Podcasting WordPress Branding and the Long Game with Matt Medeiros

In this LMScast episode, Matt Medeiros shares all the tips about podcasting WordPress. Matt Medeiros highlights that the success and longevity of a podcast come from genuine interest and care, not just from treating it as a marketing tactic.

Matt additionally notes that this authentic approach causes the work to seem less like work and more like a creative endeavor. When podcasters focus on their curiosity and the desire to serve their audience instead of solely measuring downloads or ROI, they naturally expand their “luck surface area”—the potential for unexpected opportunities such as partnerships, new ideas, and customer connections.

Podcasting then becomes more than just content; it becomes a platform for personal branding, business development, and long-term impact. According to Matt, those who focus on the art of conversation and consistency, rather than just results, are the ones who truly succeed in the podcasting space.

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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. We’ve got Matt Medeiros, he’s back on the show. I think this is number three. This is a special episode. This is episode number 500 LMS cast, started in 2013. Here we are 16, or what? I’m doing the math wrong. I can’t do math either. What’s that? 13 years later, which is amazing.

Matt’s been podcasting longer than that. We’re gonna talk about the power of podcasting, celebrate this milestone, talk about personal branding benefits of [00:01:00] podcast. But first, Matt, welcome back on the show. 

Matt Medeiros: Chris. I’m glad you haven’t got sick of me yet. I’m happy to be here on this milestone episode of yours.

Big round of applause. Is folks like you that. I actually really look up to for that dedication and also for numbering your episodes. Oh, because that’s something that I’ve just never done. But we can talk about the why in, in a little while. 

Chris Badgett: Let’s start there with dedication.

To me, I feel like podcasting is quote, easy. I tend to do commitment well, like I do things over a long time. But when I discovered the medium, it just works. And I get a lot of value out of talking to people. I become a better communicator. I’m doing marketing, I’m creating content, building my network.

But mostly it’s the personal connection and being able to connect with people all over the world who have similar interests. And we’re trying to serve, course creators, WordPress professionals, coaches, and these folks. And to me, it’s just fun. I don’t wanna say it’s. Quote, easy, but it just, it’s not that hard.

And just to get one done a week it’s not that bad. But What are your thoughts on commitment and consistency and just the podcaster DNA? Because I almost feel like I discovered oh, this is, for me, I actually, it’s easier for me to podcast than it is to write and make YouTube videos, even though I’ve done bo a lot of both.

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. So I think. That’s the secret sauce right there is that you care about like the human connections that you’re making, you care about, like this conversation that we’re having right now. You care about meeting new people, you care about hearing new ideas and how people are tackling things in their business or their course creation.

And that’s something that for a lot of podcasts and now I, a few years ago, so I work at full-time at Gravity Forms now. A few years ago I worked in the audio space proper. [00:03:00] Where I consulted a lot of folks to start their podcasts, and there’s nothing wrong with it. A lot of people start their podcasts because they go, oh, that’s a thing to do.

A podcast is a thing to do in this marketing content marketing wheel that I’m told I should be rolling down the hill. And oftentimes people will say Podcasting is a lot of hard work because it is. But the 50% of the hard work is. If you don’t enjoy it if you don’t enjoy meeting people and having those conversations and being curious about like different aspects, and you simply look at it as a task and you’re like, how do I measure the ROI on this podcast thing?

How am I getting customers? Why am I downloads only a hundred downloads per episode? I’m looking at YouTube and I’m seeing tens of thousands on these celebrity podcasts. What, why, what’s, what am I missing? And I think that. When you care about these conversations and you’re looking at it as a learning experience, it’s enjoyable.

Number one, you, number two, you increase that surface luck area of things that can happen because of it, you have another creative idea. You meet somebody else that could be a business partner, you create a friendship, whatever it is or somebody listens to you and they buy your product.

Like you’re increasing all of this luck surface area when you’re doing this work. And then you think of that like business side afterwards, okay, I’m gonna brand the show differently. I’m gonna have different segments. And you kinda work on it and it becomes like this art as I like to refer to it as, so when you actually care about this stuff, it is easy. And I think the particular challenge is when people just look at it as, I gotta fill in the dots of this thing and ship it to my newsletter, or just post it on social media and God, I gotta get to the next one. That’s when it becomes, the particular challenge for somebody who says ah, I burned out from this podcast thing.

So you’re in a good spot by like actually caring number first and foremost. 

Chris Badgett: Let’s talk a little deeper about ROI. In marketing there’s always this goal to like, what’s the return on investment of time and capital? I feel like podcasting is literally the hardest thing to track ROI on.

A lot of people listen, they’re not on the show notes. They hear about a brand or a person. They Google it. You have no idea how this person actually, or the ROI you got from that. There’s all kinds of intangibles from the network to becoming a better communicator. We all say it like, I can’t go back and listen to my early episodes ’cause I’ll just be like, man, I was, I’ve become a better public speaker.

There’s the personal brand thing. You’re, I know when you went to Gravity Forms and you were looking for new opportunities, I saw a tweet, but like everybody in the WordPress community. Knows who Matt Maderis is, but that’s because you’ve put yourself out there, you’ve added tons of value for people.

I remember when I was new to WordPress, riding around Montana, listening to the Matt Report and just like falling in [00:06:00] love with this industry. But you were the guide. You were like, let me introduce you to some interesting people. And there’s all kinds of ROI that comes from that, but 

Matt Medeiros: yeah. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. Riff on ROIA little more.

Yeah. 

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. Particularly in, in particularly in this space. In the WordPress space, and I would probably say like in different silos of the tech web development, and probably from your listeners here who are doing courses and in industries I have no idea about. It’s like finding those pockets of community that you can, associate yourself within.

And podcasting is fantastic for that, right? Whatever that little silo of the community is. And I would say in the greater community of WordPress, the silo that we are in is. We’re bus, we’re building businesses, right? We’re building brands or, working for brands. Like we care about the economy of WordPress, and that’s our, our thing.

I would also say that there’s a hidden gem in podcasting for the business side of it. Is local podcasts still a very untapped. Market. But I [00:07:00] will tell you now as of, early May, 2025, that’s gonna change because at the top things are so saturated with celebrity podcasts and all this other stuff, I.

That the industry is going to buckle to that pressure a little bit, and people are gonna be so sick of the next celebrity podcast or the next news anchor who starts his or her own YouTube show, where they’re like, but now this is all the same. It’s like when everyone said cut the chord for cable and here we are, 15 years later.

We’re all paying micro fees to all these streaming services to, to go like 50% more than what we were spending on cable, 10, 15 years ago. And it’s this same like flip o of this of the industry. And I think local is gonna be a big thing, which could, for those who are listening, maybe your courses and courseware are in could affect a local market.

So that could be a benefit, but. Measuring that ROI is super difficult. So you’re either doing this thing to build your brand sentiment, takes time, build [00:08:00] that resume, get your name out there. That’s all cool. And if that’s what you’re in for, which I’m largely in it for that, then continue with what you’re doing.

There’s no need to try to pixel your podcast and try to convert at the end of the day. It’s gonna be very difficult to measure that in the audio space. But what it also does, connections, networking, we already mentioned that. The sort of the third thing is I look at this as.

Speaking of like comedians, comedians have a podcast and like I, I listen to Bill Burr very often, his podcast. Hilarious. But what he’s doing in that podcast is he’s practicing his standup. He’s using that as his stage. So if you study comedians and it’s just like you gotta do a hundred shows to get 15 minutes of content, right?

And do that four more times, 400 shows to build your hour special, right? These are like, the comedian in my opinion is like the true, oh, this is a broad term, but the true [00:09:00] essence of an entrepreneur, you go up on stage, you fail countless times year after year, and then suddenly you figured it out.

You figured out your process, you figured out who you should be speaking to. You start figuring out what your craft and your angle is in your content, and at, if you’re podcasting and you’re, having these meetings, think of it as that. Maybe brainstorm session for your business, work out different topics and ideas.

That’s what I did when I started the MAT report. I didn’t know how the WordPress community worked. I didn’t know how to run an agency. You and I were both at Press Conf and I just interviewed Jake Goldman at Press Conf on, on stage, and he was a huge part of me like figuring things out. Getting my business down.

I was like, okay, now how can I like 10 x this experience with Jake and asking him questions on how to run an agency, how can I 10 x this? It was, at first it was gonna be start a blog, but then I was like, I’ll start a podcast and see where it lands. And it was a massive education process, so don’t undervalue that.

Oftentimes people can just throw that away. But in your early days, like really use that as. As you are expensive as you’re learning, try not to look for did I get a customer outta this? But look at it as like your investment in, understanding how to run your business, if that makes sense.

Chris Badgett: That does. And let’s, you mentioned pockets of community. What advice would you have for somebody who’s getting trapped in the compare game? So LMS cast as an example. Doesn’t get big numbers on the downloads, but the people that do is a pocket of community that care about things like WordPress, entrepreneurship online education.

It’s very tight focus. But if I look at something like the All In Podcast or My First Million, or Joe Rogan or whoever. I’m like, am I failing? I don’t really feel that way ’cause I’ve already figured it out that yeah, hey, small is good. And like you said, there’s a million streaming services.

Pick the ones that work for you. Pick the podcasts that work for [00:11:00] you. There’s like like mainstream podcasts, but there’s also these tight niche podcasts. How do you, what advice do you have about not getting wrapped up in the download counts or having a small, a quote, small audience compared to the mainstream ones?

Matt Medeiros: Yeah, I think especially. It is hard for me to answer this because I analyze the podcast industry as much as I analyze the WordPress space. And COVID was, I know I hate bringing up Covid ’cause it’s man, this is like five, six years ago. Like how long are we gonna talk about that?

But what Covid did, I guess also maybe for your audience too, is it accelerated the adoption of podcasts. People were listening more and people wanted to start more podcasts. So we. We got this insane boom. This is probably, this is why I joined that CAOs because there’s an insane boom, a lot of money into it.

And it was just like, oh man, audio’s here to stay. Like this is the thing. And people got conditioned to inflated numbers on the audio side. And we felt shouldn’t we all have like big numbers? ’cause everyone’s doesn’t everyone [00:12:00] listen to this? And what we’re getting, just like maybe your Google search traffic, it starts now.

It’s worth coming back down. It’s starting to plateau like AI’s com combating against your organic search. Now video’s competing with audio. So it’s plateauing. I don’t look at that as a negative. I look at that as I’m correcting the amount the size of my audience, right? When I, look at.

Whatever, the 2000 subscribers on my email list for the WP Minute, back when I was doing the MAT report, it was like almost 10,000 back then. But hey it’s been corrected. Now. There’s a lot of people who have just simply left WordPress. I don’t, I realize that. I understand it. And I course correct for that.

And it’s a more intimate audience, right? People are engaged more. And you can craft content that’s gonna be more compelling for that audience. This is something that I was actually thinking I was telling you before we hit record. I was out on a walk. ’cause that’s what I do now instead of running.

And I was thinking about this, is if you do feel [00:13:00] like you’re on that hamster wheel of, okay, I’m doing an episode every single week. And this is getting to be a little bit of a slog. I am feeling a little drained from not feeling like the numbers are oh so big. This is a perfect time to have a little bit of reflection point and make sure that you understand who your audience is by literally polling them, telling them to take a quick little survey.

Tweeting this stuff out, do a single podcast episode that begs, literally begs for people to tell me what you do so I can make sure I am making the content for you. And have a little strategy to, to reinvest in understanding who that audience is. If you’re feeling burned out, cut the content in half your production in half and take the information that you just learned from your audience.

Double down on super valuable content for that audience [00:14:00] and make sure that content is going to be a must listen, right? Like it’s a must listen. Like Chris, I want to go back and start creating content that you wanna listen to again, just like you did, 10 years ago. And that’s what I’m doing.

In these coming months and then cut it in half and spend more time promoting it and breaking it down. And making sure that you can bring that wisdom in chunks on social media or short clips on YouTube and making sure that you are giving yourself a fair shot at promoting, because half the battle is making the content.

The other battle is making sure people tune in and see it ’cause everyone’s busy. And there is so much competition. So cut it in half if you have to, which is what I’ve done, and spend more time breaking it down and making sure people are seeing the big takeaways through social platforms and things like YouTube shorts and Instagram reels and all this other stuff.

That was a long answer. I apologize. [00:15:00]

Chris Badgett: And a pro tip, I used a script for editing and they have AI confined viral clips and all this stuff. It’s never been easier. It’s still a lot of work, but Sure. Yeah, it’s 

Matt Medeiros: a lot of work. Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: Let’s address stage fright. We’re so far from it that we we’ve dealt with that issue.

But I think you just gotta do it and then over time you get, you just get used to. Just having a conversation. And I really love, I heard Lex Friedman once say when he does a podcast, it’s like the whole world exploded and it’s just him and the guest and that’s it. And it’s just a deep conversation and that’s how I feel.

I do always in the back of my mind have the audience in mind like, let’s create value. What can we talk about that’s not just makes a great conversation but like really helps people and a lot of people ideally, but for me, it’s like I just get absorbed in this one-on-one conversation and the stage fright that just doesn’t exist because of that.

How about you? Yeah. 

Matt Medeiros: Yes. This is something [00:16:00] that it you work through it. It’s like a muscle. The more you exercise it, the more you strengthen it, et cetera, et cetera. I would say though that the, the only strategic piece of advice that I have for that is to. This sounds super cliche, but it’s just be your authentic self.

It’s just don’t talk about shit you don’t know. Yeah. And that is the biggest, that is the biggest advantage. Early on in, when I was in like high school I forget what the name of the program was, but it was, something career, I forget what it was, but it was like kids that had particular skills, there was a program that you could join and like you could teach other people, like how you do these skills and ob obviously mine was like computers back then. And I remember the teacher was fantastic because she was making me break down. The most simplistic things that I just took for advantage.

Took advantage of. Now you gotta remember, this is this is late nineties, right? So computers, people still struggle with [00:17:00] computers today, nevermind, like back in the nineties. And I remember her telling me to like. Set this computer up. ‘Cause this is when they were just like getting computers in the office for like, all these teachers.

And she was like, can you set my computer up for me? I was like, yeah. So I, I started doing it and then I just put the whole thing together in five minutes, monitor, desktop, keyboard, mouse, printer, all this stuff. And she’s whoa. So what did you do? Oh, I just plugged in the stuff.

I don’t know what’s a, like I just, how’d you get the printer to work? I just plugged in the printer cable. What’s a printer? Cable. And she made me break down the most basic fundamental steps that I was just taking advantage of. You don’t know what a printer cable is? And she’s no, I’ve never seen a printer cable in my life.

People listening to this today might be like, printer, what the hell’s a printer? But she made me like really break down those like real basics. And I’m sure you teach us in like courses. Don’t take. It, don’t forget like the most basic fundamental things people don’t know, and this is a perfect learning [00:18:00]moment.

So I use that to my advantage, like growing up, like understanding, like I have something to offer as basic as it might be. I just have to find the people who need this information, right? I’m not talking like this is something that’s infamous in the WordPress space. A lot of like course creators and stuff like that or content creators.

We all want to like create courses and things like that, but we’re talking to other WordPress people who are doing the same thing. It’s this is not your audience. These people know how to do this stuff. They tune in and they like you and they engage with you on social because they’re, you’re friends with them, but you’ll never sell them how to make a website with Elementor because they already know how to do that.

They’re already doing it. You have to go find the people who are not here on Twitter and sell that course to them and get them engaged in it. So finding the audience and never taking the most simplistic things that, you know for advantage. And it’s another lesson that Gary Vaynerchuk, whom I haven’t followed in quite some time, but that was the thing he always [00:19:00] said.

He is I would just never, I just never talk about anything. I don’t know, like. When I know something, you’re gonna hear everything and every opinion that I have on that topic. But if you started talking to me about like financial tech industry, I’m not touching it with a 10 foot pole ’cause I don’t know anything about it.

Pass I got, I’ve got no opinion. And that’s, I also grew up in car sales, so that was a getting rejected in a cold November afternoon on a dreary car lot in New England. I. We’ll teach you a lot on confidence and being able to talk to folks. 

Chris Badgett: I think one of the things that really stands out in the AI world and where podcasts can help is having a personal human brand.

And I want to get your thoughts on branding. In my opinion, branding is easy when you just be yourself and stay in your lane like you’re saying. If you meet me at a conference, same hat, same shirt, talking about the same stuff, I’m [00:20:00] probably a little shyer than you think because you’ve seen me on the internet, but I’m actually a reserved guy.

But other than that, what is what you get. How do you think about brand and why it’s important and the way podcasting fits into that? 

Matt Medeiros: Yeah, so for years I always thought that the output of my work. Was defining my brand right? Was like, oh, if I do this podcast episode and I put out this conductor plugin or something like that.

That was the brand, right? And I’ve slowly over time started to realize that I. I’m trying to detach myself from the work and bring people on more of I hate the word journey, but this is the experience that I’m going down and here’s, here are all the things I’m learning while I’m doing this stuff.

See the stuff I’m doing over here? It’s the MAT report. And it’s the WP Minute. It’s South coast fm. And it’s breaking content. It’s, we are Here podcast. It is our Beloved Medium podcast. It’s the Breakdown podcast. It’s the Crew Collective podcast. Coming soon, like there’s all these things that I do, but I want people to understand, like for me.

My brand is that you, you trust and trust me, right? The typ, the typical like marketing sales kind of thing. And trust me, this is all the stuff that I do over here and I will be as transparent as possible. Along the way, you know that the content that I’m creating or the product that I’m recommending is.

Tested by me, Matt approved to a degree, but I don’t want that to define me. I want you to understand that the way that I morally evaluate this stuff and like how I find it valuable and share that with you, like bringing people on that ride is I hope what the.

What the brand for me is, not saying that’s for everybody, but that is for me because I feel [00:22:00] like I do a lot of things and experiment with a lot of things. And maybe that’s another part of it that shines through. So I try to look at that personal brand. Yes, super important. You’re without a doubt, especially in the face of ai, the digital handshake, is this what we’re doing right now?

It’s these conversations, it’s this human interaction. But I try to look at it as the output of my work is not my brand, it’s about me and how hopefully I build that relationship with the viewer, listener, or reader. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah, great points. I think there’s two brands. There’s like the personal brand and then the corporate brand.

So like for example, gravity Forms brought you in to help with the brand in a way, and, yeah, and by the way, I just wanna mention, you should go check out crafted by matt.com and you’ll see all of Matt’s projects and brands and so on. But yeah, you’re almost all of them. At least the ones he has the Yeah, 

Matt Medeiros: Yeah.

Chris Badgett: He remembered to put on there. 

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: But if you just focus on the corporate brand, without the [00:23:00] human element, it’s like it’s, everything’s a sales pitch. There’s always a human in the machine, so you’re, yeah. Whether consciously or unconsciously, I. Brand is everywhere, and it’s not just the founder and CEO or whoever works at the company is part of the brand.

The community has a brand to it, and the I think of it as the way people feel after, in hearing from you, engaging with you, consuming your content or interacting with company X, Y, Z. It’s like the brand.

Matt Medeiros: Yeah.

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Brand feeling and it’s gonna happen no matter what. 

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. And listen I’m also, like I said earlier I’m trying to take a step back.

This is brand adjacent here, but I have, I still have imposter syndrome, like we just talked about stage fright. I’m not afraid to talk, but I also have a lot of imposter syndrome and. There’s also like this like level of nothing I do is perfect. Like we’re recording right now. I’m in my basement.

I’m not happy about this. In the back of my head this whole time as we’re recording this, I’m like, I can’t believe I’m doing this in my basement. Even when I’m in my studio. I’m never happy about things in the studio that happen. Sounds reverb, people next door. Things drive me nuts. Studio’s not in my house.

It’s in a coworking space. And part of the. Of like [00:26:00] this evolution of the WP Minute is promoting the content more and trying to be more engaging on social media, whatever that means. I’m still trying to figure that out. But then also yes, I’m about to literally install Lifter LMS on WP Minute so that I can use it and create courses for my audience.

And by the way, I’ve used Lifter LMS countless times at. Gravity forms for learn.gravity.com is powered by lifter LMS and and my old job at CAOs, but I’m back to like building courses and I’m like, ugh. Like I, I feel like I’m jumping into a pool that I don’t want to go into where it’s just I’m, right now I’m making a podcasting.

It’s not even like a full course. It’s just here’s a quick little guide. ’cause so many people ask me about podcasting and I have this imposter syndrome like. Are people just gonna look at this and be like, oh God, you’re a course guy now. Yeah, and I’m having these issues like with that [00:27:00] mentally, and then I talk to all these other people no, we want that.

I wanna take it so I know how to like, do this thing. So it’s always a challenge, the whole brand thing, both from competing with, your competition and then as a solo person, you’re just always just like in your own head and that’s, that is a particular challenge. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. I think imposter syndrome, I have it too.

I think the only people that honestly do not have it are psychopaths. So just get used to it. It’s just part of the journey. You just get better at managing it. Yes. Yes. Let’s talk about podcasts. I’m gonna use 

Matt Medeiros: that on a t-shirt only psychopaths don’t have. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah it’s always with you. One of the things I’ve, that I’ve admired about you is, and I’m similar in the sense I consume a lot of podcasts, but you have a very like you keep tabs on an industry via podcasts.

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: So what’s some advice there? ’cause not only is making a podcast great to do, but you can [00:28:00] also leverage ’em to just master your craft, find possible guests get niche news. Like how do you, what’s your method to your podcasting consumption? 

Matt Medeiros: Oh, this is where AI comes in, Chris. There’s always two x, right?

So speaking of psychopaths, I do listen to a lot of podcasts on two x because it’s part of my, what I call part of my job, right? I need to be informed with what’s happening in WordPress because that’s largely how I. Evaluate things at the WP Minute, and it’s largely part of my job at Gravity Forms.

Like to know things that are happening, to take that information and do something with it. Either here’s a feature I see a lot of people asking about, or here’s where the WordPress market is going. We should be aware of that. So there’s a lot of podcast consumption. There’s a lot of two x there’s a lot of podcasts listening around the house sometimes when the family’s home.

And my wife is are you listening to another podcast on speaker phone? We’re all sick of [00:29:00] it. So there’s a lot of that jamming a lot of content in, but recently even before like consumer AI software building with bolt and rep lit I was downloading a lot of podcasts just individually the MP threes and then running them through D script and like taking that.

Find the hot clips or whatever they call it, the clips, AI clips. And I was just doing that on podcasts that I needed to listen to and long form podcasts that I’m not gonna listen to the whole thing. I was getting the text and finding those moments and like leveraging that as like a reverse engineer.

But now with ai, I’ve built my own tooling. I built this one site called Pulse, wp.cc. Anyone can look at it. And basically it’s a over, it’s just a RSS aggregator of all these top WordPress sites that I listen to or that I read. On the back end of it, I have it. You can click through and see all the articles.

AI summarizes it. You can go [00:30:00] through it right now and see a summary of all those articles. And I have it shooting me messages in my Slack that. Give me that information so I don’t even have to view the site. So I am constantly like building that infrastructure out including podcasts. So either transcribing podcasts that don’t have transcripts or podcasts that do have transcripts.

Thanks to the podcasting 2.0 transcript tag. Downloading those podcast transcripts and summarizing those for me. So I’m starting to use AI a little bit more to help feed me that information on a swath of shows that I need to be informed on. And I do that in the WordPress space and in the podcasting space.

’cause I also follow that space quite closely. It’s not a very sexy answer, but that’s how I do it. 

Chris Badgett: Pro tips in there. I love that idea of letting AI find the viral moments in long form content. 

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. DS script. I’ve always used Ds script for that and as a content creator, especially when I [00:31:00] was like doing a lot of WordPress news summary and writing out more of like my thoughts around the new stuff That was that was key DSCR for that stuff.

Chris Badgett: I’m gonna flip the script on you and, going back to your printer example of chunking it down and somebody learning, I’m so close to podcasting and been doing it for a long time, as are you, but what are some questions you might have for me about 500 episode milestone and just where we’re at.

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. I, so in my world or my world, but in my podcasting journey, I want things to end. Yeah. I save nothing. Like I don’t, YouTube videos gone. And I save zero which is actually yeah, gravity Forms says we wanted to like, revisit another video and I was like, I deleted that thing. I don’t have it on my hard drive anymore.

I save nothing, I want things to end. I’ve never numbered my podcasts [00:32:00] because I feel like I’m on like this artistic journey and I just want it to stop. And start a new album, and I never wanna look at that album again. I’m curious, 500 episodes in, do you get that itch to be like, you know what, gonna chop the show down to 15 minutes, I’m gonna reorganize the sentiment or the premise of the show.

Do you have that sort of desire to just throw the whole thing away and start fresh or are you happy with I’m 500 episodes in. And this is still the same like format and process. I like. 

Chris Badgett: Oh, that’s a great question. I have two answers for that. One is a personality type thing. Having been around entrepreneurship for a while, I’ve identified two characters that show up to this party.

One of ’em is the serial entrepreneur that does like a lot of things, right? And then there’s this person who’s just obsessed and. Is does the one thing and neither is better or worse. And I actually think [00:33:00] it’s amazing when those kinds of people can work together. But I’m definitely in the obsessive camp and just like tunnel vision guy.

The deeper answer to that question, which I lucked into, but also, made a lot of decisions. I feel lucky that my life, mission, and company mission are aligned. Lifting up others through education is something I care deeply about as a father, as an individual in society, but that’s what the company does it.

It helps democratize education, empower education entrepreneurs, and send out a ripple of, positivity and improvement in the world through people’s courses that end students do and then move on. So it creates like this exponential value. The, I just feel like there’s no end and it doesn’t feel like a treadmill to me, and it’s an ever renewing market.

There’s always, people are getting older, new people, younger people are getting older and start getting into [00:34:00] this education thing. So it’s like never ending opportunity. Technology keeps changing, WordPress is changing. Video cameras and tech and all the rest keep changing.

There’s just like infinite. It is just, it feels infinite to me. So yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever stop, but maybe one day there will be a reason to do it and change. And also by doing an interview show I’m on the train, I don’t have to carry the luggage in the sense that I get smart people like yourself who bring insight and so it’s, and I just get so much value out of it personally and professionally.

Like, why stop? So that’s, yeah. That’s not where I ended up. 

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. Have you started to you do this, I think maybe with like your live streams but have you thought about replacing yourself as the face of the podcast and or starting a podcast or a media channel that is for lifter for the company, [00:35:00] but just not hosted by you, like getting another talent personality in there?

Chris Badgett: I have done that to a degree with, like Kurt and Emily do a lot of our live calls, right? And I used to do all those solo, then they came on and now they do almost entirely them themselves. So I’m a big fan when you build a business and we’re talking about like a business brand, if you can, and if you have the right amount of scale to give multiple faces out there.

For the podcast, I’ve thought about it, but I need to meet somebody who has the same. Obsession. 

Matt Medeiros: Yeah, that’s the tough one. 

Chris Badgett: And like that same focus. So that’s I know there’s people out there and there’s a lot of great people out there, but I’d want to be really certain that they could share that.

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: And I also want to add I do get the itch because I have other interests also outside of online education and all kinds of topics. So I do get the itch to start another show about something like. [00:36:00] Ultra endurance stuff or some other kind of more general entrepreneurship stuff.

But I just can’t this always pulls me back to the focus. 

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. One of the folks that I think you align pretty closely with in terms of whatever, like your. Your, the way you operate the business similar markets is Nathan Barry, right from Kit. Yeah. They just convert from Convert Kit to kit.com.

Great show. By 

Chris Badgett: the way, I love the Nathan Barry show when he interviews his customer, like it’s really good. 

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. So that’s where I was going with that. He’s heavily invested, like you, you both probably have very similar on the Venn diagram of customers. Pretty similar. Yeah. I’d imagine. Yeah, not directly competing with each other, but similar. I’m curious if those, if that thought process of a higher production has entered your mind? I can definitely see, like you and I both live in New England and there’s a lot of [00:37:00] like mill space that can be converted fairly cheap. He just opened up Kit Studios, I think, which is in Ohio or something like that.

Don’t quote me on it. Probably fairly affordable versus if he did it in New York or Boston directly or la big hubs of content creators, but probably very expensive. So I’m curious has it ever come across your mind to maybe invest in something really unique for the brand where course creators can go and create their own courses in a higher production studio, just like he has kit creators, doing it in his own production shops.

Has that crossed your mind? 

Chris Badgett: You actually are getting me really excited about that. I’ve thought about it. I’ve always been challenged because I’m a, I live in a rural area of Maine, right? 

Matt Medeiros: Sure. 

Chris Badgett: I believe Nathan Barry’s in Boise, Idaho, which is not Idaho, which is a it’s a big city in Idaho.

It’s not in California. It’s not New York, but and he’s done a lot with like in person stuff, has the conference that kit puts on and stuff like that. [00:38:00]But yeah, I do get jealous. Like I. I’m sure you’ve listened to the diary of a CEO podcast. 

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. Yep. 

Chris Badgett: Great interview show, always in person. Same with Lex Friedman and Joe Rogan and many others.

They’re in person and you can’t beat that kind of fidelity and it takes both production value, but also I think the. Interaction and the content is just even better. So it is a goal out there. I just figure need to figure out how to make that happen, where to make that happen, how to do it.

And definitely the idea of creating hubs for course creators to just remove friction. That’s what I do as a software entrepreneur. It’s all about friction removal. So if I can make it easier to create courses and create high production value content. I’d love to do it. The challenge is lifter, LMS has customers in 180 countries, so where do I put it?

You know what I mean? 

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: And this ski, [00:39:00] there’s certain parts of the world that have more than others, but even like in the United States, they’re all over the place. Yeah. But I love the idea and I do get quote, jealous of the Lex Freeman and the diary of a CEO and that like just awesome setup.

Matt Medeiros: Yeah, it could be something. This is so totally brainstorming, slightly off topic, but you could travel down to Portland, right? Yeah. And do like a weekend or a week session, maybe rent out a coworking space, bring lifter, LMS creators in do in-person workshop, that kind of thing where it’s like, Hey, I’ve got the studio set up.

Hire a videographer, probably fairly affordable these days to set up a space, and maybe try to pre-sell something like that where people come in and, you do the whole half a day of recording with their mini session or whatever, and then you can scale it out from there.

But I can definitely see you doing stuff like that because I think the brand, I think your brand is already like at that level, right? [00:40:00] Where it’s trusted. It’s a higher pedigree. It’s not just something that you stumble upon in wordpress.org anymore as oh yeah your free plugin is fantastic.

I’m gonna turn this into a commercial for you. The free plugin is great because I leverage it just for that. Like I, I leverage it for that course creation, for brand awareness and everything is. Very well done and well thought out. So I think that’s, when I look at you and I look at Lifter, I’m like, oh, that’s the natural, like next step for like brand sentiment, just like what Nathan has done.

I love that. And I just checked it’s kit.com/studios and he has Boise, Idaho, not Ohio Chicago, Illinois, and New York coming soon. Both coming soon. So pretty cool. Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: Building community. It’s another thing in the AI world, like creating those kind of workshop pop-up events and things is, has a lot of opportunity for the future.

I. 

Matt Medeiros: [00:41:00] He’s thinking, ladies and gentlemen, if you’re listening to the audio, I can see the wheels turning. You got it on Chris badge. 

Chris Badgett: Hey, this is why I’m talking about why serial entrepreneur type entrepreneurs and like tunnel vision entrepreneurs should get together. ’cause then the magic happens and that’s yeah.

Yeah. 

Matt Medeiros: And you look at what’s the place that Chris Lema really likes? It’s not Airbnb Cross. 

Chris Badgett: You mean the no. So he has Oh wander. Yeah. You 

Matt Medeiros: know, so why not? You could always centralize around something like that. It’s rent a nice, great place. Wandered, bring the studio there.

People come, they stay, whatever. I think there’s many ways to do that, but I, but that’s where I see Lifter as the next, again, I think that’s like the next, for your brand, for increasing brand sentiment and stuff like that. That’s where it goes for you, in my opinion. 

Chris Badgett: Like you, I come from a marketing and sales bent angle.

So if you’re listening to this and you are interested in this kind of event, workshop on location deal send me an [00:42:00] email [email protected] and let us know what you’re excited about, where you want it to be, what you would want included in the format. Love to hear about that ’cause it’s great to get people together and.

Conferences are great, content is great, but I think there’s a lack of workshops, like hands-on. Yes. Outcome driven, project driven. There’s a lot of that in the world, but I think in this space we could have a lot more of that. Nathan Barry’s doing a great job leading the way with that kind of stuff.

Matt Medeiros: Yeah, and if you do one in Maine, I will come up for it. All right. And I will attend the workshop and meet the fe. The folks listening to this now meet and greet and I’ll hold the workshop on podcasting or whatever you want me to, 

Chris Badgett: dang, Matt, you’ve ruined my afternoon. Now my, my brain is gonna be like, okay.

Awesome. Matt, I want to thank you for coming on the show and celebrating 500 episodes together. It’s quite the milestone and I. You [00:43:00] out there listening or watching? I’d encourage you to do what we’re talking about here. Get into podcasting, try it out. You don’t have to do a solo show. You can talk to people interview style like we’re doing right here.

And you can see like the chemistry and the we’re creating value and bouncing off each other and it’s, you just get a ton out of it. So I’d encourage you to do that. He’s at Crafted by matt.com. Go check out gravity forms. We use gravity forms at lifter LMS. I’m actually right now building something with gravity forms to help people figure out which lifter LMS plan they need.

Like conditional logic help me pick my plan thing. I’ve been using gravity for I don’t know, 10 plus years. It’s been a long time. It’s awesome. The WP Minute. Check it out. Anywhere else people can connect with you, Matt? And any final words for the people? 

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. Again, super excited for you to hit 500.

It’s an honor to be celebrating this with you. I look up [00:44:00] to a lot of the work in critical thinking that you do in the space, and I really appreciate it. So congrats on 500 the WP Minute. Dot com. That’s where you can find me in my WordPress stuff. And two podcasts. The WP Minute and the WP Minute Plus, you can search for them in your favorite podcast app and or YouTube if that’s where you prefer to listen and watch things.

Chris Badgett: Awesome. Thanks for coming on, Matt.

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 [00:45:00] episode.