We’re going to do what every pioneer in every industry has ever done…

“Business as usual” won’t suffice any longer.

Look around you. What do you see in the eLearning industry?

It is a sea of sameness, built on the backs of clever online marketers…

NOT artists.
NOT teachers.
NOT innovators.
NOT change-makers.

People who are selling hollow info-products for a quick buck.

That is why the average dropout rate for online courses is 90%.

The reason is simple: students are bored out of their flippin’ minds!

If Facebook is more exciting than your course, then it’s game over.

We don’t need any more information. We can’t handle any more information.

We need deeply engaging transformational experiences.

The true value of your online course is not the information it provides, but in the experiences that it facilitates.

So what are little ol’ we doing to help you create engaging experiences?

We’re doing what every pioneer in any industry has ever done…

We’re innovating.
We’re re-imagining.
We’re coming back to our WHY.
We’re creating an entirely new way of doing things.

The Mission

The Great eCourse Adventure was built upon the mission to create deeply transformational learning experiences.

We decided we would focus deeply on the student experience, and create something that we ourselves would be inspired and transformed by.

Little did we know that this simple idea would transform our entire perception on what’s possible in the world of online learning.

However, a year and a half later there’s still a huge problem that we keep coming up against.

The majority of our students and clients are not techies, nor do they desire to be.

They get inspired and dream up these magnificent courses, but when it comes time to do the tech-side, they come up against tons of road blocks.

There’s a million different apps and configurations, yet nothing seems to ever be quite the right fit or the solution is insanely complicated.

The Revelation

A few weeks ago we listened to the audio book, Anything You Want, and we were deeply impacted by Derek Sivers’ (founder of CD Baby) stories on how he solely focused on serving his customers.

Nothing else mattered to him. It didn’t matter how much money he was offered or how much extra time it took to do something. He was devoted to serving his customers. The stories he tells were so freaking inspiring. Life changing actually.

After reading the book, we asked ourselves, “What is the best way we could serve all of our current and future students in the Great eCourse Adventure?”

The answer: “Create our own experience design platform that enables us and our community to easily create the courses of our dreams.”

With that answer, we immediately got to work and have been working our butts off since.

We call it an “experience design platform” because it will enable us to create learning experiences that are truly effective and engaging.

Our goal is for this tool to unlock our creative potential for crafting digital experiences.

Here’s what it will do:

  • All-In-One Solution for creating websites, courses, list building and marketing automation. It will be everything we need to grow our business.
  • Drag-and-Drop Experience Designer so you can quickly create world-class learning experiences, sales pages, blog posts, landing pages, opt-ins and whatever else you can dream up.
  • Community Builder so you can host your very own social network with forums and profiles.
  • Gamification Tools so you can incentivize and inspire engagement in your students with challenges, badges and currency/points.
  • eCommerce + Memberships so you can sell your learning experiences, products and community memberships.
  • Live Chat so you can connect with website visitors and students in a human-to-human way.
  • Relationship Manager so you can grow your network and nurture relationships. Don’t grow a list, grow a community.
  • Engagement Automation so you can create automated engagements with your contacts, subscribers and students. Create different experiences and communications based on the actions of your members.

Everything all in one place, working exactly how it should.

We use a complicated array of about 34 wordpress plugins and a handful of services/apps to power our course.

All of these things create an overwhelming symphony of technology that even Andy gets baffled by on a regular basis.

I (Brad) was also tired of waiting for Andy to make all my ideas come to life, because he’s “the tech guy” on our team.

I wanted to be able to create awesome things too! This platform is going to do exactly that.

So smile and exhale all you non-techies. The tide is turning. A new dawn is on the horizon!

It’s all in the experience.

Quality experiences and meaningful engagement are the cornerstone of what we do at GEA.

It will be no different with this new platform.

Our ultimate mission is to create an experience design platform that is not only easy to use, but inspires you to create whatever your heart desires.

We want to help you create better learning experiences with more ease and and more fun.

Needless to say, we are darned excited about it and its coming together beautifully.

We’ll have a big update for you soon and if you want to be on the early launch list, then add your email below and you’ll be the first to know.

Help us bring this vision to life.

In the comments below, share what features are MOST important to you in creating the learning experiences of your dreams.

Leave a Comment:

6 comments
Jesper says August 3, 2017

That sounds like a bit of a mouthful. Similar platforms have needed a lot of venture capital to pull off even half of that. I like to follow you guys because I share your opinions. But are you sure becoming a SaaS provider is where you want to go? I’ve been there. There’s mobs with torches and pitchforks waiting, and they are seriously trigger happy.

Reply
    Bradley Morris says August 3, 2017

    Thanks for your concern Jesper. With the eCourse Adventure, we are growing a culture and community of people who understand the importance of the long-game. We are building this software for both ourselves and our community, not for the entire online marketing industry. The types of experiences we are, want to and are excited to see our students design are incredibly complicated. We want to make that creative journey much much easier and more fun for everyone.

    The UCSE 5000 is going to be for people who understand our philosophies, values and creative principles. The typical online marketers will probably throw up in their mouths when they read about our commitment to experience design over profits and engagement rates over conversion rates. Those folks with the pitch forks won’t be allowed into our inner circle. Our version 1 is going to be open only to 150 people and after that we will only open it up to the number of people we can handle. Any pain in the ass, ungrateful customers will kindly be asked to go elsewhere with their business and we will happily give them a refund.

    We are not trying to win over the whole industry. We realize that to go big, we must start small. Our goal is to serve our inner circle in the greatest ways we can. We know that without this Experience Design platform, we will not be able to do that.

    Thus, we must build.

    Reply
    Andy Freist says August 4, 2017

    Hey Jesper – thanks for the heads-up. We are absolutely, positively sure that this is the direction we want to go. There are a huge number of apps and tools we use to make up the GEA platform, and truth be told, we only end up actually putting 5-10% of each one to use. That’s a lot of redundancy and inefficiency. So we are going to build our own platform that does exactly what it needs to do for us, and absolutely nothing more.

    We’re not just going to build a clone of Mailchimp, Teachable, Thinkific, etc etc.

    That’s like creating a starting a soda company and going up against Coke and Pepsi. We’re just solving our own problem in our own way, and it will be nothing like anything that currently exists.

    So we’ll let Coke and Pepsi battle it out, while we build our craft rootbeer company and slip by beneath the radar 😉

    There is no competition here, and we have zero intention of being any bit of a threat to these pitchfork-wielding companies you speak of. (Though if they really are pitchfork-wielding, with mobs and torches, then that’s even more reason for us to no longer do business with them)

    We’re just a couple dudes making out-of-the-box products for people like us 🙂

    The show must go on!

    Reply
      Jesper says August 7, 2017

      😀 I didn’t mean the companies have pitch forks… your customers will be the ones with the pitch forks. People go nuts when software doesn’t work like they expect. And I don’t blame them. Making software work for you, and then making it work for a wide variety of other people is veeeeery different. I spent 10 years doing UX design, so I’ve seen the mob in person. I was good at what I did, so it wasn’t even that bad. But I know what it required in time and money to make even something simple really great. So you are in for a challenge 🙂

      I wish you the best of luck. Looking very much forward to see how it turns out.

      Reply
        Andy Freist says August 11, 2017

        Ahhhh, gotchya! haha. Our answer to that problem is by building it in a deeply collaborative approach with a smaller number of people and growing it slowly and steadily in the direction that best suits the collective. It will be crystal clear what/who it is for and not for. Challenge accepted! 🙂

        Reply
Mary says August 12, 2017

Hey Brad and Andy, this sounds awesome. I’m looking forward in seeing what you’re building. Can you estimate when it will be ready (or at least in beta)? And can you give an estimate of the costs? (one time or monthly subscription)? Thanks in advance!

Reply
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