In this episode of the LMScast podcast we’re joined by Adii Pienaar, founder of WooThemes. Adii and Chris talk about how entrepreneurs can live enriched lifestyles from Adii’s life profitability perspective. Adii is also the author of the book Life Profitability: The New Measure of Entrepreneurial Success.

Adii attributes a big part of his entrepreneurial nature to his ambition, drive, and love of a challenge, along with a thirst for learning. Many failures in business happen when we get stuck in cliches around what an entrepreneur does or should be. We end up striving for a unicorn status in our businesses, which isn’t very helpful for seeing productivity in our work.

Often these cliches, mantras, and memes act as very limiting for our mindset around what we need to do to be successful in business. Forgetting about peripheral things and staying laser focused is what made Adii’s businesses successful. And this did cause him to incur collateral damage along the way and costs in life and to those around him that he wasn’t aware of because he was focused on growth at all costs.

If you’re at a point of struggling to find prosperity in your business, starting with your own values first as the leader of your team will help guide what your next move should be in your business and life.

If you’d like to learn more about Adii Pienaar, be sure to head to Adii.me where you can find his book Life Profitability: The New Measure of Entrepreneurial Success. You can also find his book on Amazon. Thanks for joining us!

In this episode of the LMScast podcast, we’re joined by Neil Richmund. Neil has built many sites for clients over the years in adult education organizations for career training, English language learning, and high school equivalency. Chris and Neil dive into what agencies can learn about serving the adult education markets.

Most people are familiar with the traditional education system of K-12 programs and college. But higher ed is adult education. Every state in the United States has an adult education department, and there are programs all around the United States. Neil is based in Indianapolis, and Indiana is currently a national leader when it comes to adult education.

There are three main areas adult education falls into:

- English language learning

- High school equivalency or GED

- And career training opportunities

Neil shares how he took the world of adult education online from the typically in-person format where people would meet in a huge room with dozens of tables and go from table to table. Neil adapted that to an online format via LifterLMS and Gravity Forms, where students can enroll in a course, go through a questionnaire, upload a photo of their ID, and go through the learning material to achieve the same outcome as the in-person trainings.

One key tip as a website builder is understanding that people using the site may have less digital literacy than you do. So keeping it as simple as possible will help non-techie users navigate and complete a course with little frustration. Often course creators add a lot of bells and whistles to their sites, which can cause a lot of confusion for users. But keeping it simple is important, especially with sites that are multilingual.

To learn more about Neil Richmund and the opportunities he provides for companies looking to build higher ed and adult education programs, be sure to head to NeilRichmund.com. And you can also connect with Neil on LinkedIn and find him in the LifterLMS community.

We’re joined by SaaS Academy sales aficionado Wendell Scott in this episode of the LMScast podcast where we discuss how you can sell high value coaching, courses, and community products. Wendell shares some expert tips for sales in general, but also specifically in the realm of online membership products.

If you haven’t yet considered selling a recurring membership option with a community component and a monthly live call component, you’re likely missing out on the recurring revenue value. Instead of constantly chasing new sales, with a recurring revenue model you can much more easily scale your business.

An important tip Wendell shares for having a great sales engine is having a very specific target customer. At SaaS Academy they have a very specific customer archetype of B2B SaaS companies. They don’t work with B2B industrial supply companies or B2C service companies - just B2B software companies.

Once you have a clear product and target customer laid out, it’s important before even hopping on the phone with your prospects that they really understand who you are, what you do, and how you can help them. If you can lay out a clear statement of who your offer is for and who it is not for, it really helps to clarify who your target customer is to everyone who visits your page. Many online businesses struggle to get traction due to being over generalized and non-specific.

To learn more about Wendell Scott and SaaS Academy, be sure to head to DanMartell.com. They have a free Rocket Demo Builder there that will allow you to give better sales demos and get higher conversions in less time. Thanks for joining us!

In this episode of the LMScast podcast, we’re joined by Dale Berkebile from Hellagood Life. Dale has been in the LifterLMS community for many years now, and altogether he’s been in business for over 22 years. He shares his journey of entering the world of course creation, creating a course that one student purchased, and then managing to utilize mindfulness to keep pushing strong in his business through adversity.

Living in Texas at the time with a 3-month-old son and his business on the rocks, Dale had to find a way to support his growing family, so he wanted to try to create a more evergreen program.

While clearing his driveway of ice, a guy stole Dale’s car, and pulled out into the street. Dale tried to chase down his car, but the guy got too far away. This traumatic event and all the frustration surrounding it caused Dale to fall into a 2-year depression, and for six months he was an angry man and was always pissed off. He realized he needed help and struggled to get any sort of medical help, so he found his way into meditation. And through that, he found sympathy for the person who stole his car and came out of his post-traumatic stress situation.

You can find out more about Dale and the great programs he offers around mindfulness and mediation at Hellagood.life/imposter. And connect with him on LinkedIn and Facebook as well and let him know you saw him on the LMScast podcast. Thanks for joining us!

We’re joined by successful podcast host and WordPress hosted LMS provider Jonathan Denwood in this episode of the LMScast podcast where he shares insights on the LMS industry and how he’s tackled the challenge of building a full stack managed WordPress hosting company in the past few years.

There are three factors Jonathan identifies that make someone successful in the online LMS site building industry:

The personal element - Jonathan has dyslexia, and that’s always made him interested in education and the limitations of the education system. He sees the possibilities of online education and training as a great way for people that don’t fit into the established systems to learn in an environment with many teachers and teaching formats.

Growing a market - contributing something to the market and being an influencer in the space by best serving a specific type of customer and building out a tool for their specific market needs.

Business stickiness - being able to create a product that clients rely on in a good way where they won’t want to leave your service.

The personal touch aspect of business is often overlooked with online offerings. Jonathan has incorporated the opposite into his business, where he offers unlimited Zoom meetings with him on any questions that come up in the first month of his service offering. That personal touch is a key for creating a successful service-based product.

Be sure to head to WP-Tonic.com to check out more resources Jonathan has to offer on his podcast and blog. You can book a demo consultation on the WP-Tonic website and fill out a short questionnaire that will really help the WP-Tonic team identify your main pain points and how they can help solve those for you. Thanks for joining us!

Prolific content creator and Divi expert Josh Hall joins us on this episode of the LMScast podcast to discuss how course creators can use community and coaching to further their offers and create a perfect business model that incorporates upsells and recurring revenue through a membership offer.

Josh specialized in Divi web design, so he has sort of a niche within a niche of not just WordPress users, but also Divi users. Josh breaks down how over time he designed his perfect business model around content.

The two key niches Josh has in his space are people who are brand new to web design, and he teaches people how they can design great websites using Divi, a little CSS, and some other key aspects of the tech side of things. And he has a lot of focus on more advanced courses, like the web design process and SEO (Search Engine Optimization). He also has some content that gets into the business side of running a web design agency and taking it to the next level.

Josh and Chris dive into some advice around Josh’s programs and how he can work with his current memberships and courses to start the transition Josh is going through in business, where he’s starting to hire others to help out in the process of content delivery and community.

You can learn more about Josh by heading over to JoshHall.co, and check out his podcast there which is a mix of design and business related content. He also has a YouTube channel with 23K+ subscribers with all kinds of content around the WordPress and Divi space. Just look up Josh Hall on YouTube, and you’ll find him. Thanks for joining us!

Brad Redding from Elevar joins us on this episode of the LMScast podcast to discuss how online course creators can work with Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, and Google Ads for their eCommerce and online course needs. Elevar is the leading analytics and tagging platform built exclusively to help ensure direct-to-consumer brands on Shopify have a data foundation they can trust and scale with. In this episode Brad shares some key tips he’s learned and how they can apply to online course creators looking to navigate the world of advanced analytics tools.

Google Tag Manager is a tool you may have heard of. That tool acts as the conduit to all the other tools like Google AdWords, Google Ads, and remarketing tags. It allows you to tag users based on interactions of pages visited on your website. In the CRM (or email list tool) space, the term tag is used to segment your audience. So if a student enrolls in a course, they’d get a tag in your email list tool letting you know they’ve enrolled in case you want to send out offers to enrolled users or opt to not send marketing emails to enrolled users.

Google Analytics is a platform that allows you to look at page views, whereas Google Tag Manager offers a bit more depth by showing what videos they interact with, if they submit a form, etc. It also allows you to see conversions based on segments. So if you want to see the conversion rate of people who watched the video, you can see that segment.

To learn more about Brad and the great work he and his team are up to, head to GetElevar.com. Their product is focused more on Shopify brands rather than WordPress, but it is a great example of conversion-based priorities in the online business space. They also have a blog with some helpful resources on conversion optimization. Thanks for joining us!

Louisiana fisherman and angler expert Devin Denman joins us on this episode of the LMScast podcast where we discuss how he turned his craft of fishing into an online course site where he teaches others about Louisiana inshore fishing. Devin also has a YouTube channel he uses for lead generation and sharing his passion.

Devin’s journey began when he was a kid in the early 90s watching TV and he saw a Mercedes commercial where at the end they promoted their website mercedesbenz.com. Devin told his dad they needed to get a computer, and with that exposure to the World Wide Web the seed was planted that would eventually have him building online courses and teaching others the same way he learned as a kid online.

In junior high school Devin was always connected to the internet in some way, shape, or form. He joined the Marine Corps straight out of high school. He turned 18-years-old in boot camp, he turned 21 on his second deployment to Iraq, and after he got out of the Marine Corps, he went to work for the State Department as a personal security specialist. After 7 years in that position, he discovered he really wanted to try entrepreneurialism and liked the idea of the challenge of creating his own business.

As Devin tried to monetize his fish blog, he worked with selling t-shirts and hated that. He thought about writing a book, but didn’t think it made sense, so he ultimately decided to create an online course. Devin’s value proposition was basically that you can hire a fishing guide for $600-$800 for an eight-hour trip, or for $100 Devin can teach you everything you need to know for inshore fishing.

Devin also shares some tips for how he grew his YouTube channel around Louisiana inshore fishing and what has gone into his YouTube content over the past 3 years, along with how that’s helped his online course business. LAFB Elite is Devin’s membership package where you can access all his courses around inshore fishing.

You can learn more about Devin and his courses around Louisiana inshore fishing at LAFishBlog.com. If you have any questions for Devin, you can also reach him at [email protected]. Thanks for joining us!

Chris Taylor from Actionable joins us in this episode of the LMScast podcast hosted by Chris Badgett from LifterLMS, and we dive into having a focus on integrating behavior change into online learning rather than just providing content. One of the sayings at Actionable is that, “Learning alone can’t create change.” Real change comes from implementing a behavior change into a process.

When we talk about learning alone not being enough to create change, it’s qualified by how you define learning. Content consumption, even content retention, doesn't do anything. It's the repeated application of the relevant elements of that content that actually leads to behavior change, which is ultimately what it's all about. It's about creating new habits. That's how learning gets applied in the most meaningful, lasting ways.

Online courses can come in different forms. Courses around losing weight or quitting smoking would be examples of an adaptive learning course where the goal is to change a behavior. A technical course would be a course about how to tie a tie where you’d follow the process and then could forget until you need to reference the material again.

Be sure to head to Actionable.co to learn more about Chris Taylor and all the awesome work his team is doing around the science of behavior change. You can also find Chris Taylor on LinkedIn. Thanks for joining us in this episode. Hope to see you in the next one!

Mindset, lifestyle, and meditation mentor Emma Goldie joins Chris Badgett on this episode of the LMScast podcast where they discuss how online course creators can reach a state of superflow to help optimize clarity, creativity, and productivity.

At age 13 Emma started mediation, and she has been teaching intensively for 10 years. Most people don’t have time to meditate properly, and getting results from meditation is something that requires going deep, which takes time. She currently teaches something called non-invasive meridian therapy, which uses the meridian points to help release the past imprints. Those imprints could be traumas or even thoughts or decisions that we made when we were young and because we couldn’t handle our decisions in a complex situation.

One big part of meditation for entrepreneurs is around vision. When meditating, we tend to look into the future, and the challenge for entrepreneurs is to bring that future vision into actions in the present. That’s a very rare skill to have, and about 5% of the population is wired in a way where they can do those really uncomfortable things, especially in the beginning when entrepreneurs are often misunderstood.

Superflow is a state Emma describes as the state of being able to have a very clear intention that’s really fixed, and taking aligned action. It’s important to take a look at mindfulness with entrepreneurship, since many entrepreneurs can have a lot of their work seeping into their personal lives, creating a stressful, workaholic nature.

To learn more about reaching a state of superflow in your work, check out Emma’s Reset Your Mindset Challenge at https://emmagoldie.com/reset-your-mindset-2/ You can also find Emma on Facebook and Instagram at @emmagoldiespiritualmentor. Keeping focus and taking aligned action is the key for building momentum. And once that momentum is contained, it has a life of its own. Thanks for joining us in this episode!