Continuing Education Courses: Justin Montgomery Solves Time-for-Money Burnout for 8 Figures in 3 Years | Ep. 194

Justin Montgomery: 00:00:00

Now he's letting his knowledge work for him and there's a big difference there. And a lot of professionals don't do that. They never let their knowledge work for them. It just works through them.

But I am the world's biggest super fan. You're like a super fan.

Intro: 00:00:16

Welcome to the Business Superfans podcast. We will discuss how establishing business superfans from customers, employees and business partners can elevate your success exponentially.

Learn why these advocates are a key factor to achieving excellence in the world of commerce. This is the Business Superfans Podcast with your host, Freddie D. Freddie, Freddie.

Freddy D: 00:00:51

Hey super fans. Freddy D. Here. In this episode 194, we're joined by Justin Montgomery from founder of Pro Course Start.

And he's tackling a frustration I hear from service based pros all the time. You're great at what you do, but your income still depends on your time, your calendar and whatever the algorithm decides.

This week, Justin went from nurse practitioner to building and scaling the elite nurse practitioner into an eight figure continuing education platform. So he knows exactly what works and what doesn't.

Now he helps doctors, therapists, attorneys, chiropractors and other credentialed experts turn their knowledge into trust based high margin education businesses that create real passive income. No gimmicks required.

Freddy D: 00:01:43

Welcome, Justin, to the Business Superfans Advantage podcast. Great conversation that we had before we started recording. Welcome to the show.

Justin Montgomery: 00:01:52

Yeah, thanks for having me on here, Freddie. Appreciate it.

Freddy D: 00:01:53

How did you come up with this Pro Course Start program that you've got teaching people how to create their online courses and kind of create a second income or a full time income, but what's the backstory? Because it didn't just come out of nowhere.

Justin Montgomery: 00:02:06

Yeah, sure.

nurse practitioner school in: 2013

hour shift. And sometime in: 2015

And I just had this light bulb moment where I just realized that I'm stuck here. Like I've already hit the ceiling in my career. I mean, I'm making good money. I mean I'm making 150, $200,000 a year.

I mean, I had no complaints, but there. But I had to go to work and see patients, and if I didn't go to work, I didn't get paid. And so I was just like, just getting burnt out.

And so I just had this light bulb moment where I was like, I got to start something else, I have to do something else so I can have some passive income, recurrent income, etc. And so I use the skills that I had developed as a nurse practitioner.

I started a couple practices, I started some men's health clinics and a medical cannabis clinic. And I did that for a couple years. I learned the intricacies and the processes of starting a medical practice. And so I did that.

But I was still tied to my time. I was still the product of those businesses. People would come see me, right?

Like, I still had to see patients, I still had to prescribe medications, I still had to do labs, I still do all this kind of stuff. And I was still tied to the business.

And I was like, I'm making better money now and I'm working less, but I want to get to the point where I don't have to go to work. And so I decided start an online business. So I was like, I want to start a business where I can develop a product that sells 24, 7, 365 days a year.

Something that's scalable. A medical practice isn't very scalable.

I mean, you can scale it if you hire other providers and nurses and stuff like that to see patients for you, but then you have to deal with all the headaches and liabilities of employees and things like that. I just didn't want to go down that route. And so started an online business called the Elite Nurse Practitioner.

And so I started that in: 2019

ple how to do that. And so in: 2019

product to sell. In March of: 2020

I created this course at taught people how to start a men's health practice. We went over the business aspects of it. We also went over the clinical aspects of it. And so I started this.

So I created this course and I launched it out to my audience. I didn't really market it, I just launched the audience that I had and I made like $50,000 in a week.

Yeah, I was like, I stumbled onto something here. So I was like, I'm just gonna start creating more courses.

So then I created a course on how to start a medical cannabis clinic, and I started a course on how to start a telemedicine practice. And it just snowballed from there. We created a new course every single month for two and a half, three years.

ss scaled to seven figures in: 2020

And I was like, I honestly, I really didn't realize that. But I guess you're right. I guess I did. And so I paid off my house, I paid off my cars, I paid off my student loan debt.

st became debt free. And then: 2021

And so I had a, basically an eight figure event there where I essentially was able to retire at the age of 39 years old from a business three years before. And a lot of people were just like, how the hell did you do that? I mean, I can teach you how to do it.

And so I started a business called Pro Course Start, where now I teach people how to start essentially that business that I created. So I focus on helping mostly professionals start a continuing education course business.

Not just a course business, but a professional development course business, a continuing education course business where you target other professionals, not just the general public. And so it's extremely niched, which means it can be very, very profitable. So that's my story in a nutshell.

Freddy D: 00:06:46

Well, that's a great story, but you hit a really important point I want to emphasize there, Justin, is that the fact that you're packaging it as continuing education for the professional, whatever vertical that's in, that's really the unique part because most professionals have to go through every year continuing education course. So by providing that, it's helping them complete their requirement to maintain their licensing and everything else.

At the same time, you're generating revenue out of it and you're helping other people create revenue out of, because let's face it, there's a 8 billion people on the planet. So you've got a little bit of a pool that you can market to and that is generating revenue while you're sleeping.

Justin Montgomery: 00:07:28

Yeah, exactly. I mean and you hit the nail on the head too.

It is a business that has immediate demand built into because every professional, it could be a lawyer to an accountant to a doctor, chiropractor, therapist, public school teacher, registered nurse.

Like they all are required to take contin education courses and they're required to have a certain amount of teen education and I'm just going to call it CE from here on out. They all have CE hours or CE credits to maintain their license so they can keep working.

And so when you create a business that basically provides CE courses, you have an automatic built in demand. So it's like it has a very low barrier to entry to it.

And people don't realize that like a lot of people want to start a course business and it's like who are you marketing this to? What are you selling? What's your value proposition? What's so valuable about your course? Is it truly transformational to someone's life?

Is it something that they actually need? And you can just skip all of those headaches and all of those things you got to think about.

Freddy D: 00:08:30

You've got a built in audience waiting for the product. I mean like you mentioned you hit 50 grand in a week is because all of a sudden this is like oh, I need this.

It's like versus I wonder if this is going to be beneficial or not. That X amount of money per deal, I'm not sure, oh, I need this because that's so qualified me for my CE requirements. It's 500 bucks, boom, I'm done.

Justin Montgomery: 00:08:55

Yeah, and the beautiful thing too is that oftentimes these professionals aren't even spending their own money. Money like most these people have something called a CE stipend given to them by their employer.

They can take these courses and so oftentimes they're not even paying for it, their employer is. And so like it's free money basically.

Freddy D: 00:09:19

So it's a tax write off for them as well. Yeah, I mean it's a brilliant business model.

Justin Montgomery: 00:09:25

Yeah, no it really is.

And another thing too, people like when they want to start a business like this, they worry about how do I target these people and will there be enough professionals to generate a certain amount of revenue to make it worth my while. And number one, you only need to have 0.5 to 1% market share of that profession to have a million Dollar business.

So it's like if there's a profession, a lot of little professions out there, there's certain therapists and certain nurses and stuff like that, where there might only be 300,000 of these people in the entire country. If you can get 1% of those people, that's 3,000 people. And if you're selling a course for $500, do the math, that's $1.5 million.

So it's like you don't need that many customers really. And targeting them online is a piece of cake. Like, you can literally create an ad on YouTube or Meta, especially meta.

And you can literally just choose demographic, job title, this profession, and only those people who identify themselves as that profession are going to see your ads. So it's like your marketing dollars go a long way.

A successful continuing education course business will have a return on their marketing dollars for every dollar they spend. Marketing, you should be getting back anywhere between $7 to $20. It's a crazy return on your investment.

Like, why invest in the stock market when you can just do that?

Freddy D: 00:10:57

Yeah. It's actually economy proof.

Justin Montgomery: 00:11:00

Oh, yeah. And that's why private equity companies love these kinds of businesses, because it is recession proof.

It doesn't matter what's going on in the world, like these doctors, these lawyers, these accountants and stuff, they still have to have continued education. Even if we're in a depression. Like it doesn't matter. Like you're still going to be making money.

Freddy D: 00:11:21

Yeah, yeah. How difficult is it to put together the course?

Justin Montgomery: 00:11:26

Creating the course itself is probably one of the easiest parts of starting this kind of business. Course development, especially utilizing a variety of AI tools, is pretty simple.

The course itself is relatively easy as long as you have some sort of strong value proposition behind the course. And so the way I teach people is I teach people that you need to have a strong value proposition for your course.

nt to teach an accountant the: 2026

But if you can teach an accountant how to start their own mergers and acquisitions accounting firm, that's transformational. And those are high value courses. So you want to teach something that's somewhat valuable in nature.

So that's the difficult part of the course development is coming up with an idea that's actually valuable. Valuable. But the course itself is relatively easy. It's starting the continuing education course business that's the hard part.

I mean, Anyone can create a course, a CE course. Anyone can, any professional can, Anyone can create a course.

But to actually create the continuing education course business, to sell the course through, that's the hard part. Because you have to brand it appropriately. You have to have a strong mission and value proposition. Mission statement, value proposition.

You have to know how to market the things you need to learn, how to develop consistent content to build an audience. You didn't know what kind of systems to have inside the business, email lists, social media platforms and things like that. That's the hard part.

And that's what I really focus on when I teach people how to do this. Because the course is pretty easy. The CE business, that's the hard part.

Freddy D: 00:13:10

Yeah, well, you're right, because a lot of people spend time getting their degrees and getting their licensing and everything else, but they're not technological people. They use computers to do stuff, but they're not in there to lear level that you're talking about.

And it's more importantly, not everybody understands digital marketing and how to do that because you're not taught that. You're taught to become a doctor, you're taught to become a nurse practitioner, you're taught to be an accountant, a lawyer, et cetera.

I mean, sometimes I found that law firms, they're the most inefficient organizations because that's not their world.

Justin Montgomery: 00:13:45

Yeah, they don't know business. You're not taught how to run a business in these schools. You're just not.

And so that's a critical component of it, is that you have to teach them the technical components of IT and then also the business components of it. I've had clients that I mentor who aren't even a professional. They're just a tax savvy individual.

They're just a business savvy individual and they want to start a business that's generally passive in nature, has low operational overhead, that has built in demand, and they will start one of these businesses and then they'll just contract out the professionals to do the actual professional education component of it, and they just pay them a small amount and then they just run the business itself and take all money, basically. So, yeah, so if you're business savvy or tech savvy, in a way, these are really fairly simple businesses to start.

Freddy D: 00:14:34

Yeah, interesting.

Can you share a story of how you work with somebody that had a profession and that they were looking to kind of come up with a side gig and you've helped them get it set up and they're running and now they're one of your biggest advocates, or as I prefer calling them, a super fan. It's actually attracted more business for you because of the PR that they've done on your behalf.

Justin Montgomery: 00:14:57

Yeah. So I trained a. Or I mentored a emergency room decision. Okay. He was an MD and he worked in the ER. And he worked in the ER for about 10 years.

About the same age as me, about 40. He was getting burnt out. I mean, just like I was. You get burnt out doing that stuff every single day.

So he reached out to me after seeing, like, one of my ads on Instagram or whatever it was, and he was like, I want to start a continuing education academy, teaching other physicians some of the skills that, like, that I've learned. And so I need your help.

And so basically, I started mentoring him, and I pried a value proposition out of him, essentially, like, he wasn't too sure what he wanted to teach. And so we spent about four hours just going over all the stuff that he knows.

And we discovered that he's really good, good at teaching residents, physicians, assistants, nurse practitioners, registered nurses in the er a variety of different procedural skills. So, like, as an example, like suturing as an example, okay.

We created a course business, a CE business, where he doesn't really target seasoned ER physicians, but he'll target new residents. He'll target physician's assistants, registered nurses, etc.

And he'll teach them how to do, like, advanced suturing, splinting, abscess, drainage, starting a central line, just all these different ER procedures. And he started that back in. Let's see. I think it was probably like March of this year is when he launched.

The first month was a little slow, and then we kind of had to work a little bit on his marketing messaging and kind of really dial in on who he was targeting online. And. And now it's December now, and I think he's on track to do about $450,000 this year alone after. Back in March.

Yeah, he's been open for eight months, and he's made more money in eight months, generally passive. Than he makes in a year working his ass off in the er. So, yeah, he told me.

He's like, dude, if this keeps working like this, in probably about a year, he's like, I will probably just stop working in the ER and just focus on this. I'm like, I don't blame you one bit. Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:17:13

Yeah. Because especially the hard doctors, they got to be on game all the time. I mean, there's no off. So the emotional drain when you come off the shift.

Because I've known some people that have played in the ER room and they say when they're done, they're drained. I mean, because you got to be top of your game every day that you're on. So totally makes sense that he was in the burnout.

Justin Montgomery: 00:17:33

Yeah, I mean, I worked in the ER myself. I mean, after a 12 hour shift, there's no other time or energy to do anything else.

You go home and you go bed and then you got to wake up and do it all over again. And then three days later they switch your shift from day to night. I mean, there's very little quality of life there. Yeah, he just burned out.

So now he has a business that's actually working for him. He was letting his knowledge work through him as an ER doctor.

He learned all this stuff in med school and in residency and all through the 10 years of experience that he has. And he lets his knowledge work through him, seeing patients and doing that sort of a thing. Now he's letting his knowledge work for him.

And there's a big difference there. And a lot of professionals don't do that. They never let their knowledge work for them. It just works through them.

Freddy D: 00:18:18

And that's a really important point I really want to emphasize because you're right, a lot of people leverage their knowledge with the way that they're doing stuff, but they're not leveraging it as you're packaging it to where it's working for them versus through them. And that's really an important aspect because really that transcends really across multitude of different businesses.

It's irrelevant whether it's sales, marketing, accounting, customer service, all that aspect. Like me, I played on the global stage on sales and marketing, have scaled companies millions of dollars for somebody else.

But that was all through me. That was my skill set. So taking that, that's making me think actually how do I can transcend that to work for me versus through me.

And that's a really important point that you bring up. That's why I'm emphasizing it.

Justin Montgomery: 00:19:03

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you can continue to have your knowledge work through you and requires your time. Right.

Like you have to always exchange your time, letting your knowledge work through you to get results and to get stuff done. And if you want your knowledge to work for you, there's only really a few options you have.

I mean, you put it on paper and you sell it through a book or a podcast or a video or a course, or you use that knowledge and develop systems in a business and then have Other people have their knowledge work through them, through the systems that you develop from the knowledge that you have. There's only so much you can really do with your knowledge. Letting it work for you instead of through you. Yeah.

And that's why I'm really partial to continue education course businesses. I think it's a great way to really have your knowledge work for you. And it's extremely passive.

Freddy D: 00:19:54

Yeah. Because I've written a book, I've got the podcast, I've set up.

Two years ago, I scaled a company by a million dollars because we put systems in place and got people trained and changed the whole culture, mindset and the company, everything else. But that was me involved in getting that done.

So what you're really doing, and for our listeners is they really need to stop and think about that, is to how can they flip that switch and make their knowledge work for them.

Justin Montgomery: 00:20:21

Absolutely. And if you do, then you create a business that actually truly works for you versus you working in it.

A lot of people who start businesses where their knowledge works through them, you just end up becoming self employed to the business. I mean, you're still an entrepreneur, it's still scalable, but at the end of the day, you're still kind of employed to your business.

You're still kind of a slave. Yeah.

So you want to try to let that knowledge work for you in a way where it actually the business works for you, generates income for you without your input. This is something I always talk to my clients about.

And I asked them during one of our initial strategy calls, I ask them, there's something called the two week rule.

And the two week rule basically says, do you have a business that allows you to take two weeks off and you have absolutely zero input into that business? Zero input. Nothing. No emails, no calls, no texts, absolutely nothing. And it's still generating the same amount of income as it did before you left.

If you answered no to that question, you do not have a business.

Freddy D: 00:21:27

A glorified job.

Justin Montgomery: 00:21:28

It's a job.

Freddy D: 00:22:53

It's a glorified job. At the end of the day, it's a glorified job. Yeah. You gotta be able to walk away, as you said. And really, two weeks is a minimum.

I mean, I would think you'd want at least a month to three months to be able to walk away from the business. And it still operates, you're still making money, and more importantly, it should be growing without you being involved in it.

That's when you've got a business. And there's the book E Myth I'm sure you've read it or familiar with it.

And it's getting systems in place and training people to mimic in the same approach everywhere else. So you look at McDonald's is really where that all kind of started.

Likewise with the assembly line, with Ford coming up with the way of systematized method. So every car is the same, every hamburger is the same.

Once you've got that implemented, that's the only way that you can walk away is having a system.

What you're doing is a completely different approach, which is now you're taking your knowledge and you're having it work for you in a way that you're not even involved and you don't even need a team.

Justin Montgomery: 00:23:58

Yeah, really. I mean, you develop systems within the continuing education course business. Your product sells 24, 765 days a year. The entire process is automated.

You have ads going out at all times. The checkout process is automated. When someone buys your course, it automatically enrolls them into it. Like it requires no input from you whatsoever.

You still need to have though a small team and I'm talking about like one virtual assistant to handle just basic customer service, technical issue kind of stuff. Like someone will email you, hey, I can't log into my course. Well, let's take a look.

Okay, well instead of, you can put your email in here as whatever.com and instead you put.c o n or something. It's just like basic technical issues stuff. So you still have to have someone there to just do very basic tasks for you.

But if you have a team, if you start a CE business and you want to run it by yourself, then the two week rule doesn't really apply because there's always going to be a customer service issue or technical issue or something like that. And you're going to have to deal with that if you want to deliver a decent customer service experience for your customers.

And so if you want to continue education course business that actually works, works for you and the two week rule applies, or even the one month rule or three month rule, you have to have a very basic team. But the beautiful thing about it is, is that they're not employees, they're contractors. So you have no W2 employees.

They're all: 1099

But yeah, that's how you really get that business. To work for you.

Freddy D: 00:25:42

Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting model. You're the first person I've had on this show that's really talked about this whole idea.

So my head's going a little bit thinking about it because I'm going like, wow. It's just something I've never really even entertained. I've built courses and things like that, but not from that perspective.

Justin Montgomery: 00:25:58

And the beautiful thing too about it, Freddy, is like if you do it right, you're talking about a margin of 80, 90%. I mean these things just print cash. It honestly feels like you're cheating sometimes just because the margin is absolutely ridiculous.

The only overhead you have really, once it's built out, starting a continuing education course business, it'll cost you roughly between 10 or $20,000 between there to start the business. The right. You can do it for a lot less if you want to like really bootstrap it.

But 10 or $20,000 will get you a really solid CE business built with the first course and an initial marketing budget.

The only expense you have after that really is paying a couple contractors to do some basic customer service work for you, some marketing work for you. And then it's just marketing. Like you're going to spend roughly between 10 to 20% of your revenue on marketing to grow the business.

Outside of that, it is pure profit. Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:26:54

And then really you also want to get stories of the people who took the class to become a growth engine. So that's the other thing that a lot of people don't realize is that that's a growth engine is whether it's a customer or some.

Basically it is a customer taking a course. But they need to be ignited, as I like to call it, to basically be promoting you to other people.

So you gotta make sure that the experience is good and more importantly is the follow up and maintaining engagement with those people after the fact.

Because especially in a service based business, we've all had stuff done at our house by some company, they've done a great job and then you don't hear anything from them, they never follow up. Six months later, a year later, say, hey Justin, how's that kitchen? Or how's that bathroom or how's that furnace that we fixed thing?

Just check in, not selling, just saying, hi, we're still here. Because when I went through a divorce years ago, I had two real estate agents.

I've shared a story in the past and it worked out because my ex didn't like one and liked the other. So we were able to get rid of stuff. I moved into an apartment for a while till everything settled. I never heard from him again.

And when I was ready to buy a house, I couldn't find their information because I had moved and all that stuff. So I went with somebody completely else. Had they taken the time to remember that? Oh, yeah, he's renting the place for a year.

The divorce is going to get done. He's going to probably want to buy a house. We should stay in contact. It's the same thing with people taking a course.

You need to stay in contact with those people because that's your growth engine.

Justin Montgomery: 00:28:27

100%. I mean, 100%. I totally agree with you.

The business that I scaled before the elite nurse practitioner, I mean, our courses were so transformational, and the customer service experience was so solid. Like, if you emailed us a question, we responded within 12 hours. And it just built a group of just absolute loyal super fans, loyal, fanatic fans.

And when I go speak at conferences through that business, it's just like, people come up to me and just shake my hand and want to give me a hug and things like that. That business just markets itself at this point. So, yeah, you really have to follow up with people on a regular basis.

One of the critical aspects of a CE business, in terms of building super fans and building a solid audience, the key component of that is developing very consistent, valuable content on a regular basis. I really like the example you said about a realtor. That's a solid point. Like, I have a realtor that I've used up here in Colorado Springs.

I use the guy to buy a house, and then I use him to buy another, like Airbnb that I wanted. And then I needed him to then sell the Airbnb eight months later, just because it just wasn't generating the kind of cash that I wanted.

It was more of a pain in the butt than anything else. But, like, every month I get a letter from the guy with a coupon or something for a free meal at whatever, Panda Express or something like that.

So, like, he's always whispering in my ear. And I remember the guy because he's always whispered in my ear once a month.

And so you got to do the same thing with a continuing education course, because you got to always be whispering to your audience, always whispering in their ear, even if they're not even a customer, but they're still someone who's an audience member, right? Who just, like, enjoy your content, enjoys your videos, whatever. You got to continuously whisper in their ear with regular, consistent Content.

And if you do that, the people who never bought from you, they might buy from you a year.

Freddy D: 00:30:19

Right?

Justin Montgomery: 00:30:20

People who bought from you, if you continue to whisper in their ear and you develop a new course, they're probably going to buy the new course. Right? I mean, absolutely critical.

Freddy D: 00:30:29

Yeah. And your thing, too, is that I talk about a lot is leveraging products. For example, this is just a simple water bottle, but it's got my logo on it.

So it's. Who's it about? It's about me. You don't care. Could care less. Right? Now I put your name on it. Now it's your water bottle.

Completely changes the dynamics of that thing. It's still my logo, but now it's got your name, it's personalized. And so now all of a sudden, it's don't touch my water bottle.

And so that's the other thing that I've.

I talk about is when you have conversations with customers or suppliers or everything else, I always send out a little bit of a gift of something where I stay in contact. Basically, the whispering. So this is a way of whispering, using your verbiage to stuff.

So, for example, all the guests that had in a show that gave me their mailing address, they all got a Thanksgiving gratitude card thanking them for being on the show this year, helping grow the show and everything else. It was just me expressing gratitude to them. Cost me little money, but I got people to message me back saying, wow, that was so cool.

That's so thoughtful. Those that give me mailing address, I usually send them a coffee cup which has got the logo and their name on it.

I've had people post that on LinkedIn. That's how I created a superfan. And they're promoting me and I got more people wanting to be on the show.

Justin Montgomery: 00:31:48

Yeah, absolutely, 100%. I really like the idea of, like, something as simple as a water bottle. Right.

Like when we have conferences, we'll give out like a yeti cup, and it has the logo of the business on it. So, like, when they're sitting at their desk and they see that every single time they look at that and they just read it, you got to put

Freddy D: 00:32:05

their name on it. That's the difference.

Justin Montgomery: 00:32:08

That's the difference.

Freddy D: 00:32:08

That's the difference. Because now that they've got their name on it, it's theirs. It's not yours anymore, it's theirs. And they'll cherish it and they'll protect it.

Because, like, one of the guys that I'm friends with now, that was a Guest on my show, he says he takes his stuff to the gym all the time that I gave him and he loves it. And so by putting the name, it changes it emotionally. You're changing the dynamics emotionally.

Justin Montgomery: 00:32:37

That makes sense. And with a continent course business, continuing education course business, you're doing the same thing in a way.

When they finish the course at the end, they're awarded a certificate of completion or a certification.

Freddy D: 00:32:53

Right.

Justin Montgomery: 00:32:53

And it says, this person completed, blah, blah, blah, blah course. And then it has their name on it. And these people then print that off and they put it in a frame and they put it on the wall in their office.

And so it's personalized. They always remember it. It's actually a good point. I've actually never thought about that, but it's so true.

Freddy D: 00:33:11

Yeah, yeah.

And you can also incorporate that once they finish the course, not only to get a certificate, but then you could actually send them a gift that's personalized because there's a platform that allows you to do that all automated.

And so then all of a sudden they not only get their certificate, but a week later they get a little box and here's a coffee cup or whatever it is in there. Congratulations. And completing this, they're going to tell everybody.

Justin Montgomery: 00:33:35

Yeah, it only cost you 10 bucks.

Freddy D: 00:33:37

Yeah. Cheap money for great PR.

Justin Montgomery: 00:33:39

Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:33:41

So that's one of the ways that I work with people to think of a little bit of different way to create a sales team out of those people.

Justin Montgomery: 00:33:48

Right. Yeah. It's really important to do that, especially in this space.

You gotta have people who are leaving your reviews, like in the continuing education course space. Not as much as just the core space in general, but people are very leery and very suspicious of what kind of promises you're making with your course.

And the only way to break that barrier down is by having testimonials and reviews. And the only way you're going to get people to take the time out of their day to leave you a review or a testimonial is to change their life.

Mail them a coffee cup, I mean, something like that. And then they'll take the time out of the day to do that. And it just generates more business.

Freddy D: 00:34:29

Yeah, because now it's giving you social proof.

It's one of the things that I've told people is, especially in the home improvement industry, it says, you got one of these things, they're done, you've finished a project, they're super happy. Hey, Justin, can I get a quick testimonial from you right then and there. It doesn't have to be Hollywood, doesn't have to be professionally produced.

Actually, it's better if it's on the phone. My wife and I, we had a digital marketing company years back. We help people get listed on all the online directories properly.

We were the first company to go with vertical directories. So if you were in a medical profession, we got you listed in all the medical professions, automotive directories and everything else.

So we went around to all of our customers and got a quick video says, yeah, we show up on page one, page two, page three, multiple times because of all the directories. So we created about a two minute video of all these customers saying all this in different professions. That was my sales pitch here. I just shut up.

Watch this for two minutes. What do you guys want to do? Where can we get started? The deal was done. I didn't have to sell anything.

Freddy D: 00:35:35

Yeah.

Justin Montgomery: 00:35:35

And that's free marketing, basically. It takes a little bit of some effort. That's it.

Freddy D: 00:35:39

Yeah, yeah, it's free pr. So like one of the doctors I just posted on LinkedIn story, he would have a customer appreciation event on a regular basis.

They would do it outside, they bring in food. But what he did different was he also brought in all his medical vendors because he was a diabetes and chronologist doctor.

So he'd have all the suppliers for the insulin shots and everything else all come there on a Saturday. And it was a perfect opportunity because patients would get more facetime with the staff, they would get face time with the providers.

So the suppliers and providers, so they got to know more about the stuff. And I was there grabbing social proof with my phone.

And then we put together the testimonials and he got more people and everybody was more than happy to give the testimonials. And then we also got testimonials of the staff talking about the suppliers.

So we made the suppliers look good and we had the suppliers talk about the company. So created a whole marketing engine out of an appreciation event that he holds every year.

Justin Montgomery: 00:36:44

Yeah, yeah. It builds a really fantastic cycle for new customer acquisition and things like that. With a CE business, you can automate a lot of this.

And what a lot of people don't realize is, is that when you create an online CE course business, like getting those reviews and those testimonials really should be one of the biggest components that you need to focus on because it's going to be extremely difficult to scale a CE business to seven or eight figures, if not impossible if you don't focus on those reviews and focus on those testimonials and get that word of mouth snowball going and build those fans and build that audience. Without that, the only way you Scale the 7 to 8 figures is by spending a ton of money marketing for new leads.

Because it is always cheaper to maximize the customers that you have than getting new customers.

And you can either do that by having those people refer new people to you, or you extend the lifetime value of each one of those customers by selling them more products and services. And the only way you sell them more products and services is that they have to have a good experience.

They're not going to waste their time unless they have a good solid experience on the first go around. So you got to make a first, really good first impression.

Freddy D: 00:38:04

Yeah. And beyond that, when I take it a little bit further, is a guy that I know what he would do.

He had an online marketing business that he was selling stuff through and he minimize his churn of people as well as people returning the products that they were buying.

He would automatically, after they made a transaction, they would get a thank you card in the mail, physical card mailed in there, thanking him for their purchase and everything else. And it significantly dropped his return and minimized his churn on people just because of that simple gesture.

Justin Montgomery: 00:38:41

Yeah, that's all it takes is something literally that simple, A simple thank you email, a small free gift, just anything like that. And it can really, really sniffly improve lead generation and reduce turnover and increase the lifetime value of the customer.

And yeah, it's a critical component. And people, I don't think people focus enough on that really with any kind of business and especially continuing education course businesses.

I see so many businesses where the owner just does not prioritize building a super fan or building an audience and they plateau, they get stuck.

Freddy D: 00:39:16

That's one of my sayings. The little things are really the big things. And the other thing is that people crawl through broken glass for appreciation, recognition.

And by recognizing those people for buying, your course is the game changer.

Justin Montgomery: 00:39:31

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. 100 agree with that.

Freddy D: 00:39:34

So as we wrap up here, Justin, how can people find you?

Justin Montgomery: 00:39:38

Yeah, so you can email me directly, Justin. Procorestart.com and I will personally respond to it. I don't have a VA that responds to those emails. I will respond.

So you have any questions whatsoever, just shoot me an email.

You can go to procorestart.com or procoresestart.com podcast superfan and I'll have a discount for our master class that we have on how to start a CE business and also a way to we'll check out our mastermind and plus I'm on social media too. You can just look at Procorestar or my name, Justin Allen Montgomery on Facebook, Instagram, etc.

Freddy D: 00:40:07

Okay, we'll make sure that's in our show notes. Great conversation. Very much appreciate your time being on the show. Love to have you on the show down the road.

Justin Montgomery: 00:40:15

All right, Sounds good. Freddie. I appreciate you. Thank you.

Freddy D: 00:40:17

Thank you.

Freddy D: 00:40:18

So there you have it.

Justin Montgomery Story is a masterclass on what happens when you stop letting your expertise only work through you and you designing it to work for you.

Justin went from a burnt out nurse practitioner, high income but capped by the time to building a continuing education course business with built in demand because professionals have to earn continuing education credits to keep their licenses and many even have employee stipends to pay for it. The bigger takeaway? You don't need a massive audience.

Justin explained how a tiny slice of a niche market can become a multimillion dollar when you offer specific and truly transformational and for you as a service based business owner, that's the move. Stop relying on more hours to grow.

Package what you know into a system or offer that you can sell and deliver value without you being present every time so you can finally break the feast or famine cycle and build something that passes a two week rule. Know another service based business owner who would benefit from this?

Send them the link and help them Get a Superfan closer if today's conversation got you thinking about where your business could be not just this year but three years from now, don't let it stop here.

Too many service based founders get stuck in feast or famine revenue, marketing that doesn't convert and teams that depend on them for every decision. You don't have to build it all alone. Join the Entrepreneur Prosperity Hub on Skool.

It's free to join and it's where I mentor founders who want predictable growth, stronger teams, smarter AI driven systems and a business that actually scales.

You'll get the service provider Prosperity Playbook, weekly growth strategies and direct access to other growth focused entrepreneurs inside live virtual sessions designed for real collaboration, not small talk. So go to schoolskoo.com eprosperity hub and step into a smarter way to grow.

Freddy D: 00:42:26

Thanks for tuning in today.

Freddy D: 00:42:28

I'm grateful you're part of the Business Superfans movement. Every listen and every action brings you closer to building your own superfans. Be sure to subscribe to the show.

We've got another great guest coming, and I'll talk to you in the next episode. And remember, one action, one stakeholder, one super fan, closer to lasting prosperity.

Intro: 00:42:50

We hope you took away some useful knowledge from today's episode of the Business Superfans podcast. Join us on the next episode as we continue guiding you on your journey to achieve flourishing success in business.