How to Make More From the Audience You Already Have With Craig Shoemaker

In this episode of LMScast, Chris Badgett and Craig Shoemaker discuss how course designers and education entrepreneurs can boost revenue without continually pursuing new clients. The conversation is on developing more compelling offerings, enhancing the customer experience, forging deep connections, and adjusting to an AI-driven future while maintaining the human aspect.

The significance of looking beyond the original transaction is another important subject. Craig advises business owners to inquire, “What happens next?” following each client activity. There should always be a clear next step that strengthens the relationship, whether someone downloads a lead magnet, buys a course, or completes a program. Chris elaborates on this by offering useful tactics, such as utilizing thank-you sites to present supplementary materials during periods of strong consumer engagement rather than only instructing people to check their mailbox.

Craig also considers his own career, in which he made over $2.5 million in royalties from Pluralsight-published web development courses. Changes to the company’s royalty arrangement significantly decreased his revenue, despite the platform’s great popularity. He learned from that experience how risky it is to rely solely on third-party platforms and how crucial it is to own your audience thru email lists, lead magnets, and direct customer interactions rather than relying on the business of others.

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Episode Transcript:

Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high-value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co-founder of LifterLMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end. I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. I’m joined by a special guest. His name is Craig Shoemaker. You can find him at craigshoemaker.net. Craig works one-on-one with education entrepreneurs to help them spot problems and opportunities they’re often too close to see their own course or membership businesses.

Craig also has a fascinating story from his own career as a course creator. He earned more than 2.5 million in royalties from web development courses and generated hundreds of thousands of watch hours. But when the company he published his courses with changed its author agreement, his royalties were cut by 68%.

That experience changed the way Craig thinks about audience ownership, platform dependence, and the idea that not all money is good money. Craig now helps other education entrepreneurs make more intentional decisions, get more value from the audience they already have, and work out where human judgment and leadership still matter as AI changes the education market.

Craig, welcome to the show. 

Craig Shoemaker: Thanks, Chris. Appreciate it. Glad to be here. 

Chris Badgett: Awesome. Yeah. I’m stoked to get into it, especially with another podcaster. Craig’s podcast is The Growth Question, and you’re gonna make it easy ’cause you’re a pro podcaster- … and you’ve been creating media and courses for a long time.

But the first thing I wanted to ask you is, what do you see when you look at an education business that the owner is often too close to see? 

Craig Shoemaker: That is like the question, isn’t it? Because there’s so many d- th- usually what happens with an education business is it’s usually one person. Maybe there’s a small team, but they’re having to be responsible for being a domain expert in what they’re doing marketing, doing outreach, handling the financials.

And so there’s so much surface area for blind spots that there’s a lot of opportunity there. But I’d say one of the things that I find most often comes up is the way that the, the offer is constructed. And so a lot of times what course creators will do is they’ll create a course, and they’ll put it out there and they say, “Hey, it’s available for, whatever price point.”

What I’ve found is that if you don’t have multiple options available, so maybe like different tiers, or maybe you skip doing order bumps, or you don’t have an upsell available in your funnel. Or one of my favorite things, if you don’t have a surprise, if you don’t give people something that they never saw coming to create that goodwill, that these are things that people have often either never thought about or haven’t thought about it deeply enough to be able to integrate it in with what they’re doing.

Chris Badgett: I love that. Yeah, the offer is core, and if you mess that up- 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah … 

Chris Badgett: or if you have challenges with it, everything else is downstream from that. What are some more detailed offer mistakes- 

… 

Chris Badgett: Or gaps- 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah.

Chris Badgett: that you see in the patterns of the people you work with or in the market in general?

Craig Shoemaker: I think a lot of times people will– they’ll create their checkout process or their order process, and then they won’t pay attention to the question of what happens next. And you get the chance to answer that question or pose that question all through the process. So when someone opts in to maybe a lead magnet, what are you showing on the thank you page, that confirmation page?

That, that’s one of the biggest buyer intent signals that people will have is the fact that they’re like raising their hand, saying, “I want you to contact me.” And often, and I’ve certainly been guilty of this myself, is that you’ll throw up a, a standard or, kind of template thank you page and go from there and hope your email sequence kicks in.

So that’s one place where you can say what happens next?” When you get people into the buyer flow and they’re, they’ve got that momentum going, and then they’re purchasing your main course or program, whatever they came to, on the other side of that, are you pitching something different or bigger to them in terms of an upsell?

So what happens next there? But then the one that kind of hides in the shadows a little bit is that once they’ve made a purchase, and maybe once they’ve begin going through your program what happens next after that? We don’t wanna be satisfied that they just started the program. We want to create a relationship with the people that we’re working with and figure out what does that entire customer journey look like?

Chris Badgett: I love that. I think that’s like thinking through time is the biggest unlock you can do. The customer journey before they buy from you, after they buy from you. It’s not just, “I have a product, here it is.” 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: What types of course and membership business owners come to you for coaching?

What do you notice that’s in common with them? 

Craig Shoemaker: So I’ve had people everywhere from medical doctors to people who help independent authors sell ads, to YouTube scriptwriters, to guitar teachers. And so the commonality isn’t in what they teach. The commonality usually is the … a question that sits behind the next decision that I have to make, especially ’cause I’m usually doing everything alone what is that decision going to cost me?”

Maybe I’ve put together this program, I’ve r- built this community, and I’ve been successful doing it, but I’m not … I think I know how I did it. Maybe I could do it again. And it’s just living within that uncertainty of saying “Okay I’ve built something and I’ve established resonance with my audience, but now I need to figure out where that next step lies and make sure that I’m heading in the right direction.”

Chris Badgett: I think that’s a backbone of good coaching programs where people hit some kind of growth ceiling. Whatever that is in terms of operations or sales or just figuring out how to move forward and scale, basically. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s awesome. I’ve seen so many coaching programs across different industries that it’s really

It’s not the beginners. Beginners need coaching, but the people that are hitting growth ceilings raise their hand. They have budget- 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah … 

Chris Badgett: typically, and they’re ready to invest in themselves, and they’re humble enough to realize, “I don’t have all the answers and I need help,” and raise their hand.

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah.

And that’s what makes working with people at that stage really fun and interesting because they have all the levers to pull. When we’re starting out and we’re beginning we’re trying to find ourselves and trying to figure out who, what sort of audience we resonate and that’s hard work.

But I found the, the way that I can help people most is when you have the, the mechanisms available to be able to say, “Okay we can at least test this idea because there’s an audience there,” or, “We can adjust pricing here because we know people are buying at this point.” And that’s what makes it fun because you can see the results a little bit faster.

Chris Badgett: Tell us the story of the 2.5 million in royalties from web development courses, and what happened there. What did the business look like at its peak? Yeah. And I know they, they changed their royalty agreement. I’m guessing this might be Udemy, but it could have been something else. What- 

Craig Shoemaker: N- 

Chris Badgett: What’s the 

Craig Shoemaker: story?

Not Udemy. So I try to, I describe it as it was basically Netflix for developers, right? And the I was very entrenched in the tech community and knew a lot of people who… i’ve published books, I’ve written for magazines, done conference talks and when I lived in Southern California, I would build a, a, a technology talk and then go on tour to all the different user groups in the area and did all that.

So I n- I was around the people who were about the business of teaching technology to our market. And there’s a, a, a group of developers in that community that started this this company called Pluralsight, and the idea was that basically they would get the best developers they could find to build courses for the the developer community.

And what’s so cool about it is that what they did is they didn’t overlap content. So if you had the course on beginning web development, anybody who used that service all around the world was going into that course. And I just so happened to be in the fortunate position to be able to do some of the very basics of web development.

So as their audience and as their reach grew, more and more people were watching my content. And it was… I learned so much about how to build good courses, how to communicate with people, and yeah just loved doing it. But a- as most companies do they grow, and they were bought and sold a few different times, and then they decided, okay what we need to do is basically change how we’re handling the the author agreements.

And so with that change, so did my royalties. And so- What 

Chris Badgett: year are we talking about? What time period is this? 

Craig Shoemaker: ’22, ’21, somewhere around there. And so th- what I wanted to do was, like, okay i- instead of continuing to push through a, a system that’s changed a lot, I realized I’ve had all this experience as an author, as a speaker, as a course creator, as someone who’s built courses that resonate well with people.

I want to take my experience and help other people build their businesses in a way that can, just be worthwhile. And part of that story, part of that scene was, like, I I wasn’t in the sort of- I didn’t understand at the time how valuable it would be for me to basically just put up a lead magnet within my courses and begin to build my own audience in parallel with everything that I was doing there so I could make my own offers.

And so this whole idea of not seeing your blind spots and paying the price for it is something that I’ve lived out 

Chris Badgett: So you felt that pain personally with the- Oh, yeah. 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. And then describe the pivot to coaching. Do you mostly do coaching? Do you still make courses? How do you… what did you pivot to?

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah. So I’m doing coaching with my clients one-on-one now. I still do the… I actually got contacted recently about making a- another course there in terms of the technology stuff, and then I, building some courses and digital products within my within my business right now.

But my main focus is working one-on-one with people because when you have a longer engagement with someone, you get to know their business, you get to know their habits, and you get to know how they think. And when I’m in that position, I’m able to help orient people’s business and growth in a way that you can’t do if you just meet once and then you go on from there.

And so it’s in building those relationships that I really get to have, have an impact in what people are doing. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. I’m a big fan of courses, coaching, and community, and you don’t always- Yeah … have to do all three or do all three equally, but, a c- coaching is very different from courses.

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah.

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Chris Badgett: But it… But like you said, it’s more personalized, and you can drive impact, and you have a lot more unique context to help people. Did you go the kind of individual coaching route, or do you do group coaching or a combination? 

Craig Shoemaker: Right now it’s individuals. It’s all one-on-one, yeah. I’d like to do group co- coaching in the future.

It’s… I’m just gonna see how that evolves a little bit. But yeah it’s getting down into the weeds with the individual right now is the w- where I can pull those levers the hardest. 

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Tell us more about the patterns and when you get into the coaching, and we talked about working on the core offer and thinking through time and customer journey.

What else are big areas where you unlock growth or get people unstuck or remove bottlenecks? 

Craig Shoemaker: This is gonna sound so cliche, okay? 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. 

Craig Shoemaker: But it’s true and that is around mindset. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. 

Craig Shoemaker: Almost every one of my clients has been, at one point or another, essentially afraid to raise their prices, change their pricing, d- or go into a different area of expert- N- not totally wildly different, but y- just mindset stuff holding them back from either creating a new part of their program.

But particularly it comes down to pricing. And- There’s I think there’s just something in that situation to where you’re the single person, you feel like everything’s on your shoulders. You don’t want to make a mistake that will adversely affect, the wellbeing of you and your family, and so there’s fear there.

And so a lot of times I’ve been able to say, “Okay we can w- we can test in certain areas we can set up different kind of boundaries, make you feel comfortable.” But for the most part, it’s usually just by facing that area of saying I’ve never charged this much before,” or, “I’ve n- I’ve never…”

Maybe, I’ve, I had one person who essentially trained his audience to expect really low prices from him, and he was sweating bullets the first time I said, “We’re gonna, we’re gonna build a high-ticket, $5,000 a person mentorship program, and you’re gonna sell it to your audience.” And I don’t think he slept well the night before he launched it, but then when he sold out, he was sleeping actually quite well.

And so we all have it. We all have those, those areas that, that require some extra push. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. Super valuable. And the mindset like imposter syndrome, fear of failure, fear of success- Yeah … financial insecurity. Yeah it’s such… Nobody can escape it. 

Craig Shoemaker: No. 

Chris Badgett: Anybody I’ve ever talked to, no matter whether they’re in software or digital products, physical products, when you bring up pricing, it’s always, there’s all this fear and what if it breaks or whatever.

What about like funnels as an example? What kind of gaps do you see people making in terms of the funnel? More on the before the conversion, what are people just not doing or doing poorly- 

… 

Chris Badgett: In their funnels? 

Craig Shoemaker: It’s the basics. The, the funny thing is that there’s so much information, like, being thrown at us all the time.

I think the thing that stops us from doing it is the fact that, one, one podcast will say one thing, one blog will say another, one email list will say this, and you just get… unless you really focus, that’s the, the thing that stops you. And so I would say that the, the gap is the ability to focus.

To be able to say, “Okay, I’m gonna take this one technique,” so maybe it’s confirmation or thank you pages. Okay, make sure when someone opts in for your thing, that the response that they get back, independent of the email that’s sent to their inbox, is congruent with whatever offer you want to pitch them in the future.

Maybe that’s an opportunity for you to give something generously to them at that point, and just do something different than what everyone else is doing other than, “Hey, you’re on the list. Congratulations. You might hear from me again.” So that’s one of the things. One of the other things is just being able to truly understand the progression between, okay, I have this thing that I wanna offer people.

Low ticket, high ticket, doesn’t matter. But again, that whole idea of congruence. Okay if I have a lead magnet or if I’m post- posting social content, h- how much does it make sense for them go from point A to point B to where I want them to go? Or am I just creating things because it’s fun or it’s exciting or it’s the trend or whatever?

And so it’s about being really intentional about saying, “This is the first problem I need to solve for people, and that will unlock the second problem, which is the thing that I can really provide for them.” 

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. And I just wanna share a pro tip. Something I do that I learned is if, and this doesn’t apply to everybody, but on a lead magnet thank you page, one of the things I do is put in a little pause of five minutes before they get the lead magnet, and on the thank you page, I think the email might still send relatively quickly, but even email deliverability takes time sometimes.

But- … the basic idea is, “Thanks, your resource is on the way. While you wait, check out this thing.” And it might be, like, something further down the funnel, like a prerecorded webinar or something else. And you’re not gonna catch everybody, but it’s like the, the idea of a one-time offer, but just with- Yeah

information. And it works, and they still get the lead magnet or whatever, and they- Yeah … and it, the… I think of fast lane, slow lane, sidewalk buyers or whatever that framework is. 

Craig Shoemaker: Okay. 

Chris Badgett: If somebody’s on the fast lane they may be like, “Oh forget about a lead magnet. This thing further down I’m super interested in,” they just move faster through.

It’s just a fun little trick I learned that works. 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: But it’s stuff like that, thinking through time,

if you could have a moment, instead of saying, “Thanks, check your inbox,” or whatever “Hey, while you wait, check out this cool thing real quick.” I don’t know. It’s just fun stuff like that.

Yeah. Once you start thinking in time and shaping experience there’s just so much you can do, and it’s all about adding value, not upselling and a million one-time offers or whatever. Yeah. Although that’s good, too, but not necess- but you have to do it in alignment with what’s right for them at that stage.

Craig Shoemaker: Yes. So I love the phrasing that you’re using, thinking in time, because I think that takes out the sense of urgency in terms of I have to pitch them with all of this stuff, as soon as possible. A 

Chris Badgett: one shot. Yeah. One opportunity, Eminem style. 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah. No multiple shots. And the way I like to phrase it for myself in my own coaching, but also with the clients I work with, is just how can we serve people the most powerfully, right? And when you use that mindset, then it’s less transactional and becomes more relational. And you can do that at scale.

You can care about people and their and their transformation even when you’re talking to a, a large number of people. But it’s the fact that the word I like to come back to is just being intentional about it and knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing for the benefit of the people you’re serving.

Chris Badgett: You mentioned relational. I’m a framework guy, so I’m dropping another one, which is, like, when it comes to marketing and sales, I see three buckets: inbound, which is content marketing; outbound, which is prospecting. Like you, you prospected to get on the show, and now you’re on the show.

I 

Craig Shoemaker: did. Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: And then there’s relationships, and what I find is that entrepreneurs tend to have one of those be their superpower. 

Like for the work I do I’m primarily an inbound guy first, relationships second, outbound third. I do all of them. 

But I think the relationship-based marketing, sales, and business is is misunderstood, and people don’t quite realize that.

So you mentioned a lot, like maybe in your own business and with your client business, if somebody wants to leverage relationships, not just s- so I get more whatever, but in a win-win format. 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah.

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Chris Badgett: How can entrepreneurs do better-based, relationship-based growth and scaling to either optimize what they already have or bust through that growth ceiling?

Craig Shoemaker: I think that’s getting easier now than ever. Okay, so you talked about how I prospected to get on the show. Yeah. And so we were talking a little bit before we hit record about the fact that I’ve built a booking agent that runs in the background, and what it does is basically scours the web to try and look for podcasts where I might be a good fit to come on as a guest.

That’s using systems automation in order to shortcut the part of the process that would be the most painful for me, which would be doing all the searches, trying to find the fit, and all that kind of stuff. So I can just hand that over to a machine. I don’t care, right? But then when it came time for me to send you an email, I made sure that I went through and I got to– tried to get to know you from a distance a little bit.

I watched some of- … some of your interviews, got a sense of what you did, and then wrote you a personal email in order to say, “Hey, if you’re interested, I’d love to come and have a chat with you.” And so I think more and more as the world is moving towards automation, is moving towards really sterile, soulless ways of communicating, that adding in those areas that kind of show, number one I cared enough to take the time to, to value you as a person, to be able to reach out in this way.

And we can talk about that at scale in a second. But n-number two, that I literally was the person on the keyboard doing it. I think there’s a texture to that, that, that comes across hopefully at least enough for people to be able to feel it. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. 

Craig Shoemaker: And so I was just gonna say that for at the scale situation, it’s just it’s basically, being transparent enough to say “Here’s the areas of my business that are automated, that I have AI take care of,” and trust me, I do a lot of that.

Having a technology background I try to leverage as, as much as possible. But then to be able to tell people like, I’m… Customer interviews is something that I, I- is a big thing that I harp on a lot with my clients. Because when you’re teaching and you’re selling programs at scale, sure, you talk to your customers, you answer questions, you do support, all that kind of stuff.

But that’s a very distinct difference than getting on a call like this and asking very pointed questions about what’s important to them, how they found you, what they thought of the program and things of that nature. And so you can build those areas of relationship- … even when you’re working at scale, as long as try hard to make it happen.

Chris Badgett: Yeah, and in a AI world, I think relationships just become even more valuable. And I think sometimes people don’t realize … Do you know Dunbar’s number or whatever? 

Craig Shoemaker: No. 

Chris Badgett: So Dunbar’s number is that the human animal is designed to have relationships with 150 people. It’s like the size- Okay. Yeah, I 

Craig Shoemaker: have- … of a 

Chris Badgett: tribe.

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah. Okay. 

Chris Badgett: So we have, in our genetics or whatever, that kind of capacity. Yet we find ourselves in a world with social media, email lists, and all that stuff. So we’re still like our biology isn’t ca- has not caught up to our current reality. And I think the like even just shallow connections, like actually engaging in a conversation on social media with somebody you don’t know, like these shallow, the shallow network of relationships have a, hold a lot of power.

And as more automation and everything comes in, it doesn’t mean automate everything. It’s, you’re still pe- what I’m saying is the human connection is becoming even more valuable- 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah … 

Chris Badgett: in an automated world. 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And, and- What do you- I was just saying- Go … and we, we’ll get to a point, and we are now, but you can generate video.

And so being able to give the tells, the, like the very human tells to be able to say, like even if I’m gonna cold pitch you, to be on the podcast or to be a client or something like that, and I send you a video or whatever, it’s like just being able to connect, look into the camera and I don’t even know what the distinction is anymore but to be able to find those ways to be able to show that humanness is there is is a huge deal.

Chris Badgett: Yeah. I asked somebody once, what’s the difference between a high-ticket program and a low-ticket program, and he answered with one word, and he said fidelity. And I had to look it up and see what he meant. But it’s really access. Like- 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah … 

Chris Badgett: you could have $100 course, but if somebody has access to you on a monthly or weekly or whatever- Yeah

coaching call or some kind of coaching format, that’s a different product altogether. 

Craig Shoemaker: Oh, 100%. Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: What’s your advice for somebody, for a coach to transition from courses? In the sense that from where I sit, like, looking at AI and information, and, we have a course tool that has some community and coaching features in it and stuff, but I’m finding that courses are, just on the macro level, are becoming a little less valuable.

And that human connection, like the coaching and the community, becoming more valuable. 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: Not that courses are dying or dead or anything like that. They serve a place. They’re not going anywhere, just like books are still here. 

But and there’s only one you if you’re a coach. 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah.

Chris Badgett: So that’s the, that’s one of the mindset things is like, yeah, I help businesspeople or whatever, but there’s already this famous business guru who said it all. But that’s not … I would be intimidated going to Tony Robbins for- … a private coaching call on personal development. I’d rather go to somebody who’s 60 that had a very similar life journey as me, even if they’re not well-known, but they’ve got what I want, and they’re, like, a kind, helpful person.

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Okay. So I think there’s a couple different questions in there. So the first one would be, like, how would you move into to coaching if you’re selling courses? And I’d say it’s a really natural progression. And on my website, the the, the hero text at the moment says, “Knowledge is now free or paid for your judgment.”

The whole idea of the fact that the procedural information that we have to sell, yes, is valuable because it’s organized, and it’s tested, and it’s vetted, and all that kind of stuff. And y- I even have a thing to where you can… I’ll show you how to put an AI model in the place of you as the teacher, and you get to see how well it can teach what your, what your program is.

But the fact of the matter is that the, the facts and the procedure are just one part of it, and that is enough for some people. They can just buy your course, they can learn the thing and go on. But other people want to know what that looks like in context and like you said, against the reality of someone who’s lived it.

And so a model will be incredibly confidently wrong sometimes, and if you don’t know where those dividing lines are, then you can be set off in the wrong direction pretty fast. And so as an education entrepreneur, being able to say y- and I like getting really practical here right now, right? So let’s say you, you have a course, maybe you have a community, and you want to start doing some sort of coaching or something one-on-one.

I would say look for building the high-ticket thing first. Create something where you can serve people really powerful. Charge an amount for it that scares you a little bit but also gets you to the point to where you know that if someone goes through this time with you, the transformation that they have at the end of it will be well worth it.

I always say anything we do should ultimately be free, right? Because people should be able to take what they’re in the, the business education con- context of it, right? But you work on building something that excites you to work on with your clients. It excites them to be able to get th- the transformation they’re looking for, and then you can prove out what that relationship looks like and what’s valuable to people.

And record every call transcript, use that in your research, and then from there you can go on and build maybe other group coaching type of programs and things of that nature. But the, the bottom line is what you have to sell is your judgment, not just your knowledge. 

Chris Badgett: I love that. Yeah, it’s like a different kind of asset.

Yeah. We think of the expert has the, the knowled- there’s a knowledge gap, and we help fill it. But the judgment- … and the discernment- Yeah … is also just as valuable. 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: You say that running a, a lot of people are running a business based on instinct instead of intention. Unpack that for us.

And then by the way, guilty as charged. I’ve done a lot of stuff based on- We 

Craig Shoemaker: all 

Chris Badgett: have. 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah we’re all in this group when you think about all the hats you have to wear as an entrepreneur, usually as a solopreneur. So I couch it in this area because most of the people who are in this arena are either doing it themselves or doing it with a, some virtual assistants for a very small team or whatever.

Even in those contexts, the thing that you’re doing is usually trying to run to an understanding of this, what is it that I’m selling? That’s the first thing that people want to figure out. Okay, what do I have to provide the market that’s going to, people are gonna buy and hopefully be profitable from, right?

Okay, so you get some traction there. People wanna buy your course or your program, cool. Then after that it’s okay how do I increase my profit margin? How do I make this thing kind of work for me? A lot of education companies start off with a really high profit margin because generally what you’re doing is selling, one to many and you’re able to work in a, a situation to where it’s not exactly passive, but it’s more passive than in other places, right?

But then you’re have– You’re faced with this question of okay was it my positioning that, that nailed it, or was it timing that nailed it, or was it a bit, little bit of luck that nailed it? What caused me to be able to have that, that success that I’ve had so far? And so that’s where it comes into okay maybe you’re not entirely clear of how to repeat the process.

And so that’s where the intentionality comes in, is to be able to say, okay, there’s different systems and frameworks that we can put into place in order to make sure that maybe we’re gonna focus on profitability for this section, or maybe we’re working on retention for this section, or maybe we’re working on what our relationships work, work look like.

And all of that comes from basically being strategic and intentional about working on that thing specifically in isolation rather than, “I’m just gonna try a bunch of stuff and kinda hope it works,” which is how we all kinda start off. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah, it’s super easy to get busy and lose your way. 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: There’s a lot of we- weeds you can get into, whether that’s some kind of technology rabbit hole, or you start learning about funnels and then you’re building, like, all this stuff.

Or you get really obsessed with the video production or- 

Craig Shoemaker: Yep … 

Chris Badgett: I don’t know. There’s just so many- my- … places to get stuck. 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah. My my weakness is the fact that I just, I enjoy creating things, right? 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. 

Craig Shoemaker: So I play drums and guitar. I’ve written code for a living. I’ve, books and magazines, podcasts.

It’s I just love the creative process, and so sometimes what I’ll do is oh I wanna make this new lead magnet, or start building this new program, or do this other thing. It’s like no, gotta get back to, okay, what builds the business? So we all fall prey to it. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. Shiny object syndrome is a real- Yeah

real thing. Let’s dig in a little bit more on AI. For education entrepreneurs specifically, what are some examples of ways they use AI, or might be using AI poorly versus things that- … tips and tricks you have on c- ways to use it in ways that unlock value? 

Craig Shoemaker: I think the poor ways to use it I th– I, I think the most obvious poor way to use it is also the most enticing.

So spinning up Claude and saying, “Hey, I need you to write my newsletter for me this week because I’m busy.” I’ve done that. I’m not super proud of it, but I’ve totally done it, right? And it’s this seduction of being able to say, “Okay, I know that the system knows about my positioning. I’ve given it, dossiers on all of my key clients.

Here’s my case studies. All of the, you know, here’s stuff that I’ve written before. Here’s all the rules that you’re gonna use to write like me,” right? And you spin something up, and you get… And it’s just it’s 80%. It’s not horrible, but it’s not you, right? And so I think it’s when you build systems and you have a lot of a lot of input that’s gone into it, and then you look for these places to where it’s like the key insight, the thing that really requires the thing that is most of who you are and what you most provide value to your your audiences, and you delegate that off to AI, whether it’s building stuff for your website, writing emails.

Building content that it shouldn’t be doing is, I think, the, the biggest misstep. And so what I like to do is, again, the customer research interviews, or in my case it’s on my coaching calls, is I like to use it more as a research arm for me to where it’s like I don’t try to invent who my ICP is.

I know who my ICP is because I have hundreds of hours of coaching call transcripts that I’ve then gone and asked Claude, say let’s do the pattern matching. Let’s figure it out. What are the things that they face most often? What are the words that they use to be able to describe the the obstacles that they face?”

And so that becomes much more powerful while still keeping me in the driver’s seat of actually running the business. 

Chris Badgett: You have a saying that not all money is good money. Unpack that one, ’cause I totally get that, but I’d love to hear your perspective on it 

Craig Shoemaker: So th- there’s a saying that says passive income doesn’t exist, right?

And that’s totally true. With my courses that I built, though, since I worked with a very strong and very capable publisher in the industry, I would be able to kill myself building a course, record it, publish it, and then be able to collect royalties on it for a long time without really having to y- you know…

I made a quality product, so it didn’t need a lot of updates and do all this kind of stuff. But the thing that got me in the end was the fact that it made me lazy. 

For many years I got the royalty checks and it was great, and I loved it. But what I should have been doing is figuring out, okay, in light of all of the success that I’m having, how do I build something in parallel, like I was saying before, that gives me, th- number one, gives me platform independence, and number two, gives me something long-term?

Because I always knew in the back of my head, I’d tell my wife, I’m like, “This money’s awesome. It’s not gonna last forever. We need to plan. We need to enjoy it while it is,” whatever. And so it was just the fact that, sure, you can make a lot of money doing something very specific, but make sure, one of my favorite words coming back to, is you’re intentional about it.

What are you doing with it? How are you making it into something that will last you long-term? 

Chris Badgett: I think that dovetails into what you were just saying about AI. And by the way, it’s human nature to be lazy or whatever. The brain is… wants you to not work as hard. Oh, yeah. That’s just a thing.

It’s part of the human condition. But if you’re lazy with AI, that’s different from using it as the ultimate research assistant that actually probably makes you work harder, ’cause now you have new insights, and you create more value and stuff like that- 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah … 

Chris Badgett: in some ways. Let’s talk about lifestyle.

You have five kids. I think you work from home. 

And that’s often… There’s often particularly in the early days of an online business, there’s this friction between family and work. But what have you figured out with five kids, like, how to strike that balance and move forward and be a present father while also, doing, having time for your entrepreneurship and doing what you need to do there?

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah. Oh, man. It’s not easy. I have a la- I have a lam- I don’t have an on air light, but I have a laminated sign that says, “Recording. Don’t open this door unless there’s an emergency.” It’s on 

Chris Badgett: right now? 

Craig Shoemaker: It is on my door right over here, right? 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. 

Craig Shoemaker: And everybody’s old enough that they can read. So- Yeah.

I’ve been working from home for the last 15 years, even longer. So my, my kids have basically grown up with me working at home, and so a lot of it is just been the culture and the nature of what it means to live in this area. But for right now, I literally have a puppy tethered to my chair because I- no one else can watch him right now and I don’t want him to eat all the cords in the house.

So I think it just comes down to having a, an- an understanding of when you need to focus, how can you build boundaries and expectations ahead of time to make sure that happens? And then it’s s- so then once you have all the people around you giving you what you need, then it becomes, okay, how do I focus my mind well enough that I don’t get distracted on social media or, answer emails that I don’t need to at the time or, you know, whatever.

And so it really comes down I think the… Now that I’m articulating it, the, the bottom line is really just self-discipline. What does it look like to be able to say, “I need to have these things in my environment and in my mindset to be able to do what I need to do”? 

Chris Badgett: Yeah, and that goes back to your favorite word, intention.

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: Like, when you intentionally hold the space or- … intentionally be present at dinner time and stuff like that. 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah. That 

Chris Badgett: intention is everything, and it’s actually, in my experience, a relief ’cause when you’re trying to do all the things at the same time- 

… 

Chris Badgett: It’s just hard. 

It is.

As I’m talking to you, I saw a voicemail come in from, on my phone from my daughter who’s in the other… i’ve… I like to have a separate workspace, so I’m, like, in a detached garage office, but they’re only three feet away. 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: But it’s… she knows that I work, that I’m usually working at this time, and I’ll get to her- Yeah

when I get to her, and if there’s an emergency, the door behind me will open just like your dog will- It 

Craig Shoemaker: has hinge- 

Chris Badgett: hinges. That’s right … do. So life, sometimes you gotta do it. 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: Tell us more about how people can work with you. Who’s the perfect fit person- … for your coaching, and what can they do to reach out to you?

And just to add another question on top of that, I know on your website you have something called the Offer Map. If s- … if somebody s- wants to check that out, tell us about those things. 

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah. So that, that was exactly what I was thinking of. So the, the person that I work best with is a education entrepreneur who has a program or a course that they’re selling and wants to figure out how they’re gonna scale and grow from there.

And like I said, that gives… There’s so many different opportunities to go into a business like that and find areas where you can create growth and extra profits that’s i- is worthwhile. Also, going back to one of the first things that we talked about was just having an understanding of what your offer is.

And so if you go over to my website, there’s a link at the top for the Offer Map, and it’s a free tutorial series where I take you through my framework of how I think about building offers. At the end of it, you can get access to a calculator that takes all of the different elements of the Offer Map, and you can plug all that in there, and it gives you an idea of what your revenue might look based off of your audience size, your conversion rates, and each of the different elements of the Offer Map of what that might look like for you.

You just have to provide your email to get to the calculator, but everything, you know, everything’s available for free. On the AI side of things I have some- something that you can get access to, which is basically an assessment that you can take that gives you a sense of where your– I call it your AI gap.

And so as a teacher, as someone who, is– your business is built around education, h- how much can AI do, and where is that, that lane of judgment and le- and of leadership s- remaining for you? And I’ve… That’s an exercise that you can go through. It’s… I’ve seen some wild stuff, right? In, in one, one guy’s situation, we went through and we’re like, “Okay we’re telling Claude teach this this thing about ads.”

And it got it really close, but it wasn’t basically the nuance of the niche that he sells to, right? So it’s not just general ads. He does it specifically for authors who are inde- independent authors trying to sell their books through ads. So some of the procedural stuff it got right, and then it’s another part of the, the system that I take you through is like, okay here’s this really gnarly specific question that someone had that came in as a support email, and it answered that incredibly well, which is not what I had anticipated, right?

I thought that the more relational specific type stuff it was gonna fall down on, and the other stuff it would do better. So it’s just a very revealing exercise to be able to put any AI model I like to use Claude a lot, in your spot and be able to see, okay if someone was just gonna spin up a new chat session, what might they get if they were trying to learn the thing that you do?

And then by seeing those gaps and seeing those edges, that gives you a place to adjust your positioning. 

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Go check it out. That’s at craigshoemaker.net. And if you like podcasts, you’re listening to one now. Craig has a podcast called The Growth Question. Can you tell us what that’s all about?

Craig Shoemaker: Yeah. So The Growth Question is a place where I co-host with my friend John Brosio. And we do similar fashion like this, where we’ll have people come in, but we’ll do live breakdowns. And so they’ll come in and say, “Okay this is an element within my business that’s not working, or I wanna fix, or I wanna grow in.”

And so the two of us together dig into the nitty-gritty of the situation and basically do a, a live coaching session right there on the channel. And so it’s, i- it’s a great way to be able to see us working in real time, and also learn from, some very real similarities that you might have with the guests’ questions that they have.

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. So subscribe to The Growth Question podcast, and definitely get- take a visit to craigshoemaker.net. And thank you for being a shining example of a education entrepreneur. As a course creator, somebody who has made courses, made money with courses, maybe put courses on a platform, and whether it was Udemy, Pluralsight, or wherever, and had issues with not owning the platform- 

And wants to get into coaching, Craig’s walked a mile or two in those shoes. So check him out. That’s craigshoemaker.net. Craig, thank you so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. 

Craig Shoemaker: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.

And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMScast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at LifterLMS.com/gift. Go to LifterLMS.com/gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode.