How Missouri Credentialing Board Built a Continuing Education Platform With LifterLMS

In this LMScast, Founder Karen Wisch of Graphics by Design talks about how she transitioned from traditional graphic design to web development. She began her profession in design when computers were widely used, and once a customer requested a website, she progressively moved into web programming.

The Board was handling continuing education (such as the MARS course) and license renewals all on paper around seven years ago. The Board selected Karen over larger organizations that wanted a share of their revenue because she suggested digitizing these processes. Karen replaced their traditional, mail-based continuing education and grading method with an online system using LifterLMS.

This change made it possible for classes like the MARS course to be fully automated and offered on-demand, transforming a time-consuming, biennial program into a scalable, effective, and adaptable educational experience. She stresses that the Board is quite pleased with the project’s success and that LifterLMS played a key role in it.

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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 Badget. I’m the co-founder of lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. State of the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMS Cast. I’m joined by a special guest. Her name is Karen Wish. She’s at karen wish.com. That’s W-I-S-C-H, and her agency is called Graphics by Design. Karen caught my eye. She built a really cool continuing education project. Called the Missouri Credentialing Board.

We’re gonna talk about that. But first, welcome to the show, Karen. 

Karen Wisch: Hi. Thanks Chris. 

Chris Badgett: It’s awesome to have you here. And we were catching up before the, we went live here and you’ve been around for a while. You got the lifter LMS shirt in the background. Awesome.

Karen Wisch: Swag from you guys, right? 

Chris Badgett: Yeah, we do a lot of strategic swag, it’s not, there’s no merch store. If you have an item you’re on the good list and doing awesome stuff. But tell us a little bit about you, graphics by design. How did you get into this space of helping businesses with technology and marketing and sales and modernizing their tech?

Karen Wisch: Yeah. I’ve been around forever, so I graduated with a degree in graphic design before there were computers. Seriously I took a. Basic coding class while I was in college, but there was nothing in my field as far as computers. We went through a lab one time and the professor goes, these are computers.

We think they’re a fad. He walked on through he was wrong. Over time, I did a lot of graphics for people, a lot of publications and stuff. And then one of the people I did. Graphic design for, they needed a website. And so I started with, oh gosh. What did Word have that they used? Microsoft had publisher what?

Not publisher. That was, they had something for websites. And I did that and then I did some HCML forum. And then eventually somebody contacted me through a referral and they said, our site’s been hacked. Can you fix it? I said I don’t know, but I’ll see if I can. And I was able to, and it was a WordPress site.

So I got intrigued by that and pretty soon they were coming to me for all of their website needs. It escalated from that is how I got into designing WordPress website. So it was basically there was a need and so I filled it. Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: Tell us about the Missouri credentialing board that’s at Missouri cb.com.

Yeah. What [00:03:00] what do they do and how’d they find you and what’d you build? 

Karen Wisch: They do credentialing for the state of Missouri for people who are substance use disorder professionals. So people in that sector need counselors and people to help with recovery. And I was asked to come and make a bid.

They were looking for someone to help them with their renewals. They, their licenses for their counselors for the state of the Missouri need to be renewed and they wanted to put that online ’cause it was a paper document at the time. And this was probably seven years ago. And so I went to a meeting with a couple other people and the other companies were larger.

But they wanted a percentage of each of the renewals. The credentialing board wasn’t super happy about that. And I said I think I can do it. Let me see what I can figure out. And I gave them a bid. At the time they also were doing a lot of continuing ed, and one of the things they did was a course that was called the Mars course.

And the assistant director was in charge of grading all that. So everything was done by mail. Again, this was seven years ago. So they would send out a program, like a document and a quiz, and then the people would mail that back in. He would grade it manually and then he would mail back the results in the next course.

There’s probably 11 different sections to the Mars course and I. He had to manually grade all 40 or 50 of them each time. So while I was there I said I think that we can set this up so this is all automated. That really sealed the deal for them because this was a lot of time for him.

And obviously using Lifter, it’s, once it’s automated, it’s all set up. It worked great. It [00:05:00] was a huge success for them. And. As I was telling you beforehand, that’s now, it used to be a class offered twice a year. Now anyone can go on at any time and start the course because it’s self-paced and they can finish it when they want.

And it’s all, because it’s all set up with Lifter. It’s a great solution for them. They’re really happy with it. 

Chris Badgett: So what were the what are the key parts of Lifter? I noticed they’re selling these continuing education units. And there’s continuing a continuing education credits.

Are you, did you set up certificates or how 

Karen Wisch: Oh yeah. 

Chris Badgett: So what are all the nuts and bolts of it? 

Karen Wisch: Okay I’ve got the Infinity bundle and I bought the lifetime access to it, which has been awesome, but then I can use the advanced videos we have videos for a lot of our courses where.

So we have it set up, so they have to watch the entire video. They can’t turn it, they can’t speed through it. They have to watch the video. And [00:06:00] I kind of love if you open a different window, you can’t still listen to the video. It’s it’s really cruel. You’re like, oh rats, this isn’t gonna work.

But I love it for our people because it’s so easy to get distracted. So they. They watch the video and then they have the, they can then take the quiz, it grades itself, and if they pass it, they’re, they automatically are sent a certificate that I’ve set up. I use something that’s very personal to the credentialing board and looks very official because it is, and it has their director’s signature and everything on it.

But that’s all set up ahead of time. Super easy to do and then. They, if they pass they get their certificate automatically. If they don’t pass our, the office gets a notification that they didn’t pass. Their supervisor has to contact and get a voucher for the [00:07:00] second exam because we don’t do the same exam for each effort.

So if you. Fail the first effort, you get a second chance, but your supervisor has to get the voucher code for that because we set ’em up so that they have voucher codes, which I am, I’m probably going ahead of where we are, so we have voucher codes. I use Lifter and Gravity Farms forms, together a lot.

And they work, they play nicely together. So that works out really well for our people. 

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. And I, when I checked, I looked at their site and I think I counted 59 courses. How much?

Karen Wisch: There’s 64. 

Chris Badgett: Okay. You go? 

Karen Wisch: Yeah.

Chris Badgett: Did you set all those up or show them how to do it, or it’s Oh, no, I do 

Karen Wisch: all of them.

Chris Badgett: Okay. 

Karen Wisch: They go ahead and they schedule. They set up the videos themselves and they give me the quizzes that they want and then I set everything up for them. They’re very busy doing the other half of the stuff. They don’t wanna mess with this. And I think I could show them how fairly easily, it’s not a hard process, but there’s some, there’s little caveats that we use that maybe not everybody does.

It’s a win-win. I take care of it. They don’t worry about it and it works for them 

Chris Badgett: yeah. That’s awesome. And it sounds like a great, relationship. Like they’re busy, they just want somebody to handle the website and make sure everything’s good and that’s a great long-term client for you.

Karen Wisch: It is it’s a really good situation for me and I have a couple other. Agencies. ’cause I am in the middle of the state. I’m, our city is the capital of Missouri and there are a lot of state associations and a lot of them need CU set up. So I do a couple of different ones beside that. Prior to this, they had used services that cost several hundred thousand dollars to, do you know what I mean?

And it’s. We’re not talking tens of thousands even here, we’re, it’s way more reasonable, and again, if I could get the hundreds of thousands, I’d probably do it but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. So

Chris Badgett: you can do a lot for what people used to pay 10 times that amount for and stuff like that, without limits, either, like without. Caps on number of students or courses, right? Or teachers or whatever. 

Karen Wisch: Yeah. And again, for them, I, before they were having to do the same process every time, and now it I think COVID has streamlined a lot of stuff for people.

Like I know we talked before, before COVID, they did a lot of trainings in different areas of the state, and now most of those are done. [00:10:00] On Zoom or whatever, just because it’s easier, it’s less expensive for an employer to give somebody eight hours off during the day and not pay for their travel, and things like that.

And we see huge success with that as far as having the Zoom calls with the education, and then following up with the training afterwards or with the. And information afterwards 

Chris Badgett: forms you use. I noticed on the Missouri credentialing board, there was like a order form for something that had some e-commerce in it.

How do you use Gravity and alongside the LMS and then what other plugins and things do you find super useful when you’re building this type of site? 

Karen Wisch: I, my, theme I use is generate press. And then I started with them. I, we talked a little offline and I would say WP Crafter with Adam Preser when I first started learning about what lifter, which LMSS.

Software I wanted to use, he recommended you guys and he had some valid reasons at the time. Again, that was seven years ago and I hopped in. I was like, this is a way to go for us. But I use gravity forms occasionally. They’re so blended for me that like sometimes there’ll be something in the course that I use a gravity form for instead, and.

Occasionally, I’m trying to, I’m stumped right now as to what, because they’re merged together. But we’re going to have a peer conference in October, and so there’s a registration out there right now that we’re using Gravity forms for, that people just sign up and tell you, give their information.

And that doesn’t require a learning management system. But all of our trainings. Do you know, they all end with a quiz to make sure that they’re proficient in the information, if not several quizzes with a series of different trainings within it. I don’t know if that answers your question. 

Chris Badgett: People are always using forms in interesting ways alongside lifter LMS, and it’s cool to see what folks are doing.

I have to ask you, because you have an agency, the number one question we get for agent from agency folks is how to get clients. It sounds like you have a lot in the Missouri area, like you, there’s a lot of local word of mouth perhaps, but what would your advice be on getting and retaining clients for the long term?

Karen Wisch: I would say retention just means you’ve gotta pay attention to your clients. I’m a one person agency, if they call, they’re getting me. I think it, that’s part of why they have me, right. I, it is I tend to respond quickly, which sometimes is like probably the bane of my existence. But I’ve had a lot of referrals.

I, I seem to be in the education and prevention and recovery area. Is because that’s where I started. And so by word of mouth, that’s what I’ve gotten. I have some other outta state things, but they were all at one point there was a, an association, a national association, and they I found out.

Through the Missouri one that they were no longer going to host everybody’s website, that they all were going to have their own website. So I contacted the head of the National Association and said, I do websites for people and I’m going to contact everybody. If someone contacts you and you need someone to refer them to here’s my information.

Here’s some samples of my work. And I ended up with six different websites that way, which was nice. It because they all wanted to be very similar to each other, so they were easy to make. Does that make sense? So I would say I have been lucky with getting information and then. Going after it after that.

But most of it, I would say, is referrals from other people. 

Chris Badgett: And clients like it when you’re easy to reach and return calls quickly and prove your just your reliability and track record and it’s, you’re always there for them. It’s not that complicated, right? 

Karen Wisch: It isn’t. I, one of my clients said before they ought to submit a requisition order and then.

In five to seven days, they would get a response and then they, the change would be made. [00:15:00] But, part of it’s price. I’m not charging $200 for 10 minutes of, for a change. Maybe I should, but that’s with a bigger agency you have a lot more overhead too. So I’m sure prices is part of it.

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For the Missouri Cred Credentialing board is there anything you can [00:17:00]say as to the impact that platform is having on the world or people like, do you know anything? Even just roughly, like in terms of, we mentioned I think you said 64 courses. That means that a lot of people are flowing through this thing.

What impact is that organization having with these online learning programs? 

Karen Wisch: One of their programs, which is the, they have a crisis peer, and these are people who are, you have to be in recovery to actually get that certification and. These are peers, mentoring peers, right? So it, it’s awesome.

These are people who maybe if they didn’t have someone else to help, they’d still need recovery, but they’re able to go back after they’ve gone through the process and they can help other people who. Are in the middle of a drug crisis. And I don’t know how much you know about the opioid crisis in the United States right now, but it’s, more people die of overdoses than right in 1 7 47 a day.

But nobody says anything about it. And I, if a 7 47 crashed every day, there’d be people paying attention. I, that’s part of why I love what they do. They’re saving lives. 

Chris Badgett: It’s a great impact. Tell us more about your learning curve with, learning how to use all this stuff and WordPress.

You mentioned following WP Craft or videos and you’re you’re self-taught, it sounds like 

Karen Wisch: I am.

Chris Badgett: Besides the graphic design, which you went to school for, which is awesome. But but, 

Yeah. 

Karen Wisch: Yeah. I I would say you guys, your help is awesome. I, when I first started, I needed a lot of handholding and you guys were great.

It, I would send you something and it’s like you would, sometimes it was a very obvious thing, sometimes it wasn’t. But between watching the videos and doing that. And now I, now that I have the Infinity bundle, I go to office hours every Thursday with Emily and Kurt, and that’s been very helpful and it’s great to have other people there with problems because sometimes I don’t know I have a problem until somebody else’s problem gets fixed right there.

There’s extra information that I’m getting that I wouldn’t get if I wasn’t part of that group. I really appreciate that you guys are very good at documenting things and explaining it, and I would say ease of use is part of why I am still with you guys and why I bought the Infinity Bundle. 

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome.

Yeah, I appreciate you saying that. We always feel like support is like a feature of the product. It’s not like a cost that we have to minimize something we invest in and, like you said, your clients like the fact that they can talk to you and call you like, we wanted to make ourselves as available as much as we can and be real humans and help people.

Karen Wisch: I don’t know. Yeah, I would say you guys are, 

Chris Badgett: I don’t know where I heard it on a podcast like this is 10 years ago. Somebody dropped an idea in my head that. Caused what you’re talking about, which is that the support documentation, it’s part of your marketing content. You should invest just as much time in supporting your customers with content as you do trying to, do sales pages and marketing stuff.

And that really clicked for me, and we even for a while. We would have a, everybody came to a Zoom call and would write documentation together for an hour on Thursdays or something. And a learning management system is not an easy marketing website with a homepage and about page and a contact page.

It’s got a lot going on. So there’s a lot 

Karen Wisch: of bells and whistles, right? 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. 

Karen Wisch: Yeah I would say that most of the time, whatever my problem was. There was a way to resolve it very easily, and if there wasn’t, you guys are like, okay, if I can have access to your site so I can see what’s going on.

Because sometimes, the websites act a little swirly. But I would say in general, you are able to fix it or give me a suggestion of something else I. When I first started, I did not have a good host. I didn’t realize that was gonna be an issue, but I didn’t realize how many people were going to be coming to the website, and I think that’s increased in I use Cloud ways now and I’m very happy with it.

And that was one of your all’s suggestions at the time. I don’t know if that’s still one of your go-tos, but, yeah. They, because I’m able to scale with them, which is very helpful. As the site’s grown in popularity, we’ve been able to scale the size and manage the workload that we’ve got.

Chris Badgett: Yeah, that’s fantastic. Yeah. Sometimes, you can start on like a cheap shared hosting account, but if something like Missouri credentialing board starts getting a ton of traffic and a ton of users, you gotta get on something a little. A little goofy.

Karen Wisch: And it is if people are required to have a certain amount of continuing education hours, and we’re one of the places that can provide them for them and we do it very reasonably, most of the courses are five or $10 it draws more people to them.

But it’s also a nice. Side source of revenue for them. It’s stuff they don’t do anything about. And it continues, they don’t, the selling point for LMS, I think is the fact that once it’s in place, people pay their money. They review the materials, they take the quiz, they receive their certification, and no one in the office has to deal with any of it.

They get an email that says, John Smith. Passed his Mars course and gets three units of continuing ed, and a lot has gone on in the background, but they’ve, they don’t have to mess with it. It’s a hands-free thing for them, and yet people are getting what they need and they’re getting. They’re getting all their, the bells and whistles that you guys implement.

So you pass quiz one, the, it lights up and it goes, congratulations. You’re through with quiz one. You did it. And you go on to the next place. All that stuff is wonderful and it’s not stuff I even have to think about. It’s stuff you guys thought about you. It’s great. I’m sorry, my desk is wiggling.

Chris Badgett: Hearing from this story with this client, I. Is the time saving, like you came in and you were able to automate and time save, like to a level that is exponential in terms to what they were doing before.

Karen Wisch: I would say they have grown exponentially, partially because of that. Their staff is much larger.

They’re doing a lot more than what they were before. They have several programs that they do now for the state of Missouri and before they couldn’t do it because they’re. It was so much, I wouldn’t say not important stuff, but it was stuff that they had to do, but they couldn’t get it done.

Because, they’re grading quizzes instead of working on helping people save people, and now that’s all taken care of for them. They don’t have to worry about it. They can deal with the peers and with the crisis that’s going on. Rather than going, yes, they, they passed this test or not.

It’s it’s crazy how automating just this one part has allowed them to grow in other ways. Be, ’cause they have the time to think about it, okay. 

Chris Badgett: Buying back your time with automation. It’s what you can do with that time. Once you have it back, you can make more programs, you can help more people, you can scale in other ways.

That’s a really beautiful project there. 

Karen Wisch: And that’s exactly what they’ve done. They’ve taken that time and they’ve moved on with it, which is awesome. It’s, just having time that they’ve never had before. ’cause they could never get ahead of these quizzes and stuff, which sounds silly, but again, we’re seven years later.

The world has changed a lot in the last seven years and I’m sure it’ll change another a ton in the next seven. You just, I, and back to the original reason they wanted me to, they hired me, was so that they could get their renewals done. The people were not ready for online renewals at the time.

It just was a epic fail. It just couldn’t do it. And now, seven years later they’re doing it, no problem. It’s just the change in comfortable being comfortable with being online, that pe And again, I hate to give COVID any credit for anything good, but I would say that people had to learn how to do things online in that time period,

Chris Badgett: like you said Hey, maybe we should do this by Zoom instead of airplane tickets in multiple days.

Karen Wisch: And I, it’s like I have a physician friend and she was like, oh yeah, we used to go to Orlando and sit in a very cold hotel. I never got out of the hotel. I’d much rather sit on my couch and watch the Zoom meeting there and be in the comfort of my own home.

It’s a lot easier when I’m not freezing, and have spent the money and shows. It’s not like I ever saw anything in Orlando, but the inside of the hotel.

Chris Badgett: Karen Wish. That’s karen wish.com. KAER or sorry, K-A-R-E-N-W-I-S-C h.com. We were talking about the Missouri credentialing board. Thank you Karen, for coming on the show. Thank you for being a shining example of an education entrepreneur, somebody who empowers others to lift up others through education.

It sends out a ripple of positive impact in the world. And thank you for sharing your story with us today. Is there anywhere people can go to connect with you besides your website or just karen wish.com? 

Karen Wisch: Just my website. That’s all I. 

Chris Badgett: Awesome. Thank you Karen for coming on the show. We really appreciate it.

Karen Wisch: Oh, thank you Chris. And thank you so much for getting Lifter LMS together ’cause it’s awesome. 

Chris Badgett: You bet.

And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS Cast. 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 [email protected] slash gift. Go to lifter lms.com/gift. Keep learning. Keep taking action, and I’ll see you. In the next episode.