StartupBros founder Will Mitchell talks with Chris Badgett in this LMScast about how course creators can deliver group coaching and sell your product before building out your course programs by interacting with your audience on a high level. Will shares his journey and motivation creating StartupBros and his business Simply Organic Beauty, along with some great tips for course creators developing a program online.

Often when building an online course, we see course creators spend months or years building out a course without an audience. And when they launch, they find no one is interested in their program. Will shares in this episode how you can engage with your audience in a live coaching format or through webinars and build your course product from the ideas they bring to the table that they want to learn.

Experimenting is key when figuring out what businesses will and won't work. Will shares an idea out of the book, The Lean Startup, that you need to get as many ideas to the point of failure as soon as possible to see which ideas can hold up and which ones will fall through. Many ideas for businesses and online courses will not work out as well as we expect, but figuring out that an idea isn’t going to work as fast as possible is key to landing on the idea that will work well.

Touching the lives of your audience and making an emotional impact is important for developing life-long customers and keeping your leads engaged. If your customers remember you and like you because the content you give them stands out and is exceptionally valuable, you will build a much better connection than you would by spamming your customers with offers and ending up in their email promotions tab.

At StartupBros.com you can find out more about what kind of online course you should build for your community, and how you can really tap into what your potential customers are looking for. You can also reach out directly to Will at [email protected]. Thanks for joining us!

Zack Katz of GravityView joins us on this episode of the LMScast podcast to discuss how course creators can unlock incredible functionality on their websites by taking advantage of how GravityView allows you to display form submissions on the front end of your website.

For anyone new to the WordPress space, Gravity Forms is a form builder in WordPress, and GravityView is a separate tool that allows you to display form submissions on the front end of your website. So if you have a testimonial form on the last lesson in your course, you may want those forms to automatically display on a page once people submit the form. That’s where GravityView is super helpful.

Zack shares some great use cases for GravityView, including how you can utilize the Gravity Forms map integration to create an online marketplace that shows users in a similar area selling products, or you could even create a social network with people in your area who share similar interests to you.

Another use case for GravityView is if you are collecting donations and want to display the latest donors on a page without having to put them there manually. By collecting donations via a Gravity Form, you can also have GravityView post in your directory setup once that form is submitted with the donor’s name and donation amount. You could even have an opt-in box on your form, so they could opt out of being shown on the list if they didn’t want to appear there.

At GravityView.co you can learn more about the setups you can create with GravityView for your online course website. Everything from testimonials, collecting donations, and segmenting leads for your email list, to building an entire directory is possible, so be sure to reach out to GravityView support or their community to see if you can create the setup you’re looking for with your online course website. Thanks for joining us!

Vito Peleg of WP FeedBack joins Chris Badgett in this LMScast episode to discuss how WordPress developers can improve the process of communicating around making revisions on websites with clients. WP FeedBack allows you to have clients highlight parts of the website and go over revisions in a layered manner that makes the process of making changes a lot easier.

Vito and Chris share how they both got their start in the WordPress space as freelancers and have since moved to the product entrepreneur side of things. Twenty years ago Vito built his first website at age 14. He shares the process of how he decided to pursue a career in music by touring the world with his band and went all over Europe. But when he found there wasn’t much money in that industry for him, he ended up building websites for clients and grew his freelance practice from there.

While Vito achieved six figures in his first year running a website development agency and by year three had 12 people in his agency, he found that all of the issues the agency was facing came down to client communications. So he became obsessed with finding a solution to this issue, and that’s where the idea for WP FeedBack came from.

Chris shares how he got started in the WordPress space by having his own blog website and using the skills he learned there to build out a skillset for building websites for clients using WordPress. He eventually built an agency from there targeted towards online courses and coaching websites that would eventually fuel his interest in developing LifterLMS.

You can save a lot of time by using a tool like WP FeedBack to optimize how you communicate with your clients, but Vito and Chris also talk about a few best practices for how as a freelancer you can set deadlines and project limits to not be affected by scope creep and get jobs done on time.

You can learn more about how to simplify the process of getting client feedback and making site revisions at WPFeedBack.co. Thanks for joining us!

Dan Martell joins Chris Badgett on this episode of the LMScast podcast to discuss how online course creators and coaches can sell premium programs. Dan shares his journey from starting out in the world of business to immersing completely and starting his YouTube channel, eventually leading to the creation of his massively successful program SaaS Academy.

About a year ago Chris enrolled in SaaS Academy, and he shares what aspects of Dan and his program made Chris very interested and eventually led to the sale. Being a lifestyle entrepreneur was a big selling point for Chris, seeing how Dan highly values family, kids, and friends really was an inspiring factor to Dan’s stack for Chris.

One great quote from this episode is, “The riches are in the niches.” Dan speaks to how he has become very focused on the SaaS company owners as his ideal customers rather than entrepreneurs in general, because it allows him to dive deep into specific use cases and really provide a high amount of value to a smaller audience, rather than trying to have everyone as his customers, as that typically ends up with no one as your customer.

Dan shares why he’s decided to adjust his programs so they are around one year or longer for the full customer journey, because when he was working with six month programs he would find there was a lot of stress to constantly be worried about enrolling new students.

Be sure to look up Dan Martell on YouTube and subscribe to his great content there. He’s got his podcast Escape Velocity that we recommend checking out. You can also find Dan on social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. He tries to use every platform differently, so be sure to connect with him wherever you're at online. Thanks for joining us!

In this episode of the LMScast podcast Terri Tutich shares best practices for WordPress course creators and knowledge from her experience building WordPress websites and being active in the WordPress space. Chris and Terri dive into why backups are crucial, and some other tips from the projects Terri has worked on.

A key WordPress tip Terri shares in this episode is that it is very important to always have backups in place. There are situations that can be out of your control, such as getting hacked due to weak passwords, plugin vulnerabilities, or you may need a backup even if you install a new theme or plugin that changes or deletes content on your site. Having backups in place is something good website hosts will have, but you can also create backups via a plugin, such as BackupBuddy.

Many course creators find themselves hung up on the tech in the process of building their websites. Either they are stuck and don’t know how to work with the tools or they are so invested in the tools and spend so much time getting into the tech that they get burnt out and fail to launch their program. Working with someone like Terri is a great way to avoid getting stuck in the weeds there.

Terri shares the breakdown of her service offerings in this episode as well. She offers backups and updates in a maintenance package as a basic offering for making sure a website is healthy and up to date. She also has workshops where she walks organizations through how to manage their WordPress site with backups, updates, staging sites, and general security best practices.

To learn more about Terri Tuchich and the great things she has to offer, be sure to check out BeyondTheOffice.com. She has a guide to WordPress ownership there, so you can opt-in to learn more about managing WordPress if you’re new to the ecosystem. Thanks for joining us!

Ali Mathis from the LifterLMS team joins Chris Badgett on this episode of the LMScast podcast to discuss the latest release from LifterLMS, LifterLMS Groups. Ali and Chris talk about the idea behind LifterLMS Groups, the problems it solves for course creators, and the opportunities it opens up for how you can offer your online course programs to companies and organizations.

LifterLMS is now about five and a half years old. Over the lifetime of LifterLMS, we’ve developed 20+ add-ons for course creators, such as additional quiz functionality, assignments, social learning components, and private coaching. Now that the fundamentals of an LMS are in place, LifterLMS Groups allows you to expand your LMS site’s reach by having the ability to offer seats in courses to companies at scale.

One great use case for LifterLMS Groups is industry training for companies. The LifterLMS voucher system filled this role before, where you can create a code employees can use to sign up for a course, but now you can give each company you sell courses to their own branded dashboard, and they can manage students and view reporting directly from your website.

Ali and Chris talk about the future of LifterLMS Groups, and what the LifterLMS team has in development for the tool moving forward. One large feature currently being built out is the ability to sell groups and have buyers get automatic access. Currently that process is manually set up by the website admin, but that will be automated with Groups release 2.0. Another upcoming feature is to have the ability to sell seats in your group with a discount if a customer purchases X number of seats. So if you wanted to incentivize companies to purchase 100 seats in your course, you could apply a discount of 10% when they hit that 100 seat threshold.

To learn more about LifterLMS Groups, be sure to check it out at LifterLMS.com/Product/Groups. Thanks for joining us!

We dive into how writing a nonfiction book can help you get more leads and sales for your online course website with Julie Eason in this episode of the LMScast podcast. Chris and Julie dive into how selling your book through Amazon can be a great strategy for spreading awareness of your course website by using profits from selling the book to fund ads to sell more books and spread more awareness for your program.

Adding a book to your product stack along with your online course is something to consider as a value add to your program as well. Delivering results to your students is important, but how you deliver that value is less important. We talk a lot about how mixed media courses can accommodate different learning styles, and adding a book to your program allows people who prefer to read to learn best.

As an expert creating a course, you’re challenged with turning your years or decades of expertise into something people can use to achieve a result. Many experts building courses can struggle when it comes to instructional design, because rather than teaching students to get results, they’re sharing their expertise, which may not be as useful for overcoming the hurdle standing in your students’ way.

Many course creators who are industry experts struggle when it comes to building a funnel for their program. Julie shares how authoring a book is a great way to take your students from a state of being problem aware to being solution aware. Then you can position your course product as one option for achieving the results they’re looking for.

Chris and Julie also cover the dangers of writing a lousy book, and how while writing a book can serve as a great tool for selling courses, it is also important for that work to be something to be proud of as a stand-alone product.

To learn more about Julie Eason and how you can leverage the power of authoring a book for your online course, visit NonfictionBookAcademy.com/LMScast. Thanks for joining us!

WaaS entrepreneur Michael Short joins Chris Badgett in this episode of the LMScast podcast to discuss how entrepreneurs and freelance agencies can take advantage of the opportunities that come with the rise of websites as a service to build websites for customers.

WaaS companies are becoming more common as we see developers, freelancers, and agencies offering website builds as a product or service offering. Things like turnkey solutions and Shopify are great examples of this. The older way of building websites was connecting with a webmaster who can code you a website. Then we saw WordPress and other companies that allow you to build out your own website. And now we have the emergence of people offering services and out of the box solutions for websites in the WaaS space.

Michael also shares his ventures in WaaS services in the automotive industry providing websites to mechanics, auto detailers, paintless dent repair technicians, car washes, and businesses in that space. His setup teaches them what pictures they need to take and where to put them on the website. They also integrate with Groundhogg for email marketing automation within WordPress.

Removing the friction of setting up a website and going through the process of working with a developer by implementing a way for customers to buy and get set up before interacting with someone directly makes the process cheaper for the customer and easier for the developer. If you are a freelancer working with building websites or an agency building sites for clients, the WaaS-Pro offerings may be able to help you optimize your process and/or become your process for building sites.

To learn more about Michael Short and what he is up to with WaaS-Pro, be sure to head over to WaaS-Pro.com. You can also join his Facebook group to connect with his community there. Thanks for joining us!

Donata and Hans from Termageddon share how you can have an up-to-date privacy policy and terms and conditions statement for your online course website in this LMScast. Legal compliance with privacy policies is something many course creators overlook. Donata and Hans share how important it is for legal compliance to have a privacy policy that is not only compliant with where your business is registered, but also everywhere you do business (sell your courses).

Termageddon is a tool that allows you to protect your website by having a privacy policy that is in compliance with everywhere you do business for just $10 per month. Similar to having backups to protect your website for times when you may be hacked, having a compliant privacy policy allows you to dodge major fines for violating privacy laws anywhere you sell online courses.

One strong point made by Donata and Hans in this episode is that privacy laws are put in place to protect the citizens, not the businesses, so the most important thing to remember as a rule of thumb is to comply with the laws everywhere you do business. If you’re selling courses to people in Nevada and collecting their data, you’ll need to be in compliance with Nevada’s privacy laws.

A lot of small businesses online think privacy laws such as GDPR don't affect them, as they don’t go after small businesses. But small businesses are prosecuted and fined, we just don’t hear about the smaller cases in the news. Fines can range anywhere from $2,500 per violation to 20 million euros.

If your privacy policy may be out of date, we definitely recommend checking out Termageddon.com to learn about how you can easily be in compliance and protect your company legally with your privacy policy. Thanks for joining us!

Rob and Kennedy of ResponseSuite join us on this episode of the LMScast podcast to discuss how online course creators can generate site leads and sales using surveys. Better understanding your audience and segmenting your highly engaged users can be a great way to get sales from the leads you already have. Rob and Kennedy share quick wins and strategy for course creators on how to build up their online course marketing in this episode.

Dedicating part of your sales funnel to customers you’ve already got is a huge part of what Rob and Kennedy recommend when it comes to your marketing. A lot of course creators and people doing business online will focus on getting new traffic, but understanding and marketing to your current audience is a great way to build relationships with hot leads.

Kennedy shares a two question survey template you can use to figure out exactly where your customers are and deliver tailored sequences to them based on where they’re at. Question one is to ask, “How experienced are you with this?” Then the second question is, “What is your biggest challenge?” This template allows you to figure out exactly where your customer is on their journey, and thus how you can help them get to the next level.

You can use the results from your survey to tag your audience accordingly and send them messages based on that. Overwhelm is a big reason people will leave membership sites, so segmenting your audience also allows you to deliver the perfect amount of content to your students.

To learn more about ResponseSuite, what it has to offer, and the great work Rob and Kennedy are doing there, head to responsesuitedeal.com/lifterlms and sign up for their two week trial for $1. They also have a free 20 minute consultation call with either Rob or Kennedy to help you figure out what questions to ask and how to get your surveys and segmenting going.