Today on LMScast we’re starting an interview series with people who we admire in the learning management system space, and who are just altogether incredible people in online education. Listening to customers’ feedback and measuring results is important for moving a business forward the right way, and we value the feedback from our LifterLMS customers. Today Joshua Millage discusses LifterLMS and online education with Diana Young.
Diana is a LifterLMS customer, and she shares her experience setting up a course with LifterLMS and her initial surprise with how easy the software made the process of creating the course. She was skeptical at first, because all softwares say that they’re easy to use. But she was pleasantly surprised that LifterLMS really delivered and made it easy to set up her course!
Some people think online education and internet marketing are all about making money. While other people want to teach in order to help spread knowledge and make the world a better place. Those two perspectives can exist in harmony, and an online entrepreneur can make money at the same time they’re teaching and helping other people.
It can be easy to get confused by the difference between beliefs and values. In Diana’s mind, a belief is a way that you think the world is. Whereas a value is a vision of a way the world could be. So what we believe tends to shape our behavior, but what we value tends to shape our choices.
We have some amazing members of the LifterLMS community. If you are a customer listening to this interview, and you have an incredible story that you’d like to share about what you’re doing with LifterLMS, we’d love to hear about it. You can reach out to us at [email protected], and we can schedule a time to tell your story here on LMScast.
If you don’t own a copy of the LifterLMS WordPress learning management system plugin, you can purchase a copy at LifterLMS.com. We’d love for you to be a part of our community and share your wisdom with the world.
You can also post comments and subscribe to our newsletter for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast.
Thank you for joining us.
And if you’re an already successful expert, teacher or entrepreneur looking to grow, check out the LifterLMS team’s signature service called Boost. It’s a complete done for you set up service where your learning platform goes live in just 5 days.
Episode Transcript
Joshua: Hello, Everyone. Today we’re doing something a little different. We’ve decided to start an interview series here on LMScast with people who we admire in the learning management system space, and who are just altogether incredible people in the online education space. Today I had the opportunity and the pleasure of interviewing Diana Young. We met Diana through an online group, a Facebook group. She has been one of the most passionate, generous people who have come into our world here at LifterLMS, giving us feedback on how we can improve our product and do a better job with our branding.
I asked her to kick off this interview series with me, because I think that what she has to share with the world can benefit everyone who’s in the online education space, as well as anyone who has purchased LifterLMS and who is looking to create an incredible course, and we go through so many different topics – everything from values and beliefs into why you should be okay with making money and making any difference, and while these two ideas are not … why they aren’t mutually exclusive ideas, I should say. I had such a fun time interviewing Diana.
I think that you’re really going to enjoy this interview, and I’d love to hear your feedback. If you can head over to LMScast.com, check out the blog post with Diana and leave me a comment, and let’s start a discussion there. I hope you’re having a great day, and thank you for listening to LMScast.
Yeah, let’s start off with this question. What attracted you to LifterLMS? Let’s just start from the top, I guess.
Diana: Great. We’ll, the first thing that attracted me was the combination, actually the split personality, because that’s who I worked with, and it took me a long time to figure out that that’s actually me, too. I have an interesting combination of having very high comprehension and very low execution. I can do … Apparently, the stuff I can do is really technical. It feels to me like I’m always just flailing in just like, “I don’t know what I’m doing here.” But compared to other people, apparently I’m pretty effective at figuring things out.
That combination of easy for someone who is starting from zero, and responsive and designed for someone who wants to do expand and build on and do things, those are the people I most enjoy talking to about technology. It was really intriguing, but the problem was I didn’t believe it. Nothing personal.
Joshua: No, no, no.
Diana: After two years of flailing around buying everything, I did, I bought it all. I pay everyone. What I found was that things were not as described, and I was shocked and disheartened and discouraged. I didn’t realize how complicated it was in a lot of ways, but the problem was I never really knew what I was getting until I got it, and then it wasn’t usually anything like what I had expected based on what I read, if that makes sense.
Joshua: Right.
Diana: The second thing that what really attracted me was when I was hearing Chris Badgett, I was describing that. I said, “This sounds great, but man, everything says it’s easy.” Every single thing I’ve ever bought, the first thing it said was that it was easy. I won’t name the product, but I spent three months, and I cried, and it was a $300/month product. It was supposed to be easy, and I was supposed to just do it myself. It was not easy. I could not do it. No. That’s fine. Just tell me that. Right? Tell me I’ll need to hire a programmer. Tell me I’ll need to spend three months. If I’d known that, I could have made a better decision that would have worked better.
Joshua: Right.
Diana: Anyways that was my problem was I didn’t believe, but then I tried it, and I was shocked. It really was that easy. It was ridiculous. I did all the whole course in a weekend. Now, I probably couldn’t have done that. Wait a second, I probably couldn’t have done that except I’ve been writing courses for a year. That gave me the course part comes easy now.
Joshua: Yeah.
Diana: The sequence is in my head before it hits the … That took me a year to really get there. If I was starting from absolute zero, I’d say get your course ready first.
Joshua: Right.
Diana: You have the course ready, either in your head or someplace else. Man, not only just a weekend, but a weekend of constant interruptions.
Joshua: Yeah.
Diana: Like I probably could have done it in four hours, had I had four uninterrupted hours. It was a really … A lot of other stuff going on that weekend. Anyway, I was happy.
Joshua: That’s amazing.
Diana: I have to touch it, I have to see it. I have to …
Joshua: Yeah, that’s where we’re headed, too, because at the time of this recording we’re really in kind of version one, and we have a really cool update to make even to the course builder side of things even more streamlined and the user experience more robust. We’re constantly just trying to listen to our customers and watch how they use our product, so that we can improve it and make it simpler, and I think you’re right. Congruency between the message that a company puts out there, and then the execution of that message through their product or service is so important … It’s so important to keep those in line.
I think that, because I do have a background in internet marketing, I see how the internet marketing world gets very excitable, excited and they’re excitable about the possibilities, but then after that sale is made, they’re just on to the next sale. They’re not really watching. Is the information that they sold or the product they sold implemented and used in the way that they had sold it? There’s a disconnect. I think that’s what’s unique about our team is we … This is something I actually want to ask you about is, because we have these tension between the idea that the make money online idea and the make impact idea.
That’s what’s driven us to the LMS world, because we see people who want to teach and have a huge impact, and that’s deeply rooted inside of me. My parents were both educators. I come from a long line of educators. There is this whole like, “Let’s educate the world,” that’s ingrained in me, but I am also a business person and an entrepreneur, and I want to feed myself and provide for my family, too.
Diana: Absolutely.
Joshua: It’s like today, I feel right now like the flag that we’re trying to raise in a way is like those things don’t have to be mutually exclusive, and to be completely frank and vulnerable, I don’t want them to be polluted. I don’t want people to go to LifterLMS and say, “Oh, those are the make money online guys, and that’s what their product is.” We want to enable that. We want to make that easy, but we also want to give you tools to make an impact, too. It’s not one or the other.
Diana: Oh my gosh, I want to address that so badly, but I also want to go back. I think once I start talking about making money and making a difference as one single thing that cannot be separated, I will not stop talking.
Joshua: Let’s go. Let’s rewind, and then we’ll go forward.
Diana: Right. I think what I learned after I did more study and more research, more just hooking into how things work. I learned that many companies have marketing as it’s almost its own separate thing. Even if it’s the same company, it’s a whole different thing. It’s a separate thing. It’s not connected. They hand this thing over to the marketing, and they just say, “Sell this.” They give a really a quick idea of … And then the marketing department just goes to town. And the marketing department considers that their job, if you ask them, this is usually what they’ll tell you if you ask them, and no one else is listening like I did.
You know what I’m saying? You go where they hang out, and you go ask him. We’re entertainers. Our job is to get you excited. Our job is to get you excited, so you will take your money and put it on the dotted line. It’s basically like the circus bunker or something. Right? They think that’s the game. They think that’s the game we’re all playing, so that’s their expectation, is that I know it’s entertainment, and I’m just there to be entertained. You know what I’m saying? I’m there to hear a good pitch and give them my money and have a good time. Right?
That’s their world, but my world is … My dad’s an engineer. How does that work? Is it going to work for me? What’s it made out of? How’s does that operate? I need to know these things. The marketing department. That may not be something they know anything about. You know what I mean? It’s not necessarily going to to translate real well if that makes sense through this. I think that’s one way that the marketing is just happening in an alternate reality of hopefulness and enthusiasm, but is not entirely grounded in product reality, if you know what I mean, because that does sell. God, we all want something that works, and it’s wonderful, and it fulfills our desires and does everything we want, and we’re like, “God, that thing, absolutely want to buy it.” And then is the problem, relationship.
Joshua: Right.
Diana: People bounce from thing to thing, and no one really ever gets any feedback, and I’m just going to … I’m sorry to go here, but it’s like dating. What if you dated somebody, and you went out for a while, maybe a week, and then you dated somebody else, and you went off for a while, maybe a week. Then you dated somebody else. Nobody will get any feedback. The power of relationships, and the reason they hurt sometimes is because it’s commitment. You start seeing yourself from the other person.
You start learning from them how you are and how you operate, and then you make adjustments, and the whole thing is when a relationship works, it is the best thing. It is so good, because the two have formed a super being, and it is … Yes, and it’s something that you don’t get if you skip the pain and skip the learning from relationship. I’m not trying to run people down to do this. I’m just saying there is a layer of growth when you commit to something.
Joshua: Right.
Diana: You got to commit to the right thing. Or else it’s just going to be just a pain, a horrific pain that shoot you. I really think values is the … I married someone who shares my values, because even our beliefs are different in some ways, beliefs change. We actually have both of us changed our belief many times during our marriage, and it’s been okay, because we have this common values that grounds us in the relationship and makes us both want to be there and both keep trying.
The second thing, this was really early on. I met Chris Badgett, then I tried the product, and then of course, I had a million suggestions, because I can’t help it. I’m fascinated. There’s this emotional trajectory that … It’s navigating a physical space for me. “Oh, here’s the door. I’m walking in and out.” I never read the manual first. I’ve been walking in … “Oh, okay, I’m turning right here. Oh, this is the living room. Great. Living room. Okay, cool. I put my stuff down here. I’m going to start setting up my class.” That how was Lifter was. It didn’t take me that long to navigate and get in there and be able to start.
I was like, if you get a new house, and you’re able to just put your stuff down and unpack and fix a meal. Make the bed and sleep. Or in a house and you’re like, “The attic is where?” The attic is … “But the attic, it’s in the middle of the bathroom. I can’t get this. This isn’t going to work.” And then you’re like, “Excuse me but your attic, it’s in the middle of the bathroom. Did I make a mistake?” “I don’t know. Hold on. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” You know what I’m saying? Things can really go wrong on a number of levels, but what I loved was that, “Man, you guys were like … You are interested in my experience. You cared about my experience. You want to know more about my experience.” Oh yeah.
Joshua: We look at it like we’re on a journey. The only way to have a successful journey is to get feedback from people who are on the journey with you, who are ahead of you, who are behind you, who have a different perspective, they’re on a hill behind you, so they can see a different vantage point, and it’s important to not put yourself in a box and build in that box, because you’re not going to build something that resonates. When we met you, Diana, it was really fun, because you are able to give us really good feedback and feedback that propelled us forward.
I think in a lot of ways is going to propel the entire WordPress learning management system industry forward, because of what we’re trying to do and connect the dots for teachers and make it easy for them to build, sell, and engage their students. It’s really exciting to me.
One of the things I want to ask, you said it just a minute ago was values and beliefs. For those of us who are listening, help me think about those things. What is a value versus a belief, in your mind?
Diana: Great. Okay, this is actually in my brain enclosed, because I feel like we start here in so many ways, but we don’t think about it very often. A belief isn’t something you think is true. It’s a way that you think the world is. I believe that people are … I believe that life is … That’s a belief. A value is a vision of a way the world could be, so I guess you could say I believe people can be, and it’s just a value is bigger and it’s more about the future. The reason values are important is because belief is still our filter or auto pilot. What we believe tends to shape our behavior, but what we value tends to shape our choices.
Joshua: That’s good.
Diana: Right. When I have a choice, my value is what helps me make the choice, because when I am talking about my values, I’m talking about creating something. I think what I recognized with Lifter really early, like in the first five minutes or maybe ten minutes, because I was deeply skeptical actually for the first time. It’s too good to be true. I want it to be true, but I don’t believe that it’s true, and there’s belief again. I became a believer. When I used it, and it works. Right. When I did actually put my class online in one very busy weekend that mostly wasn’t spent at the computer.
That was the one I believe, but the values that I sensed immediately that made me feel like, “I don’t need you to be perfect. I just want to know that we’re aiming for the same place.” You know what I mean? And the fact that you care of what I thought and cared about my experience, that is something I want to create in the world. I want to create a world where we care about each other’s experience, listen to each other. That is the world I believe. I believe that already exists, but I have to choose to continue to make it so for me. Does that make sense?
Joshua: Absolutely.
Diana: I could usually make choices that would short circuit not for me, even though in the largest sense will always be true, and can’t be changed in a smaller sense like an insulator, isolate myself even from something that’s true by turning myself away from it persistently. I always want to turn myself towards listening, and because they sustained, I study with, what would you call it? The mechanic systems that go in your brain. Right? One of those things that I keep noticing in myself is … There’s a name for it. It’s cognitive bias.
It’s just this little core of us that makes us always return to something even when … Actually, we have evidence. I know I’m not the only person in the world, and I know I’ve got many perspectives, but man, over and over again I found I’ve only looked at my own piece.
Joshua: Yeah, absolutely.
Diana: I couldn’t even realize it.
Joshua: Yeah. Yes, it’s you getting myopic with your own view.
Diana: Yes, and that can be all right, provided that I’ve got some other way of bringing in the inputs that are important in this situation. What’s funny about this is I do great facilitation, which means we have people, we have a group, we have a problem, and we’ll going to get to the bottom and that we’re going to solve it. Right? There’s two ways I could be in that group. One is one of the people, but I found what really works better. We actually want a problem solved, and that’s not my problem. If I’m the one who helps everyone connect, so everyone’s perspective gets into this thing.
Then you look at it to the other people’s perspective, and suddenly you start seeing solutions. It’s almost like these little windows, and you got to remember to look through all the windows, because as you move around to the different windows, things starts to look real different.
Joshua: Yeah, totally.
Diana: Yeah, also the problem, the solution is already there, but what needs to happen is we need to see it from someone else’s perspective or from an entirely different perspective, so it’s funny. Even though I feel like I’m super good and get a lot of what I do is about perspective taking and helping people take perspective. It’s cognitive bias that I’m just as terrible at it than every other human being.
Joshua: How do you deal … That’s such a great perspective and when you apply that to a brand that has what I would call like a split personality, how do you make those personalities isolated so that people can resonate with one or the other?
Diana: Yeah. Well, I want to talk to people about their experience. It is more complicated when you’re talking about two very different people with two very different experiences. With Lifter, you have this interesting dual level thing. Someone who specializes in implementing LMS systems and WordPress, for less technical people automatically needs to protect the perspective of that less technical person in order to do good work. Can you see, it’s like a circle nests in a circle.
Joshua: Yeah, right.
Diana: I think I would start with … They are already probably looking for that. They’re already probably looking for the thing that is easy for their users to use, because it hasn’t helped us. It’s like books. They’re sending you books, but people don’t really always read them, and sometimes they get confused, and sometimes they don’t read very fast or their comprehension isn’t good. We think that by throwing a book at somebody, we’ve already delivered to them everything that’s in it, but it’s just not like that. People are designed to learn from other people, not from books, and honestly not from software either.
Joshua: Right.
Diana: They aren’t.
Joshua: Here’s the dilemma.
Diana: Here’s the dilemma. Exactly. People actually learn from other people, and not just how we are, biology has made us that way and not the other way. Reading was considered an arcane art until fairly recently to something that rich people and … It was just not necessary for the average person until recently, now it’s essential. Software is relatively a new thing, too. I mean, “Wow.” We’re still sort of figuring it out, and I think how people learn, but anyways, someone who’s implementing is already having a look at it. If they’re doing something that’s going to be effective. They’re looking at it from their user’s perspective.
I would say they’re going to be able to see both. I would lead with the simple and then add, and if you are also or if you are. The people who are looking for simple, they’re not going to want to read that, because they don’t need it. We have to, in this culture, we have to shield ourselves from the constant information overload all the time. It’s so funny when I get a new operating system on the phone or something, it will auto update. I have just decided to delegate that to my children, because … Not because I can’t do it, because at this point I have stuffed so many … Especially when I was testing software. I would probably test four or five different kinds of software at the same time. I didn’t have any brain bandwidth left. I don’t have any informational digestion left to figure out why my phone had just moved my call button from this side of the screen to that side of the screen, but the kids were so wooo though. They were into it. They we’re doing that all day. It was a holiday for them. This is my pet one, my pet peeve is feeling like I’m never not working, because every time I interact with software, I’m evaluating it.
Joshua: Yeah, you constantly critical …
Diana: My dream is where I can just feel like, “This is working.”
Joshua: Yup, I understand. Owning a development company, that’s a big issue for me, too.
Diana: Yeah, I imagine that happens to you, too. Hey, can we go to making money and making a difference?
Joshua: Yeah, let’s do it.
Diana: Good, because I care about that. That’s another thing that looks like it’s split in half. It looks like it’s two things. A lot of people you talk to, I just saw a guy on the internet who posted, “I’m not even going to deal with people who say that making money isn’t their primary purpose.” It’s funny because to me it read, you care about people? You care about them first? You fool. Making money is in the name of the game, and I’m going to do it, and if I have to step in your face to do it. Consider yourself stepped on.
Joshua: Yeah, isn’t it funny that people have this guilty conscience around it. Yeah, people I think when you say money either you’re completely … It’s like you either you have to be this raging bulk capitalist, like we just got to squeeze all the money out of every single thing we can, or you have to be like a 1960’s throwback hippie which is like, “I don’t need money man. We’re just going to …”
Diana: I’ll just live in my van, man.
Joshua: We’re just going to live in my van, and I grow some herbs and stuff and chill.
Diana: I’m just going to eat, I don’t know, wild plants and stuff. Grow some herbs. You know what? That is totally fine. If you are totally fine running out of gas, if you’re totally fine when it gets to be winter, and then some of herbs didn’t make it. You know what I’m saying?
In India, there are two paths. The easy one and the hard one. Let me tell me you about the easy one. The easy one is when you take off all your clothes, you might have a piece of cloth wrapped around your waist, but probably not. You take the top of somebody’s skull. You just wander around, and people give you food, and if they give you food, you eat.
If they don’t, you can’t find anything, you starve and die. That’s it. You pray all day. That’s your … It’s between you and God what happens to you. It’s up to you and God. No one else is really involved. People can be involved themselves, like feeding or caring for you, but they’re free not to do it. It’s up to this between them and God. Right? That’s the easy path to … Are you looking ahead and guessing what the harder path might be?
Joshua: I have an idea. Yeah.
Diana: Yeah, it’s making money and supporting your family. That’s a much harder experience. It also considers spiritual path, but it’s much, much, much more challenging.
Joshua: That’s actually cool. I’ve never heard about that from an Indian culture perspective, but … Why do you think that people put these things in categories? Why they can’t exist together?
Diana: Here’s what I think. I know that guy didn’t really mean it. I know he wouldn’t actually step on my face. He wouldn’t, but we have different number. I talked about the different roles. We have different ideas. His idea is that we are competing, that it’s a competitive game. In order to win, he needs to make a lot of money, and if he has to step on my face to do it, well that’s fine. That’s part of the game. I used to play basketball, and man, part of the game was it was psychologically intimidating your opponent. It was part of the game, we all agreed to it. I didn’t say anything, but bring some with my body language, and they were not getting around me, and I also didn’t let them around me, because that was what made me good.
That’s competition. That’s a perfectly good game. If everybody agrees to it, and everybody’s happy with it, good, play and enjoy. My kids are playing chess right at this minute. That is the game they agreed to compete at, and they’re enjoying it. Now, the problem is when this guy is competing, and I’m going in there, and I want to cooperate. Right. Did you see what a disaster that’s going to be?
Joshua: Yeah.
Diana: He’s going to think I’m a dummy. He’s going to think I am the biggest … He’s going to think I’m that hippie guy in a van, and the funny thing is that people who are willing to play the game as it is culturally understood generally do make money faster, but I think that there is another game, and I think my problem was I was trying to play a different game … You know what I’m saying, I hadn’t really found people who said, “Hey, let’s play our own game. Let’s make the rules. Let’s decide them, and let’s play about them.” And my rule is I want to play with her cooperative rules. As long as everyone else is cool with it, we’ll just play that game.
Joshua: Yeah, I love that.
Diana: We get super brain.
Joshua: Which is the best part.
Diana: We get super brain. We do. With super brain, we can solve anything with all these perspectives. We can solve anything, because the answers are always inside the problem. It’s like the plants, and it’s like the seed. A problem is just this amazing puzzle waiting for us to figure it out, and it’s got a gift for us in it.
Joshua: Yeah, I love that, because I had studied Stoic philosophy, and you know the idea in the nutshell. The obstacle is the way.
Diana: Yeah, yes it is.
Joshua: The rock in your path is the path. That’s the whole purpose, is figuring out how to get around the rock.
Diana: Let me tell you. When I was working with people, and the pain was the rocks. The suffering was their rock. We could not go around it. Boy, we could not numb it. They had already tried numbing it, trying to get out, using surgery. These are people who the medical establishment had said, “I’m sorry, there is nothing more we can do for you.” That’s why they came to me, and we did. We sorted stuff out, and that was how, because everything surgical is trying to get around the rock. Without doing anything different. Anything. You got to figure out. Okay, I’m sorry. There’s actually a lot of really cool movies that I haven’t seen, but I think are sort of getting at this.
The way it is with pain is almost like you hear about these people who can put their hand right through a wall or walk on fire, and it always sounds thorough, I used to trigger my skepticism so badly, but really in a lot of ways problems and difficulties are like that. We have to both see them and not see them. They’re both there and not there. I think it’s more taking our perspective to where we see opportunities. When I was banging against the wall, I thought I had to go through that, but what I realized is I just wasn’t creating a right container for myself yet.
With the reason that one was hard, it’s because I want to help everyone, and I got the wake up call. Some people do not want me right now. They do not like my game. They do not recognize that it exists. They think I’m just a crazy person who doesn’t understand the rules. Why on earth would I not manipulate people? This one guy, and he said, “Well, why do you do this? Why do you sell other people ways to manipulate?” You know what I’m saying, it was like a manipulation machine. He figured out … He was good at psychological manipulation, and so that was what he sold.
He sold to other people who had left scruples about how to use to, and he did, and I just asked him. He said, “Why not? Because I’m good at it.” I don’t know what to say, but I’m good at it, too, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to sell it, because I don’t think these people really are going to use it in ways that are really going to bring us all pretty much just … There’s a lot of … It’s like people are hypnotized, or they’re just in so much pain, and they’re so desperate, and they’ll just do anything, they’ll believe, and he thinks he’ll buy anything.
It’s not that hard, because I just want that moment of relief. What he told me, he told me something that just … For weeks I was terribly upset. He said they don’t expect it to work, and I don’t either, and then I was just like my heart like you could hear the crack, is it broke? What? Neither of you … Excuse me, but no wonder it didn’t work. I mean hello, if these are our expectations, these are really, really low.
Joshua: Right, yeah we spend the money, because we want … That’s the easy way out in a way. We spend the money with that brief moment of hope that it’s going to change things.
Diana: Right, and I’ve certainly been on that roller coaster and taken that ride. I bought things that didn’t work, and I think it was a combination of me deluding myself in that way, in that specific way, and also people not being very careful about where they led me, as long as they got my money. Like you said, they’re not examining the results. I remember I had … I take a lot of online courses and try a lot of software, and then I have a lot of feedback, and I was shocked that people weren’t interested. Just really shocked, because I’m interested, but then I realized, “Oh, okay some people aren’t … How could they not be …” It was a really long time for me to absorb that some people don’t care. I have your money, and I’m done with you.
I really don’t care about your experience. I really don’t care what you think could be different, or where you think this should go, or what you think the possibilities are. I’m satisfied. I thought that’s who I just need to not … I could not do that. I could be … I’m supporting this, but I could stop supporting it. Right? When I gave you money, what I want is for you to do more good things for other people, and for me, and that’s why I gave you money. When I thought that wasn’t going to happen, man, you never get my money.
Joshua: Yeah, absolutely. That leads into the next question I want to ask you, which is … This is because I want to start a public conversation where I’m asking you in a public forum. How can we better serve you? You’ve seen the initial product in what we have, where should we take this, in your perspective?
Diana: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so where I think the world change is going to happen that you were talking about. You said, I think it’ll change the entire … I think it will, too. Definitely, keep moving towards this ability. More testing, more listening to people, people from different … get a little more … I would try to get a little more specific, I think who you want to help as a person has a very particular nature. They want to help others, and they are maybe feeling a little bit torn by that make money versus help others thing. I would love to see you develop some support or community.
Honey, uh-uh (Negative), No.
Joshua: The chess game is over. Isn’t it?
Diana: Sorry, we got a little visit from the rest of the house. Okay, the dog wants to come in. All right, the dog is going to assist me here to answer this question. Thank you. Okay.
Joshua: I love it.
Diana: They’re a little bit torn on the rock of, I want to make money, and I want to do the right thing. Their little business training that I have found, maybe I just missed it, but so much business training is about how to do the wrong thing, but pretend you didn’t. How to do the wrong thing and justify it to yourself. How to do the wrong thing that hurt people a little bit, but you don’t really examine that, because that’s not part of the process, so what I would love to see is you keep on just like you’ve been doing, make it easier for developers, make it easier for the average people who they help and who help themselves, and then help those people do … Help those people get all the way.
That’s the other weird dynamic of online marketing. Is there’s like this … Everyone makes the strong start. They’ve got a little money, they’ve got a lot of enthusiasm, and then they … You know what I mean. Stuff doesn’t work, it takes forever. It’s not that clear. They’ve shockingly discovered that some people aren’t honest and aren’t really telling them the useful stuff. You know what I’m saying, and it just so much potential momentum for good have been … The competitive game would say, “Oh, some people that aren’t good enough or aren’t tough enough.”
What if they are? What if they’re just not good at this particular competitive game? What if what they really need is an atmosphere of support. So that would be one thing is create an atmosphere of support, create groups, communities, the super brain, the human part of and also function as a screen. This is a tough one, and this is hard for me. This still hurts me even to say. People, when you sell to anyone with the polls and the credit card, you get just everything. When you’re trying to grow a culture in a dish that has certain qualities, you got to keep it really clean and only put in, figure the garden.
If you want to have a garden and you want certain things in it, and other things aren’t going to work, you’re going to need to try to sort them out constantly and so functioning is that filter both of the things that are effective and will create results, because that’s a huge filter. Stuff that’s going to create results. Values and ethics. Values are the way we imagine the world could be, but ethics are the rules that we make between the agreements you make between each other of how we’re going to make it. I think for the rules that we agree to play by. If you created a space that was bounded by ethics and had a common goal, “Wow” That would be amazing.
Joshua: I love that.
Diana: That will be super. Yes, here’s some of the other things I realized. I had just spent ten years learning to get actual change. It hurts. It’s hard, and it is the only way through going straight through the rock, and then I realized, “Oh my gosh, these people are selling it. It looks like he went to the rock, but he didn’t.” And I realized, okay, well that’s fine. Sell it. But let’s just be clear what it is. This isn’t a way to appear that you went through the rock. For instance, this is a way to get marketers speaking. This is a way to get somebody to tell you all their pain points, you don’t even have to know them in advance so you can sell them something, and I’m just sitting there like, I have been doing it the hard way.
I created an entire product around there and what their pain was and how to get them to the other side of it. Almost everything will turn. How am I going to sell that? Because it sounds exactly the same from the outside as the other thing that doesn’t, but it gives the illusion that the problem has been solved or that solved part of the problem and never goes back to check. Hey how you doing with that? That container in which relationships can occur.
Joshua: Yeah. No, that’s a really important thing I think, especially because I think there’s this individual that we’re talking about who doesn’t have a great forum right now to find friends and people in a community, because they have to choose the box, a box. Internet marketing box or some other box.
Diana: Yeah, any box exactly. Let’s choose an ethic, valued, more than shared goals box. That’s fun.
Joshua: I’m into it. Let’s do it.
Diana: Seriously.
Joshua: I’m sure we’re going to have some Facebook group or something pop out of this. That’s an excellent idea. That goes in to my final question. Where you see the biggest opportunity in the online education space, and I think it has to do with that.
Diana: Yeah, that you’re right. That is actually my answer to that question. I think our unprecedented opportunity is to sort ourselves by values and what we want. The world we want to live in and into the games we want to play and create that actual change in people enrolled and do it really effectively. It doesn’t have to be several lifetimes or ten lifetimes. What if they could do it one lifetime, because we decided that that’s what were going to do. We aren’t going to spin our wheel. We’re just going to get attraction. We weren’t going to work together. We were going to solve our incomes and other people’s problems. We are going to do this. We were going to create this world.
Joshua: I love that. I think that now is a perfect time to do that, because of where technology has gone, and it’s cheap as it’s ever been to be able to spin up a WordPress site with a plugin and put information there and then go connect with your tribe of people.
Diana: Anyone in the world who you share a common language with, you can connect with who has internet. You know what I mean, provide a bunch of listing you mentioned internet connection. That’s a lot of people.
Joshua: That’s a lot of people. I think that’s the most exciting thing to me is now that we’ve brought technological barriers down and geographic barriers down like, what’s going to happen now through the intersection, the super brain as you would say, that can form.
Diana: Yeah, and you know it’s funny. I actually spent some time … A lot more time with my neighbors sometimes on online stuff, just because everyone’s so busy, and the online stuff lets us plan efficiently and then execute in person.
Joshua: Oh, that’s good.
Diana: I actually feel like the internet allows me to see more people in person than I ever was able to without … Of course, I wasn’t so busy then, but this thing that allows me to do the things I want to be doing, and it’s just so efficient. You can gather a lot of support. You can gather money. I know a local farmers market just got completely redone, and it was an online fundraiser that did it.
Joshua: That’s amazing. Well Diana, this has been an incredible interview and one in which I think a lot of people are going to gather a lot of value from. If someone has a question for you, what’s the best way for them to get in contact with you?
Diana: You can email me [email protected], or you can friend me on Facebook if you can use that address from Facebook and ask me. And if you don’t get me the first time, try again. Not notorious for checking email exhaustively. I also look right at it and don’t see something which is just a strange quirk of mine.
Joshua: No, it’s all good. Well, thank you so much for doing this interview. Just so the listeners know that we’ve … I would say you’ve become a fast friend of the LifterLMS team, because of your very powerful feedback and heart for where we want to go, and I think that resonated with you and vice versa, and so we’re excited that you’re on this journey with us. We want to do more interviews like this, and we want to do more community building efforts in the learning management space for the people who are not afraid to sit on the line of the make money and make impact.
At the same time do share those values that of ethics and doing things above the bar. That’s really, it’s really, really important to us, so thank you so much for coming on and doing this interview with me.
Diana: Thank you so much. I have so enjoyed this. I just, I really appreciate what you’re doing, and I’m really excited about it, too.
Joshua: Cool. Hey, thanks for listening to the end of the interview. As you can tell we have some amazing members of the LifterLMS community. Diana Young is a phenomenal individual, and if you are a LifterLMS customer, you can interact with her in the Facebook group, and if you are a customer listening to this interview, and you have an incredible story that you’d like to share about what you’re doing with LifterLMS, I’d love to hear about it. You can reach out and find me at [email protected], and we can schedule a time to tell your story here on LMScast.
If you don’t own a copy of LifterLMS, well, get on it. We’d love for you to be a part of our community and share your information with the world and hopefully do an interview like this one. You can go purchase a copy over at lifterlms.com and select either a personal or development license. If you have any questions, again, feel free to reach out to me directly. My email is [email protected]. Thanks for listening.
