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• About
• Podcast
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• Youtube
• Contact

Thinkific has risen to become the top searched course platform since their CEO Greg Smith last appeared on the show and today he joins us again to share some amazing updates. Our conversation with Greg covers the story of Thinkific’s evolution, and the company’s best practices for marketing, hiring, subscriptions, and corporate culture. We dive right in hearing Greg’s story about his college how-to blog for passing the LSAT that he morphed into an online course with the help of his software developer brother. Next up, Greg gives us a bunch of metrics about the company’s gross revenue currently, how much the average course creator would pay and earn using Thinkific, and which types of courses tend to scale. He also touches on some of the company’s strategies around getting course creators prepared to put their best foot forward and create packageable content that adds meaning to consumers for growing their own businesses. Our interview then moves onto the topic of hiring and staff, and we hear Greg’s thoughts on delegation, headhunting, keeping vision aligned, and how to involve late cofounders from an ownership perspective. Thinkific stands as a great example of a company that scaled fast through a great team and business model so make sure you don’t miss this one.

TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:

• [00:21] Before we jump into today’s interview, please rate, review, and subscribe to the Leveling Up Podcast!
• [00:26] Opening comments on Greg’s company Thinkific, the top searched course platform.
• [01:16] How Greg’s LSAT college blog morphed into his first online course.
• [02:56] Metrics on Greg’s course: its price, continuing amazing monthly sales, etc.
• [03:36] How people are finding Greg’s course: YouTube and Google SEO converts.
• [04:39] The way that Thinkific makes money from a freemium option upwards.
• [05:27] Further metrics on Thinkific: 110 plus staff and 14 million ROI plus.
• [06:42] What course creators make on Thinkific: from 5000 to tens of millions of dollars.
• [08:00] Percentages of people who run courses on Thinkific that continue to scale.
• [08:42] Three milestones for a course creator that bode well for future success.
• [09:26] How the infrastructure trains course creators to make and market courses.
• [11:40] What qualifies as a valid reason to run a course.
• [12:50] Contributors to Greg’s success: a good team, paid ads, and refining focus.
• [14:14] What Thinkific is doing to manifest its corporate culture: investing in people.
• [17:43] How online course searches and Thinkific’s business focus bodes for their future.
• [21:40] What people who run cheap courses on Thinkific do to market on low budgets.
• [23:00] Greg’s biggest challenges in the last three years: knowing what to delegate.
• [23:50] Why Greg only focuses on team building and strategy now.
• [24:15] How well people that Greg hires do in tasks he thought he was good at.
• [25:10] Going beyond workplace gimmicks to build a corporate culture.
• [25:48] Whether a total hands-off leadership approach is really the best one.
• [26:50] Greg’s approach to keeping staff on track by helping them articulate the mission.
• [27:37] Employees who ended up merging into cofounder positions at Thinkific.
• [28:35] Strategies for adding cofounders and equity along the way.
• [29:30] Specifics of arrangements for how much equity to give cofounders.
• [31:27] Greg’s must read books, favorite business tool, and companies he follows.

Resources From The Interview:

• Greg Smith
• Greg Smith on Instagram
• Thinkific
• Exploding Topics
• Sam Ovens
• Who
• Glassdoor
• Tia Fomenoff
• High Output Management
• Let My People Go Surfing
• Matt Payne
• Miranda Lievers
• AngelList
• Slicing Pie
• Todd Herman
• Jim Collins
• Slack
• Excel
• Google Docs
• Audible
• Kindle
• Whispersync
• Better!
• Tobi Lutke
• Shopify
• Ready Player One
• Must read book: Turning the Flywheel, The Alter Ego Effect

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Connect with Eric Siu: 

• Growth Everywhere
• Single Grain
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Hey everyone, on today’s episode we’ve got Greg Smith, CEO of Thinkific, an all-in-one platform for independent experts and entrepreneurs to create, market and sell online courses.

Listen as we discuss how cold calls got Thinkific their first 50 customers, how Greg created an online course that got $10,000 in MRR which allowed him to start Thinkific, the simple funnel that Thinkific uses to grow revenue 30% MoM, and how they saw success by figuring out why people read their content and then monetizing the ‘why’.

Download podcast transcript [PDF] here: How Thinkific Uses YouTube to Organically Drive 3-4K a Month in Additional Revenue TRANSCRIPT

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:57 – Eric introduces Greg to the program
• 01:15 – Greg shares his background and a brief history of Thinkific
  • 01:25 – Greg launched his first online course 10 years ago
  • 01:34 – Also a security and capital markets lawyer
• 01:55 – What inspired Greg to get into online courses
  • 02:30 – Got to $10K MRR
• 02:50 – Made Thinkific a full-time gig 5 years ago
  • 03:40 – At the end of the day, make your mission about helping others succeed and you’ll succeed
• 04:19 – Thinkific’s differentiators
  • 04:35 – Stability, uptime, support team…you name it
  • 05:15 – Strong branding and e-commerce agenda as well
• 05:40 – Early course distribution
  • 05:53 – A lot of the strategies that worked 5 years ago still work today
  • 06:15 – Create great content and link to great tools
  • 06:43 – YouTube!
• 07:15 – Give away your best stuff for free
  • 07:40 – People go to YouTube to watch free videos
• 09:10 – Getting people to backlink when you have no brand
  • 09:55 – Make sure influencers or people with audiences are a part of your content development and your reach will grow
  • 10:15 – You can also try Reddit, but you have to be careful
• 11:30 – How Thinkific makes money?—Monthly subscription
• 12:00 – Today, Thinkific is used by more than 20,000 sites and has 23 employees
  • 12:19 – Recently had a few Angels get involved
• 12:40 – How Thinkific got its first 50 customers—cold-calling
  • 13:10 – Originally a really unscalable method
  • 13:43 – If people say no, that’s great
• 14:20 – Current customer acquisition
  • 14:32 – Higher level education for potential and current clients
  • 15:35 – When you educate customers, they become POWER users which expands reach and reduces churn
• 16:44 – One big struggle in growing Thinkific?—the daily setbacks…death by papercuts
  • 17:35 – Learn as much as you can from each little setback
• 17:53 – One big thing that has had a positive impact in Greg’s life?—having a daughter
• 19:00 – If you could go back in time and give your 25 year-old self ONE piece of advice, what would it be?
• • 19:06 – Invest in Home Depot, WalMart, Dell, Adobe, etc…also, keep having fun and doing what you’re doing
• 20:15 – Travel the world
  • 20:30 – Greg traveled in early 20s, mid 20s, and late 20s
• 21:20 – One BIG change Thinkific has made in the last year?—adding amazing people
  • 21:40 – Good hires accelerate EVERYTHING exponentially
• 22:20 – When you’ve passed the 6 person team-mark, read Verne Harnish’s Rockafeller Habits
• 23:15 – The Alchemist, The Lean Start-Up, and Scaling Up
• 23:40 – get.Thinkific.com/growtheverywhere

3 Key Points:

1. Adding amazing people to your company will exponentially grow your business.
2. Help others succeed and you will succeed.
3. Think about why people view your content and then find a way to monetize the why.

Resources from this interview:

• Thinkific
• Must-read books:
  • Rockafeller Habits
  • The Alchemist
  • The Lean Start-Up
  • Scaling Up

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