How Greg Built A Billion Dollar Business By Helping People Live Freedom Lifestyle 😎 | IMOTW

Hi, I'm Greg Smith, CEO and co founder of thinkific. I will be here on the podcast or in the Internet Moguls of the World school, and also in the book. I love helping people. I love helping other people achieve their dreams. Whether it's my kids or my wife, she helps me achieve my dreams as well, or everyone I work with at thinkific or our customers in creating and launching their courses, or the students and people they teach. Everything we do or I do is really about helping other people achieve their dreams. So that's been the impetus behind having a family and also starting thinkific to go and help entrepreneurs create and launch businesses, teaching other people what they know and what they're passionate about. We like to work with people who are creating. They've got some special skill or knowledge. They've got a business of some kind or some kind of audience. They are, you know, out there looking to create a business, sharing their special skill or knowledge. Choosing a micro niche, I think could be super helpful, right, because you get to narrow down, who are you talking to? Who are you serving? Who are you helping? There are also times, I think, when it's okay to just go out there and start learning and writing more about a space.

I always say that the shortest distance between two human hearts is always a story you tell a perfect stranger, a true, honest, heartfelt story, and you win hearts for life. People who don't know you yet. What is Greg's story?

My story? Do you want personally or around thinkific?

Mix it up.

Okay, we'll mix it all together. I think at my core, my why is I love helping people. I love helping other people achieve their dreams. Whether it's my kids or my wife, she helps me achieve my dreams as well. Or everyone I work with at thinkific or our customers in creating and launching their courses, or the students and people they teach. Everything we do or I do is really about helping other people achieve their dreams. So that's been the impetus behind having a family and also starting thinkific to go and help entrepreneurs create and launch businesses, teaching other people what they know and what they're passionate about.

Awesome. Thank you. So, Greg, what we want the audience to learn, and this is the Internet mobiles of the world, which is a book, a school, a podcast, everything for people who need not necessarily have a degree on their walls saying that they're an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer, but they can follow their passion and do whatever they want in life. So having said that, what is your advice to people on how they should or if they should choose a micro niche before they start a business.

If they should choose a micro niche before they start a business. Yeah, I think it can be helpful. It, if you have a sense of it's choosing a micro niche, I think can be super helpful. Right, because you get to narrow down who are you talking to, who are you serving, who are you helping. There are also times, I think, when it's okay to just go out there and start learning and writing more about a space more broadly. So, for example, starting thinkific one of the. If I could go back and do it again, we're in a. Where we're pretty niche down as I know have a really good idea and could describe to you our ideal customer. But when we got started, we were still figuring out what we were going to be, what we were going to do, who we were going to serve. And so if I could go back and do it again, one thing I would do is just start writing and creating content and helping people generally in that genre, even though I didn't have a micro niche because then I could start building that audience generally and then start to niche down. So I think if you know who you want to help, if you know where you're going, if you have a good sense of it or the value you're adding, it can be great to niche down. And obviously then you can really get specific about who you're talking to and why and how you're helping or what you're creating for them. If you're still figuring that out, I think it can be okay to go kind of broad and say, I'm in this space, I'm going to start talking to it. But eventually, yeah, you got to get pretty specific on who you're serving. And like, good example would be are you starting a fine dining restaurant or a food cart? Right. And different, different kinds of customers. Not necessarily. Like one day I might go to food court, the next day a fine dining restaurant, but I'm a different customer on a different day. And so if you're not clear which one of those you're serving, you're trying to be all things to all people and it becomes more difficult and the bigger your niche goes, the harder it is to serve that group. I think so Few thoughts on that.

That's fantastic, Greg. I remember seeing a huge customer avatar drawing board in your office and I remember you were teaching or training all your employees on who they are. So every time new people come in and I remember a couple of years back when I was there with you in the office, there were some senior people you were talking to and you people are very sure about who you are targeting. And so can you talk to us a little bit about how companies, when new startups happen, new people come into business, they should do this from the get go. And how.

Yeah, yeah, I think it comes back to just talking a lot to your customers, learning from them, understanding who they are. I've been careful along the way not to be too prescriptive about it in that I like to ask people, what are your hopes, what are your dreams, what are your fears? I find especially when you're building software or a product, we can often get too specific in terms of like, what do you want me to build for you next? What product do you want? People often have very strong opinions about those things, but they may not, maybe one way to put it extremely would be they may not be the right opinions. Right. They have a sense of, I want you to build me this. What I prefer to ask is, well, why, why is it that you want that? What are you hoping that's going to help you achieve in life? Or how do you think your life will be different if we create something like that for you? And that's where you start getting into hopes, dreams, fears. And these are the kind of like things that drive people's emotions. And then you can start to build towards, well, how could I solve that for you? And if you start to hear a lot of the same hopes, dreams and fears, then you can start to figure out, hey, which of those can we address? Which of those can we help people with and how can we do it? You can even be more creative and going to. If you look at, say, Eric Ries and the lean startup model, where it's a lot of research and understanding as you go and being very iterative, try this, see if it works. There's another way of doing things a little bit. I think Steve Jobs did that lean bit as well, but he was also a bit more visionary of like, no one's asking me for an ipod or an iPhone, I'm going to go and create it. But I think he was looking at what are people's hopes, their dreams, their fears and how could we help them with that? And then you can be creative and think of what those things could be and then test, does it actually go back and solve for those big hope streams and fears?

And so continuously, are you still testing? Are you still iterating your customer apart or you pretty much got it sorted?

Oh, we're still. Everything's Always in flux. I mean, we have a good sense of it, of who we're working with. Like, we like to work with people who are creating. They've got some special skill or knowledge. They've got a business of some kind or some kind of audience. They are, you know, out there looking to create a business, sharing their special skill or knowledge. But that's our sort of ideal. Then you expand beyond that of the people who actually choose to work with you. Like, we have people come in who have none of that, and they want that, and so that we're the place that's aspirational for them. And then we have people who are well beyond that level of success and they're coming in. But you still need, I think, your niche avatar and your sweet spot. So we're constantly refining and clarifying and then even adding characteristics, because as you go, you start to learn more about those people that you help. You have more of them come so you have more kind of quantitative, substantial data to understand them better, and you can start to paint out a full picture. I think one way to look at it is, you know, initially you start with a bit of a sketch on a whiteboard, and then you start to fill in the details and the color as you go. And it's great to start with that sketch. And the end result of that painting of your customer might be quite different than when you thought it was at the beginning. But you started with a sketch and then you're working on it and you're fleshing it out through subjective conversations, but also through quantitative data.

Lovely. Over to you.

Okay, so my first question for you is, team building is key in your business. So should co founders be the focus of every successful company?

Should co founders be the focus? How do you mean on that? Is that the focus of, say, the culture or the focus of leadership? Like, are you saying, should we be. Should the co founders always be the leaders, or should they be the focal point of how you develop your culture or something else?

Well, from my perspective, I was seeing in terms of leadership.

Okay, no, my opinion is we don't need to be the leaders. If we can, that's great. But I look at my role. I'm a CEO of a publicly traded company. Now, if I can find someone who can do my job better than me and this company with this team, I'm happy to give that up and learn from them and work for them. I would be their assistant or their advisor or their. Or go work as a product manager inside the company. I don't want to leave. I love what I'm doing. I love my job right now. I want to keep it. I'm working hard to. And I'm leveling up as fast as I can to keep up with the speed of growth of the company. But just because I was a founder does not mean I get to keep my spot. I need to be the best possible person for the team and for the company in the moment that it's at, as it continues to grow. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I don't think anyone enjoys. It's like every other role in the company. No one enjoys being in a spot where they're not doing well. And so when that happens, it's looking at, can we level you up so that you are succeeding in the role? Can we move you to a different role? Do you need to go to a different company? But people don't want to be in a spot where they're not performing well or see a view to how they can learn and be coached or level level up to a way that they're doing well. And I think that applies to everyone. There's nothing different to me about the co founder title in that sense.

Next one.

Okay, so my next question is for us. Why did you choose to be a part of Internet Mobile with the world?

I think all three of you are amazing people. I really got. I remember, Abby, your story to me of the bedtime stories with your daughters and teaching them about or not teaching, sometimes learning from them about how they would run a chocolate factory and walking through these scenarios. And I was just totally infatuated with you and that story and both of you girls and when you came and met with me at the office and we talked about business and your curiosity and ideas and I think it's so wonderful to see young people getting really excited about understanding the world and understanding business at a level beyond what we're typically seeing taught in schools and going and kind of creating your own education. So to be a part of that, I'm honored. I think it's super cool and I admire all of you, so thank you for including me in it. I'm kind of hopeful that I can learn some of this through osmosis and apply it with my own kids who are a little younger, 6 and 3. But we're already starting to talk about some of these ideas.

Fantastic. Thank you. You have another one?

I have one last question. So they say your mess is your message. So would you say to take your life lesson and make a career out.

Of it to help others take your life?

Yeah, I think. Was that Jen Gottlieb, who might've been saying that recently? But, yeah, your mess. I think it's a great way of looking at things because I think for a lot of people, the challenges they face, you work through them and you end up learning so much about it as you go through it that you can take that and help others with that. The one caution I would have in that area is make sure you've kind of worked through it to a pretty decent level. Occasionally you see people who are really in the mess currently, and then it can be. If it's a really deep mess, it can be a bit hard to say you're struggling with depression. I think it can be hard to be really helping others deal with it if you haven't figured it out yourself. Not to say that you couldn't take something you're dealing with and build a brand and an audience and content around it. I'm not saying you need to be perfect, but before you go, talk to people about it. But if you're going to be seen as someone who's going to help others progress to the point where you're at, just be clear as to where you're at in your mess.

Awesome. Yes, ma'. Am.

Okay, so my first question is, what was the biggest struggle you had growing your business and how did you solve that problem?

Wow. So many struggles. I'd say the first three years it was endless. All sorts of struggles. But some of the big pieces of it that they all kind of tie together, it feels like a lot of different things, but I think they tie together. It was really about finding product market fit and figuring out where do we fit in and how is what we're creating going to fit with the people that we're serving and add value such that it becomes not something that we're pushing, but something that we're being pulled into. And I would say, and this led to all sorts of other things of how do we find people to join our team, how do we find customers, how do we do marketing, running ads that aren't working because we haven't figured out our product market fit, we're not having enough money to think we're going to make it to the end of the year. Because you're struggling with this product market fit piece. Once we achieved it, it's hard to sort of quantify exactly when and how it's achieved, except that there is a real feeling of gravity that once you hit that product market fit, you Go from calling potential customers up and trying to convince them that you have what they're looking for and instead they're coming to you and saying, that's awesome, give me more and let me tell you how you can improve it for me, but I need it. And here's how you can make it better. And suddenly it becomes more about like you're falling into the market rather than trying to chase it or find it nice.

I like that.

So my second question is, what advice would you give to kids starting off their entrepreneurial businesses?

Make mistakes, embrace failure as a. Like redefine failure as an exciting word. That is an opportunity to learn and nothing else. And just dive in because, you know, if you think so, I came from a background in finance, at least in education. And when you go see a financial planner where you put your money, maybe this is not a great analogy. I just think embracing you're at a point in life where you can take risks, you can have failures. You can start with wild, audacious ideas that people say, ah, that's not going to work, or you can't do that and you can try and maybe it fails and you learn from it. And that's amazing. But it would be a shame. I think when you're young and starting out to think small because of any fear of failure or needing to succeed on, you got so much time, which is people talk about having enough money to start a company or finding talent or some of the other challenges. That biggest, I think scarce resource in life is time. And you have the most of it of anyone. So take it and learn with it. And you learn, I think, by trying big, bold, audacious, fun, exciting, passionate things and failing at them and then learning from that failure and diving into the next iteration or the next idea that you have. So that would be the biggest one for me.

Lovely, Greg. I've not only watched you from afar, but we traveled together to San Diego. We've been to your office multiple times. I remember bicycles on a rainy day parked inside the office. Your earlier offices, teams were walking in. You allowed pets to come in. It was amazing, people. All of the things were happening from there. The office has grown, the teams have grown. It's an international company. Everybody who's in the online space knows about you. You've been written about in all these magazines and all of that. What remains common in Greg as a CEO and what has changed completely?

Yeah, well, so we were lucky. We found this idea of core values when we were getting started. And so I think at about 13 people when we were in that office with the. Not just pets, but rats and other fun things, but we established our core values. And so we looked not at what we wanted to be, but we looked sort of like DNA. What are we here? What's important to us from a core value cultural perspective? And so we wrote those down, put them up on the wall. We built them into everything that we do from hiring to firing, to goals and ambitions. And all of those are still alive and talked about today. And so those kind of things for us, ethics and integrity is one of them. The celebration of diversity is one of them. Creating success for our customers is one of them. Those things are still alive and well. And I think it is important to find the things that are. And a lot of those do come from the founders. So we don't need to be here for the life of the company, but they come from the founders. And not just the founders, but the founding team, those early people who are involved and looking at us and saying, what are the stories that make this place, that make for us, that make thinkific. Thinkific. What are the stories that we tell that are really core and central to what's important to us? And you say things like, oh, remember the time when we, like, did everything we could to help make that customer successful? We dove in and we helped build them their website and we went over to their house and we shot some videos for them and we did all these things we don't normally do because we needed them to be successful. That was a story we tell and that became one of our core values that we'll go above and beyond to help our customers be successful. So I think it is important for everyone to look inside you and inside the early stages of your venture and say, what is it about us that's important and unique and special that we care deeply about? And extract it from, say, what makes our product different? I don't mean the product differentiation. I mean like deep inside your. The things you'll use internally. You don't always have to talk about them externally. Sometimes you do, but it's what makes our team special and unique. And lock those up and use them and talk about them. Don't just put them on a poster on the wall, but make them a big part of growing. And the big thing too is these shouldn't be things that are changing. Every once in a while there'll be a tweak or a change or an addition, but really it should be something that was ingrained in the beginning and it sticks for the Long term.

Greg, you spoke about, you know, all of entrepreneurs have anxiety fears. Money might not last till the end of the year, what to do, how to make the product work better, how to have more sales, all of those things. When financial success comes for a business, do all these fears disappear or there are different fears at different stages?

Yeah, I think different fears for different stages. And I don't even know if it was fear. Like when I was looking at our bank account and saying, we've got enough money to last six months, I was like, this is great, we're flush right now. It's like years or decades. I remember six weeks was a bit scary of, oh, we better do something. We've only got enough less to last six weeks. We're in a much different situation now. Now the things I fear is, well, not fear, but the things that I'd say keep me up thinking about is like, how do we preserve our culture as we go from 500 people to a thousand people? How do we make sure that that culture stays alive? How do we ensure the success of our customers? How do we double down on all of the value we've given them so that three years from now they're saying, wow, it's even better than it was three years ago? Those. I think so. I think you move from new things or old things that kept you up at night. I don't worry about the financial position of the company anymore. I still think about it. I don't ever want to get to a place of not thinking that's important, but moved on to new, most important to worry about or think about things.

Rick, from being a startup in Vancouver, which would be even then written about because of your culture and the way you ran your company, but still a very small startup to a company that's known all over the world. Did you know even though you were thinking big and you inspired entrepreneurs of all ages to think big, did you think that every. Do you think that every company can have a future like yours, which means that if you work hard on single idea, you've got the product market fit as long as you put in the 5, 10, 15 years, you don't have a deadline one day you can be a listed company or there's a different trajectory if you want to become that big.

Yeah, and I would say, I mean, I still look at. It's like we haven't made it, we're just getting started. This is like just the beginning for us. I'd say the. There's two ways to answer that, yes and no. The no is, the yes is dream big shoot for the stars. I think anyone can dive in and try and accomplish something and take it to an absolute astronomical scale way beyond anything you dreamed of. So there's no sense you shouldn't limit yourself and really any company could. But there are some characteristics that I think are important to consider. You do need a significant size of say addressable market, right? Like you can build an amazing business with a thousand super loyal followers, but if you're not figuring out what that bigger market is, it's really hard to scale something to a billion dollar global level or something like that. So you do have to think about what is the big opportunity here. I don't think you need to think about that at the start, but eventually if you want to take it to that kind of scale and then the other thing to consider in this is should every company go to that? Like my many of our course creators are super content that they're like, I have two employees and I make a great living every year selling my course and I only have to work a little bit because a lot of it is on autopilot or so many people want to create a great lifestyle business where they get to spend a lot of time having fun and have a great business that's successful. So there is also a decision of the people involved as to do you want to take it. Because there is a lot of sacrifice to be made as you know, the further you take it and the big the more you take on as well. So I think anyone can, any company can. But there has to be certain characteristics to the company that you intentionally start to angle towards if you want to take it into a large enough market to do that and then you have to make that choice that that's something you really want.

Greg, when you started thinkific as an online course creation platform which will give freedom lifestyle to so many people to be able to monetize their own messages and life experiences, did you think that an online course creation software would become so big or because you mentioned Steve Jobs being a visionary, he actually created something that the market realized that yes, this is what we needed. But they didn't, they didn't want it, they needed it later. So I have seen the thinkific journey to say initially when you started off from there to now, especially after Covid, everybody wants your software. So were you sure that one day everybody will see this coming or that vision came after a few years of running that company?

It's a little bit of both. In the early days I would Say my horizon, like how far I look out ahead has continued to go up. In the early days, I was looking what's going on this week, this month. Then you get to looking six weeks ahead, 90 days ahead, maybe towards the end of the year, you know, a few years, multiple years in now I'm trying to spend most of my time, if it's to do with this quarter, I'm trying not to be involved. I'm thinking about what's happening next year and beyond. But in those early days, no, I wasn't really looking to this kind of stage or scale of growth. I did at the time. I felt and thought that the opportunity to help people was this big, but never really did the math on translating that to our own company success. It was more. There are tons of people who need this help. Let's go out and help them. And right now I know five of them. Let's help them really well. But hadn't conceived that we would get to the point where we're at today.

Lovely, lovely. Greg, my last two questions. What is your definition of an Internet mogul?

Okay, can I hear your definition and then maybe I can add to it because I, I don't want to. I don't want to create the definition for your community or even attempt to.

So between all of us, the one thing that we agree on when we don't agree on a lot of things, but which is good, which is good. So pipe the grin off. But the one thing that we do agree on and definition of an Internet mogul is somebody who leverages the Internet to be able to do anything from anywhere so that they can spend more time with their family and not have to compromise between family and business. Everything can expand and be bigger together.

That's amazing. I love it. I would propose an addition that they want to create positive impact in other people's lives using that Internet, not just to better their own life and have more time with the family, but have a positive impact on people out there. Not all Internet moneymakers do that, but it sets the. I think we are more and more going into a phase where those who do want to genuinely and with authenticity have a positive impact, like the three of you are set apart and are different. And I think it is an. It's an advantage. I think the community now sees that and they crave that real impact and authenticity as opposed to someone who just wants to make money on the Internet. So I think that is an important part of it and it, it may lead to harder decisions in the short run. But I think it leads to greater success and greater impact in the long run.

Awesome. My last question, Greg. People will listen to this interview on our podcast and read about it in the book. And also our online school, which has multiple courses, and we featured these interviews for our new students coming in. So, as a family man and more importantly, as a founder of Thinkific, which is now getting famous across the world, especially where our audience is in India, what is your message to our audiences from the CEO of Thinkific?

Well, I think you just heard an amazing definition from you three around being an Internet mogul. And I think that's a really great thing to aspire to. If you're not there, it can be a wonderful place to be, to be able to create that freedom for yourself and your family and then also to go use the Internet to be anywhere and work from anywhere and have that impact on the world. It's a pretty amazing thing. Things. So I would say strive for that. And along the way, maybe take my advice about embracing failure and just, you know, look at this. And you were asking about advice for young people, but I would say, you know, whether you're 10 or 75 or anywhere above or below or in between, you can take that advice and embrace failure as something to learn from, and that will help you more than anything in creating and growing a business.

Sam.