LMScast

Founders of LifterLMS Thomas Levy and Chris Badgett talk about the in-person WordPress community and what they have learned about the power of contributing from leading events and organizing WordCamps. Thomas was the lead organizer for WordCamp Los Angeles in 2018, and Chris is one of the lead organizers for WordCamp Portland, Maine this year.

With most tech conferences Thomas had attended before 2015, he would stay near the back of the room and work on his computer, only halfwa paying attention to what was going on. Once Thomas volunteered at his first WordCamp in 2015, he realized the power of contributing and how that led to much better networking and relationship building experiences.

WordCamp is typically a $40, two-day conference where speakers give presentations on various topics from development to best practices for basic WordPress users. There are WordCamp conferences all around the world, and they happen all year round. Many people travel around and attend conferences worldwide.

If you have never been to a WordCamp, we encourage you to check one out. The $40 cost usually covers lunch for the two days, and you can hear all kinds of great speakers and meet others who use WordPress as well.

The idea of WordPress is accessibility and an open environment where people can experiment and create. The WordCamps reflect this idea, so even if you’re not a developer you can still get a lot of value out of these camps, as there are three talks happening simultaneously that are broken down into three broad categories: developers, business, and users.

Chris and Thomas will be at the upcoming conference in Portland, Maine with some LifterLMS swag and the LifterLMS rocket cutout and helmet you can use to take pictures with the founders of the software.

Diane Halfman joins us on this episode of LMScast with Chris Badgett of LifterLMS to discuss how course creators can overcome extreme stress and unlock creativity through clarity with the spa life. Diane and Chris dive into strategies you can use to relieve stress to make a much larger impact.

Diane learned about the spa lifestyle when she was working as a police officer often working in stressful environments. When she had the opportunity to relax and prioritize her wellness, she noticed her productivity and impact elevated. She created a coaching program around the spa life and teaches business owners, authors, and anyone who is looking to reduce stress in their life how to create a relaxing and empowering environment.

Creating time for relaxation is important, but it is even more important to respect that time you’ve set aside and actually do it. Chris and Diane share several stories from their lives and the lives of others they know where relaxation and stress management lead to greater success in business and life.

Sometimes when creating courses or working on projects that have set deadlines you don’t always get the time everyday and that’s okay. Diane believes in the concept of work hard, play hard, but you have to be sure you make time for the play. As Chris mentions, it is better to manage energy not time.

Diane shares some strategies on how to use quizzes on the front end of your site to gain insights on your customers problems before talking to them directly. This allows you to find out what areas of their life or business they need help with and figure out a rough outline of the best way you can support them.

To learn more about Diane Halfman you can head to DianeHalfman.com. And take her life reset quiz at LifeResetQuiz.com to learn about what areas you need to focus on to manifest the life you desire.

Bradley Morris of the Great eCourse Adventure shares strategies for how to create engaging online courses in this episode of the LMScast podcast with Chris Badgett of LifterLMS. Chris and Bradley dive into topics from how Bradley entered the online education industry to how you can build a community around your product or service online.

Bradley dropped out of college in 2005 to create an online business to sponsor himself to play professional golf. After getting involved with meditation and personal growth, he experienced a radical shift in his perspective and life habits. He started touring North America and speaking after his video called the Gratitude Dance went viral on YouTube.

Bradley was burnt out after teaching over 500 workshops on meditation and wellness around the world. He created an online course to encapsulate his knowledge, so the meditation knowledge he was sharing wouldn’t die. After that Bradley started creating more online courses and teaching others how to build theirs as well.

The Great eCourse Adventure is Bradley’s training for course creators on how to create binge-worthy online courses that capture the engagement of students. What makes the Great eCourse Adventure unique is the settings, stories, and themes behind the course.

Bradley and his partner Blair decided to build the Green Screen Magic course to help education entrepreneurs learn all about how to use green screens and editing softwares just like they did in the Great eCourse Adventure. You can find the Green Screen Magic course on https://demo.lifterlms.com/

To learn more about Bradley and the awesome products and services he offers, head to eCourseAdventures.com. You can also find his masterclass where he teaches his philosophies about creating engaging learning at CoursesWorthSharing.com/Masterclass

Chris Davis of ActiveCampaign joins us in this episode of LMScast with Chris Badgett of the LifterLMS team to discuss the business of internal training and strategies for course creators online today. ActiveCampaign is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool, and Chris Davis is the Director of Education there. Chris and Chris talk about what internal training is, and how you can use it in your company to promote growth.

Social media has changed the interactions between companies and customers in a huge way. Chris Davis uses how people understand ActiveCampaign and what they say on social media to inform his internal training methods for how he trains employees at ActiveCampaign.

Passion is a big part of the learning process. Many people have negative experiences with the idea of an online course because of their dislike of their experiences with formal education. When you are learning something like riding a bike, playing basketball, rock climbing, or learning anything you are passionate about, it seems very easy to absorb information, because you are intrinsically motivated. Chris and Chris dive into how you can foster that learning environment for your students.

Chris Davis emphasizes the point that if you can get your learners to walk away with just one nugget of wisdom from your course, then it is worth the price of admission. One solid takeaway is enough to justify the price of admission. Chris is also a fan of lifetime access, as it allows your students to not feel pressure to complete everything fast and end up missing out on valuable information.

To learn more about Chris Davis and the things they have going on at ActiveCampaign, head to ActiveCampaign.com. And be sure to check out ActiveCampaign.com/learn to learn more about ActiveCampaign and business in general on their podcast.

CEO of the Association of Internal Control Practitioners Tom McClurg joins us on this episode of LMScast to share tips and strategies for how you can make your online course or membership site business a success by managing it from the top. Tom and Chris Badgett from LifterLMS dive into what the AICP is all about and what Tom and his team have put together for business owners and managers.

Tom has experience working in finance, money lending, debt collecting, business development, consumer credit law, and procurement, and he has been on various strategy committees of one of the major banks in the UK.

Tom and his colleagues at the AICP work to teach anyone in business management how they can cultivate the best opportunity for success. Tom believes that poor management and governing in businesses has caused many companies to go out of business in the past few years.

The AICP team have put a lot of work into the material they’ve built over the past few years. They are currently running a successful online education company with 15 courses and several other learning tools, but they don’t yet have video in any of their courses. Many course creators don’t end up following through with launching, or even testing, their course ideas, because they don’t have video for their courses. Tom and the AICP are a great example of how you don’t need video to get your course off the ground.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Association of Internal Control Practitioners you can head to TheAICP.org

CEO of Joseph Studios Daniel Klein joins us on this episode of LMScast with Chris Badgett of LifterLMS to discuss how to implement WordPress LMS internal training platforms into the operations of Fortune 500 companies. Chris and Daniel talk about the versatility of LifterLMS and how it can be a phenomenal solution for business training programs.

Creating a culture of learning and improvement is important for creating long-term growth in any company. LifterLMS is a great tool for fostering that environment. It also makes it so there is a single point of failure in the learning process, meaning that if one employee quits or gets a promotion the whole system won’t fall apart, because the education is still there.

LifterLMS is a great tool from an auditing perspective too. Because with regulations like HIPAA compliance, FDA compliance, and FAA compliance, you have to have proof that employees are taking the training, and the reporting in LifterLMS allows you to see who has completed what training and how they performed on quizzes. You can then print out the reports and hand them to the auditing agencies.

What sets Joseph Studios apart is their solution-based approach, rather than a transactional approach to designing solutions for companies. Meaning they create a quantifiable experience and process for improvement, defect management, and remediation, rather than just delivering a product and walking away. It is more of a partnership experience that is mutually beneficial for both parties.

You can find out more about Daniel Klein at JosephStudios.net

Founder of Globalocity Doris Nagel joins us in this episode of LMScast with Chris Badgett of the LifterLMS team to share her experiences forming partnerships in business, and strategies you can use to form mutually beneficial partnerships in the online course industry.

Globalocity is passionate about helping companies do a better job of selling through partners to reach new markets. Building partnerships is one of the best ways to make indirect sales and reach as many people as possible. Doris and Chris talk about the advantages to creating partnerships even with your competitors who have complementary skill sets to you.

If you partner with others in the online course space, it is a win for everyone. You look smart for being connected to experts, the experts you bring in gain exposure to your audience, and your audience benefits by gaining knowledge in a new subject that is relevant to them.

Doris shares that building trust and establishing mutual benefit are the two keys to building strong partnerships. People don’t typically buy products just to have products. They purchase products or services to solve a problem or fill a need. This is where partnering with your competitors can be an advantage. If you compete for different customers in an industry and you partner, then you can provide an all-in-one solution.

To learn more about building partnerships in business, head to GlobalocityServices.com

Founder and CMO of Elementor Ben Pines joins us on this episode of LMScast with Chris Badgett to discuss how you can use Elementor to build well designed online course and membership websites. Ben and Chris dive into what the core elements of design are with Elementor, and Ben shares some of the experience he has gained with creating the software that has taken the WordPress community by storm.

Elementor is a page building software that allows you to customize the layout of your site in a very visual manner from the front end. What makes Elementor different is that it allows you to work with the dynamic pages on your sites. The company was created two years ago and already has over 900,000 active installs in WordPress.

Creating campaigns that are focused on big updates and new product releases is a great way to spread word of your products and services. Chris and Ben also talk about how celebration times are large opportunities to sell, because you build rapport with people when you know how to celebrate. It is like being the host of a party.

Chris and Ben also touch on some issues you may face while scaling and what you can do to handle changes in your team, traffic, volume of inquiries, and support in a fast growing company like Elementor. Choosing the right people to do the right jobs is a large part of finding success when scaling your company.

Finding inspiration for your design is important for really taking advantage of your vision for your product or service. Ben shares some places like Dribbble and One Page Love where you can check out some different landing pages and find the inspiration you need to start designing your site. The biggest mistake Ben has seen is when someone who is in charge of marketing doesn’t have any idea about design and just stacks up things without paying due attention to what has been proven to work.

To learn more about Ben Pines and Elementor head to Elementor.com, and you can find their theme builder at Elementor.com/Theme-Builder.

Micah Mitchell, creator of Memberium, joins us in this episode of LMScast to share his journey from owning a lawn mowing business to creating cutting-edge software that integrates WordPress with Infusionsoft and ActiveCampaign. Chris and Micah dive into some course creation best practices and strategies you can use to make your courses and membership sites more engaging.

Memberium is a middleware software, meaning it integrates two other softwares together. Memberium is built for the advanced user who wants a lot of control over activity happening from the CRM Infusionsoft. Chris and Micah talk about how you can use Memberium, LifterLMS, and Infusionsoft to keep your students on track and engaged with your courses.

Micah shares the strategy he uses to make his content more engaging for students. He creates note cards and goes through his learning content as the customer would. This strategy delivers several insights into what content you should make clearer, break down, or even cut from your online course.

Often times with monthly or weekly podcasts or webinars you find that the content becomes very similar and less engaging. Micah shares some great advice for how you can make content evergreen by utilizing hot seats, bringing in guests, or engaging with your audience in interesting ways.

Creating sales hooks is often the hardest and most crucial aspect of selling any product. With online courses, copywriting is key to success because it is how you will communicate with your customers before and after they buy, and it is ultimately what will make the sale in most cases.

If you’re interested in learning more about Micah Mitchell and the awesome things you can do with Infusionsoft and LifterLMS head to Memberium.com.

Jonathan Farley shares his entrepreneurial journey from working in medicine and losing track of his health to making an amazing recovery with his knowledge of the human body. Jonathan turned his knowledge into an online course with LifterLMS and has made around half a million dollars while helping others develop healthy lifestyles after gastric sleeve surgeries.

Jonathan knew that the clinics that were helping people to lose weight weren’t telling people the information they needed to hear. Rather than saying eat this, eat that, etc, Jonathan would tell his students why they needed to eat healthier foods. It is much easier for your students to figure out what to do if they truly understand why they’re doing it.

After having a gastric sleeve procedure, Jonathan went from 400 pounds to 175 pounds in nine months. The reason Jonathan was so successful with losing that extreme amount of weight is because of his knowledge of medicine and how the body works. So he decided to share that knowledge with other people.

Jonathan is working on several other amazing projects he shares in this episode. He took the knowledge he gained from the bariatric site and is now helping kids in other countries who are impoverished and giving them the knowledge they need to build themselves out of their current situations. Jonathan is also working on a platform for personal trainers around the world to create their own online courses without dealing with the technology aspect.

To learn more about Jonathan Farley you can head to FarleyProMedia.com where he helps experts turn their knowledge into a business without having to deal with the complicated technology aspect of online courses.