Pitching, Writing, and Recording LinkedIn Learning Courses with Carrie Dils

Joe Casabona: LinkedIn Learning is a force in the online courses space, with hundreds of courses, millions of learners, and a well-oiled machine for putting out great content. I, along with today’s guest, Carrie Dils are fortunate to be longtime instructors for the platform. I invited Carrie on the show to catch up, and I thought it would be fun for us to exchange notes on how we come up with ideas for and then record our LinkedIn Learning courses.

In Build Something More it gets even more fun as we talk about the courses we thought would do super well, but turned out to…well…not. We talk about a bunch of stuff following the footsteps of people we learn from, how to pitch ideas and share our love for the recording booths on LinkedIn Learning’s campus.

And again, if you want to get that ad-free, extended version of this conversation and every episode of How I Built It, you can become a member of the Creator Crew over at joincreatorcrew.com. Thanks so much to LearnDash and TextExpander for sponsoring this episode. You’ll hear about them later on in the show. But first, let’s get to the intro and then the interview.

[00:01:12] <intro music>

Intro: Hey everybody, and welcome to How I Built It, the podcast that helps small business owners create engaging content that drives sales. Each week I talk about how you can build good content faster to increase revenue and establish yourself as an authority. I’m your host Joe Casabona. Now let’s get to it.

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Joe Casabona: I am here with my good friend Carrie Dells. She’s a LinkedIn Learning instructor, as well as so many other things. I forget really when we met but we worked together at Crowd Favorite, where we have some battle stories, and some good times too. But Carrie has been a freelancer in the WordPress space for a long time and she also creates incredible LinkedIn Learning courses.

And she’s here, if you listened to the intro and just skip the first few minutes of the show… She’s here because we are going to exchange notes about how we come up with ideas for LinkedIn Learning courses and our process for recording those LinkedIn Learning courses.

If you want some context for how a LinkedIn Learning idea becomes a LinkedIn Learning course, how a LinkedIn Learning bill becomes a LinkedIn Learning law, check out my interview with Tracey Larvenz, which happened last year. That will be linked in the show notes. I don’t have the episode number for that because I’m a professional. But that’ll be in the show notes for this episode over at streamlined.fm/268.

But I’ve been talking too long. Let’s bring in our guests. Carrie Dils. How are you?

Carrie Dils: Well, I am just fine, Joe Casabona. It is fantastic to be in the same virtual room as you.

Joe Casabona: Why don’t you tell us kind of the things that you’re up to now.

Carrie Dils: I’ve been working with LinkedIn Learning, the artist formerly known as lynda.com for about seven years now. I’ve created numerous courses for them, you might say. Well, you did say, in fact, I’ve been prolific there. I’m doing a lot less client work these days focused more on the educational aspect. I’ve actually been working with WP Engine for a few years now, helping them create some media and training resources and enjoying that. So basically I just like telling people kind of what to do or I suppose how to do things.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, a little bit of both, right? What to do, how to do it.

Carrie Dils: Well, you know.

Joe Casabona: Nice. I didn’t realize you were working so closely with WP Engine at this point. I know you had been working with them, but I guess I haven’t been keeping up. I’ve been kind of bad at social media.

Carrie Dils: Well, you know, it’s not just a social media thing but whole pandemic and not having WordCamps, where we’re regularly seeing, appears and kind of doing that little hallway catch up and catch up over meals, yeah, I feel a little out of the loop as well. So I think that’s [inaudible 00:04:14].

Joe Casabona: Yeah. It’s so interesting. It’s not something you really feel like you miss until you realized how much you miss. Again, I talk to Brian Richards regularly, but a lot of my WordPress friends I really mostly only saw at WordCamps or meetups or whatever. I’ve said I want to do fewer WordCamps and more non-WordPress industry conferences, kind of break out of the WordPress bubble a little bit but I don’t know how much I’ll be able to stay away because that’s like a reunion with my friends. So we’ll see.

Carrie Dils: Right. Right. At some point it becomes less about the actual sessions and more about catching up with your WordPress loved ones.

Joe Casabona: And let’s be honest. The only time I feel like I was ever in a talk was when I was giving it. I don’t think I spent most of my time in the hallway track.

Carrie Dils: Yes, I am a proponent of the hallway track.

Joe Casabona: So that’s where the biz gets done. So…

Carrie Dils: Fact.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, right. Awesome. So you’ve been making LinkedIn née or nae… Is it née? Lynda?

Carrie Dils: Née. Linda. Yeah. Née. Yay.

Joe Casabona: Née. Watch me whip and then watch me nae nae.

Carrie Dils: We’re gonna leave that to the listeners to decide.

Joe Casabona: Yes, write in, tweet at me @Jcasabona. Isn’t nae or née? Spell it the right way so I’ll have no idea what you’re talking about.

Carrie Dils: Phonetically. Spell it phonetically.

Joe Casabona: Yes. So LinkedIn, LinkedIn Learning formerly Lynda for seven years. How did you get involved? Because I needed an in… I guess I didn’t need an in but I had an in with Morton. I basically like said, “Hey, man, I would love to make LinkedIn Learning courses.” And he said, “When the time is right, I will connect you with the right people.” And the time became right a little while later.

Carrie Dils: Oh, that’s awesome. Well, my LinkedIn or Lynda origin story may be similar to yours then. Morton was the one that introduced me. And if anybody’s listening to this and is not familiar with Morten Rand-Hendriksen, please go follow him on Twitter @mor10. A fantastic fellow.

Actually, I love this origin story. So thanks for queuing it up for me. I’ve been reading Lynda’s books since the late 90s, and have always been a fan of… And Lynda is actual human in case people didn’t know that. And then when I was starting to get into the WordPress world, for my birthday one year, my dad gave me a yearlong subscription to Lynda.

It was at that point that I actually took Morton’s class, his WordPress course, his some other courses and really kind of got my footing on on working with WordPress as a platform. And then I want to say it was maybe the 2013 WordCamp San Francisco—this is before there was WordCamp US—I met Morton in person and I was probably like… You know, imagine you meeting your favorite musician or rock star or whatever. I kind of was… I didn’t throw my bra at Morton. I did fan girl a little bit. And you can edit that out if needed.

Joe Casabona: If you’re cool with it I’m cool with it.

Carrie Dils: So it was not too long after that where Morton actually suggested that I submit an interview or whatever you call it, I don’t remember what it was called at this point in time. But anyways, he introduced me to someone and I ended up going through the application process. And now I am teaching WordPress on that platform. And I absolutely love it from the standpoint of the student becomes the teacher. I hope that that’s really encouraging to anyone that’s listening. You know, if you’re learning from other people or growing from other people, you may very well be in that position someday to step into the teacher shoes. So, yeah.

Joe Casabona: Man, I can’t echo that enough. I have a similar story on the book side of things when I met Dan Cederholm. He wrote SimpleBits, he wrote Bulletproof Web Design, and Handcrafted CSS. And I said to him, I’m like, “You’re the reason that I’m any remotely good at CSS.” And someone a few years ago told me my book was the reason that they’re into WordPress now. And it’s just like wild. I’m like, “No, no, no, I read people’s books to get better. Nobody reads my books to get better.”

So yeah, if you love learning and you love teaching, I mean, it really is kind of student become teacher stuff. I love it. So Morton did something similar with me. We’re at WordCamp US… I don’t think it was Philly. What was after Philly? Was that Nashville?

Carrie Dils: Nashville, yeah.

Joe Casabona: He introduced me to Steph who had since moved to a different area of LinkedIn.

Carrie Dils: Another great human.

Joe Casabona: Another great human. I mean, everybody we’ve met so… First of all, I’ll link to Tracey’s episode. I interviewed Morton about just kind of like teaching and philosophy and stuff like that. Very Morton topic. We might have touched on… So this was before the mass polarization of everything, but he and I sit on kind of very different ends of the political spectrum, but we had a good discussion about stuff like that, too. So always a good conversation with Morton. And he’s very thoughtful and sees things in a different light. That’s always good for prospective purposes.

Carrie Dils: Absolutely, yeah.

Joe Casabona: But yeah. So we kind of got our start the same way, nearly exactly the same way. And since then, we’ve both… You’re creating primarily WordPress courses?

Carrie Dils: Yes. I think I’ve only done a couple of courses that were just front end web Development and not specific to WordPress.

Joe Casabona: Got you. Cool. I’m like a mixed bag a little bit. I was very concerned about like I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes or take anything away from anybody. And then Tracey found out that I’m a pretty heavy PHP developer, and he’s like, “Let’s give you a bunch of PHP courses.” And I’m like, “Great, yeah, let’s do it. Whatever you want me to create, I’ll create. It’ll be fun.” And I love it. And the thing I love about it is… Because we both also create courses… you’ve created courses on your own, right?

Carrie Dils: Yes.

Joe Casabona: And that is less fun, which is weird, right? Because there’s not the whole team aspect of it. You talk to your content manager and your producer. Like my first producer was Pat Stevens, who’s another great human. Good job, LinkedIn hiring great humans.

Carrie Dils: They do. Excellent culture.

[00:12:02] <music>

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[00:12:59] <music>

Joe Casabona: So when it’s just you, it’s like it’s all you and then you do the editing or whatever, you pay somebody to edit.

Carrie Dils: Right. Right. There’s none of that team support with LinkedIn. Where as you know we create, we write the material and then we present it. But other than that, somebody else produces it, somebody else is worrying about the minutiae of the slide transitions, and how things are… You know, it goes to somebody else to put the polish on it.

The whole self-publishing courses, not only do you have to do all the technical work related to actually producing the course, but then you have to create the platform for it. And in this case, as we’re both WordPress developers, maybe that’s kind of part of the fun, too, is building a site and working with an LMS and figuring out all that stuff. But yeah, it’s a whole ball of wax.

And I’ve had people ask me in the past, like, “Is it better? Do you make more money if you self-publish? Or if you go through a platform where they pay you a percent or whatever?” And you’re like, “Well, it depends who you are. And if you love marketing, and if you want to get your hustle to get your site and your courses out in front of people.” But it’s a slog. So going the route of working with a team and a platform even though they’re taking the majority of the pay, it’s worth it to just come in and be a specialist and not have to be the generalist doing the whole kit and caboodle.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. And the nice thing about LinkedIn Learning versus some of these other platforms is you really are just the contents person. And since they started as a book publisher, their agreements look very similar to book contracts, where you get an advance, so you get paid upfront to do some of the work that advances paid against royalties, and they pay you royalties.

And so if you do a number of courses, and they’re good courses and people take them, then this could be some predictable revenue for you in the near future. I mean, that’s been a lifesaver some months for me where it’s slow or whatever. Versus something like… Well, I always drag Udemy through the mud because they’re terrible and they deserve to be but Skillshare is another one that maybe is a little nicer. But you still have to do everything and then they take 70% or whatever, right? Well, maybe you get 70%. I don’t think you do, though. I think you get less than… You still do a majority of the work but then you don’t get a majority of the pay.

Carrie Dils: Right.

Joe Casabona: Whereas with LinkedIn, it is a lot of work but I feel like, at least for me, it’s like my favorite work in creating the course.

Carrie Dils: Yeah, I agree.

Joe Casabona: So awesome. So you’ve been doing this for seven years, so you probably have many courses on the platform, right?

Carrie Dils: I do. I don’t know how many courses. I’ve lost count of how many courses I’ve recorded and then rerecord it. Because that’s part of the deal too is keeping courses up to date. And especially with something like WordPress where things are ever-changing, you know, you’re always going back and updating courses to make sure they’re still relevant.

Does a rerecord still count as another course record? I don’t know. I don’t know. But, alas, yes, I have done dozens of courses at this point, and kind of have got the system down. Doesn’t mean it’s less work to actually write the content and all that, but having a system to use. And I found that system has actually served me well just as a consultant of being how… how you present information, how you structure the delivery, how you plan a presentation or a talk for a conference, whatever. I’ve learned a lot just being in the role of… the role of instructor has helped me kind of dial in my communication when it comes to presenting information.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. That’s such a great point. Because you get to create these great courses for a platform of… You know, I get these notifications that like 100,000 people have taken this course.” And I’m like, “Wow, like, that’s a lot of people that you can effect.”

But also my independent course creating process has improved. I have a spreadsheet that looks suspiciously similar to the Google one that they provide for us. And through LinkedIn Learning, I decided to hire a video editor, because I was like, “Why am I editing my own videos when I kind of like hate it, when I could send it off to somebody who is more skilled at that, then I can focus on the content and promoting the content?” And so my process for creating my own courses, as well as like you said, just presenting information has improved a lot just by being a LinkedIn Learning instructor.

I don’t know how your calls go, but I get together with my content manager. Shout out to Amelia. I’m sure it’s okay. I don’t know. Maybe I should ask her, “Can I like name you on the show?”

Carrie Dils: Too late. It’s done. We’ve outed you as being another awesome person at LinkedIn, Amelia.

Joe Casabona: It’s done. Another awesome person. I’ll chat with her. I will probably get on a call every like six weeks or so just to be like, “Hey, where are we at? It’s proposal time again? What ideas do you have? Here’s what we want.” And I love those planning sessions. Is it similar for you or is it…?

Carrie Dils: Yeah, yeah. It’s collaborative. So there are some times I’ll bring topics to the table and other times where we’ll talk about, okay, are there gaps in the existing library content? Are there gaps that need to be filled in? Or are there courses that are a little bit long in the tooth that we can take a look at and breathe in some fresh life into?” So I have very similar conversations with Amelia and Tracey and other content managers before her. So interesting to hear. It sounds like it’s similar

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Like you said, it’s collaborative, sometimes they’ll bring ideas. I always ask, like, Is there something that the library needs that it’s lacking?” Because I have a bunch of my own ideas, but I prefer… Like, if they know that someone’s searching for something and it’s not there, I’m like, “Yeah, I want to do that because I know people will take it.”

Carrie Dils: Right. They’ve got the insights into what learners are actually coming to the platform for. So I’m certainly… Well, I don’t mind bringing my own ideas to the table. I’d certainly rather know… I mean, it just seems a no-brainer if they’ve already got a built-in audience looking for a specific topic.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, yeah. I feel like it’s usually a pretty good split. I’m working on one right now called PHP for non-programmers. That was definitely their idea. And I was a little bit concerned, like, how do I differentiate this from my learning PHP course? And then I was like, “Right, I need to assume that people have never told a computer what to do, basically.” And so it’s really fun looking at the course in that light.

But then I just launched a course called something something Gravity Forms. It’s like a full-blown Gravity Forms course where we write code in it too and stuff like that. I was a little worried because I know Patrick has the forms course. But I was like, “This is like a deep dive into one popular form builder I think.” So how do you come up with ideas? Is it like stuff that you’re doing that you like, “This would be a good course?” Do you search through the library? What’s your process like?

Carrie Dils: It’s kind of both of those things. I’ll go kind of hunting through the library to see what’s there. And then also, maybe not necessarily something I’m working on but a topic that… Now this may sound shocking to your listeners. A topic that I want to learn more about and dig deeper in. And that’s part of the fun of teaching of course the course is you’ve got to go learn it deeply. I feel like if I say learn deeply, I immediately think of JavaScript and Matt Mullenweg.

Joe Casabona: I know.

Carrie Dils: I need to see a therapist about that. But in order to be competent in teaching something, you obviously have to learn the material. So that’s part of the fun too is kind of getting to do research and see what’s out there or see what people are using these days in terms of their favorite products in the WordPress ecosystem. I had started a series on WooCommerce and… Well, I don’t know if I can share what’s coming down the pipeline. I’m just kidding.

Joe Casabona: It’s actually funny you mentioned that because I didn’t think we were allowed to but then I actually read through one of Amelia’s kickoff emails recently. It’s like, “Definitely tell people what you’re working on. We just can’t say dates I guess.” And I was like, “Well, I’m glad I read this.” Because I feel like in the before time, it was more kind of you can hint at what you’re… don’t give away titles or anything.

Carrie Dils: I’m still not sure if titles we’re supposed to. I don’t know. I always kind of err on the side of caution with that. So some courses around eCommerce and LMSs, and that’s fun for me to kind of dig into. We may talk about this later. I’m not sure. But some of the courses that have been the most fun for me or the ones that were really kind of passion courses have kind of been bombs generally speaking. That just goes to show my ideas are not always good ideas.

Joe Casabona: And you know what? We are going to talk about that in Build Something More. So if you want ad-free, extended episodes of How I Built It, like the one that Carrie and I are gonna have later where we talk about our favorite courses and then the courses that we liked but we’re duds, you can become a member of the Creator Crew for 50 bucks a year, that’s less than five bucks a month, over at the show notes page, streamlined.fm/268. So yeah, we’ll definitely talk about that more later. But I feel the same way.

I’ve gotten into a topic I thought I knew pretty well very recently, actually the CMB2 course that I launched that’s out right now, I was like, “Oh, yeah, this is gonna be great.” And then I’m like, going through the docs and I’m like, “I kind of assumed that this was updated more recently than 2015 or 2017 maybe. There’s like some commentary about, “Oh, yes, we know that Gutenberg is coming.” And I’m like, Oh, man.” So I had to rework some of the course during recording because there was like building a block. I guess I assumed that you could do it with CMB2. And I don’t know if it didn’t make it into the final version, but I was like, “Oh, man, I’m in the thick of this.”

Carrie Dils: It’s too late to stop now.

Joe Casabona: Yeah.

Carrie Dils: Oh.

Joe Casabona: But that’s definitely one that’s kind of a dud. I’m looking at my earnings report now and it’s… I liked it because I like CMB2 and it was nice to refresh myself on that, but my ACF course is a lot better.

Carrie Dils: When you look at-

Joe Casabona: A lot more well received.

Carrie Dils: Right. And I don’t know, these numbers off the top of my head at all. But what’s the user base of advanced custom fields versus CMB2? And how those courses performed may be a reflection of kind of percent market share that each of those products has? That’s, again, I guess, because I don’t know those numbers. But speculation.

Joe Casabona: It’s reasonable to assume. Especially because ACF has like a front end component to it. And I feel like the developerly developers who are getting into CMB2 probably are just consulting the docs or have been using it for a long time at this point. Like it’s not new. It’s actually very old as far as like WordPress goes.

Carrie Dils: Right.

Joe Casabona: So maybe that was it. I felt like that was a good gap in the LinkedIn library to fill. If for no other reason than to maybe point people to my ACF course. If you want something newer-

Carrie Dils: “Hey, this one’s pretty much of POS, but I’ve got this course over here.” I like that promotion method, Joe.

Joe Casabona: I gotta tell you. I stole it from Morton because I did an updated version of his WordPress workflows course. So I was going through his course and I’m like, “This is brilliant,” because it’s just like, Here’s like, surface-level stuff in WordPress. If you want to learn more, check out my course that goes deep on this topic.” And I’m like, this is like a switch station to get people to take even more of your courses.

Carrie Dils: Whaah.

Joe Casabona: I know. Brilliant. But that is also a very popular course. A lot of people like taking that. Because I mean, it lays things out pretty clearly. So when you come up with your ideas, do you have like a text file, like a note doc that you just write them in? Or is it like, “I’m meeting with Amelia, I need like 10 ideas”?

Carrie Dils: Ah, I’m not very organized about it. It’s usually just a couple of ideas floating around in my head that may live on a post-it note.

Joe Casabona: Gotcha. This is where I’m like… I don’t want to say I’m a freak because I think maybe… This is the most type A thing about me, I’ll say. I guess it doesn’t make any sense to share screens on the podcast. But I have a document in my notes app called Craft where I have a section that’s called Current Production Schedule, LinkedIn Learning resources, right? Anything that like Amelia or my producers have sent me. Currently in development, and that’s one course. On deck, any courses that have been approved proposal-wise. And then I have an idea section broken down into like types of courses. And then a section called Shipped.

Carrie Dils: Nice.

Joe Casabona: So I can go to this doc and I can be like, “Oh, yes, here are the ideas I came up with.” And then I’m like, This one definitely was like a fever dream idea, because it’s terrible. But it’s all there. And then when I come up on these meetings, I like picking my favorite five that I think are pretty good.

Carrie Dils: Nice.

Joe Casabona: Or timely. WordPress 6.0 is coming out soon and so I know we’ll probably have some updates to one of them. I think we’ll probably want to update the workflows course at that point because theme development is changing. And I think like Patrick… Do you have a theme course—how to make a WordPress theme?

Carrie Dils: I did at one point in time that was specific to the Genesis Framework. And that one is, I think, since retired.

Joe Casabona: Gotcha. And I think Patrick Rauland has a how to make a child theme course out there. But you also you were like a pretty early adopter on the block stuff, right? Or full site editing maybe?

Carrie Dils: Yeah. I’m glad you brought that up because this is one thing I liked about LinkedIn. I had a first look—I’m putting air quotes around that—first look at full site editing. And I won’t ever make any royalties off of that course just because the shelf life is so, so limited on it. But I still appreciated that they greenlit that course to introduce it, because that’s the way things are being done with the block editor and the move towards full site editing.

Complete adoption is… let’s say availability in WordPress and adoption are two totally separate things. So it may be a while before people fully embrace it. That was another one that I was like, “Oh, my gosh, I get to dig deep and learn about these things and then present it.” And it still holds up as a brief. I mean, the ideas still hold up. But that’s probably been out there a year and so much has changed. Like I said, the shelf life on that is pretty short.

Joe Casabona: I did a first look course for PHP 7.4, and that was shortly before 8.0… not shortly, but sooner than I expected. My learning PHP course dropped. And then I think like a month later, 8.0 came out and I was like, “How did this happen?” I feel like I’m pretty connected to these release dates, and all of a sudden it’s out.

Carrie Dils: Okay, this was a fun one. I do the wordpress.com essential training Course, which I’ve just published or released what I think is maybe the third revision to the course. And talk about a moving target, Joe. I remember the first time I was recording that course being in the booth. This was right around the time… Any old-schoolers out there remember Calypso. Calypso was rolling into wordpress.com and things changed. Like, I would record a movie and the next day that screen would look different on wordpress.com. I was like, “Oh my gosh, it’s outdated before I can even finish recording the course.” And it made me so irritated.

Anyways, the last provision of this course came out just two weeks ago. I think it was two weeks ago. And like between me recording the course and the courses release, wordpress.com completely overhauled their pricing structure and just went to a free plan and a pro plan where they had been at five plans and I’m like, “Oh Criminy, this part is already…”

So I was immediately on the horn with my producer and was like, “Okay, what do we… do we just leave this be for a while or do we try to go ahead and get another revision out the door?” Our friend Shawn Hesketh over at WP101 Videos I know have been in that same boat on many occasions of you try to get something out the door that’s up to date, and by the time you create it, it’s already a little outdated. It’s a frustrating phenomenon.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Shawn’s art and dedication to making sure things is up to date is I think unmatched.

Carrie Dils: Yeah, I will go with unmatched.

Joe Casabona: But it has become really hard, right? Because like WordPress changed their release schedule to like, “I will do it whenever.” Which is so frustrating. I mean, we can talk about that in a different time over a beer.

Carrie Dils: Right. That’s frustrating to product developers. I mean, not be not just educators. That’s frustrating timeline.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, to developers and users and people in the enterprise. Like, you need a predictable timeline in the enterprise. Otherwise, you’re not going to see any adoption.

Carrie Dils: Right, right.

Joe Casabona: Anyway. So you have your ideas. We won’t rehash the whole process again. I walk through that with Tracey in our episode. But let’s jump to your process for writing scripts. What does that look like? Do you like sit down and bang them all out in like a couple of days? Do you write like five a day for five days or 10 days or whatever?

Carrie Dils: Oh, scripting. So I am not the kind of person that can just look at some bullet points and riff. If I do that, it’s filled with uhs and ums and my logic is circular and meandering. So when I script, I literally script out every single word. Um… See, there’s an um because I’m not scripted for this interview. Sorry, Joe.

Joe Casabona: No worries.

Carrie Dils: One course I just do one giant, long Google Doc that flows. Again, I can’t screen share because it’s a podcast. But basically break it up into chapters and lessons, and then I’ll put in breaks, like highlighted breaks for, “Okay, here’s where I’m going to switch a slide, or here’s where I’m going to show this particular URL.” So I know that a lot of people—and I’m curious to hear how you do it—will do sort of a multi-column script approach where your script or your narration is in one column and then you’re on-screen action is in another column. And I’ve done that too for some projects. But for courses I’ve found just doing the straight top to bottom flow is what works for me.

Joe Casabona: I use their provided template. But I find usually what I’m writing in… So the listeners can get kind of an idea of what they’re looking at, the top of this document has all the pertinent course information: the name of the course, the video number, the title, and then the objective. The objective is really important because we want to know what the learner is going to get from this specific video. And then there’s a two column table where the left side is the script, the narration words, and the right side is the actions, the screen actions that you’re taking.

And sometimes you kind of need that. Okay, like, show this part of the screen or zoom in, right? Because then our editors will ultimately have a better idea of what we had in mind for when we were recording. Because we’re just doing a straight screen recording. We’re not zooming in on anything, maybe we’re moving our cursor. Try not to wiggle the cursor too much. That’s distracting and gross. But usually, you and I are doing screencasts. So if I don’t just have like the word “slide” in there, I’ll either have the exact code I want to write, which makes the scripts look terrible, or I’ll just put the words “actions match narration.” Because if it’s like, “Go here and click this and then do that…”

Carrie Dils: Right, right.

Joe Casabona: …I’m not going to rewrite that in the action section. I usually don’t script my own courses but I’ll script for the LinkedIn Learning ones because I want to make sure that what I’m doing is accurate. And I understand it’s a long course, a lot is happening, and somebody else is editing it. So I want to make sure what I expect is happening will actually happen.

And that scripting process saved me from the CMB2 kerfuffle familiar. So I was able to kind of rework the TOC on the fly. And that’s another thing I appreciate about LinkedIn Learning is my TOC always changed from proposal to final. I don’t know if yours do.

Carrie Dils: A little bit. So that’s a table of contents for the uninitiated.

Joe Casabona: Yes. Yes.

Carrie Dils: That’s part of before course is even contracted, going through writing that TOC. And then, like you mentioned, what the learning objective is for every single movie in the course. When I get into the throes of course creation, I’ll be like, “Ah, you know what, I’m giving some information in this movie or I want to talk about something in this movie that I haven’t referenced yet. So I need to switch the order to introduce this other topic.” Or sometimes I’m like, “You know what? That’s just stupid. I don’t need a lesson for that,” or “Oh, hey, and I need to add one.” I usually comes out plus or minus I’ll say two movies because I may take a couple out a couple in something like that. It’s usually not too far off the original but it definitely evolves.

Joe Casabona: Same here. Because once you get into… First of all, well, I don’t know about you but usually the proposal and the TOC are created a couple of months before we actually record. So as you mentioned, we’re in a field where things change quickly, right?

Again, with my ACF course, I recorded something that became a premium feature the day I was going to record it in the booth. And I was like, “Wow, good thing that’s happened today and not tomorrow or whatever.” I think they switched to the Create Your Own Blocks to a premium features. And in the script I was like, “This is free.” Isn’t that wild?

Carrie Dils: Strikethrough as of today.

Joe Casabona: Just kidding. But yeah, I just did that with the current course I’m working on. I’m working on a script. And like before I talk about variables, I talk about accepting input. And I’m like, “Why am I talking about accepting input when I’m not telling people where to store it?” So I’m like, “Just move that down, move these up.” Again, it flows better. And it’s nice that it’s not so rigid that your content or your producers like, “This can’t have changed? Why did this change?”

Carrie Dils: Right, right.

[00:41:10] <music>

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[00:42:16] <music>

Joe Casabona: So you you’re working from a long script. I think I have the opposite problem of you. I’m really bad at reading things verbatim off of a page. So I never use a teleprompter, for example, because I’m very bad at that. So I’ll usually have my iPad up mounted while I’m recording so that I can reference what I want to say. Or like typing the code again verbatim from that script. But again I’m not reading it verbatim. It would be very slow and I think annoying for learners.

Carrie Dils: Oh, yeah. I’m pretty sure that Morton doesn’t do a verbatim script either. So I think it’s just what works for whatever your individual style is. Part of what I oddly enjoy about scripting is that to script something that you’re going to read verbatim, you don’t script it like you’re writing a formal document. You script it like you’re actually speaking because that’s how it’s going to be delivered.

So, if you were to go through and read my script, you might be like, “Ooh, that’s kind of gnarly.” But I wouldn’t say, “From here, you go click the settings and go to tools.” You know what I mean? It would sound wooden if I wrote it like a book or a blog post or whatnot. That’s kind of part of the fun challenge for me.

Joe Casabona: I mean, punctuation, too. You mentioned our friend Shawn Hesketh. We both worked with him. You know, we’ve had clients and I’ve had clients since where they’ll either want to write the script or review the script and they correct it for like, grammar.

Carrie Dils: Right. Right.

Joe Casabona: So you got to have the conversation that’s like, “Look, I understand that if you’re making this a blog post, absolutely, those changes are right. But I’m reading, so I know to pause here, I need to add a semicolon. Like I add a semicolon or em dash or whatever so that I know, ‘just take a quick beat here. Let that last point land before you move on to the next thing.'”

Carrie Dils: Indeed. Two different styles to be sure.

Joe Casabona: Again, kind of talking different styles, with LinkedIn Learning, at least for me, I’m recording the voiceover and the screen actions at the same time. I don’t know if you do it differently. I don’t know if their process accepts kind of different approaches.

Carrie Dils: No, I’m doing the same. But I have had, like when working with Shawn and then some other projects where those two things are recorded separately. So first you record all your onscreen action and then you go back over and do a narration. I personally find that much harder.

Joe Casabona: It’s tough, right? I’m doing that for some client work now because they wrote the scripts. So I’m less familiar with the actual products than I would be. So I record the voiceover first. And then what I’ll do—This is a handy trick that our friend Shawn taught me—I will record screen actions kind of slowly with very deliberate mouse movements that allow me to sync those up in the edit. And what Shawn does, I don’t know if I’m giving away one of Sean’s trade secrets here, is when we were doing work for 101 Videos, we actually had a separate track that was the cursor track.

Carrie Dils: Yes.

Joe Casabona: And then we would animate that. That made for very smooth-

Carrie Dils: Oh, it’s so much cleaner.

Joe Casabona: I mean, but you pay for that because it takes a long time to do that.

Carrie Dils: Yes. For anyone who has never edited video, you can say the same for audio, but definitely video, it is a labor of love. It is incredibly time-consuming. Like, oh my gosh, how many minutes or hours do I have to spend to get one polished minute of content? In it’s crazy. Have you ever done the calculation for your LinkedIn courses, like how much time for your finished minute?

Joe Casabona: I figured that a day of recording gets me about an hour and a half of finished course material.

Carrie Dils: Oh, wow. You’re fast.

Joe Casabona: It’s probably really frustrating for the editors. Actually, this is a really good transition because I want to ask you about the day of recording stuff. I have small children at home. And so on the days I record, I have to be strategic. I gotta make sure they’re at school or my wife goes to her dad’s house or whatever. But I have some movable panels and a green screen. So I kind of make my own booth here.

And then I also have a separate profile on my computer just for LinkedIn Learning that hides all of the dark stuff and the menu bar stuff. And that’s a really big screen resolution. I really love screen resolution too. I don’t allow myself to log out of that profile until I’m done recording and everything’s uploaded.

Carrie Dils: Wow. That’s hardcore.

Joe Casabona: I’m very incentivized to record in a short amount of time. So I’ve kind of figured for every hour and a half of finished content, it’ll take me about from 10 a.m. to like 8 p.m., 9 p.m. You shouldn’t record that long.

Carrie Dils: Your voice starts to get a little scratchy then.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, usually I’ll record a course over one or two days for that reason. So what’s your process like?

Carrie Dils: I also have a separate user account just for coursework? Like you said it, kind of sanitizers everything or removes all the doohickey icons and whatnot, and is it a lower resolution? That makes some things so much easier because then I don’t have to worry about if my screen settings or if this is correct, or whatnot. It’s just that whole profile is dedicated to using it for courses.

When we were able to record in the boots pre-COVID, that wasn’t a problem we had because we were working off a separate computer. I’ll do the same. So I live in an apartment that sort of sandwiched between a fire department and the police department.

Joe Casabona: Wow. You’re like a scene in The Departed.

Carrie Dils: I just submitted a sound check yesterday and I got feedback that, “Oh, couldn’t you move to a quieter space.” And I’m like, “I wish I could.” It’s really frustrating because it’ll interrupt the process of recording. You know, I’m going, I’m in the flow and then all of a sudden a helicopter is hovering over my building or something. And I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to wait this out.” So I just pause on the recording, let the editors know, “Hey, here’s helicopter room tone.” Or “hey, here’s the firetruck room tone. Here’s dog barking room tone.”

So it takes me a lot longer. Accounting for environmental factors just increases the total of recording time because I just can’t control those things. Another reason why I’m so ready to get back in the recording booth? I don’t know what’s taking so long.

Joe Casabona: I love the booth. So real quick, again, for the uninitiated moment, room tone is generally when you just turn your mic on and you don’t say anything. You recorded about 30 seconds of that so that our editors, if they need to cut out apart… Well, first of all, they can use it to figure out what the low hum noise is and edit that out. But also, if they’re cutting a part of narration, it’s very obvious if you cut out the audio, but not the video on that part, so they can just throw the room tone in there so it’s a more consistent sound. Which is super neat. And again, that’s another thing that I stole from my own process. Again, I put painstaking effort into my setup. I have a super good… They don’t make me use their microphone because my stuff sounds really good.

Carrie Dils: Really? I don’t know if you recognize my headsets.

Joe Casabona: That’s there. Yeah. So they don’t make me use it. This was a little bit of a big deal because my mic is not attached to my face. They like to use the pre-two because it’s a headset microphone. So if you move your head, you get consistent sound. But the way I arrange my desk and my arms when I’m typing it’s like really hard for me to move my head and my mic. So it’s pretty fixed. And then I have a decent compressor on there that keeps everything around the same volume anyway.

Carrie Dils: Oh, nice.

Joe Casabona: So yeah. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I’m so fast is even with the environmental noise. You know, I have like an egress window, but I put acoustic foam in it when I’m recording, and so there aren’t too many interruptions, you know, if they happen to be mowing the lawn. But usually they’re doing that earlier in the morning or at dinnertime. So I’m usually not recording. That said, I love… it’s like a vacation.

Carrie Dils: It is. Oh my gosh. Okay, I don’t know how much time we’re running up onto, but-

Joe Casabona: We’ll make this kind of the last bit. I really wanted to get your perspective on recording and ideas and stuff like that.

Carrie Dils: Oh, okay. So I’m gonna share with everybody who is listening. So the sound booths for LinkedIn Learning are located in Carpinteria, California, which sits just slightly south of Santa Barbara, kind of between LA and Santa Barbara. It’s this beautiful, little coastal town. It’s tiny, the sidewalks roll up at 8:30 p.m. or something crazy. And then LinkedIn has this really lovely state-of-the-art campus there. And in it, there are individual sound booths, where you can go in. It’s fully padded. The walls are padded. So if it’s frustrating with the recording, you can feel free to bounce yourself up off those walls. Then the food, oh my gosh, every morning-

Joe Casabona: Oh my gosh.

Carrie Dils: …they have this thing called Pixel Cafe. You go in, they have breakfast ready for you. They also provide lunch. And then this is my favorite part. I mean, this is where my inner child just takes tremendous delight. In the little kitchen area of the building where the recording booths are, and Joe I know you know this-

Joe Casabona: I know.

Carrie Dils: …there’s no a free vending machine where I can reach in and grab my iced coffee or a Red Bull or a fizzy water. I can get a little pack of gummy bears or whatever kind of-

Joe Casabona: It’s like the good gummy bears too.

Carrie Dils: Yeah, it’s the Haribo. No store brand.

Joe Casabona: No dollar store card.

Carrie Dils: No. No. So while you’re in the booth, they treat you incredibly well. While you’re in the booth you’re getting to enjoy these old snacks and treats. And then when you’re done for the day, like you said it’s vacationland, you go to the beach or just find a little cafe or something. I have friends over the years that they’re like, “When are you going to Carpinteria next? I’m coming with you. I am your professional traveling friends.”

Joe Casabona: Oh, that’s awesome.

Carrie Dils: And they’re like, “Oh my gosh, we just get…” They lay up in the holiday all week or whatnot. What’s your favorite part?

Joe Casabona: First of all, I will stock up on… I’ve since been diagnosed with type two diabetes, so I can’t get the Haribo. But the keto movement has been amazing for this. I’ve lost like 40 pounds.

Carrie Dils: That’s amazing.

Joe Casabona: So diabetes was secretly the best thing to happen to me. I don’t want to make light of a terrible thing, but it’s working out for me. But they do have sugar-free gummies that I can buy. So like stock up on my own little snacks to keep down here and I have an espresso down here. You know, really try to recreate the booth experience that you can.

My favorite part, I think, is… maybe this is because I’m fast. I don’t know what time you knock off. But the guys that I’ve worked with in the booth that were Pat and then Matt. And they’ll always be two or three. They’re like, “You should probably go. I think you’re starting to sound tired. Let’s knock off for the day.”

So I’m done at like 2:30, I go back to the hotel, I chill out in air conditioning. The Wi Fi in the hotel… I don’t know if you notice this. The Wi Fi is not the best. So I’m like, “Well, I can’t get meaningful work done. So I’m just gonna go walk around. I always have a bunch of cigars with me. I’ll walk down to the beach. Or I guess I’ll drive to the beach and then I’ll park kind of far away and walk around and just listen to a podcast, smoke a cigar. Uh, it’s so good.

Carrie Dils: Can we please petition to open? I’m in the LA area now. I was driving to Santa Barbara a couple of weekends ago and I stopped by the campus, which was like kind of Friday, maybe around lunchtime to see what was going on. And it was crickets. I mean, there was nobody on campus. So it might be a while before we get to return to our dreams.

Joe Casabona: We’ll chat offline about that.

Carrie Dils: All right.

Joe Casabona: But again, I have the great booth here. I appreciate the flexibility because I don’t like to leave my wife at home with three small kids for a long period of time. But oh, it’s like a vacation. Oh, it’s so great. And when you’re in the booth, it’s work but the breakfast they have like specialty coffee one day. It feels like going to a resort, you know?

Carrie Dils: Yeah, a resort. I’m a little envious of your booth time. I usually get there about seven in the morning because at that point in time I was coming from Central time zone. So I was always up early. I mean, my body was just awake early. So I’d always go in booth, get a little prep work done. I’ve had some pretty monster booth days. But getting outside and just taking in the fresh air at the end of the day was always kind of a treat.

Joe Casabona: See, maybe this is just a testament to your abilities, right? Maybe like by two o’clock, Pat and Matt are like, “Joe is not even making any sense anymore. Let’s just send him home. We’ve got the time. “Joe’s messing up a lot. He should go sleep.”

Carrie Dils: Well, there’s also one day, it’s usually Wednesday. So I usually go for like a… I’ll make this quick. I’ll usually go for a week to record a course or sometimes do two courses in a single week. Wednesday tends to be my hit-a-wall day. I’m cranking out lesson after lesson, dah, dah, dah, and then I’ll have a day where I only record like four lessons or something. And it’s like, oh my gosh, I don’t know what’s wrong with my brain. And that’s when my produce will be like, “Why don’t you take off?” Tomorrow is a new day?”

Joe Casabona: Yeah, we got that. I know. The editors for sure can tell when I’m recording at home and I hit that wall because I’m like, “Well…” I don’t want the explicit, but I curse a lot in the recordings. And I’m like, “Sorry, I’m cursing so much. But I just gotta reset.” But it’s so great. Maybe we could try to coordinate when the campus opens up again and we can meet up.

Carrie Dils: Sure, yeah.

Joe Casabona: Because they have like the… The instructor meet-up dinner situation is usually Wednesday nights too, right?

Carrie Dils: I think so. Yeah.

Joe Casabona: Wednesday, Thursday? Something like that. For sure. I know if you’re listening you just heard me and Carrie does go on like a… I don’t know four-minute pleasure cruise in our head.

Carrie Dils: We did. Thank you for being on with us on that cruise.

Joe Casabona: And it is work. It’s hard work. The people at LinkedIn Learning know that and so they want to make the amenities or whatever you want to call them, they want to create the best environment for instructors to do their best work.

Carrie Dils: Yes.

Joe Casabona: So this isn’t like some kitschy like Silicon Valley like play ping pong and live your whole life here. This is like, “You’re gonna have a few grueling hours in this booth. Let’s make it as easy on you as possible.”

Carrie Dils: Yes. And the research… I don’t know if you’ve seen this new research come out, Joe. But shows that gummy bears increased productivity by 8%.

Joe Casabona: I know that Carrie Dils jokes a lot. I’m just gonna assume that’s real. I like that. Then I’m gonna go pick up some gummy bears.

Carrie Dils: Sugar-free.

Joe Casabona: Sugar-free, of course. Yeah, the Keto one. I’m telling you keto has been great for people with diabetes.

Carrie Dils: So Carrie Dils, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for sharing your process with us. Maybe we’ll have to do a part two, like what do we do postgame? How do you recover? But we’ve gotten pretty long and we do have Built Something More to record where we’re going to talk about… I wrote in the notes, studs and duds. So we’ll talk about the courses that we didn’t expect to do super well, the courses that we thought we liked but didn’t do too well.

You can sign up for the Creator Crew to get ad-free extended episodes over at streamlined.fm/268. That’s the episode number. Carrie Dils, if people want to learn more about you, where can they find you?

Carrie Dils: Well, you can find me on the Twitter @Cdils, C-D-I-L-S, or at Carriedils(just one L).com.

Joe Casabona: Carrie Dils. Just one L. Just one is not part of the domain. It’s just carriedils.com.

Carrie Dils: Right. Otherwise, that would… I mean, I think that domain is probably available, but it’s a little bit long.

Joe Casabona: Carriedilsjustonel.

Carrie Dils: I can’t get that on business card.

Joe Casabona: 877cashnow.com. Yeah, right. Yeah, it’s really long. 877-Cash Now, not a sponsor of this podcast.

Carrie Dils: There you go. Boom! Boom! And Haribo is also a sponsor. Joe is gonna send you an invoice.

Joe Casabona: Y’all, if you want to gummy bears, Haribo, reach out, and we’ll make it happen. Carrie Dils, it’s always such a pleasure talking to you. Thanks so much for joining us.

Carrie Dils: Thank you, Joe. Great to be here.

Joe Casabona: All right. Thank you for listening. And thanks to our sponsors, LearnDash, TextExpander, and Nexcess. Like I said, if you want to learn more about them, if you want to learn more about Carrie Dils, or if you want to join Creator Crew, you can head over to streamlined.fm/268. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, get out there and build something.