If you’ve ever felt burned out seeing client after client and wondered how passive income could fit into your therapy career, this episode is for you. In this episode of The Traveling Therapist Podcast, I sit down with Justin Montgomery to talk about how therapists and other healthcare professionals can step beyond the one-to-one model and build passive income through continuing education courses.
Justin shares his journey from burnout as a nurse practitioner to building multiple businesses, including a highly successful CE course company. We talk honestly about what it really takes to build passive income, what works, what doesn’t, and how therapists can start thinking like entrepreneurs without losing their professional integrity.
In This Episode, We Explore…
Connect with Justin:
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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/procoursestart25/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/procoursestart/
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Signup to learn more about life as a Traveling Therapist: https://www.portablepracticemethod.com/free-training
Revolutionize Your Private Practice with AI Course: www.kymtolson.kartra.com/page/ai
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Transcript:
[00:00:00] Kym: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Traveling Therapist podcast. We have a very cool guest today. He has got an interesting topic for therapists that we could talk about. Part of this podcast is we're all very entrepreneurial. You guys know that we talk a lot about how are we gonna scale out of that one-to-one model. 'cause we're burned out, we're tired. We don't wanna see that many clients. So I'd love to bring guests like Justin Montgomery, to talk about other ways to generate income in our businesses.
[00:00:29] So Justin, welcome. I would love if you could just maybe introduce yourself a little bit, the nurse practitioner part, but also this other business that you've got going on that we're gonna talk about today.
[00:00:39] Justin: Thanks Kim. my name is Justin. I'm a nurse practitioner by training graduated NP school back in like 2013. Did not do mental health. I mostly did like ER stuff and urgent care stuff, that kind of thing. Yeah. But just like you guys, I got, you know, I got burnt out working for people and I realized four or five years into my career, you know, I was maybe like 35, 36 at the time, and I realized that
[00:01:05] I hit a ceiling like this is it I can't really make a whole lot more, doing this. This is pretty much it for me. And I'm 35 years old, like, you know, I was making good money, still doing well, you know, compared to most people. But I guess I wanted uh, I guess I wanted more. I wanted something else and so I started my own practices.
[00:01:23] started a medical cannabis clinic and did like, some men's health clinics and some online hormone replacement therapy clinics and stuff. And I gained skills on opening up practices and I mostly did cash based. I wanted to avoid insurance. Like I just, the headaches associated with it, I just, I didn't wanna deal with it.
[00:01:41] So I started cash-based practices and, I started noticing like online, like in various Facebook groups and message boards and stuff where nurse practitioners were at that they were kind of going through the same thing I I went through in terms of just being burned out. so I decided to start a, a, a business called the Elite Nurse Practitioner.
[00:02:00] And there I essentially taught NPS on how to start their own practice. So. It started off as more like a blog. At first, just, I wrote some articles and stuff, and then I would do like some consulting with people. And I realized that my time was still tied to, seeing, you know, consulting
[00:02:19] Kym: like you switched to like nursing clients to consult or patients, whatever, to consulting clients. Yeah, yeah,
[00:02:25] Justin: Right, right, right. You know, I mean, I was charging, you know, $500 an hour. I still making good money, you know, but I'm just like, great. And I just gave myself another job. Right. you know, I mean, I was still, like I said, I was still making good money though, so I wasn't, you know, I mean, I'm, I'm, you know, I wasn't complaining about that, but I was like, I want something passive.
[00:02:42] So I built this business. I started in late 2019 and, spring of 2020, I decided to create a course. So like I was consulting with people, I was like, you know, I can just put this in a course. Like, I don't need to consult with people. I can tell 'em the same thing in a course. so I launched my first course through the elite nurse practitioner, and I taught people how to start a men's health clinic.
[00:03:01] That was my first course, like how to start a men's health clinic because that's, that's, that's what I did. And I, I launched the course and I made like 50,000 bucks in like seven days. was like, whoa.
[00:03:12] Kym: That's awesome.
[00:03:13] Justin: It's like I'm onto something here, you know? Like, okay, I'm gonna stop focusing on my men's health clinic and my other clinics. I'm gonna focus on this. And so I basically created a new course every single month for like three years. And when it was all said and done, you know, I mean, I had 45 courses or something like that you know, uh, sometime in 2023.
[00:03:33] And you know, at that point I, I was looking at the numbers and stuff and I was like, you know, I have a business now that's generating almost eight figures a year. So I was like 38, 39 at the time, and you know, this was about, yeah, like three years later and I'm like, you know, I could retire. So, um,
[00:03:50] Kym: everyone's
[00:03:51] Justin: yeah. Yeah.
[00:03:51] Kym: talking about.
[00:03:52] Justin: Yeah. You know, and I just, I just happened to be at the right place at the right time, offering the right thing, And uh, you know, there was some luck involved, obviously, you know, being in the right place at the right time, kind of a thing. And yeah, so I essentially decided to more or less kind of retire at the age of like 39, 40. And I'm 41 now. And, I have businesses doing its thing now. And I decided to start a new business where I teach people how to start CE businesses
[00:04:16] Kym: yeah. I love it. Okay. You sound like me, right? It's like I could retire, I'm done, but I've gotta create something else. Like that's like my curse and my blessing at the same time. It's like I literally could put it all to bed and still make money, but it. You know, I just, I wanna keep doing, creating things.
[00:04:31] But anyway. So tell us about this business then, because I think this is the really interesting part for therapists and tools they can use to help them scale like you did.
[00:04:41] Justin: Yeah, so I started a business called Pro Course Start. So pro, like a professional course start, start your own course business. And I don't teach people just how to start a course business. I teach people how to start a continuing education course business. There's a big difference, right? You know, a lot of people start course businesses on teaching people how to.
[00:04:58] Oh, I don't know, quilt, you know, just random, random things. Right. You know, how to market online, stuff like that. And so I wanted to focus more on professionals, predominantly healthcare professionals, medical professionals. So you know, anyone from a chiropractor to an MD to a psychologist or a therapist or a nurse, you know, whoever.
[00:05:17] The process is the same thing. It doesn't matter who you are, you know, it's the same thing. And so, so yeah. So now I'm teaching people how to start a continuing education course business because. I realize that you can start your own clinic, you can start your own practice. You can even do it all.
[00:05:30] Telemed, telehealth. you could still do that, but you're still tied to it, right? So like, sure, you could be in Costa Rica seeing, you know, patients and clients via Telemed, telehealth. But. You're still tied to it, right? And so my passion now is to teach people actually how to get outta that. Like how can you build a passive income stream?
[00:05:50] And as a professional, I think that, you know, if there is any kind of teacher inside of you, then a CE course business is a, is a great option.
[00:06:01] Kym: Yes. let's break it down for the listeners. What is the process? I'm sure this is like multifaceted, but the process of just starting a CE business in general.
[00:06:10] Justin: so
[00:06:11] the way I teach people how to do it is, and something that's usually overlooked is you need to develop your value proposition first. Like it is the foundation, it is the concrete foundation of, of the house here. Right. And most people just
[00:06:29] Kym: Can we talk about that for a second? Because I, you know, I know what that is, but I think a lot of people, maybe just therapists that are trying to start out, they don't even really understand that concept of the value proposition. Like maybe we could just hone in on that a little bit because I heard you saying that too.
[00:06:41] It's like, I could create a course to create courses, but I needed to like niche down and do it for professionals that needed ces and you know, so maybe we could talk about that a little bit.
[00:06:50] Justin: so let's just break it down. Value proposition, What value are you proposing to the world? Essentially, right. So, you know, I mean, how do you define value? Like it needs to be something valuable to people. It needs to be transformative in nature. It needs to improve their life, So you need to develop a value proposition. You need to develop something that's transformative to whoever your target demographic is. So if you are a therapist and you wanna start a continued education course business. You're probably gonna target therapists more than likely. Right? Or you could maybe target, oh, I don't know, psychiatric nurse practitioners and teach them how to integrate more ther, you know, therapy based, you know, modalities into their practice.
[00:07:39] 'cause they're mostly medication management. Right. So you needed to, yeah, so you needed to determine who, like who are you targeting, and then what kind of value can you propose to them that's gonna transform their professional life, their financial life, their personal life, et cetera. And so it all starts with that.
[00:07:57] And most people just overlook it. They just come up with an idea in their head, okay, I'm gonna create a course business and teach people this. Okay, great. But like, is it truly valuable? Is it actually transformative? Oftentimes when I consult with people, it's not. I just like, I'm just honest with them. I'm like, I think that's a dumb idea. I just, I don't, I don't think it's a good idea.
[00:08:16] Kym: have wasted, I mean, they're just like, this is a great idea. They never market tested. It's not even a problem that people are trying to solve, you know? So it's, it's good that you give that honest feedback, I think, right?
[00:08:26] Justin: Yeah.
[00:08:27] Yeah. So yeah, so when I mentor people and consult people or whatever, or someone takes like, you know, our course, there's hours spent on just that because it is critically, It's critically important. If your value proposition isn't dialed in, you're wasting your time. You're gonna spend $10,000 and 80 hours of your time building this thing and it's gonna fall on deaf ears.
[00:08:44] Right? so it's basically starts with that. So you gotta develop your pro value proposition, create the name of the business, make sure it's something that people understand what it is. You don't wanna create a CE business teaching. Let's just go back to like the model, like let's say you want to teach nurse practitioners how to integrate therapy into their practice. You don't want to call it therapy ce.com. Like that doesn't
[00:09:04] Kym: Yeah. It's like, a dime a dozen. Yeah.
[00:09:07] Justin: right, right. You need to name it so it makes sense to who you're targeting. Right. And so you create the name. Create your mission statement, right? Like what's, like, you know, what's your mission here? You know, once you develop all that stuff at more higher level kind of thinking, then at, at that point, once you have that built, the way, the way to do it the right way is to then build the walls
[00:09:29] on top of that foundation and the walls of a continued education course business is literally the, you know, the hollow shell of the business. And now you need to start filling it up with rooms and furniture. And that shell is the business itself. So like, you know, basic stuff like your website, your LLC bank accounts, payment processors, you know, the actual infrastructure of the business.
[00:09:51] Once you build that now it's start filling the house up. And so step number one, build your course. You gotta have a product. If you don't have a product to sell, what are you doing? that's where most people spend the majority of their time is building the course. And that's the wrong way to think about it.
[00:10:09] you, you can have the most amazing course in the world, but. If you don't know how to market it appropriately and how to sell it, it doesn't matter. You know what I mean? And so most people focus so much time on the course versus the actual continued education course business that they fail. And so you need to, the course is secondary.
[00:10:31] Yes, it is your product. It needs to be stellar. But now you need to make sure that the roof of the house is actually built right. And if it's not, when it rains, it's gonna leak and it's gonna flood it out and it's mm mm. Mm-hmm.
[00:10:45] Right. So, so that's where my focus is with Pro course start, is to actually help people build this the right way so it actually sells. 'Cause if you spend all this time on it, you know, you just, you just wasted a lot of money and time.
[00:10:57] Kym: is there part of the process for the listeners where you determine, like, especially for therapists that, you know, my understanding anyway is like the, the credentialing boards that do CEEs, like, they're very particular about topics and the things that can be taught that can actually earn CEEs.
[00:11:13] So how does somebody ascertain like what is viable course? I mean, I hear what you're saying, the value prop market. you've gotta have the good marketing and all this stuff. But like around those topics and being able to actually obtain CEEs, is there like strategies around that for people listening that are trying to start this from scratch?
[00:11:31] Justin: Yeah, you need to you need to go through the, you know, you need to go through an accreditation
[00:11:34] Kym: Okay. Right.
[00:11:36] Justin: so what I typically recommend people to people that, that wanna do this is go ahead and build your course and build the course business and send it out into the world. You can accredit later, okay?
[00:11:50] You do not have to accredit before you launch because accreditation can take between. You know, depending on what accreditation organization you're going to going through, what kind of therapists you are, you know, like behavioral analysts, I think the accreditation process for them takes a month, like, you know, a psychologist through the, you know, the, the American Psychology Association that can take six months.
[00:12:16] You know, so it really depends on who you're going through, right? So, my recommendation is get the business out there. Start building an audience. If your course is transformative in nature, people will not care if there's CE attached to it or not.
[00:12:34] It's still continuing education, but you just don't get a little check mark and you don't get a CE credit or an hour, right.
[00:12:42] So basically I tell people, just get it launched. Then start going through the accreditation process. Do not delay your launch. If you begin getting a lot of feedback from people, let's say you create a Facebook ad and there's a lot of comments. Does this offer ce? Does this offer ce? How many CE hours does this, you know, offer?
[00:13:00] Well then that, that kind of gives you your answer that you probably need to
[00:13:03] Kym: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:13:04] Justin: right? But with the elite nurse practitioner, I did not offer CE for two years, and it was already a
[00:13:10] Kym: wow. Yeah.
[00:13:11] Justin: because the transformation was valuable. I'm gonna teach you how to start a practice. I'm gonna teach you how to get out of the er.
[00:13:16] I'm gonna teach you how to get outta the hospital. I'm gonna teach you how to get outta the clinic, right? People didn't care if they were CE or not attached to it. Now, when I became accredited and offered CE business increased by 25 to 50%.
[00:13:27] Kym: Yeah. Amazing.
[00:13:29] Justin: But it was a million dollar business before, so, I would not wait, but you, you do need to offer ce. Now there's three kinds of CE businesses that people normally don't think about. Here. There's three types. Number one is the CE business, where the value lies in the CE credit or the CE hour. That's the value. We are all guilty of doing this. We have all taken a CE course and we just click next, next, next, next, next. Go through the quiz and of out.
[00:13:59] We gotta renew our license. We're all guilty of this. We didn't even, you know, we the, not the information, the course, we didn't even care about it. We just needed that three CE hours so we can renew our license. Right. Yeah. There's that model. Okay. The way I describe that model, it's kinda like it's, it's a pill mill for
[00:14:15] Kym: Exactly.
[00:14:16] Justin: Like that model works, but it's a volume game at that point because those courses are cheap. Right. 30 bucks, 50 bucks, maybe a hundred dollars maybe. You know, so it's a volume game at that point, you know, if you wanna generate a million dollars at 50 bucks a course, you need a lot of students, right?
[00:14:40] Second model is the value lies in the actual course. Okay? The elite nurse practitioner, that was my model. People didn't care if there was CE attached to it or not. The value lies in the actual information. They actually want to know what you're teaching because it's truly transformative in nature. Those kinds of things are like, can you help them make more money?
[00:15:02] Can you help them get a raise? Can you help 'em get a better job? Can you help 'em start their own practice? Can you help them learn a new skill that makes them so much more competent? Like it's truly valuable. It's not just a CE course about, you know, how to do therapy with, I don't know, children with A DHD.
[00:15:18] And it's just like completely clinical, right? completely clinical courses are valuable. Yes. But most people are taking them to get the CE credits.
[00:15:25] So model number two is the value lies in the actual information. Okay? You can create a course that's valuable. You don't need ce, you can still make money.
[00:15:34] Option three, and the best option is a hybrid of both. that's the model you should be striving to do is option number three.
[00:15:41] Kym: Nice. Okay. Yeah, that, that's fantastic. so if we're going with option number three, like what would be the step-by-step process for somebody listening to this? Obviously your course is super helpful to help people get there. Do you have like pointers, somebody should follow the, this trajectory with it or just start the course and then start the accreditation process and then apply after.
[00:16:03] Justin: Yeah, so I mean, if you go to procore start.com, I have a few articles on there that kind of just give you like a very brief rundown, you know, but again, develop your value proposition, develop the, the infrastructure of the business, create your course, and then at that point begin developing your marketing materials and your content strategy.
[00:16:24] So ideally want to build some kind of audience, And you do that through providing valuable content information. Like, so for you, for example, you have a podcast, right? This helps you build an audience, So you need a YouTube channel, a podcast, or you can just write articles. You know, like you don't have to go any, yeah, you don't do anything crazy here.
[00:16:45] So create a content strategy where ideally you're publishing. Two to four pieces of content a week, One can be a podcast, two can be articles, one can be a YouTube video or something, right? And you send it out there to the world, and if it resonates with people, they'll start following you. They'll start engaging with you.
[00:17:02] They'll subscribe to your email list, et cetera. So you wanna build an audience through content strategy, and then you wanna start developing some kind of marketing strategy as well. Like you're gonna have to spend some money marketing your CE business. It's just not gonna magically happen.
[00:17:17] advertise through meta, advertise through LinkedIn, maybe advertise on Reddit or something, you know, advertise on YouTube, budget.
[00:17:24] anywhere between a thousand dollars to $5,000 a month on it. It sounds like a huge investment. It is, but if you do it the right way, you should start seeing a decent return on that. So like, you know, I know people who have CE businesses and me personally, for every dollar I would spend advertising on Meta, for example, for every dollar I spend, I got $13 back. The best
[00:17:49] Kym: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense when you put it that way.
[00:17:52] Justin: Right. You know, but as long as you're putting a dollar in and getting $2 back, you're doing pretty well. You're not gonna get that kind of return in the stock market, you know? So yeah, so then you develop content strategy and marketing strategy. Send some ads out there.
[00:18:06] Maybe every once in a while, boost some of your content without any kind of goal of generating income, just to build an audience because your audience will start buying from you. And then at that point, it's just a lot of trial and error, working out the kinks in the business and just more or less
[00:18:20] Kym: Yeah. That's amazing. So what are the, do you have like pros and cons of starting this type of business for somebody that's listening? I.
[00:18:28] Justin: So I would say the three big pros are gonna be number one, it's passive income. I'm not gonna say passive, I'm gonna say partially passive, right? You still gotta put a little effort into it. You gotta build courses, you gotta build content. Like you still gotta do stuff, right? But it's very, very partially passive.
[00:18:46] Operationally. So once you start the business starting the business itself will take you anywhere between 80 to 120 focused hours. I'm not talking about spending 15 minutes and then getting on Instagram and scrolling for a little while. I'm talking about 80 to 120
[00:19:03] Kym: Hmm. Mm-hmm.
[00:19:04] Justin: okay? That's how long it's gonna take you to build the business, all right?
[00:19:07] After that 10 hours a week. All you need to put into it to keep the thing operational, content generation, marketing, dealing with some customer service stuff, right? So it's partially passive in nature. Number two, another big pro is it's location
[00:19:24] Kym: Mm-hmm.
[00:19:25] Justin: which aligns perfectly with your, with your podcast, right?
[00:19:28] Like you could be anywhere in the
[00:19:30] Kym: Right. Yeah.
[00:19:32] Justin: Like, I'm flying to Mexico tomorrow for a week with my family. I'm still gonna work, but I'm not gonna work much. I'll probably make more money than I'll spend on vacation. Like,
[00:19:44] Yeah. So it's completely location independent. And number three, it's, it's a business that works for you.
[00:19:51] Like it truly works for you. It's not a business you work for. You're not self-employed. it's a truly a business where you are an entrepreneur, you're not a self-employed person. You're not just, you know, you don't own your own clinic, your own practice and see patients like you're, you know, if you're a therapist seeing patients and you're the only person in your office, then you are the product.
[00:20:10] It's tied to you, right? so, yeah, so those are the three big pros. Number four too, I'd say it's scalable like this. This is a business that you can really grow and scale fairly quickly. And by doing that, it's a business you can sell very easily. Like CE businesses are extremely valuable to private equity.
[00:20:31] So you could have a big windfall if you wanted to, you'd scale it over three to five years and sell it for millions of dollars. Cons are gonna be, I would say, probably one of the biggest cons is that it's not guaranteed. You don't know if it's gonna work or not, you know, it's just like any other business You can put a lot of work into it and it might just, not really, might just fall on deaf ears. You know, if your value proposition isn't dialed in, then you're probably gonna fail. So that's a big con. Number two is marketing is the number one expense of this business. you're gonna spend more on marketing than you're gonna spend on anything else.
[00:21:09] You need to get good at marketing. If you are not good at marketing, you're gonna have to hire someone to do it for you. And ultimately, a marketing agency does not care about your business, like you care
[00:21:21] Kym: Right. I've definitely found that It's like, gosh, you think they, they talk a really good game in the interview before you hire 'em. Yep. They sure do.
[00:21:29] Justin: yeah. They're salespeople. They talk a big game. A lot of 'em are, most of 'em are scammers . I hate to say. They just are. So you've gotta get good at marketing. If you are very hesitant about marketing and doing it yourself, at least for the first couple years it might not be the right business for you because it is very, very heavily marketing driven.
[00:21:49] And I would say that's probably a, you know, a big con there. And number three is if you're not tech savvy whatsoever, it's gonna be somewhat difficult for you. Like, you need to understand like this business. Your office is the, it's, it's on the internet. You know, like you don't have a filing cabinet with patient charts in it, like it's in a Google drive.
[00:22:11] You need to have a basic understanding of maybe like, you know, website development, social media. Different kinds of tech stacks. How do you automate your business? How do you utilize artificial intelligence to make yourself more, you know, more efficient? So if you're not very tech savvy it is a tech intensive business unless you decide that you wanna do mostly just like conferences, which works, but your time's
[00:22:36] Kym: Meaning go present and then say, I've got a CE business too, where you can buy courses. Is that what you mean? Or,
[00:22:42] Justin: Yeah, that, or you just decide you're just gonna do
[00:22:45] Kym: oh, okay.
[00:22:46] Justin: like you're just gonna do your own
[00:22:48] Kym: Yeah. Oh, I see
[00:22:49] Justin: as an example. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. But even if you do that, you still
[00:22:53] Kym: Yeah. I mean, it's still work. All of it's work and, and we threw around the word passive earlier, but it's, there's still time involved in this stuff, whether you've got somebody else marketing for you and you're paying for that, but there's still gotta be some sort of churn in the background, keeping this machine running, essentially.
[00:23:09] Right? Yeah.
[00:23:10] Justin: That's why it's, it's partially passive.
[00:23:12] Kym: right. Mm-hmm.
[00:23:13] Justin: Oh, then one more, and then one other con too is that the accreditation once you become accredited you do have to play by their rules. And so I.
[00:23:22] Kym: I wonder about that. 'cause I feel like you could, like I hear what you're saying, like, you know, define the value prop, create the course, market it, sell it. But then I feel like, and I've just like anecdotally heard this, I guess, that the accreditation body comes in and says. You can't say this, you can't say this.
[00:23:37] It needs to be structured this way. You've gotta meet this criteria and like, I mean, maybe then somebody's gotta go back and revamp their whole course or something to fit into this criteria. So, you know, I guess I'm just saying that out loud for people listening to say that does happen to people. Right? I mean, I guess you see that in what you're doing.
[00:23:53] Justin: yeah, I would correlate it with like insurance in a practice. There's a third party involved, And you have to follow by their rules. You know, if you start your own practice and you're cash based. You don't have to listen to insurance company regulations, If you wanna see a patient for two hours, you can see a patient for two hours.
[00:24:11] You can chart however you want to chart with a CE business. If you do not like, if you do not accredit, your courses can be structured however you want them to be structured. if you don't even want to have a reference, a bibliography or whatever, you don't. You don't have to. It's your business, right?
[00:24:29] But with accreditation, you have to follow, almost like in clinical practice, there's a standard of care, when you become accredited, there is a standard of accreditation. And so your courses must be evidence-based. They must have, references, they must have financial disclosures. They, you know, you gotta, you know, you gotta file, you gotta send them paperwork every year or two.
[00:24:52] So like, it does add complexity to your business, but. The increase in sales you will get by offering CE credits. It's worth it.
[00:25:00] Kym: Gotcha. I guess my next like, kind of question is like, Procore start, like how does that help? You've talked a little bit about what you offer in there, but is there curriculum or criteria around this part of it? Like how to navigate all of those complexities that you're talking about?
[00:25:13] Justin: Yeah, so, so I created a, a, a course called the Proco Start Blueprint. it's 15 to 16 hours long. Like it's a, it's, it's very in depth course. Like I literally go through every single. Step, you know, all my blood, sweat, and tears and failures and successes are in that course, right? So, you know, if you're more of a do it yourself kind of person, you can take that course.
[00:25:37] You will literally have the entire blueprint. You need to start it. You know everything from starting the business to value proposition, to creating the infrastructure to marketing content generation. All the way to building the business in a way that you can sell it. Like I go over everything from start to exit essentially.
[00:25:55] Yeah. And then we also have a mastermind too, where if you want something a little bit, you know, yeah, yeah. If you want more handholding then you know, there's more of a structured week by week curriculum within the mastermind, plus q and a calls with me and webinars and stuff like that. So that's kinda what we offer.
[00:26:10] But you know, if you don't wanna buy anything whatsoever, just. You can subscribe to our email list, like we have, there's articles, there's videos I publish, there's, you know, a bunch of free stuff that I put out there to, you know, to
[00:26:20] Kym: Yeah. That's awesome. And I was just gonna ask that, 'cause I mean, even, especially in the therapist world, like everybody for courses, they want the community part. You know, they want the like, yeah, but who, who am I gonna talk to to walk me through this? And you know, I wanna, I wanna meet, have a mastermind, like that kind of thing.
[00:26:36] So I was just wondering like you're the 45 CE courses that you created or you know, before all this, are they all just like. Courses. There's no community involved with those, just for people listening that might be trying to replicate that model.
[00:26:48] Justin: Yeah, so you want, so with a CE business, you want it to be a vertical business, not a linear business. Okay. You, like you, yeah. And like some people might, might not understand what that means. And so what that means is that you do not want your course business, your CE business, to essentially be completely 100% reliant on one course.
[00:27:11] You wanna have multiple courses and you should develop a course that's evergreen in nature, and by Evergreen it's prerecorded and it's for sale 24 7, 3 6 5 days a year. That is gonna be your bread and butter of the CE course business, okay? And you wanna have as multiple courses as possible.
[00:27:27] You don't want to just have one. You need to have, have a flagship course that lays the foundation of what you're trying to teach and then have other courses, right? So. That's the foundation of it. That is like the bottom of the pyramid. Most of your revenue should be coming from that. And then if you think of a pyramid, it goes from, you know, down here and up, right?
[00:27:47] Like it's a pyramid. That's what I mean by vertical. And so now you start stacking additional products into that pyramid. You want a vertical business, you want to have membership. You wanna have mastermind, you wanna have consulting, you wanna have eBooks, clinical protocols, like you wanna try to maximize the lifetime value of the customer.
[00:28:07] You want to try to squeeze out as many dollars as you can from your customer. And if it's just a one one course and that's it, and you never hear from 'em again, you can't scale a business like that. So. to grow your business, you need to be able to extend the lifetime value of the customer. You don't want 'em to just buy one course for 500 bucks and you never see 'em again.
[00:28:26] You want them to continuously buy more things from you. And a membership is a fantastic way to do it. And like the way I recommend it in Pro Course start is that at a bare minimum, you need to have Evergreen courses and a membership bare minimum. Right. 'cause a membership, like you were saying, people like the community, they like to have a way to ask you questions directly.
[00:28:51] they like that. And you need to increase value in, you know, within the membership. Just don't, it shouldn't just be a message board or a Facebook, like webinars, q and a calls, things like that. Right. And the beautiful thing about a membership is that it's recurrent income.
[00:29:05] With a course it's 500 bucks and that's it. With a membership, it's $50 a month, right? That exponentially grows. It just scales month after month after month. And so you definitely wanna have something like that. But I will, you know, say this to your audience. Customer service with a CE business will make or break your CE business.
[00:29:25] You could have a. An amazing course, and you can market it right, and you can build an audience. You can do everything right, but if your customer service is poor, your business will end up failing. And so. One way that you can do this the right way is that you ensure that students always have access to you regardless if they're in a membership or not.
[00:29:50] And this can be something as simple as in the course and in your marketing materials, you simply state and you can email me with any questions that any time and I'll respond within 24 hours. Make that guarantee and follow through with that guarantee. Like, yeah, if you do that, you'll build a loyal
[00:30:09] Kym: I love that. Oh my gosh, I feel like I could pick your brain all day. And I've gotta say, I totally agree with you with the membership model. I've got three memberships myself, and I mean, every day there's like, oh, new recurring payment, receive new recur recurring payment. It's like a beautiful thing to see. and of course offering value to keep your customers and retention and all that stuff, but yeah. it's a great model. So there's so many ways to do this, but incorporating the CEEs in is super valuable, it sounds like, and, and from, from what you said, you had the course, you added the C CEEs and it just like exponentially grew from there.
[00:30:40] Justin: A hundred percent. If you can offer the CEEs, you offer the CEEs do not let people, people make the CE accreditation component. They make it a roadblock and they're so scared of it that they never start. I will say this, it is not hard guys. CE accreditation. I hate to say this, but it's the truth. It's just the reality.
[00:31:02] It is mostly pay to play. You pay the CE accreditation, their money, and you fill out the application and you tell 'em what they want to here, they will accredit you because all, I don't care if the accreditation organization says it's non-for-profit bs. Yes it is. It's for profit
[00:31:20] Kym: We know nonprofit means
[00:31:21] Justin: make money.
[00:31:22] Kym: yeah,
[00:31:23] Justin: Correct. Like they're there to make money. Guys, they want you to be accredited because now they can charge you their yearly accreditation fee, okay? So like they want you to become accredited, okay? They will make it as easy as possible to get accredited. All right? So do not make it a roadblock. Now, if you do not wanna go through the accreditation process, that's fine.
[00:31:45] You don't have to to offer
[00:31:47] Kym: Oh, okay.
[00:31:48] Justin: to. Okay? There's two kinds of accreditation you can accredit each individual course, Which means you have to file an application and pay the fee every single time you wanna accredit a course. Alright? Becomes a headache.
[00:32:00] Spend the money and accredit your organization. Just accredit your organization. If your organization, your LLC, your CE business is accredited. That means you have full autonomy and it's at your discretion to offer CE as you see fit. So you can offer CE to this course. You can offer CE to this free webinar.
[00:32:25] You can offer CE in your membership for the webinars. You can do whatever you want, okay? It's worth the money to become accredited as an organization. Now if you don't wanna become accredited. And if you want to launch this with CE hours and you wanna wait six months, okay, then you can do something called a joint providership.
[00:32:44] And what joint Providership means is that you go online and you find a joint providership company. Now there's companies out there that have become accredited with the A MA, the a PA, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. their business model is to just become accredited with all these organizations, and then there's something called joint providership.
[00:33:06] You pay them money. You use their accreditation to attach CE to your courses. Okay. That process is cheaper, faster, and it's fairly easy to do. Again, they are for-profit organizations. They want you to pay them, right? So you pay them $2,000 a course and now you can offer CE for the next two years for the
[00:33:28] Kym: And they do all the, the backend implementation, like certificates and all that stuff. Right. So you don't have to deal with it or, okay.
[00:33:35] Justin: No, I mean, you still offer this, you still offer this certificate and stuff on your end, which is, which is easy. Most course hosting platforms allow you to do that. So it's simple, but down at the bottom it would say Accredited buy, and you'd put their
[00:33:48] Kym: Okay. Gotcha.
[00:33:50] Justin: Right, so it wouldn't be accredited by your business, you know, ce therapy.com or whatever.
[00:33:55] Right. So, yeah, so that one is o you know, that's, that model works and it's a great way to streamline it and like get your CEEs out there right when you launch, because that process usually only takes two to four weeks, typically. It's very, very
[00:34:09] Kym: And I just wanna say to the listeners, Lisa Mustard, she runs that Therapy Show podcast. She is an accredited provider and she does this for therapists. I don't know if you guys know that, but I'm just putting that out there. She's a great resource for therapists that wanna do exactly what you're talking about.
[00:34:24] I mean, I don't know a Proco start does that too, but she does that for therapists. I'm just saying that to the audience. A little nod to Lisa. Lisa Mustard.
[00:34:31] Justin: Yeah. Use her for it,
[00:34:32] Kym: I mean, do y'all do that? I should ask you, do y'all do that too, or no, that's not part of your business.
[00:34:37] Justin: If I don't wanna deal with those
[00:34:38] Kym: All right. I was like, I hope I'm not just
[00:34:41] running over what you do, but Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:34:43] So, Lisa Mustard, do you guys
[00:34:44] Justin: yeah, like, we teach you how to start the CE business the
[00:34:47] Kym: Got it. Love it.
[00:34:49] Justin: And then we'll give you resources on where to go for joint providership and things like that. But you still gotta do that yourself. But like our goal is to ensure that you create a CE business the right way.
[00:35:02] To where it can scale to, you know, 5, 6, 7 figures. You know, that's, that's my goal. 'cause I've done it and I help other people do it. I've had clients who went from, you know, $0 a month to six months later, they're generating a hundred thousand dollars a month.
[00:35:19] So you can do it. You just need to make sure you do it the right way before you waste a lot of money and time, because I'll be honest with you guys.
[00:35:27] before you know it, you could be spending a lot of money advertising this online and you are not generating
[00:35:33] Kym: Yeah. Gosh. Don't fall into that trap. I, I know so many people that have, yeah. I just keep throwing advertising dollars at something that's not working. Somewhere in the funnel's broken, like you said, the value prop's not right, or, or, you know, there's so many things that could be happening that's, causing it to not sell. So how do people find you if they want to work with you? Take your course, learn from you, take your masterminds, all that stuff. Where did they find you?
[00:35:55] Justin: yeah, for sure. So they can go to uh, just, you can go procore start.com if you want to. Okay. Just proco start.com. You know, I have a Facebook page and an Instagram and stuff. YouTube channel Proco start. My name's Justin Allen Montgomery. You can find me on Facebook and stuff as well. You can always message me.
[00:36:10] I'm happy to answer any questions. If you want to email me justin@procorestart.com I actually answer it. I don't have AI bots or VA like. I answer it And then uh, what we'll do is I'll also grab a page for your listeners too, so it'll be, procore start.com/podcast/traveling.
[00:36:29] They can just go there and there's like discounts there. You can subscribe to our email list, check out our mastermind, that kind
[00:36:35] Kym: that's awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. thanks for coming today.