point, right? So that was very difficult because I had to cold call the schools, very difficult to get in contact. With administration in a school and then you have to prove yourself. So bring that message and make them believe in something that’s very new. So yeah, that, that was particularly difficult and considering I’m on my own, that was very rough. Because I, do think sales is a full time job and when you are a business owner, you already wear so many hats, you don’t necessarily have the time to be doing sales full time, especially when, like me, it is not your forte yeah, I found that particularly difficult, so I ended up pivoting a little bit more and gearing the service more towards So lately lots of online marketing campaigns to go and reach those parents and to see what we’re offering and, to see that this is an available option for them. Because I think on top of getting parents to, to trust this whole the, education of their child to something, an online service. Beyond that, we’re presenting something that hasn’t really been done often. There’s a whole element of trust that I need to to get past as well before these parents. So that has been particularly difficult. I do find that presenting that, that face and that personal element really helps. So yes videos are, great and informative and educational, but the fact that you’re a real person and they realize that has been extremely helpful. I’m really starting to, I’ve never been good with social media. I, I, it doesn’t come naturally to me to share my life. I just never thought that I was interesting enough for that, that nobody would care. But it turns out people do care. I’ve been trying really hard to share tidbits of, my life, of learning French, of tricks that parents can use at home, even if they don’t speak French, to support their child. So that’s been extremely helpful. I think we’re bringing a, personal element, and they see that this isn’t just a face behind a screen. This is a real person with with real things to offer. It’s not just a, voice on the other end.  Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Is it is it like Instagram and Facebook and Twitter? Yeah,  Madame Alexa: exactly. Facebook and Instagram, especially. I haven’t tackled Twitter yet. I am tackling Tik  Chris Badgett: TOK. Oh, good for you. For what it’s worth, we have a a Spanish teacher who does really well on Tik  Madame Alexa: TOK, so yeah it’s, Impressive that when you don’t have a very short time limit like people are interested in learning and I feel like this is just a, bite size way to learn now. And it’s so accessible that I think there’s something to do with that. Yeah, for sure. And the algorithm is. It’s crazy scary good. If, it recognizes, Hey, you’ve got an interest in learning languages here’s a content creator who’s going to help you do that. And then we end up on their for you page and that’s really great. It’s very impressive.  Chris Badgett: That is good. I agree with you that that whole micro learning thing is. It’s really a trend for one, but number two, tick tock is really good at that.  Madame Alexa: Yes. And, I feel like it’s a whole new era. This isn’t something that we would have been able to do some 25 years ago, right? When, everything wasn’t so accessible with, the internet and with every, everything out there. So I feel like. It’s okay to adapt to new realities and, to change learning in a way that just suits people better in the lives that they’re living today, right? Of how busy they are. You have  Chris Badgett: a like a free trial program course on your site? Yes,  Madame Alexa: I do. Yeah. Tell us about the strategy  Chris Badgett: of that and how it works and what it does.  Madame Alexa: Yeah. Originally it came from when I was still approaching schools. I think that Teachers are very concerned that if they jump into a new tool, it’ll be more work for them because they’re going to have to learn how to use it, how to apply it, where can they fit it in their planning. And I think there was a big block there. They needed to see that what I created was good pedagogically, right? That it was good content, but also that it was easy to use. And I wanted them to see. I think a lot of them couldn’t fathom the types of activities that I was able to create with these programs. So it was really important for me to showcase just a couple of activities just so they see the potential and that they see oh, wow, this is really easy to use. And my students are really going to enjoy doing this. So that’s where the free trial initially came from. It was just I think five or six different activities just to give the flavor and to show them how easy it was to use, but to also see we’re not just we’re not just teaching vocabulary. We’re looking at reading, we’re looking at writing, we’re looking at speaking. Like we’re really exploring the language through all of this. It’s facets. So I, wanted them to be able to play around with that and put up an activity on the board and just have their students explore it. So that’s where I came from originally. And then when I started pivoting towards parents, I figured, Oh, it it might be good for them as well to show this to their child and be like, Hey, is this something that interests you? Is this something that my child would do? And when they see the interest to be like, Oh yeah, this is worth me spending the 29 a month for my kid to have access to a bunch of different activities like this. So that’s where it came from.  Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. I think that’s the best marketing you can do is a free course or free product. That’s, great. You mentioned a term and just for the non teachers out there, what is pedagogy or pedag? Pedagogical mean?  Madame Alexa: Pedagogical. So it means that there’s, a whole science to learning, right? This is what we learn for four years in university, right? It’s how the brain works. How, is a completely new concept introduced to a young brain? And then gradually that learning solidifies in their brain to become something that’s fully acquired. So any, you can throw any fun, colorful activity at a child and they might do it and they might understand. But how does that play into the building blocks of their knowledge and how do you use those blocks to gradually grow towards language learning and becoming fully bilingual. So that’s all of the thought that’s behind every activity. It’s not just fun. There’s, a, yeah, there’s, yeah, it’s not just we’re throwing in this number of activities just, just. for giggles there, there is a, goal to each and every one of those and they all create building blocks so that the child can take what they learn, reuse it later, use that knowledge to push their learning further and, then build on that. So that’s what it is. It’s, not just willy nilly exercises. It’s really there is the method to the madness.  Chris Badgett: Awesome. And if I’m understanding it does it come with a weekly video  Madame Alexa: call? Yes, it does. Yeah. Part of the package. Yeah. When the when the parent purchases a monthly access, they have access to the activities drip fed weekly because it was very important for me that we don’t overwhelm the child either. Sometimes there’s just too much going on and that’s a great motivation killer. So I wanted them to. Take it slowly. And every week when they’re on their home screen, they have a big button that says register for this week’s call. And obviously I have limited spots available because it would get very chaotic with 50 kids in there at once. So if the parent wants too. They just have to press that button and it registers them for the weekly call. And then they get a a Google meet link that they can then join. So at the time of the lesson every week, and then we get to go over what they’ve practiced during the week. So the different types of activities that they’ve done, what they’ve learned, I get to practice it with them, but in an authentic. context, right? Like, how do you respond with that knowledge when a French speaker is asking you a question, right? And you got to think on your feet. So we keep those very short. They’re only 30 minutes. They’re very young learners, so their attention span is quite short. And again, we’re going with the idea of we want to keep learning. So we don’t want it to drag on, we don’t want them to get bored with it. So this way we get to do a fun little activity, I can read them books sometimes we can have like fun little discussions and every month I also do a live book reading that’s free that any, parent can join. They don’t have to be registered. So if they just want their child to be listening to a French story. read by a native French speaker. That’s free. They just have to join the Facebook page and, we do that every third Sunday of the month. So yeah, just a bunch of different fun ways to, make French learning authentic for them. Chris Badgett: Wow, that’s awesome. And the you mentioned, I think current pricing was 29 a month. We get asked a lot about how to figure out what to charge or pricing. Any, advice there in, this education market or how you came up with that?  Madame Alexa: I found that extremely difficult as well. Obviously my pricing for is different from my pricing for parents because we’re talking about an access for 30 children for the entire school year versus a monthly access for one child. So that was a big moment for me, even for my school pricing was very difficult. I ended up having to drop the price to something. Almost ridiculous and even then it was very difficult to sell to schools because it’s so hard to pass all of those barriers. So I knew that I needed to go with something that was easy to digest. I think a lot of people when they talk about a monthly membership, they’re very quick to compare it to other monthly subscriptions like Netflix. They come to expect that. As a a monthly subscription price. Obviously we’re talking about education and not just entertainment. So I think that really was an added value to what I was offering. But you want something that They that’s a no brainer right for them that it’s like this is a very small price to pay for your child to have quality education that’s added to what they learned at school every day. And when I, spoke to many different parents to see the different tools that they had used, what did they, that made sense for them? And that price range came back a lot. The 25 to 35 a month was something that was often mentioned. And I, wasn’t even talking about monthly prices. I was just like what would you be willing to pay? And they’re the ones who kept coming back with the monthly pricing. And that’s when I started doing the monthly pricing. Cause I was like, okay, this makes sense to people. So let me do that. And and I figured why not just start right in between these two numbers and, go from there. So it is an introductory price right now. I don’t know how long that’s going to last. I’m thinking that the more, because I’m constantly adding content to these this platform as well. So obviously, eventually, I’m thinking the price will increase. But right now, since it’s all very new I figured this was the ideal place to start. I hope that answers your question. It  Chris Badgett: does. That was really good. I have found by the way that dollar a day, basically price point is a good price point for certain things. So I’m glad you found that spot. What about expansion or growth plans for the future? I guess you could do more grades or ages and then different countries or like, how do you think about the future? Where do you want to go? Oh,  Madame Alexa: so many plans. Originally the idea was to create content from kindergarten to grade six. At the moment we only have early learning. So it’s grades one and two. So definitely going to be expanding from. K to at least four and maybe to six. If I see that the interest is there. It is extremely time consuming to create the activities and to make them as good as I want them to be. So yeah, I have to put a lot of thought into that. It’s a lot of planning. It’s a lot of creation. That’s a lot of testing before it’s put out there. Yeah. So for sure, I want To grow that I’d also like to keep adding on to the current activities that I have so that there’s more I’m going to be visiting Western Canada very shortly so that I can compare the immersion programs over there to the ones. over here and see what the differences are so that I can better adapt to their needs. So that’s a growth that’s going to be happening very shortly on the school side. Eventually I would like to start marketing this to the US as well, because I think that if this is good enough for English speaking Canadian parents who want their child to speak French, then why wouldn’t it be for, you guys, right? I think that language learning is so beneficial everywhere, especially today. And especially considering French is such a popular language. I can definitely see some parents wanting to give additional opportunities to their child and, seeing how easy it can be, right? And that they don’t need to. the language to be able to give their child that opportunity. So that’s something I definitely want to go towards. And you’re the first to hear this. We’re currently developing a, an AI tool, a conversational AI tool specifically for children. So that outside of those. Live 30 minute calls if the child wants to practice their language learning, they’re going to be able to do that with a cartoon version of me, who’s going to ask them questions and respond to what they say. So we’re working on that right now.  Chris Badgett: Wow. Do you know what that AI tech is called? Oh  Madame Alexa: boy, I do not. Clearly not my area of expertise. That is my husband’s. It’s definitely his passion project right now. So I’m, working on all of the educational side of it and the I guess the knowledge that goes into that. That data but yeah, I couldn’t even give you a specific name. I have no idea.  Chris Badgett: Yeah. No worries. It’s interesting time for AI and it’s amazing how fast changing and what happens even over a year.  Madame Alexa: Yeah. And the possibilities are just endless. I’m constantly amazed with what he’s showing me that it can accomplish. I I threw that idea one day because. What I do, right? Every morning I wake up with a new idea and I’m like, we should do this and expected that to be like a unicorn project in 20 years and then he goes no, you don’t understand. This is moving fast. This is possible. And I was like, really? I feel like it’s way more complicated than you think it is. And he’s no, And within I want to say a week he had the very basic prototype done and the, voice side of it is a little bit complicated given. But it’s, working now. But when he made me try it after a week it was still written. Which is great for older kids, but younger kids it’s is more complicated. And he had me write to it and talk to it as if I was a kid and it was responding and it was responding well. So I was very impressed with everything that we can accomplish with this. Now it’s, unharnessed, but So many possibilities, especially in learning we, could really take language education to a whole new level before, if you wanted to become a fluent speaker, you needed to put yourself in an environment where people around you spoke that language. And now potentially we’re talking about. That might not be necessary anymore. Obviously it’s preferred if you’re stuck alone in the middle of a country where French speakers are, scarce that’s not going to stop you anymore, which I think is absolutely amazing.  Chris Badgett: That is really cool. Yeah. AI as a tutor, particularly trained on your material and style content. There’s just so much there.  Madame Alexa: Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to be able to also analyze the speaker’s level and where they’re at and then recommend specific activities to work on. Their challenges based on that. So that’s the the end goal as well. Chris Badgett: Adaptive learning. Very cool.  Madame Alexa: Exactly. Good job.  Chris Badgett: A couple more questions before we land the plane here, Alexa. Do you remember the time that went by from, okay, I think I want to try to build this site that does this thing to getting your first paying student or classroom on board?  Madame Alexa: You mean like from, the conception of the idea to actually getting it done? To  Chris Badgett: getting it done and having your first customer.  Madame Alexa: So I started getting the idea in 2020 when we were teaching online. I started creating the material I want to say in 2021 or 2022. And I got my first paying customer. I think six months within building like the, bones of the platform. So it was very fast at first and then it came almost to a complete stop. I think a lot of entrepreneurs definitely live that. Yeah. And, that’s exactly what happened to me. So it was working extremely well. And then It just froze because then it wasn’t just like my, immediate contacts, I had to push this further. And like I said, sales and marketing, I knew absolutely nothing about. So I think there was a big adaptation period there where I had to be like, okay I’m going to have to put in some real effort for this. So yeah, but yes, initially it happened fairly quickly. I was making more than my costs. So I, was profitable within six months of, creating it. Which I’m, told is something to be proud of. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think the, only reason that I was able to do that was because I have an online service, right? So I, it’s not like I have to pay an office or all of these material production costs to be able to do it. So yeah, it’s it’s a whole new era of business now. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. What advice do you have for somebody else who’s a language learning instructor who has a deep passion like you do and they’re inspired by something like this? What advice would you have for them?  Madame Alexa: I would tell them to have a clear plan in mind and to not expect things to be easy. I think that teachers already make they, daily they’re doing a job that is extremely demanding. So I know that they’re not afraid of hard work, but this is a different kind of hard work. So I think. Yeah to, be aware that you’re going to need to wear a lot of different hats. And if you’ve got a passion for learning, it’s great because you will be learning a lot. So for sure to carefully research what you’re going to be, the tools that you’re going to be using. Because they are going to really make a difference in Your, product or your service being successful. But also you want to be able to do your thing. So you need to be using tools that you can trust and so that you’re not constantly handling technical issues versus doing what you’re actually wanting to do. Chris Badgett: Awesome. Thanks for that, Alexa. And that’s at madamaise. com. Any other for the people to connect with you on the internet?  Madame Alexa: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So the Facebook page for Madame A’s and the Instagram is at madame. As. ca. And always free for a call if you want more information. So you can just write to me directly. That’s alexa, a l e x a, at madameas. com. So that’s my personal email. So if anybody wants to know a little bit more, to ask me questions, I am always  Chris Badgett: available. Alexa, thanks for coming on the show and thank you for being an inspiring example of a language learning entrepreneur. I’m really impressed. I can’t wait to see, we’ll have to do this again a couple of years down the  Madame Alexa: road. Yes, I would love that.  Chris Badgett: Thanks so much for coming. We really appreciate it. Thank  Madame Alexa: you so much for having us. It really makes a difference for small businesses to to be able to be put front and center like that. So I really appreciate it. Thank you for all the work you do. You bet. Have a great. 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. 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 Teach French Online with Madame Alexa appeared first on LMScast.

In this LMScast episode, Judy Butler discusses about legacy estate planning and the need of having a thorough plan in place to protect families from hardship when inevitable death occurs. Judy Butler is an expert in legacy estate planning and is associated with The Guardians Gift. Her area of expertise focuses in offering educational programs and training procedures that enable people and families to proficiently manage estate planning. She highlights the importance of having an honest, humorous conversation while debunking some popular beliefs and superstitions around the subject. Judy draws attention to the negative effects of not having a plan, including pressure on finances, strife within the family, and rash decisions. When inquired about the more straightforward approach to estate preparation, Judy clarifies that it involves more than just creating a will. She highlights the intricacy of the procedure by drawing on her own experience, which encompasses legal facets outside of the will, such as healthcare directives and powers of attorney. She explains the comprehensive strategy of the Guardians Gift program, which starts from birth and takes into account finances, healthcare, and ancestry. 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 LifterLMS, 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 Dr. Judy Butler. She’s from the guardiansgift. org. She has a whole learning opportunity and training process around Legacy estate planning, how that works, how that, how to do it well to benefit the family. We’re going to talk about the subject matter. We’re going to jump in to how she’s leveraging the online world to help with their mission. But first welcome to the show, Judy. Thank you.  Dr Judy Butler: Thank you, Chris, for having me. And I’m excited to be here today.  Chris Badgett: Awesome. It’s great to have you. This is a bit, this is a big topic. It’s a heavy topic for people. So can you explain at a high level how families and children get into crisis? around inevitable death and, estate planning and the legacy they leave behind. How does that play out when there’s no real planning or it just pops up and there wasn’t really, things are in place. What kind of crisis happens in the lives of people, when that happens?  Dr Judy Butler: People seem to think they know what’s going to happen, and we do at one level, we’re all going to die, and you’re right, it can be very difficult conversation, it can also be very depressing for some people and people are very superstitious, they think, oh, if I talk about it I’m, going to make it happen, and I’m sorry, but it’s going to happen anyway. So let’s talk about it. And so I try to make it more light hearted and enjoyable to actually discuss and even funny sometimes what’s going to happen because when we don’t plan and I’ll. 67 percent of Americans do not have a plan. But when we don’t plan, we put our family members into crisis. We actually cause them to have to come up with financial resources physical resources. We actually have to make decisions that we are not equipped to make because we don’t have the information that we need when a planning. a simple plan can alleviate the heartache, the headache, the family dysfunction, the dynamics. I’ve seen so many families that get into turmoil and they fight over things. Mom told me this, or dad told me that no, they told me something different. And then it just, it’s a, he said, she said kind of thing. And I just think that there’s a simpler, easier way.  Chris Badgett: So what is that simpler, easier way? And can you talk a little bit about, are we talking about like a will or a lot more than that? And what,  Dr Judy Butler: is it? It’s a lot more than that. This actually comes out of my own personal experience and life story. And that’s for a different time, but it’s more than just a will. People, a lot of people have a will, a power of attorney, healthcare, power of attorney, and a living, will, and. Like a lot of adult children, my parents had those things as well, but, and I thought I knew, I thought oh, they got a will, that’s all I need. But when it comes down to what happens from the time a person starts their decline towards death, and this could go for years. And then the actual death, that is a place where caregivers actually spend a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of money, trying to figure things out. And I was like a lot of adults, I thought I already know what mom, dad want, I just handle it. There’s so many legal parts to it that are not anything to do with the will. And so it’s about knowing how to navigate, how to actually ask the right questions, what resources to look for, and the Guardian’s Gift actually starts people out at birth. There’s a component of genealogy. There’s a component of health care. There is a financial piece to it where we actually look at what does it cost from the time someone begins the decline to the actual death. Now, death and dying in and of itself is expensive, but it’s really expensive to think about. In home care, nursing homes, assisted living, and what those things are, how they function, what does that mean, and people really get lost in the weeds when they start navigating that.  Chris Badgett: Couple of clarifying questions. Could you explain the difference between a will, a living will, and a power of attorney? Dr Judy Butler: Absolutely. A will is a legal document that Talks about your assets and what will happen to your assets. A health care power of attorney is a simple legal document and it actually gives someone else the ability to make health life care decisions for you. If you’re not able to make them. An example would be if you went into surgery and while you’re under anesthesia, the doctor comes out and says, Oh we need to give them some blood. If that hasn’t been decided beforehand, your healthcare power of attorney could make that decision. And of course it’s bigger and deeper than that. People associate it with pulling the plug, so to speak. If somebody’s on life saving measures. Now, a living will is a legal document that actually says what it is you want to happen or not happen about your life and if you were to need life saving measures. And it’s different than a do not resuscitate, which is something, another legal document that people have towards their end of life. So a power of attorney is different than a healthcare power of attorney because a power of attorney is a legal document that has to do with your finances and handling of your financial arrangement. Chris Badgett: That’s great. Thanks for clarifying that. And you said, you mentioned the word we earlier, so I was wondering is, it the parent or the child that leads this process or both? Is it, or is it really, are you really focusing on the person, the parent planning for the future?  Dr Judy Butler: Actually Because I’m also a therapist and I’m very, it’s very important to me that we secure the family dynamics as much as possible. I really enjoy when we can have the adult children as part of the process. Of planning but sometimes senior adults and not always just seniors, but people in general are very private And they are very hesitant to talk about these things with their family members So sometimes an individual or a couple will come and they’ll want to put their legacy estate plan in place And they don’t want to discuss it with their children and i’m I have that conversation with them that at some point, these people, your adult children, are the people who will have to actually follow through with your legacy estate. So I think it’s important to have the conversation, at least, at some point during the process. Now, some people don’t have they don’t have family members that way. Sometimes I have adult children that come and say, I want my mom or dad to actually talk to me about this, and I’d like to help them, and I’d like for them to get something in place so I don’t end up having to make these decisions later. So it can be driven by either of the parties that you’re asking about.  Chris Badgett: Can you speak to the the, memory issues that are common Alzheimer’s or dementia and how that factors in and how that affects this, situation when the parent is starting to deal with that and it’s progressing. Dr Judy Butler: So in the early stages, and of course, my father had dementia and that’s part of my story is. It’s important early on as possible to be able to get these documents and things in place because particularly with a health care power of attorney when. You take like I had to take my dad to the doctor on occasions and I’d have to go with him Because once he was given medication or some instructions for his health care And of course this goes to financial and all other kinds of areas, too I would have to remember those things for him and help him execute those things And if we had it all written down if We had the guardian’s gift. Then I would have had all those legal documents in place so that when I went to the doctor’s office, I could say, here’s his healthcare power of attorney. And of course they ask for those things these days more than they did when my dad first was diagnosed. But we I would have those documents and the doctors and offices and all the healthcare providers, it makes it a lot simpler for everybody as well as It would have made it easier on my dad because he didn’t have to worry about it. He would say talk to my daughter. She’s got it. She handles all that. And a lot of adult children already handle it. They go with their families. But having the legal documents in place is just an added extra protection for everybody. That’s  Chris Badgett: great. Thanks for that. And we’re going to get into the guardian’s gift. In the time capsule in a second and for you out there listening, that’s at the guardiansgift. org. But a couple more questions before we go there. Tell us a little more, Dr. Judy, about your story and, why you were motivated to pursue this what, happened in your situation?  Dr Judy Butler: As I said, Dan had dementia. And my parents, I grew up blue collar. My parents were relatively poor. Of course, we didn’t know we were poor. Everybody was poor. And so we I grew up that way. And as the, sometimes caregiving falls a lot to the girls, the family, the females, and I was the oldest and I thought, oh this is my job. I’m grew up knowing that was my job to look after my mom and dad. But it got to a point where. My mother could not physically care for my father. He had begun to fall and he was having some difficulty getting around, and I was afraid, and my mother has a bad back, and I was afraid she was going to try to pick him up, and they were both going to be injured, and I was going to lose both of them. So it was decided that dad needed the kind of care that we could not give him at home, and that is a really tough decision to make. And so we sought out a facility where they could look after him, but my parents being poor, they had a will and but they had a home and they had cars and they had furniture and their personal belongings. They didn’t have stocks or bonds or major assets other than their home. But to go into a nursing home, a skilled nursing facility they could not afford that because it’s so expensive. People don’t realize you can’t just go to a nursing home. Somebody has to pay for it, whether it’s Medicaid Medicare, doesn’t pay for it. They’ll pay for a few days if you’re sick and you need that kind of care, like for the first hundred days, but for extended care, they won’t pay. So you have to be Medicaid, which is you don’t have any money. And a lot of people don’t realize that, or you have to hire people. My parents couldn’t afford it. So the only thing that was an option for them was for them to sign their house over. Department of Social Services said you have to sign your house over. So at some point, when he passes and you both pass, they would take the house and sell it to pay off the debt. Somebody has to pay. And my mother was like, no, I’m not selling my house. I’ve worked my whole life and I’m not going to sell my house. So we had to wait a little bit and get the house put into a trust. And I learned all about trust and how those work but to protect the house so my mother would be okay and then to be able to have social services pay for dad to be in a nursing facility, so it was not the actual death and dying piece. It was the getting to that part. That was the problem. So I learned all about the legal aspects. I went, I learned all about nursing homes and Medicare and Medicaid and how that works, what they pay for what they don’t and then when dad died. I was exhausted and I was physically worn out from running around, taking care of them. Mentally, I just didn’t have anything left to try to make those decisions. I was like, we got to plan a funeral. I don’t know. And I’m a pastor. I’m an ordained pastor. So I preached lots of funerals, but this was my dad. And so it was different. And when it’s your own, it’s very, hard to make those decisions when you have no energy left. So the day that my dad, at his funeral, I stood there. And I thought there has to be a better way to do this. Why doesn’t anybody have all of this stuff together? So I set out, it became my mission, which and I made it my life’s work, my passion, that I would help people. And the way that I figured this out, as a pastor for Senior adults don’t like to talk about death and dying, but they do like to tell their story. And that’s why we start at the beginning. Where were you born? Where did you go to school? Who was your best friend? Did you have any pets? And I ask all those questions in a very simple format, and we’re going into a different space here but it became my mission to make it simple for people to tell their story, list their genealogy, put all their financial information And their legal information and their health information into a format that somebody like their adult daughter like me or their son has access to be able to make the decisions and help their family. Chris Badgett: That’s great. Let’s dive into the guardiansgift. org. What was your journey into doing this mission? You have a website now and a process and the time capsule. Yes. Did it start with taking one-off clients and just helping them in consulting or, and how did it evolve into a website? So  Dr Judy Butler: yes, it did start off exactly as a one off with a legal pad and a few questions. And and people were like why do you need to know that? But I just sat down with people and consulted with them and helped walk them through it and. Then COVID hit because my father died in 2018 right before the pandemic. So I was doing it from the time he passed until COVID again with a legal pad and a few questions and then COVID and I was like okay, now what? So I had to transition and put it online so that I could not only make it simpler for people, But I could offer more value to people with more questions, more form uploads and all of that. I looked at learning systems, which is what lifter is and the 1st system that I used was very basic. And but I learned from that. I learned to put the questions online. I learned to put videos online and to make things explainable and easily accessible to folks so that during COVID, they could just sit at their computer and they could actually create their will. Get their will, their legal documents, tell their story and create their legacy estate. But I knew as we have progressed and grown, there needed to be a better system, a faster system, more elegance, if you will, for people to be able to do it. And I needed it to be simple and fast and straightforward. And LFTR.  Chris Badgett: Awesome. Tell us more about are you doing the website and everything yourself? Or did you hire somebody to do it? How did you put it all together?  Dr Judy Butler: Yes, to all of it. So again, I started out and I had somebody help me with it. A lot of it I’ve done on my own. And I have again, every time I need some help, I’ll find somebody that can help or I’ll hire somebody. There’s different agencies that offer. people that you can hire on contract. But when I transitioned and the end of 2023 last year to WordPress, I actually went to WordPress and I thought I need something that I can at least access myself. But it’s time for me now to let it go to somebody who is more proficient and more technical than I am. So that’s why I went with WordPress, because WordPress is I guess the Rolls Royce, if you will, of hosting and such. But as part of that, I was looking for a learning management system, and there are several on WordPress. But I was impressed with Lifter, because it incorporated It incorporates the commercial piece that I needed to be able to present. This as a format for purchase that people can buy it, but I also needed the quality That they that you guys offer of how to put the system together How could I put the guardians gift together in such a way? That it flows from one lesson to the next lesson to the next module and that everything is there and simple  Chris Badgett: Awesome. Tell us more about the student or client experience. Are they working through videos? Are they filling out forms? What’s, in the lesson content?  Dr Judy Butler: So it’s, a mixed bag. When they sign into the guardian’s gift, there is a welcome video. So there’s a little video there. There’s also an instructional video that actually walks them through What they’re going to see, what’s coming up, what they need to do and how it functions. And then they actually get into what are the forms. They are forms. And I chose formidable forms because Lifter actually said, we work well with these guys. And we looked at some other forms, but they didn’t do again, what I needed them to do as part of this process. They actually, it comes up, a question comes up and they just type in the answer. Where were you born? And then it also has calendars that you can click on the calendar. This is the date. It has drop downs. It has all sorts of different parts of forms that people don’t normally associate with forms. But they’re very simple to set up and LFTR and Formidable work well together. And so that’s why I chose that. Chris Badgett: Awesome. Can you tell us more about what the Time Capsule is?  Dr Judy Butler: The Time Capsule is a series of questions or question prompts. There’s also a space to answer or tell your stories talk about your first pet. So the Guardian’s Gift, the Time Capsule piece is that we take all of your history That you do want to pass down your legacy. You want to pass to your family your life stories and we’ve combined it with getting your will and your legal documents and we help you do that. We provide that as part of the process and then also the planning piece towards the end. Where you actually plan your end of life service. We help you write your obituary. We, set all of these things up. They’re different modules. So there’s a birth through kindergarten module. There’s an elementary school module, there’s a high school, middle and high school. There’s college and career, and then there’s transitions and there’s adulting. We call it adulting because it’s where you would get your first, you get married, or your first love, or your first car, or your first house, all of those firsts. And you talk about those things, and then we take you from the beginning all the way to the end, And there’s also an executor’s checklist that helps your family members after you’re gone, put everything in order. They’ve got it. They know what to do. Oh, yes. I need to remember to turn off the electricity. For this outside light that’s running, or I need to remember to stop the newspaper. So those kinds of things, there’s a checklist for that as well.  Chris Badgett: Awesome. So in the end, like for the student, I would say, do they end up with do they print something out? And have a, it’s basically becomes the plan,  Dr Judy Butler: right? So what we suggest, of course you’re doing this online and when you complete one of the modules, we suggest that you save it to a flash drive, which we give you this handy dandy little neat flash drive. We’ll send it to you. And we want you to save it to the flash drive, but we also want you to print it and put it into a binder because it’s, I hate to kill trees, but at the same time, it needs to be all in one place. There’s also where you can upload pictures and the documents. So I asked people to get a copy, make a copy of their will, their legal documents, copy of the pictures, a copy of diplomas and certificates. And all of that goes in the binder. So you end up with an autobiography. But we don’t call it that. We call it a time capsule because a time capsule is something that someone else will open at some point in the future, and they will actually see things that you thought were important enough to go in this container, if you will. But we also suggest. If you have someone that you can email it to, that you can email it, and you can send it, so you have it on a flash drive, you have it printed out in a binder, and you email it to your executor or an adult child or somebody, and they have it as well. So it’s in several different places. Chris Badgett: Wow. I love this, I call this an instructional design. I call it clicks and bricks. You’re doing like this digital stuff, but then you have these physical things like the binder and the printouts and the thumb drive. That’s really cool. And it’s so focused on this specific moment in time and challenge of life. I really admire what you’ve built here. Let’s look a little more where we started this interview around. What, happens if this doesn’t exist and someone were to pass away and there’s no will or living will or power of attorney or anything. And yeah, what happens when this, doesn’t exist? Dr Judy Butler: The first thing that happens is if you don’t have legal documents they, the estate, and some people don’t think they have an estate, but they do it may be small but, we still have assets. It will go to probate when these things go into probate, it can take 18 months to years for this to be settled, depending on what a dispute is, if there is a dispute, but even if there’s not a dispute, the state, whatever state that you’re living in decides who gets to handle the estate. The state of North Carolina, which is where I am, will select someone and most often they’ll select, if it’s a husband or a wife, they will select that other one. But say one of the parents has passed and now this is the other parent that’s has just passed. It could be some person that you don’t know comes in and says, Oh, there’s a nice estate. Let me petition the courts. to be the person in charge and they have to provide some, information. It’s called a letter of testamentary and they go before the court to petition to become the person who handles the estate. It can take again a long time. Families get into quarrels about things. Who’s going to get the clock? Who gets it? Surprisingly, you don’t think people are going to fight about those things, but they do. And if it’s stated in the guardian’s gift, then there’s a picture of it. And you say, this is who I want to get it. But if it’s not there, their family fights, people get into arguments that last for generations. And sometimes they don’t even remember what the argument was about. 10 years later it becomes very expensive. It becomes you have to hire an attorney necessarily. If there is a dispute some of the major celebrities surprisingly have not had wheels. Let’s see the guy that was, The black panther. Chris Badgett: I know you’re talking about I don’t know his name.  Dr Judy Butler: Okay, he did not have a will but he had He has a spouse a significant partner and there’s been a lot of legal stuff And so the again that it’s you’re already upset You’re having to deal with these emotions about losing this person that you love dearly and now all of a sudden you have to go into court and Fight about stuff because there’s no will there’ve been a lot of major celebrities that didn’t have wills that they would have their estates would have benefited from had they had those things in place. Chris Badgett: You mentioned earlier that you came from a blue collar background. And you told your story. How is the experience different on either end of the spectrum? Let’s say somebody dies with very little assets and somebody moves on with leaving behind significant assets. How, do we think about that wherever we are in the spectrum? Dr Judy Butler: People think they tell me a lot. I don’t have anything to leave anybody, but you do you have your stories You have your life stories if you don’t have any physical assets But even for people who are blue collar like my family as I grew up We had a house even you know, you had a car. There are some things that need to be taken care of a friend of mine few months ago and she did not own a house and she was never married and she had no children. But what happened was she didn’t have a will. And so her friends were, calling and they said we know that you talked to her about this and you, she expressed some of her wishes. So all of her friends were trying to pull together to Create a ceremony, an end of life ceremony. What’s going to happen to her body, and her ashes, and what and so you have to piece it together at that point. But there are things, even if you feel like you don’t have anything, you do. What’s going to happen to you, your body, when you die? What’s going to, who’s going to pay for the funeral? How is that going to happen? They can’t just stand you in the corner that the state of the United States doesn’t allow that. And what’s going to happen, just simple things like that, what’s going to happen to your, clothes? You have things. I don’t care how poor you think you are. Even someone who’s on the street, they have sometimes a grocery cart with stuff in it. And I’m not saying that they necessarily need the guardian’s gift, but they have stuff. Chris Badgett: Can you speak a little bit to the other end of the spectrum? If there’s a lot of assets stocks, bonds, real estate, People  Dr Judy Butler: who have money and who have a lot of assets tend to think that all they need is a will or they have beneficiaries. Now the thing about insurance, it’s important for people to know, is if you have a beneficiary, that is the person who will get whatever they’re a beneficiary of. If it’s insurance or whatever. And that’s different than leaving things in a will in your estate. So that’s a different legal fault. But people who have lots of stocks and bonds and things like that, they can actually, a lot of that can be consumed in probate. And a lot of fees and things like that will be charged. You have to hire somebody. And again, it gets into that. battle in the family. It creates dissension where family members fight over certain things. And so what you intend to leave to someone if you have a lot is sometimes consumed just by the process, which is really pretty awful. Where if you could actually have everything set up ahead of time and how it’s going to be handled. Or even if you don’t want a family member to handle it, you can hire a bank, can take care of your assets for you and your your will and be the executive of your estate, or you could hire an attorney. So there are different ways to handle it. It just depends on what you have, how it’s tied up. Even a business Chris, like you, a business owner who What happens to your part of the business when you pass and have you made arrangements for that? So if you own a business what’s going to happen with your business? So there’s a lot more to consider But it’s still the same process on the top end of the economic spectrum as it is on the bottom end.  Chris Badgett: Thanks for that can you speak to the the legal aspect where let’s say somebody creates their time capsule and or I guess one question there is like a will you can just write on a piece of paper, I believe, and it’s still like a will. It’s their signature. But at what point is where does the legal aspect come in terms of. Having an official will and living will is that something to be done with a lawyer and that kind  Dr Judy Butler: of thing? As part of the guardian’s gift we offer it and when you buy into the guardian’s gift you get a what you get those four legal documents You get a will you get a health care power of attorney a power of attorney and a living will so that’s part of the process You’re right And in saying you’re correct that you can just write out on a piece of paper and sign it. However, if anybody at all comes along and says. I’ve got a piece of paper, too, and I’ve got it, and then another person comes, so it’s very easily to dispute that’s a legal will. The thing about a will that’s important is not only Filling it out and signing it, but having it notarized that is your signature. So there is a notary on there and also having it recorded in the local county or state wherever that you live so that it’s recognized. That’s really important. So that if it’s on a piece of paper, yeah, And sometimes that, that works okay, but that’s really sketchy, and I could fill out one and say Chris Badgett left me all of his money and his cars and vehicles and everything. Yeah, that could be disputed very easily.  Chris Badgett: What’s the the time difference in general? You said something where there’s no No, plan is, goes into probate and that can take up to 18 months or longer. What’s, if you have your time capsule and all your ducks in a row and your plan, how long after the end of life does it take for all that stuff to settle out compared to probate? Dr Judy Butler: Oh, compared to probate, you can settle that out in just a few months. It depends on the family and it depends on the assets and what has to some things are timed if there’s stocks and bonds and those kinds of things. But let me stop right here for just a second and, just say, let me make a disclaimer. I am not an attorney. Okay, I have the things that I’ve learned and that I’m passing on today Are things that I’ve learned and I’ve learned from attorneys, but I am not an attorney. So I do want to make that clear however as part of the guardian’s gift We also partner with trust and wills and so we have that is set up where you get a legal bonafide, if you will document and those are actually notarized and they are recorded. So, yes I did need to make that clear.  Chris Badgett: Yeah. Thanks for putting that, the legal disclaimer in there. Side question for those who are inspired by your journey as a subject matter expert who was passionate about a topic. You have a great TED talk on YouTube. I saw it. It’s on your website too at the guardiansgift. org How does one get a TED talk?  Dr Judy Butler: Oh, a lot of work. It’s just you have to you have to make an application to the TED area that you want to, go to. The best way to do it is you just you make application to a lot of different ones. Because they’re in rotations and you have to. I had to go through, it took me about a year to get my talk together to figure out how to do the application and to go through the process. And I had a coach that actually coached me through that.  Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. And that, video is on the homepage of the guardians gift. org. I recommend you check that out. Dr Judy Butler: Yeah, I did that at Purdue University. Let me give a shout out to Purdue.  Chris Badgett: All right. Awesome. What how would you describe the impact you’ve been able to make on the, in the world with your work here?  Dr Judy Butler: First of all, for me it, it, actually sits in my heart that. This really matters and people tell me all the time when they understand what the guardian’s gift is because I had somebody tell me recently I didn’t, I thought it was about being the guardian of a person and it is that way. You are the guardian of your legacy for your family. You’re not a legal quote unquote guardian. But it, makes me so satisfied to know when somebody comes to me after there’s been a death in the family and they say to me I did not know this about my dad and he never talked about these things. And here are all his stories. Or when somebody comes to me and they say, I wish I knew more about X, Y, Z for my mom or my dad. It’s just gratifying when somebody opens up the guardian’s gift and the pictures are there, the stories are there. They don’t have to find the legal documents. They don’t have to look all over and make decisions about what kind of song or scripture or story is to be told or read at the funeral. It just people, it allows people to grieve in a healthy way and people come back to me later and they’re just so grateful and it just, it makes me happy. This is a passion for me. It just makes me happy.  Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. What what’s the best way for somebody to get started with the guardian’s gift? Dr Judy Butler: The very best way is to actually send me a message. Either I or one of my team members will give you a call to talk about what it is you want to accomplish. Because we’re not here just to sell something. We’re not here just to do that. The whole point is to make sure that nobody else goes through what I went through with my family. So it’s about that. So we want to map out the strategy. We want to hear your what is it you’re concerned about? Are you concerned about what happens to your body? Are you concerned about the clock? Who’s going to get it? Are you concerned about stocks or bonds or what is your concern? What is your fear? And let us help you figure out what the best way to go about this is.  Chris Badgett: Awesome. Definitely go to the guardiansgift. org. And I wanted to ask you one more tactical question as we land the plane here from your story earlier. You mentioned coming from a blue collar background with your, parents house. If they move into the state funded Retirement, they, the state would take the house and the cars to pay the bill. But you mentioned a trust as a, as something that could happen with planning. Can you just explain for those unfamiliar with trust how, somebody in that situation could, work? Dr Judy Butler: You have to decide how you want to handle the trust. The trust is just a container. If you think about it as, a bucket, It’s just a bucket, so to speak, that you put things in. There are limited number or not of people who actually can put their hand in the bucket to take something out. So you get to decide what the bucket looks like and what goes in the bucket. That’s the trust. So there’s all different kinds of trust. You hear about people very wealthy people who have Trust funds. And one of the best things that I know about trust is that for somebody who has a disabled child. Let’s say, and they are at the point where they’re in their last years of life. They set up a trust fund to take care of this disabled person. So the monies are there. The money is just in this bucket, if you will, and they have somebody who is the trustee. Designated that’s the person who can reach in the bucket and take out and they can take out. To make sure that the disabled person is taken care of. You know pay their medical bills make sure they have a place to live food clothes all the day daily living necessities. But a trust is just a container and you can put Most anything in a trust. But there’s a lot of legal pieces that go with that. And again, I’m not an attorney, but you can set up a trust to put the house in. You can put stocks and bonds and things in a trust and you can put jewelry and furniture. You can put all sorts of things in a trust and you can designate then who gets to be the trustee.  Chris Badgett: Thanks for Claire. Thanks for clarifying that. And there’s so many nuances to this whole thing. I’m so glad that you’ve built the project at the Guardian’s gift. And I love how it’s not just about assets. It’s about stories and, experiences that are part of this whole process and planning ahead for all that. And it’s a big topic in some ways. It’s a taboo topic that people don’t want to talk about or feel uncomfortable talking about. So I love what you’ve assembled here. Go check out the guardians gift. org. Any other ways to connect with you or any other resources you want to point people towards?  Dr Judy Butler: They can, of course, send me an email. They can, and the contact is on the guardians gift. org, but it’s Judy. At the guardians gift dot org. Just send me an email. And there’s a ton of resources. The problem is for people when they go as a caregiver, you go on the internet. You Google something or look up something on the internet, it becomes very overwhelming. So be sure that the first place that you look, is in your local community. People don’t realize what resources are available locally. A local church or synagogue or mosque they typically will have things that are very helpful. There are hospice homes typically have resources available. Look for a therapist in your area that specializes in grief, counseling, or family dynamics. Those are some areas look locally 1st and and then look in your state and then expand out as you go. Don’t just go on the Internet and look at something that. Could be a scam or not that’s that’s just out there. Caregiving. com is a good one. AARP also has a lot of resources available and points you in the right direction if you’re going to look for those. Dementia and Alzheimer’s groups. Are very good. Also,  Chris Badgett: Dr. Judy, thanks for coming on the show and thank you for being a shining example of creating a positive impact in the world with your work and leveraging technology and tools like WordPress and lift your LMS to help on your mission. Really appreciate all you’ve shared today and I wish you all the best in the work that you do. Dr Judy Butler: Thank you, Chris. 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. 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 Legacy Estate Planning Through Courses with Dr Judy Butler appeared first on LMScast.

In this LMScast, Tiago Faria, a coach and course developer, emphasizes the value of a client-centered strategy in getting outcomes. Tiago Faria starts out by emphasizing how crucial it is to define the target niche and pinpoint pressing issues that need to be resolved. Tiago encourages the use of customer interviews to get insight into clients’ goals and difficulties, which enables the creation of offers that truly resonate. Tiago advises include short victories to keep participants motivated as well as offering continuous assistance and accountability measures all through the program. His strategy revolves upon crafting precise, targeted offerings that cater to consumers’ urgent need. According to Tiago, the online education sector offers a means of making a significant contribution to society. In the end, Tiago and host Chris emphasize how crucial it is to put outcomes first since they both feel that real customer success spurs organic business development. 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. 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: Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMS cast. I’m joined by a special guest. His name is Tago or excuse me, Tiago Faria. And we’re going to be talking about the course creation industry membership, sites, coaching, and most importantly, how to get your students and your clients to get results. Cause if we don’t get them results. They’re not going to be successful with the program. They’re not going to refer you more business, but let’s just dive right in there, Tiago. How do we get our clients results and not just sell them products? Tiago Faria: Amazing question, Chris. Thank you so much for having me. First of all, it’s a true honor to be here. And yeah, in terms of generating results, I think it’s not, but it starts before the course even is created. I believe in my own in my own experience doing this for like already five, six years is we have to start first of all, defining exactly who we’re trying to help. What kind of person, what context does she have? What kind of problem do we want to solve with this specific problem? Not just any kind of thing has to be something that they actually want to solve right now. So that we, they don’t fall into the trap of maybe someday I’ll do that or, and I don’t buy it. Or if they buy it by pressure, then they don’t implement it because it’s not something that is urgent for them to solve. So it starts with that, the definition of, the niche. And then we have to what I love to do in my anti marketing approach is to just talk to people. I love to tell my, clients to, okay, you already have clients you’ve worked with before or leads you’ve worked in the past. Let’s just interview five to 10 people. that you know you could help and ask them questions like what are the main frustrations, what are you dealing with daily, how do you, how does it make you feel, what are your objectives, because then you can collect all those emotional words that are super useful not only for you to craft an offer position your offer in a way that is super attractive to whoever is listening to and so that we are super clear also on what’s the outcome what, are we gonna what results can people expect from it. So that’s the key thing. So talk to people, be very clear who you’re helping out and what is the outcome. And then also when you’re, in terms of definition of people, you will accept your courses. You also, you should also be very selective on where you’re most valued. Who will be more likely to succeed with you. And You should be more selective and only accept those that you know. Okay. She’s the right, this person has the right mindset, has the right resources, has the right ability to implement, this is super crucial. Because imagine if you’re trying to help C level single moms to improve their relationship with their. Child or something like that. If you have a course of 80 hours, it’s quite unlikely that person will implement or even finish the course or even get results. So we have to be extremely clear on exactly if the person has the ability to, implement, not only to buy, of course, if he has the resources, etc. But the ability to implement and that, those are two important things for us to make sure that people actually that come in have the ability to implement and succeed. And then of course, in order to make them feel like they’re progressive progressing during the course. I love to not only wait not, only make the person wait until the end of the course so that you can have the outcome, but also think of some strategic quick wins that we could add to the beginning, like the first week you, if you do this, you’ll immediately have this cool momentum going on and the person will be motivated okay, this is working. I can see this, happening. So those, things I think are, yeah. Super, important. And then of course the accountability part, which is something that all my courses, I had this problem that people implement or they got blocked somewhere, or if there has to be some sort of access to, you, the course creator I know most people say, ah, I want a completely passive just create something and sell it to people. But there has to be some sort of Access to you, it can be live, like Q and a sessions or creating community where you manage that part. They can also be like offline support where the persons can submit the question, something that’s blocking them and you can answer on a loom video something offline. And there’s, in my opinion, there has to be some sort of access to you. I think I rambled a bit about, I don’t know if it answered your question. Chris Badgett: I love that. I love that. Tell us more about if we give them access, whether that’s like. An email form, a contact form, or a forum, or group coaching calls, or one on one coaching calls. How can we best support them when we have that, when we’re holding that space for them and in communication with us? Tiago Faria: How can we best support you if we have, if they have access to us? Yeah. I think one of the things is to have goals for the people to implement during the week or something something to keep them accountable. Like in this week you achieve this specific goal or you have this thing in mind that you should be implementing. I think it’s a matter of having something for people to implement. And then simple asking, did you do this, but that you promised you had before. And then I’m trying to unblock, try to find out where people are actually being blocked on. There’s something that they’re not, it’s not allowing for them to continue. And we should be there in those moments, either in real time and Q and a sessions. And, also I. I I learned that even in group programs where there’s like group Q and A’s and, et cetera, I think it’s, for me, it’s super important to still have one on one access to you. Either it’s like by chat only or by some, platform or email support. Because I think in my opinion, that’s the way for you to guarantee that people actually reach like as close to possible to a hundred percent implementation and success in your courses. Yeah, I think that’s those are key. Chris Badgett: You mentioned earlier before getting to results, the offer needs to be clear and the niche needs to be defined. Can you give us an example of what a strong offer in the health industry or the expert industry looks like? Tiago Faria: Yeah. So imagine, you’re like a relationship coach. And you say something generic like I help you improve your relationship with your partner or something like that in that sense, since there are already so many offers in that area, that message dissipates it is not a strong reason for me to buy now because, okay, it doesn’t resonate with me. It’s not, I feel it’s something very distant. It’s it’s, not something I’m feeling right now as a problem. So instead of that, of being too generic a good offer is, something that actually solves a now problem, something that is specific and urgent for the person that is on the other side. So for example in a relationship niche, you could do something like focus on, on, on specific person and a specific context. I help like men that are on the verge of divorce to go back to, to, to normal relationship and, save your, marriage. So it tackles a problem that the person is feeling exactly right now. It’s urgent for them to, solve. And that, that, that has by itself a very strong urgency attached to it, right? The people, the person wants to back now and it’s more likely that she will buy it from you and really want to pay a premium to, to have you solve that problem for them right now. So I think that’s probably the, strongest component. Then of course you also have to have the, outcome has to be super clear on what the person is actually going to achieve. How is her life going to be like once it goes through you with, through the work with you? And the way we get there is what, I said at the beginning is by interviewing people actually talking to people and recording those conversations, instead of you interpret, interpreting their words, you actually just record it and transcribe it and okay, these are the emotional words people are using. And if you use that in your own communication it will resonate. It’s, inevitable that people think, Oh my God, this is my, me right now. This person understands me deeply. So if she understands me deeply, it means she can actually help me. So I’m going to work with Chris or I, yes, those are two, two strong, components that if you’re, if you nail this down, it’s already halfway there halfway there to, have an offer that sells by itself. Chris Badgett: What got you passionate about the help industry? The whole online course, coaching, information, product online education industry. Tiago Faria: What got me, it’s it’s, just that I love helping people. I always loved helping people. And once I work at Google for eight years. And I was feeling very limited there in the corporate world. So when I decided to come back to Portugal to start my own business, I was helping people. I was helping local businesses, helping small, companies. And I feel, I think I started feeling like the person that can help the best is, me. I’m, someone that is providing a service or a consultancy for others and trying to help others generate results. And, I felt that, okay, I understand myself the best. I’m, my ideal client. And and I think it’s the most abundant business area because you really are helping. People make a difference in the world, you’re you’re helping the community around you, you help, you make others help others, and which is like a compound effect. And that’s what, yeah, that’s what fascinates me in this industry. But of course, there’s a lot of a lot of, people in this industry that are not focused on generic results, which upsets me. But, we are here to make a difference, right? You and me, Chris, we’re focused on this is the results business. So we should be focusing on that. And every, if you focus on that, like generate results to people the rest will, come eventually. Because you’ll get some testimonials, you’ll get case studies. People will be very happy to, work with you. They will tell others and it’s inevitable that you have success. Chris Badgett: I think you mentioned it was about six years post Google that you’ve, come into this industry. Tell us about your experience as a helper, as a course creator, and how you figured out how to package your knowledge, experience and expertise. Tiago Faria: Yeah, sure. So the first course I created was I made all the mistakes possible. I made it like an encyclopedia course with everything I knew and, something else, of course. And which is, it was crazy because People to go through a huge program, they become overwhelmed and they will never implement it and they get lost. So this was the first mistake. And then the second mistake was not having a clear, like I said, a clear niche, a clear person that I was helping a clear outcome. And also I created everything before I, sold anything, I spent like weeks or months creating that encyclopedia to then understand when I sold it Oh, okay. Just one or two, three people bought it. And it really didn’t, it didn’t work out as I wanted. So yeah, it was was many, years of experimenting and mistake, having huge mistakes all the time. Until I, of course, working with other coaches, mentors that helped me out. Okay. Let’s clarify your message. Let’s make sure you simplify your processes to something that is easy to implement and generate results. It took me, a while, it took me a while to get there. At first I was focused on providing services. I was a service provider for small businesses and then I transitioned to help industry. And for three years I did all those mistakes and I was falling into complicating my life and my clients lives. With overly complex strategies like funnels and ads and SEOs and crazy stuff like that. And it was only when I started simplifying everything, reached this anti marketing approach to, generate quick results to people and focus on a specific outcome. That’s when things start to start, started working out, but it was a long, painful process. Chris Badgett: Tell us more about the anti marketing angle. Tiago Faria: Yes, it’s not exactly that I’m anti marketing. I love marketing, of course. But it’s, I’m more anti shiny objects for you to get distracted with funnels and ads and those, the same traps that I was involved in the first few years. And I truly believe that you already have everything you need. Around you in your own world to start and grow a very cool sustainable business and if you focus on your established relationships you have everyone all of us have a contact list we all have a with friends, family, colleagues, LinkedIn connections, we have an audience that’s some of some sort and we have also a customer list, our previous clients we work with. So tapping into those established relationships to help you craft an offer that reflects what they actually want to buy your ideal clients. That’s why I say you should interview 5 to 10 people in your network because if you do that you create something that people actually, want to buy and implement and then you can go back to those people to interview and say, Hey, I created this offer. That answers this problem you said you have. What do you think? Do you know someone that would be interested in that? Only with that small interviewing process, you can start already selling your course or coaching program, et cetera. And then I love to do tapping into your own audience using social media as a, an excuse for you to generate conversations, to talk to people using those kinds of hand raising posts where you say, when you create a video that solves a problem that shows how people can solve a problem in a specific way that’s interesting for them. And then I’m posting on, social media, something like I created a video that helps you do this. If you want to watch it comment below or send me a message and I’ll send it over to you just as an excuse for you to start generating conversations with your current audience. You can find those people that are ready to buy. Now, if you do those kinds of posts and you interact with them and use DM Messenger, whatever. So those, for the people who actually want to buy your offer and for those people that are around you, that don’t need your offer right now that you can still make them help you because everybody needs money. So you can, why not creating a cool referral partner, a referral program around your course. That incentivizes people to send you over potential clients and you can then pay them a commission. But as you see, you only use your tapping into your network. You can immediately get clients and you can immediately have access to big networks because people know people that know people and you can start having people helping you out motivated to help you. And yeah that’s, the basis of, the on time marketing approach. Chris Badgett: I love that. I know you created or completed in 2021 a YouTube 120 day YouTube challenge. I’m a big fan of YouTube. As a place to practice making videos and also reach your people and create valuable content. Can you tell us about the challenge you did? Tiago Faria: Yeah, sure. It was inspired by Mr. Miles Beckler. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. Yeah. He’s one of the good guys of internet marketing. Yeah. So I, was incentivized because I was very introvert person. I even hated public presentations. And I knew that video was a super important skill to, to have. So I just told myself, okay, I’m just going to destroy this silly belief I have that I am not a creator. And I’m just going to commit to 90 days of 90 consecutive videos on YouTube. And yeah, it’s it’s amazing because you, actually start breaking the silly beliefs that you have by brute force. You’ll hate the first video, hate the second video. But you just keep going and forgetting what you just published. And at some point you find your voice you, get much more comfortable with the camera. And also you start positioning yourself as a cool partner of of YouTube, for example. It starts seeing you, okay, this guy is answering all the questions people have in his niche. I’m going to put more eyes on him. And of course I was using. Some kind of SEO little skills for, to make sure that my videos are searchable on YouTube to leverage the search engine of YouTube, because at the beginning, you’re not going to have a lot of suggested videos going on to your site. So I made a combination of those things, brute force, creating content, answering questions that people have in my niche. And yeah, and then start having comments, a topic of one video gives me an idea for the next video. The, ideas will never exhaust and at some point you became a creator, you suddenly. Start your life kind of changes because you’re just a consumer before and suddenly after three months you’re a creator now and it’s a skill for life for to create courses, to create content, to sell your programs, et cetera. And yeah, and I, extended for 120 days just, because. Just because I wanted to extend it and overachieve at some somehow. And it’s amazing. It’s the 90 day challenge is really life transforming. If you want to acquire a new skill of some sort that you’re not comfortable, but you feel it’s important, it’s for me, it’s the best way I did. Afterwards, I did email 90 day challenge. I did also I started with the blog 90 day challenge. And yeah, it’s super recommended. Chris Badgett: I’m looking at your YouTube channel. I see you’ve got some great interviews on there. What’s your advice to people to not just make all the content yourselves, but bring in experts and do shows. Like how did you develop the interview skill? Tiago Faria: Actually, I started interviewing on my YouTube before the 90 day challenge. I started that podcast because it was my first attempt to start becoming more comfortable in camera because you’re interviewing, you’re passing the ball to the other side, the attention is on the guest. And it was also a cool way for me to. Create a network of very influential people in this sphere. Cause I was new to the business in Portugal in 2019. So it was, I was surprised at how easily people say, yes, people love to talk about themselves. And even if it’s someone you think it’s unachievable. You’ll be surprised by how people say yes, those the right people, the people that have the right mindset that know that it’s a matter of doing a lot of these things constantly. And yeah, it was amazing to create that network to have access to other people’s audiences, right? Because those people bring their own audience. So people find me that way. And my podcast actually is still something that brings me people till nowadays. It’s a super abundant strategy. And then if you combine this, of having your podcast with also. Being a guest on other people’s podcasts, it’s an amazing way to reach to new audiences that you would never reach in, another way, unless you play for ads or you play that game. But yeah, it’s super recommended. Chris Badgett: Before we hit record, you were talking about expansion outside of Portugal. And I’m curious one, if you could tell us about your ideas around thinking bigger and two, how you think about. Multiple languages like you have Portuguese content and you have some English content. So how do you, and there’s so many different languages in the world and we really think big. That’s a, it’s a big challenge and not everybody speaks one language or whatever. So yeah, tell us about thinking big. Tiago Faria: Yeah, I was not actually thinking big until last year I was focused on Portugal. We were talking offline because I thought it’s easier here. No smaller market less competition. I know the language. But yeah then my, coach at some point told me, Tiago, you’re. Portugal is 10 million people and there’s 1. 8 billion English speakers that it’s there’s space for everyone. Yes, there’s more competition, but also there’s nobody like you you’re unique, you have your own unique perspectives and and it’s completely true. It’s, a massive market that is out there that I was ignoring for too long. Yeah, I’m expanding my reach now. And of course having Portuguese and English, I think it’s opens up even more opportunities because there are Portuguese people that don’t actually speak English why not also help those out. And I think you, if you speak second, third language. I think it’s a great idea to just not limit yourself to one. And if you work online, of course if you’re in this industry, that you can actually help people online, there’s the world is a limit I don’t believe that you should be limiting yourself. But I was not always like that, right? So here we go. Now I’m the world is the limit. That’s Chris Badgett: awesome. Tell us more about. Just your your journey into being a coaching client yourself. Sometimes I think it’s helpful to invert, like you help people, but you’re also asking for help from coaches and stuff. What have you learned from your own. Experience as a client under a coach. Tiago Faria: Absolutely. For too long, I was trying to do everything alone. I think it’s a natural tendency that we have sometimes at the beginning, you’re talking to everything my own. I’ll just use YouTube buy some courses here and there and just assemble it all. And it’s possible. But that’s the hardest way. And actually understood it after interviewing all those experts on my podcast, that was a pattern that they all. Early on in their career, they reached out to someone that is already at a higher stage to, to ask for help ask for a mentor for a coach. And that’s just the short, shortcut for, you to succeed and go faster to where you want to go. It’s But I think it’s crucial and I think it’s the earlier we do it, the better it avoids so many headaches, so many like frustrations. And why, wait? If, you can have a shortcut, someone that already went through your same path and that you avoid many mistakes. Of course you still make mistakes, but at least you have a clearer path. Someone that already organized the information into Kind of a a guided way for you to, implement and it keeps you accountable. And when I, so after three years, 2021, I finally decided to work with a mentor. His name was Terry Dean. And he, yeah, he helped me out let’s make a vision. Okay. To be clear where you want to go to keep you like avoid distractions and keep you focused, make a plan, yearly plan, weekly plan. And actually be concrete about who I’m helping. Simplifying my processes. So if I didn’t reach out to him, I would probably still be firing everywhere and trying, falling into all the traps, all the shiny objects. While I could already be right now, I’m helping the people that actually need me. I will be postponing this, situation, right? And it’s the smartest thing to do, I believe. How do Chris Badgett: you define your nature, your avatar, the people that you help? Tiago Faria: How do I define, so I define it as I’m working the people that work in the health industry, which are coaches, consultants, service providers people that actually help others achieve some sort of results. And my people are trying to get results consistently, but They cringing to think that they’ll have to post reels on Instagram every day, or they’re tired of wasting money on, ads that are just eating their budget. And they think that’s the only way to do it. So then that’s the kind of people that I would really love to help that it’s me in the past basically. And I love to help them with the anti marketing approach. Okay. Let’s simplify everything. Let’s use the anti marketing method to craft something that your people really want to buy, that you are happy with, that excites you and them, and then tap into your network and then tap into other people’s audiences through podcast guests, guesting or podcasts creation. So yeah, that’s my main focus. Chris Badgett: What do you think the biggest challenges or problems that people in the help industry or have, what are the main buckets? It’s like One to five challenges that they have. And I, one of them you mentioned already, which was the, they’re trying to do it all alone and figuring out everything from scratch, like that’s a problem. What and shiny object syndrome, but what else are they struggling with? Tiago Faria: And I think the main tendency is also to try to help everyone like anyone that gives me money is a potential client and that’s a bit complicates your life too much because your, messaging is too bland dissipates in the ether and you don’t attract anyone specifically. Yeah, drilling down the niches, I believe is crucial finding that person that you can actually help the best, the easiest, the fastest. That actually can buy your courses and they can actually implement your courses. It’s super, super important. So being super clear about that and solving the, problem that we talked about the, now the urgent problem. So super, super clear. It makes everything so much easier. Your communication. Selling, you know exactly what are the object objections and you know exactly what the person wants and also the delivery of your course, right? If you’re super clear on that, you know that you don’t need to put everything inside the course, everything that you know, in the course, there’s only just a couple of things that are crucial for that person to achieve that specific result. And you just put that and magic can start happening, right? So the niche and the clarification being too generalist is one of the biggest mistakes. And then maybe also the mistake I was making the creating everything before you even sell it, right? I’m a big fan of, selling it first and then going through the program with the first clients to, to make sure it reflects what the market actually needs and wants that answers all the main obstacles. And I love that a lot of this approach of selling first. And then going through the problem with your first beta users, basically. Because we’re always in our own mind, right? As creators we, think we just create something in our own minds and then I hope that people will buy it. Why not just invert the process and have fun creating it together with, people, and and then it will be something that. People really want to buy and achieve. So those are the, I think the main things that I find when people I talk to. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Tell us more about your vision, the world you want to create. Or the the, vision of you’re, committed as a creator, like what, is your vision? Tiago Faria: Yes. So I had the vision of I was limited to Portugal. I wanted to help 3. 14 percent of the population here to start finding their own purpose helping others and get, rewarded by helping others achieve results. And but probably not just by, by my own, of course I will by, my own content, by everything I create until then, by maybe my team in the future that will start spreading the message. But yeah I, really believe that this is a super abundant area and industry that helps each other out and creates a community of, people willing to help each other. That’s, just something that fascinates me and it’s, super abundant. Yeah, my vision is to keep keep growing, keep keep helping people because the more people I, help the more they will help others and it just multiplies the effect and that’s, fascinating to me. Chris Badgett: I love that we have a similar vision. I call it accelerate the accelerators Tiago Faria: and, ah, accelerate accelerators. That’s cool. Chris Badgett: Yeah. Tiago is at Tiago Faria pt. How else can people connect with you and, work with you and, what can they do to go deeper with you? Yeah, Tiago Faria: I think the, easiest way is to shoot me an email, with any questions you have about what we talk here today or anything you want to know about what I’ve been doing in the past. So it’s tiago at tiagofaria. pt. Or you can, if you want, you can go to my website to book a call at tiagofaria. pt forward slash call. We can have a chat. I just love to meet new people in this industry, brainstorm some simple strategies that people can implement today. And that’s, those are two ways that I would love to connect with people. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome, Tiago. Thank you for coming on the show. We really appreciate it and I wish you all the best on the journey. And it’s fun to be with you on the journey cause we do very, similar things and yeah I’m, excited for you and I’m really glad that. There’s people like you out there in the world that are trying to help the helpers because when somebody is called to help people, particularly the helpers, it can have a massive impact on the world. So keep up the amazing work. Thank you so much, Tiago Faria: Chris. Chris was a true honor and I hope people take something out of this conversation today. 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. 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 Antimarketing for the Help Industry with Tiago Faria appeared first on LMScast.

In this LMScast episode, Harry Spaight shares insights into selling courses. He stresses the importance of adopting a sales strategy grounded in honesty and customer service. Harry Spaight, a speaker and author of the book “Selling with Dignity,” advocates for a servant-based approach, particularly in an era where many people harbor disdain for salespeople. He advises overcoming mental health challenges like impostor syndrome by steering clear of a salesy image and focusing on comprehending buyers’ needs. The significance of employing charm during prospecting, making a memorable impact at networking events, and streamlining the sales process is emphasized by Spaight. Addressing the common challenge of selling something one doesn’t enjoy, he underscores the importance of projecting an image of service rather than self-promotion. Spaight encourages vendors to participate in networking, attend local gatherings, and prioritize brightening someone else’s day. He underscores the value of establishing genuine connections, acting with decency and empathy, and recognizing that understanding and resolving potential customers’ issues are often critical to closing deals. 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 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 LifterLMS, 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 Harry Spaight. His website is sellwithdignity. com. He has a book called. Actually, I don’t have your book up. I have your podcast over here, which is sales made easy. And I believe your book title is selling with dignity. So I got that. And let’s just jump right into this first challenge that people have with selling, whether they’re creating education companies or they’re an agency that serves that market, we all need to sell. But some of us just don’t like selling. And so we put it off and we put it off and then ultimately we have to face this beast. So how do we sell if we don’t like selling? Harry Spaight: Yeah, that’s a great question. And the, it’s so common Chris. So first of all, thanks for having me on your show. Really appreciate the opportunity. My goal is. Try to help someone today so that they can walk away and feel better about selling themselves or selling for their business. So the big challenge is, that most people these days, younger generation does not want to come across looking like a salesperson. They don’t want to be viewed as salesy. They don’t like the tactics. And with the rise of Parvana and a lot of other websites like Amazon, where you could buy virtually everything, people can bypass the sales person. Which is really for the first time in the last probably 10 or 15 years where this has become pretty normal compared to years ago. So we all want to avoid the salesperson, yet we have to sell. So what do we do? And I think the real key to this is view yourself as a servant for others, just like the server in a fine dining restaurant serves. But they’re also selling because they have to ask for the order, but they do it in a way that is polite and respectful. And most people don’t even view the server as someone that sells. So that’s my thought. What’s your take on that? Chris Badgett: I think that’s awesome. I, personally. Early in my career now I love selling, but I used to have that aversion to it and marketing as well. But to me, selling is almost like a moral obligation to help people. And if you believe in your product, that’s a pretty easy job to do. But one area I’d like to dig into with that is some of the resistance comes from imposter syndrome. Or a negative connotation of not wanting to be perceived as like salesy. So how do we get over that personal mindset issues on the front end? Harry Spaight: I think one of the key things is, that if you’re thinking you’re salesy, you’re not. I used to have this come up frequently with salespeople who viewed themselves as being pushy or over the top, and I said anyone who thinks or is worried about it isn’t. It’s the ones and it’s just the same as true of the imposter syndrome. The only ones who are worried about the imposter, about imposter, syndrome are people who are not imposters. The imposters could care less, right? So the same is true if you’re feeling like you’re being a little salesy. You can ask people. It’s okay. When you ask your clients, when you have clients, you can ask them. It’s like, how do I come across? Do I come across more as a consultant? Or do I come across sales? A because I’m working at improving and getting feedback from people that see you in real time can be very helpful. Chris Badgett: How about I think let me just back up and say in marketing generating the lead. These days, a lot of folks do content marketing in a way. That’s what we’re doing right here. We’re creating useful content. And if the people resonate they, go deeper into the relationships with the people they’re seeing there. But there’s this friction, especially in the early days of being an agency or a course creator, where if we have a. Email, or if we don’t have an email list. And we’re still trying to validate Hey, will anybody buy my course or my coaching or my agency website building service? It can make sense to go out into the world and actually do some prospecting or working with cold leads that don’t know you from Adam. And that I think is the most scary part. It’s one thing if somebody has raised their hand and they’re sitting in your email inbox, just like the, restaurant example of you’re in the restaurant, you’ve already raised your hand. Like I would like to eat the food here, but if we go out into the world, how do we do that with dignity for outbound prospecting or outbound How to Sell a Lot More Courses with Harry Spaight: sales? Harry Spaight: Yeah, that’s such a great question. And it’s funny how you mentioned that, but that used to be the way always was for sales. So imagine right before there was a telephone, people were selling and they did it face to face. And then the advent of the telephone made it a little bit different where there was more opportunity to reach people without visiting them. Then email came in. Probably a few other forms of technology. I’m skipping, but each one you were less than face to face each improvement. You are further removed from the face to face. And so even in difficult circumstances in sales, I’m going to answer your question. I’ll try to be sure. But in the difficult circumstances in sales, I always want to be face to face. You want to be able to see what the other person is saying with their face while you’re speaking because they’re going to give you micro expressions off of their mouth and their eyes and either a little bit of a half smile or frown that you’re going to pick up on and then you’re going to be able to respond accordingly. You can’t really do that over the phone and you sure as heck cannot do it over email. And this is a huge mistake because a lot of people will go and try to close a deal or work on a big issue through email. And it’s so much can go wrong with interpretation. But getting back to this, question. So the face to face, if we think about it is really very normal. And when you put yourself out and I, I have to do it as well is I’m going to go out to community events, network with people, chamber events. I have been in the car, folks, with my fingers clenched onto the steering wheel, all sweaty, thinking, Oh, my God, what is going to be in front of me when I go in there? Are people going to like me? Am I going to look stupid? Am I in the right place? Is there going to be a good old boys club or something along all these negative thoughts? But then when I bring it back to reality, I say, okay, I’m gonna go help one person. I’m going to make someone’s day and give them some of my time. I’m going to give them the listening that I can give them, I’m going to ask them questions. And I’m going to make them hopefully feel good about what they’re doing and show genuine interest. When I do that, All the fear and all the nonsense goes away. So when you’re talking to people, I think the key thing is how can you make someone’s day, bring a smile to their life. Yes, we’re going to make asks throughout it, but bring a smile, be charismatic, do something that not everyone else is doing. That’s really my thought on that. What’s your take? Chris Badgett: I think that’s great. And to sell is just a conversation. It’s being human. And again, you’re just trying to help people. Instead of waiting to come to you, you’re going to find them. And they, might, that will make their day. If you can help them and with your offer, your product, they’ll be glad that your, paths have crossed and you made the effort to make those paths cross. Harry Spaight: Absolutely. I Chris Badgett: was wondering, Harry, if you could describe the sales process. Sometimes it takes it may be just like one interaction. You go from just meeting to closing a deal. Other times it could have a long sales cycle, like six months or something like that, or even longer. There’s these stages of sales ending with the close qualifying the lead and all these fancy sales terms. But could you explain like the choreography of sales? A language that we can all understand. Oh my Harry Spaight: goodness. I’ve been known to keep things simple. I do not like to use terms that people can’t relate to. So closing is just bringing the order to completion. Doesn’t mean the end of the sale, because there should be a lot of follow up afterwards. But way I look at it is selling should be easy. So when people struggle with sales. Frequently, they’re speaking to the wrong people. So they’re trying to bring to fruition. They’re trying to close business. They say things like, I have a lot of conversations. I just can’t close. The first thing that needs to happen is that we need to be speaking with people that recognize they have an issue. If they don’t recognize after a conversation that they have an issue, you can have the best thing in the world. It does not matter if they don’t see themselves as having an issue, they are not going to buy. I don’t care how persuasive you are. The second thing they need to do is recognize if this is worth money. Whatever the money is, if they don’t see the value in it and say things like before I had a coach, the first time I spoke to someone that did coaching and went, wow, oh my God, that’s a fortune. I didn’t have any clue. I had nothing to benchmark that against. And so the poor person was trying to defend themselves and chuckle back. It’s I didn’t really have a problem and I certainly didn’t want to invest it, but that all changes when you recognize if I really want to grow a business and I want to know all the things are to know about marketing and so forth, I need somebody and then saving me years. Is worth the money. So that’s just the thought to help your people are doing programs. So first thing is, speak to the right people. And then the next thing that you want to do is I just have a servant minded attitude. So instead of leading with your product and service, find out what they need. What are they trying to achieve? When you find out what they’re trying to achieve, you can then typically tie in Your product or service to help them get what it is that they want. Okay, so talk to the right people go in with a servant minded attitude. Get what is important to them. Once we do that, we figure out that. Hey, now there’s an opportunity here. We do simple discovery questions. We should have a list of 5 to 10 questions, not a million questions, but a few questions that help us determine what they have done before. If they’ve ever investigated something like this, someone might say, Chris I want a learning management system and you’re going to go great. This is what I have. And this is how much it is. You want to do that. You would take through it and you say, why, right? What, would you use it for? You would ask all of these questions. And those are the things that we should be asking. Then we get to the point where we’ve asked the questions. Everything looks to be pretty positive. The next step at that point is. say I use the perfect clothes from James Muir’s book, The Perfect Clothes. He simply says a good next step for many at this point is we review a proposal or we speak to one of our clients that’s doing something similar. Whatever that good next step is, lay it out and say, is that a good next step for you? And if the person says yes, You’ve got a good next step. If they say, no, I’m not ready for it. James suggests say good or just say, I understand. What is a good next step for you? So you always have a forward moving process here instead of it getting stuck where someone says this is all great. I’m going to think it over and then the inexperienced 1 will say, what’s there to think over right? And it’s now we’re challenging them instead of being polite, respectful and getting on the same side of the table as them. And then saying a good next step. Normally, when people say they’re going to think it over is that they will talk to one of our clients. Does that sound like a good next step for You You get sure no. And then you’ve got a good next step that they’re going to give you. And now you’re just following along until you bring it to a good next step. At this point is we drop the paperwork. Does that sound like a good next step for you? It’s that simple. Chris Badgett: Awesome. I love that and getting agreement along the way and you’re ready if they’re not ready to help them figure out if what might be the next step for them. Could you say 1 more time that the perfect close line again, a good, you could say that 1 again. Yeah. So Harry Spaight: you can say something along the lines put your own personality on it by say a good next step for us. Chris is typically we review a proposal. Does that sound like a good next step for you? Nice. And you’re going to get yes or no. Yes. You’re going to review the proposal. No means what would be a good next step for you? And you’re not just putting a ball back in their court. I had Chris Badgett: a question for you about quote, objection handling, but you’ve already answered it with just follow them down the path they’re going, and if they need help, Oh, maybe you need to see some case studies or talk to somebody who’s already purchased before. Is there any other advice you have around when a quote objections pop up? Harry Spaight: I love how you’re doing that. So there’s, why are you saying it objections like that? I’m just curious. What’s coming to mind for you? Chris Badgett: I think about aggressive closing tactics where Oh, I’m not sure. I, need to talk to my spouse and then an aggressive salesperson would do something like potentially saying, trying to override that way of thinking and be like, you have, you can make this decision without them or something or. Harry Spaight: Yeah. Yeah. That’s really good. In fact, I used to be really good at overcoming objections. And then I realized that I was winning, right? It was winning. An argument was not winning a customer or winning a client. So I just stopped that. Once I had the awareness, I stopped using the word objection and started thinking about concern. So if someone is concerned, they’re making a big decision and they want to talk to their spouse about it. Is that something we want to discourage? Or do we want to encourage that? Yeah. Chris Badgett: We don’t want to be the person responsible for starting a fight later the day or when they’re Harry Spaight: buying my stuff. Come on. So getting getting other people involved, it’s a committee, it’s a committee decision that this happens all the time. Incorporated very rarely do people make a decision themselves. There’s a committee. So if they say things like I have to get the committee involved. It’s okay, great. Who, makes up the committee? How can I help? When someone says that about their spouse, for whatever reason, we’re thinking that’s, terrible. I think it’s a good thing that they’re moving along the buyer’s journey and making a, this is what their next step is. Now, sometimes they are going to say that just so they don’t have to make a decision and get it out of their hands, but that’s a whole, they just don’t want to say no. And that’s a whole nother issue that tells you that they’re not ready, which is fine. Okay, but laying guilt on them is not the answer. So overcoming objections to me is helping people deal with what their concerns are. Moving my chair on their side of the desk and saying, I’m here for you. I’ve had similar concerns. That’s in essence what we want to be saying. So yeah, I love how you approach it and totally can relate. Does that answer your question? That Chris Badgett: does answer it. And I want to dig in a little bit more on sometimes you get a no or a rejection or they’re saying something like, Oh, I need to talk it over with someone, but they’re really just trying to exit the conversation. How, as a salesperson, should we deal with rejection and how do we tell the difference between that’s a real concern or this, they’re just trying to get off the phone or whatever Harry Spaight: Yeah, And it happens. So no is simply not now. For most of us in sales, if you’re talking to the right people. So again, picture your ideal client profile and say, I am working with coaches that need this program. It’s going to say that X and whatever, whoever your ideal client is, you want to be speaking to those people. The numbers show, and this came from Chet Holmes. Who did this study over years and years that typically 3 percent of the population is in the market for what we’re selling at that moment. So he’s, had people raise their hand. Who was today. It was ready to buy tires and these huge crowds, 3 percent of the hands would go up. So that number is pretty consistent. So some people are not going to be in the market today. Doesn’t mean they won’t be. Another 30 percent or so will be interested, just not ready. And another 30 or 40 percent will be curious and there’ll be opportunity in those numbers as well. And then there’ll be a smaller percentage that will just never be interested, nor will they want to do business with you. We want to get through those people, excuse me, that are polite, but they’re never going to do business with us. And they’re not in our ideal avatar. They don’t have a need. There’s no point in spending tons of time, but there’s plenty of people that have a need that you can talk to. And that 30 or 40 percent that are either in the market or will be it once they find out about you. And then the thing is just a timing game. So you stay in touch until they’re ready to do something. That’s where email and social media can help as well. Chris Badgett: I love the quote that the fortune is in the followup because it’s true. You just have to follow up. Stay connected and don’t be annoying stay connected to people. Harry Spaight: Yeah, a hundred percent. And this is a huge mistake. It sounds like it’s not a mistake for you is people think no means. Forever. Not now. It’s no, I got too much going on. Does not mean forever. It could be give me a call in three months and things settle down. This is another great opportunity where people say I’ve just got a lot on my mind. I can’t do this right now. Instead of trying to push your offer to the front burner, I relate. I want to go, I want to let them know that there are things that I have on my mind at times and I can’t think of anything else. So I’m here for you. First of all, is there anything that’s on your mind that I might be able to give you a referral or somebody that might be able to help out? That would be one thing. And then as the thing softened at a guard drops a little bit and they feel like you’re now a friend versus someone trying to sell them something. You can say Chris, I really appreciate you telling me this and spending the time with me. Sounds like you do have a ton on your plate these days. When would be a good time to follow up? Would you say 90 days? Does that sit well with you? And then you get the yes or no, right? The yes, you follow up 90 days. No is yeah, gotcha. When do you think would be a good time to follow up? It might just say, give me six months. And now you put that in the calendar and say, I’m going to pencil this in my calendar six months from today. Is that cool? And yeah, they’re going to say yes, because now you’re respectful and now you’ve got, again, a reason to contact them. It’s in the calendar. They’re going to get a notification, keep the sale process moving. Chris Badgett: I heard a fun, an acronym for that called BAMFAM, book a meeting from a meeting. Harry Spaight: Yeah, that’s easy to remember. I’ll probably say it wrong though. Book a meeting from a meeting. Great stuff. Chris Badgett: Let’s talk about pricing and perception of value. I find that as people get into online business or really any kind of business they really start to deepen their understanding of what is product? What is sales? What is marketing? In my view, like pricing mostly sits in product. Like it’s part of the offer construction, but of course sales needs to talk to product and give that real feedback of what’s coming from the market and marketing needs to communicate to product. Hey, what are, how to, how are people valuing this? So just, that’s just a setup to the question, which is in the education companies, what I’ve noticed is there’s three pricing buckets for courses and coaching programs and membership sites, there’s low, medium and high low is anywhere from free to 200 medium is from like 200 to 2000 and high ticket or whatever is 2000 and up. And so this is mostly a question. For mid and high prices. If you’re in a sales conversation with somebody by email or on social media or face to face in person, wherever it is, and you’ve got somebody who’s really fits your ideal customer profile and you’ve sold. Similar people like that. And they’ve been very happy and successful with the program before, but the feedback you’re getting in the sales conversation is, whoa, this is a 5, 000 a year investment for this intensive coaching program. They may not say it outright, but they might be thinking, I don’t know if it’s worth 5, 000. How do we help substantiate the value without an aggressive salesperson in terms of explaining the value or helping them see the value. Harry Spaight: Yeah, this is a great question, Chris. So I look at it as really having the conversations and find out what the potential buyer needs. And if we’re not having that conversation and someone says, Harry, how much is your pricing program? And I say, it’s 7, 500 for three months. Okay. So that’s a lot of money, right? I want to do that. I could say that, but I’d say first, before we even talk about pricing, let’s see if there’s a fit. What is it you’re trying to achieve? And if they’re telling me that they want to achieve something that I can’t help them with, I’m not going to offer 1st of all, I’m not going to make an offer to somebody that we’re not on the same page with 2nd thing is. If they’re selling stuff for 20, they have to sell a lot of that, even just to pay for the coaching. You take 7, 500 divided by 20, that’s a big number, so it may not make sense to them. But if they’re selling 10, 000 and up or 5, 000 and up services, you now say, you can now justify by saying, look, it’s one and a half sales. Will I help you get to where you want to be faster, which I believe I will. And if someone is saying I’d rather not spend the money, but it’s going to take me 2 years to develop those skills. How much money are you leaving on the table going through the trial and error methodology, which happens for the majority of people who say, I don’t want to spend the money on a coach. It’s okay, but over the next two years when you’re struggling, not that I’m wishing that on people, but a lot of people struggle in sales. People who are really good in sales, I’d like to think I’m pretty good, is we have tons and tons of hours. Think of the 10, 000 hour rule. 10, 000 hours plus role playing, right? Doing real life stuff and having this be part of our everyday lives versus someone who is casually doing it to grow their business. It is two different things. So whenever your program is being viewed as high. You first want to make sure, did you ask what the person was going to get outside with their pro, with your program before you gave them the price? If you, they ask you a price, you don’t want to hold back and you say I got three programs there 500, 7, 500 and 150, 000, whatever the number is, you now then want to have a conversation. But they might be shell shocked, right? So this is all. So I try to say before I give you the numbers, we have a little bit of a conversation. I want to find out what you need and see if I can align a program that fits what your budget is and get that ahead. And now you can ask some questions. These will be your discovery questions like we talked about earlier. What’s your thought on all of this, Chris, a long answer for a short question. Chris Badgett: No it’s a perfect length. It’s I think that’s fantastic. Once you understand the value of their pain point or the opportunity, then you can relay the value. And I think the, it’s just as important, like you mentioned, to focus on the opportunity costs what if you don’t do anything about this, how will that impact your time and money and so on? If you, this goes back to the first sales to yourself, if you really believe in your product and know what it can do, you should like how impactful and effective it can be when it’s used with the right people. One of my favorite parts of selling is. Expansion revenue, like selling more to existing customers who are happy and helping them get even greater results. But sometimes I see sales folks get super focused on always like closing new business. How is there any kind of system or strategy for expanding sales with your existing customer base? Harry Spaight: Yeah yeah, another outstanding question and I’m being very complimentary here, but I’m legitimately impressed by the question I refer to this. It’s account based marketing, cross selling expansion. Selling is the first I’ve heard of it. So thanks for clarifying as to what that is. Yeah, you it’s a whole lot easier to sell to people that already have you your stuff and already love you. So we’re many, businesses are missing out on opportunities. You have already done the work. You’ve already established trust. They already love you. They have other things that they need your stuff for. So you got to think through that. Just, I would pull a, just, I would create a little spreadsheet of who my clients are and what my products are. So now with this spreadsheet, I can say, okay, here are the gaps. I’ve got these higher paying clients. They’ve got this product, but they don’t have this. Now I’m not looking just to sell product. I want to uncover what their needs are. You just have to remove yourself from the sale. And the longer you do this, the easier it is. And just say so a good thing to do is to have business reviews. Understand how your client is using the stuff that you’ve sold, whether it be with technology or your services or your coaching for that matter, and say, I just want to invest some time here with you. See how everything is going and understand what you’ve gained so far. You’re going to get all kinds of reference testimonial. Capability on this, you’re going to be able to say, can I quote you on that? Which is going to be great for another reason, but then you’re going to uncover, right? When you start showing that you’re really a trusted advisor, you’re going to uncover different opportunities. And that is where you can say, I might be able to help you with that. I’m not sure a hundred percent, but I might be help be able to help you. That was you want to explore that a little bit. You’ve already got the trust and I’m not going to be, Oh my God, I can help you with that. Cause that’s, way too eager. Just pull it back. Just use words like might possibly things along those lines show that you’re not in there for the hard sell and that stuff really works. So yeah, a hundred percent recommend that whole approach there for you. Chris Badgett: I love a a good expansion revenue model. And, this is why, even if you’re a one person business, if the sales department talks to the product department, cause in those followups, you learn things in the product. Or the service may not be ready. There may not be an offer there yet, but there could be in another month or six months or a year. A fun. Harry Spaight: Yeah, this is really good. Yeah. Chris Badgett: example from Lifter LMS is we created the software and people were successful with it. And they bought our payment stuff and our different things for it to do different things. But then we started hearing from existing customers that they were like, can I sell? This course one to many to like companies or schools or groups of some kind. And there are answers like not yet, but a year later we have that product. And now that’s just part of their buyer’s journey. Once somebody finds success, they start thinking about scaling and getting more sales and that’s just like a software example of when you follow up and you hear what the next. The buyer’s journey doesn’t just end at the sale, you deliver the product, they activate, they retain for another year, and then they expand into more stuff. Harry Spaight: Yeah so you, earlier you mentioned how some people view the close as the end of the sale. It’s the middle, right? It’s exactly. Yeah. I love it. Chris Badgett: I think about that marketing and sales up here and then customer success is below and it’s, just as important. And that includes selling expansion stuff down there. Yeah. Harry Spaight: And the, idea that people are bothering their customers by trying to sell more to them. I, go back to what you said earlier, right? It’s your obligation. Who would your customer rather do business with someone who is a complete stranger or someone they’ve already been working with that knows them that can help them solve another problem. So yeah, I appreciate your approach to that. It’s really good. Chris Badgett: You you flew over something really quick, but I just wanted to pull it out, which was sure. You made a comment to remove yourself from the sale. And what I want to dig in there with is. Where I’ve learned this lesson and I want to ask you specifically around money mindset, particularly with somebody who doesn’t come from a sales background and maybe they’re selling yoga classes and they’re not really trained in sales or business. But and maybe they’ve had a hard road, which a lot of bootstrap founder folks have and, they’re they had to be frugal and stuff. And maybe they have their own like head mindset issues around money and costs and everything. So I wanted to just ask your advice around money mindset as is and not projecting on clients. And I’ll just add one short story is it always amazes me when I come across. Somebody making a purchase that is not price sensitive at all, they just come in, boom, they buy the most expensive thing. No objections, anything. And there’s, and maybe you’re not like that as a consumer out in the world, but there are people that are like that and that’s, them, but just talk about removing yourself from the sale, particularly around money ideas. Harry Spaight: I think I understand the questions years ago when I was brand new to sales, I was living on the edge of poverty and. I was reading or listening to cassettes back in the nineties and I think it was someone really famous, Brian Tracy, I believe it could have been Tom Hopkins. But the line that stuck with me is act like you want the sale, but don’t act like you need the sale. And when I, immediately that was like really simple for me. Cause I knew what needy looked like, and I did not want to look needy. So when I watch salespeople around me. Say this is the best thing since sliced bread. You really need to do this. This is great. You’re going to love it. And there’s all this stuff I would use this may or may not be a fit. And I got my share of deals and I got the trust factor way faster than I realized that this was a much more consultative approach, which I stumbled across, but it wasn’t like. I need, I needed the money folks. I was living in a, not a three bedroom apartment. A three room apartment with a sink that was not in the bathroom. I had to walk, we had to wash our hands in the kitchen. And so we were living on the edge of poverty. But I just kept acting right. You, it’s not the fake until you make it, but you just have to act like you don’t need it and it will come. And I just Going back to my beliefs and faith was that I read and over the years that I did mission work is like every worker is worthy of their wages. The birds of the field or the birds of the heavens are going to be fed things like that. Lilies don’t feel they’ll worry about things. I just started to apply all that stuff and said, I’ve got the mindset. I know this will come, I just have to just have faith in the system that it will all work out. And it does. Alex Ramos, he said, there’s two, two outcomes. One is you’re going to succeed. And the other one is you’re going to quit. There’s no, and I was just like, Oh my God, does that guy say anything that isn’t brilliant? But that’s it. It’s like you stick with it long enough. You’re going to have the outcome. Gary V I remember talking to someone. He was saying something along the lines. It’s like you haven’t put time in at two or three years, five years, 10 years, then talk to me, but two or three years, that’s not enough time. And so we, a lot of us might have this perception that we quit the job to be an entrepreneur and we just show up every day, the money comes in. It’s not quite like that. What’s your thought on all that, Chris Badgett: Chris? Yeah, that’s awesome. The yeah, I love that. I’m definitely going to hold on to that one. I’ve, heard it called commission breath. Harry Spaight: Yeah. That’s another term that’s out there. Yes. Chris Badgett: Where someone is peers, very needy for the sale. And when you’re doing it, like once you get the self awareness for it, it’s Oh, wait a second. Harry Spaight: Oh yeah. Yeah. It’s if a person is. Saying that they might go elsewhere or they’re going to, they’re going to shop around. Our first reaction is we, might feel a little bit hurt at that rejection. I’ve got, I’m being rejected here. I put a lot into this and I spoke to someone who felt this rejection. And I asked, I said, do you ever shop around? I do it all the time. So yeah. So why do we expect that others aren’t going to do the same to us? We all do it. So just say just relax. Here’s the key. Is when you’re sensing this feeling, just breathe. It’s really that simple. It’s like the Navy seal trick. Just exhale and inhale and exhale. You practice the breathing, the tension in the shoulders drops, and you can say consultant, right? Consultant, not a needy salesperson. And then you start acting like you. Care about the person more than the sale, and they’re going to see that and say I really like this guy. Chris is really trustworthy. And I just wanted to see what he was thinking. If I said that to someone else, I said that to jump down my throat for saying that. So that could go that way, too. Chris Badgett: Yeah, 1 thing I’d add to that is people aren’t just listening to what you say. They’re also watching how you listen. And being a good listener ties into my next question, which you mentioned, I try not to weave too many questions into one, but a couple are here are, you mentioned Alex Hermosi who sells selling and as a, as an art, but He’s very charismatic. So that’s one question. Why do you think so? The other is some people are more introvert and they’re like, Oh, can introvert sell? And they absolutely can. I’m an extreme introvert and I’ve sold a lot of things. And but I want, so the question is around charisma without losing our authenticity. And maybe we’re super extroverted, maybe we’re not. So help, us step into our charisma or our power as a salesperson. Harry Spaight: Yeah, that’s really good. You’re, bringing me in places I don’t normally go. So I love these questions. Are you making me think here? So first of all, Alex, we’re not all Alex or Mosey or Gary V. Those guys have very strong high deep the disc profile personalities. I’m not like that. I’m more introverted than extroverted. I recently took a test and my score was 52 introvert, 48 extrovert. So I always was thinking, am I an extrovert? Should I be doing this while in sales? Should I be should I be sitting with the people who are driving the Porsches and the BMWs and the wearing the Rolexes? Or no, I always sat with like the techs I sat with people who are not in sales because I felt like I was one of them. So like you said, introverts can sell and do very well. And I often say to people who struggle with that, it’s like, who would you rather buy from someone who is loud, always talking about themselves, has to be in the front row, has to share how glorious how great they are, or do you want to be the quiet person that does the right thing and hardly says anything? I know where I want to be. I want to be with those people. So those, if there’s an audience for those people, then there’s also buyers for those people, right? So that’s how that works in my mind. Now, the difference is so the authenticity is some days we feel like. Crap. Okay. We just were not in the mood like I come from the Northeast give me a slushy rain snow mix day and I’ve got to go out on prospect. Not fun. However, when I’m in front of a candidate, a prospect, a living human being. You can bet I’m smiling and making fun of myself or making fun of the day or someone’s got to be out there. I’m going to make the mailman look bad. I’m going to use self deprecation humor to help bring a smile to somebody. Those smiles will open up additional doors. So Is it faking it until you make it? Is it using an alter aspect of your personality? I think it is. It’s, I think it’s you saying that part of it that’s in us that is not always there, I’m not always doing standup comedy, but I know I can be funny at certain times as part of my personality. I know I could be extroverted when I need to be extroverted so that I can lighten up the room or be there with my kids party or something. We all do these things to say I’m really introverted and I’m always quiet. I think you need to re examine that a little bit and say, really? Are you always that way? Or you just could that possibly be an excuse as to why you don’t want to sell? And I think you might find that there’s opportunity for growth there. And I love the growth mindset. It’s read the book by that anyway, it’s called the growth mindset. It will knock you out as far as putting yourself to the test and saying if the beliefs you have are really good beliefs all the time. I love that long answer. Chris Badgett: I love that. There’s just that part too, about just being the consummate professional. Like a doctor may be having a bad day, but you’re in the office and they’re in character. They’re doing their, thing. Just like any, role you can tell quickly. That’s what makes us like great service providers and everything is that they’re professional and they they, do their thing that we’re there for, that we signed up for. Harry Spaight: Yeah. And a lot, and sometimes it’s acting. And it’s not bad, right? You’re, putting on your best face because you know that you have to bring it for the other person. If you’re going to cheer up, say you feel like less than great, and you’re going to go visit someone in the hospital that’s has a terminal illness. You’re not going to go there and bring the person down, right? That’s not your goal. And your goal, you’re going to say, I’ve got to put on a happy face. I’ve got to be positive. This is breaking my heart, but I’m going to do everything. I tend to be positive. That’s how you think. So the person that comes out in that moment, is that a fake Chris? I don’t think so. I think it’s a Chris that’s drawing from his inner strength and his conviction to make the world a better place and to help this person. That’s not fake Chris. That’s a person that’s going the extra mile to do what he can to bring some light into this person’s life. Chris Badgett: I love that. Harry’s at sellwithdignity. com. His podcast is Sales Made Easy. Thank you for putting so much sales advice in this short episode. We’ve covered a lot here and you’ve given so much good tips and information. What can people do to work with you or go deeper and how else can they connect with Harry Spaight: you? Yeah. So if you go to selling with dignity. com, you can get a few chapters of my book under selling with dignity. com the book. And you can see if that’s an appeal to you. We can also reach out for a conversation there on the website as well. So happy to have a conversation and help you with sales. First call is. Complimentary. I’ve tried to get past the free word myself. I’m always working on stuff myself, but free sounds cheap. First call is complimentary and happy to help you with something that might be struggling a challenge for you. That’s Chris Badgett: awesome. Harry, thanks for coming on the call. One last question for you. Who is your ideal customer that you help? Harry Spaight: Yeah. I have this down. It is people who are leaving corporate that have done pretty well in the corporate environment and are getting closer to retirement. Feel like they want to make an impact, help other people be a consultant. I’m the person that can help you. Bridge that gap from corporate to actually serving people and getting paid for that. So those are my ideal clients. Awesome, Chris Badgett: Harry. Thanks so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Harry Spaight: That’s been a blast. Great questions, Chris. 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. Go to lifterlms. com forward slash gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode. 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 The post How to Sell a Lot More Courses with Harry Spaight appeared first on LMScast.

In this LMScast episode, Josh Spector discusses his strategy for assisting professionals in expanding their businesses, especially concerning the skill sessions model. Additionally, he shares tips on how you can grow your expert business. Josh Spector is an experienced and practical specialist in the realm of business growth. In a succinct manner, he highlights the need of offering targeted and useful material. The one-hour Zoom video lectures throughout the skill sessions include subjects including creating clients, creating products in a day, newsletter social playbook, and defining a specialty. He emphasizes the benefits of cohort courses’ community component and the necessity of avoiding too complicated courses. Also Josh presents the idea of skill sessions as a means of efficiently packaging knowledge and offering the most value per minute. Participants can interact with the material during the 15-minute Q&A that follows each session. Josh also talks about the inclusion of monthly jam sessions for subscribers, which offer chances for unrestricted Q&A on particular subjects. The goal of the workshops is to assist participants in overcoming obstacles and making progress more quickly. 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 LifterLMS, 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. His name is Josh Specter. You can find him@joshspecter.com. Also, sign up for his new newsletter for the interested.com, and he has a podcast called the I Want to Know podcast. And Josh helps expert businesses grow. And I’m really excited to dig into some of the product creation, marketing, wisdom, communication, and teaching wisdom that you’ve developed over all your time doing this. But first welcome to the show, Josh. Josh Spector: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. Chris Badgett: One of the things that jumped out to me about you was. Your skill sessions. Can you give us a little origin of how somebody who has some expertise might use skill sessions and how you crafted what Josh Spector: those are? Yeah. So the, basic model is I let me start off with this. I think that. I help experts grow their business. And, obviously anyone who is an expert when they’re going to do it through products, they’re trying to figure out what’s the best way to package my expertise for people. And that sometimes is on demand courses. Sometimes that’s cohort courses obviously consulting and services is its own separate thing. I have found that in most cases, most courses are. Overblown, they’re bloated. Nobody needs 800 modules and 56 worksheets and whatever. I have found in most cases, cohort courses, people tend to be more interested in the community than they are necessarily the course itself. I also think cohorts there’s a certain you have to. Beyond at this particular time, there’s it’s a sort of this whole other thing. And for the creator of it, you then have to be on at that specific time. And you’re doing it over and over again with different people. Maybe. For me, with everything I do, I am always trying to figure out what, how can I. Create the most value per minute, both for my customers and for myself. So the skill sessions model, which is really a way to package my expertise for my audience came out of that. The basic model is that I do a, there are a series of 1 hour video presentation on zoom, usually about a 45 minute presentation where I show you exactly how to do. Something specific, so I have 1 called the client generator about how to get clients. I have 1 called the product and the product in a day creator, which is literally how to create a product in a day. I have 1 called the newsletter social playbook, which is how to use social media to grow your newsletter. One called the niche definer, which is about how to figure out and find your niche. So very specific things. Then I go through a presentation showing people how to do it basically typically based on stuff that I have done, proven things that have worked for me. And people can watch that. And at the end we do 15 minutes of Q and a, and then that’s it. The sessions up until now, this is about to change, but up until now. The sessions are available individually, so you can just buy 1 that interests you for 50 dollars, or you can get an annual membership, in which case you get all the sessions you get to join live at the 6. I do a session once every 2 months. You can join live at the 6 sessions in the coming year while you’re a member. You can ask questions, you get to vote on the topics. So when I’m going to do a new session, I send three potential topics to members and whichever one they vote for is the one that I do. So I’m ensuring that I’m teaching just what I want to teach, but what people actually want to learn. And then the other thing I added I don’t know, maybe six months or so ago was I added what I call monthly jam sessions, which are basically members only. And they’re essentially an open Q and a. So what I found was a lot of members have things that they want to learn or trying to figure out. They want feedback on their sales page, or there’s things that they want that I can help them with it. Maybe don’t warrant a full hour long skill session. So there’s this is an opportunity for them to come on, ask me questions and maybe in a 5 to 10 minute exchange. I can really help them move something forward. That in a nutshell is the skill session model, right? It’s a way to package expertise and hopefully provide people with the most possible value per minute. Chris Badgett: Wow. That’s awesome. So much wisdom in that. And I, I really noticed when I was digging into your site at joshspector. com, the specificity of all the skill sessions. There’s nothing abstract. There’s like a, there’s like a problem and then the solution is there. And I’m sure every one of these could be like a different episode on this podcast, but to give us a taste of what’s inside the product in the day creator, what does that look like? How do we create a product in the Josh Spector: day? Let me first talk to this specificity. So that is, I’m glad that you noticed that, like it is very intentional. And I think one of the interesting things is the format of the skill sessions, right? The fact that I’ve got to be able to teach this in a 45 minute presentation, basically means you can’t do a sort of general newsletter course, right? You can’t teach everything about newsletters in 45 minutes. So I actually think the format it’s a really, it’s a real good thing, right? You could do a course on how to build and launch and sell a product I don’t know that can be 3 years worth of stuff, right? But by narrowing it in, right? And I’m always trying to narrow it in. And what that does is number 1, it forces a specificity and I think makes the information more valuable. We’re not talking about. theories of any of that kind of stuff will get very specific. And also it allows people to watch it, take it and go do it, right? Start doing these things versus getting overwhelmed with information. So for example, in the product in a day creator I share different, a few different suggestions of ways that you can create a product, but it’s all about again, simplifying it if you start from the premise that, okay, you’re going to create and by the way, it’s create and launch and sell a product in a day. That is such a right off the bat. You’re not going to go invent some new widget in a day and get it manufactured and do any of that stuff. So a lot of it is repackaging stuff that maybe you’ve already done and figuring out ways to do something very simple. So 1 of the examples that we use in there is. My for the interested newsletter which I published for seven years. One of the things I do at the end of the year is I literally go collect everything I’ve shared in the newsletter. And it’s a curated newsletter. So some of it is links to blog posts I’ve written in videos and episodes of my podcast, but a lot of it is the best stuff I find from elsewhere about how to grow your audience and business. All those newsletters exist, right? So I compile them all into a really simple PDF ebook. Sell it. I’ve done it. This is the 4th year. I’ve done it. I personally put it out as a pay what you can product. So people can download it for free, or they can contribute about I think about 15 percent of people pay something for it. But that’s an example where the creation of that product is literally. Copying and pasting all my newsletters into a PDF and putting up a sales page. So that’s one of the examples that I talk people through and show them how to do. Another example is a lot of people maybe they, want to create some sort of course around their expertise. That can be really overwhelming. Do I need professional video? Do I need all this editing time, Do I need to like all this stuff? And one of the simple ways to do it is I say pick very similar to my skill sessions, pick something super specific. That you can teach in 45 minutes or an hour, go on zoom and teach it, record the zoom live, no editing, no any, no anything. Boom. You have a product, right? Maybe it’s someone else’s expertise invite someone else on that’s an expert and knows how to do something, interview them for an hour on zoom, record it, upload it, boom product, right? So those are some examples and I talk through in the. In the session, both how to come up with ideas for products that might work for you, how to actually produce them, and then getting into also, how do you promote them? How do you start to promote them? How do you start to sell them all of that kind of stuff? And the idea is you watch that video for an hour and you can literally the next day, create and launch a product. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. How much of your skill sessions are tactical versus strategy and theory? You said it’s light on theory because we’re going to, you’re going to walk away with something you can implement, but is there, tell us about that balance there or how you think about Josh Spector: that. They’re, highly tactical and they’re, highly what I would say, even more so than tactical, I would say they’re highly actionable. So for example, if you think about the, niche definer, so the niche defined there’s a big difference between the product and a day creator, where it’s I’m going to make this tangible thing and I’m going to sell it. And the niche definer is a level up. It’s a little more theoretical. It’s a little more, I’m trying to figure out. My positioning and all of that kind of stuff, but in that session, I give specific exercises that you can do. That’s the actionable part. So I’m not just talking about, Hey, here’s how to think about niche. And here’s how to sort this through. I give literal specific exercises that like you can go through and you can map these things out. Part of the premise of the niche definer is I started with the example of a sculpture. And that I I think what people get wrong about niche is they, try to build or pick or choose a niche. And I think your niche already exists and you’re just carving away the stuff that isn’t your niche, like a sculpture, right? You start with a block of marble and you’re carving. The sculpture is already within it by you’re just revealing it by carving it away. So in that session, we go through exercises that helps you carve away it. And find the niche that actually already exists about as opposed to you’re randomly trying to pick and choose one. So that’s an example of something that’s a little more theoretical. But given actionable exercises that you can use to do it basically. Chris Badgett: Let’s double click on that. Cause niche challenges are obviously a big challenge in the expert industry. Tell us a little more about carving the statue out of the stone to reveal the niche that we probably already have. And we’re just not clear on. Josh Spector: It’s funny cause it’s been a while since I’ve done that session. So I’m trying to remember some of the, exact stuff that I share in there. But the basic premise is. A couple of things. So number one, I think one of the reasons why people are hesitant to commit to a niche is because they’re worried that it’s going to turn off. But I can help this person and that person or I want to do this thing and that thing They’re very worried about, that abandoning of other stuff, right? I don’t want to just focus on, this, right? Okay. And one of the things that, that I talk about in there that I think is really maybe arguably the most important concept to understand about niche is that niche is not about only, it’s not about your niche is not the only people you’re going to serve and it’s not the only thing you’re going to do. Niche is about ideal. So the question is, when you’re choosing your niche, who are the ideal people you want to work with? What’s the ideal work you want to do? Because everything that you’re putting out there is designed to attract the ideal. You will still wind up doing other stuff and attracting and working with other people, but you should have some idea of okay, yeah, I like to do a, B and C things. And I like to work with X, Y, and Z people, but everything being equal, who do you like working with the most? What do you like doing the most and optimize for that? The other thing is to understand that your niche is always going to evolve. It’s not a people are afraid to commit. They’re like, but if I do this, then I’m stuck. You’re never stuck. Even if you choose something and it works fantastic, it’s still going to evolve over time, right? Even in success. So I think those two. Number one, start freeing people up because they go, Oh, okay. It’s not only it’s just, who do I most want to work with? And the truth is everyone, even if you say you want to do a bunch of things for a bunch of different people, they’re not all equal. Some part of you is like. This is who I can best serve or who I most like to serve. And this is the work that I most like to do. So what I’m saying is focus on that in terms of your niche already existing and carving away the stuff. That isn’t your niche. There’s an exercise in there where, literally there’s like a chart and you map out and I forget the specific categories that I had in it, but you map out this combination of. Okay. Yeah. Things you like to do experience you’ve had there’s 5 or 6 things where you put them all down and you’re looking for what are the similarities here, right? And what sort of off track and what winds up happening is you start to see some of these connections and you’re the natural niche based on what you like to do, who you can best serve, the skills you have, the experience you have the resources you have, whatever it is your, natural niche starts to emerge out of that. And then you can go from there. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. In my opinion, writing is super important as an expert and particularly, I’m just thinking about the future. There’s a lot of people coming up who are like, Really well versed in video and the YouTube generation and maybe hasn’t haven’t spent as much time writing as a podcaster. I try not to ask two questions at once, but just to weave in some, color to this, I’ve really been impressed with what Justin Welsh has done in the past couple of years. And I saw you mentioned him on your site. And I also find his material quite tactical and actionable. Yeah. And he’s obviously a great writer and he develops systems for writing. But tell us how to develop as writers and really use that skill and build our email lists, but most importantly communicate effectively. Josh Spector: So I think that, I think there’s a few things. So first of all, I I agree. I think writing is incredibly important and it’s the, core of, I actually think writing is the core of any expert success, even if you’re going to do videos or podcast or whatever you’re going to do. But I think what’s important to understand is, I think the definition of writing is much broader than maybe some people think. To me, writing is there’s, yeah, there’s writing newsletters and blog posts and social posts and all of that stuff. But there’s also writing sales pages and marketing emails and proposals. And writing emails to clients or audience members are giving them feedback that, that right. When I talk about writing, I’m talking about all of that stuff, right? Not just, oh, you have to have a blog or you have to whatever, right? Videos, right? Your YouTube videos. Even if they don’t have a quote unquote script that you’re reading from a teleprompter, you’re mapping out ideas you want to talk about, right? Writing is the process of communicating those ideas, even if you’re ultimately speaking them, right? On a podcast podcast, another example You’re going to have to write a title for the podcast, and you’re going to have to write a headline for the episode, and some sort of description, and when you share it on social media or in your email, you’re going to have to write that. You’re going to have to write questions for the person you’re interviewing. You’re going to, like, all of these things are, ultimately writing, even if you don’t view yourself as a quote unquote writer. So in terms of how you get how you get better at writing, obviously there’s a million things, but I think the, first thing is. Clarity is hugely important, right? Clarity and specificity. Understanding that every single word you use is a choice, and one choice conveys something different than another choice. For example one of the things that I talk about all the time is I, because I always see people and it’s such an easy, It’s such an easy improvement and fix is you’ll see people’s websites where they say here’s a perfect example, right? They might say, I help people grow their business. People is a red flag word because people could be anything. And it’s a missed opportunity to insert. If I say I help experts grow their business. That means something totally different than people. If I say I help entrepreneurs grow their business, that means something different than experts. If I say I help creators grow their business, that means something different than entrepreneurs. Now, there is no right or wrong. This is where it gets into alignment and understanding your niche and who you’re trying to reach and all of that. But just at a base level, understanding that every one of these words is a choice. Am I helping them grow their business or am I helping them grow their revenue? Or am I helping them get more clients? Or am I helping them sell more products or get more customers? All of these things are choices. So in a, in the most simple sentence, right? I help people grow their business just by looking at people and grow their business, a million choices there, right? So I think from a writing perspective at its base level, understanding that every word is a choice and making those choices consciously and deliberately. Is one simple thing you can do to improve your writing. Another simple thing you can do to improve your writing is stop trying to impress people with your writing, right? Don’t be, don’t use fancy words. Don’t use don’t write like you’re writing literature. My background is in journalism, which I think is partially what in partially what fuels my approach, but you should always be trying to write like you speak and like others speak. You always want to the goal of any writing is to be understood. So there is no such thing as good writing that people don’t understand or are confused by or whatever. And so I think a lot of times people go the opposite because they’re trying to be more formal. Some of it’s their own insecurity, some of it is really bad things that they were taught in school or in jobs or in whatever. The, less formal, the more sort of normal and simple you’re writing, the more effective it will be, the more it will connect with people. Less is more in most cases. I say this with newsletters all the time. Most newsletters are overwritten. This is also true with blog posts. You’ll see things where it’s the intro is like today, I’m going to tell you about how to grow your business if you’re an entrepreneur. And then the next part is here’s how to grow your business as an entrepreneur. Why just tell me it, why do you need to tell me what you’re about to tell me? If you look at newsletters, the intro paragraphs of most newsletters are completely pointless. They’re just wasting words and taking up space and unnecessarily lengthening thing. They think that they’re helping people. They think that they’re like, Oh, I’m going to tell people what I’m going to tell them. And then that’s going to give them an idea. You could just tell them. And this goes back to value per minute. By the way, same thing with podcasts. How quickly can you get into it now, different shows and different pieces of content serve different purposes and for different audiences. And that gets into alignment, but in general everything’s overwritten. So that’s another, tip. And the third tip I’ll give you, this is my favorite tactical writing tip of all a hundred percent guaranteed to make anything you write stronger, whatever you write. When you’re done, like when you’re done, you’ve added it. You think you’re about to publish it. You’re like, this is good. I’m unleashing this on the world. Do a word count. Then force yourself to cut 10 to 20 percent of the words. It will make it stronger every single time. And the reason I love this besides that it, it works every time. What happens is when most people edit their writing. What you’re doing is you’re going through and with each paragraph or sentence or each thing you look at, you’re going, you’re asking yourself, do I need this? And you’re like it’s valuable. I need you like, so chances are you’re going to skew towards. Yeah, I need it. It’s good. When you have to eliminate words, now you’re going, what, instead of saying, is this valuable? You’re saying, what is the least valuable? I have to remove 10%. I have to remove the least valuable stuff and the difference in editing between looking at something and go. What’s the least valuable versus is it valuable will really tighten up your, writing and make it much stronger. I write pretty tight to begin with and still I’m amazed every time I do this at the end. I’m like, Oh my God, there really was 10 percent or 20 percent I could cut and it’s, much better. So yeah, that, that’s a really simple one that anyone can do that always makes writing stronger. Chris Badgett: That was a lot of value per minute. Thank you. You also have a skill session on the solopreneur simplifier and having been in this expert industry for over a decade, I’ve noticed like within the past three years, the solopreneur thing is really getting big or just more, it’s always been big, but it has more focus and. Maybe some people in the industry or have built teams and they’re like, Oh, I just want solo again. And some new folks are like, I just want to keep it small, but focus on the lifestyle and not outsource my whole life, but be this awesome solopreneur. Tell us about that and how we, about being a solopreneur and how to simplify it. Cause it can be overwhelming. Like you said, all the different things now we’re writing in 50 different places. Like how do we keep it simple and not run our life off the rails? Josh Spector: So in that one, I share I share a bunch of different a combination of approaches that I use as well as tools. There’s a tool I talk about in there and I actually show exactly how I use it called text expander. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard it. It’s fantastic. Create snippets and just little, like little simple things. And I show how I use it in, my stuff. So there’s some tool stuff in there. There’s also some approach stuff. I think I might share that 10 percent word count. trick in there as well. I’m not sure, but I think I might. I talk a lot about there’s a lot of assumptions, right? So like with social media, there’s assumptions that like, you need to be on all these platforms and you don’t that the truth is one or two at most is more than enough. When you feel like I always laugh because people are like oh, I’m on Instagram, and I feel like I also need to be on TikTok and LinkedIn and Twitter. And I’m always like, because you don’t think there’s enough people on Instagram to accomplish your goal? If you think about it that’s really what it is, right? I understand that maybe there’s people you’re missing, but you’ve really reached everyone on Instagram that could potentially be in your audience? Of course not, right? Any of these platforms at this point is more than big enough to accomplish whatever your goals are. And the truth is, in order to succeed on any social platform, it takes a lot of time and effort and attention, right? And that you’re ultimately going to grow faster if you focus on one platform than if you spread your time and efforts across multiple. So, that, that’s an example of, sort of ways to, simplify, breaking from some of these assumptions that that people feel. And then I also get into certain things like. I’m not huge on automations, but there are some basic automations how do you use a welcome email? What do you send to people after they buy your product? Like, how do you do some upsells, like things that you can do to simplify your, work? And then even I do talk about just because you’re a solopreneur doesn’t mean you can’t get help from anyone, right? I talk a bit about. How to do that. So for example, I have someone that helps me part time with stuff and, has for years, we don’t have weekly meetings or calls. We don’t do any of that. No, it’s we’ll talk occasionally when we need to. And here’s what you’re responsible for. Let me know if you have any questions. We don’t need a weekly check in call, right? And I think lots of people have assumptions, right? That if you do have someone like you, you do need to do that. And in some situations, maybe you do. But I think a lot of it is removing a lot of these assumptions and really looking at how can you simplify everything that you do basically. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Client attraction. You have the client generator. It’s a popular subject on this. Podcasts in terms of course creators and coaches and people with training based membership sites, they want more clients. How, can you help them? Josh Spector: It’s funny. It’s it’s the same thing. I’m really, some of these I haven’t put out in a long time. So it’s I’m trying to remember like what’s in there versus things that I’ve talked about, but I’ll give you a sort of few examples, right? Like one of the, some specific examples. So one of the things that I talk about in there is I do this thing occasionally on Twitter that I call like free coaching tweets. And basically what I do is I I’ll typically pick something specific, right? So I might go I usually say free coaching time. So if someone’s I’m on Twitter at Jay Spector, by the way. If you go there and search, for tweets that say, Coaching or free coaching time from my account. And you’ll, see a bunch of these. So I’ll, do something that is, I might say okay free coaching time show me your newsletter signup page, and I’ll take a look and give you some suggestions to improve it. And so what happens is all these people reply because who’s going to turn down free coaching, right? So here’s my thought so the tweet winds up doing pretty well because you’re getting a lot of engagement. Then I’m going through and I’m just looking at their, in this case, their signup pages and giving them some recommendations. Hey, your headline should be this or you should have testimonials or you should, whatever it is. And what winds up happening with that is a couple of things. Number one, all that interaction, the tweet starts to perform really well in the algorithm. Number two, the people that I’m helping are like, Oh my God, this is so cool. And they’re more likely to buy my stuff. They’re more likely to book a coaching call with me or whatever it is. But the other thing that’s interesting is all the people that didn’t reply are seeing me coaching literally. And what happens is they’re seeing it at scale, right? That, wow, that was a really great point he gave to that guy. And what a really smart idea he gave to that woman. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that becomes it’s almost like a testimonial or like proof of whatever, like on steroids, right? Not just for the people you help individually, but for everybody else. And so I would do those pretty regularly. And I think anyone. Can do a version of that right to share your expertise and it takes you out of just again, it gets more specific because you’re giving specific feedback to people about specific stuff. It takes you out of the, just here’s another tweet where I’m sharing my philosophy on whatever, right? The different, and I’ll do that too, but the difference between me saying the difference between a tweet where I go, Hey, there’s here’s three things you should have in your newsletter signup page. And me doing that one on one coaching stuff. Number one, it’s going to get a lot more reach. Number two, I’m going to surface more stuff. I can also then repurpose some of that. So from a getting client perspective, that’s way more powerful than just, Hey, here’s three things you should do. So yeah, so that’s one example of, a way that you can, and that’s really what the client generator is, right? It’s a whole variety of actions you can take and things you can do like that, that are going to lead. I think another one in there is with a newsletter welcome email, right? So when people sign up to my newsletter I’m not doing this right now, but I used to do it I used to do it a lot more they would sign up and I would ask them tell me what you’re working on. I’m happy to give you a suggestion on how you can improve it or accomplish your goal or whatever. And probably 35 percent or so, the people that subscribed would reply. It’s also interesting because they would never, they’re just shocked that someone wants to hear from them. They’re like, I’ve never seen anyone like ask me whatever. And then when I reply back, they’re really shocked because they can’t believe anyone’s paying attention. So someone might reply and they might go, Oh, I’ve got this newsletter and I’m trying to grow it and blah, blah, blah. So I would reply back to them and say, Oh, here’s a few things you might find helpful. Like I give them some specific suggestions. I checked out your page and your sign up page is missing this or whatever. Instead of saying people, you should say entrepreneurs or pick a different word. And then I would say, here’s here’s an article, a blog post I wrote about how to grow your newsletter. Here’s a podcast episode about ways to monetize your newsletter, whatever. I give them some relevant resources, which draws them deeper into my world. And then I might go, no, by the way, if you ever want I have my skill sessions, which you can. Blah, blah, blah. Or if you want a coaching call, here’s how that works. So I would have people literally go from sign up to the newsletter, reply to tell me about themselves, which by the way, they’re telling me exactly what they’re trying to figure out. So from a client perspective that’s someone else might reply and go, Oh, I’m trying to figure out how to sell more products. I can give them my product stuff, right? So I’m matching my expertise to their thing. And then I’ve had people literally turn around right from that and be like, let’s book a call or buy my skill sessions or whatever, right? Just by having automated automated welcome email that prompts a conversation and them telling them. Telling me about themselves as opposed to what most people do, which is congratulations. You’re signed up for the newsletter. See you soon. So it’s those kinds of things, right? Little things you can do that can have a massive impact on your ability to get clients. Chris Badgett: I feel like social media is really misunderstood and it’s because there’s two words there. There’s social and there’s media. And like, with their Twitter example, here’s three things I recommend. That’s some great media. But when you actually do live coaching and there’s all this conversation, that’s the social part. And same with your reply to the, welcome email. It’s actual social stuff. People don’t just want media. They want conversation and Josh Spector: connection. A thousand percent. And also I think with email, people forget that it’s a two way medium and completely different two way medium and completely different than social. Because what’s interesting is It’s one of the reasons why I’m huge on newsletters. There’s a million advantages of it over social media. So number one is this algorithm proof. So whatever I send, they may not read it, but whatever I sends landed in everybody’s inbox, right? That’s you’re lucky if your tweet gets in front of 10 percent of your followers, right? Total difference. Number two. They’re reading it. It’s a more intimate medium. So especially if you write in the way that you’re writing to 1 person as opposed to writing to everyone, you will never see me in a newsletter. Be like, Hey, everybody no it always feels like you’re writing to 1 person. But what’s interesting is when someone sees something you share on social media, they also see. How many likes does it have? How many retweets does it have? What are the replies? Is everyone else saying this is a dumb idea? I guarantee you there are people that think it’s a smart idea until they see other people saying it’s dumb. That doesn’t happen in your inbox, right? So in an inbox, they are just one on one with you and processing what they think about it. They have no context for anything else. So I’ll, give you another example of this where it’s like when I was early on in my newsletter because people have no context, I think everyone should be completely honest. I’m not suggesting anyone lie about anything but their interpretation of anything that’s going on with you is solely based on what they hear from you. So the more excited you are, the more you sound like things are going well, again, I’m not saying to lie. But the more you have that, the more they feel like, Oh, this is a thing. So really simple example of that is early on in my newsletter, I think I had asked some question or whatever, or maybe posted something and three or four people replied, I didn’t have a ton of subscribers, whatever. But the next week, I think I wrote Oh, I was blown away by the replies to last week’s newsletter. If you’re in a vacuum, you don’t know, you don’t think I literally was blown away. I got three or four people to reply and it was great, but you have no idea how many subscribers, like you read that and you’re like, Oh, everyone’s replying. I should have replied, I had something to say about that. Oh, this is a thing that I’m part of. So the way you talk about things and on social, that can’t happen right on social. They can see Oh, this reached 30 people and it has one so he’s blown away by one it’s just a totally, different medium, but to go back to your point, yeah, the social is way more important. And so with that, you’re standing one on one interactions and engagements on social or email or whatever, way more powerful. I talk about, people ask me all the time. They’re like, how do I get. How do I get a thousand subscribers to my newsletter? And I go you get one subscriber a thousand times. Stop looking to try to get you don’t get a thousand subscribers. You get one by one. And that’s the truth of any of this, right? How do I get a bunch how do I get 20 clients? You get one client 20 times. How do I publish I’ve published 300 in my weekly newsletter I’ve published for 396 weeks in a row, something like that. And people go how do you, publish 300 new? I was like, you publish one newsletter 300 times. Like it seems obvious, but I think it’s a really important mindset that people don’t have because they see all these big numbers. And they’re, chasing that growth and they don’t understand that, like all of those things purchases, subscribers, any of that stuff, it’s individuals making those decisions and every individual interaction you have makes that person way more likely to do so related to Chris Badgett: that. 380 newsletters. You have a another skill session called the content maximizer and the content compass for people with the experts curse, who were experts in investing or certain type of entrepreneurship or parenting or whatever it is. How do they get a framework to get that expertise out and, not be overwhelmed with, Oh my gosh, what am I going to write about? What am I going to make a course about? How to help, us with the content writer’s Josh Spector: block. So let’s start here. So the first thing, the first key concept to understand is that everything is content. And I think people think about, Oh, I need to create content. Like it’s some other thing. Especially, if you have some expertise or whatever, your business is day to day. If you go to your inbox and look at the last 100 emails that you’ve sent to people, I guarantee there’s at least 20 pieces of content and probably more in there. Because your emails and your exchanges, whether it’s teaching what you know, whether it’s answering questions that people have had for you, just related to your work. I’m not even talking about content specifically. All of that is content. So a lot of times people would ask me stuff and I would, there have been times that I have specifically said, let me email you that answer because emailing, it’s going to force me to write it. And now I can repurpose it. I literally can copy and paste it. I can Oh, that idea was interesting. Maybe I’ll write something more about that or whatever. So number one, your inbox is full of potential content. All content is, just transferring the expertise that you have any question that anyone ever asks you, not just in an inbox or whatever, right? Something comes up in a meeting. What do you think we should do about this? Any question? Your answer is content, right? Super easy. You start to put yourself in the mindset of recognizing that. Oh, that person asked me that. Oh, yeah. Everything is content. Okay. That’s an easy post. Okay. As opposed to staring at a blank page and going, how do I come up with content? It’s some new and different thing. You’re just transferring the stuff that’s already existing. The other thing is when you get into curation and going a step further. Anything you find interesting. Is content, so the book you’re reading the TV show, you watch the YouTube video, the podcast, you listen to the whatever again, when you start to have that mindset of everything I’m saying, or sharing outside of social platform outside of the content world can easily become content and everything I’m consuming. Oh, I was in a meeting and that guy said, something super interesting. Let me go look at my notes from the meeting. What did I write down? That’s content. And by the way, here’s the other thing. It could literally be like, let me just look, I’m just looking at my notes to see if there’s anything that I wrote down recently. But anything, let’s say you’re in a meeting and you write something down, depending what it is, you literally could even take a photo of it and just post the photo. Was in a meeting about whatever such and such said this. Yes. I wrote it down and it would probably do really well. So I think that mindset makes it much easier. I think where people get in trouble is they sit down and they go, now it’s time to create content. What do I say? The other thing is, if you are going to do that a really simple exercise you can do is. Sit down, think about who the audience is you want to attract or serve or help, right? As specific as possible. What they want, and more specifically, what the transformation is they want to make. They’re at point A, they want to get to point B. Write a list of the 20 questions that person probably has, and or the 20 things that they need to know. So I’ll show you right now. Give me like throw. We’ll do an example right here. Throw an example of any either. It’s someone you want to reach or just a hypothetical, right? This is the audience they want to reach. And this is the transformation. And I’ll show you how we would come up with content ideas. Chris Badgett: I think I want to make my first course. Let’s, say that’s a people come to us. They’re like, yeah, I think I’m going to do this course thing and I want to become a course creator. That’s my transformation. Okay, Josh Spector: perfect. So if I were to, if I were to sit here and think about that, I’d go, okay, what are 20 things that person who wants to create their first course? Needs to know or figure out right. Or is wondering. Okay. And I’m just going to rattle these off the top of my every one, the answer, my answer to every one of these is great content. Okay. How do I, what platform or technology do I use to host the course? How do I figure out what the course should be about? I don’t have a connection to any audience. How do I get people? How do I make people aware of the course? What do I, how much should I charge for the course? What, and these are such obvious questions, but that’s the point. And the answers to all of these are super easy content. How do I get started, How do I map out what should be in the course? How do I decide if the course should be video or audio or written or any of that stuff? Should I be concerned if other people already offer courses on this subject? Do I how do I actually collect the payments? How do I deal with taxes, How do I, what should I call the course? How many modules do I need? And by the way, once you start doing this, you could take any one of those questions and come up with 10, 15, 20 questions about that topic, right? For example I’ll, pick just one of them randomly, right? Let’s pick the, I’ll do the payments one, right? How do I, collect payments? Okay. What question, what questions are within the payments one? Do I need to be incorporated as a business. do I need a PayPal account? Do I need, does my website need any kind of special security, right? What percentage should I be willing to give to the platform that’s processing the payments? So you can see really quickly. There’s an infinite amounts of content ideas, right? And so I think when people, once people do that and understand that the excuse of I don’t know how to create content goes away or should go away. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Josh, that was a lot of value per minute. Josh Spector: I told you that’s what I, that’s what I try to do. Chris Badgett: You’re a great teacher and the journalism background. Wordsmith and a communicator. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. Tell tell us how we can find you on the internet. What are the best places and ways to connect with you and go deeper with you? Josh Spector: Joshspector. com. You can find all my stuff there. My newsletter, it’s free for the interested. com slash subscribe. My podcast is called, I want to know it’s on all the various platforms. Also my skill sessions. So I mentioned before that there is going to be a slight change. So this I know it’s streaming live now. I’m not sure when this will come out, but on January 30th, so right now you can buy any of my skill sessions individually. You go to joshspector. com slash sessions. You can get any of them individually for 50, or you can get a membership for 197 a year and you get all of them and you get to go to the coaching. Sessions and all of that stuff. On January 30th, I’m no longer going to be selling them individually. You’ll only be able to get them with a membership and the membership price is going up to three 50 a year. So if you have any interest now is the perfect time to buy them. If your, price will never be raised. So if you become a member, your price isn’t going to go up when the price goes up. You’ll just. Be getting a better deal. So josh Spector dot com slash sessions to, to learn all about that. And yeah, I’m on Twitter at Jay Spector. Chris Badgett: Thank you, Josh. I appreciate you coming on the show. And again, I’m super impressed with the specificity of, all your stuff, really zeroing in on the problems and challenges and opportunities that are out there for experts. So keep up the great work and thanks for coming on the show. Josh Spector: Thank you. Thanks for having me. And thanks for giving me an excuse to try, to remember everything I’ve taught in skill sessions a year ago. So I appreciate it. 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. 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. 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