Course Lab
Interview with Greg Smith
CEO & Co-Founder, Thinkific
Interview Summary
Greg Smith, CEO and co-founder of Thinkific, started as a course creator himself — teaching LSAT prep online around 2005-2006 before building the platform. In this special industry-perspective episode, he traces the evolution of online courses from early innovators to mainstream early majority, explains why niche creators can earn meaningful income with even dozens of fans, and argues that community is becoming the primary retention driver. His own course still generates $10,000 per month on autopilot, which he uses to illustrate what the "creator middle class" can look like.
From LSAT Prep to the 800-Pound Gorilla
Greg was tutoring the LSAT at the University of British Columbia in 2005-2006 when he realized he could reach more people online. He looked for software to host his course but found nothing that fit: marketplaces controlled pricing and customer data, and enterprise LMS platforms were designed for corporations and universities. So he built his own solution. Other creators immediately wanted the same tool, and by 2012, Thinkific launched as a platform. The first three years included false starts — a marketplace model, bespoke enterprise solutions, creating content themselves — before coming back to the original idea of serving independent creators. When they found product-market fit, it felt like gravity: they went from pushing a product to not being able to keep up with demand.
It went from trying to push something on the market to all of a sudden, we couldn't keep up with customer demand fast enough.
The Creator Middle Class
Greg sees a fundamental shift in who can make a living from online courses. On traditional social platforms, algorithms drive 90 percent of revenue to 2 percent of creators. But when creators own their brand, pricing, and customer relationships on platforms like Thinkific, meaningful income is possible with even hundreds or dozens of followers. Greg calls this the "creator middle class" — not millions of fans, but perhaps an extra $1,000-$5,000 per month at an 80 percent profit margin. His own LSAT course still generates $10,000 per month on autopilot, years after he stopped actively working on it. The opportunity is particularly accessible because more creators are niching down: instead of 50 generic geology courses saturating a market, one creator teaches mineral exploration specifically for northern Canada.
Keep in mind, being a middle class as a creator might mean that you're making an extra 1000 or $5,000 a month, at a profit margin of 80%, where you're keeping most of it.
Community Is the Retention Layer
The evolution of what constitutes a "good enough" course has moved through clear phases: from downloadable zip files with PDFs, to video players with quizzes, to interactive assignments. Now, Greg sees community as the next essential layer. People join for the content and stay for the community. He encourages creators to invest in building communities — even small ones — before launching courses. A community of a few dozen people provides both a potential customer base and a continuous feedback mechanism for what to teach. The shift from hard-sell webinar funnels to organic community-based selling is one of the most significant trends Greg sees: bring people into a light-touch community experience first, deliver value, and then introduce paid offerings to an already-engaged audience.
People join for the content and stay for the community. So I think having some form of community interaction around the content you're creating is more and more important.
This Is Not for Dabblers
As Abe and Danny discussed in the debrief, the online course opportunity remains attractive — but it has matured. In the early days, you could throw something together and make money on autopilot. Now, building a successful course business requires more work: testing, iterating, building community, creating feedback loops, and constantly listening to students. Greg emphasized that the greatest investment a course creator can make is in creating listening loops — any mechanism that gives you continuous feedback on what is working and what needs improvement. The quality bar has risen, not in production values necessarily, but in the depth of the learning experience and the level of engagement students expect.
The greatest thing you can do to make the greatest possible courses is to listen and create feedback loops. Whatever you're delivering, you're constantly hearing if it's good or bad, or helpful or not.
Greg's Action Steps
Greg recommends these 3 steps to improve your course planning:
Build a small community before launching your course
Start with even a few dozen engaged people in a community. This gives you both a feedback mechanism for what to teach and an audience already primed to buy when you launch. Communities can start with free groups but should evolve to owned platforms where you control the relationship.
Create listening loops to drive continuous improvement
Build mechanisms for ongoing student feedback into every part of your course business — post-lesson surveys, community discussions, coaching calls. The feedback loop is what allows you to continuously improve and to discover what your next offering should be.
Niche down to avoid saturation
The broader your topic, the more you compete with everyone else. Go narrow and specific, or go deep in terms of the transformation you deliver. A niche course with a small but passionate audience can generate meaningful income at high margins.
About Greg Smith
CEO & Co-Founder, Thinkific
Greg Smith is an entrepreneur, lawyer, and lifelong learner who co-founded Thinkific and serves as its CEO. He started as a course creator himself, teaching LSAT prep online around 2005-2006, before building the platform that now serves hundreds of thousands of creators worldwide. Under his leadership, Thinkific went from a small startup to a publicly traded company, guided by the mission of helping creators turn their knowledge into businesses.
Listen to the full episode
From Course Lab with Abe Crystal & Ari Iny on Mirasee FM