180. Want to Host a Webinar That Feels Like an Addictive Game (Instead of a Snoozefest)? – with Caitlin Johnson
Let’s be real—most webinars are painfully predictable.
👉 They start with a big promise…
👉 Drag on with way too many case studies and personal backstories…
👉 Drop a couple of generic tips…
👉 Then, surprise! It all leads to yet another sales pitch.
By the end, you’re thinking, “Well, that was 90 minutes I’ll never get back.”
But what if your webinar could be different? What if it could be so engaging, so interactive, and so FUN that attendees don’t just stick around but actually love every second of it?
That’s where gamification comes in.
In this episode, I’m joined by gamification and game-based learning expert Caitlin Johnson, who reveals exactly how to turn your next webinar into an epic, adventure-style experience that keeps people hooked from start to finish.
No more boring slides. No more endless monologues. Just immersive, action-packed webinars that convert like crazy.
If you’re ready to make your webinars addictive (in a good way!) and create events that people actually WANT to attend in 2025, hit play now! 🎧
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Transcript:
Caitlin Johnson:
While you are the subject matter expert in these webinars, it can unfortunately be the incident of where we see ourselves as the sage on the stage and we become a talking head. But we need to engage the audience. I think about some of the most engaging webinars I’ve been on and they’ve provided opportunity for me to think and to connect with who else has joined. If I can connect with two or three people outside of this webinar after the fact, I feel like huge value. So create opportunities for people to network and connect with each other at the very beginning.
Brad Powell:
Welcome to the Standout Business Show, where it’s all about making a bigger difference by doing business differently. I’m Brad Powell, your Standout Business Coach, and on our show today we’re talking about how you could be using gamification to create an addictive and epic webinar. So here’s the thing the webinar world is getting pretty stale out there. Most webinars, as you probably know, they seem to always follow this same formula they hook you with this big promise, this same formula, they hook you with this big promise, and then the presenter spends most of the time of the next 90 minutes talking about their case studies, their own background. They give you a couple of tips and it all leads to wait for it, a sales pitch and come and buy my thing, and so you’re left thinking, well, oh man, that’s 90 minutes totally wasted and they don’t have to be like this. Like, I don’t want to diss webinars as a medium, because I actually think that, done properly and done with really good back and forth engagement with the participants, this experiential learning opportunity is huge and a lot of good can come from this. Experiential learning opportunity is huge and a lot of good can come from this, and a lot of good can come if you’re doing webinars or any kind of master class as part of your marketing. So what if your own events could be really different? What if they could be super engaging and interactive so much that your attendees are leaving feeling like they really got something, they’re inspired, they’re energized.
Brad Powell:
To help answer how to do this, I’ve invited gamification and game learning expert, caitlin Johnson, onto the show to talk about how you can not only make your next webinar more engaging, but turn it into an epic adventure. Imagine that. So Caitlin is founder and lead consultant of Bold Bird Consulting. Her background is in gamification, change management and leadership development, and for the past 15 years, she’s impacted over 72,000 global leaders. So if you’re ready to create an addictive epic webinar 2025, stay tuned. And with that let’s start the show. I just want to say, before we get started, that this interview with Caitlin gave me so much great information, and the reason that I got so much out of it is because later this month, I’m doing my own masterclass webinar and I am going to integrate many of the things maybe all of the stuff that Caitlin shared in this episode into my own webinar, so that it’s going to be more engaging and, hopefully, more of an epic adventure. So I encourage you all to join me on February 26th at 12 pm Eastern Time on the Make Coaching your Marketing Masterclass.
Brad Powell:
You, as somebody who is a consultant or a coach or have some form of expert business, you are already doing lots of things in your normal day to day where you are sharing your expertise and you are in your zone of genius and you are communicating. Whether you’re a guest on a podcast or you’re doing a presentation or you’re simply having a meeting with a client or a prospect. During those moments, you can be recording and documenting exactly what you’re doing, and all of that makes for great content. So what I’m going to share is how you can develop a very simple system for not creating content but actually documenting the moments where you are absolutely at your best and turning that into an archive that people can go and explore and binge. So join me. This is a free masterclass. It is February 26, 12 pm Eastern Time. Just go to awesomevideomakers.com/blueprint or you can find a link in the show notes and I’ll see you there. And now back to the show. Caitlin, welcome to the show.
Caitlin Johnson:
Yeah, thank you so much for having me, and, gosh, I love the tee up of how can we make webinars just more adventurous, more inspiring and fun, and I’m here for it. I’m here to share some of the ideas that you can incorporate really simply into your webinars.
Brad Powell:
Yeah well, I am a huge believer in all forms of experiential education, experiential learning, All forms of experiential education, experiential learning.
Caitlin Johnson:
I’m a big believer that people actually do learn best by doing Absolutely, I agree.
Brad Powell:
And possibly they learn worst by sitting in front of PowerPoint.
Caitlin Johnson:
Nothing’s worse Like, especially if you think too about self-paced trainings, and there’s a lot of them. The drop-off rate of these are upwards to 96%. They just don’t hook us and keep us engaged as we’re moving along. Yeah.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, and so, given that most of the professional community seem addicted to this very static form of education transfer, like come in here, sit down and we’re going to present and it feels like history class in sixth grade or something it’s like.
Caitlin Johnson:
Oh no how do I get out of here?
Brad Powell:
Right, yeah, you’re absolutely right the idea of not only making it more engaging, but making it more fun and almost like we’re on a journey we have a destination and there are hills and valleys and challenges to meet and overcome along the way, so that as we go along, just like if you were actually playing a real game, there are rewards and there are things make happen so that while you’re doing it, not only are you learning something and getting experience, but you’re actually feeling good and maybe even on an internal way, you know, becoming a better, more capable person, which is part of the puzzle.
Brad Powell:
So talk in a big picture way how just the whole concept of game learning and gamification can apply to education and learning.
Caitlin Johnson:
Yeah, it’s a great question and you’re right. I think we’ve been doing learning and transferring of knowledge in the same way as we remember growing up in sixth grade, and so therefore, that’s what we then do and we replicate. But there’s a better way, a more fun way of being able to engage with our audiences. So I’ve got a lot of different strategies that you can apply into your own learning, but I want you to start with the psychology behind how we prefer to play games. So first I want to tell you there are four different ways that we prefer to play games and specifically video games. Everything that I reference comes from a video game standpoint and background, and there’s a gentleman by the name of Richard Bartle who is a British researcher and professor who in 1996, and really in the world of video games, 1996 is quite a while ago, but in 1996, he found that there are four main ways that we prefer to play games. When you keep these different player types in mind, then you can start to think about what game mechanics or tactics could you apply to support learning. The first one is what he calls a killer it’s not my favorite word, I prefer to call it a dominator. These players are the ones that want to highly compete. They want to be the first on the leaderboards. If you were to do a timed activity where it’s hey, in less than 30 seconds or in one minute, do X, y and Z to apply the learnings that we tried, the dominators are going to be the ones that get it done first. The second game player type is an achiever. They like to collect all the experiences along the way, the different badges. They would love if there’s a completion badge at the end of your training or your webinar so that they could then post on social to say, hey, I just spent this time learning this skill and here’s my badge to prove it.
Caitlin Johnson:
The third player type is an explorer. These are the ones individuals who are there to take in all the information that you’re sharing, but they also want to push the buttons. They want to go down rabbit holes. They want to see what else is possible. They want to see what else is possible. They might ask you the tough questions or even just have questions, but as a facilitator or a webinar host, you haven’t built in time for your audience to ask questions, so that’s always key here.
Caitlin Johnson:
The fourth player type is a socializer or a connector. They prefer to play games with other people. So if you think about leveraging your chat feature in whatever platform, whether it’s Zoom or Teams or whatever the case may be, they’re looking to connect with other people. So first, there are those four psychological dynamics of how we prefer to play games. Now we could make this a science project, brad, and like totally geek out onto well, what are all the right tactics to inspire all four of those player types, and that is what I hope people aspire to be. But let’s just talk really simply of some ideas that you can engage your audience, that maybe you’re not fully utilizing, and I would also say don’t overcomplicate it. And here’s what I mean by that.
Caitlin Johnson:
Zoom, in particular, offers a lot of engagement functionality. One of which I’ve been testing out a little bit more and then have opted not to use is the annotate function. So annotate allows for all of your participants to be able to pick a stamp and then stamp on the screen, and so you can create like a four by four grid and say all right, hey, we just learned about XYZ concept. What would you do as a result of it? Pick which box right and then they can click on the screen. It’s a really cool functionality, but here’s why I don’t use it.
Caitlin Johnson:
Not everybody is savvy when it comes to technology. So even if you have a here’s how to use annotate slide, which I’ve given instructions on how to find it, how to use it, I usually find two to three people who can’t for the life of them find this button and then they feel left out. So now I just disengaged that person. So, while it’s a cool functionality, I use it sparingly or if I know my audience is savvy with the technology. Some of my favorite go-to strategies is to have a welcome slide that just says share, where you’re calling in from type in your LinkedIn profile code so that we can connect with each other.
Caitlin Johnson:
Because while you are the subject matter expert in these webinars, it can unfortunately be the incident of where we see ourselves as the sage on the stage and we become a talking head. But we need to engage the audience. I think about some of the most engaging webinars I’ve been on and they’ve provided opportunity for me to think and to connect with who else has joined. If I can connect with two or three people outside of this webinar after the fact, I feel like huge value has been had, so create opportunities for people to network and connect with each other at the very beginning. So I’ll pause there. I’m saying so many great things. I’d love to get your thoughts.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, well, first of all, I’m just going to go back to these four basic things the killer, slash, dominator and the achiever, the explorer and the social connector. Yes, and what’s interesting? For when I hear each one of those, I go well, and I think this is true for lots of people. Well, there’s a part of me in all of those.
Caitlin Johnson:
Oh, yes, each one of those, I go well.
Brad Powell:
I, and I think this is true for lots of people. Well, there’s a part of me in all of those. Oh yes, I know, like I, I used to be, when I was growing up, a huge. I never got into video games, but I was big into board games. Like used to play risk, used to play all these I mean I can list them all off there like I had a whole like closet stacked. Oh, yeah, and I would play them for hours with my friends and I was very competitive.
Caitlin Johnson:
So there’s no friends in card games with you, right?
Brad Powell:
That’s right, and people would look at me and go man, you are so cutthroat and I go.
Brad Powell:
yeah, but we’re just playing a game here, this is the idea me go, man, you are so cutthroat and I go, yeah, but we’re just playing a game here. You know this idea and uh, but in addition to that, you know like, certainly, for in the context of a webinar, when I do somebody else’s event, I am also there to connect with the other people who are there. It’s a big reason to go. And, just like what you just said, if you come away and you have made a couple of connections, even like two, of new people who you’ve met who seem interesting, that alone has made going to that event quite valuable. And yes, of course, you know the more exploration there is. You know, sort of if there’s something in there that makes me think critically about something or get an insight that I didn’t get before, or allows me to explore something about the work that I do, you know, and how I do it, you know, and all of that. It’s really good learning.
Brad Powell:
So, all of those together make for a great combination.
Caitlin Johnson:
A hundred percent yes. And then, when we think about exploring so simple ways to be able to engage your audience, again, you’re wanting to transfer knowledge so that they can also apply it. There’s been a lot of trainings where I’ve gone through, or webinars where I’ve gone through. I’m like, well, that’s a really great idea, but I didn’t have the time to really deep dive and think about how to apply it into my world. So then it’s like, oh, that’s a nice idea. What happens after the webinar is over? Brad, we’ve got like 17 other things and 47 emails and there goes the information right.
Caitlin Johnson:
So intentionally creating moments to say, now, what would you do? Right, here’s the problem that we’re looking to address. Here are some solutions that me, as a subject matter expert, are applying. Now, how would you apply that into your space? And then here’s one of my favorite chat prompts. What I’d like for you to do is go to the chat, don’t press enter, yet Type in your response. And when I say go, then press enter. So this gives everybody a chance to pause, because nothing’s more uncomfortable especially as a host or an attendee when the facilitator says type in the chat what your thoughts are. And then it’s crickets.
Brad Powell:
It’s crickets Right, right, right.
Caitlin Johnson:
But again, like virtually, you haven’t given somebody enough time to think about what their response could even be. So you give them the time. I’m going to give you about 30 seconds. You could even pull in a digital timer onto your screen. There’s some great apps for that. Or you could just say hey, I’ve got my phone, I’m going to you know, in 30 seconds, I’ll check back with you, type in your response and when I say go, press enter and it’s this chat blast. And so then all of a sudden, everyone’s curious.
Caitlin Johnson:
What it also does is it doesn’t influence other attendees to see, like, well, what did they say? And oh yeah, that’s a good idea, right? So you’re getting unique answers. And then you create time to say, okay, let’s all look at the chat and see what we’ve all said. And then you pick a couple attendees to expand on. You know, I see what you wrote there. Can you tell me more about what your thoughts are? This again creates connection with the audience to be able to understand well, how are other people thinking about this and what other ideas can I learn from the attendees? I find that with 15 years of facilitation of in-person and virtual, people almost learn more from each other than they do from you as the subject matter expert.
Brad Powell:
Right, exactly, it’s through the application right. Yeah, I find that when you’re working with a group, that’s actually the beauty of group education is because they help each other. There’s a really great book out there called the Art of Possibility by Ben and Rosamund Zander. Ben Zander was the I don’t know if he still is because he’s getting on in age but he was the conductor for the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra.
Caitlin Johnson:
Oh, wow.
Brad Powell:
And his wife is a therapist and they wrote this terrific book together. But he tells a story in there about going to Cuba. The chapter is called Learning from Every Chair.
Caitlin Johnson:
Interesting. Oh, I get it. The orchestra pun Took me a minute Orchestra reference.
Brad Powell:
And so, anyway, he had a trip with this youth orchestra that went to Cuba to play alongside a Cuban youth orchestra and somehow, before the arrival of this event that they were going to do together, the music that the Cubans were going to play that was being brought, never made it to them, and so they hadn’t learned the piece that they were going to play together. Okay, that could be problematic, yeah right. It was like, oh, now what do we do? And so, anyway, he had the two orchestras get together and each instrument taught their corresponding instrument how to do the piece.
Caitlin Johnson:
Oh, love that. That’s how they did it.
Brad Powell:
So the orchestra just completely intermingled and and did that all together. And to me I took that like back in the day when I was an outdoor educator and my role was I was actually the director of the program but our medium was we’d go out in these open rowing sailing boats and 10 people on board. Each person had an oar. We did a lot of rowing and singing and chanting together.
Caitlin Johnson:
Okay, that creates some collaboration.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, but the thing is, and from a leadership point of view, typically on a boat there’s always like one captain and the captain is in the back of the boat and the captain doesn’t do anything and the captain tells everybody what to do and they just, you know, whatever the captain says, they do it. And I kept introducing this other way of leading on the water. I took this thing of lead from any chair. I was like lead from any bench. Oh cool, yeah, I like that to collectively do things, which is really contrary to how boats are usually operated, especially hard to run. Ones like these were. And it was fascinating experimentation to see what the group would do as a dynamic. And we even did things as far as we wouldn’t allow anybody to talk. You know, we’re just like well, you know we’re going to sail and of course you have to tack through the wind and do these various maneuvers and we’re going to go from here to there and it’s going to take us probably an hour and a half to get there, maybe if we’re lucky.
Caitlin Johnson:
Okay.
Brad Powell:
And, but nobody can talk the whole way.
Caitlin Johnson:
Wow, so what did that do?
Brad Powell:
The next step beyond that is we would actually blindfold half the crew. Oh wow, and so half the crew could say things. The other half of the crew had to do things. Okay, and so you’d have a partner. And this is again like learn from every chair. It’s like here you have a partner and they’re your hands, they’re the means by which things are going to happen, and you need to help them verbally.
Caitlin Johnson:
But you can’t actually physically help them.
Brad Powell:
That’s hard, they can’t see but oh yeah, it was it was really fascinating, fun, interesting, you know, unusual and all kinds of good stuff happened.
Caitlin Johnson:
Yeah, that actually reminds me of like a little mini icebreaker that I’ve done, where you could do this virtually as well as in person, where you have two people get together, one person has a shape, some combination of shapes, and you sit back to back or you know, virtually you could be in the same room, just don’t show the other person the picture, but you have to verbally explain the shapes and how they connect and have the other person draw it and it just most always never matches.
Caitlin Johnson:
It’s very hard to verbally explain something clearly and simply to another person to be able to write it but it’s a really great art activity to be able to talk about effective communication, collaboration, listening Like it’s a really great activity.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, yeah, for sure, all right. Well, bring us back on track here.
Caitlin Johnson:
Yes, Well, I’m thinking about collaboration actually, Brad. So I like to talk about collaboration partners versus accountability partners.
Caitlin Johnson:
It’s a bit of semantics, right, Accountability seems so heavy. Right, Accountability seems so heavy. And there are so many traits like if you are a facilitator by trade, you usually do have content that you’re training. And then it’s the connect with your accountability partner from the session so you can continue learnings. I like to think of it as a collaboration partner, because you’re both learning together and how can you support each other versus, you know, hold yourself accountable in the way that we feel that word? So, collaborating together, post workshop them, connect on LinkedIn, then it might be hey, connect with somebody intentionally and collaborate with them on how they’re going to incorporate the learnings into their day-to-day and be each other’s support. And then that’s where learning continues outside of the workshop and outside of the session. As people continue to apply that information.
Caitlin Johnson:
Breakout rooms are a great opportunity as well. A clear tip if you’re going to do breakout rooms is to have the instructions on the slide beforehand. Explain it, and then I love to ask the question instead of does anybody have any questions? Because, again, like semantics, nobody wants to ask a question. But I’ll ask is there anything I can clarify before I open the breakout rooms? So this gives people a chance to just say like oh, I’m actually a little confused and I get more questions, quite frankly, as a result of asking is there anything I can clarify before I open breakout rooms versus are there any questions?
Brad Powell:
Yeah, good question. Yeah, it reminds me of this idea of framing, like before you’re in, you know you’re moving to a new piece, a new activity of some kind the importance of framing that activity before you get into the activity. Make it clear and when I’m talking about it’s like just what you said, like are the things that we need to clarify, you know, it’s basically creating a frame like here’s the parameters, here’s what’s going to happen, you know, and so on, so that people are really you’re just checking in, so that everybody knows that they’re on the same, they’re on the same game plan.
Caitlin Johnson:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think the overall trend that I see when you’re trying to incorporate gamified methods of engaging, the idea is that you engage with your audience and that you keep engaging and you re-engage with your audience because we get so distracted is being pulled in so many directions. Whether it’s a ping on our watch which I don’t like using Apple Watches because I turn all of that functionality off, it’s too distracting but it could be a watch ping, it could be a phone ping, it could be an email ping, whatever the case may be, your intent is to engage and re-engage with the audience in fun and engaging ways. So I do want to go back to those four game player types and give you some ideas on how to specifically think about each of those four players. So when we think about the dominator, you know that killer personality, super competitive.
Caitlin Johnson:
If you were to create again those short, quick little quests of all, right, you’ve got 30 seconds. Let’s see how many things you can type in the chat about X, y, z, topic Ready, go and then let the 30 seconds pass and see who pops into the chat For an achiever, calling them out by name. They really appreciate the recognition. They go after badges and certifications, because they want the accolades, so you could find out like who’s participating in the chat and then just call them by name to be able to give that recognition or have a very simple certification or badge of honor, so to speak of after attending the session, the explorers.
Caitlin Johnson:
So little side quests inside of they could be little mini challenges where you could offer like after the session, here’s something where you could dive a little bit deeper. Or, if you’re curious and want more information, here’s a white paper on that and you can put it in the chat for future reading after the session on that. And you can put it in the chat for future reading after the session. Bonus material so after the session’s over, and then you might want to send a thank you email for attending and hey, I’ve got a bonus Sign up for XYZ or another additional opportunity to learn more information. And then for those connectors, the socializers this is where those collaboration partners come in play. Anything having to do with the chat to be able to learn from each other and breakout rooms are really helpful as well.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, that’s great. It sort of goes with that thing you were talking about in terms of I’m going to say some things and I want you to respond, but don’t do it right away. Yes, yeah, wait a minute. And then the same thing is like okay, but don’t don’t do it right away. Yes, yeah, and then the same thing is like okay, but this is almost the opposite of that, like now I’m going to say something and then I’m going to give you 30 seconds or 15 seconds or whatever, and type as many of these things as you can go, right, and then it’s, then it’s a race.
Caitlin Johnson:
Think about the mentality too. Like there’s certain like I would imagine if you preferred to play risk growing up, you’d be like oh yeah, I’m right there, Like 30 seconds, I’m gonna put in my answer real quick, Whereas some folks who might be more the socializing, connecting, like they may be like you know what, I wanna see what other people say first and then I’ll go ahead and apply my thoughts. So there’s two different ways to engage with two different psychologies.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, absolutely, and critical to be accommodating to all of them.
Caitlin Johnson:
For sure?
Brad Powell:
Yeah, this is really cool, all right, well, it’s interesting. We’re now like the time just went.
Caitlin Johnson:
Yes, I know it’s a fun topic.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, it’s a great topic. We could talk for a really long time, but and there’s so much more If there is another piece of wisdom that you could share, as people are thinking, well, these are cool. Now I’m thinking I’m going to redesign my next presentation to include some of these. What would you like to say to those folks?
Caitlin Johnson:
You know, I think my biggest takeaway is to think of yourself as a guide a guide to transfer information. Make the attendee the hero, so don’t be the sage on the stage and be the talking head. Create opportunities for your attendees to be able to process and think, which truly makes you work just a little bit harder as a presenter, because you need to clarify and simplify your message in order to make time for those opportunities for your audience members to connect and to think.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, the world of presentations could really gain from clarifying and simplifying. Yes, make it shorter, shorter yes, don’t put up that slide with with. It’s just covered with stuff.
Caitlin Johnson:
It’s too much, yeah and then please don’t read it right, because I can read it yeah, I mean, that’s the worst.
Brad Powell:
It’s like you just here’s all this stuff, let me just read it to you. It’s like why?
Caitlin Johnson:
why don’t you just send it to me? That’s exactly right.
Brad Powell:
Well, caitlin, this is terrific stuff. I’m inspired. I know that my own next presentation is going to be better as a result of this, so thank you so much for that.
Caitlin Johnson:
Yeah, thank you for having me, this was fun.