Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: You're listening to the Doc Lounge Podcast. This is a place for candid conversations with the healthcare industry's top physicians, executives and thought leaders.
This podcast is made possible by Pacific Companies, your trusted advisor in physician recruitment.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Welcome to the Doc Lounge Podcast. I'm thrilled to introduce today's guest, Justin Allen Montgomery, founder of Pro Course Start and a former nurse practitioner who knows firsthand what it's like to feel the weight of burnout in medicine. Justin took his clinical expertise and turned it into an eight figure continuing education business, proving that there are ways to create income impact and freedom beyond the bedside. Now, through Pro Course Start, he helps other licensed professionals, including physicians and apps, do the same. In this episode, we'll talk about how to build a CE business that actually frees your time, why social followers don't equal sales, and how you can monetize your knowledge without the funnels, fluff or hype. If you've ever wondered how to take your hard earned expertise and make it work for you in a new way, Justin's story will open your eyes to what's possible.
Welcome to the podcast, Justin.
[00:01:14] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks for having me on here, Stacey. Appreciate it.
[00:01:18] Speaker D: I love your story and your background is so unique. So tell us, first of all, how did you get into more on the medicine side and decide you wanted to be an np?
[00:01:29] Speaker C: Yeah, so I graduated with my first undergrad degree in biology and chemistry.
You know, I did all the pre med stuff, pre dental stuff. You know, I got my first degree basically and you know, all that kind of fun stuff. And my initial idea was go to like dental school. And after shadowing some dentists, I decided I don't want to do that.
Yeah, so I took a year off, kind of just trying to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life, you know, I mean, I had like a 3.6 GPA. You know, I scored really well, well, on a lot of entry exams. And I was just kind of just in that weird stage of life where you're like 22 years old and, you know, really no clue what you want to do.
And I was kind of just working, you know, just nonsense jobs, you know, bartending and waiting tables and just stuff like that. And I, I was like, you know, I really need to do something. So I, I started looking at nursing and I saw that there was an accelerated BSN program where I could become an RN in like a year and a half because I already had a bachelor's degree and I already had all the prereqs and everything. So I Was like, you know, that sounds like, you know, that sounds like something that'd be something interesting to do. My. My goal was to become a nurse practitioner. I ever wanted to just stay as an rn, so.
So I did the accelerated bsn, worked as an RN in the er, did some home health and stuff as an rn, and then went into my MSN and got my master's and became a nurse practitioner. I graduated MP school in 2013, and from there I started working in an urgent care.
It was a really cool urgent care. We had a CT scanner lab.
I mean, it was almost like a little mini er. And so I learned a lot working there. I worked with a really cool, really cool doc who taught me a lot of fun stuff. And so I transitioned from there to the er, started working in the ER as well. So I kind of always balanced in between the ER and the urgent care as a nurse practitioner. And in 2017, so this had been about four or five years after I graduated MP school, I already started kind of getting burnt out. And I was like, man, I am only like, I'm like 34 years old, and I'm like, I'm already getting burnt out. How am I supposed to do this for another 25, 30 years? Like, you know, I was. I was working a shift in the ER one day, and I was looking at, like, some of the older ER docs, some of the older pa, some of the older nurses, and they just looked.
They just looked like they didn't have any life left. And I didn't want to be that way. It's like, it really kind of. It kind of depressed me, you know, and so I decided to start my own practice in 2017.
So I started a medical cannabis clinic, and I started a men's health clinic basically within about the same year.
And the medical cannabis was just easy money. You know, you just sign up on people's cards.
Low liability, it's cash only. And I did that for a little while, made some, you know, made some great little side money, and then opened up my men's health clinic. So I wanted to do men's health where we did testosterone replacement therapy and treat ED and things like that, and started that, opened up another location, started an online HRT practice, scaled and sold that in a period of about six to 12 months.
And, um, so that kind of gave me my first taste of building a business and selling a business.
And after doing this for a couple years, in 2019, I decided to create a website called the Elite Nurse practitioner. So elite np.com started off as a blog.
I just wrote articles like, just basically telling people what I thought of the nurse practitioner profession. You know, how, how schools are just pumping out a bunch of new grads, how the admission standards have dropped. Like, I really just spoke my mind and it really gained a lot of traction amongst nurse practitioners. And I did that for about four to six months and I was like, you know, I'm really building something here. I should try to monetize this. And so I wrote a book called the elite NP model.
It's like 150 pages. And I basically just wrote like, you know, what you can do as a nurse practitioner to separate yourself from, from the rest. You know, try to, how to be elite, how to truly be like in the top 10%. So I wrote that book, published it, and it did really well. And I was like, okay, I'm on to something here. So I was like, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm going to make a course on how to start a men's health clinic. And so I developed this course on how to basically open up a men's health clinic, how to open up a cash based practice. And I launched it and I made like $50,000 in a couple weeks. And I was like, whoa, yeah, yeah, I'm onto something here, you know. And so I started pumping out more courses like every single month for almost two years we released a course. And so I scaled and grew the Elite Nurse practitioner from, you know, $0 to, you know, seven figure yearly revenue generating machine that's generally passive in nature.
And I built and scaled that thing and it essentially allowed me to become financially free by the time I was about 39 years old. I mean, it blew my mind. Yeah. And so now, now I'm here today trying to teach people how to build a similar business. Like I'm, my, my passion doesn't lie in helping people start practices anymore. My passion now lies in helping people build an actual scalable business.
A practice is scalable with a lot more headaches and a lot more liability associated with it. A CE business is infinitely scalable with minimum overhead, minimum employees, minimum liability. And you could truly scale a CE business to an eight figure business in three to five years if you put the work into it. So that's kind of where my passion lies now.
[00:07:27] Speaker D: Love that. Well, congrats. I mean that is such an amazing journey. And it sounds like you, you definitely your, your niche. Now. Tell us a little bit about. I'm assuming some of this had to do with really the authority that you Kind of made for yourself and obviously you had a real good following. Is that tell us a little bit about how someone can start thinking about where they're going to focus their efforts and then the CE side.
[00:07:57] Speaker C: Yeah. I think the biggest question you need to ask yourself really is, what is it that I'm good at?
What do I know like the back of my hand, you know, like, what is it something that I just do at work, in my career, you know, in the hospital, at my practice, wherever? Like, what is it that I'm just good at that I know?
And is it something that people ask me about a lot of the times, you know, like, are you always asked about, you know, whatever it may be, you know, whatever, maybe whatever clinical practice it might be, a clinical question, a business question, like, what is it that you're really good at? And are you asked that a lot? And if you are, then there's probably an opportunity there. You know, there's a lot of new graduate providers out there. Like, I mean, even doctors going into residency, coming out of residency, apps, physical therapists, et cetera. A lot of them come out of school and they just really aren't prepared for the real world. And so is there something that you can teach them or is there something advanced that you've learned that you can teach, you know, more seasoned providers? So I think that the biggest question you can ask yourself is, is like, what is it that I'm good at? And is there an opportunity to leverage that knowledge and turn it into an actual product? Because your knowledge truly is the most valuable asset you have as a professional. I don't care what kind of professional you are, it doesn't matter. Lawyer, doctor, nurse practitioner, accountant. Like, your knowledge is what makes you you, right? And so it's your most valuable asset. And most people aren't leveraging it, which I find to be foolish. So, like, if you can leverage your knowledge and turn it into a product, can you sell that knowledge to other professionals and make, you know, a business out of that? Chances are you probably can.
[00:09:54] Speaker D: Great advice and great insights there. And I think it's something like you're saying people don't always think about that. And I'm sure there's different, you know, based off your clinical setting. You know, in specialty, there are certain, you know, maybe is it reading certain tests or, you know, kind of being able to figure out based on certain symptoms, like, what would be the best, you know, course of, you know, medicine plus, you know, therapy. So there could be something that everyone is really like, you're saying an expert in that. If they're just using that to get going, I'm assuming they could get a lot of, a lot of traction.
So tell us, when you first start working with a new client, how do you kind of figure out how you're going to do this together and work together?
[00:10:40] Speaker C: Yeah. So I have a mentorship program, it's called the Procore Start Launch Accelerator, where over a three month period of time I work with you to help you develop a CE business leveraging what it is that you know. And so I treat your business like my business. Like I walk with you for three months, you know, treating your business like my business. What I would do, you know, I give you strategy, my opinion, what I would do. And the first thing that we do is we do two strategy calls. And those strategy calls last one to two hours. So it's basically a two to four hour, you know, strategy call session. And during that strategy call is where we develop your value proposition for your business. And so it's a simple equation. It's basically what problem do you see in your profession and what you, what unique knowledge can you use to create a solution to that problem? If you can do that, you have a business, right? And so you just go over like, what is it that you know, what is it that you've been good at over the last three to five years? What is it? That's something that people ask you questions about all the time. What is it? Is it like, what is it that you are just good at? What is it that you know like the back of your hand? And so sometimes it can take an hour or two to really try to pry out that information from a client to figure out, you know, what is it that you're good at? And ultimately too, what's your goal with this?
There's a couple different kinds of CE businesses that you can develop.
There's really about three different kinds. So the first one is a CE only business where the value is in the ce, not the actual information in the course.
You know, we've all taken CE courses before just to get the ce, just to check a box. Like no one. Like you didn't pay attention to the information, you just scan through it, you click boxes, you took the quiz at the end so you could get your, you know, two or three CE hours. Like we've all done that before. We're all guilty of that. Do you remember the name of the company that you got that cell course from? Probably not. I don't. You know, so there's that model where you just develop CE courses, the value is in the ce, the credit, the hour, the cme, whatever it is.
If you're going to go with that model, it doesn't really matter what kind of knowledge that you bring because those courses can be extremely generic in nature. You can just use textbook information to pump out CE courses basically and just attach CE to it. So if you go with that model, it really doesn't matter what you're good at. It make really doesn't make much of a difference.
The other model though, that does make the difference is the, the, the CE business where people are buying your course for the actual information, the actual knowledge.
Right.
That's what makes you different compared to other people. It's, it's basically what information are you providing and is it actually valuable? Does it move the dial in the student's life?
Does it or does it not? Like if it actually moves the dial, if it helps them make more money, if it helps them learn a skill that makes them a better clinician, if it actually moves the dial in their life, they will buy your course for the information and they could care less about CE or not. I've helped people start CE businesses before where, when we, when we, when we go live with it, when we would launch, there was not even CE attached to it and they make $500,000 in three months without CE, without credits, because people want the information.
Now if you can combine both of those together, if you can offer CE and provide valuable information, now you have a multi million dollar CE business. That's the business that scales seven, eight figures. So, so yeah, it just really depends on what it is that you're good.
[00:14:27] Speaker D: At before you know, social media followers don't equal sales. So why do you think a lot of people just get stuck on building a social media presence and how do you work with them and what do you advise beyond that?
[00:14:46] Speaker C: Maybe So a social media presence doesn't equate sales because if you don't actually have a CE business to sell a course through, it doesn't matter if you have 100,000 Instagram followers. If you don't actually have a CE business, then all of those followers don't really mean anything unless you're monetizing it. I've helped a client before who had, I think she had like 30,000 Instagram followers. She had a course, but she didn't actually have a CE business. She would just sell her course through her Instagram profile, her Facebook page or whatever it was, but she didn't actually have A CE business. And so it was something that she couldn't really scale. It was just based off of her social media following and people messaging her and her selling the course.
So while having a social media presence is very, very important, by building an audience, you have to have the CE business itself.
So you don't have to have a huge following to generate pretty significant revenue if you actually have a CE business. The elite nurse practitioner, when I hit seven figures, I think I only had like 5,000 or 6,000 Instagram followers. I didn't have that many people.
But those five or six thousand people that followed me were quality followers, right? Not just a bunch of people. You don't want 30,000 Instagram followers or Facebook followers and 95% of them are just trash. That doesn't matter, right? So you really need to focus more on quality versus just the quantity of followers. It's really, really important. But you have to build an audience. It's really what separates you from the corporate CE businesses. And that's where you separate yourself out from the corporate CE businesses. The corporate CE businesses, they're not authentic.
They're just pumping out CE courses and the bottom line is their priority.
With a single provider CE business, you know, more of a mom and pop shop CE business, which are the CE businesses I like to help people start because you can scale and grow those to an eight figure C business. Eventually you can be authentic with a business like that, where the corporate one you can't. And so by being authentic, you build a true quality following and the amount of followers you have doesn't really matter. Does that make sense?
[00:17:13] Speaker D: That does. It does. And I know one of the topic areas that you talk about is really this, you know, trust as the foundation. So obviously a lot of clinicians have that built into their practice. So how do you leverage that? Or how would you recommend any physician or app uses, maybe the ratings or reviews or tell us more of how you've helped.
[00:17:39] Speaker C: The trust that you have amongst your patients is established by your title and your license for the most part, right? When someone comes and sees you and they see MD or DO or PA or NP behind your name, there's pretty much an automatic trust factor built in there. They, you know, you went to school, you're a licensed person, most patients are just going to automatically trust you based off of that title, right?
With a CE business, it's not going to be like that because other providers or other professionals are going to be purchasing the course from you.
They're going to have the same title as you, so you're already on even grounds with them. And so how do you make them trust you? Like, how do you convince another provider, another professional, to trust that you're going to teach them something valuable? The only way you can do that is by consistent content.
It's really only way. You have to prove yourself to people so they trust you. And so there's two pillars of content within a CE business, and both of them are extremely important. There's the social pillar, and then there's more of like, I would call it like the science pillar. The social pillar is you establishing that you're a real person to people.
People like you, right? You speak your mind, you're authentic. You're establishing a relationship with someone, like, that's watching you. You have no idea who they are. They just begin to like you and they begin to trust you as an actual person. They want someone who's personable. They don't want a robot, right? So you have that social pillar, and then you have to balance that out. Just because people like you doesn't mean they're going to trust that you're going to teach them something valuable and something safe. You balance that with the science, the scientific kind of pillar, the information pillar. You have to give people some value that's actually valuable. It shows that you know what you're talking about. Like, you know, for example, you could say something along the lines of, you know, let's say you create a post and you speak your mind about your profession and why you think this or that, why it pisses you off, for example, right? Like, I really don't like what's going on over here. And people will agree with you. That doesn't mean they're going to trust you. Don't buy your course.
Then the next day you release, you make an article. You release an article or a video or something talking about the top three hypertensive medications that you like and the dosing and the physiology behind it, the pharmacology, all that kind of stuff. Well, now you just proved yourself that you do know what you're talking about. So if you can combine both of those together, people will either love you or hate you.
That's good. That's what you want. You want that polarity. You want people to love you or you want people to hate you, that's fine, okay? No one, everyone's not going to love you.
And then you want to actually prove that you know what you're talking about. So you actually have to give people something that's real. You have to prove to them you know, what you're talking about. And you do that through just consistent content. If you do those two things, people will trust you and they'll start buying your course.
Love that.
[00:20:58] Speaker D: Well, that makes sense. When you're, you're blending the social and the science, I think. Yeah. And as physicians, I know, you know, that's just kind of what you're doing on a day to day basis anyways, meeting with, with your patients. So I can see a lot of potential for, you know, this audience to, to get into, you know, CE as a whole new way of making money.
Now tell me. I know obviously there's some common mistakes that professionals make, you know, once they, they get into, you know, launching a continued education business. So what are some of those and what, what should they do to avoid them?
[00:21:36] Speaker C: I think one that I see oftentimes from people is that they'll have a course already made and they're just selling it through their social media page. So they actually don't build a CE business. I see that mistake all the time. I mean, you can probably find that right now. You might, you, you might know someone who sells a course on their Instagram page or whatever.
You know, they, they actually don't build the CE business. And that's what, that's what I teach people. I teach you how to build the CE business. That's, it's critically important. Anyone, anyone can make a course.
Most of us can make a course. We made PowerPoint slides and stuff while we were in school. Like we can, most of us know how to build a course. It's really not that hard.
It's just building the CE business to sell it through. That's what's difficult, you know, and so a lot of people don't focus on the CE business, they focus on the course.
Your course is important. Yes, but the CE business is more important because you have to have that funnel to sell the course through. You scale a CE business, you don't scale just a course that you sell on your Instagram profile. So that's probably one of the biggest mistakes I see people make is that they don't focus on building the business the right way. You have to build the business the right way. If you want to generate seven, eight figures, you have to, it's important business. Right. And so I see that quite often.
So just focusing more on the course and not the CE business, it's probably the biggest thing that I see people do.
The other one that I see people do is that they get hung up on various limiting beliefs.
One of those would be CE accreditation.
They get so stressed out that getting accredited by the AMA or the AANP or whatever accreditation organization it is for your profession. They think that it's this holy grail sort of a thing that it's really hard to do, that it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and takes years to do. And it's really, really complicated.
And in fact, it's not, it's actually very easy, it's surprisingly easy to become CE accredited.
Sometimes. I think it's, it's honestly a joke.
It, it truly is. It's, it's, it's pay to play, guys. It really is just. It's pay to play. You pay these people money. They want you to become accredited because then they can charge you yearly to maintain your accreditation. Like, they want you to become accredited, they're gonna make it easy for you. They're gonna, like, they're not gonna try to make it super hard. And so you pay, you tell them what they want to hear, and you follow their standards, you're accredited. Like it's, it, it. It's not very difficult. And so a lot of people get hung up on that. I think it's this limiting belief.
And another limiting belief too, is that people think it takes a tremendous amount of time and money to, to do, and it doesn't. Like, you can seriously get a CE business up and running for 10, $20,000.
It's, it's really not that expensive. It's a digital business. There's not a whole lot of overhead with it and the time investment to it, while it does take work to start, you know, you're going to expect to spend 80 to 120 actual focused hours. You're not 180020 hours to sit in front of your computer, you know, on your phone at the same time. And, you know, I mean, 80 to 120 hours of actual work to get your first flagship course developed and the CE business developed, it's about 80 to 120 hours.
That's it. It's really not that difficult. And then to keep it operational takes five to ten hours a week. You're just basically answering some student emails and producing some content. That's really, it's really not that hard. So I think that's another big thing is that people just have a lot, a lot of unnecessary, limiting beliefs.
[00:25:25] Speaker D: Well, I'm glad that you're here breaking through those myths, because it sounds like there's a lot of opportunity for our audience here. So I'm just so excited that you came on today and share know the way that they can do this.
So now let them know how they can work with you, Justin, and you know, kind of the next steps if they're interested. And after hearing this, it sounds like there's a lot of opportunity.
[00:25:52] Speaker C: Yeah, there's a lot of opportunity in this space, guys. I think that it's, it's saturated in some places, you know, but in a lot of places it's not. So, you know, if you're really interested in doing this, I think it's a fantastic opportunity for any kind of medical provider or any kind of professional who wants to build a passive income stream. It's, it's a fantastic, it's a fantastic passive income stream and it could replace your salary if you give it some time and you put, you know, put some love into it. If you do it, it'll replace your salary and actually surpass it.
So, so yeah, you can. Procoursestart.com so it's just www.procoursestart.com I publish a couple articles a week, release videos talking about various topics so you can just enjoy some of the content on there. It's not the most exciting stuff in the world, but I mean it's, it's there for you to use.
Or you can go to procoresestart.com podcast doc and there'll be a little landing page for this podcast and there'll be three options there. You can subscribe to our email list, get a free PDF that will give you the free top five concepts on what you need to know to start a CE business the right way.
You can also purchase our pro course Start Blueprint which is a step by step guide on how to start a CE business.
It's literally a blueprint from start to finish. Everything from starting the business, creating the course, marketing it, building an audience, building the business in a way to where you can sell it to private equity as well. It's 15 hours long. It's a very comprehensive step by step guide. So if you go there, you get a 10% discount. And if you want to check out our launch accelerator, it's just a one on one mentorship with me where I will, I will help you start your CE business. Like I really enjoy helping people build a seven to eight figure scalable business because let's face it, we're stuck in the time for money trap. As a professional, you just are. So build a business that works for you.
[00:27:51] Speaker D: Love it. Thank you. And we'll definitely share that link that's super exciting. Thank you for for customizing that for our audience, which is amazing. And I really want to thank you, Justin, for your time. Thanks for sharing all the knowledge here. And really, this is something that I had no idea about, and I'm sure our listeners didn't either, so thank you.
[00:28:14] Speaker C: You're welcome. Stacy. Appreciate you having me on here. Thank you.
[00:28:17] Speaker A: Thank you to all of our listeners. If you would like to be notified when new episodes air, make sure to hit the that subscribe button. And a big thank you to Pacific Companies. Without you guys, this podcast would not be possible.
If you would like to be a guest, Please go to www.pacificcompanies.com. thank.
[00:28:43] Speaker C: You.
