Episodes

  • How To Launch Your First Course As Quickly As Possible

    How To Launch Your First Course As Quickly As Possible
    Feb 1 2026
    This episode is brought to you by Popup Maker Boost Your Website’s Leads & Sales with Popup Maker Get started for free or save 15% OFF Popup Maker Premium—the most trusted WordPress popup plugin to grow your email list and increase sales conversions. Get Popup Maker Now In this LMScast episode, Kurt Von Ahnen discusses the challenges of rapidly establishing an online course and the typical errors that hinder developers. He clarifies that the most significant obstacles are frequently psychological rather than technical, including the expert’s curse, impostor syndrome, and overanalyzing before beginning. Kurt stresses how crucial it is to have a well-defined plan before using the platform. Frustration and stalled launches result from the fact that many course developers purchase tools and start creating without first defining their content, structure, or delivery method. Kurt highlights the importance of attention and time dedication. He cautions against attempting to construct courses in brief, dispersed time blocks, stating that frequent disruptions impede progress and make the job appear more difficult than it actually is. Rather, he urges authors to set aside concentrated, uninterrupted time to complete the course’s primary components. Additionally, he minimizes the importance of great manufacturing quality. Kurt emphasizes that solid concepts, well-defined frameworks, and practical approaches are far more important than flawless production by using a real-world example of a sizable, well-funded training firm providing great information with subpar images and sets. In general, Kurt supports: Putting execution ahead of perfectionFirst, developing a bare minimum of a workable courseMaintaining concentration on resolving a particular issueAllowing content quality to take precedence over technical or aesthetic excellence His message is straightforward: action, clarity, and focus rather than over-optimization are the keys to speed, and done is preferable to flawless. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide Here’s Where To Go Next… Get the Course Creator Starter Kit to help you (or your client) create, launch, and scale a high-value online learning website. Also visit the creators of the LMScast podcast over at LifterLMS, the world’s leading most customizable learning management system software for WordPress. Create courses, coaching programs, online schools, and more with LifterLMS. Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014. And be sure to subscribe to get new podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week. Episode Transcript Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badget. I’m the co-founder of lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. State of the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. I’m joined by a special guest, Kurt von Onan. He’s back on the show. Kurt is from Mana No Mas. You can find that@manananomas.com. Kurt also works with LifterLMS directly. You’ve seen him on some of our live calls and office hours, masterminds. Today we’re gonna get into how to launch an online course quickly and get really specific, tell some stories around that. Talk about some of the things that happen if you move too slow. I’d just like to say when it comes to online education, particularly in the entrepreneurial context, that speed is your friend. But before we dive into it, Kurt, welcome back on the show. Kurt Von Ahnen: Thanks, Chris. It’s great to see you again, man. I love our chats. Chris Badgett: Yeah, it’s good to see you too. We’ve been around this industry for a long time. Over a decade you’ve launched courses, you’ve helped many clients launch e-learning websites. What would you say, let’s say if an entrepreneur wants to launch quickly. Their course, but it just, it’s not working or it doesn’t launch, and it’s just where the speed is not happening. What mistakes are they likely making or could be making that are causing challenges with the speed to market? Kurt Von Ahnen: Without trying to be somebody’s psychotherapist, Chris, there, there is a strong, like you call it, the experts curse. And then there’s the imposter syndrome. There’s, all these things that people can mentally sabotage themselves with just to even get to a point where they can launch. And it’s really important to overcome those things. But the thing functionally that I see with people is just not. Really having a, strategy or should I say a, like a real plan like, a real what is my content gonna look like? What’s gonna be included? How am I gonna build this out? ...
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    44 mins
  • Look Inside The World Of Corporate Training Powered By WordPress And LifterLMS

    Look Inside The World Of Corporate Training Powered By WordPress And LifterLMS
    Jan 25 2026
    This episode is brought to you by Popup Maker Boost Your Website’s Leads & Sales with Popup Maker Get started for free or save 15% OFF Popup Maker Premium—the most trusted WordPress popup plugin to grow your email list and increase sales conversions. Get Popup Maker Now In this LMScast episode, Kurt Von Ahnen elaborates on the notion that corporate training is a continuous process that changes with the company rather than a one-time event. He argues that many businesses put off documenting their procedures because they think things will change all the time. However, when teams expand, this kind of thinking frequently results in confusion, inefficiency, and knowledge loss. Kurt Von Ahnen is known as a highly skilled corporate training and e-learning specialist who has worked with LifterLMS for more than ten years. Before working directly with the LifterLMS team and starting his own company, Manana No Mas, which focuses on LifterLMS and WordPress-based training solutions. Businesses establish clarity and consistency even when processes change by documenting them early on through lessons, screen recordings, and organized training. Kurt highlights that corporate training reduces risk when people go and stops the emergence of unhealthy “this is how we really do it” workarounds by transferring knowledge from individuals to the firm itself. Beyond onboarding, he notes that training may be used for a variety of strategic objectives, such as enhancing sales effectiveness, assisting with customer education, uniting teams around common standards, and raising business valuation. By combining training materials into a single, adaptable platform, assigning content by role or group, and continuously improving their internal “business product,” WordPress and LifterLMS enable organizations to transform training from a reactive expense into a key driver of stability, scalability, and long-term growth. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide Here’s Where To Go Next… Get the Course Creator Starter Kit to help you (or your client) create, launch, and scale a high-value online learning website. Also visit the creators of the LMScast podcast over at LifterLMS, the world’s leading most customizable learning management system software for WordPress. Create courses, coaching programs, online schools, and more with LifterLMS. Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014. And be sure to subscribe to get new podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week. Episode Transcript Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badget. I’m the co-founder of LifterLMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. State of the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show. Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. We’re joined by a special guest. He’s back on the show. It’s Kurt Von Onan from Manana Nomas. He also works directly with LifterLMS. Kurt is awesome. He’s been around the LifterLMS project for a decade or so, a very long time. Uh, Kurt started as. LifterLMS user started coming to our office hours, then got a job doing some work for LifterLMS. He has an agency called Mon Ana Nomas and does a bunch of lifter projects. Uh, I’ve had the pleasure of spending time with Kurt at various conferences and things. Kurt’s awesome. He has a lot of unique experience. We’re gonna be diving deep into corporate training and using WordPress and. LifterLMS and other tools to solve a different kind of e-learning use case, which is corporate training, which is very different from being a subject matter expert trying to make money on the internet selling courses to any people all over the world. Corporate training is very different, but first, welcome back on the show, Kurt. Kurt Von Ahnen: Chris, it’s awesome to be back, man. I love having chats with you. Chris Badgett: Yeah, I love to get into your experience ’cause you have so many stories and so much unique experience. Uh, from your career and just in life, but let’s start, for those out there listening who may be a little fuzzy on exactly what corporate training is, how, how would you define it? Both like at the large scale, maybe the medium scale and the small scale? Kurt Von Ahnen: Well. Corporate training, it, some people say, well it’s just course creation and it’s not. They’re, they’re, they really are separate entities in how they function, how they work, how they, how they do. So corporate training really is the idea that, you know, any kind of function or process within a corporate frame set should be documented and disseminated to the staff in an organized way. And, and that’s like...
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    40 mins
  • Making LMS Website Magic With Emily Middleton

    Making LMS Website Magic With Emily Middleton
    Jan 18 2026
    This episode is brought to you by Popup Maker Boost Your Website’s Leads & Sales with Popup Maker Get started for free or save 15% OFF Popup Maker Premium—the most trusted WordPress popup plugin to grow your email list and increase sales conversions. Get Popup Maker Now According to Emily Middleton, the way she operates WP Course Guide is purposefully distinct from a standard agency or freelancer model since she bases her company on close, intimate connections with her clients.Her early exposure to entrepreneurship through her family and her long-standing relationship with LifterLMS, which provided her with a strong feeling of commu nity, trust, and mentoring from the start of her career, have had a significant impact on her approach. Emily also explains key LMS website-making strategies using WordPress. As a result, she views each project as a part of a greater human tale rather than a straightforward technical assignment, treating clients as partners and frequently as friends, and engaging emotionally in their success. She highlights the value of live collaboration, particularly via Zoom, stating that it enables her to work more quickly, prevent misunderstandings, and gain a deeper understanding of the tactical and emotional difficulties her customers are having. Emily sees her work as both a technical problem-solver and a soothing presence, and many of the individuals she assists come to her during stressful times when a website is faulty, a launch is failing, or a business choice feels overwhelming. Face-to-face communication allows her to pick up on tone, impatience, reluctance, or doubt, all of which might disclose deeper business issues that would not come out through email alone. Emily also talks about how her work is greatly impacted by ADHD. Instead of viewing it as a drawback, she characterizes it as a strength that enables her to think fast, adjust rapidly, pick up on minute details, and maintain a high level of engagement when working with others. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide Here’s Where To Go Next… Get the Course Creator Starter Kit to help you (or your client) create, launch, and scale a high-value online learning website. Also visit the creators of the LMScast podcast over at LifterLMS, the world’s leading most customizable learning management system software for WordPress. Create courses, coaching programs, online schools, and more with LifterLMS. Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014. And be sure to subscribe to get new podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week. Episode Transcript Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badget. I’m the co-founder of LifterLMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. State of the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. I’m joined by a special guest today. Her name is Emily Middleton. She’s from WP Course Guide. You can find that@wpcourseguide.com. Emily runs an agency. She specializes in a lot of LMS related work. She’s been around the block for about a decade, maybe more. I don’t know. It’s been a long time. So there’s tons of experience here. One of the things that Emily does differently is how she runs her agency and how she works with clients. We’re gonna start with that. But first, welcome back on the show. Emily. Emily Middleton: Thank you for having me, Chris. I’m happy to be here. Chris Badgett: Let’s start with WP Course Guide. I’ve always been impressed with how you work with clients. For example, we, Emily also does some work directly with LifterLMS and some of our. Live calls, like the Office Hours Mastermind that universe bundle and hire people get access to for a weekly office hours mastermind as well as our ask us anything calls, which happened weekly. But one, one time we were getting together for a Zoom meeting and you were actually at one of your agency clients. Place, which was really interesting, and I’ve seen that before where you’d pop up on the radar and you’re like, hanging out with LifterLMS users and clients of WP Course Guide. Tell us your approach to working with people and how you’re, you perhaps approach it a little differently than other freelancers or agencies when they work with clients. Emily Middleton: Thank you. That’s a really good question. I, think it’s a funny thing that. That I do, that’s bleeding my personality into my business and part of how I run things. I do business on a very personal level, and I think the way I was intro to business was on a very personal level, so my. Mother did some work with lifterLMSlong time ago, like ...
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    34 mins
  • Best WordPress Plugins for LMS Websites Besides LifterLMS

    Best WordPress Plugins for LMS Websites Besides LifterLMS
    Jan 12 2026
    This episode is brought to you by Popup Maker Boost Your Website’s Leads & Sales with Popup Maker Get started for free or save 15% OFF Popup Maker Premium—the most trusted WordPress popup plugin to grow your email list and increase sales conversions. Get Popup Maker Now Chris Badgett offers a comprehensive overview to the top WordPress plugins in this episode for creating and expanding an LMS website that goes beyond the LifterLMS core. He begins by emphasizing that LifterLMS itself handles almost all of the fundamental LMS features, such as creating courses, student dashboards, user accounts, memberships, e-commerce with PayPal or credit card payments, group sales, and engagement tools like achievement badges, certificates, gamification, and behavior-based emails. He does, however, stress that extra plugins are frequently required to operate a completely effective and user-friendly LMS site. He suggests the free User Switching plugin, which enables administrators to swap identities to solve difficulties as a student or instructor, and WP Mail Log, which records all transactional emails received from the site, including enrollment notices and password resets, for site administration and user experience. He suggests the free User Switching plugin, which enables administrators to swap identities to solve difficulties as a student or instructor, and WP Mail Log, which records all transactional emails received from the site, including enrollment notices and password resets, for site administration and user experience. He emphasizes Document Library Pro, a commercial plugin for organizing and graphically displaying files while managing member access, and Embed Any Document, which can be used to display PowerPoint, Keynote, or PDF files within classes. Loco Translate is crucial for modifying the site’s language and material. He recommends Popup Maker for interesting popups and WP Fusion to sync users with automation solutions for marketing, CRM, and revenue management. He suggests utilizing Gravity View in conjunction with a form plugin like as Gravity Forms to gather and present user-submitted data for forms and data management. Additionally, SEO is crucial, and plugins like Rank Math and Yoast SEO may assist increase the exposure of a website. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide Here’s Where To Go Next… Get the Course Creator Starter Kit to help you (or your client) create, launch, and scale a high-value online learning website. Also visit the creators of the LMScast podcast over at LifterLMS, the world’s leading most customizable learning management system software for WordPress. Create courses, coaching programs, online schools, and more with LifterLMS. Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014. And be sure to subscribe to get new podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week. Episode Transcript: Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badget. I’m the co-founder of lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. State of the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. I’m Chris Badgett, and today I’m doing a solo episode on the best plugins, the best WordPress plugins for your learning management system website. Besides, of course, LifterLMS, we’re gonna go over free plugins that I use on every LMS site that I build. Also some paid ones that are my top recommendations for the best plugins. Now, an LMS site is not just courses and memberships and e-commerce and student dashboards. It’s also a fully functioning website that needs, you know, things from marketing, things for operations, things for user experience, and things for scaling for when your website gets really successful. So think about lifter LMS as the best all-in-one learning management system solution for WordPress. It covers all the LMS features. Everything from courses, student dashboards, user accounts, reporting, uh, gamification, engagement, all that stuff, all that LMS stuff is there. All the membership stuff is there for course, bundles. For locking down access to other parts of your site, outside of the courses. And, uh, also lifter LMS covers the e-commerce piece. So whether you’re selling with, with taking credit card payments or PayPal payments, or you’re using WooCommerce or you want to do group sales where somebody buys a bunch of seats for a group of people, that’s all covered within the lifter LMS E-commerce. Then all the engagement features for gamification, like achievement badges, certificates, behavior-based emails that are triggered based on actions in the LMS. This is all ...
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    26 mins
  • How To Profit From Pain

    How To Profit From Pain
    Jan 6 2026
    This episode is brought to you by Popup Maker Boost Your Website’s Leads & Sales with Popup Maker Get started for free or save 15% OFF Popup Maker Premium—the most trusted WordPress popup plugin to grow your email list and increase sales conversions. Get Popup Maker Now In this LMScast, Chris Badgett clarifies that “profiting from pain” refers to generating enormous value via the resolution of significant issues rather than exploiting people. Because conventional educational systems concentrate on teaching knowledge (mechanisms) rather than addressing why someone urgently needs that information, pain is frequently misinterpreted in the classroom. In actuality, they purchase pain alleviation and a clear route to a better result rather than classes, coaching, or memberships. He presents Dane Maxwell’s client-Result-Mechanism structure, stressing that everything must begin with a single client rather than a product. The course or coaching program is only the means by which the client transitions from suffering to relief. The client has a problem they wish to avoid and a goal they wish to achieve. The majority of course designers fail because they don’t fully get the suffering that generates actual market demand and instead think like experts, creating material first. Chris distinguishes clearly between severe pain and mild discomfort. An instigating event, such as a divorce, the birth of a child, sleeplessness, slowed company development, or an impending deadline like retirement or a lease expiration, can cause acute pain. People actively seek out answers and are prepared to spend since these difficulties are urgent, time-bound, and emotionally taxing. For this reason, pain-relieving offerings perform better than proactive but non-urgent “vitamin” courses. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide Here’s Where To Go Next… Get the Course Creator Starter Kit to help you (or your client) create, launch, and scale a high-value online learning website. Also visit the creators of the LMScast podcast over at LifterLMS, the world’s leading most customizable learning management system software for WordPress. Create courses, coaching programs, online schools, and more with LifterLMS. Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014. And be sure to subscribe to get new podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week. Episode Transcript: Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badget. I’m the co-founder of LifterLMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. State of the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. Today I’m gonna be doing a solo episode with you about how to profit from pain. So pain is very misunderstood in the education space. We’re gonna get into that. When I talk about profit, I’m not talking about exploitation, I’m talking about value creation. So having a clear offer with clear conversions and more impact by solving pain, how to think about pain differently. By the way, we have a whole lesson in the Lifter LMS Academy course called the Perfect Offer Playbook, where we go even deeper on pain than what we’re gonna talk about today here. But I wanted to loop you in to start thinking differently about pain. Either in a new online course or coaching program or even business that you’re creating and how does leverage that to your advantage so that you can create much more impact, make more profit, have more fun, have a lot less friction, and doing the hard work of education entrepreneurship. So there’s a great old episode on this podcast that I did with Dane Maxwell. He dropped this solution from his book Start From Zero. He says that the holy grail of business is three things, a customer, a result, and a mechanism. And once I heard that framework and started using it and what I do, everything just started clicking for me. And we’re gonna. Unpack that, but basically you have to have a clear customer. I’m a big fan of putting a customer at the center of your business, not your product or your service, or your course, your membership or your offer. So a clear customer, the mechanism is how you do what you do. Ideally, it’s a unique mechanism. Now your mechanism will be unique no matter what, because there’s only one you, which doesn’t mean you can’t borrow. Pieces and parts from other folks, just like I just did with Dane Maxwell’s framework of the customer result mechanism. But the mechanism is basically how you do what you do when you create a course and it’s teaching somebody something. Maybe there’s quizzes, assignments, action items, and so on. ...
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    31 mins
  • Plan Your Online Education Business for 2026

    Plan Your Online Education Business for 2026
    Dec 29 2025
    This episode is brought to you by Popup Maker Boost Your Website’s Leads & Sales with Popup Maker Get started for free or save 15% OFF Popup Maker Premium—the most trusted WordPress popup plugin to grow your email list and increase sales conversions. Get Popup Maker Now Chris Badgett offers a comprehensive guide on how to strategically plan your online education business for 2026 in this LMScast episode. He emphasizes that planning is about developing clarity, focus, and adaptability to maximize the probability of success rather than forecasting the future. He starts out by emphasizing how crucial it is to determine your main audience, or the “who,” and comprehend their requirements, goals, and frustrations. Chris clarifies that many business owners erroneously concentrate on their product or method rather than the results that their clients need, and he advocates delving deeply into details like quickness, assurance, understanding, or preventing unfavorable outcomes. Chris presents a multi-layered strategy for planning.In order to create ambitious long-term goals, he suggests beginning with a 10-year vision, reducing it to a 3-year vision for more achievable milestones, and finally creating a comprehensive 1-year plan. From there, weekly and daily execution guarantees momentum and advancement, while quarterly themes aid in prioritizing focal areas, important projects, and initiatives. He highlights the significance of “anti-goals,” or things you consciously choose not to pursue in order to stay focused and avoid distractions. He also emphasizes how important it is to link your company with its goal, vision, and values. Values influence your decision-making and corporate culture, vision reflects the long-term effect you wish to generate for your audience, and mission outlines how you will do it. Chris demonstrates how these components influence hiring, team duties, and leadership choices using examples from LifterLMS. Chris delves into operational planning, outlining how to view your company as a “product” made up of people, procedures, and technology. Even for solopreneurs, he advises creating a basic organizational chart to clearly define roles and duties and to choose where to assign or employ staff. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide Here’s Where To Go Next… Get the Course Creator Starter Kit to help you (or your client) create, launch, and scale a high-value online learning website. Also visit the creators of the LMScast podcast over at LifterLMS, the world’s leading most customizable learning management system software for WordPress. Create courses, coaching programs, online schools, and more with LifterLMS. Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014. And be sure to subscribe to get new podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week. Episode Transcript You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badget. I’m the co-founder of lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. State of the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. I’m Chris Badgett, and today I’m doing a solo episode about how to plan for an entire year as I’m recording this. It’s the tail end of 2025, and we have a resource on the Lifter LMS website in the lifter LMS Academy called the Annual Planning System. I’m gonna go over some of the highest level. Concepts in that, but I would encourage you to go check out the annual planning system. I happen to actually be a very big planner and believer in plans and there’s so much going on in our space in terms of. Change and disruption and the economy and geopolitics and everything that having a plan, an intentional plan, but more importantly than a plan, is the system you use to create the plan can really increase your odds of success as a course creator, a coach, a membership site owner as a WordPress professional who builds learning management system websites for clients. I’m gonna give you all the secret sauce on planning. And, we’re in this interesting stage where the education market is maturing. We have artificial intelligence accelerating in the world, in the economy, in tech. But keep in mind that planning doesn’t equal prediction, but what a plan gives you is a much higher odd of success. So there’s a famous quote that Mike Tyson says that everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face. But what I wanna say is the act of planning and coming up with a strong plan is super important and makes you far more robust and capable and clear. A better leader and just an easier way of being in the world in terms of business and even life. So ...
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    39 mins
  • How To Build an AI Teacher With ChatGPT, WordPress, and LifterLMS Online Language Learning With Marcus Carter

    How To Build an AI Teacher With ChatGPT, WordPress, and LifterLMS Online Language Learning With Marcus Carter
    Dec 22 2025
    This episode is brought to you by Popup Maker Boost Your Website’s Leads & Sales with Popup Maker Get started for free or save 15% OFF Popup Maker Premium—the most trusted WordPress popup plugin to grow your email list and increase sales conversions. Get Popup Maker Now Marcus Carter from Carter School of English returns in this episode of LMScast to provide a detailed look at how he turned decades of conventional English instruction into a scalable online learning company driven by LifterLMS and WordPress. Marcus, who has taught for more than 30 years, describes how the COVID epidemic compelled him to switch from traditional language schools to virtual ones. His tentative TikTok videos and lack of camera confidence eventually developed into a powerful social media presence, which helped him see the possibilities of digital courses as a long-term business strategy. He distinguished himself in a competitive market by concentrating on his proficiency in phonetics and multilingual instruction for Spanish speakers. Marcus also discusses how, after months of trial and error and sluggish early development, YouTube turned out to be his most successful growth and sales channel. One little alteration to a thumbnail served as the catalyst for a breakout video that has already amassed millions of views after more than 160 films were uploaded before gaining significant popularity. From there, he was able to create a devoted worldwide audience by using YouTube to easily integrate content with course sales through straightforward links and weekly live sessions. Marcus highlights his open, trust-first approach to marketing throughout the discussion, providing prospective students with thorough walkthroughs of his courses rather than depending only on exaggerated claims. He talks on how producing top-notch courses takes a lot of time and effort often nearly a year each course and why having several revenue streams such as YouTube, teaching, sponsors, and digital goods is crucial for long-term viability. Marcus concludes by discussing how he is now utilizing AI to make language learning more dynamic and interesting, continuing to push the limits of LifterLMS’s capabilities while producing significant results for students worldwide. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide Here’s Where To Go Next… Get the Course Creator Starter Kit to help you (or your client) create, launch, and scale a high-value online learning website. Also visit the creators of the LMScast podcast over at LifterLMS, the world’s leading most customizable learning management system software for WordPress. Create courses, coaching programs, online schools, and more with LifterLMS. Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014. And be sure to subscribe to get new podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week. Episode Transcript Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badget. I’m the co-founder of lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. State of the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMS Cast. Today I’m joined by a special guest. He’s back on the show. It’s Marcus Carter. He’s from Carter’s school of english.com, the Carter Method. And Marcus, what this episode is primarily gonna be about is how he’s figured out to make online language learning more engaging, more effective, more interactive, how to push the boundaries with WordPress Lifter LMS using AI to help. This is gonna be super fascinating, but first, welcome to the show, Marcus. Marcus Carter: Thanks very much, Chris. It’s a pleasure to be here. Be here. Chris Badgett: I’m real excited you’re here. And for those of you who are listening via podcast a little later in the show where Marcus is actually gonna get into screen sharing. So if you wanna see what we’re talking about, go to the lifter, LMS YouTube channel. And find this episode. If you type in LMS cast Marcus Carter, you’ll find it. And if you have the ability to switch over to the YouTube while you’re listening right now, I’d recommend doing that. But first, Marcus, let’s give a little context. Tell us about the Carter School of english.com. Just bring us up to speed on what it is, how long it’s been running, and your brand and your approach, and what your mission is and what’s going on. Marcus Carter: Okay I’ve been teaching English for the last 30 years and up until COVID the Pandemic I had my own language schools and we were all obviously, in different places and in different towns. And then COVID hit and that all went to pot, basically. And we had to diversify ...
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    1 hr and 7 mins
  • Cohort vs Self-Paced Courses: How to Choose the Right Online Course Model

    Cohort vs Self-Paced Courses: How to Choose the Right Online Course Model
    Dec 14 2025
    This episode is brought to you by Popup Maker Boost Your Website’s Leads & Sales with Popup Maker Get started for free or save 15% OFF Popup Maker Premium—the most trusted WordPress popup plugin to grow your email list and increase sales conversions. Get Popup Maker Now Chris Badgett explains the main distinctions between cohort-based and self-paced online courses in this LMScast episode, assisting course designers in selecting the approach that best suits their objectives. According to him, self-paced courses are very scalable and manageable since they let students learn on their own, at their own pace, and at any time. These courses may produce everlasting revenue with minimal expense, and they are particularly effective for information-rich content and big, diversified audiences. The drawback of self-paced courses is that they frequently have lower completion rates, worse responsibility, less community involvement, and lower perceived value, which typically translates into cheaper costs and fewer student changes. Chris compares this to cohort-based courses, in which students progress through the course on a same schedule. Better learning results, more engagement, a deeper sense of community, and inherent accountability are all produced by this system. Cohorts frequently feature peer interaction, group coaching, and live training, which greatly raises the perceived value and enables producers to charge higher costs. 2025 WordPress LMS Buyer’s Guide Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech. Download the Buyer’s Guide Here’s Where To Go Next… Get the Course Creator Starter Kit to help you (or your client) create, launch, and scale a high-value online learning website. Also visit the creators of the LMScast podcast over at LifterLMS, the world’s leading most customizable learning management system software for WordPress. Create courses, coaching programs, online schools, and more with LifterLMS. Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014. And be sure to subscribe to get new podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week. Episode Transcript Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badget. I’m the co-founder of LifterLMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. State of the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show. ​Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMS Cast. I’m Chris Badgett doing a solo episode here, and today we’re gonna get into cohort based online courses versus self-paced online courses. How to decide which one is the right one for you. I’ve got a surprise for you in this episode. There is a hybrid version, which we’ll get into too, which I’m a big fan o of. First, let’s start with a self-based course. Like what does that mean? So, a self-paced course is like the courses that you see on websites like you did Me or Masterclass. They often contain a series of valuable. Video lessons, maybe some quizzes, maybe some worksheets, but it’s self-paced. There’s really, uh, not much teacher interaction, probably none at all. This is why you have some of the best instructors or subject matter experts in the world on a platform like masterclass. They create a wonderful course with awesome ideas and content and stories. But you can’t interact with them at all. And that’s why Masterclass costs $20 a month, basically. Similar, same is similar with Udemi. It’s mostly just self-paced. Online courses and self-paced online courses are great. For example, we have a self-paced online course at LifterLMS called the LifterLMS Quickstart course. It’s a self-paced course that essentially. It teaches you the 5% of the most essential features of LifterLMS, so that you can create and launch an online course website and start getting sales, which show you all the critical steps in under 40 minutes of training. That’s a very powerful, popular free, self-paced online course that we make at LifterLMS. So what is a cohort based online course? A cohort based online course is where a group of people come into a course and they kind of go through it together at the same time. So if you think back to the offline world, so when you go to school, you’re the class of whatever year you’re kind of with a cohort of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors, and so on. You move as a cohort through the system. So that’s what a cohort based online course is. So that’s how they’re different. And a cohort has a lot of magic that comes with it, but it also comes with some trade-offs and by magic that comes with it. What I mean is it’s a very different thing to be an individual like by yourself taking a self-paced. Self-paced online course learning about a subject versus kind of joining a group ...
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    29 mins