ITT 151: Bootstrapping a Software Company as a Non-Technical Founder with Chris Badgett

Chris Badgett is the co-founder of LifterLMS, learning management software that allows you to create and sell online courses. Chris is a veteran of In The Trenches, making an appearance on episode 95. On that episode, we broke down what it takes to ensure student success. This topic is so important because most course creators think they can simply create and sell their course, and that's that. But the data tells a different story: course creators who emphasize student success (and all the things that lead to student success, like engagement, support, the structure and flow of your course, etc.) are responsible for the most lucrative ecourses across time (e.g. these courses are usually the top perennial sellers). So if you haven't listened to that episode, and you're a course creator, go listen to that now. In today's conversation, we go into the backstory behind LifterLMS - how Chris got his start, how he bootstrapped the software, how he got his first 42 customers, and what he's done to grow it to thousands of paying customers in a few short years.

In this broadcast, Chris Badgett and I talk about:

• How Chris bootstrapped LifterLMS (even living out a car just to get by at one point)
• How LifterLMS landed their first 42 paying customers
• Why Chris moved from agency to software
• Chris' best strategies for generating consistent, increasing recurring revenue (he uses an amazing pre-order strategy that I outline as one of my top hacks in my book "Launch Hacks")
• A simple strategy for creating things your audience and customers want
• Why you should do this one thing to get amazing feedback from customers (this is something I rarely see entrepreneurs do, which is wild...)

And much more.

How to connect with Chris Badgett online:

• lifterlms.com
• @chrisbadgett

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