Our Predictions For eLearning For 2026
.Discover our top eLearning predictions for 2026. AI, personalization, and VR reshape education. Stay ahead of the digital learning curve.
In this insightful video, we explore our bold predictions for the future of eLearning by 2026. Discover how emerging technologies such as AI and VR will transform educational experiences, making learning more personalized and accessible than ever. We also delve into the evolving roles of educators and the impact of global trends on digital learning methods. Don’t miss out — click to watch and stay ahead of the curve.
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The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:01.360] – Jonathana denwood
Welcome back to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 152. This is our episode for the beginning of 2026, the first of January. I’ve got my great co-host, Kirek, with me. So, Kurt, could you introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:00:36.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
Sure can, Jonathan. My name is Kurt von Ahnen. I own an agency called Manana Nomas, and I work directly with the WP Tonic team.
[00:00:44.460] – Jonathana denwood
In this episode, you’ll get our predictions for eLearning in 2026. I call it the Year for Digital Transformations. That’s what I’m going to call the whole thing: Digital transformations. I think it’s going to be an interesting year, to say the least, for eLearning. We’ve got some great predictions, but before we go into the meat and potatoes of this great show, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We’ll be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. Coming back, folks. I also want to take the opportunity to mention that we have a great course by Kirk himself that shows you how to build a membership or community website on WordPress from beginning to end. It will make the process easy, so you can unlock the full benefits of WordPress’s flexibility and ownership by building your membership website. Usually, this course costs around $50, but you receive a 50% discount. Where can you get this course? You go over to Wp-tonic. Com/deals, Wp-tonic. Com/deals.
Additionally, we received special offers from the show’s sponsors. What more could you ask for? I don’t think it’s a fantastic course, by the way.
[00:02:18.740] – Jonathana denwood
So let’s go straight into it. AI-powered personalized learning. I see this, it might not happen in 2026. It definitely hasn’t happened in 2025. I think some of the things that we’ve seen, the promise around eLearning, there have been a few YouTube channels really pushing that courses are dead and various statements that I find absolute rubbish, total madness. But they’ve built their channels to a high level. They’ve built my YouTube channel. But we haven’t seen AI significantly affect eLearning. I think it’s more about the topics you want to discuss that have affected eLearning in some way in 2025. But we haven’t yet seen how AI can impact the core of eLearning, I think, through membership or larger organizations’ requirements. I guess maybe during ’26, we can see something more concrete where,e through AI agents, we can customize the learning journey of each student. Research shows that people learn in different ways. If they have average IQ levels, you can still see a significant difference in how people learn. And one of the problems is that even if you’ve got a teacher in front of you, the teacher might be different, might be stressed, or have too big a class.
[00:04:24.620] – Jonathana denwood
The beauty of having a one-to-one instructor in front of you is that, through their training, they should be able to tailor the learning experience to each student’s individual requirements. But the reality is that it doesn’t happen that much. It definitely doesn’t happen online. That’s what I see as the magic: using AI agents to really customize the learning journey. Is this making sense? What are your thoughts on this, Kurt?
[00:05:03.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, a lot of it’s making sense, Jonathan, but I think I have some disagreement, and that is the LMS cast, that Lifter LMS makes, they featured a person a week or 10 days ago named Marcus Carter. Now, Marcus Carter is not a developer. He’ll tell you straight to your face that he’s not a developer. But he has leveraged AI in a Lifter LMS workspace, where he teaches native Spanish speakers English. He uses 11 Labs’ voice tools and AI to analyze what people are saying and then provides them with grades or results. And his leverage of AI and the way that he’s doing it, to me, seems baffling, right? Because I’m one of these people, every time I hear someone say, “Well, I’ve got these Google Sheets over here, these Google Docs here, and these APIs and that API, and this connects to this and this automates that.” And I go, oh, my God, what a nightmare did you create? Just make the stupid course. I am primarily an asynchronous eLearning course professional. That’s where my heart is at. That’s what I like to do. I want to make them as integrative and interactive as possible, while maintaining a sense of reality and of the present, future, and security, right?
[00:06:33.380] – Kurt von Ahnen
What Marcus Carter has done is contrary to all of that in my view. But what he’s done is impressive to see in practice. I think if a lot of people start to leverage AI in that way, people are going to start to get a much more customer experience.
[00:06:55.240] – Jonathana denwood
We got a nice comment here from Sarah. Thank you so much. Have a happy New Year, Sarah. Sarah. You can join us. Sorry, Sarah. You can always join us live. We like your feedback, folks. You recommended that I watch this episode. I haven’t yet, but I will definitely will do in the next couple of days. But this is the total contradiction of where we are in 2025, is that when you watch somebody that’s really doing something creative in it, it’s quite impressive and you can clearly see the future. But there is a lot of drift out there as well, isn’t there? But I don’t discredit the power of AI because it’s helped me in my certain Pacific things that I do. Now, as you know, Kirk, as the owner of WP Tonic, is to get leads, to get customers to grow the business. I think, hopefully, you would agree, I’m very focused on that, aren’t I? But this prospect of using AI, I think what you’re saying is it’s already there. The technology, and it’s only going to get there.
[00:08:21.300] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s there, but it sure isn’t easy.
[00:08:22.700] – Jonathana denwood
No.
[00:08:23.560] – Kurt von Ahnen
That’s the dichotomy of AI. You’ve got all these people on the outskirts of IT thinking, Well, I’m not a developer at all, but all I got to do is talk to my computer and make magic happen. And unfortunately, this guy like Marcus gets on the podcast and basically says that, but he also says, This took me hours and hours and days and days of forward and back and trial and error. And he did say something in his podcast that really resonated with something I truly believe, and that is done is better than perfect. So he’s very open to the idea like, Hey, I might throw something on the website and maybe it doesn’t work. They’ll tell me if it doesn’t work and we’ll fix it. He’s not one of these perfectionists, and I think that’s enabled him to grow at a quicker pace with this AI stair-stepping thing he’s done. Not for leaving people out. Chris Lasseter from the Lifter LMS world. He is also an AI expert with certifications in the field. But to his credit, he’s built a front-end course builder so that teachers can leverage AI to build online courses for their kids.
[00:09:38.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s there, but it’s not- Obviously, we’re a boutique hosting provider, but we also an agency.
[00:09:46.920] – Jonathana denwood
I want to move the… We have two levels. We have the creator, the small entrepreneur, and then we have our organization clients. Our organization clients, AI What I call producing that digital transformation. In the next two years, is going to be the fundamental thing for our larger clients, our more corporate type clients, is getting this using AI so you can get this digital transformation. It’s really where I want the agency part of WP tonic to be laser-focused on AI and using AI in practical ways to get this digital transformation. Shall we do your one on your list? There will be an upsurge in course creation after you don’t need a course bubble pops. Tell us more.
[00:10:54.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, absolutely. I’m at its end with the marketing coming out. You don’t need a course. You don’t need webinars. Webinars are dead. You need a mobile app. Make $50,000 a week or you don’t have a business. These ads to me are ridiculous. You have to have a mechanism, some mechanism to establish yourself as an authority in your space. For me, it was publishing a book. Once I actually published a book in my field, no one ever asked me again, Hey, where did you go to school? They just said, Oh, he published a book. He knows what he’s doing, right? Courses are a lot like that. You put out a course, you establish yourself as an expert or as an authority in the space, and then you use that course to leverage other things, whether it’s public speaking or training or coaching or whatever it is. And I think that there’s this giant bubble out there right now, and I’m going to include the Russell Brunson tribes and the Tony Robbins tribes And Russell Brunson is doing a thing now that’s saying- Well, you know what?
[00:12:04.340] – Jonathana denwood
This is only my opinion. The two people that you’ve mentioned, highly successful, fantastic marketers, but in my opinion, total drifters.
[00:12:13.080] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, yeah, not selling quality concepts to people. He’s got a thing now telling people how to sell to people without having authority in the space. It’s like that doesn’t make any sense, Russell. You need something. The average person, not famous people don’t need this because they have their Fame. But the average person needs to establish themselves as an authority in some way. And I think that this is going to cause… I think people are going to drift off. They’re going to try this- I’m sorry to interrupt, but you’re basing that on your firm personal experience, because I think you’ve said this publicly quite a few times, that writing a book because you’re big into the motorcycle, motor Marine industry, that’s the other side of your commercial life.
[00:13:04.760] – Jonathana denwood
Writing a book about training really changed your own life, didn’t it? Considably.
[00:13:12.740] – Kurt von Ahnen
The whole trajectory of my family’s lives have changed because of publishing those books.
[00:13:18.600] – Jonathana denwood
Because it gave you credibility.
[00:13:20.940] – Kurt von Ahnen
Exactly. I can remember. You remember when the economy was absolutely in the toilet in 2007?
[00:13:29.080] – Jonathana denwood
Yeah, I Luke. It was the first full year I was in America. It all went band-shaped, bear-shaped.
[00:13:38.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
We literally lived in Albuquerque and I said, I got to go back to work. I got to go get a job. I walked into a car dealership with a copy of the book I had written, and I laid it on the general manager’s desk without an appointment. I said, I wrote this book, and I can turn around your service department and show you how to make money in this economy without ripping people roll off. And I started that Monday with a really good salary. And it had nothing to do with Kurt’s awesome or Kurt looked great in a button down shirt. That wasn’t the case because I know none of that’s true. What was true was- You were a handsome beast, actually. I took the time to publish the book, which led to authority, which led to the owner of that dealership going, just put them in there, man. Just, anything’s got to be better than what we got right now in this economy. Put them in there and let’s see what happens. And then, of course, you make it happen and you build a track record through experience off of that authority. That’s what the whole course building experience is about.
[00:14:38.140] – Kurt von Ahnen
A lot of people think course building is that set it and forget it, that passive income thing. They’re going to build it once and they’ll never work again and live on a beach. And that, to me, is not the case. Proper course, trajectory is your course is your authority piece, and then it leads to your upsells and your expansion from there.
[00:14:58.960] – Jonathana denwood
Good. I think also the other factor is I was watching a couple YouTube, got quite large YouTube channels, and they specialize in IT and front-end coding and around React and some of the other front-end Java, because I try and keep my hand in, because I trained as a JavaScript developer. I started with Action Script with Flash, and I got totally burnt out, really. I don’t want to go down that road. That’s for another episode. But I like to keep my hand in a little bit. They were saying they built their channels. These are YouTube channels that got a quarter of a million subscribers. They used to do very long Coaching actual courses, mini courses, like three, four hour long with a project from beginning to end. They said that the popularity has died and they no longer do that type of content. And they were saying that there was a couple of factors that they felt affected that type of content. One was the COVID years, that there was a lot of people at home through COVID-19. When I say that, it seems like a decade ago, doesn’t it? But it was only a couple of years ago, wasn’t it?
[00:16:43.520] – Jonathana denwood
Or three years ago. But it just seems like we’re talking about something a long time ago. But people were at home, they had a lot of time on their hands. The other thing they were talking was the growth of TikTok, of other similar platforms where the younger generation or people in general don’t want to watch nonformed content. I’m not too sure about that because you could say podcasting, like Rogan, three-hour podcast, general discussion or particular topics. I like long-form podcasting, long-form YouTube. So I’m not too sure about that second argument. I think there’s elements to it. It’s like a lot of things. It’s not black and white. You can have something that’s partly true, and there’s another part. I think it’s more complicated. I’ll be interested in what’s your thoughts about this?
[00:17:55.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I’ve been on the micro learning trail for a long time in the eLearning space, and that That’s one of the obstacles when you deal with enterprise eLearning is you’ll have a client that may have spent two, three, five million dollars on Scorm content that’s long format, and you’ll have a conversation And you’ll have a conversation. You’ll say, hey, we’ve got to take this content and we’ve got to drill it down. So this 45 minute lesson really needs to be a separate section within the course, and it needs to be nine five minute segments. But they’ve already paid a tremendous budget to make that long form content. And then you’re asking them basically to double down and make it micro learning. And it’s shown over and over and over again that micro learning drives people to completion. There’s a lot of science behind it with the dopamine hits and chemically, what happens in a learner’s brain when they continually get something done, get something done, get something done, they get excited and actually keep going. Where If you haven’t drone on for 45 minutes, there’s no dopamine, and they just get bored and turn it off.
[00:19:06.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
So I’m really big on the eLearning path with the micro learning. It’s just you have to be strategic about it. And you mentioned TikTok. Part of the problem with education now is there are people that really do want to learn, Jonathan. There are people that really like, they’re not doing it for entertainment. They’re doing it because they want to learn. And there’s a lot of eLearning professionals now that are trying to not micro learning, but micro micro learning. They’re trying to do everything in a really fast, TikToky fun way, and it doesn’t provide the learning. So if you can’t produce the desired result, you’re not going to succeed either. You’ve got to find that balance, dare I say, six, seven of it all.
[00:19:54.680] – Jonathana denwood
Yeah, I think you put that fantastically. I think it’s time for us to We have our middle break, folks. We’re back. We’ve got some fantastic topics to discuss in the second half. I think we’ve covered a lot of interesting stuff in this first half of this show. Back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I want to take the opportunity that we got a fantastic newsletter, totally free. I cover one of the topics that we discussed in the podcast in a bit more detail. Plus, there’s a created list of other stories that I which I put in the newsletter. That’s around AI or membership topics. You can get this newsletter by going over to wp-tonic. Com/newsletter. Wp-tonic. Com/newsletter. Sign up, written by myself and created by myself, and you’ll get it in your inbox every week. So please to sign up for that. It really does support the show. So I think my next one, and your one, number two on our list of predictions, mine was the semi-declined of asynchronous e-learning, the growth of social and cohort learning, and your one, community tools will become the more expected as normal within learning sites.
[00:21:20.600] – Jonathana denwood
I think they’re all mixed up in one topic. First of all, would you agree with that?
[00:21:26.520] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I do. And it’s not because the course creators are pushing certain tools or certain agendas, it’s just the flow and the evolution of the learning space. Again, that whole droning on, solo learning all by yourself in the desert thing, that whole working remote. We’ve all begun to master working remote. You and I are remote right now, right? We’re neighbors, but we’re on this call together. People have gotten used to that, and now they want that contact even through the learning experience, and it’s just been the natural evolution of it. The challenge is, and we’ve talked about this on other shows, Jonathan, the challenge is, what tools are you going to integrate together to give a seamless, clean user experience to the student? Because one of Lifter LMS’s values is student experience first, right? So what is the learner experience? And that’s the hardest part for a lot of these course creators, especially with SaaS platforms, to really grasp because they might use Podia and then try and say, Oh, I’m going to have a circle for this. Well, now you’ve got two platforms you’re trying to smush together to get an end result from.
[00:22:46.220] – Kurt von Ahnen
That’s not going to be a smooth experience for the learner.
[00:22:49.420] – Jonathana denwood
No. I think it would also be effective because in another show we do, we were discussing about… You were discussing one of the topics, one of your predictions for 2026, the WP tonic. We did a very similar show about our predictions for 2026 in WordPress. I think one of the points you made was the need a reaction against AI or this term AI slot. I don’t actually like that term, actually, but I did understand a reaction to wanting the need for real people. Funny enough, I see it myself When I’m using YouTube, obviously, if I sense in any way that it’s a generated person using AI technology, or I tend to ditch, I want a real person really communicating me through YouTube. More creative content, I’m fine that is using AI, where it’s like a mini film or mini concept storyline. I just see that as an extension of creativity, but I don’t like it when it’s trying to mimic a real person. There’s something about it that I really don’t like. I think this is what all this is about. I think there’s nothing wrong with asynchronous learning. What that means, basically, folks, is you can dive in at any time you want into a course and you can learn at your own pace.
[00:24:32.400] – Jonathana denwood
The problem was that it’s been linked to this whole drifter class, as I call them, that say that you can run your membership business like 20 hours a month and have seven figures and run it on the beach in some tropical island somewhere. There’s some of those people that I’ve been pushing that we’ve already named, and in my opinion, they’re semi Drifters, but they’re very successful Drifters. Part of me thinks, Why do you keep going, Jonathan? You should join them, really. That’s what the market wants. But I just haven’t got in my heart to actually do it. I would feel dirty. But there’s nothing wrong with asynchronous learning. It’s just been linked to this Drifter class. But I think because of AI, there’s a reason why people, in some ways, still want to go to university. A lot of the times, it’s not the actual quality of the teaching. It’s the co-haul, it’s the student having your own and try making people that might be your friends for the rest of your life. Now, I have one or two people that I’ve known for 25, 30 years that I went to university as a mature student in the But funnily enough, I was one of the younger mature students.
[00:26:05.300] – Jonathana denwood
I was in my early 30s. But I’ve got a couple of people that are friends that were my lecturers. I’m still in contact with them. I think that’s why having a small group, it motivates you because the biggest problem with remote learning, eLearning, is the drop out rate. It’s the thing not mentioned, is it? It’s the drop out rate. It’s very large, isn’t it? You could say it’s not your problem, but it is your problem, because you can’t grow your membership business if people are not getting a result and they’re dropping out a lot from finishing your course and getting the result, isn’t it?
[00:26:54.300] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, that’s a bad one.
[00:26:58.620] – Jonathana denwood
That’s what I like to hear, you agree with me. Rob doesn’t do it very often. No, it’s fine. On to the next one. We will see the end of the beginning of the end of scorm. I think that’s also linked to number 4. I put the growth for CMS, CMI5 and XRPI, but it could also be the death nail for these as well. The reason I’m saying this, Kerp, is I’m not saying it’s going to go away in 2026, but I’ve been staggered about how scorn has lived on, lived on, lived on. And the reason why is it’s linked to our other podcast, again, is I put this concept that AI, and I use this term that I made up, that flat data, I call it flat data. The idea in AI of primitives is that AI is going to really change eLearning dramatically. It really doesn’t like school, and it probably doesn’t really like some of these other standards. They’re more… Well, nothing’s more enclosed than SCORM, is it? I really see the beginning of the end for SCORM, really, in 2026. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:28:28.780] – Kurt von Ahnen
This is one that you and I on complete opposite ends of the spectrum on. And this comes from my corporate life experience. So it’s going to be hard for some people to hear, and some people might like to hear it. Corporately, the people that make the decisions on where the budget goes and how it gets spent for e-learning typically have no idea what the heck is going on. They’re so totally disconnected. And They’re not risk-takers. They’re not entrepreneurs, right? An entrepreneur puts up a step stool on his own little project and gets launched, and a career CEO puts up his long extension ladder on a tall building and starts to climb that ladder. And what happens is the higher up that ladder they get, the more risk-averse they are. And so they don’t make new decisions. They’re horribly slow at adopting new technologies and new processes and new ways, even if it means saving a ton of money and getting a better learner experience. This is actually the struggle with Manana Nomas, because this is one of our specialty products. We specialize in taking very high dollar, scorm-purposed websites and converting them to a more learner-centered environment at about 20 % the expense that the corporations used to The problem is, Jonathan, is that a lot of these corporations, even with an 80 % savings on hosting maintenance and getting a better learner experience, they believe it’s too good to be true, or they just don’t want to endure the change, or they don’t want to take the risk that it might be a bad decision, right?
[00:30:18.460] – Kurt von Ahnen
Not that it is a bad decision. They just don’t want to take the risk. If you go to scorm. Com and you actually look at the development of Scorm, I think the last version of Scorm came out in 2004. Before. So it’s not new. It should have been like flash. You said you came up doing flash development, right?
[00:30:38.890] – Jonathana denwood
Action scripting, that’s where I’m going to.
[00:30:41.400] – Kurt von Ahnen
And when they said, Hey, the browser is not going to support flash anymore, Flash was gone, Adobe turned it off, and there was no flash. In my mind, it should be that way with Scorm. They should just turn it off and go this. There’s other ways to do this, right? There’s other course authoring tools that will give us similar results for a 10th of the cost and a better learner experience. But the reality of it is simple. These corporations have spent literally millions of dollars on eLearning content that they don’t want to push the delete button on. And because they’ve already made that massive investment in eLearning, Scorm capable websites and hosting is going to continue to be a thing.
[00:31:26.440] – Jonathana denwood
Oh, yeah. I’m not saying you’re wrong. I think it’s a case-by-case company by industry. I just think the requirements of AI and AI to some extent in the corporate, in the non-entrepreneur eLearning creator, the coach, the person building a profitable seen as a small business, but could be a very large business for individual or small team, the corporate world. I think AI is such a buzzword. Obviously, some of it’s Sham. It attracts a lot of drifters. But as we discussed in other podcasts that we do, there’s definitely something to it. It is, in my opinion, and it’s going to fundamentally change things. I really think this indifference, this lack of knowledge, and plus this massive investment, they’re all true facts that you’ve so clearly laid out. But also a lot of these type of individuals are going to feel under pressure because they’re going to be asked by their chief financial officer, the chief officer, to What are we doing around AI? They’re going to have to have some answers. Scorm is, like I say, the opposite of what AI wants and requires that I I think there might be opportunity to see the beginning of the end of this that should have been put to bed a long time ago.
[00:33:07.640] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, while SCORM might not provide the flat data that AI is seeking, to your point, I do believe that they’re going to develop AI modules that they’ll be able to embed through Articulate 360 Rise and Captivate, where people will be able to build these AI integrative elements into the eLearning and still have it wrapped up into that Zip package that is Scorm. So if you think about it, like when you take a quiz in SCORM, and let’s say you’re in WordPress and you’re running Scorm and you’re using Grass Blade, that SCORM package is still integrated and running through a third party reporting site. It’s running through Grass Blade LRS, and that’s what syncs the reporting in Lifter LMS for you in your student report. So if the SCORM package can interact with that third-party site through an API in that way, we know that it has the ability to integrate with embedded AI modules that would be in there that could go out to third-party SaaS sites and do things.
[00:34:13.300] – Jonathana denwood
Might be totally possible. On to our next one. More growth in the micro learning space, I think it’s happening. I think I think using AI, you can see AI enabling people to produce interactivity, quizzes, interactivity materials at a much cheaper, at a much higher quality level. You see that. It’s not quite there, but you see… I actually have been surprised how slow it’s been in a way. During this show, we’ve looked at some of the AI products out there that can help you make interactive slides, images, videos, but you can waste an enormous amount of time as well. We have, you and me, because it’s part of us keeping ourselves relevant, isn’t it? But I see that more tools that actually help you produce real stuff rather than wasting a lot of time, that a lot of these AI tools… I Of all the stuff I’ve looked at, I can really name… I’m looking at one now that, like Notebook LLM, actually helps you produce some actual real stuff. We looked at a couple of other products, and I think there was only one or two that both of us were impressed with. But the bulk of them, just a time waste, really, aren’t they?
[00:35:55.960] – Jonathana denwood
But I see these tools maturing in 2026, really helping produce micro learning content. What do you think?
[00:36:05.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, the hardest thing about the micro learning content, and this is going to sound mean, but it’s quite honestly the course creator’s mindset. The tools are there. I just did a lunch and learn presentation for the chamber of commerce. I did one in December. I’m doing another one on January 30th, and I already have all of the content is pre-generated for the one on the 30th. I’ve already got the presentation. I’ve already made the workbook. To your point, you mentioned tools. Designer was one of the ones that we had talked about. I had a lifetime deal. I signed up for it, and that’s how I make the workbooks. I literally take the PowerPoint and I slam it in the designer, say, make me a workbook. Boom, I got a workbook. It’s just been that easy. The problem is with the micro learning and the interactivities that we’re talking about, a lot of course creators struggle with how to break down their content. When you’re a subject matter expert, you see everything in this giant global perspective. What you need to do is you need to have that learner’s mindset that says, How do I break this in the bite-size pieces?
[00:37:13.170] – Jonathana denwood
Because I think you’ve made a fantastic point there is that… Because I think a lot of organizations, I’ve seen this with a lot of eLearning, especially in university, higher education schools, that it was actually seen as a cost saver. It was seen as a mechanism to cost save, but actually to produce really good eLearning and micro learning content takes a lot of knowledge because you’re trying to reduce… Unless you’re dealing with the most simplistic training element, really reducing something. You get that with copywriting. Anybody can produce paragraph after paragraph after paragraph, or most I can’t, but most people can. But to actually distill the essence of a marketing, what the company is offering in two lines or in one paragraph and really trigger a result, an action. That’s a skill. That’s what a skilled copyright… A lot of so-called copywriters can’t do that. They’re lying or they’re lying to themselves. But that’s the same thing with micro learning or online, taking something and distilling it. So the person actually… That takes a lot of experience and a lot of work, doesn’t it? Would you agree with what I’ve outlined?
[00:38:46.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, to be clear, I got 20 years in that space of really finetuning that craft. And that’s a really difficult thing. I used to be the training manager at Ducati, North America. And so you have these motorcycles that are incredibly intricate. And you’ve got this giant machine. You got to tell a technician how to take apart and put back together, but put it back together so it runs right. And you can’t just You’ve got to vomit the whole thing out. You’ve got to focus on components and systems and networks of systems, and then at the end, it becomes a whole unit.
[00:39:25.020] – Jonathana denwood
I’m sorry to interrupt, but isn’t it really been proven this is all back by science that if you’re trying to explain something new that’s reasonably complicated, it does depend on the knowledge of the student base. But I think these are broad things that affect all scenarios, is that If you cover more than one or two topics and it’s more than 10 minutes, you increasingly lose their attention and student base, don’t you?
[00:39:55.220] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, they’re gone. And that’s why one of the… If we could just jump a little bit, that covers… We’ve gotten into one of my predictions, and that is that tactile, organic interactions are going to become more integrated with online platforms. There’s going to be, I believe, an enhanced level of what we call that integrated or that blended learning example. I’ve used the term blended learning for a decade now, so that’s what’s in my head. But it’s the idea that I’m going to give you the theory online, but knowing that you’re going to have to come to an in-person workshop of some kind. If it’s a mechanical thing, you’re going to demonstrate that skill mechanically in the room. If it’s just sales, if it’s a soft skill, we’re going to do role play with real people in a room. You’re going to exercise these skills that were in the training. But the whole idea of we have the theory online and you’re taking the training with the expectation that you’re going to deliver and execute that skill in person in a room full of your peers. That’s what elevates the result of training. I think we’re going to see a resurgence in that.
[00:41:11.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
That was pretty popular before the pandemic. And then during the pandemic, of course, everybody wanted to do everything 100% online. I think that that dream horribly blew up on people, and they’re still recovering from that bad decision.
[00:41:25.200] – Jonathana denwood
I think the last one, it’s very linked to our other podcast and one of the discussion we had in that. That was round where I put the death of wall garden LMSs. I do see not only open source, WordPress is well positioned, I feel with headless and with Lifter LMS or with LearnDash, the two that we really for our corporate clients. For smaller, I think it has some relevance as well through marketing optimization using something like Lifter LMS or using Creator LMS, which are both WordPress learning management plugins that really span membership and more the corporate side as well. I think AI through marketing optimization is really important for the smaller client, creators, and for the corporate larger clients integrating because you got this term called ERP, enterprise Resource Planning. I don’t know if you’ve heard this term. It’s about because I asked Kurt to look at a particular product that’s in the lower end, and he hadn’t heard of it, and he was wondering why I asked him to look at it in the first place. Because I’ve had larger clients that wanted a digital transformation of their association to reduce churn, to reduce membership churn of their association or their nonprofit, or it can affect universities and schools.
[00:43:18.240] – Jonathana denwood
Their subscription don’t end because they’re students or they’re pooples, but their engagement disappears. And They also want the larger organizations want a ERP solution. They want the WordPress website to integrate with finance, with HR, with other elements of their organization. They’re looking at Salesforce, or they’re looking at large ones, or they’re looking at Microsoft or Oracle solutions. That’s a bit out of my scope. But this need to integrate is, I really thought, we’ve With what we offer through WP Tonics Agency, it’s something we’ve got to grow in, I feel. But these wall garden, these SaaS LMSs, I’m not sure in the world of AI and the need to integrate with finance, with HR, they can offer that to the extent that maybe WordPress and other open-source LMSs can. What do you reckon? That was a lot I’ve just thrown at you, Kurt.
[00:44:47.760] – Kurt von Ahnen
It is a lot. When it comes to the walled garden thing, I’m a little… I’m on the fence, Jonathan, just to be real about it, because I’m thinking about, Well, where Where is the average course creator really coming from? Where are they getting their inspiration from? Where are they seeing this inspiration to jump in the realm? And unfortunately, as much as we love WordPress and as much as we love what we do in this space, there is just not proactive marketing coming from our side of the table. And so a lot of people, I run into an awful lot of people in the entrepreneur space that are I’m like, Oh, I just signed up for a new school and I’m going to start my own community there. I just signed up for… I got a Kajabi site. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this or not. Have you ever heard of Go High Level? And they’re new to the space, and they’re They’re new to the space, and they’re excited, and I get it. I don’t mean to say that I’m talking down to people. That’s not the case. But they’re very excited and they- It’s a lot…
[00:45:54.260] – Jonathana denwood
I’m sorry to interrupt, but I think the term I use is imbalance. There’s a lot of imbalance You get people that should not even think about high-level. High-level is an agency experience marketer tool. I’ve got some indifference towards it because some of the things they market. But I think you would agree it’s a marketing higher-level tool. You’re getting people that haven’t done even the basics of digital marketing, thinking that they’re just going to dive in to high-level, don’t they?
[00:46:31.900] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. I had a client that we made a beautiful, beautiful website for them. And then without consulting me, they hired a marketing expert from Go High Level, and $3,500 Well, it was $3,500 a month, so it ended up being $10,000 later, they had not one sale come from this expert in their Go High Level integrations. It’s just I run into these people, and And so when I say, Hey, I run an agency and I’m on the WordPress space, we could totally do that in a hosted example where you have flexibility, design freedom. We can keep your costs down. We can use Fluent CRM for that. And you’re like, Hey, we’ve got a tool that matches that. We’ve got a tool that matches that. And when we say that, Jonathan, they don’t hear easy solution. They hear, Oh, that sounds complicated. That means I have to get the hosting and the tool and I have to do… It’s like, No, we’ll build it for you, and it’ll still be cheaper than what you’re spending and easier and better results. It’s such a frustrating element.
[00:47:38.540] – Jonathana denwood
Yeah, because I think we’re also… I think a lot of agencies which are really the bedrock of WordPress WordPress. Regional statewide agencies are the bedrock of still WordPress. They don’t even… I used to work for a large regional agency. They never mentioned WordPress WordPress when they were working with clients. They only talked about solutions. Exactly. And they chose the tool, and the tool they chose was WordPress for the price point of the client and what the client needed.
[00:48:13.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, and That’s where I’m at. So we say, Oh, is it going to be the death of the walled gardens and stuff? And I think we’re going to see an inflated frustration with people that saw the marketing, signed up for these platforms, and it doesn’t do what they thought it was going to do or what they interpreted or inferred as a promise. They’ll think it’s a broken promise that it doesn’t work.
[00:48:37.880] – Jonathana denwood
Well, you see it in Kajabi, don’t you? Which is a great product. It’s a great product. But the idea that depending on your experience, it’s a simple product to set up is nonsense, isn’t it?
[00:48:51.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s not easy. I have a client that’s on Kajabi, and she said, If I give you the back-end access to this, can you look it over for me? And this was a couple of years ago, Jonathan. I went in, I said, Oh, my God. How do I even know what’s back here and how it looks on the front-end? There’s a total disconnect between the… I said, How do you learn this? And I’m like, People say WordPress is hard? Are you kidding me? But then they’ve really come a long way in the last couple of years, and it’s gotten more intuitive. So I don’t want to beat us on-It does a lot of things.
[00:49:23.800] – Jonathana denwood
And a lot of things mean-Lots of complications. It just goes with the territory, doesn’t it?
[00:49:30.260] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. But you mentioned earlier, and I think it’s important to reiterate the liberation of data. Where does that data live? When it gets super popular, let’s say your dreams come true and you get 5,000 people that want to use your website and bandwidth and do community tools and talk to each other and message each other. And all of a sudden it starts to slow down and it’s not really as crisp as it used to be. And who do you complain to? Because If they don’t increase the server resources or increase the capacity of your URL within their walled garden, you’re stuck. But if you’re in WordPress, you can go, hey, man, this thing’s growing, the site is starting to slow down. We need more PHP workers. We need more memory. And if we’re using terms that are over your head right now as you’re listening, that’s what you have people like me and Jonathan for. We’re aware of those things and we go, Hey, you know what? The $100 a month hosting thing ain’t going to work for you anymore. You’re going to have to pay the $300 a month for hosting to get the resources that you need to deal with this bandwidth.
[00:50:33.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
But if you had 3,000 to 5,000 people giving you 50 bucks a month to be in the website, you wouldn’t care if you paid $300 or $500 a month for hosting.
[00:50:41.860] – Jonathana denwood
I think that’s fantastic. I think it’s been a fantastic show. So, Kurt, what’s the best place for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?
[00:50:50.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
Maniananomas. Com is everything that’s business-related with hosting and course development, stuff like that. So maniananomas. Com. And then if it’s just personal, If you just want to connect, LinkedIn. Linkedin is my connection hub.
[00:51:04.420] – Jonathana denwood
Yeah, and if you want to find that Kurt works with WP Tonic, you want to find out more about WP Tonic and the services that we provide, go over to the WP Tonic website. We’ve got a very diverse… We’ve got creators, coaches, and large organizations all use the power of WordPress for its flexibility, data ownership, and just ownership that it provides. We will be back next week with another great podcast. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.
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