How a former lawyer built Thinkific
I watched today’s guest from a distance as he grew his business. And I watched a revolution happening. People were starting to shift towards publishing more of their content on sites like Medium but also on sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Today’s guest saw that and said, “I’m jumping in.” I want to find out about the business behind this concept.
The founder you’re about to meet is Greg Smith. He is the founder of Thinkific, software that enables individuals and businesses to create, market, sell, and deliver online courses on their own websites. They don’t have to host it, they don’t have to manage it, they don’t have to take care of the software behind it. I invited him here to talk about how he came up with this idea.
Greg Smith is the founder of Thinkific, software that enables individuals and businesses to create, market, sell, and deliver online courses on their own websites.
Andrew: Hey there freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy where I interview entrepreneurs about how they built their businesses. My first revenue model at Mixergy, I mean, the first sustainable one that I discovered was selling online courses. And a bit after I started doing that on my site using software that I control, using a plugin I paid for, I heard about this software called Thinkific and I even talked to the founder of Thinkific and found out a little bit about how it worked. And I said, “Hold on a second. A software that I don’t have full control over? A software that I’m not hosting? I’m not going to do it and I actually don’t know how anyone else is going to do it. Why would you want to do that?”
And we had an interesting conversation. I even gave him access to my site. We stayed in touch a little bit. And then I watched from a distance as he grew his business. And I watched a revolution...
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