Greg Smith joins us to talk about the phenomenon that was the Saw series before we are joined by a property and operations manager that doesn't play any games when it comes to client satisfaction.

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My next guest, Greg Smith, had a very successful career in corporate law.

He started an online course to move away from corporate law to start a new chapter in his life, and this course had revenues that were much better than expected.

After getting phone calls from others to get advice on how they could also model their courses the same, Greg's intuition seized on this opportunity to start Thinkific, which has now become one of the largest online course creation platforms.

To find out more about Greg, you can visit his podcast page at https://www.intuitionology.com/greg-smith/

This week, Nadia and Steve talk to writer and director Greg Smith (@smithlgreg) about the specific topic of video game P.T., developed by Kojima Productions, and directed/designed by Hideo Kojima (alongside film director Guillermo del Toro). Why did this "playable teaser" scare the bejeesus outta Greg? How does a first-person psychological horror video game change the genre? Why is this game so hard to find? And what's our take on Midwestern basements? Let's do this again some time!

Greg is the CEO and Co-founder of Thinkific - a software company that makes it easy for you to create, market and sell online courses. Thinkific serves over 50,000 people and businesses, that have taught millions of students, and generated over half a Billion in revenue for Thinkific clients.

Top 3 Value Bombs:

1. More people are creating more courses, and more people are taking courses.

2. Start your curriculum with the points that you are comfortable writing or talking about.

3. Whatever business you are in, there hasn’t ever been a better time to be diving into an online business.

Sign up for FREE and gain your career freedom with online courses - Thinkific

Sponsors:

Secrets Masterclass: Join the founder of ClickFunnels, Russell Brunson, for a FREE masterclass to learn the 3 secrets that will IGNITE your business in 2020! EOFire.com/secrets

Thinkific: Join Thinkific’s first ever 5-day Course Challenge and walk away with a complete blueprint for your online course that you’ll be ready to put into action! Sign-up for this FREE challenge today at Thinkific.com/fire!

A  Zoom conversation with Brigadier-General Greg Smith about leadership in a multinational organization, thought on stewarding the profession and what he finds satisfying about leading at the institutional level.  

The sound quality is a bit spotty due to the platform connection but still a fun conversation to listen to!

Theme music provided by:

Fareoffice The Tribute by Mikael Hellman
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6095-fareoffice-the-tribute
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Episode Notes

Greg Smith has 12 years of experience in the commercial banking industry. He worked at Bank of America for four years as a relationship manager, focusing on lower middle market companies. Prior to this, he was a commercial relationship manager for eight years at BB&T.

Click here to listen online, read notes, and connect with our guest

Connect With Greg Smith

• greg.smith@firstcitizens.com

Connect with Kevin Brown & Jim Kittridge

• WhoKnowsRealEstate.com
• whoknowsrealestate@gmail.com

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

Leave Some Feedback:

• What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below.

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Connect with Eric Siu: 

• Growth Everywhere

• Single Grain

• Eric Siu on Twitter

Greg Smith is a retired CIO who hikes and backpacks along with his Australian Shepherd Brook. In this episode we talk about his annual trip to hike Mt. Hood's Timberline Trail - a loop that takes you around the mountain in just over 40 miles. Beyond Mt. Hood, we talk about section hiking on the Colorado Trail, his hike earlier this year on the Lost Coast Trail in Northern California and his favorite hike near the Oregon Coast and other must see places in Oregon. Greg blogs about his hikes over at Adventurecontinues.org - where you can find his photographs and trip reports documenting hikes all over the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
Connect with Greg:
Instagram: @ghsmith76 and @aussiebrook
Blog: The Adventure Continues

Connect with Lori:
Instagram: @thehikepodcast
Twitter: @thehikepodcast
Blog: thehikepodcast.wordpress.com
Facebook: @thehikepodcast
Email: hikepodcast@gmail.com

Special thank you to Isabella, Tim, Leisel and Greg for being show patrons! 

Music intro track by Thorn and Shout

Music outro track "Two Mountains at a Time" from Live at the Fillmore by Pachyderm

Music used under the Creative Commons license. 

Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/thehikepodcast)