Guiding early-stage SaaS founders to 7-figures | SaaS Coach & Advisor | Top 0.5% Global Podcast | 400+ SaaS Founder Interviews | Ex-Microsoft & Disney

There are two dangerous traps for SaaS founders today.🪤 Trap #1: The "Old School" Grind. Thinking you need to hire a massive team, burn VC money, or work 80-hour weeks to scale. 🪤 Trap #2: The "AI Hype" Illusion. Thinking ChatGPT will magically build a business for you while you sleep.I believe in a third way: Powered by AI. Guided by Humans.The fundamentals of business haven't changed. You still need product-market fit, a sales engine, and retention strategies. But the speed of execution has changed forever.I help bootstrapped founders use "Pragmatic AI" for leverage (to stay lean) while relying on time-tested strategies (to stay profitable).Where the insights come fromI host The SaaS Podcast (Top 0.5% globally), where I don’t just interview guests; I deconstruct their playbooks.After 450+ interviews with successful founders (and my background at Microsoft &amp; Disney), I’ve turned these patterns into actionable programs to help you cross the chasm from "building" to "scaling."How I can help youDepending on where you are in your journey, I have a specific roadmap for you:1. For Early-Stage Founders ($0 to $10k MRR) You have a product, but you need traction. Stop guessing. 👉 SaaS Club Launch: A proven program to help you find your ideal customers and reach $10k MRR faster.2. For Scaling Founders (6-Figures to 7-Figures) You have revenue, but you want to scale without breaking the business (or yourself). 👉 SaaS Club Mastermind: A private community where I work with you directly to optimize your funnel, operations, and strategy to hit $1M+ ARR.3. For Listeners &amp; Builders Get weekly SaaS insights, founder case studies, and actionable strategies delivered straight to your inbox. 👉 The SaaS Club Newsletter &amp; PodcastReady to start?You don't have to build alone. Choose the path that fits your current stage here: ⬇️ https://saasclub.io/join-community/

Omer Khan

Greg Smith is Co-Founder and CEO of Thinkific, an award-winning learning platform where courses and community come together to power business growth. Greg is passionate about ensuring academies, experts, and businesses can access everything they need to create and sell online learning experiences, build communities, and grow their revenue.

Prior to launching Thinkific, Greg was a corporate lawyer for one of the largest law firms in the country. During this time, he launched an online course as a side project, which allowed him to share his passion and expertise with thousands around the world. Revenues from his course soon surpassed his salary as a lawyer.

Greg and his team at Thinkific currently power courses for 35,000+ customers in 190 countries worldwide, teaching millions of students and driving $3.7 billion in customer revenue. 

When he’s not empowering learning communities, Greg can be found kiteboarding, sitting around a campfire, playing board games, and spending time with his wife, daughter and son.

Greg Smith

Thank you to Amanda Breen for the thoughtful interview and for capturing the early days of my journey building Thinkific. 

Back in law school, I was just trying to earn a bit of extra income tutoring the LSAT. That side hustle grew when I wanted to put my course online and realized the platform I needed didn’t exist. So my brother Matt Smith and I built one.

That experiment eventually became Thinkific. Today, more than 77,000 learning businesses use Thinkific to turn their knowledge into digital products (courses, communities, and memberships) that generate income and impact.

Throughout these years I’ve learned that:

- Starting small can unlock big growth. My first course was $29 and grew quickly to $10K+/month. From there we switched from running our own course to building Thinkific so we could help others run theirs.

- In the early days, scrappy beats perfect. We filmed courses for customers, built websites, and even called customers to collect payment info. While that approach wasn’t scalable, I was grateful for it because it gave us deep insight into customer needs which we later baked into the product. 

- Building a great product is important, but building a great culture around outcomes, trust, and accountability is what really scales.

Thanks again, Amanda and read the full interview: https://lnkd.in/ebb4phWC

In 2026, I’m most excited to see people and companies lean into what truly sets them apart: their unique expertise and the real impact they can create.

In a world where AI can generate endless content, what rises to the top today isn’t volume, it's a focus on trust, clarity, and real outcomes.

That’s why learning businesses built on genuine insight and lived experience still stand out. But beyond knowledge, it also takes intention, structure and connection.

How do you build this?

- Communities

The most successful learning businesses aren’t just delivering content — they’re creating connections. When people learn alongside others, share progress, ask questions and feel seen, it builds trust faster than any landing page ever could. A strong community becomes the glue that holds the learning experience together.

- Focus on transformation 

The internet is flooded with information. What cuts through is transformation. People don’t pay for access to lessons; they pay for the change those lessons create. If your program doesn’t move them forward in a meaningful way, they won’t stick around — and they won’t refer others.

- Augmenting with AI

At Thinkific, our approach to AI is all about support, not substitution. Agentic tools can take on repetitive work — analyzing data, preparing assets, answering questions — so that businesses can focus on what matters most: their learners. The goal is less busywork, more meaningful connection.

And to be clear — this applies whether you’re a solo expert or an enterprise-scale brand.

The future of learning isn’t about creating more content. It’s about delivering more impact.

What’s the most overlooked part of a strong performance review process?

Like many organizations, we run performance reviews. At Thinkific, we call them ThinkSyncs — a process we go through twice a year, broken down into three phases.

Someone recently asked me what stands out most about ThinkSyncs, and for me, it’s Phase 2: Talent Calibration.

This is where our People Leaders come together to align on performance ratings across teams — not to nitpick, but to bring more consistency, fairness, and accountability into how we assess and support talent.

It helps remove the natural bias that can creep in when reviews happen in isolation. It also invites a broader view: How’s the team performing, not just the individual? How’s the leader enabling that performance? Are there contributions from cross-functional work that might’ve gone unnoticed by a single manager?

It also holds leaders accountable to a more honest, evidence-based assessment — not just gut feel.

That said, I’ve always believed performance reviews shouldn’t be a surprise. They should be part of an ongoing conversation, supported by regular 1:1s and weekly feedback. The review is just a moment to pause and reflect — not the first time someone hears how they’re doing.

Curious how others handle this: does your company do some form of calibration in your review process?

In many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, teacher training faces three major barriers: low bandwidth, limited time and almost no support infrastructure.

1 Million Teachers, a professional development program built for educators across Sub-Saharan Africa, is tackling all three (with a little help from Thinkific Plus).

Their BlackBelt program now supports 85,000+ educators across 20+ countries. And while the content is strong, what makes it work at scale is how it’s delivered: with empathy, structure, and flexibility.

This is a case study I’m excited to share because it shows what’s possible when learning is built not just for knowledge but for real-world impact.

Here’s how they’re doing it:

1) A clear roadmap for growth. 

1MT created a unique system called the BlackBelt program — an 11-level journey from white belt to black belt that helps teachers build skills, leadership and confidence, step by step.

2) Designing for offline, not just online. 

By embedding lightweight, offline-ready modules into their platform — and delivering content via USBs and print — they’ve made learning possible anywhere.

3) Milestones that matter.

With one of our features, Digital Badges, 1MT gives teachers visible proof of progress — not just checkmarks, but moments of pride they share with peers, families, and communities.

It’s one of the best examples I’ve seen of how the right tools can help mission-driven teams scale change.

Full case study: https://lnkd.in/emnUc7U3

Cc: Rizma Butt, Hakeem Subair

If you’re kicking off 2026 by building (or refreshing) your learning business, here’s a reminder I’ve seen make a big difference: 

There’s a temptation a lot of businesses fall into when creating a course, community or learning program: trying to pack in too much.

They have years of experience and a genuine desire to help so they put everything in. 

But most learners aren’t looking for everything. They’re looking for a clear path to a specific result — and if they can’t see that quickly, they start to tune out. 

Attention spans are shorter than ever and people are busier than ever. If your course takes too long to get to the point, most people won’t stick around to see it through. 

Instead of asking: “What else can I add?”, a better question might be: “What’s the minimum someone needs to know to make progress?”

I think this shift in mindset can make all the difference, not just in how your course is received but in whether your learners actually get the outcome they came for. 

How do you decide what to include/what not to include when building a course?

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The Battle

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Greg Smith

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Greg Smith's LinkedIn Performance

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