• AI Empowered Course SCORM Content Creation With Joe Gorup From CourseAvenue
    Mar 22 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 episode, Joe Gorup goes into great detail about how his platform CourseAvenue uses a highly developed AI system called Course Advisor to transform complicated, dense source materials (like technical documents, PDFs, or government regulations) into fully structured, instructionally sound online courses in a matter of minutes. Joe Gorup founded CourseAvenue and is a software developer and innovator in e-learning. Using API interfaces, these courses are then smoothly distributed via LifterLMS, enabling student tracking, course structuring, and lesson development to be done automatically. In contrast to simple AI prompting tools, his system employs a multi-step “AI factory” process that evaluates the length, context, and purpose of the content, applies instructional design frameworks such as Bloom’s Taxonomy, and creates assessments and lessons that are appropriate for various learning levels. He emphasizes that the true issue this addresses is that the majority of subject matter experts such as attorneys, engineers, or compliance officers are not qualified teachers, which makes it challenging and costly to transform their expertise into useful training (which often costs up to $100,000 per course). Beyond creation, the platform offers sophisticated learning analytics that analyze everything from individual question performance to completion rates, assisting in the identification of gaps in learner comprehension and course quality. By utilizing a specially designed bridge to enable bookmarking, scoring, and progress tracking, it also tackles important technical issues like SCORM integration within WordPress. Additionally, it guarantees complete accessibility compliance (WCAG/Section 508), making courses usable for students with disabilities. 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. 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 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. His name is Joe Goup. He’s the founder of course avenue.com. You gotta see what he is built over@gov.education. Which is a super cool implementation, of course, avenue’s, unique way of creating course content and then feeding it into a lifter LMS site. But first, welcome to the show, Joe. Joe Gorup: Hey, thanks a lot, Chris. I appreciate the chance to chat with you and the folks. Yeah it’s a wild rule in the LMS and education and content space these days and to throw our hat in the ring and show people what we’re doing. So I appreciate the opportunity. Chris Badgett: Yeah, it’s a, it is a busy space. There’s literally 500 LMSs out there. AI is taking over the world. The economy’s in flux and everybody’s just trying to figure things out, and you’re doing some really interesting stuff at the intersection of all those. Tell us about gov. Do education, what is it? Why’d you build it? How does it work? Joe Gorup: Great. It came from the notion of as a company course avenue, which I started early on works a lot in the federal government. People use our core our, authoring tool to build courses on everything from inspecting meat packing plants to ethics compliance for federal lawyers. And so over the years, we just saw this kind of huge gap between there’s dense regulations. Are hard to understand. And then the volume of time it takes to actually educate someone on what is in these regulations. And the one rule of thumb that we’ve used within the federal government is a hundred thousand dollars per course. One of my associates, director of training, yeah, I had a million dollars budget and I had to build 10 courses in one year, stressed out to the to the max. But he did it. And...
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    47 mins
  • Transform Your Teaching With Lee-Anne Ragan
    Mar 15 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 episode of LMScast, learning and development specialist Lee-Anne Ragan, who has over 40 years of experience working with international organizations, such as the United Nations, shares useful tips for designing more successful and captivating learning opportunities. According to her, many course designers fail because they don’t always understand how people learn best, not because they lack knowledge. In order to assist trainers in creating well-rounded learning programs, Lee-Anne presents her SAKE framework, which stands for Skills, Attitude, Knowledge, and Experience. While many courses place a lot of emphasis on knowledge such as theory, frameworks, and information, Lee-Anne highlights that students really appreciate experiencing the most, which means having the chance to put what they’ve learned into practice after the course. However, the component that online courses and training programs most commonly lack is experience. Additionally, Lee-Anne talks about “information overload,” or what she refers to as “infobesity,” which is a condition in which individuals are overloaded with information and have shorter attention spans. Because of this, course designers must make their material interesting, helpful, and instantly applicable in order to lower learning friction. She suggests planning instruction for both before and after the learning experience, in addition to what occurs during the course. For instance, teachers might use resources like her HARP technique (Highlights, Actions, Resources, and Pictures) to assist students capture important discoveries in advance. Through challenges, communities, or practical projects that promote ongoing practice, designers should assist students in putting their knowledge into practice after the course. The significance of establishing a psychologically secure learning environment is another important idea Lee-Anne emphasizes. She describes how the amygdala in the brain affects learning by assessing whether a student feels scared or comfortable. 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. Her name is Lee-Anne Ragan. She’s at rock paper scissors ink.com. I met Leanne at a conference in the UK for membership sites. It was awesome to connect and she has an interesting life, as well as interesting skills, tips, and knowledge to share about how to be. A better teacher, workshop leader, coach, communicator. But before we dive into it, first, welcome to the show, Leanne. Lee-Anne Ragan: Thank you, Chris. I am so excited to be here. And just a big shout out to all your listeners and your viewers for being interested and showing up and times are challenging right now. And thank you for being here. We appreciate it. Chris Badgett: Let’s share a little bit about your life. ’cause I find it so interesting, like some of the things you’ve done and places you’ve lived. Give us a little context. Into the leanne that we’re, listening to or watching today? Lee-Anne Ragan: That’s a good question. I am a learning and development expert. I’ve been in that field for, gosh, 40 years or something like that. I hold a Canadian passport. I’m a proud Canadian, and I just spent the last 14 years living in Kenya in East Africa. And you might think to yourself, this does not look like a Kenyan background. It’s because I’ve just moved to France. So I am in Southern France adjusting to weather that is very different from Kenya. And I’ve just, I think I’ve been here a few months and I’ve just about finished the, when I see a ...
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    40 mins
  • How to Decide Which eLearning Content Should Be Free vs Paid
    Mar 9 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 discusses how course designers may choose which e-learning materials should be paid for and which should be free in this episode. He emphasizes that while many producers are afraid to share too much information for free, free material is actually crucial for gaining a following, developing credibility, and creating authority. Introductory ideas, concepts, brief advice, blog entries, tutorials, webinars, podcasts, or mini-courses that assist individuals in learning about the subject and grasping its fundamentals are examples of free content. These tools serve as a marketing engine that attracts new students to the ecosystem and motivates them to continue participating. Conversely, sponsored material need to concentrate on providing learners with deeper results and actual transformation. This includes advanced lectures, certificates, coaching, community access, organized, step-by-step training programs, and effective templates or tools that enable students to accomplish a particular objective more quickly and with greater assistance. Chris offers a straightforward test: if the information primarily raises awareness or teaches an idea, it may be free; but, if it aids in a major shift or the implementation of an entire system, it should be paid for. In general, he advises course designers to reserve the organized systems and results-oriented training for their premium paid products and to provide more worthwhile free content to expand their audience. 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. I’m Chris Badgett, and today we’re gonna be doing a solo episode on how to decide which of your e-learning content to make free versus paid. There’s a whole free versus paid dilemma when you’re creating an online course or a membership site, a coaching program, an online education company. There’s this tension between what kind of free content or free products should I put out there versus premium content That’s only for my paying customers, students, or members. So there’s a fear of giving away too much for free. And, but it’s a super important one because it dramatically impacts your growth, your scale, your profitability, and your brand authority. Essentially free content, fuels paid success. So that’s the way to think about it. If I had to guess, and you’re out there listening or watching, most people don’t give away enough for free. But there are some that give away too much and just put it all out there and can never monetize. So both problems are bad, but the more common problem. Is people not giving away free stuff. They get a little too in their head about protecting their intellectual property, and a customer has to pay me money in order for me to help them at all kind of thing. That’s not the right mindset for growth and scale. So essentially the core principle is that you use free content to attract and then paid content to create the main transformation. Or benefit. So free is about discovery building trust, audience building, and paid is about deeper outcomes and implementation or implementation support. That’s more direct. So there’s like also like within the ping bucket of e-learning content. There’s things that can be very cheap, and then there are things that can be very expensive. So think about free content as creating awareness, low cost content, courses, memberships, coaching calls, whatever that create activation. But then the most expensive thing is actually what creates the transformation. So let’s. Talk about what makes really perfect free content. And to clarify...
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    18 mins
  • Culture by Design: How We Use LifterLMS to Shape How We Work
    Mar 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 Chris Badgett and Alex Panagis delve deeply into the meaning of corporate culture and how it influences every aspect of a business in this episode of LMScast. They clarify that a company’s culture is its actual conduct rather than merely a collection of words on a “About” page. The founder’s character and principles are the foundation, but as the team expands, each member adds to it. Culture will develop whether or not you want for it to. The secret is to intentionally mold it with a distinct vision, goal, and guiding principles. Hires, firings, product choices, and even crisis management are filtered via LifterLMS principles, which include clear communication, extreme ownership, continuous improvement, reducing friction, community, and prioritizing student success. Chris compares what seems strange to those ideals in order to determine the mismatch. They also talk about recruiting people based on their character rather than their abilities. Character and value alignment cannot be taught, but skills can. In order to guarantee cultural fit, LifterLMS incorporates a probationary term into the recruiting process, allowing candidates to grow while being open about expectations. It’s never easy to let someone go, but when they consistently behave against the company’s basic beliefs, it becomes a vital move for both the organization and the individual, who could do better in a different setting. Alex adds that sometimes releasing someone is ultimately beneficial for them, helping them find a workplace that aligns more naturally with how they operate. Intentional communication and organized thought are two other key themes. Chris describes how LifterLMS meticulously defines and documents projects before creating them using the Shape Up technique, which was influenced by Basecamp’s developers, 37signals. Rather of making a haphazard decision to “build a feature,” they develop comprehensive proposals that include customer pain points, goals, risks, and strategies for implementation. 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. Today I’m joined by a special guest. He’s back on the show. It’s been a while since he’s been on the show. We’ve got Alex Panus from Scale Math. You can find alex@scalemath.com scale. Math also works directly with Lifter LMS on growth initiatives. It’s been several months. It’s been awesome. Today we’re gonna dive into culture, IE, company, culture and mission, vision and values, how to shape culture, what you can’t shape, how it can work well, how it can’t work well, how to hire and fire against it and make your life easier. We’re gonna get into a lot of culture topics, but first, welcome to the show, Alex. Alex Panagis: Thank you. Great to be here. Chris Badgett: Yeah, this a, this is a fun one to dive into. I have a background in anthropology. So for me, culture has always been interesting internationally and even within the United States where I live, there’s all kinds of cultures and subcultures and all kinds of things, but culture is alive and well in business and entrepreneurship as well. I think one of the wildest ideas with culture is you have it no matter what. It’s just, it’s gonna be there. It starts usually with kind of the personality of the founder, but particularly as a team grows every member in that business contributes to the culture in the same way that every person in a society or a nation contributes in their own way to the culture. So you can’t always control it, but it will always. Be there. Maybe let’s start just with a general question. ...
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    52 mins
  • The Secret World Of Continuing Education Entrepreneurship
    Feb 22 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 Kurt Von Ahnen discusses in this LMScast episode that continuing education (CE), which is one of the most reliable and scalable options in online learning, is basically corporate training provided in accordance with certification or licensing criteria. He draws attention to the fact that professionals in fields like healthcare, real estate, and technical professions need to renew their certificates on a regular basis, which generates steady income for CE providers. In addition to providing compelling features like credit tracking, expiration management, recertification, and group-based bulk sales, Kurt illustrates how utilizing WordPress with LifterLMS can significantly cut costs by citing actual cases of businesses overspending on enterprise LMS platforms for hundreds of thousands of dollars. He also highlights hybrid training, which combines online theory and in-person practical, as a way to save money and explains how seasoned professionals frequently choose CE entrepreneurship as a wise career move. Kurt argues that many agencies and course designers ignore continuing education as a lucrative, impact-driven, and recurring niche. 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 LMScasts. I’m Chris and I’m joined by a special guest, Kurt Von Onan. He’s back on the show, and today we’re gonna go over the world of continuing education, doing it in WordPress, and really get into the opportunity. Of continuing education and how to think about it, how to do better at it, whether you’re a continuing education provider or an agency who’s assisting a continuing education provider with delivering the product. But first, welcome to the show. Kurt Kurt Von Ahnen: Chris. Yeah, it’s amazing, dude. I’m so glad to be back. It’s always fun to chat with you. Chris Badgett: Awesome. Yeah. And this is good stuff ’cause you have a lot of experience with continuing education clients at Manano, NOMAS and a lifter for over a decade. We know that the people that are the most successful with our product are in the continuing education niche. That doesn’t mean you can’t be successful if you’re a coach or course creator or a school. But based on what we know from our interviews and everything, the continuing education platforms that are successful are sometimes very successful financially and also in terms of the impact and reach they have. One of the first things I wanted to ask you you had a great insight on differentiating the difference between corporate training and continuing education. So I like, where you went with that, tell us how you see those things as being different, but very related. Kurt Von Ahnen: So I, I think that’s interesting actually, Chris, because I don’t know that a lot of people would see things the way that I see things, but it’s because I’ve had the benefit of being I was the corporate training manager. I, I am the agency owner and I do. I’m a course creator so, I have the, view, the perspective of all three. And when you are making continuing education, you are basically a corporate trainer, but it’s under contract. And a lot of people just don’t make that connection. They don’t really, they think corporate training is this weird, sterile, like some other kind of platform, some other weird thing that they’re taking where it’s mandatory training or whatever. And then they think that continuing education is, some kind of other product. And then we think of course, creators as being like. This like soft cuddly I’m really committed to this is my passion and I wanna share knitting with...
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    47 mins
  • How To Validate An Online Course To Maximize Your Success
    Feb 15 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 Kurt Von Ahnen from MANANA NO MAS, demonstrates in this LMScast episode that even if you are certain of your knowledge, you must validate an online course. Since he thought his ideas would succeed, he acknowledges that as an entrepreneur, he used to detest validation. However, experience has shown him that ignoring validation results in a waste of time, money, and energy. He highlights the need for creators to think like entrepreneurs and consider long-term viability, profitability, and demand in addition to their passion. One of his best lessons is about pricing: when he first offered his program for $1,500, it didn’t sell because people thought it was too inexpensive rather than because it wasn’t worth it. Significant price increases resulted in higher sales, demonstrating that assessing perceived worth and willingness to pay is part of validation. Additionally, he emphasizes that various price points necessitate various sales procedures, ranging from straightforward checkout pages to protracted relationship-based sales cycles. Kurt promotes testing concepts on sites like YouTube or in-person meetings, asking viewers directly if they would sign up, and making sure that feedback is provided by actual customers rather than friends or relatives. In the end, he emphasizes that validation is continuous, flexible, and closely related to knowing who drives purchasing decisions, what the market really desires, and whether or not your product-market fit is genuine—not presumed. 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. I’m joined by a special guest. He’s back on the show. It’s Kurt Von Ahnen from Manana Nomas. Kurt also works with Lifter LMS. You’ve seen him on some of our live calls, many of them. Actually. Today we’re gonna get into how to validate an online course before you build it. We’re gonna go a little deeper in this one than the usual advice, which is good advice to pre-sale and put up a landing page and all that. But we’re gonna go into more detail around validation to save you a lot of time, energy, and money. But first, welcome back on the show, Kurt. Kurt Von Ahnen: Thanks Chris. It’s always awesome to have a chat. Chris Badgett: I love validation. Partially because as an entrepreneur, which. You are, and many of the listeners out there are. Opportunity all around you. So I know when I’m hanging out with my entrepreneur friends and we go to a restaurant as an example, you’ll see you’ll start constructing in your mind like, oh, this many plates, the food costs this much. And you start you just start thinking like a entrepreneur, like a business person. Oh. Or you’re at a conference and you’re like, oh, how much money do they make from this conference? There’s 2000 people here. The tickets were this much. Anyways, but part of that entrepreneur brain is that you have your radar up and you’re just scanning the environment. Entrepreneurs are, they’re often seen as risky, but they’re actually risk averse, so they’re like looking for risks and opportunity, but part of that scanning brain that you have. Is for finding and validating a good course idea or online business or coaching program, or multi instructor school or whatever it is that you’re building. So let’s dig into validation. I feel like the radar comes in handy. I can’t turn it off. That’s how you know, if you’re an entrepreneur, if you have that kind of brain and no matter what you do, you just can’t turn it off. It’s always there. You’re an entrepreneur that’s called the entrepreneur personality...
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    47 mins
  • How to Deal with the Failed Online Course Business
    Feb 8 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 an online course that has “failed” is typically merely an unfinished endeavor. He explains that a lot of creators quit too soon after making their debut, particularly if they just have a few students or no sales, but those first results are only feedback. Kurt claims that poor positioning, communicating to non-decision makers, focusing on the incorrect audience, and having irrational expectations brought on by internet marketing hype are all common causes of failure. He emphasizes that the key is to understand the course’s purpose, the problem it solves, and how it adds value. Purchasing software, rebuilding websites, or pursuing new technologies won’t solve the fundamental issue. Additionally, he emphasizes that development is slowed by perfection. Learning from the market is delayed when months are spent revising material or waiting for the “perfect” launch. Rather, developers ought to release an initial version, collect input, and refine it over time. Kurt also draws attention to the emotional aspects of failure, such as humiliation and impostor syndrome, and he urges artists to seek support from masterminds, communities, and collaborations. His own experience demonstrates that perseverance, iteration, and clarity are more important than quick success since a failing course may become a lucrative, even six-figure, enterprise once the proper audience and sales strategy are discovered. 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 joined by a special guest. He’s back on the show. It’s Kurt Von Onin from Manana Nomas. Kurt also works directly with Lifter LMS. You’ve probably seen him around at some of our live calls and events. Today we’re gonna get into a different way to think about and deal with a failed online course project. Things aren’t necessarily what they seem. We’re gonna give you some ideas of how to think about and react and work with a project that isn’t quite working out. But before we dive in, first, Kurt, welcome back on the show. Kurt Von Ahnen: Dude, again, thank you so much for having me. It’s always great to have a chat with, Chris Badgett. Chris Badgett: Awesome. Awesome. You, were just on a team meeting we had that we do monthly at Lifter LMS and there’s actually a section of the meeting where we talk about failures. And I got this idea from some podcast somewhere where a parent advice to other parents was. To basically ask their kids, not just, Hey, what’d you, what went great today? But also what’d you fail at today? And turn failure not into a, something that you don’t talk about that you hide or you diminish, or you denial and pretend didn’t happen. But let’s talk about failure. So let’s, in the game of entrepreneurship and online business and creating education products, there is a massive amount of failure. Failure could be the giant goose egg, which is zero. Like Kurt Von Ahnen: yeah, Chris Badgett: site didn’t launch or it launched and zero people bought. Some people call that crickets. But there’s other kinds of failure too, where you’re really excited and you think you’re gonna get like a hundred students and you get one or three. These kinds of things happen a lot. But to start the conversation, let’s keep it philosophical at first and talk about failure as feedback and not something to just be shame shameful about, or pretend it doesn’t exist, or just like quickly tap into entrepreneur A DHD and move on to something else, like in your life, particularly in your ...
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    47 mins
  • 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