A Crash Course on Scaling an Online Course Platform with Greg Smith, CEO of Thinkific | Ep. #360

All right everyone, today we have Greg Smith. He is a repeat guest on the Leveling Up Show. He runs a company called Thinkific, which is basically the way I look at it is, it is a platform that helps course creators really kind of, well, start out their dream and really gives them the tools that they need to be successful with educating people and helping people get to the next level in their lives. So last time we talked, I mean, there's a lot of numbers that were shared. The business is growing Um, and it was, you know, smaller 3, 4 years ago, and now you really see Thinkific everywhere, right? We were looking at something the other day called Exploding Topics, and, uh, if you go to explodingtopics.com, it's literally— I think Thinkific is the top searched course platform out there versus your competitors, and it's actually exploding. So Greg, I want to welcome you back to the show. How's it going?

It's great, really appreciate it. Thanks for having me here.

Yeah, so I mean, if you can give someone like a— the people that haven't heard you before, maybe a recap of kind of what your story is, I think that's always a really good place to start.

For sure. So I actually was going to law school, and I started teaching people how to take the LSAT as a way to pay my law school tuition and pay off the student loan a little bit.

Mm-hmm.

So on the weekends, I'd tutor and teach people how to take the LSAT, and eventually I kind of realized I was getting— I think like a lot of us who are sharing your skill or passion or knowledge, I was getting all the same questions from when I would first meet someone. They'd be like, oh, can you tell me this and this and this? So I put together a blog initially just to say, just read the blog first, that'll get you the basics, and then we can sit down and do the tutoring or come to the class. So as a way of just giving away a bunch of free information to accelerate people's learning. And this was back in 2005, 2006. And, uh, eventually that morphed into creating a little mini online course. And it was actually— my brother was my roommate at the time. He's a software developer. So we took WordPress and PayPal and his custom code, mashed it together, and made our own mini online course.

Mm-hmm.

And that blew up and did really well. Um, he actually kind of had a bet with me that it wouldn't work.

Wow, but he worked on it with you?

He did, yes.

Wow, that's kind of crazy, huh?

Yeah, he's a good brother.

Okay.

So we got that up and running, and then eventually that continued to grow and grow. I finished law school, practiced law, but the course kept going as this passion project. And what really changed things is people started actually reaching out to me saying, how are you— how did you build your own course on your own site, building your own business around it? I want to do the same kind of thing. And so we started building Thinkific to help other people do exactly that, because it was so hard for us to get it going that— and nobody— not Not everyone has a software developer as a brother living with them.

Yeah.

Who works for free.

That's the best deal, especially if you have a good relationship with them.

Yeah.

So your course, how did it do?

So early, first launch, we sold it for $29. It was like a mini course of what I really wanted to do. We sold 10 copies in the first month, which meant I got to win the bet that we were actually going to sell something. But eventually got up to doing about $10,000 a month in sales, and it's been doing that now for—

15 years. Still?

15 years, yeah. And it's full autopilot. So I— like, you can look at the site. I haven't written a blog post in probably 8 years on it, and it just continues to go, which is amazing.

That's incredible. How much does it cost right now? Still $329?

There's a few options, but the main one is $389. So we did eventually add to it once we validated that people wanted it. We added, got it up to $389, and added some more content. And actually got a call recently from someone who's interested in buying the whole site and business. Yeah.

Well, I'm assuming you're— How are people finding it right now?

Just organic search. SEO, right?

And YouTube.

Yeah, SEO and YouTube SEO.

Wow, that's incredible.

Yeah.

I mean, if he doesn't buy it, I'll buy it.

Yeah.

Jeez, that's a good deal. So it's literally, you have a bunch of content. You have blog content. People are discovering it. And then it's like, hey, here's a call to action. Maybe subscribe to the email list, and then buy my course.

Yeah.

That's it, right?

Yeah, we give them a little mini free course. So because a lot of it comes from YouTube, I learned pretty early on that people are on YouTube, They're not really shopping, right? They're trying to— in my case, they're trying to learn something, so they're Googling a question. I give them a free video teaching them what they were looking for, and then I share, if you want more free videos, come over to my site, as opposed to go buy the course. So then they go to the site, there's more free videos there, they take those, and that's part of a free course where there's like— it captures their email. Then we promote the actual paid course.

Got it. So Thinkific, how do you guys charge? How do you guys make money?

We charge a monthly fee. So it's a freemium product, so you can sign up for free, you can build courses for free and get going and actually sell courses with no charge from us. Then we have a $49 plan, $99 plan, and then there's a couple higher-level ones, but mostly those are for companies or bigger organizations. So most of our clients are solopreneurs, entrepreneurs.

And have you guys always been freemium?

Yeah, right from the beginning. Initially, we charged a percentage fee on what people's course sales were, and we Took that away, because pretty early on saw that that kind of discouraged the big picture dreamers of saying, I don't want to give you a cut.

Yeah, it doesn't make sense, right? But there are— I mean, your competitors out there, they're still taking a cut.

Yeah, some of them are. Yeah, yeah. So we wanted to make it where you pay us the fee for the software, and then all the revenue, data, customers, everything is yours. As much as possible, we wanted to create a scenario where we really aligned with the best interests of our customers.

Got it. Makes sense. So what kind of numbers can you share around the business today? How's it doing?

Sure. Growing rapidly. We're about 110 people on the team, hiring for 50 roles.

Nice.

We're profitable rapidly. We're doing about 75% to 100% year-over-year top-line growth. And the— let's see. We've had a few hundred thousand people try it out. There's 40,000 active businesses using it now. Some of those are on premium, and so we're— Yeah, I think we passed the $14 million revenue mark last year.

Congrats.

And still going.

Nice.

So yeah, I think last we talked, we were doing like 30%, and even slightly before that, 40% month over month. Obviously, once you crack the $10-plus million per year mark, it slows down a little bit from that, but it's still amazing growth.

I think 3 or 4 years ago when we were talking, I mean, I think it was a couple million bucks a year, like I think around $3 to $4 million, if I'm not mistaken.

Oh yeah.

But yeah, it's incredible growth for you guys. I think more specific for people that are watching right now, 'cause it's gonna be shared a lot of different places, they're probably thinking about, I wanna do a course, so what kind of numbers can you share around kind of how courses are going today? Like, I know for a fact, we had Sam Ovens from consulting.com, spoke at one of our events, $36 million a year. That's the high level of doing a course, and then you have other people doing like $18, $20 million a year. I don't wanna say that's for everyone, so maybe you can kind of bring it down for people, like, what are you seeing?

Yeah, I wanna be, I'm always very sort of straightforward about what it takes to build a course or a business, and that— the cool thing is we see hundreds of millions in course sales on our platform, so we get to look at the data, and it really is quite a range, right?

Yeah.

And for some people, like when I set out to first build my course, I thought, OK, if I can make $45,000 a year, that'll like cover all my expenses, and I can live in Squamish and kiteboard, and like— I didn't have wife and kids and mortgage at that point, but yeah, it is quite a range. I do see people who are doing in the tens of millions, you know, some customers Uh, in, in that range. That's definitely more rare.

Right.

Uh, but lots of people who are doing $5,000, $10,000, uh, some even $100,000 a month, um, which is amazing, and for a lot of people, just life-changing. I mean, for me, even now, that extra $10,000 a month that comes from my course, I give half of it to my brother, 'cause we still split it.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Uh, but it's, it's a great add to your revenue stream, and it's— for me, it's fully autopilot. So it takes some work to get it there, for sure, um, but, uh, it can really be I think life-changing, right?

Is there anything else you can share? So I think the revenue numbers are always good, but thinking about, oh, like, you know, what percent of course makers are actually going to succeed? Because my bet is, you know, you have a lot of these solopreneurs or people that are kind of just starting out. A large percentage of them aren't going to quite make it. But you probably have more insight into that than obviously I do.

Yeah, it's well over half, like upwards of, I think, 2/3 of— or sorry, 2/3 or 3/4 of Customers who pay us that are successful and continue to scale and grow over time, which is really good. We do a lot in terms of training, and helping, and trying to put stuff in the software to help them. On the sort of greater, like, few hundred thousand people who've ever signed up and tried us out, it's probably more like a quarter of the people, right? But a lot of those— that does include people who sign up one day, poke around, and then never come back and do anything. Or not even churn, as in they never started paying, or they just literally poked around for 30 seconds, or they signed up—

Churn, yeah.

on a webinar and never even signed in.

Yeah.

So it's— I more look at the ones who get serious and actually, once someone puts the effort in to upload, I think our— one of our magic numbers is if they upload 7 pieces of content, and then the next step is if they publish the course, and the next step is they get 3 people that isn't mom to go and take it.

Yeah.

All those are huge milestones to go towards success. As soon as someone's got 3 or 4 people in their course, that's a really good indicator, then they're gonna move straight through to success and growth and—

Got it.

And revenue.

Yeah, I mean, I want to touch upon something you said earlier. You said, from what I've seen, and we use Thinkific, by the way, we don't push courses that hard, but we still have stuff that comes through it. And you guys have done a really good job of, again, educating people. There's training, I think there's videos that people can go through. So I guess my question is, someone's antsy right now, they don't know what to do. If they go to Thinkific, how do I know that you're going to have the resources that Right.

So we do a lot, like I said, even within the software, just to guide and point you in the right direction and give you the right things to do. There's a lot of training that we provide, and then we have a lot of partners who do training. So there's really amazing people out there, some who use Thinkific, and then they'll actually teach them just how to go and build the course, whether it's how to create the content or how to get out and market it. So we try and point them in the right direction just based on where they're at in the journey, because everyone—

Yeah.

Some people come to us and we actually ask a few questions as part of our onboarding flow. As you're coming in, we'll say, do you have content already? Are you already teaching? Because people can range from, this sounds cool, I'd like to teach something, to, I've already got an online course, I'm just looking to take it to the next level. So depending on that, we give them different advice and help. And then we have a team, obviously, a big support team, and then even customer service managers who will help people out.

Love it. Yeah, so it sounds like there's a lot of different support out there.

Yes.

What do you— do you know this off the top of your head?

The—

what is the average course, uh, make per year?

You know, I don't, um, just because we segment them in so many different ways. So, uh, it would depend on if you're talking— like, if you talk courses that actually make sales, uh, then it'd be in the thousands up to— or thousands A month, up to tens of thousands a month.

So it can be like, you know, $12,000+ a year.

Yeah, yeah, at least. Like, I'd say it'd be, it'd be over that. Yeah, in terms of the average of the ones that are actually starting to make money, because our data also includes people who haven't launched yet or had revenue yet, so it's always a little hard to break that out. Yeah, but I would say it's pretty close to average for someone to expect to make, you know, $50,000 to $100,000 a year, but I also see people Build a course, launch it, and make $120 grand in their first week.

Yeah, it's crazy. So who do you think should be creating a course? Because here's the thing, right? Like, if I log into Facebook, God, at least for me, the targeting I'm getting is everyone has a build an agency course, or I'm gonna change your life course out there. So I think we're at like— my opinion is like we might be at like peak course or whatever, because the problem right now is I see people that are maybe you know, 18, 19 years old, and they're teaching you how to like win at life, right?

Right.

It's like, you just started life, right? So who should be making a course?

I'm— there's a lot of viewpoints on this. I more err on the side of take the stuff you're really passionate about and knowledge about, the thing that people always ask to pick your brain about, that you're good at, that you know about, and use that to be creating the course. So I really do think that pretty much anyone can be out there creating it, but you have to put some thought into it and make sure it isn't just, I read a book and now I'm gonna teach you what I read in a book.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so it's, it's, uh, I don't think you need teaching credentials to go and do it. I mean, we see people all the time who are teaching courses in hula hooping, or encaustic painting, or, uh, or all the way up to corporate finance, and they've worked in that field for 5 years or 20 years.

I mean, to your point, your LSAT thing's been going for 15 years, right?

Yeah.

I have this course, this content marketing course, that's sitting on, uh, one of these other platforms, I think Skillshare. They just came to my house to shoot it, right?

Yeah.

It's like 5 or 6 years ago.

Yeah.

It still kicks me like a $600 check a month. I'm like, oh, this is nice.

Yeah.

So if you get an extra $12,000, $24,000, why not? It can pay for some stuff, right?

Exactly.

So I want to go back to the business for a second. I mean, let's assume 3, 4 years— well, 3, 4 years ago, you were doing $3, $4 million. You've basically tripled, maybe even a little more than that. So what do you think has led to that? reason for that growth?

Yeah, it would have been less than 3, 4 years ago, I think, that we were there, but the big things that have led to that growth— a lot of investment in the team. I think for us everything starts from the team, and the kind of hiring we do, and the team that we're building. But in terms of specific marketing channels, back then we really hadn't figured out paid ads. Still working on it, but it's getting better. So all the little things are coming together. I think also early days marketing— Everything was working for us, so we were very unfocused. So when you're hitting 30%, 40% growth every month, and you're doubling every 2 or 3 months, you can become really unfocused of, oh, let's try this. Hey, that generated something. Let's try this. That generated something. So we've gotten a lot more focused, and there's actually, I'd say, less we're doing with more people, and more effort, and more resources, but into less channels now.

I think going back to what you're talking about, because last time we— I'm looking at our notes over here from the last time we spoke. And I actually did a couple of podcast interviews today, and it's like, I used to be, you know, starting out as a marketer, what's the new tactic? What's the new strategy? Same for sales, right? What's the new tactic I can implement? But, you know, the more experience you get in business, you realize, forget all that, it's just about the people, and it's just about building a great culture. So before, you said, you know, hiring the right people was a massive difference, right? Good hires accelerate everything exponentially.

Everything, right? Oh, good, I was thinking about it even then.

That's good.

So, I mean, how you've done that, Double down on it.

Like, what are you doing specifically to kind of foster, you know, great hiring and great culture?

Right. Well, I— one interesting thing happened to us last year is one of our great people, uh, Gary, uh, left the company, and he came and sat down with me, said, you know, there's this other amazing person in town, Craig, who I want to go and learn from. Uh, and so I love the company, I don't want to leave, but this is the person I want to learn to be a better marketer from, and so I'm leaving. and to go work at this other company to work for Craig. And so I said to myself, I need to get Craig. So now Craig joined us.

OK.

So for me, I think it really is finding people that others on the team can look up to and be mentored from, but also really investing in the people in the team so that even the junior people can grow and scale. And so we— I generally err on the side of hiring for growth potential rather than I have all the skills already. I'd rather see someone who can just— crush it and grow, and is going to learn new things and pick it up really quickly.

Well, I mean, it's a mentality too, because if you think you've done all of it, then you're not going to be motivated to get better.

Right, yes, that's a risk as well. If you can get both, that's your unicorn, but I'd err on the side of growth potential.

Yeah, and I'm assuming you're willing to pay premium dollar for these, these really good hires?

Yeah, yeah, especially in this market for sure. Talent is— really good talent can be tough to find, and we've built a whole internal recruiting agency. So we do work with some external recruiters, but we have a whole internal recruiting agency.

How does that look? What do you do there?

Well, just we're— we have a team that's dedicated to employer branding, outreach, and then actual, like, our whole interview funnel and outward-bound recruiting. So a team that's really focused on doing this, and then they work really closely with the hiring managers. And we're really dedicated to a super strict kind of hiring process. We use what's called top grading.

Yeah.

Good book called Who on that. And so the whole team is aware of that. All the hiring managers use it, plus our recruiting team partner up and work together to fill roles as quickly as we can.

Got it. Do you think— I mean, so by the way, everyone, Hoo, really good book. I recommend you check out— I think all the scorecards and everything are available if you Google them.

Yes.

So everyone, definitely go check them out. We use it internally as well. It's been great.

Excellent. I mean, the other thing we do on the people front is once they're— it's one thing to get them in, but then making it a culture where they want to tell their friends about it. So we did employee NPS, promoter score. Last quarter, it was 93.

Wow.

Congrats. So which is off the charts. I'm still a little like, triple-check the numbers. And then we're over 50% women, over 50% women in leadership, and a whole like super diverse— I think we represent 26 different countries. So all that kind of stuff comes together to make a much more fun, diverse team to work with.

Do you guys have all those Best Places to Win awards? And if so, what have they done for you?

We're collecting a little shelf. Tia, our head of our culture operations recruitment engagement team, core team, was just in Toronto picking up the Best Places to Work award. And so we have a few of them now.

It's—

I don't know if I could quantify it. I mean, we put it on the hiring page. I think it does help. One thing that definitely has helped is our Glassdoor reviews and Glassdoor score. A lot of people will mention that. We even have people in an interview And we say, why do you want to leave your current employer? And they say, well, I don't. I'm super happy there, but I read all about you, and it seemed too good to be true, so I had to come and check it out.

Ah, love it.

Yeah.

And so, OK, when you think about courses, kind of— I want to come back to team in a second, but what do you think the future is for courses? Because here's the thing, right? We talked about, like, maybe it's a little saturated right now. And then you have a lot of competitors in the space right now, too. So where do you see courses going, and how do you see yourselves Kind of differentiating for the future.

Yeah, and so you mentioned maybe we're at peak course capacity, but the interesting trend, I think from people creating courses, there's certainly been this huge influx of it's cool to be an entrepreneur and create a course. And you definitely see a lot, you're right, in this sort of marketing and agency building, things like that.

But at the same time— I think I just have PTSD from like the scams. So I think the vast majority is probably legit. It's just for me, because I'm targeted as a marketer, I just see the scammy stuff.

Yeah, and the retargeting stuff, and there is some of that. out there, but the really cool thing is that every demographic is now learning to go online first. So even if you were 65, empty nester, looking to pick up a new craft, you used to maybe wait for community college and night class like in 3 months, but now you go straight to Google or YouTube or search online, and that could lead you to an online course. So people are going online first, and that side of the market is not slowing down, so I think we're going to continue to see this, this whole market growing rapidly.

Mm-hmm.

And then what we really care about in terms of differentiation and wanting to do better is we're building for the course creators that really care deeply about their product, the product that they're delivering. So it is about— our number one goal is basically creating successful businesses. So all the people we work with, it's not just an educator, we're not conventional edtech, it's much more education where it intersects with business. So you have a skill and you want to build a business by teaching people what you have, or you're an existing business and you want to tack on education to give to your customers or even use it as a marketing channel, right? So our whole— everything we do centers around building successful businesses and helping our clients become or grow into or scale as successful businesses. And then one key area we're working there is in making sure that they can create amazing learning experiences, because what I find— you mentioned the sort of, I don't know, scammy ones— is they tend to be much more focused on market and sell, market and sell, which we do, and we help you with, but the more important piece is deliver.

Right.

Deliver results, because as you know, internet's getting more and more kind of suspicious and less trusting place to hang out, and if you— and we're just— there's less trust in purchasing now, but if you deliver results, that very quickly spins around, and We have this little flywheel of how it kind of spins around and brings new customers back to you, because you get results, you tell everyone, hey, I took this course, I lost 20 pounds. Took this course, I learned a new skill.

Yeah. What should people be charging for their courses, and what have you seen? Like, what's— maybe before I even ask that question, what's like the highest you've seen on your platform? Is there like a $100,000 course?

Yeah, I think I have seen some crazy high ones. Sometimes I see something for like millions, and it's in a different currency, so I'm like, okay, they've just— it's just a decimal thing, or a conversion thing. I have seen things in the tens of thousands, or even I think one or two over north of $100,000, but usually it came with— a lot of people will package other things. There might be a live event, or in that case, a bunch of one-on-one coaching. So I have seen those kind of things. I'd say the average price is in the $200 to $400 range.

Got it.

And then I'd say for most courses, it caps out around $1,000, $2,000. And even at those prices, you're usually adding something, some coaching, or part of a group, or something like that.

I think, um, so my question then, at $200 to $400, it's hard to make those economics work for using paid advertising. So what are these people usually doing? Do they have built-in influence? What is it?

Yeah, some it's built-in influence, some it's an existing market. Um, some they are, they are finding ways to make it work on the ads. Uh, others, a lot of social, uh, well, I guess that's the built-in kind of influence. Uh, others is partnerships. So finding people, the sort of influencer affiliate partnerships, that tends to work really well, especially the affiliate stuff. Uh, but you're right, I think for the bigger, Especially when you see the big launches, they tend to be in that close to $1,000 plus or more range, because when you're really wanting to attract the bigger affiliates, and you're giving them, say, 40%, 50%, and they're going to run ads, you have to have that higher price point. But I also see people making millions on a $9 a month subscription plan.

No.

Yeah, like teaching something.

The churn on that's got to be crazy.

But if you're adding a lot of value every month, and again, if you add value and there's that sort of flywheel of, I'm learning to sew on this site for $9 a month, or $20 a month, or $30 a month. They'll tell all their friends, and because it's so cheap, people just pile on. You post on social in a mommy group, and everyone's like, oh, sure, $9, I'll pick that up. And then it's recurring. So you do get churn, but you get the recurring revenue.

I think that's fair enough, because the way I look at the Marketing School Podcast is, you know, we get a good amount of downloads a month, and we're planning on adding— whether we use a membership platform, or we just use Supercast, which allows us to be like Patreon, where we can do like a $9 a month subscription. Yeah, there's a lot of creators in China that are making it work. There's a teacher that makes $8 million a year. Wow. Just like subscriptions. So I think you're making a really good point there. Yeah, so that's cool. Yeah, so, you know, the last time we spoke, you said the—

I love how you have notes from—

I just want to see how much you've changed, right?

Yeah, go for it.

What's the one biggest struggle you faced while growing Thinkific in the last 2 to 3 years?

Yeah, okay, what did I say back then? Was it my brother?

No, it was definitely Death by paper cuts.

Oh, yeah, lots of little things. So last 2 or 3 years, I would say the biggest thing I've been working on is personal change and self-growth, in that what I was doing even 6 months ago is very different than what I was doing 2 years ago. So I constantly have to reinvent myself, and really shifting from any individual contributor work and more— I mean, you were saying as I came in, right? You're like, I'm trying to stay away from the office, let the team do things. But it's the same kind of thing for me. I'm trying to move more and more, and I'm just getting to that place where I'm doing almost nothing except for strategy and team building.

Yeah. Can you explain why—

And a little bit of product.

A little bit. It's hard to get away from it, right? It is.

I love it. I love our products.

Yeah, it's just like I can't get away from marketing. But I mean, what is the primary kind of motivation for getting away from that stuff? If, like, people are like, what? But like, Greg, if you're good at that stuff, you should be doing it. But that's not necessarily the reason.

Yeah, so I used to— I forget where I heard this, but I used to hear this thing where if you could find someone who could do it If you can do 70% as well as you, you should—

Gary Vee started saying that a lot. I don't know if it was— he didn't originate it, but he says that a lot.

Right. Yeah, so then you should delegate it, right? Well, what I learned is that often I would think that it would be 70%, I would delegate it, and then it would be 200% or 300% of what I could have been doing. And I'm finding that more and more now, especially if careful with hiring and who's taking on what, is now I'm giving stuff away, and I look back at it a month later, I'm like, wow, you just did more in a month than I did in a year. That's amazing. So that's the big push for me, is realizing that I'm not I'm not the best at most things, probably everything.

That's like me too.

Yeah, so being able to give it away is amazing. And then you get to see these amazing people step in and grow and deliver amazing results. And I get to focus on the few little things that I still love.

I mean, I used to think when people— when I was first learning marketing at Gannett Bear, I was like, no, this is the main thing. Like, you know, forget everything else. People say team building, I'm like, that's so nebulous, whatever. So what does team building look like to you? Because that's a lot of stuff that's That's a big word.

Yeah. Well, OK, so I think we do all sorts of fun things. But before we get to any of the fun stuff, I actually think that the most important thing you can do is give people a vision and a mission that they're passionate about, and make sure you don't get in the way of letting them solve the problems and making that happen. Because you can have all the ping pong tables and company retreats that you want, but if people aren't stoked about why they're coming into work, the difference they're making, and their ability to actually contribute to that, None of that stuff matters. So we've got snacks, and coffee, and beer on tap, and all sorts of fun things. And they enjoy it, for sure. It's helpful, and I like having it too. But the key thing, I think, is that we love the mission. We love building successful businesses and helping our clients. And everybody has the kind of autonomy to come in and innovate and do cool stuff.

I mean, that's what's going to keep them there. The snacks and stuff, those are nice, for sure. I remember reading a piece from High Output in Management. It's— so before that, I read a book called Let My People go surfing, from the Patagonia founder, co-founder, right?

Oh yeah, yeah.

I took it literally, so I literally let my people go surfing. So I didn't show up to the office, I did nothing, right? And what I learned was like, I don't know if this is true for you, but you have to continually nudge people. Like, you know, if the plane's off track by like a degree or so, it's gonna be way off, you know, down at the end. And so it's like, do you agree with that or not? Like, I find myself sometimes having to be the annoying parent, like, hey, just this, and then like I kinda just go away, right? Versus before, I would just be completely hands-off, and then things might go off the rails. So I don't know if you've seen the same thing. How do you feel about that?

Oh, being too hands-off. Yeah, I mean, and high-output management, are you thinking like task-relevant maturity and that?

No, I just remember there's this one section where it's just saying, hey, like every now and then you're gonna have to just nudge people in the right direction, because they don't have the same vision that you have. So it's not like necessarily micromanaging, but it's saying, hey, like this way.

I do, I do still find that. However, I find the more I can provide context, not control, so the more we, everyone, If I try and work on making sure that everyone can articulate the vision and where we're going, and they have access to it, and they can see it, and they've even ideally contributed to it, the closer people are to that, and that it's really, really clear— so sometimes I call myself the chief repetition officer, right?

Yes.

So just getting out there and saying it over, and over, and over, and telling customer stories over, and over, and over, so people see, oh, that's how it all works. Then I have to do less of that kind of nudging. I've also been blessed with some amazing co-founders, and so they can also do some of the nudging And you started with your brother as the co-founder, right? I did, yeah. He's not— he advises me, and he's on the board, but he's actually started his own company later.

OK. So who are your co-founders now? It sounds like you brought in co-founders after you started to see some traction. Is that correct?

Yes, yeah. So we were growing, and they weren't even— they weren't the first hires. They joined as employees, and then leveraged into sort of co-founder positions. There's Matt, our CTO, and then later Miranda joined us, actually in marketing, and now she's our COO. And they're great examples of how— obviously, Matt on the product side, there's no way I could do anything he does 1/10 as well as he does it. And then I spent months this year trying to reorganize our sort of meeting structure, because as you scale, everything breaks. And I couldn't do anything with it. Miranda picked it up, and in a month, she's basically solved it. So it's amazing.

That's great. How did you find these people?

I think both of them were through AngelList.

That's hilarious.

Yeah, which is not really our main hiring channel right now, but it just— at the time, we were just cruising. Reached out to them, and then went for coffee, and yeah.

That's awesome. How do you think about— and I think this is still good for course creators, because if you build a course business that's starting to scale, you're going to need employees. So the stuff we're talking about is very relevant. How do you think about people adding co-founders and equity when they were not with you since the beginning?

Yeah, it took them— so I didn't do it right away. And I've thought a lot about this stuff, because my background is a corporate and securities lawyer. I've read a lot of shareholders' agreements and also seen a lot of fights amongst shareholders.

Right.

And had one or two of my own in the past, and so I wanted to be really careful. So with them, they joined, they worked on the team as regular paid employees. They did get some stock options early days, so significant stock options, and then after they'd been there for at least a few years each, then that was more that transition of, okay, you know what? You've probably taken less salary than you were entitled to, so there's an element there of, like, doing what a founder does, and a whole bunch of others just up in the middle of the night, or servers go down, and they're basically on call, or answering support tickets until 3:00 in the morning, that kind of thing. And then I thought, OK, this makes sense.

Got it. So are we looking at a couple points, 10 points, 15, 20 plus, just a range for people?

Oh, in terms of what you should share with co-founders?

Yeah.

I think it depends on the stage. So for us, it was like really healthy stock option plans. But I think, you know, early days, I mean, my brother and I were 50/50. When he left, he gave a whole bunch back to me.

Yeah, makes sense. You guys took the risk up front, so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But he gave a whole— he was really nice, and when he left, he gave a whole— we didn't actually have a formal vesting arrangement. He gave a whole bunch back. I'm lucky that he's my brother, and we got along well.

Yeah.

I do recommend, if you're bringing a co-founder in right out of the gate, or even like years in, And put some sort of earning or vesting stuff in where the— if they leave a year later or 3 years later, that they are giving something back, or they haven't earned it all yet. I just— I've seen too many scenarios where people bring in co-founders, and a year or 2 in, one leaves, and they're— and the whole thing falls apart because the person left doesn't want to continue working while the other one is taking half of everything.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

Yeah. There's a— this is book— there's this concept called slicing pie. I actually haven't used it yet, but it's literally the amount that you've worked equals out to your equity, and you're constantly recalculating it every quarter or so.

Oh, yeah.

Sounds like a lot of work, but someone might want to look into it.

So— I did that in one of my first businesses, actually.

How'd that go?

And then I was the one who left, and it worked perfectly. It was great. I mean, I think all of these things, though, unfortunately, kind of come back to, like, if you have reasonable people. So we were reasonable people. I left. The guy came back, and he said— it was a tiny thing. He said, I'll give you a couple thousand bucks, bought me out. And I was like, great, sounds good. And I tried to turn him down, but he's like, nope, you're gonna take this. So I think it's also being super careful, and really, I mean, it's arguably a bigger decision than getting married in a lot of ways.

Yeah, I think so.

I love my wife a lot. That was a big decision too.

Pretty close, but you would know better than me. So working towards wrapping up here, we talked about, so, favourite business book, but you cannot say The Alchemist. You can't say Rockefeller Habits. You can't say Lean Startup. You can't say Scaling Up.

I've read all of those.

Yeah, those are the ones you gave last time.

Oh, OK, cool. Nice. All right, so favourite book lately?

Yeah.

Turning the Flywheel by Jim Collins is a really good one. That's a good one.

It's a short one, too.

Also, The Alter Ego Effect by Todd Herman.

Oh, he's great.

From the sort of personal growth and even into the team. Do you know him? I do, yeah.

Yeah, he's great.

Yeah, he uses Thinkific, actually, I think.

Yeah, I had no clue.

Amazing guy, definitely. And Turning the Flywheel is actually— I think it's a 52-page book. monograph, and it kind of summarizes a lot of Jim's other work, like Great by Choice, Good to Great, Built to Last, and How the Mighty Fall. I actually got to spend a few days with him a couple of weeks ago.

Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah.

Did you have to pay anything for that?

I did.

I'm going to have to ask you about that afterwards. I recommend people Google The Flywheel Effect Jim Collins PDF, and you'll find— it's a pretty good description. He's got like 6 case studies in there, like he did it with Amazon, But I think it's important for companies to understand how that flywheel works. And then, favorite business tool that's not called Thinkific?

So I actually use it myself. We use it with the team. But I'm super basic. I mean, I use Slack, Excel, and a couple sort of project management tools all day, every day— Google Docs. And then personally, it's Audible and Kindle.

Got it.

Yeah, so, you know, just constant learning, basically.

I mean, is there anything else? It sounds like you're a heavy learner. So is there anything, any other— I want to kind of extend this— podcasts, other stuff that you look at?

Well, I love the WhisperSync, so you can get the Kindle version and the Audible and jump back and forth between the shower and the car and, you know, bedtime. Podcasts, I tend to actually just sort of pick up what people send me, an episode here, episode there. I haven't— I keep— I need to kind of get into and listen and get more dedicated. Personally, Better by Stephanie Estima is fun from like a health perspective.

Nice. Yeah. Do you guys have a podcast?

No, but we need one.

Oh, you—

we do need one.

Yeah, I mean, Neil just released a blog post the other day. He basically gave the numbers for like our contract that we have on for our podcast. Yeah, it just makes sense right now.

Yeah.

But anyway, that's a whole other episode for another time.

Yeah, we've got to do that.

Yeah, and we're doing it right now. Hopefully this helps. Also, which company right now, or founder, are you following closely?

A lot of Tobi at Shopify, partly because they're Canadian, partly because the business model is fairly similar to ours, and they care about entrepreneurs. Yeah, I just love a lot of the stuff that they're doing.

Yeah, he's got a crazy story. We should get him on here someday. But yeah, I mean, Greg, this has been fantastic. Best way for people to find you online?

Everything is @thinkific, T-H-I-N-K-I-F-I-C. And then myself is on Instagram @gregariousgames.

Yeah. Happy customer.

So you get that reference, tell me.

Gregarious Games?

Yeah.

People will— I can't get that reference.

Ready Player One, another good book.

I watched that. I didn't—

Oh, it's only in the book, I think. Damn it.

All right. Well, definitely check out Thinkific. We've ran maybe like $60,000 or $70,000 through it, and we haven't really focused on it, but definitely check it out. So, and that's what, like, imagine if we actually focused on it, it'd probably be way bigger.

Yeah, you should. We can help you with that.

All right, well, I'll take you up on that. Greg, thanks again.

Appreciate it, thanks, Eric.

Let us know if you want us to do more interviews like this, 'cause this is actually in person at my place in downtown. Takes a lot of time to set up. We wanna know if it's worth the effort. We wanna know if you loved it, so put a heart below if you loved it. it. Heart me on Twitter if you loved it. Heart me on Instagram, alright? So that's it for today, and we'll see you tomorrow.

Bye.