How Edwiser Bridge is Helping Bipolar Advantage Increase its Reach
It must be quite a challenge to accept being diagnosed as bipolar.
It was for Tom Wootton.
More so, because of the terrible outcomes he was offered. Diagnosed as Bipolar I – the most extreme form of the disorder – it was difficult for Tom to accept that bipolar was treated only as a disadvantage, a disorder. Certainly there was more beyond this.
Tom wanted to change the existing paradigms of the mental health field.
Over the course of ten years, Tom began talking to thousands of others facing similar challenges as him. This prompted him to develop the Bipolar IN Order workshop, in the year 2003.
The Bipolar Advantage
Tom built an effect workshop- his now signature program- to help those with bipolar disorder. And to make this program available to those who needed help, Tom launched the Bipolar Advantage website.
“Bipolar Advantage is an online education company focused on helping people suffering from depression and/or mania. We are helping people create better results than any other program.”, says Tom.
The task of getting a website up and ready, was not void of a few initial struggles. Tom spent more than half a year, trying different online education platforms, but none suited his needs.
As Tom puts it, “I was very frustrated with the functionality both for end users and for myself as the one who would need to build the courses.”
Out of the e-learning platforms he explored, most did not offer him needed solutions. The only comprehensive platform to meet all his needs, was Moodle.
“Although Moodle was perceived as complicated, it was more full-featured than any of the options and in my experience no harder to use. The other options offered only partial solutions and integrating the missing parts was harder to do than to just use Moodle.”
Adding the Marketing Angle
With the website ready, Tom needed it to reach far and wide. But Moodle did not provide him with the right tools to market his offering.
“My marketing was suffering because it was hard to build all of the functionality I wanted.”
Tom needed a solution that would help him without much technical complexity involved. WordPress was Tom’s go-to marketing platform.
“Moving to WordPress made it easy to add whatever I wanted without having to do all of the code myself. I now just buy [a component that I need] for a reasonable price from someone who focused on just that component. They made better functionality than I ever could have made alone and made it very easy for me to use it.”
Tom zeroed in on WooCommerce to sell his courses. For ease of management, the next step was to integrate the two – LMS and Marketing – platforms.
Tying it All Together
“A sticking point was to integrate Moodle with my WordPress/WooCommerce based site. I looked at a few options, but when I saw Edwiser Bridge I knew right away that I had found the best one for me.”
Tom found Edwiser Bridge to be the ideal solution to integrate his WooCommerce shopping cart and his courses. In his own words, this particular ease-of-use provided by Edwiser Bridge, made picking the plugin, a no-brainer.
“With some simple set-up and a few clicks, any purchase automatically enrols the user into the appropriate course. It even auto-generates the user name and password, for those buying their first course.”
For Tom, Edwiser Bridge provided detailed documentation and a seamless user experience. But what he was most impressed by, was the support.
“Whenever I asked for support, the team at Edwiser went out of their way to help. It is the best support I have ever gotten and for me that is the most important reason to buy.”
Having integrated WordPress, WooCommerce and Moodle with Edwiser Bridge, Tom could finally focus on marketing and quit worrying about tinkering with technology.
A Throwback
Tom has worked endlessly, to now be recognized as a leading speaker on positive approaches to mental health. His website is not a mere portal for his business, but it is a guide, a resource, to help those struggling with mental health issues.
We’re glad that Edwiser Bridge has been able to play a helpful role in his incredible journey. 🙂
Now, to end this article, here are some inspirational words from Tom:
“Follow your dreams but don’t give up. The only time you fail is when you quit trying.“
