436 - Will Courses Survive with AI? with Chris Badgett of Lifter LMS

This episode is sponsored by SiteGround's new AI Agent for Wordpress →

In an age of AI overwhelm, noise, distraction and behavioral change, I know we all wonder, can courses survive?

What will online education look like in 5, 10, shoot, 2 years?!?

Well, in times like these, I need a voice of reason. A calming voice of optimisim and hope. And for me, that’s Chris Badgett. CEO of Lifter LMS. Hands down the best LMS for WordPress.

And I’m pumped to have him back on the podcast today to talk all things landscape change (and future) with courses and online education. Yes I’m an online course creator but I’m also an online course taker and so many online courses have changed my life so I’m very protective of the A-Z, results-based experience but I’m also a realist and I know learning behavior is changing with AI.

But as always, after a chat with Chris, I feel better.

I hope you will too 🙂

Head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned, along with a full transcription of this episode at joshhall.co/436

Transcript

Why Human Content Still Wins

Chris Badgett 0:00

Nobody wants to watch AI videos. I mean, there's some that are entertaining, weird, or whatever, but for the most part, people go to YouTube. I feel like YouTube and podcasts are going to be a stronghold for humanity because particularly with educational content, uh, you want to watch you you don't you want to watch a real human that makes mistakes and has flaws and doesn't know everything. And you also want to listen to real humans talk, not a bunch of robots chatting back and forth with large language model content.

Josh Hall 0:35

Welcome to the Web Design Business Podcast with your host, Josh Hall. Helping you build a web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle you love. That, my friends, was Chris Badgett. And there is a reason I consider him one of my good friends in the industry, and that's because he is a beam of hope, a uh just a dose of optimism all the time. And I think that's needed in the world right now in the age of AI, especially for my fellow course creators and just those of us who take online courses and are curious about the online education world in the world of AI now. And that's what we're diving into in this one, with the big question of are courses dead? Are they going to survive with LLMs taking over and creating such a personalized learning experience? We're diving into that because Chris has some very uh counterintuitive views on this and actually gives me a lot of hope for the future of online education and courses. It's been so impactful for me, both as a course grader and somebody who just loves online courses, and for hundreds of thousands of my students who have gone through my courses since 2017. So this conversation personally was very needed, and I hope it helps you whether you're interested in doing a course now or eventually or have before, or you're just curious about the online education world and how you're gonna succeed. This is Chris Badgett, CEO of Lifter LMS. Before we dive into our conversation, I want to give a big shout out and a thanks to Siteground for sponsoring this episode. Siteground, speaking of AI, is on the leading edge of AI for all hosting companies. Many of you know I've been using Siteground since 2015 to trust them for hosting all of my websites. But one thing I'm very excited about them is how they innovate and their new AI tools, particularly the AI agent, is something I definitely recommend that you check out. And if you use my link, joshhall.co slash site groundai, you can get a free 14 trial. This AI assistant can literally do just about anything on your website. Everything from content management, if you're running WooCommerce operations around and around WooCommerce site maintenance, like updating plugins, themes, user accounts, permissions. It can even help you with some SEO optimization, user management, and workflows. So I definitely recommend that you check it out. Again, 14-day free trial, joshhall.co slash site groundai, to give that a go and see if it's a good fit for you and your business. So big thanks to SiteGround for helping me make this show possible and free for you. All right, here's Chris Badgett, CEO of

Sponsor SiteGround AI Agent

Josh Hall 3:09

Lifter LMS. We're going to talk AI and courses and whether they can survive moving forward. Well, Chris Badgett, long overdue. I can't believe it's been, we were just chatting before we went live. I don't know how long it's been since we chatted last and reconnected. You've got a killer new studio. Um, man, I'm so pumped to reconnect and just talk shop about where courses are right now. My goodness, have things changed in the land of courses and online educations, particularly over the past, I feel like year, two years for sure, but I mean like the last year really seemed like things turned in some ways. Is that what's your feeling of the timeline of the change of courses?

Chris Badgett 3:52

It's one of those things where some things don't change and some things do change. So starting with like there has been a lot of change recently, I would kind of coincide it with uh when ChatGPT kind of went mainstream. The whole world, particularly tech people like us and people who like internet and online business, got really into AI. And that's definitely had an impact just from a focus

AI Changes Learner Expectations

Chris Badgett 4:19

perspective. And then course creators, um, you know, you could build a course, but now you can build an app with AI and Claude and Replit or whatever tools you're using. So there's been a little bit of a uh, I would call it like an ADD moment across entrepreneurs who are prone to chase shiny objects and everything. And I personally love AI. So there's that, and then there's actually the macro trend of if you can just learn what you want to learn from Claude or ChatGPT or whatever, do you even need a course? So, what that does is like it raises the bar for courses. So, for example, when I make dinner, I don't go to recipe blogs anymore. I just chat with ChatGPT, I let it know what ingredients I have and it customizes it for me. So I think the actual demand from the learner side is changing. And it's never been more important to think about courses as part of your offer, but not the entire offer. So when you bundle in things like coaching, community, uh resources, templates, um even software, other things, events, you kind of need to diversify the stack. But the good news is course creators and coaches, people still crave human connection. So it's never been more important to do the human piece. So if you're doing the human piece through coaching or cohort-based courses or red phone support through a forum, text messaging, email, whatever you do, that human connection has never been more valuable and desired. So there's a really a lot going on right now, but that's at a high level, are some of the trends I'm seeing.

Josh Hall 6:12

I'm just gonna throw out the question you probably knew was gonna be asked at some point. Are online courses dead?

Chris Badgett 6:18

No. And that's because the internet was literally created for two things: education and defense. So uh the thing is, courses had a moment, particularly, I would say, between like 2006 and 2010, were really the early days where there wasn't a lot of competition. You could crush it on Udemy. There weren't that many internet marketers, so just doing decent marketing and having an information product like a course, it was kind of the heyday. And so that's like a period of time. And then everybody kind of got professional. WordPress came in as like a course platform. There's a billion SaaS solutions right now, like uh, I don't know, school, teachable, kajabi, and so many podia, so many others. So that was like the boom of courses. And then from 20, around 2020 to 23, 22, with the pandemic and everything, huge

Are Online Courses Dead

Chris Badgett 7:20

demand for people looking to take courses online education. And then after that, we kind of had a reversion to the mean after the pandemic. And then now we're dealing with this AI period, which is what we're living through right now, which will be much easier to understand looking in the rearview mirror. But education and essentially learning is one of the fundamental things that makes human beings human beings, and that's not going to go away. And we're gonna continue to use the internet to facilitate learning and you know, democratize education, make it so a subject matter expert anywhere in the world can connect with a learner who wants to learn from them from anywhere in the world. But it is changing and it's never been more competitive. There's things like you know, you and I as podcasters, our production value has gone up. We make better videos, we edit better, the editing tools have gotten better. So there's this like demand for good production value. But at the end of the day, the last thing kind of standing is really just the individual human behind the project and allowing that human to connect online and in person or whatever is really that's the piece is just never going to change. The technology is gonna shift and is shifting all around us. But courses are not dead, just like email is not dead and social media is not dead. But just like social media, Facebook groups used to be a lot more active than they are now, but that attention is spread out now across TikTok, AI chatbots, private communities on Slack and Circle and all kinds of places. So it's it's much more spread out now. So we're in a we're in a red ocean.

Josh Hall 9:09

So fair to say, I share this perspective as well that courses aren't dead, but the three thousand dollar info product, that's dead. Would you agree with that?

Chris Badgett 9:21

If it is 100% passive, with like, you know, the entrepreneur sits on the beach and just sells courses from in its videos they made like a couple years ago or a year ago, that is I would I would say that's not dead, but it's on life support.

Josh Hall 9:37

Life support, yeah.

Chris Badgett 9:37

But the one that's not dead is like if you happen to nail a niche in a target market with burning demand and there's no competition, like you've literally found a blue ocean, you could still get away with that. But the speed of like accessing information and figuring out challenges is saturated. So it's much harder to find an untapped niche and a market demand that's burning for that $3,000 passive info product. But I will say, I would say it's still possible, but you really have to nail the niche in a non-competitive environment.

Josh Hall 10:13

What's the blue ocean versus red ocean analogy?

Chris Badgett 10:17

Uh the Blue Ocean Strategy, I'm trying to remember, it's a it's a famous business book. I can't remember the author's name. I think it's called the Blue Ocean Strategy. But the idea of that is a red ocean is where you're swimming with sharks, there's so many competitors, the market's fully saturated, so you find uh a blue ocean. So a classic example would be something like the

Red Ocean Reality For Creators

Chris Badgett 10:40

Apple smartphone. So before regular cell phones are like a red ocean, and there's Nokia and all these brands with regular flip phones or whatever. But then when we introduce a new category, like the concept of a smartphone, that was a blue ocean, which uh, you know, allowed Apple to really shine with the launch of the iPhone.

Josh Hall 11:04

Gotcha. Yeah, the book looks like it's a whole framework now, but the book is Blue Ocean Strategy, how to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant.

Chris Badgett 11:13

I love books. And if you're gonna read that one, I definitely want to recommend another one called Category Pirates, which is about creating a new category.

Josh Hall 11:25

I love the title, that's great.

Chris Badgett 11:27

The um that idea of creating the category of smartphone, we all take it for granted now, but that's an entirely new category. So when you can become the leader in a new category and build a brand, personal brand, business brand around that, uh you're you're trying to develop a blue ocean, or maybe you found one. So category design, if I was at the beginning of a project, whatever the business was, if I was an agency owner or creating a course or other kind of program, I would really try to become a category king in a category that I helped design that actually fits market demand and need. It's not just like a marketing trick of renaming things. Like a smartphone was really different in a lot of ways from a flip phone.

Josh Hall 12:18

Yeah, I feel like uh going back to like a marketing classic, Seth Godin's Purple Cow may be more relevant today than ever before. Actually, a lot of Seth Godin's writing writings are like eerily relevant, like timeless. Um I think the very first book I read that was business related that actually made me enjoy reading was permission marketing. And man, right? Like, is that more relevant today with your your marketing being like personalized, expected, relevant, and asked for, you know, like permission marketing. It's just such a great gosh, it's such a great book, such a great idea.

Chris Badgett 13:04

Yeah, 100%.

Josh Hall 13:06

I feel like a lot of those, it's kind of cool because like in an AI world, there's a lot of things that are quite dated that are just killing it today. Um, like personal videos, which is what I've been doing this for almost a decade. I send a personal video to everyone who joins Web Designer Pro.

Chris Badgett 13:22

Yeah.

Josh Hall 13:23

No one does that. Right. It's crazy. Like it's so easy to do. And yes, it's not scalable. And sometimes I bulk do it, sometimes I do just audio versus video. But man, I'm just really leaning into the stuff that's not scalable right now and is like hyper-personalized and is slightly unprofessional, borderline, crossing the line. Like I asked my members,

Passive Info Products On Life Support

Josh Hall 13:48

um, we're recording this right after the mid-year, and I did a I always do a mid-year check-in with my coaching tier members and pro. And I say, How's the how's the year gone? And I gave them an option, like, great, okay, not great, need help, and need to sell my feet online. Um, you know, and like you're probably not gonna find that from an AI bot or an AI message. So um, I'm really leaning into like whatever, however, I would talk if I was hanging out with folks, you know, at a bar or at a coffee shop, that's that's how I'm gonna start to really talk online, which I mostly do anyway, but some stuff I do say can cross a line or two. So um, but I'm leaning into it right now in this age.

Chris Badgett 14:24

Yeah, and that's part of it when your personal brand, the and the way you show up is actually exactly who you are. It's not exhausting at all. You're just being yourself. And I think that's one of the keys. We were talking about longevity a little bit. One of the keys to longevity is just I'm not putting on an act. I'm just me and sharing my passion. If you run into me at a conference, I'm gonna be wearing the same shirt. I'm gonna talk the same, talk about the same things. So it's just the same. There's no effort there in terms of, you know, performance.

Josh Hall 14:57

I think that's even more important when it comes to courses. And obviously, you have a lot of like firsthand experience of this for a long time, but you're still in the thick of it today with Lifter LMS. You're hearing from creators and course creators. And are you seeing the the creators who are doing courses who are still killing it, online educators? Um one thing that I'm seeing is like a a big move for the personalization, big move for just being completely transparent, authentic, also bringing in more story-driven education versus just like here's how to do this. Like I'm really thinking about this on the future of my courses, which is like like I've always been pretty story-driven, like I share real experiences and and all that, but I'm I'm really thinking about like hammering the gas on that even more nowadays. Have you seen that type of strategy work with folks that you ever see with lifter customers as far as kind of like story-driven education?

Chris Badgett 15:58

Yeah, so a hundred percent. And it it goes back to before AI too, where you know, there was this idea of like, why would anybody ever buy my course? There's all this free content on YouTube and blogs and everything else. It's like, well, there's only one you and the way you're gonna deliver it. So that's why courses have worked for so long is they're not just buying the content, they're they're buying you and and they're investing in trusting you as a person to deliver. And in terms of story-driven, I've always been a fan of edutainment where it's not just how-to, like, you know, you buy a piece of furniture from IKEA and you open up the white thing and you the really small print and you follow the pictures. That's not very entertaining. There's no story. It's not talking about all the things that you could

Authenticity And Story Driven Teaching

Chris Badgett 16:45

do with this chair and how some famous person did something with this chair. But yeah, story, story as a part of instructional design is super important. And it goes back to that concept that learning is what makes us human. Connecting with other humans or the social aspect also makes us human. And then story has always been a huge part of communication and learning. I mean, we literally teach our children a lot of life lessons through stories and and things like that. Um, and a pro tip for people out there it can sound overwhelming to do story-driven education or lesson content or even coaching calls, but I highly recommend creating a content framework that you can repeat. So, for example, when I do a lesson, I'm actually getting ready to come out with a book, which is kind of like a course, but it I use a content framework for every chapter in the book. And there's in every chapter, there's always a story from my personal experience and a story about a course creator. There are how-to steps. There's like why is this important, kind of strategy level, and then there's kind of action steps at the end. So when you come up with your framework for content creation, whether that's a lesson, a coaching call, a chapter in a book, life gets so much easier. And then it's just a matter of like, okay, well, I'm at the story part of this lesson about X. What's something from my life experience that I could tell a quick story about? What and then later, what's a story related to this tactic or strategy that I could tell about one of my customers or somebody else in the industry? It story makes learning stick. If it's just how-to information, like the instruction manual to put the IKEA furniture together, you're not going to remember any of that. But the story sticks.

Josh Hall 18:46

The AI wave right now with online education, and like you mentioned, people are just chatting with ChatGPT or Claude to get personalized instructions and personalize how to. Crossing their fingers that it is actually true or correct, or that it's proven or is going to work. But I think that's the biggest shift for course creators, myself included now, which is like I'm really thinking about how can I make my courses a story driven and more experiential, but also two, or B, sound like Buzz from Home Alone when he's like, A, D. What the second part of this is I feel like it's gotta be more personalized nowadays, especially. I've actually been listening to quite a few different course creators on podcasts who are using AI in a way of like prompts that are like catered to where they are in business. This is where it gets really overwhelming as a course creator, because I'm like, I don't I don't, I don't know. Like I'm using AI a lot, but I don't feel like I've really embraced like I haven't loaded all my stuff into AI and trusted it to create a personalized pathway kind of deal. What's your thought on that about how to maybe use AI with a course creator's library of content to structure like a guided pathway? And what does that look like practically? Are you do you guys have anything in Lyfter LMS that's utilizing that? What are your thoughts on like a personalized pathway approach?

Chris Badgett 20:16

Well, the future is really all about like the AI tutor that exists as part of the learning content so that it can personalize. You know, it has buzzwords in the LMS industry like adaptive learning, dynamic learning, personalized learning. That's definitely a thing. And in terms of battling the AI overwhelm, I find myself fortunate to be surrounded by at my company, like a lot of really cutting-edge AI um developers and things like that. So, really where the magic happens is when you build that second brain. And the thing that you and I are really lucky about, and we put in a lot of hard work, is we have this huge backlog of content on our podcasts, our YouTube channels, blogs, and whatnot. So, like building uh an AI agent that really gets you is so different from just opening up a chat GPT um thread or Claude thread and just having conversation. You'll get good information

Second Brains And AI Tutors

Chris Badgett 21:25

there, but when you really build that second brain uh and work with it, not to do all your work for you, but kind of the 10, 80, 10 thing, like you do the 10 stuff up front to really provide the context and shape what you're trying to do and do your first pass on whatever it is, and then AI comes in and does 80% of magic, and then you polish it the last 10% on the end. That's what it's all about. So, to give a really specific example and tell a story, uh Lifter LMS has an AI agent named Maurice. And this is a it's built on top of Claude, but it also has a huge memory system that we've built in called Auto Mem. My friend over at WP Fusion, Jack Arturo, created that innovation. But basically, what that means is this AI agent can see every line of code ever written in 13 years about Letter L Mess, has all the training data from Claude in the past, has open access to the internet, YouTube, it's been trained on every podcast episode, our entire YouTube channel, which has thousands of videos. And it has like master prompts stuffed into it, like this is Chris Badget, the business guy. This is Chris Badget and his personal life and everything. And then that's just like it's just such an amazing experience to uh to do that. Um but to make it like really approachable, um when you start getting into AI agents, the main things are to build skill libraries uh which can be combined to create workflows, and you can really automate a lot or invoke certain skills. So, like an example skill I have, when we're building a new feature at Lifter LMS, we have uh something called a pitch, which is like a document. It's kind of like a specification for what we're gonna build. I I make those in concert with my AI agent Maurice, and the output is 10 times better and 10 times faster than me doing it by myself. And I'm not just giving one quick prompt, hey, build this new feature, build this new add-on. It's literally like a 30-minute conversation that ultimately ends in a document. And then one other pro tip I just want to add that's really changed my life in the past two years. I'm actually a very slow typer. So I got whisper flow going.

Josh Hall 24:07

It's freaking awesome.

Chris Badgett 24:08

And I'm like, oh my dude, why didn't I do this? Like, I don't know how long this has been around, but I'm definitely late to this party.

Josh Hall 24:14

It's been like Whisperflow, man. If anyone is a talker, just get Whisperflow and if you're a slow typer, it is so it's freaking awesome.

Chris Badgett 24:23

Yeah.

Josh Hall 24:23

I've been using that more recently too, especially for like DM coaching and pro, to where like I would spend so much time typing, and uh, I'm notoriously bad at grammar, so I would always have to go through it. I've been using Grammarly for that for a while, but yeah, Whisperflow just it's definitely saving me a lot of time to be able to cook through stuff. I'm starting to use it for like podcast intros instead of typing stuff up separately, using that, and then tweaking it, of course. But yeah, heck yeah. There are some, I mean, look, as as much as I am an AI, I'm not a pessimist, but I'm a very late adopter with a lot of AI stuff. Like I feel like over the past year, really like six months, I'm like finally coming around to like integrating it more versus just using it for text stuff and outlines and timestamps and stuff like that. Um, you had mentioned the the agent. Is that all through Cloud then that you're creating these agents through? You're not doing that through like ChatGPT codecs or anything, right?

Chris Badgett 25:17

Yeah, it's through uh Claude. It's built on top of Claude.

Josh Hall 25:20

Because I feel like that's industry standard if you're gonna create agents at this point, right?

Chris Badgett 25:25

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was a ChatGPT guy for a long time, and it was really only about six months ago. I really flipped over to Cloud and I noticed a lot of people were kind of moving that way. And uh just that's I've been there. I still use ChatGPT for like some image generation stuff and other things, but um, yeah, Claude Anthropic, our custom agent, is uh what I use. And the um cool thing that I realized is that you know, there's with chat with Claude, there's the Cloud.ai, the chat window, then there's cowork. So I've created all kinds of automations and schedule tasks and cowork to help me for as an example manage my email inbox. And then there's claud code. I'm not a developer, but I now use VS Code connected through my agent. I don't understand half the stuff I see on the screen, but it's like the most powerful version of working with Claude. And of course, I still use the AI chat sometimes or cowork, but um getting non-developers using cloud code is is really powerful. And it's it reminds me of the early days of WordPress where somebody like me could build a website without knowing HTML and CSS and everything. It's kind of like that now with the dev tools. Um, you can get yourself in trouble. Like if you start building apps or WordPress plugins and you have no idea. So it's you've got to be careful there. But luckily for me, I have a team of developers and whatnot that I can reap the benefits while also having smart humans make sure everything's cool and correct.

Josh Hall 27:04

I think that's paralleled in the course world too, as far as education, where yes, there's like oversaturation in every market, but there's not an oversaturation of quality. And you know, if you really focused on like making something killer, that's your voice, your story, your experience, and the way you teach it, that's what's really going to separate people, I think. Now that the second brain approach, I mean, I've had something similar for a while in Pro. It's been a couple of years since they came out with their AI agents. And ours is called Brock. My daughter named it Broccoli, and uh we just shortened it for Brock. And yeah, it's it's trained on everything that is in Pro. So the only trick with that is I haven't been able, to my knowledge, I don't think you can load outside sources in there. Maybe that is changed or is gonna change. I know Circle AI, I'm playing around with that right now, which is basically like having Claude chat and co-work inside of Circle so it can push out stuff and do things. Um, but I'm still, I don't have like a live, like all my you know, years of resources centralized yet. So that's a good challenge for me to get a version of that. So you do that through Claude, through co-work, you create an agent. How is that accessed like inside of Lifter LMS exactly?

Chris Badgett 28:20

Well, right now it's just internally for our team.

Josh Hall 28:25

Oh, okay. So it's not something as a customer of Lifter LMS.

Chris Badgett 28:28

Yeah, we'll get there. Like probably the next step to do that. We actually have a Lifter LMS developer Slack community, which is for um, you know, agency owners and folks that are building custom or customizing Lifter LMS. Uh so we'll be putting Maurice in there soon, which will be super helpful to them because Maurice has eyes on every single line of code and can write you know something for them that they can then test and tweak and that sort of thing. Um, but in terms of AI, this is an important part of this discussion. Uh AI for course creators, should it be in the LMS? Uh there are things like we just released an MCP server, which means Claude or Chat GPT or whatever can start doing things related to the LMS on your site if you connect uh the AI to your WordPress site. So it's sort of like how developers would use an API to do things. Now uh the AI AI can connect to your site and do things similar to that. Um we created some courses on on using AI. Like I showed how to create an entire online course with Chat GBT. It's a free course on our website at academy.lethrellmess.com. You can also find the whole thing in one video on YouTube as well. And that video took off. I knew it would. You you and I are SEO guys. I'm like, all right, well, how to create an online course with Chat GBT, I better put something up there. And uh uh, but it's not like you said, it's about slowing down. So that course does not, it's not like one prompt. It's like 12 lessons that each have a prompt. And in the middle, there's a section where you have to do what I call the human brain dump, where you build a document and put your unique ideas, other people's ideas, other people's blogs, and people you look up to and mentors and everything, you just jam it all in there, and then you create a uh you create the course content. And the way I think about that is you can decide what you want to do with your course content. So the thing that

Building Courses With AI The Right Way

Chris Badgett 30:45

AI introduces is it's obviously mostly a text-based format. So most people think of courses and they're like, oh, well, I want video lessons. That's cool, but you can also get the lesson that you co-created with AI, lesson content there. And then from that, what the AI can do is build you slide decks or talking points, or if you're the type of person that likes to read to a teleprompter, it can help you uh build that, you know, glance sheets, which I do all the time. Like sometimes I'll do a pot a solo podcast episode, and I'm I'm workshopping ideas with the episode with AI, and I'll have my PDF document that I'm glancing at to help me stay on track and make sure I hit all the points, but it's not telling me exactly what to say. And then in that course, what I did is I just went all the way, which I don't necessarily recommend. I went to 11 labs and created a digital twin of myself. And then I had uh I created you know, video content using AI as well, just as an experiment. So basically the course I created, I didn't just talk about this, I created a real course that's also on the Academy called the Course Pricing Focuser. I know a lot of course creators have trouble with pricing, and I've done a lot of education and research into pricing for software and courses and coaching and everything. So I put all that. That's that was the example I used in my course on how to create a course to Chat GBT.

Josh Hall 32:22

Congrats on that, by the way. You're the second organic video on that Google search.

Chris Badgett 32:27

I know.

Josh Hall 32:28

That is incredible, dude.

Chris Badgett 32:30

Yeah. So that's uh I don't recommend doing the digital twin thing, but I just wanted to play around with it and see if I could if I could do it. And uh anyway, so that's that's one way to think about that. And um, we obviously the really cool thing about AI at Lifter is it's more about like the speed at which we can build new features, add-ons, fix bugs, harden security, integrate with other tools. But it but in this case, it's not me using it, it's it's our developers using it and really, you know, just moving 10 times faster than we ever have before, which is so fun.

Josh Hall 33:11

I am very, very challenged and inspired to create number one the second brain, but also more like personalized prompts that can help folks almost like it's not fully done for you, but my thought is, and man, I'm glad I didn't revamp my courses like at the end of last year, because I've got a lot of courses to add new lessons to and revamp, and everything's still valid, but there's just some new stuff, and I would do things a little bit differently. I have more real-world experience and real world examples that are working today in 2026. Um, I'm trying to think of like some different ways to utilize a like prompt type system that is customized to the person who goes to the course. That's like, for example, one of my course, my SEO course is a foundational course for web designers. One of my like special areas of like IP for my stuff is what I call SEO boost. It's been like one of the hot things in Web Designer Pro. People are killing it, having little SEO boost plans as add-ons, as upsells, as downsells. I'm trying to think of a way to like, how can I make it so like they don't just learn and then implement an SEO boost, but like they go through it, they learn what's in it, and then it like guides them through like by the end of going through the course in that lesson, they have like an SEO boost plan ready to go, basically. Trying to think of some different ways to go about that.

Chris Badgett 34:34

We've done something similar. Um, there's a couple options to to mention here. Uh, we have a course, another free course on our academy called the Six Figure Course Plan Challenge. And one of the things we do is we built some custom AI stuff a couple years ago where the AI will interview inside of the lesson the person to find their icky guy. Do you know what that is?

Josh Hall 35:01

Yeah, I have the book. I haven't read it. It's like a like a mentor, mentee type of thing. Or no, no, I'm sorry. That's something else. Uh Icky guy. I know James Ramko talked about.

Chris Badgett 35:13

Yeah, he felt I might have first heard that from James, but it's uh it's a Japanese word, which means the reason for being in the world.

Josh Hall 35:23

Okay. So there's a book Your mission, your purpose, your Yeah.

Chris Badgett 35:26

So the um let me see if I can do this from memory. Uh there's a book called The Hedgehog Concept, a business book that's really good. And it's basically about picking your career and focusing your life. And it it's around three things in the hedgehog book, which is

Custom GPT Pathways And Offer Tiers

Chris Badgett 35:43

um your skills, like what you're good at, your passion, and then um the market. Like there's market demand for it. So if it's like a Venn diagram, if you get the all those things right, you've got a good offer, a good focus, and all of that. Ickigai adds one more layer, and it predates the hedgehog concept. This is old Japanese philosophy, is what the world needs is like a fourth circle in the in the diagram. So, and this is where you know, you may be passionate about something, but does the world really need that kind of thing? But that's what I'm talking about. If you find a blue ocean, something that the world really needs, it doesn't exist yet. This is where the massive opportunity is. And it's not so much the market bubble, which is like, will people pay for this? It's like there's a burning human desire for this thing. Um and that's where you find endless motivation and fulfillment. But anyways, uh AI, what it does is it so it's the course is designed to help people answer the question, what course should I make? Right. And so the first part of that is finding your icky guy, and it uh the AI interviews that person.

Josh Hall 37:03

Okay.

Chris Badgett 37:03

But to make that a little more approachable, and at the end it outputs it on these like index cards so they can see it and stuff.

Josh Hall 37:09

It's kind of just a custom GTP kind of deal.

Chris Badgett 37:12

Basically, but it's like baked into the site. So um, but the way to do that for your people is is uh one is figuring out a way to create um a custom GPT, like you said, that could just co-pilot with them. There's this like technical issue where you really want to kind of get it all in one place. Like if you think about a course in a lesson, like, well, it's a cohort-based course, I really want to embed the Zoom inside the lesson. You don't really have to do that. You just have to use Zoom for the live lesson, hit the record button, and then put the replay inside your lesson. You can get fancy and try to embed the Zoom and make it a more integrated experience. But what I'm saying is like if you just provide a custom GPT for people to use and train them on how to use a custom GPT, even though it exists off your site or off your control or off your LMS, that's okay. Um, but I have seen a lot of coaches starting to create like some of the super technical ones, like creating these down cells, if you will, where let's say it's $90, $99 a month for just the AI coaching, and it's like a whole site with frameworks and all this stuff, and it interviews you and you talk to it constantly. But then there's the, you know, kind of the middle plan that includes a bunch of the live human elements. It's much more expensive, and then like the premium plan that includes like the private access and things like that.

Josh Hall 38:48

That's literally what I'm have kind of done with Pro and what I'm doing even more so with Pro. It's like I want to do more for the the bottom tier, which is basically just get access to my courses, but I really want to do more with like a personalized, guided system there to help folks actually like like they should go through the courses and have their website up. I mean, I have a child theme ready to go, but if you're not using Divi, it's not gonna be relevant for you. Um so I'm trying to think of like how can I yeah, make some of those templates and processes and systems ready to go. That's a little more personalized and guided. And then of course there's the community for like you really actually get involved. And then you want access to Josh, it's the coaching tier. Um, so that's kind of where I'm moving towards even more on a level that's awesome. So start so before Simon Sinek start with why was Icky Guy.

Chris Badgett 39:39

Yes, yeah. We all do this is like we stand on the shoulder of giants behind us, you know. So our heroes like Seth Godin or Simon Sinek or whoever, they're standing on the shoulders of you know, some samurai back in or wherever, or other like super old stuff. Yeah. And just a uh thing that really fascinated me there's a website, delphi.ai, and that's really interesting. It it allows you to build like an AI version of yourself and just handles all the tech part. So, for example, there's a tech entrepreneur leader guy I really like named Balaji Srinavasin, and he has like a twin version of himself, and for free, I just signed up on Delphi.com and I had like an hour-long conversation with uh Balaji's virtual twin about my business challenges, opportunities, and whatnot. And he was using like I've read many of Balaji's books and things, and I could tell this thing was like trained really well. It sounds like him, it's so cool.

Josh Hall 40:42

So I know it's the future, but man, is that a moral like conflict, like conflict that I have? I know um Jay, are you familiar with Jay Klaus? Yes, he's the uh creator of science, he's been a friend of mine, he's a local guy. We've we've been connected for many years now, and I I really uh one reason I I enjoy following him outside of just being a friend is I really trust him with like he is incredibly um what's the right alert word I'm looking for? Not loyal, but integral. He's very integrity focused on the his, particularly his content, because he's very data driven. And like he's even said publicly, I'm very leery about like look making a second brain that people get access to and it giving them advice that may or may not be correct. Or may or yeah, hopefully it's trained correctly, but maybe not. I'm worried about that as well with the idea of like an AI Josh, which is why I haven't done one yet.

Chris Badgett 41:39

The thing is, is like AI is the worst version of it you're using today. It only gets better. So, like the hallucination thing like you're talking about, or like, oh, it's not as smart, it doesn't really understand Josh, it's giving bad advice, all that is getting better. I agree with you that I don't know Jay Klaus well. I've watched some of his content over the years, but his vibe, I always get like this, oh yeah, this is a cool guy, authentic, down-to-earth, super smart, data-driven. Uh, your vibe attracts your tribe. Your AI agent can't do that for you. It's more like uh, it's more like, okay, well, Josh is super busy or it's the middle of the night. What would what would Josh AI say to do in my situation? It's sort of like a backup. It's like uh something that's in the clut constellation of resources available, but obviously the best and essential resource is you, the human being.

Josh Hall 42:36

That's good. That's an interesting way to put it. It's almost like uh it's like a version of yourself when you're just a little off, maybe a little tired, you know, still gonna give good advice, but every once in a while you're gonna be a why did I say that? That's not right. Uh or maybe a version of Liu that's like a few years ago that it, you know, maybe not have all the up-to-date stuff. That's interesting. Or it could be, and I do, I mean, at this point, I think for everyone with like a wealth of of content, of years of content, I almost feel like you have to have it. I mean, I'm thinking about people who are getting and jumping in web design today and finding this show, and they're like, good God, I do not have the time to go through 440 some episodes. But a web design business podcast AI that could zip through everything, or like, you know, my entire catalog of like all the course lessons, all the YouTube videos, everything could be pretty cool.

Chris Badgett 43:29

I think of it like a guide. So it's sort of like that new podcast listener, they're like, oh, this is overwhelming. But if I can just ask the AI, hey, what I'm having this business challenge, or I think Josh interviewed Crystal or whoever it was, like it it's more like uh the front door of like just removing friction and surfacing the right content at the right time.

Josh Hall 43:54

Yeah. I love that approach for just online courses in general. That I yeah. Guided with whatever that looks like. I know there's a lot of different ways to go about that. Um what industries in Lifter LMS world are killing it?

Chris Badgett 44:12

Continuing education, which is kind of boring for like creators in the sense that uh but basically there's all these industries in like healthcare or law and other professional real estate, other things where people have to get continuing education to renew their license. Those folks absolutely crush it. They make so much money, their customers never leave, their customers come back, they keep building out their catalog of training and systematizing things, and they crush it. So my advice with that is um consider continuing education even if you think that your niche doesn't necessarily work. So for example, like for you, uh you don't need somebody's, we're talking about permission again, you don't need somebody's permission to create your own certification. So you could have AI certification or uh SEO certification or you know, Divi certification. And these what happens is when people earn

Continuing Education And Certifications

Chris Badgett 45:20

a minimum a certificate, but continuing education gets into these credit hours and expiring, like keeping your CPR up to date and things like that. But um certification is underutilized, and the people that do it crush it, and people that sometimes just invent their own, and it helps in your case, it would like help agencies get clients because they're like, Oh, I'm certified by you know Web Designer Pro SEO certification and these other certifications there. So that's that's who's killing it. Uh I would also say that basically jump on what we've already said, the people who aren't just course creators, they're building, they have coaching programs, they're doing live stuff. They might even do some in-person stuff sometimes. Um, and they're instead of putting their product at the center of their business, they put their customer at the center of their business, and they just ask the question what is this, what does this person need? Well, they need courses, but they also need coaching and community and resources and custom GPTs and templates and uh maybe like discounts or you know, swag and all these things. Like you just kind of surround your customer with the support they need. And when the when the market changes, like AI comes, it's like, well, they don't just need courses and coaching anymore. They need help figuring out this AI thing. How can I do that? And that's the whole thing.

Josh Hall 46:54

I still think courses are an incredible lead product, like top of funnel or second tier down type of thing in the funnel. Just because I know from first hand running WebResenter Pro for five and a half years now, community is very hard to sell. Like somebody really has to be ready. They need to feel like they know the community. This podcast has been the number one driver for that, especially when I have community members on, because I think people listening are like, okay, I could totally jive with these people that because you know you're hearing them, and you can't fake an hour-long podcast interview. Someone's gonna get to know somebody, typically. Um, so they're gonna be like, okay, yeah, these are, you know, these are my people. Virvibe attracts your tribe in the community world for sure, but it's also a subscription, it's a membership. Some people, I've found some people are more interested in courses, some people more interested in community, some people are more interested in coaching. So I do love having the full ecosystem be able to give people what they want. But courses are still today in 2026, I think an incredible lead product. What I've found, and I've heard different versions of this quote from members over the years, is they say something to the effect of, I came for the courses, stayed for the community.

Chris Badgett 48:07

Yeah. And I appreciate it at this point, but it's true. And I've experienced that before in like business coaching programs I've been in. It's like, yeah, I learned a lot really quick in the coaching, but then I'm like, there's this feeling uh I call finding the others. You're like, oh wow, there's a bunch of weirdos like me in here that are into all this crazy stuff, and you know, my family doesn't understand me or what I'm up to, but like all these people get it, and it's sticky. It's super sticky. But it's like you said, it's I think it's rarely uh the primary initial reason. If you're do if it is, that's great. You're you're doing it well. But between the three uh courses, coaching and community, I think community is the most misunderstood. It's the most fuzzy. The fact that you're like investing in like helping others build community, I think that's a blue ocean. I mean, I could think of a million books on course creation and coaching. I can only think of one book on community building. There's a

Community Is The Sticky Advantage

Chris Badgett 49:10

book I read once called The Business of Belonging that was quite good. But it's it's a very um nascent, new, misunderstood aspect of online business.

Josh Hall 49:20

That's that's interesting. Plus, I mean, I've done some research as I'm starting to dip my toe into sharing community-based resources. Um, joshhall.co slash community, if interested, by the way. Keep it on the down low. Well, it's public now, too. Now the LLMs have got it. So I'm not starting a whole nother business. I'm not taking my intention away from pro. I'm just, you know, I've made a million dollars with community. I feel like, okay, you know, a lot of people are asking me questions. I'm ready to start sharing some stuff on this. But I say that to say community is such a generalized term. Because like I looked at community podcasts and it's like, you know, neighborhood communities, it's church communities. There's like community is just such a it's a group of people. What is the blue ocean, I think, in the community world, from what I see, is like online community memberships that are integrated with either course communities, coaching communities, product communities, SaaS communities. There's like all these different variations of communities and memberships that is a little bit fuzzy for people. Um, so yeah, that's kind of what I'm I'm seeing on the community front. But yeah, I mean, you're dead right. You're dead on with that, Chris. It's like community is the stickiest thing. And I think it's I think it's because, especially when somebody joins something like Pro, you're you're in, you're in a tribe. And and a lot of it is they're in a support network, and they're in literally like we have we have uh we've had agencies form inside of Pro. Like I'm seeing so many people who have an agency, and I look at their team page, and like three other members of Pro are on their team page. Yeah, that's the kind of thing that is like I, you know, I could advertise that, but I also can't guarantee that. And I can't guarantee that, you know, you're gonna love this person, and I can't guarantee they're gonna love you. But it just it works when the magic happens inside of an online community. So and the courses are still there when they need them. And but yeah, it's like it's it is interesting in that world.

Chris Badgett 51:18

Yeah, and the community is um it's not like you just join and you get the value, it's sort of that thing, like you mentioned, it's a support mechanism. So, like a really healthy community, somebody asks for help and then they give help when they can. You know, so it becomes this reciprocal thing. And I think I'm I'm agreeing with you more and more and getting excited with my entrepreneur brain that like I would maybe focus that niche on learning communities, like online learning communities that include things like courses and coaching, which makes it different from like a neighborhood community, which is more about news and information, I guess, and all kinds of other types of communities. But um the people, you know, they find each other and help each other. And what we don't realize, you mentioned the team page. I've had the same thing happen at Lifter LMS. We have all kinds of different communities. I've seen people move, create business partners, you know, like a lot of people pre-internet days would meet their spouse at a in-person community, whether that's a church, a job, uh, a sport league or whatever school. Like these communities, community is how people connect, and people connect all the time in the online world, but we almost take it for granted. Yeah, like, hey, this is still just human beings connecting with each other, they're just not sharing physical space. But it's just as powerful, all the same stuff happens.

Josh Hall 52:49

Yeah, so true. It's funny because like my kids eight, six, and three now, and they're starting to ask, like, what is what's daddy doing? And I never typically say I'm just going to work. I say, like, daddy has a call with uh, you know, a friend in Maine right now. Um, and I with with us doing in-person events now, our annual Web Presenter ProCon, I've told them, like, you know how daddy does pro and I talk to people on my computer. I was like, well, we're actually meeting, like, they're all driving or flying and meeting in person. We're actually gonna hang out. And it kind of like, I think it made them realize, like, okay, you know, when I'm up here, I'm not just typing away, you know, doing it. Watching, yeah, watching YouTube, unless I'm watching Chris's create an online course with ChatGPT video, which is check that out. But, you know, I'm I'm yeah, creating community, being a part of community, building community, and literally doing something that, yeah, like it physically in the real world is happening, but just digitally, which for kids has got to be kind of interesting to see that. But yeah, yeah, I I really I love I love this overall premise of like courses now and in the future have got to be personalized, guided, they've got to have connection, level of coaching, personalized coaching is huge. They've got to be story, real world experience has got to be in there. Um, you know, no pressure for course creators, but it does, you know, honestly though, like it does make it fun. It's fun when it's not just like, here's everything I've learned. I hope this helps somebody. Like it's fun to, and that's that's the genesis. I know I'm gonna be on your show again here soon, and maybe we can talk about this in detail then. But like the genesis of Pro was I don't know the impact I'm making with my online courses. I just the info's out there, unless I get a testimonial, I have no idea. I see a name and an order, cool beans. I just made 300 bucks, but I don't know what this is doing for them or their family or their business. With a community, it's it's the real-time back and forth feedback and and results and challenges and growth and hardships and wins and everything in between, which is very, very cool. So it's a very human experience when you have a community backed with an education product. Um yeah. I anything on that real quick, Chris. I have one final like area that I want to dig into real quick.

Chris Badgett 55:07

Yeah. Uh well, I just had uh, first of all, congrats to you on like piercing the the internet wall and doing an in-person event. I think that's often overlooked and can be, you know, life-changing. My whole like WordPress career changed when I finally got out from behind my computer and went to an event that Chris Lema put on in Mexico called Cabo Press. And I hung out with like 30 other people building WordPress products. And it just it was so much benefit has come from that, just that going to that one thing and you know, going to WordCamps and whatnot, but just going to those in-person events and or designing them yourself, it's it feels scary. Like, what if nobody comes, or you know, only a small percentage actually took advantage of that or whatever, but it's it's super powerful.

Josh Hall 56:00

And uh have I sent you this stuff on our our past two events?

Chris Badgett 56:06

I'd like to see it.

Josh Hall 56:07

Oh, dude, I'll show it to you. I'll send it after this. Yeah, maybe we can talk about this when we when we go on Lifter, because this has been literally like I don't want to say it saved pro, but it made pro a whole other thing when we started our we last year in 25 is when we kicked off our first pro con. And this year we just had our second one. We had nearly 50 people, including plus ones and some sponsors who were there. And oh my gosh, dude, still buzzing two months later. Like it is it is the most rewarding, incredible thing. And much as I love WordCamps and meeting, like because we did have a couple meetups at WordCamps that were smaller groups from Pro, but this is like our conference. There's like ownership of it. Everyone's there, like-minded. Everyone, like you go there, and even we had people who came and didn't know anybody, and they're in the fold so fast, and everyone is just so welcoming and just freaking awesome. And we all might have different areas of interest or different services, but by golly, there's a like-mindedness of like being a web designer today. And yeah, it's it's just it's massive. I mean, people are literally joining pro just to come to our in-person events. In fact, we've coined a new depression. I've never been like so happy to create a new category of depression, and it's been coined the pro-con blues. And it's gonna happen.

Chris Badgett 57:31

It's a great conference, it's it's really sad when it's over, and it thinks in later, and you're on a plane and there's nobody to talk to, and it's like, wait, what just happened?

Josh Hall 57:41

And then your family doesn't want to talk about you know what's going on with WordPress today, and you're like, dang it, I miss hanging out with my friends. So yeah, it is incredible. On that note, I do I didn't want to glance at this while I have you, but WordPress, kind of in wild times. Um, how do you foresee the landscape of courses in WordPress specifically? Because you guys are are built on top of WordPress with Lifter. Um is that changing one day, you think? Do you think it could branch out to something different as far as a self-hosted platform, or are you pretty content with staying with WordPress?

Chris Badgett 58:13

Um I I'm super happy with WordPress. Like WordPress in the past three years has been kind of wild. There's been some challenges, there's some growth challenges. The thing is like 20-some years old, so it's not gonna die. Like it's sort of like earlier in this conversation, our course is dead, is WordPress dead. No, WordPress isn't dead. Is it it's a little flat, but hey, 40% of the internet is still pretty cool. And that's not just you know, like all these continuing education providers I mentioned aren't gonna turn it off. All the course creators and coaches who are established. There is a challenge with younger people coming into WordPress. It's been a challenge for a long time. Like, you know,

In Person Events And WordPress Future

Chris Badgett 58:55

when people like you and I join, we're like getting older, becoming parents, having kids or whatever, but we still we still love it, we still use it. Um, I think agency in particular, um I think there's gonna be an AI slingshot moment. And what I mean by that is because WordPress is open source and there's all these MCP things that I was talking about, where you can chat with your website and connect your cloud or chat GPT or anything, I think that technology is gonna evolve. And the fact that WordPress is open source, and then which means the AI tools can easily get in and start doing stuff, it's gonna be like a renaissance, sort of like how non-developers like me could start building websites, WordPress. But I think we're gonna see that again with AI. And just because AI has been around for a while, I think it's we're just in a situation where, you know, WordPress moves a little slower, but it's established, and the the AI tools are going to just make it super easy for people to customize and tweak and change things. And then also WordPress has another benefit, unlike a private company. Let's say if you're doing a course site on Podio or Teachable or Kajabi or Udemy or something, you don't have access to the whole like plug-in ecosystem and all these agencies that can customize all your stuff and you know be your tech partner and things like that. Um, so I don't think in terms of courses, I don't think WordPress is going away or um, you know, it is a challenge with like the challenge with the younger folks. Like I just got back from VidCon in California, the YouTuber conference. I took my daughter, who's a YouTuber. By the way, she has three times as many subscribers as I do, and she only started like three months ago, but it's uh uh are you comfortable sharing her channel or is that a that's fine. Her name's Hazel Badgett. She does uh dance videos and stuff, so she's she's 14. Um but I'm at this YouTuber conference, and it was really strange because 60% were people like me with their kid, you know, from super young to teenager. And that was like a lot of the conference. And then upstairs, we had the Pro Pass, so there are all these business talks. I ran into Chris Doe, who I think was on your podcast up there. He was super busy. I didn't talk to him, but he was like mobbed with all these people, and like a bunch of famous podcasters you would you would know are up there at the business level. But there's like this disconnect with the younger people, and part of it is you know, they think about business differently. They think about things like Patreon or YouTube ads or uh monetizing monetizing your YouTube channel or brand deals and all this stuff. So, like, but if you think about it, a lot of the course creators and even teachers in real life are older people because they have more experience and knowledge and training.

Josh Hall 1:02:05

Yeah, good point.

Chris Badgett 1:02:06

So that's not changing. But I I want to see more young agency entrepreneurs and more young course creator coach entrepreneurs who you know see WordPress as an option.

Josh Hall 1:02:20

Um, there's also when it comes to like our whole conversation here was largely about like really like how to incorporate you, your story, your experience in your courses. That's very hard to do for somebody who's 19 and doesn't have much life experience. However, I've always felt like online education could be one of two groups. It's like, I did something, I'm gonna share with you my entire experience of like a decade and all my stories and all my war stories and my hardships and and all the challenges. Or you could do and share, like while you're doing it. And you don't need to come across an expert. Yeah, you just like, hey, here's what I'm learning, here's what I'm doing. No pressure to be an expert or the person who knows everything because you're just you're you're doing it. I mean, in a way, when I started my Divi tutorials, that's what I was doing. I didn't come across, I didn't label myself a coach back then. I didn't label myself an expert. I was only using Divi a few years, and I was like, hey guys, here's what I learned with this header trick, and here's my CSS I used. And I think for that generation, I think there's a there's a pressure to come across like an expert, like you know everything, but like, dude, you're freaking 20. Yeah. Like just share what you're doing. If it works for you, share it. Don't need to don't feel like you need to come across like this because you don't have wisdom yet. You know, like you don't, you don't, I don't know what at what age you gaze you gain wisdom on something or however long it takes for for wisdom. But wisdom shines through differently than knowledge, I feel like in education. And you can tell when somebody like there, yeah, there's just there's no pressure to, you know, for the for the youngsters out there. Now you're getting me pumped up to do like a mentor program or something. Um yeah, like just do it.

Chris Badgett 1:04:05

Build in public, I think it's one of those things. Like, if you get super distracted by AI and you're just creating like AI blog content and AI building websites and all this stuff, uh like the creators that are built following a passion in public on YouTube or TikTok or wherever it is, and just enjoy the journey together, they're doing it actually the correct way, which we know as marketers, which is to build your audience first, right? And that's the big advantage young people have is if you build in public starting at a young age and you happen to stay focused on the one passion, which is why the icky guy work is really important at any age, um, and you get that consistency and longevity, you're just set up to monetize or build a business around that later. So, like, why not? And and nobody wants to watch AI videos. I mean, there's some that are entertaining, weird or whatever, but for the most part, people go to YouTube. I feel like YouTube and podcasts are gonna be a stronghold for humanity because particularly with educational content, uh you want to watch, you you don't you want to watch a real human that makes mistakes and has flaws and doesn't know everything. And you also want to listen to real humans talk, not a bunch of robots chatting back and forth with large language model content, right?

Josh Hall 1:05:32

Yeah, no, it's it's a good point. These mediums have something that a any AI buy and any AI LM is not gonna have, which is yeah, real, flawed, di, you know, wisdom, experience, challenges, everything. It is kind of a nice separator from us from the robots. Um shoot, god dang it. There was something oh what I was gonna say is that idea of like building public, that's You know, even even with where I'm at right now doing the 16 years, like I'm still doing that. It's literally what I just yesterday at the time of recording this kicked off, which is this new josh hall.co slash community. It's off my main list. It is just a behind the scenes. There's no offer, there's no, there's no nothing. It is just, I'm gonna pop in and I'm gonna share what I'm doing with the changes with Pro and how I've learned to to build a million dollar community. And I'm yeah, I'm doing the same thing. You know, like even even though I have expertise in one area, I don't consider my ex myself an expert in another area, but I'm in the middle of like sharing what I'm doing. And it's fun, it's kind of cool. I feel like a little rejuvenated. I think we'll probably talk about this on your podcast. But like one thing that's kept me going for doing this so long is like spicing it up and doing something new. It's still, you know, I'm not like starting a landscaping company. I'm not doing something that's crazy different, but it's it is slightly different and it's kind of new and it's kind of fun. And I'm very fuzzy on what that's gonna look like and very slow to get it going, but it is it's kind of cool. So that's my little mentor minute for anyone who's you know doing online catch education for a while. Like you gotta enjoy it, you gotta care, you gotta have some fun. It's always gonna evolve. What gets you here won't get you there. It's a quote that I always go back to with uh you have to have that mindset with things changing so fast. So um, anywho, I want to leave I want to leave it to you to to send us off here, Chris. But where should people go after this to connect with you and check things out?

Chris Badgett 1:07:29

Uh you can find us at lifterlms.com. If you want to check out that uh course on how to create a course with Chat GPT, it's a fun afternoon project. If you want to try that yourself, that's at academy.lifterlms.com.

Josh Hall 1:07:44

Or just Google, like I did, create a course with ChatGPT, and then you'll find it.

Chris Badgett 1:07:48

Second result. And then uh and then also uh if you like podcasts, like Josh, I've been podcasting forever. So I our podcast is called LMS Cast, and the sole focus of that is helping course creators and LMS or e-learning website builders uh find success in all that they do. We've been doing that podcast for 13 years. So uh it's been going for a while. There's also uh uh a couple episodes with Josh there. We'll have a new one coming out soon with Josh as well. So LMS Cast Podcast and lifterlms.com.

Josh Hall 1:08:26

And you're doing the podcast live now on YouTube, and then it just gets it is that the case the way

Where To Connect With Chris

Josh Hall 1:08:33

be before too? Trying to remember.

Chris Badgett 1:08:35

I used to record on Zoom and then but now I found StreamYard and um so basically I simulcast it to like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and uh we still you know download the episode, do some light editing, put the intro, outro on there and stuff like that. So it goes out to the traditional podcast format. But I found this whole thing of live streaming, it just it just really helps with your reach. And one of the most frustrating things about online businesses, I'm sure you can relate, is there's different audiences everywhere. Like the Spotify podcast listener is very different from the person that watches YouTube clips taken out of the the interview or versus the YouTube audience versus your email list versus the webinar attendee. And I don't know, it's it's just one of those things where being everywhere is a little exhausting, but that's why I love StreamYard is you just click a button and it goes.

Josh Hall 1:09:35

Yeah, heck yeah. Well, we'll make sure we announce when that one's gonna be. So, Chris, as always, great to catch up, dude. Thank you for the time. And let's see where we're at next year with AI and courses. Let's do this again.

Chris Badgett 1:09:47

Thanks, Josh.

Josh Hall 1:09:50

Uh, don't you just feel better after listening to Chris for a little while? I sure do. I really do. I I've always appreciated just how calm and chill he is in a world that can be very overwhelming and stressful sometimes. But the fact that he's just he just his optimism just cannot be dented. It's the best. I've literally seen him evolve and innovate with every iteration of technology since I've known him for well over a decade. So he's just one of my absolute favorite people in the business. And um, after this conversation, um, I hope you feel the same. If you'd like to check Chris out, go to Lifter LMS. Actually, you can go to my link, joshhall.co slash lifter, which, if you're interested in creating any sort of online education or training for clients or courses or anything specifically on WordPress, Lifter LMS is the number one tool I recommend, and Chris is at the helm of that. You can go to joshhall.co slash lifter to get a special deal on that. Uh, but definitely connect with Chris. All the links will be at joshhall.co slash 436 for this one. This is episode 436. So all the links that we mentioned will be there again, joshhall.co slash 436. Another link that will be mentioned

Final Links And Sponsor Thanks

Josh Hall 1:10:59

will be Siteground's AI agent. Again, joshhall.co slash Siteground AI. If you'd like to give that a go, a big thanks to Siteground for not only supporting my business as my hosting company for well over a decade, but just for being awesome and for supporting this show and bringing, you know, just such good innovative tools to web designers all across the world for so many years strong. They're just the best. I am uh unashamably a uh a big time fan, a s a fanboy, if you will, a super fan of Siteground, and there's many reasons. So check out Siteground's AI tools. You can go to joshhall.co slash sit groundai to check that out. Big thanks to them for sponsoring the show. All right, guys. Hope you enjoyed this one, and I will see you on the next episode.