Hosted by Jeff Walter, Founder and CEO of LatitudeLearning
One of the most fascinating transformations happening in learning and development today is the shift from individual expertise to scalable knowledge. Professionals who once shared their expertise through coaching, consulting, or in-person teaching are increasingly turning that knowledge into structured online learning experiences.
In a recent episode of the Training Impact Podcast, Jeff Walter sat down with Robert Lunte, founder and CEO of CourseCREEK, to explore how organizations and subject matter experts can transform their knowledge into digital courses that scale.
The conversation offers valuable insight for learning leaders, training professionals, and entrepreneurs who want to preserve expertise, scale knowledge, and create lasting educational impact.
Robert Lunte brings more than twenty-five years of experience in course development, coaching, and instructional design. His journey into the world of eLearning did not begin in traditional corporate training. Instead, it began in an unexpected place.
Before launching CourseCREEK, Robert Lunte built a successful career as a contemporary voice coach. Over several decades, he taught vocal performance, wrote a bestselling book, and created online courses in multiple languages.
His work helped singers improve their voices and performance abilities. Yet over time, Lunte realized that the coaching industry had natural limitations. Much of his work required personal time and direct interaction with students.
As he approached a new stage in his career, he began asking an important question that many experts eventually face.
How can knowledge be scaled beyond one-on-one teaching?
The answer came from his own experience creating online courses. If knowledge could be captured in a structured digital format, it could reach learners anywhere in the world at any time.
That realization ultimately led to the founding of CourseCREEK.
Shortly after launching the company, the COVID pandemic dramatically accelerated demand for digital learning. Organizations, coaches, and training leaders suddenly needed ways to deliver education remotely.
CourseCREEK was positioned to help.
During the conversation, Lunte explained that most organizations and experts pursue course development for one primary reason.
Scalability.
Many professionals spend years developing deep expertise in a specific field. They may deliver that expertise through consulting, workshops, coaching sessions, or public speaking engagements.
However, those formats depend heavily on the availability of the expert.
Digital courses change that equation.
Once expertise is structured into a course, it can be delivered to thousands of learners simultaneously without requiring the instructor to be present.
CourseCREEK works with a wide range of clients who want to make that transition.
Executive coaches often seek to transform their personal expertise into scalable learning programs. Healthcare organizations frequently develop continuing education programs that help professionals expand their credentials and career paths.
Across these industries, the underlying challenge is the same.
Organizations must capture knowledge that exists inside experts’ heads and convert it into structured learning experiences.
One of the most interesting moments in the conversation came when Jeff Walter described a common challenge faced by growing organizations.
Founders and industry experts often carry enormous amounts of implicit knowledge. They understand how their systems work, how problems are solved, and how success is achieved.
However, that knowledge often remains undocumented.
When organizations begin scaling through partners, franchisees, or distributed teams, this hidden knowledge becomes a bottleneck.
CourseCREEK helps solve that problem by translating implicit expertise into structured learning content.
This process typically begins with instructional design.
Lunte described instructional designers as one of the most important elements of the course creation process. These professionals specialize in extracting expertise from subject matter experts and structuring it into learning pathways.
The process begins with gathering every piece of available content.
Clients bring in notes, existing videos, PDFs, previous training materials, or even simple outlines scribbled on paper. The instructional design team then organizes that content into a storyboard that maps the learning journey.
The storyboard outlines modules, lessons, and sequencing.
But the most important element is something called the content map.
The content map connects each lesson with the best learning engagement method.
Rather than relying on simple slide presentations or videos, CourseCREEK designs courses that combine multiple forms of interaction.
Learners might watch videos, interact with simulations, complete exercises, review documents, or engage with adaptive learning experiences powered by artificial intelligence.
This multimedia approach helps keep learners engaged while improving knowledge retention.
For many clients, the moment they see the completed storyboard is the turning point in the process. It allows them to visualize how their expertise will become a complete learning experience.
The storyboard effectively becomes a blueprint for the entire course.
As Lunte described it during the podcast, the storyboard acts like a map or even a crystal ball. It shows exactly what the final learning product will look like before development begins.
Course creation is a powerful process, but it also comes with challenges.
Many organizations approach CourseCREEK with outdated or incomplete training materials. Some courses were created years earlier and no longer reflect current practices. Others lack the professional production quality needed to engage modern learners.
In these situations, the CourseCREEK team helps redesign the content so it meets modern expectations for digital learning.
Another common challenge involves technology platforms.
Organizations frequently outgrow their existing learning management systems and need to migrate content to a more capable platform. CourseCREEK supports these migrations while also improving the quality and structure of the learning experience.
These challenges highlight an important lesson for learning leaders.
Successful course development requires both creative design and technical expertise.
One of the most surprising themes in the conversation is how creative the course development process can be.
Lunte often compares building a course to producing a film or recording an album.
Each project combines storytelling, instructional design, media production, and technology.
The goal is not simply to deliver information.
The goal is to create an engaging experience that helps learners understand and apply new knowledge.
This perspective resonates strongly with modern learning and development leaders who increasingly view training as both a strategic and creative endeavor.
When courses are designed thoughtfully, they become powerful tools for knowledge transfer and organizational growth.
The conversation also explored Lunte’s experience as a CEO.
Moving from individual coaching to leading a growing company required a significant shift in mindset. Instead of focusing solely on teaching, Lunte now focuses on building teams, solving operational challenges, and guiding strategic growth.
He described his favorite part of leadership as solving puzzles.
Each day presents new challenges related to client needs, team collaboration, and project execution. For Lunte, navigating these challenges provides constant intellectual stimulation.
He also emphasized the importance of mentoring younger team members. Many members of the CourseCREEK team are talented millennials and Gen Z professionals who bring technical expertise and creativity to the organization.
For Lunte, helping these team members grow professionally is one of the most rewarding aspects of leadership.
One of the most meaningful themes in the conversation involves the long-term impact of learning.
When experts transform their knowledge into structured courses, they create something lasting.
That knowledge can be shared with learners around the world for years to come.
Courses preserve expertise that might otherwise disappear when professionals retire or move on to new roles.
This idea resonated strongly throughout the discussion.
Education has always been humanity’s most powerful multiplier. Knowledge passed from one generation to the next allows society to build on previous discoveries instead of starting from scratch.
Digital learning simply accelerates that process.
Courses created today may continue teaching future learners long after their creators have moved on.
Looking ahead, CourseCREEK continues to grow rapidly.
The company has experienced approximately twenty six percent annual growth since its founding.
While CourseCREEK initially worked heavily with individual experts and coaches, the company is increasingly serving larger organizations and multi-million dollar companies.
These organizations require sophisticated learning programs that support employees, partners, and customers across complex ecosystems.
For Lunte, the future remains focused on solving meaningful learning challenges and helping clients transform their knowledge into scalable digital education.
The conversation between Jeff Walter and Robert Lunte highlights a powerful shift happening across the learning industry.
Knowledge that once existed only inside experts’ heads can now be captured, structured, and delivered digitally to learners around the world.
Companies like CourseCREEK are helping make that transformation possible.
By combining instructional design, technology expertise, and creative storytelling, they help organizations turn expertise into scalable learning programs that educate thousands of learners.
For learning leaders, the message is clear.
When knowledge is transformed into structured digital courses, it becomes a powerful asset that can scale expertise, preserve institutional knowledge, and create lasting impact.
For more information about CourseCREEK, visit their website
https://www.coursecreek.com/
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Jeff Walter (00:00)
Hi, I’m Jeff Walter, and this is the Training Impact Podcast. This show is about using training to scale channel performance. Today we cover learning as infrastructure partner development systems.
operations standardization, brand marketing, skill development, governance, performance management, and all the great things to scale your channels. I am pleased today to have as my guest Robert Lunte of CourseCreek. Robert is the founder and CEO of Course Creek. is a leader in ed tech sales and delivery with over 25 years of experience in online course production, product development, public speaking, and coaching. Robert is
privileged to lead a world-class team of instructional designers and a unique class of certified developers that specialize in LMS implementations, migrations, and support. Robert, welcome to the program.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (00:47)
Jeff, I feel welcomed and thank you so much for all your time and effort to visit with me today and my team through me. We’re gonna have a lot of fun and you flatter me on that introduction, but I’ll take it.
Jeff Walter (01:01)
Well,
you’re welcome. And hey, Robin, as our listeners know, I’m always interested in the biographical and I always start off with the biographical founder of a training firm building great ⁓ courseware and doing elements and applications. Note to everybody out there, Coursepreq is also a partner of Latitude Learning and we love having you guys as a partner. So welcome aboard. ⁓ So, but, you know, I’m a founder.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (01:09)
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
Jeff Walter (01:27)
Getting there is not always a direct path. So what made you found Course Creek? How did you end up starting a e-learning course development and LMS implementation company?
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (01:36)
Well, in another life that still goes, used to be full time, but now it’s sort of a side hustle. It’s a fun side hustle. But in another life, I am a fairly renowned contemporary voice coach, follow a law, singing song, voice coach. So I spent 30 years, wrote a bestselling book, did nine courses in five languages. It’s all sitting on another LMS system out there.
and lived like a rock star for a lot of years, especially as a younger man, had did lots of master classes in Europe and stuff. And I would, and I, it’s not what I signed up to do. It’s just, it pulled me in. So I realized I was really, really good at teaching people how to train their voice to sing better. Okay. And so fast forward tours, lots of fun.
for many years. was great when I was in my 20s. It was still pretty cool in my 30s. I got to my 40s and it started sort of just feeling like a job and I started turning into my 50s and I was realizing, you know what? It’s time for something different. What else can I do when I grow up? Is what I asked myself. I kind of went through a personal struggle because I’d spent so many years as a voice coach and that’s kind of hard on a resume if you want to do something different.
Jeff Walter (02:43)
I ask myself that question all the time.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (02:56)
But I thought to myself, the only other thing that I can do is help people make online courses. Because I had done that with the Vocalist Studio. so off I went. I got out of Seattle. I moved to Idaho. I bought a home here. And I launched Course Creek because I thought it sounded cool. And ⁓ two months later, the pandemic hit.
Jeff Walter (03:16)
That’s cool, man.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (03:21)
And my phone, my phone was ringing off the hook. So it was a baptism in fire in the e-learning business as a business owner, as a CEO. And now we’ve been doing it for seven years and I love it. It’s great. It’s fun. I still get to work with creative people. And I like leading a team and being the CEO is sort of fun. I think the
Jeff Walter (03:21)
my gosh.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (03:43)
thinking strategy and then yeah, it’s cool. It’s cool. That’s my story. And I’m working with people like Jeff that have some funds and have a budget, which is nice. That’s refreshing. That’s refreshing.
Jeff Walter (03:48)
Yeah.
That’s very nice of
That’s a really interesting trajectory because you were in the boys coach and then you said you wrote a best-selling book and you built a set of online courses, which were successful.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (04:05)
Yep. Yes.
Jeff Walter (04:11)
I guess there was something about building that that just kind of touched you that when you were looking, it’s like, hey, I really liked what I did there from a creative standpoint or like, you know, I mean, I do a lot of things on the side too, but I don’t turn them into my primary gig, you know? So that, so that, what was it about the learning that really got you saying, I want to commit to doing this?
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (04:27)
Okay, well, ⁓
I would love to give you something profoundly poetic, but I’m going to be really straightforward with you and your listeners. ⁓ At that time, I had done everything a voice coach can do, and that industry is capped in how much revenue and what you can do with it. It’s capped financially, and it’s capped in terms of opportunity.
Because the classical singing world is sort of Fox Garden, the hen house. So they don’t open up doors for contemporary coaches. So I couldn’t go down the academic path. it was mostly for myself. I needed a change. And I wanted to work with more buttoned up professional crowd.
Jeff Walter (05:13)
All right, interesting.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (05:20)
I had outgrown it. I’d outgrown it. Now I still do it today. I still sell the courses. It’s fun and all that. I mean, it’ll always be part of me, but I did the right thing. One of the best things I ever did was to pivot and take on what I now call Course Creek. I call it my grownup job.
Jeff Walter (05:22)
Yeah.
Yeah.
company for 20 years. I still try to figure out what I want to when I grow up.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (05:40)
And I, so this sort of interesting, I was into it about a year or two and thankfully I realized, I’m not bad at this. I’m pretty good this. I’m a good, I’m a pretty decent CEO. And I, and I, and I, I thought to myself early on, wow, the stakes are really high now. Like I haven’t been in this kind that, know, now I’ve got customers that have spent 20, $30,000 and they expect results and I’ve got to now, you know, get this, get my team in line and solve problems and stuff. It’s been really fun. It’s been, it’s been really great. Yeah.
Jeff Walter (06:10)
Well, so you see, you your shingle out, COVID hits, distance learning goes through the roof, people are calling you. when they’re calling you, what are they trying to accomplish? What do they want to achieve when they call you guys? What are they trying to do?
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (06:14)
Yeah. Yeah.
There’s different problems that we solve. And oftentimes, it depends on the vertical industry, the business model. If we’re talking about executive coaches, it’s typically scalability. I’m tired of playing strange on automobiles. I need to monetize my expertise in a digital format. We’ve had a few people come to us asking for, hey, look, I’m
78 going on, you know, I’m going to be 80 soon. I need to lock down what I teach so that I can have a legacy to pass on to my family, that sort of thing. OK, so scalability is really probably the first most important thing with the health care industry, which we do a lot of work and it’s a ⁓ it’s a lot of programs. Continue to education. We’re working with clients who come in and they.
Jeff Walter (07:00)
Mm-hmm.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (07:14)
They’re offering a career path, training, which is a career path for existing healthcare professionals. So a nurse wants to augment her resume and do some additional things and that sort of thing. So a lot of continued education programs. Yes.
Jeff Walter (07:29)
And so, okay, so you’ve got on the healthcare side, you’ve already continued education and building out that development. On the executive coaching side, a lot of really smart people that have great expertise that they’ve been sharing with the world in a, if I hear what you say, sharing that expertise with the world more in a…
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (07:41)
Yeah.
Jeff Walter (07:58)
you know, instructor letter or they, you know, uh, non digital way, right. And you’re helping them kind of do what you did with voice coaching, right? Like it’s like, you can take this, you can, you can create courses, you can create books, you can, you can digitize that expertise so that it can scale. Uh, is that a good way to put it?
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (08:19)
I think scalability is at the top of the list of the whys for any client that does an eLearning program. it’s out in the, like it’s coaches or it’s an intern L &D, I think that’s always going to be part of it. But also oftentimes we have clients that are already existing in courses. We’ve done a lot of migration projects where, for example, somebody wants to leave.
maybe a WordPress type platform and move over to Latitude or another platform. So we do a lot of migrations work. That’s a problem that we solve. Clients oftentimes want the learner engagements to be real class and for them to be not only effective and taking care of the prime directive, which is learn what we’re teaching you. So
people don’t die and that sort of thing. clients love the, they love the idea of the learner engagement and the products that we’re creating with them to be fun, edutaining, highly interactive. There’s a lot of excitement. They don’t know a lot about what’s going on with AI sometimes, but they know it’s out there. So we get to play with AI and, and all the really cool authoring tools that the work that we’re bringing to bear.
So that’s sort the fun part a little bit. I tell clients often that building a course, I use my past life as a metaphor, building a course is like making an album or making a movie or making a ⁓ painting. It’s this creative endeavor. And so I’m often encouraging them to remain.
Jeff Walter (09:44)
Mm-hmm.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (09:55)
you know, keep the creative juices going and have fun and we’ll put something really fun together in cooperation with instructional designers. Hopefully, I hope I didn’t get in the weeds a little bit.
Jeff Walter (10:04)
No, no,
no, no, no, but that’s where we find the gold. You know, it’s hidden down in the weeds, right? But you know, it’s interesting because we’ve talked before and, you know, just my brain is going firing. But like last week, I was at the International Franchise Association annual convention in Vegas. And it’s really interesting because I was talking to
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (10:10)
Yeah, OK.
Okay.
Jeff Walter (10:27)
I interviewed a woman, Marla, from MSA, and they do operating manuals. They create operating manuals and things like that for franchise orers. But we got into an interesting conversation, and your executive coaching piece just triggered a cross thing in my head. We were talking about emerging franchise orers. So that’s where all the growth is in the industry. It’s the new franchises, right? And we were talking about how there’s
A founder who has a, ⁓ who’s figured out a way to, you know, found the niche in the market. Right. And they figured out how to get leads at their stores and they figured out how to do, do the thing, whatever the thing is and, and, and, and make a nice buck and they decide to franchise and they get a couple of, you know, the first couple of franchises are, are, ⁓ you know, true believers, you know, and they have a really close relationship with the founder.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (11:05)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Jeff Walter (11:27)
And so all that implicit knowledge that’s in their head just kind of oozes out to them. But then as they start scaling, the challenge is a lot of these folks, when they get to that 2550 units, they still have all that knowledge in there. The founders or the founding team have it in their brain. But now these new franchisees are distant and they’re not getting that exposure.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (11:27)
⁓
⁓
Yes.
Jeff Walter (11:53)
And the variability of performance is all over the place because they didn’t take the implicit knowledge that’s in their head and turn it into explicit knowledge. And when you were talking about the executive coaching side where you’re these folks that are speakers and other type of industry experts that have made a living as an expert, with all that
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (12:02)
right.
Jeff Walter (12:13)
beautiful knowledge up in their head implicitly that they’re applying in particular situations where they’re getting that kind of proximity, you know, that like they’re actually talking to somebody. ⁓ All of a sudden I dawned like I had this epiphany. I’m like, my God, that’s the same problem. These guys are are are having and it’s taking that implicit and making it explicit so that it can be it could be scaled.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (12:24)
Mm-hmm.
Is it?
Jeff Walter (12:39)
So if we can kind of go down, if you might go down. So how do you do that? You know, got to say somebody who’s, you if we take one of these folks, I was assuming that they’ve been, you know, they’re an industry expert and they’ve been making a living as an expert and blessed, you know, how do you go about extracting that implicit knowledge and making it explicit? then what we were talking about last week with Marlo.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (12:53)
Okay.
Jeff Walter (13:08)
was once it’s explicit, then you can put it in a bunch of different forms like micro learning, long form learning, books, all these different forms that can then be consumable and can scale. when you have somebody like that, do you get that implicit knowledge? What’s kind of the process you guys go through to get that implicit knowledge and turn it into something explicit, written down in a course?
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (13:31)
Yeah.
Jeff Walter (13:32)
You know, because
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (13:32)
Yeah.
Jeff Walter (13:33)
that’s, you know, that’s not easy.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (13:36)
Well, that’s
probably the main reason they come to us at the top of their list. And inside of that reason are a whole bunch of other benefits like scalability and stuff. But that’s certainly what they’re putting on the intake form when they’re asking for a meeting. By the way, I got to get to that conference next year. I mean, if you have franchise-ers that are, yeah, yeah, OK, that’s interesting.
Jeff Walter (13:55)
Or, ors, ors.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (14:01)
And we have a few clients like that that are are franchise people. And what we’re doing is creating training programs for their employees. It tends to be tends to be a high degree of interest in micro learning so that people can can take short little snippet lessons on mobile devices, that sort of thing. But you get it back to your process.
Jeff Walter (14:13)
Right.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (14:20)
two words, instructional designers, instructional designers, bringing in the professionals. These people are.
Jeff Walter (14:23)
Yeah.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (14:28)
You know arguably they’re the most critical piece to our full service agency. We have the platform people that can build on your platform Jeff and all that we got marketing folks and all that but it’s the instructional designers is where the spooky voodoo is. It’s the it’s the most important piece and it’s the piece that’s the least understood. Here’s the process at Coors Creek a client comes on board we assign them an instructional designer.
Jeff Walter (14:37)
Right.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (14:56)
The instructional designer that they’re assigned to is somebody they’ve already have developed a relationship and rapport with because by the time that they’re on board as a client, they’ve been through two to three meetings with my subject matter experts. So when clients meet us, we’re going to bring in platform experts myself and instructional designers. They start with a storyboard. So they’re going to meet with the client and they’re going to ask the client to bring in
Jeff Walter (14:57)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (15:23)
anything and everything in terms of creatives. Any previous storyboard drafts might have notes on a napkin, PDFs, access to Vimeo to see your videos, access to your existing LMS we’re migrating from so we can take a look at the scoring files and they’ve been in there forever and need to be updated. So the instructional designer is going to get their hands on and their eyes on as much of the existing content that currently exists. That would give them a little bit of a
Jeff Walter (15:49)
Okay.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (15:50)
jumpstart.
Then we’ll make a storyboard. A storyboard is a beautiful spreadsheet that maps out the modules and the lessons and sequencing. That’s sort of obvious, but the one piece that the storyboard does that if you’re not in the business, can become an aha moment for people and for clients, sometimes it is, is there’s a column on our spreadsheet. It’s called the content map. The content map is where the instructional designer aligns the lesson that needs to be taught.
Jeff Walter (16:14)
Thank
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (16:18)
So they’re talking to the client, here’s the lesson, they’re consulting with the client. Okay, great. I’ve seen that kind of lesson before. I’ve seen that kind of adult learning experience before. And based on my instructional design expertise, there’s two ways to teach that. There’s two kinds of engagements for the learner that based on research and methodology that are best to teach that kind of lesson. So then the instructional designer will recommend an engagement.
Jeff Walter (16:30)
Uh-huh.
Mm-hmm.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (16:46)
engagement, they bring in authoring tools, which is fancy talk for specialized software and instructional designers get to play with to make cool learning engagements. So when you’re done with the storyboard, the content map will be a multimedia experience, typically, not always. For example, as a voice coach, I don’t need a whole bunch of different score files. I just need to put myself on camera. I’m a video or if you’re a chef, it’s going to be a lot of video. But we don’t have voice coaches in my agency. We’re dealing with
Jeff Walter (16:55)
Yeah.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (17:15)
bigger companies. So it’s going to be a multimedia experience in each technology that represents the engagement for the lesson is something a little different. You might watch a video, you might have a talking avatar, might have a reading exercise. You might have adaptive learning exercise with AI where AI will automatically in real time, change the questions to suit that particular individual to make sure they’re learning it.
Jeff Walter (17:40)
Mm-hmm.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (17:41)
You might have a PDF read, whatever the case may be. So they get done with that. And then when that storyboard is done, they then hit the authoring tools and create the content. So there was the heavy lift. was the heavy lift.
Jeff Walter (17:52)
Is it
the process going through the storyboard and the content map there? that where you start getting that knowledge out of the person’s head and start getting it down? that where that kind of, and that person has that, you mentioned that aha moment that a lot of the folks have. Is that where they’re like, ⁓ yes, and they start making explicit what has been implicit?
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (18:16)
when the client sees the content map that shows the different engagements, that’s their aha moment for, this is what instructional design really is and what it can do, because they’re clues about authoring tools. So they think of course is, not everybody, but sometimes if they’re new to it, they think of course is videos with copy and a quiz, paginate, videos and copy with a quiz. So that’s their aha moment of, okay, now I get what I’m really paying for. The aha moment for the team.
Jeff Walter (18:22)
That’s, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (18:46)
the team, for everybody involved to really see what it is for the first time we’re gonna create is when that storyboard is completed. And I think that’s kind of the answer that you’re getting at, Jeff, is when that storyboard, it’ll happen in the first week or two, and that storyboard is completed, then everybody can step back and look at it go, okay, so that’s what it looks like. That’s kind of what the movie’s gonna be. That’s what the album’s gonna be.
Jeff Walter (18:46)
Yeah.
and
Yeah.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (19:13)
And yeah, yeah, I will say to my clients often the storyboard tells all the storyboard when it’s completed is like a crystal ball. Once you have the story well done, you’ll be able to understand. Wow, really what needs to get done. It’s a map. Yeah.
Jeff Walter (19:13)
That’s really cool.
Yeah, very cool. So, okay, so with that, I kind of come back. You get engaged, you got the executives, you know, kind of experts that are trying to get that implicit knowledge, make it explicit, it, which that’s what scalability is, right? The scalability is being able to scale by not having to be there personally and having it in digitized format.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (19:53)
Yeah, that’s right.
Jeff Walter (19:56)
And then you had mentioned on the healthcare side, when you’re engaging folks, what are some of the challenges that the client is facing in order to achieve their end? They have this idea, I want these courses, I want this training program to be able to do whatever their goal is, That teaching that nurse that new skill, extracting that knowledge of the executive coach.
what are some of the challenges you guys face or they face with you and that you help them overcome when they’re going down that path?
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (20:31)
Sure, would
⁓ say there are content challenges, the different kinds of challenges, different kinds of cases. If we have somebody that comes to us with has-nots-exit-ing stuff, oftentimes the challenge is that it’s outdated or it looks amateur. The content looks amateur. And I froze there for a second. Sorry about that. So they need to update their content. And the content needs to be.
Well, it just doesn’t look great and it needs to look great. So that’s a challenge we see often times.
Jeff Walter (20:56)
Yeah.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (20:57)
Scalability again wanting to grow their business by monetizing it in digital so they can offer it 24 7 to anybody that speaks English on the planet earth That’s a challenge that we’re that we’re solving a lot There’s technical challenges like migrations to a better platform a better LMS because the LMS ran isn’t isn’t getting them what they need anymore
Yeah. Is that answering your question?
Jeff Walter (21:19)
And
yeah, well, and then and then how do you guys facilitate getting past those challenges?
Yeah, well, actually, we just kind of went down. I said, we just kind of went down now with the answers to the storyboard. It’s coming up with a storyboard to get that knowledge.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (21:33)
Well, Storyboard’s
a big part of it. honestly, the way I want to answer that is, first thing that came to my mind when you asked me that was, you bring to bear a talented team. You bring to bear the best instructional designers and elements platform development people that you can find. And we’ve done that. And I leave those folks typically to get into the minutia of the tacticals on how to solve those.
Jeff Walter (21:43)
Yeah.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (22:02)
those problems. My job as a CEO, in addition to CEO stuff, is to bring to my talented team people with problems, people with challenges that need to be solved. And then they’re assigned to the team and my team solves their problems and they do a darn good job at it. Yeah.
Jeff Walter (22:03)
Right.
Yeah, that’s
beautiful. That’s beautiful. So, what’s your favorite part of being CEO? completely shifting gears totally. Just going back to your biography, you were a voice coach, which I would assume is more of a single person enterprise. I’m not familiar, but.
Now you have an enterprise that you’re managing. What do you like about that the most? What do you enjoy the most, I should say?
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (22:44)
I like the challenge that it gives me every day. Every day the job gives me a puzzle, maybe a small fire, a tactical or something that I have to figure out to get to the objective and keep clients happy, keep my team happy and keep the company growing and moving forward. And that doesn’t happen as a voice coach.
So it’s very, it’s fun and it’s refreshing and invigorating for me. mean, a lot of people didn’t do it for life and it might be tiring for them, but I’m not tired of it yet. I like being confronted with these, with these challenges because I can literally feel in my brain, I can literally feel my brain sort of solving, like working through the puzzle, working, working through how to, you know, the risk assessment, if it did this and there’s that, or we can do it this way, which do you do? I’m having a lot of fun with that.
Jeff Walter (23:10)
Yeah.
you
So.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (23:38)
And the other thing I really like about being a CEO is the older life as a voice coach is very much a mentoring thing. So I’m a really good teacher.
Jeff Walter (23:48)
Mm-hmm.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (23:50)
And I love mentoring.
And in my team, I’m the second oldest guy on the team. So I get a chance to work with a lot of brilliant millennials and Gen Z folks. And I enjoy when I get a chance, and it’s appropriate to mentor and help them kind of solve through some problems and stuff. I love that. I think that’s really fun. The clients are wonderful too. The clients are really interesting. Everybody’s brilliant.
Everybody’s got a great idea. Everybody’s got a great idea. They’ve all accomplished. They’ve all done these amazing things. And before they finally come to us and say, now I need to turn into digital. So they’re always really fun and super fascinating. And you learn about all kinds of different business models. As a voice coach, when I started getting to the end of it, I sort of felt like I wasn’t appreciated. My talents weren’t being appreciated.
Jeff Walter (24:16)
out.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (24:42)
weren’t being utilized to the max. And now as a CEO, I feel like, yeah, like I’m making a bigger impact. I’m utilizing my talents and my time best. And I like that. I like that a lot.
Jeff Walter (24:57)
Yeah.
That’s very, that’s very cool. I, I, yes, I, I love that problem solving thing myself. And, uh, yeah. And I get excited. Like, uh, last week, just, uh, I was just being in an environment with a bunch of people and, you know, uh, at the conference and they’re just asking you questions about stuff and trying to figure things out. then.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (25:05)
Do you?
Jeff Walter (25:22)
I think my favorite thing though is just having a place where people can come and earn their daily bread and just do good, interesting work. And then the mentoring is part of that is I’ve gotten older too. like you work with younger folks and it’s like, oh my gosh, they’re so hardworking. They’re so hardworking. mean, you know.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (25:47)
you
Jeff Walter (25:49)
It’s so funny. I was talking to a buddy of mine yesterday and he runs, he owns a company also. And I know this kind of off topic for the learning of that, but you know, so he’s, he’s, you know, he’s been running his company for about a couple of dozen years like me. And, ⁓ and we were talking about, you know, the, like the, you know, the, the emerging generation and it’s like, my God, these people are some of the hardest working people. Cause we go back, it goes like when I was
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (25:50)
Okay. ⁓
Jeff Walter (26:16)
you know, 25 or 22. It’s like, I wasn’t doing half of what these people are doing. They are so, you know, they get such a bum rap sometimes. And I’m like, and he’s like, oh my God, they’re so hardworking and smart. And it’s really, it’s really cool. But I love that environment.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (26:32)
You’re right. I can say this because my team will be watching it and I hope they do. The millennials and the Gen Zs, when they’re good, when they’re good, they’re real good. They’re real good. They’re real good. And they’re super impressive, man. I guess that’s what happens when you grow up with a phone in your hand and the internet and stuff. You know, I was out
Jeff Walter (26:44)
I really should.
Yeah.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (27:00)
you know, getting in trouble and chasing girls and stuff, you know, and these guys are learning how to do code.
Jeff Walter (27:03)
I know.
It
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (27:12)
Yeah.
You know, maybe that’s
maybe I think that’s maybe it that that when I I’m working with this super, super talented people, OK, they’re just they’re super talented. You and I would not be on this call for one for these people, you know, today. You know that you know that. And I think I find it if I can like if I can like impart some Gen X wisdom, you know, from time to time or a little bit of.
Jeff Walter (27:36)
Right.
Well, that’s true.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (27:52)
I’ve got 57 orbits behind me wisdom to them a little bit. It’s sort of, I think it feels kind of flattering to me that I can have something to share with them that they find value in actually. Yeah.
Jeff Walter (28:04)
Yeah, it’s
very cool. It’s very cool. then the other thing is to then do that and use that and put it to good effect to actually help clients and make a difference in their world. To me, it’s a beautiful thing. I love doing this. It’s so much fun. It’s so much fun.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (28:22)
as a voice coach.
towards the end, got to, so it’s music, right? So not everybody practices. Not everybody practices. So you teach them this stuff and the same person comes in week after week and you know they’re not practicing.
Jeff Walter (28:28)
Yeah. All right.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (28:37)
And towards the got to the end, it’s like, wow, OK, I’m making money at this, but is this really meaningful? I’m hitting the same note I was hitting three weeks ago to get this person to do what they’re supposed to do and they didn’t practice. But now in this new world with Coarse Creek,
Jeff Walter (28:43)
Mm-hmm.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (28:54)
You’re making, you’re getting results. You’re, you’re, you’re, helping people do make their vision come true. All of it is designed to add value to humanity. Really it all is pretty much it’s all adding to the lexicon of human knowledge and changing people’s lives. And heck yeah. I mean, that’s something that’s really good for the
Jeff Walter (28:58)
Yeah.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (29:18)
self-esteem, think, to be a part of that. And my team is really into that too. They’re really into that.
Jeff Walter (29:23)
Yeah, it’s one of the things I love about the learning and development sector is like to me, learning, it’s the great replicator. It’s the great multiplier. It’s the great leverage. It’s what separates us from other species. It’s like, I’m a product of learning that’s gone on for thousands of years. And there are
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (29:25)
What a pride.
Jeff Walter (29:44)
people that came up with ideas thousands of years ago that are just part of my thinking. I don’t have to relearn everything from scratch. we’re part of that. You know, even like you say, we’re part of that great lexicon, even if it’s not the ginormous philosophical, even if it’s just the more down to earth, know, how do I treat this patient?
How do I take this knowledge and share it with the world in a digital format? It’s just so cool. It’s just so cool. And it’s the great multiplier. It’s the thing that once you do that, it can be replicated over and over over over over over again. And 10,000 people can learn how to do that. It’s just really cool.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (30:32)
Jeff,
that’s the legacy piece that I hit at or I was hitting on earlier. Somebody has a really brilliant idea that in the beginning results for years, selling their time, and in eight weeks, a fair and square price, can put it all, we can it all come to life in a digital format.
Jeff Walter (30:39)
Yeah.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (30:57)
available to anybody that can speak English really in any other languages as well. 24-7.
Jeff Walter (31:01)
Yeah, it’s unbelievable.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (31:01)
So.
Every dog is going to have his day. when that comes, that knowledge will be preserved. It’ll be preserved for future learners. It’ll be preserved for their family.
Yeah.
Jeff Walter (31:13)
I
didn’t never know what…
stepping stone that is to the future. Right? Like, as somebody took that course, read that book, consume that knowledge, however they consumed it, and then thought of the world in a slightly different way and did something amazing, like, and pushed the ball another yard down the field, you know, because, but only because you were able to get in there. just, I just think it’s so cool. It’s one of the reasons I love this industry.
You know, although being an engineering type of guy, I’m on the platform side because I’m not very creative, but I love this.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (31:47)
Yeah.
Did you just say that you’re not creative?
Jeff Walter (31:51)
Yeah.
⁓ well, maybe a little bit. wrote a book, so you know.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (31:54)
I think you’re creative. can’t
run a business as successful as yours and build these platforms and stuff without being creative. You have to be creative.
Jeff Walter (31:59)
But thank you.
Yeah, well, that’s the engineering side of me. So, so what’s in the future for Course Creek? Where are you guys going from here? What do you see as the future?
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (32:13)
The near future would be to, I have to press this by saying.
I’m a biz dev sort of sales guy, wired guy. So I’m thinking a lot about revenue and bottom line for my partners and my team. So in the short term, it’s to continue our growth. We’ve enjoyed 26 % annual growth since we started and to continue that. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. That means a lot coming from you. So continuing that trend.
Jeff Walter (32:34)
Congratulations, that’s a heck of an accomplishment.
Yeah.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (32:46)
We’re in an exciting time right now where we’re still going to take on the philosophy where we typically don’t say no to anybody. If they have budget and want to give it a go, we don’t say no to anybody pretty much. ⁓ We’re still doing that. But we are getting pulled into bigger opportunities, multi-tenancy opportunities, nonprofits.
multi-million dollar companies and you know so out of the coaches so that’s exciting for me that’s exciting for our team as we’ve because we cut our teeth on a lot of coaches for many years and we still do that but now we’re getting pulled into what I see now that I’ve been in the business for seven years and I see it my own instructional designers that have been in it for many years as we’re starting to get into kind of the bigger leagues and that’s really fun and we’ve earned it we’ve earned it and and so that’s fun for the near future long-term future
Jeff Walter (33:28)
Mm-hmm.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (33:33)
You know, people talk about exits and things like that. I suppose. Sure. But I suppose. But honestly, I’m having so much fun.
Jeff Walter (33:38)
Hahaha.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (33:42)
I’m enjoying it. And so if I can just continue to do what I’m doing right now, which is meeting cool people like you, meeting clients, being the sales guy, I like kissing babies and pressing palms. love building relationships and building trust early on. And like we said, I like being the CEO. If I could just keep doing that, I’ll be happy camper. I’ll be a happy camper.
Jeff Walter (34:07)
Yeah. It’s funny, I’m at the age where a number of my colleagues, my cohort are starting to retire and that. And I had one of my buddies say to me, oh, Jess already decided he was doing a retirement. He’s going to run his company. Because I’m just having so much fun. I love this stuff. I just love this stuff. It’s so much.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (34:26)
It’s a really,
so anybody out there that maybe is younger or looking for a pivot, it’s a really fun business. It might appear to be geeky and stiff, but honestly it’s not. It’s very, take me, I’m a good case study, because I’m like a creative type. Like it’s very creative. It’s very creative and there’s a lot of fun involved in it. And every new client, every new business model is an adventure.
to that you get to go on and explore and business is good too. So yeah.
Jeff Walter (34:57)
Yeah. Well,
yeah. Well, and then, then, you know, tying it back to, you know, be part of the Library of Alexandria project, right? Because what you’re doing is you’re creating that knowledge. You’re, you’re, you’re, I mean, it’s, it’s amazing.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (35:09)
The you
know what, Jeff, absolutely true.
Six minutes ago, I was gonna make a comment about the library at Alexandria as a metaphor. I was thinking exactly the same thing. As you were going through the lexicon of human knowledge and all of that, and we were both getting really esoteric and stuff, I was gonna pop in and say something clever about the library at Alexander, but you beat me to it. I guess that’s why we’re partners. I guess that’s why we get along so well.
Jeff Walter (35:22)
Thank
Yeah.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (35:40)
Thank
Jeff Walter (35:40)
You thought it and I verbalized it. I felt your mental energy come across the waves and I got it out there. but yeah, it worked. It That’s right.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (35:47)
It worked. I hypnotized you. hypnotized you, Jeff. Now if I can only, I
can just hypnotize you to send me some leads, that’d be great. But then…
Jeff Walter (35:55)
You got it, I’m working on that. ⁓ hey, thank you. Well, because that makes the whole world go round. So, hey, we’re coming up on time here. If somebody wants to get a hold of you or Course Creek, how would they get a hold of you? We’ll have your website and the show notes but
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (35:57)
Me too, for you, yes.
Jeff Walter (36:14)
Feel free to mention it here for the listeners that are not looking at their course notes or their episode notes, show notes.
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (36:21)
Thank you for asking. Go to CourseCreek.com. Course as in an online course, Creek as in a little river, one word CourseCreek.com. You’ll see us out there. And so you can read all about us. And then there’s little call to action buttons all over the place to book a meeting. book a meeting. And when you have a meeting, it won’t only be me. I will bring in my subject matter experts, senior director of instructional design, our senior director of platforms, which is an expert on
on Jess platform, by the way, and we will engage you and guarantee that you have a great experience and deliver a product that will be outstanding.
How’s that?
Jeff Walter (37:00)
All right, that sounds good. Anything else you want to share with anybody before we wrap up?
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (37:02)
Good.
⁓
I would say.
Do it. I would say if you have thought about a course and you know it’s been on your mind or whatever, call Jeff. Give us a call, anybody, whatever. But really give it a serious thought. If you do it, make sure you’re working with an agency that has a lot of experience to make sure that it’s done right. But once it’s done, and this will tie into the theme, one of the themes that Jeff and I were talking lot about.
is once it’s done, once you create that movie, once you create that album or you get your course done, you can then enjoy all the benefits that come with helping others, that’s out there, but also the scalability. And I think that one of the things that people have to do to kind of get ahead and get freedom is to build something, create something new, be it…
Create a platform like Jeff, make a singing course, make a course, whatever. Create a product. And a course is a great way to get your own thing out there that nobody can take from you. They’ll always be there to open doors for you. They’ll probably make some money for you. And you can change lives. It’s totally, it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work. You’re going to work like a slave for about eight weeks. But when it’s done,
It’s done and you get to enjoy all the benefits. So I encourage people to think about very seriously think about making a course.
Jeff Walter (38:33)
All right. I think that’s a great place to end. My guest today has been Robert Lonte of Coors Creek. Robert, thank you so much for sharing your time with us. I learned a lot and I really appreciate
Robert Lunte of CourseCreek (38:33)
you
Thank you, Jeff. First time I met you, we had a good vibe, and that vibe continues. And I’m grateful for your interest and the opportunity to speak to your folks. Thanks a lot. Good.
Jeff Walter (38:56)
All right, and to everybody out there, hope you enjoyed today’s episode and have a great day. See you next time.