Bryan McAnulty [00:00:00]:

If you're tired of being told to post every day, chase trends and build a complicated funnel just to make a sale, you're going to love today's episode. Today's guest is Justin Allan Montgomery, the founder of ProCourseStart and the guy behind The Elite Nurse Practitioner, an education platform he scaled into a massive business by doing the opposite of what most online gurus preach. Justin started in healthcare as a nurse practitioner, then he turned that professional expertise into a high margin course business that helped him reach financial independence before 40. Justin is here to share his no gimmick way to scale a business. He doesn't teach post more or hack the algorithm. He teaches professionals how to build trust, sell something that solves a real problem and create consistent income without chasing trends. So if you've ever thought I don't have a big audience so I can't sell a course, listen up because today we're going to break down how Justin built an eight figure education business without relying on influencer status, fancy funnels or social media algorithms.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:00:51]:

You could have a hundred thousand followers, but if none of them are buying anything from you, who cares? It doesn't mean anything. Right? So you want to focus on building a high quality audience. And the way I did it and the way that I teach people on how to do it is you have to just provide very consistent, valuable content.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:09]:

Welcome to the Creator's Adventure where we interview creators from around the world, hearing their stories about growing a business. Hey everyone, I'm Bryan McAnulty, the founder of Heights Platform. Let's get into it. Hey Justin, welcome to the show.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:01:26]:

Hey, appreciate it, Bryan. Thank you.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:29]:

First question for you is what is the biggest thing that either you did or you are doing that has helped you to achieve the freedom to do what you enjoy?

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:01:37]:

Yeah. So it's pretty high level question. Yeah. So I think the biggest thing that I've done to allow me to live a life that is on my terms essentially was, was building a continuing education course business that allowed me to essentially retire at the age of 39. Like that was probably the biggest, the biggest thing has really happened to me in my life essentially. I mean, obviously, you know, I have kids and things like that. I mean that was a big thing, you know, but yeah, but yeah. So I would say that's probably one of, the, one of the, the crowning achievements there that's allowed me to kind of just live my life how, how I want to now. I'm not tied to a job anymore.

Bryan McAnulty [00:02:18]:

Awesome. So this is what you started building back in 2019. Right, The Elite Nurse Practitioner.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:02:25]:

Yeah, correct, The Elite Nurse Practitioner.

Bryan McAnulty [00:02:27]:

So, so, yeah, so I'm curious, when, when you started building that, what was like, what's the problem that you were determined to solve with it?

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:02:34]:

Yeah, so The Elite Nurse Practitioner started in 2019. We'll just call it Elite NP for short. Yeah, so, the Elite NP started in 2019 with the, the. The problem I was trying to solve was I was teaching. I wanted to teach nurse practitioners, okay? So very, very, very specific niche within, you know, the healthcare professional space. I wanted to teach nurse practitioners how to be able to escape the rat race of modern medicine. And by that I mean, you know, many of your listeners might be in healthcare and they might, you know, they might resonate with this, but most people just who have a job probably can resonate with this. Like, you get stuck in this cogwheel of this industry and it's just numbers, numbers, numbers.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:03:18]:

And then, you know, in the healthcare space, it's just seeing patients. We've all been to a doctor's appointment before. The doctor spends five minutes with you and leaves and goes to the next patient, you know, because they have seven patients, schedule an hour or whatever. And so I want to teach nurse practitioners how to escape that rat race of healthcare, basically. And I did that by teaching them how to start their own practice, their own clinic, so they could be their own boss, be autonomous and function independently, essentially, and, you know, generate what they're actually worth, not what some corporate entity decides, you know, what you're worth hourly. So, so I'm a nurse practitioner by training, so I was able to really resonate with people, you know, in that space.

Bryan McAnulty [00:03:58]:

Cool. So, yeah, so this specifically is a continuing education course. I want to go into kind of what. What's different about that compared to like a. A regular online course that somebody just goes to create for those who are, like, interested in creating something now, but they're. They're not really familiar with this. And also then I guess the second question would be, like, what. What changes about that if you're building a continuing education course in terms of, like, how you get customers or how the whole thing works?

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:04:30]:

So, yeah, so continuing education course business. The rough definition of it is, is that, you know, you're creating courses specifically towards some type of professional that they need to take to essentially stay up to date with the knowledge necessary to continue being that professional, basically. Right, so continuing education. Right. So any kind of professional needs continuing education. So doctors, lawyers, accountants, teachers, programmers, physical therapists, etc. Anyone who's a licensed professional requires continuing education. And it's not only so they can stay up to date in their profession and stay, you know, competent, it's also a requirement. And so any, any licensed professional has to have a certain amount of continuing education credits, continuing education hours every year to basically renew their license, to stay regulatory, you know, compliant with their, with their board, their accreditation agency, whoever it may be.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:05:33]:

And so, so yes, that's the difference. It's that you're targeting a very specific profession and that profession is required to take these courses. So the demand is instantly built in for someone who wants to start one of these businesses. So it's, it's a great business to start with built in demand essentially because these professionals, they have to take these courses. Now in terms of like your second question goes, what's the difference between this and just a regular course business really? You know, from a marketing aspect, how do you get, you know, how do you get customers? The big thing is, is that, well, first let me just say this, it's not all that different. I mean, you still got to market it online, right? You still gotta build an audience. You still gotta utilize various advertising platforms like Meta and TikTok and YouTube, Google, etc. You still got to use these platforms to advertise.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:06:29]:

You still got to go into it from an organic content generation standpoint as well to get organic people to just show up to you through articles and videos, etc. So there's not really a whole lot of difference between it and a regular course business or even an ecommerce business really. It's very heavily content driven. There is a paid advertising component to it as well. But I think the big thing is that your target demographic is defined when you start just a course business. Sometimes your target demographic is a lot broader and it might be more difficult to actually find customers in the, with a continuing education course business. Your target demographic is extremely specific, very niched, very targeted. And because of that, it's a lot easier to market towards those people because you can literally create an ad on Meta as an example and select demographic, click profession, like whoever identifies themselves as that person, which means only those people are going to see your ads, which are the only people you want to see your ads.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:07:39]:

You don't want someone else to see it. You know what I mean? So very, very cost efficient.

Bryan McAnulty [00:07:45]:

Yeah, yeah, that's a great point because yeah, if you're, if you're creating some other kind of online course, you have to figure out like, does somebody actually want this? Is the way I'm describing it, the way that it actually resonates with them that they want this? And then who. Now that I even have come up with a product I know some people want. How do I define that persona? And like in a way that like there is. Because there's probably not just a checkbox in meta ads for something like this. And yeah, so that's a great point. When you are then going to sell this, does the like. Are you selling directly to the individual? Are you selling to like the business or like who are you targeting in, in these ads and in this content?

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:08:28]:

I guess it really comes down to what kind of continuing education course product you're developing. I mean I've, you know, I've consulted and mentored with people who wanted to create more of like a business to business kind of a thing where they create a course product that targets, that's specific to maybe like, you know, just as an example, maybe like labor and delivery nurses. Okay, very defined target market. Right. And they wanted to create continuing education modules, courses for labor and delivery nurses that were going to be a little bit more from a hospital compliance standpoint. So you know, we all, we've all had jobs where we got to sit down and take some stupid little course on some computer, you know, for, you know, you got to take this stupid course or whatever. So you are certified in whatever or you just got to take this course, you know, like as an example, the one I like to use more. You know, the example I like to use are like, remember when you first had a, when you had a job 10 years ago, 20 years ago or whatever, and you had it like, you know, you got a job at a retail outlet, you had to take a course about sexual harassment or something, you know what I mean? And it was super corny or whatever.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:09:38]:

So you can create courses that are kind of like that, that an employer would need to provide their employees which are that specific target demographic. I've helped people start those kinds of businesses before, but for the most part most people are going to be B2C. It's going to be business to consumer for the most part. You're going to be targeting those professionals specifically because they just, they need to have those continued education course credits. But you can, I mean you can do a hybrid of it as well. You know, you could try to target businesses. I've helped people start businesses where they would help train like a, like a lawyer as an example about some sort of specific law topic and they would sell the course, the license to law firms. And then when new lawyers would come in, they would take that course and they would just pay like a licensing fee every year. So there's multiple different ways you can do it, but for the most part it's going to be just directly to the professional, directly to the consumer.

Bryan McAnulty [00:10:32]:

Real quick, Bryan here. You know me as the host for this podcast, but what you might not know is I'm also the founder of Heights Platform. It's an all in one platform that over 10,000 creators have used to build their online courses communities and digital product businesses. We recently added some awesome updates to Heights AI to help you turn your idea into a viable business. Heights AI can build entire product offers, review your content, and even coach you on how to grow. You can try it for free for 30 days. Links in the description. Now back to the podcast.

Bryan McAnulty [00:11:02]:

And so why, why would that consumer then, like, why do they want to choose your course? I understand they have to do it, but like, would they, like, what's going to incentivize them to do that other than having to do it? Do they, are they picking you because they feel something about the way that you're delivering it or what? You know, because I assume they might also have maybe recommendations from their peers, from the, their employer itself, or things like this.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:11:29]:

Yeah, that's a really, really good question. So there are three types of continuing education course businesses. Number one is the value lies in the actual continuing education course credit or hour. They're just taking it so they can get their credit or their hours so they can renew their license. Okay? Like the value lies in the actual CE credit, the CE hour. They don't care about what you teach. They could care less. They're probably just going to click through it and click next, next, next. They can just get the credit at the very end. Okay. Almost every professional is guilty of doing that because they need four more hours to renew their license. Okay? So you just go out, you find the cheapest course you can that gives you hours, and then like that's it. So there's that, there's that model where you just provide cheap super quick courses just so people can check a box and get their CE credit, CE hour.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:12:30]:

That's basically model number one. Model number two is that people actually are buying your course because they actually care about what you're teaching. The value actually lies in the information you're teaching. Right, those kinds of, like that model itself, you don't even necessarily have to attach official CE credits or hours to it because the professional actually wants to learn what it is that you're teaching because it's going to take their career to the next level. It might help them start a business, might help them get a promotion, might help them get a pay raise, those sorts of things. With The Elite Nurse Practitioner, I fell into model number two. For the first three years, two or three years, I offered no official CE credits or CE hours at all. People just wanted to learn how to start their own practice. And I, and I scaled it to a million dollar business before I even offered CE hour CE credits.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:13:18]:

Then model number three is the hybrid of both of those. That's the win, that's the model that you want, you want to teach valuable information and knowledge. People want to take your course because they actually care about what you're teaching. And the CE credit, CE hour is the cherry on top. Now they can write it off. Now their employer might pay for it. They have, you know, CE stipends that they get every year from their employer. So that's, that's the model that you want to try to focus on, is kind of doing, doing both of them. So, so yeah, that's really, with The Elite Nurse Practitioner, people wanted to learn how to start their own practice. That was the value proposition ultimately that was the transformation, the outcome that they wanted. So if you want to do this the right way, teach something that's actually valuable, not just, not just checking a box for a, for a CE credit.

Bryan McAnulty [00:13:55]:

Yeah, yeah. Well, not only does it work better, it's probably more enjoyable to, to be able to create a product like that in the first place. But I really like what you're saying how that, that, that's the, the cherry on top to combine it because you create something that people want, they see that, they say, oh I, I want to get this thing. And then when they see that it also can provide the credits. Now any like friction that would have been involved of having to actually pay for it is like potentially just gone away. It's like, well you, you can get the credits for this. So they can then figure out, oh, can my employer pay for it or is it this? Or it's worth it because of this and it makes it like a no brainer for them to purchase it.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:14:33]:

Yeah, 100%. And the beautiful thing about it is, is that it's a tax write off for any professional. Continuing education is a complete 100 tax write off. And also most professionals have some kind of stipend given to them by their employer. Depending on what, depending on the kind of professional that you are that can be anywhere from $1,000 a year to $5,000 a year. So ultimately, your customer is not even really paying for this. Their employer's paying for it. They pay you directly, and then they just give the receipt to their employer and they get reimbursed. So that's another beautiful aspect of this business. Oftentimes your customer is not even paying for it. Like they have money that they have to spend every year. And with continuing education stipends, it's use it or lose it.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:15:41]:

So interestingly enough, usually the most profitable month that you have with a continuing education course business is December is usually your most profitable month out of the year because all these professionals are rushing in. Oh shoot, I have another twelve hundred dollars I have to spend. If I don't, I lose it. So they just, they just buy your course because they have to spend the money. They might never even take the course. They just spend it to spend it. You know what I mean? So, so yeah, it's a, it's an interesting thing to, to actually watch unfold.

Bryan McAnulty [00:15:51]:

Yeah. So for those watching and listening to this who are like, okay, this sounds awesome. I, I do not currently have a continuing education credit that I can provide, but I want to do this. How can they get involved? Because I'm sure people are thinking that like, oh, this, that sounds complicated. Do I have to go through all these steps or licensing or something? Like, what does that look like?

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:16:11]:

Yeah, that's probably one of the biggest barriers here is that people think it's complicated. They think the process is going to require a bunch of regulatory compliance and standards and a lot of paperwork and those sorts of things. Now there is some truth to that. There is a little bit of a, you know, there's, there, there's a couple extra steps you got to take versus just a standard course business. But overall the process is fairly easy because the, the, the accrediting agencies. So an accrediting agency is a business that accredits your continuing education course business to offer continuing education credits or hours. Like that's the, basically the function of this other business. And so they all have licenses and agreements and things like that with various different boards of medicine and the bar and accounting and blah, blah, blah, whatever. So if you get accredited with them, then the CE, our CE credit that you can award your students is going to be applicable to that profession in terms from a, from a state level or a federal level level or whatever.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:17:10]:

So they want you to be accredited because these are for profit organizations. And the way they make money is by having people accredit through them. So they are going to make it as easy as possible for you to become accredited, because, number one, they want the application fees. They want all those fees, and then they also want the yearly fee for you to stay accredited. That's how they make their money. So they are going to make it easy for you to do it. It's an application you fill out. You got to meet some, you know, you check boxes, you tell them what they want to hear, that kind of a thing. At the end of the day, it's pay to play. That's what it is. So it's really not that hard. I have never ran into someone I've consulted with or mentored in this space who had a real significant problem actually becoming accredited. Once they start going through the process, they realize, wow, that was actually a lot easier than I thought it was. I just had to pay these clowns over here $10,000 to do it. Like, that's what. That's what it came down to.

Bryan McAnulty [00:18:25]:

So, yeah, as far as, like, the fees to do it, is there like an average or standard? I'm sure it varies a little bit by industry and things like that, but if somebody was like, starting today and they said, this sounds great, can I do this as soon as I launch my course? Is it something where it's, like, feasible for most creators? Like, what are they looking at in terms of annual and upfront costs?

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:18:50]:

Yeah, like you said, it really varies on the industry. You know, there are some accrediting agencies in, like, you know, in like a therapist space as an example, where the fees. 800 bucks. And then if you want to get accredited with, like, the American Medical Association, that's going to be closer to like, the $10,000. So, you know, so it really, really varies. I would say, on average, expect to pay somewhere around 5,000 bucks, basically to. To be accredited. It's just one of those things that you just. It's. It's just the cost of doing business in this space. So about five grand, give or take, to become accredited. The yearly fees are typically a lot cheaper than that. You know, maybe a couple thousand bucks, you know, but the thing is, though, you're charging for these courses, you're charging 300, 500, maybe even a thousand dollars for them. So you recoup that cost and, you know, really no time whatsoever.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:19:58]:

The process itself, from, from a, from a time investment standpoint of it, some accrediting organizations, you can get accredited in less than a month. And in some cases it can take three to six months to become accredited. So it really just depends on what industry you're, you're focusing on now, one of the shortcuts that you can take. So if anyone's truly interested in this, look up. It's, it's, it's called a joint providership opportunity. And what joint providership means is that you use the accreditation of another business to basically use, you use their accreditation to attach the CE credits or hours to your courses. And so there are businesses out there that that's, that's all they do. So they go through the process of becoming accredited through these large organizations and they're typically accredited through, you know, with, with 20 of them.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:20:52]:

So whatever pro, you know, whatever professional type that you want to target, you can get the accreditation component using a joint providership business. And you just go through these people and it usually takes two to four weeks. And you usually have to pay them something like three, two or three thousand dollars per course. And you pay it to them every year. And you just use their accreditation to attach the CE credits to your course. That's the shortcut, and that's the easiest way to do it. And that's what most people I consult with. That's what they do at first. And then after about a year or so, once they have a proof of concept for their business, once it starts generating money and they see that, you know, wow, this is actually profitable, they skip the middleman, the joint provider, and they just accredit themselves. So, you know, you don't have to accredit yourself right from the get go. You can just do a joint providership.

Bryan McAnulty [00:21:37]:

Got it. Okay. So I think I want to pivot now a little bit because not only do you have expertise at this, but like you, you grew this course business to a huge amount. So I want to kind of share some more of your expertise in, in actually growing the business. So when I guess like a lot of people are chasing followers, right? In your experience, what, what's actually the thing that creates customers even if you have a small audience?

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:22:05]:

Yeah, followers don't make. Followers don't mean anything. You know, like that's what I tell people all the time. Like the amount of followers you have doesn't, doesn't mean diddly squat. Like you want to focus on quality, not quantity by any stretch of the imagination. The Elite Nurse Practitioner was an eight figure business. It still is an eight figure business, but it was an eight figure business. And I had 7,000 Instagram followers. 7,000. That's it. Had like 20,000 Facebook followers. Like that's it guys. Like yeah, but, but thing is, they were very, very, very high quality followers.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:22:31]:

So like you could have a hundred thousand followers, but if none of them are buying anything from you, who cares? It doesn't mean anything, right? So, so you want to focus on high quality, building a high quality audience. And the way I did it and the way that I teach people on how to do it is you have to just provide very consistent, valuable content. That's how you do it, guys. I mean that's, that's essentially what this business is. Once the course is developed. Like once you develop your course and your products, at that point it's then selling it. That's, that's the goal now. Now let's sell it. Developing the course is relatively easy. It's really not that difficult to do it, especially utilizing various AI tools. You can crank out a continuing education course fairly quickly. But then it's how do you get people to buy it? And that's by building an audience and that's by producing and creating a lot of consistent content. You need to be producing content at a minimum of two times a week.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:23:46]:

That can be two articles, that could be one article, one video. Like it doesn't really matter what kind of content it is, but that's how you build quality. You know that, that, that's how you build a quality audience that's actually going to buy from you. The thing is though, is that it takes time to do that. It is not an overnight thing. So it will take you six months before you really start seeing your content strategy actually start working for you. It just, it just takes some time. So that's how you do it is by consistent, valuable content. Not crap content, good content that actually teaches them something that actually is valuable. So you know, don't teach them everything. Don't give away everything. You want them to buy your course ultimately, you know what I mean? So don't give away everything but produce valuable content. That's how I did it. I published content five days a week. And it worked. It built an audience.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:24:40]:

So, you know, in the background, you know, what no one saw was my email subscriber list. That is where I was making most of my money was through my email subscribers. We had 10 or 15 email subscribers.

Bryan McAnulty [00:24:52]:

Yeah, forget about the follower number. The email subscriber number is where the money comes from.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:24:58]:

100%. Absolutely. And like your email list becomes your most valuable asset. It really does. You gotta really nurture that really take care of your email list and build a good quality email list. So that's kind of where you have to really weigh in on your lead magnet strategy and your funnel. Like, do you really want to just be giving away something just to get a bunch of email subscribers, or do you just produce content, send it out there, and if people like it, they'll subscribe themselves? That model works better, but it's a lot slower. But you just get, you, you get a very, you just get a good, a higher quality of, of email subscribers if you kind of just let people just do it themselves.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:25:44]:

You don't have to do a lead magnet. I've experimented with lead magnets. You know, subscribe to our email list and get this free PDF, right? Or get this free masterclass and you send it out on Facebook, you know, maybe throw 500 behind an ad. Sure you can get, you know, sure you can get 500 email subscribers from that, but how many of those people are actually going to buy from you? Maybe 1%, maybe, if you're lucky, you know, so.

Bryan McAnulty [00:26:06]:

Yeah, yeah, I think it's oversold. How? I guess getting into Meta ads or Google Ads too early. I think people make the mistake of thinking, oh, that's, that's the secret solution. All I've got to do is run this ad. But I've definitely had times where I was like, oh, wow, we've got these, these cheap leads, cool, let's spend a couple thousand dollars. They all sign up. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Whereas that, that same amount of subscribers from the content from. It does take a longer time, but then it's just worth way more money than the Facebook ads cost. But the Facebook ads produce nothing in that situation.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:26:46]:

100%. I've experienced the same thing before, dude. Like, I would spend ten grand and get thousands and thousands of email subscribers and then I would send out an email 25% off this course. And literal crickets. You're like, what? I spent all this money building this email list and it's literally turned into nothing. It's just crickets. And then if I just sit back and wait and just produce content and let people do it themselves. You know, maybe you get one or two email subscribers a day doing it that, you know, that way, but those people are so much higher quality. So it's just. Yeah, it just takes time.

Bryan McAnulty [00:27:24]:

Yeah. I'm curious, are there any other kind of like, like marketing gimmicks that you see professionals wasting time on and what should they be doing instead?

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:27:34]:

Yeah, I think one of the big things is, is that they just create an ad and they just create an ad just to just, just to push their product, just to push their course.

Bryan McAnulty [00:27:47]:

So no, no value. They're just saying, hey, hey, look, I've got this course, go buy it.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:27:51]:

Exactly right? It's just like, you know, here's an ad, it's a video, me talking for, you know, three minutes. Or it's just, you know, so it's just an image or whatever and it just sends them straight to the landing page, the sales page of the course. The biggest mistake I see people make is that they spend so much money on that and it just ends up doing nothing for them. You are better off spending your money just literally promoting your content with no strings attached to it. And by that I mean in your case, does your content, will it always go to say, hey, subscribe to my newsletter or something instead of like ever going. Or does it ever go to say, hey, we've got this offer for our course and like buying right now. And that goes to the checkout.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:28:40]:

Yeah, I mean, maybe at the end of an article or something I might say, oh, and hey, by the way, if you want to learn more, check out our course. And just a button and just like literally that's it. You know what I mean? Not too pushy. Not, you know, not a single page where there's no other options at all except to click that button at the end of it. You know what I mean? Yeah, I just send them straight to the article, the blog post on my website or I send them straight to the video that I upload onto my website. And then on my website, you know, down in the footer or whatever on the side it says, you know, subscribe to our email list and let them make that decision if they're actually interested, interested in what it is that you're actually talking about. If you just, if you just set up your website in a way to where there's, you know, a, an email opt in form on every single page. Right.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:29:28]:

You know, every single page has that email opt in form on it. If you do that and people like the content, they will subscribe to your email list if they actually like what it is that you're talking about. You know, so, so I have found that the higher quality leads just come from doing nothing more than literally just promoting an article or a video with no call to action at all. And I know this is extremely unorthodox and this is what you are not taught. You're taught the exact opposite. Everything needs a call to action. Every single thing needs a call to action. No, it really doesn't. If the call to actions are on your website, just built into it in terms of sign up to our email list and if in the, you know, in the, in the navigation bar, your course is up there, if they're interested, they are going to click on it. You know, you don't have to direct them to it. Like you can just literally have one sentence at the end of the article, one sentence that says if you're interested in learning more, check out our course. And you leave it at that and maybe a link or something, you know. Or if you like this article, subscribe to our email list. To stay up to date, that's it.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:30:44]:

I scaled The Elite Nurse Practitioner to $10 million plus business and I never used one time, not once a lead magnet. Not one time. I have never, ever used a lead magnet in that business. With my new business, ProCourseStart, I do. But with The Elite Nurse Practitioner, I never did. Not one time. I never had a landing page to subscribe to email list. Nothing like that, ever. And it scaled to a $10 million business in three years because the content was actually, actually good content. Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:31:04]:

Yeah. So I'm curious. We talked before about quick, the, the email list and how important that is. How, like, what does it look like in terms of when somebody signs up for your email list? Is it something where you're sending out a newsletter? Is it like an automation they're going into? What kind of content are they receiving through those emails? Because I think a lot of people make mistakes here. They will maybe not send enough emails or they just right away say, hey, buy my thing. Or maybe they, they have a newsletter content. This consistent content, it is valuable. But then when it comes to finally say hey, buy my thing, like they say it once and then, and then people miss it. So what, what does, what does that look like roughly on, on your end?

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:31:46]:

So with The Elite Nurse Practitioner, I never had a, I never had a, a welcome email sequence. Never. Like, I just, I just did it just. I didn't with ProCourseStart my new business. I do have a welcome email sequence because I do spend some money building that list and so I feel like that it's, it falls into two different categories here. If you are letting people just organically subscribe to your email list, there's no need to have a welcome email sequence. There just isn't. They're subscribing because they want your content. They don't want some half cooked BS written welcome email sequence. Like, they, they're there for the content guys, okay? And then the other category is, is if you're paying for email subscribers through a lead magnet, then you have to have a welcome email sequence to kind of welcome them into it because they just subscribe for that free lead magnet. So at the end of the day, they really don't know who you are or what it is that you're doing.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:32:49]:

So then you have to kind of educate them. But with category one, if you let them just organically subscribe, they fall straight into your normal content distribution schedule. So if you produce, let's just say three articles a week, you want to distribute that obviously through all the channels that you have, your email lists, your social media platforms, etc. So when they subscribe to your email list, they just get put right into it. And then the next article you publish, they get. And they just keep getting the, the consistent content that you normally would, you know, would publish anyways after time. Sometimes it takes these people two, three, four months of reading your content. They get a pretty good idea of what it is you're talking about and what it is that you're doing. Because at the same time, you're also promoting your course every once in a while. And by that you're, you know, you have a sales event or something. You know, let's just say it's like a Labor Day sales event. For the next two days, all of our courses are 30% off.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:33:55]:

Well, if they're subscribed to your email list and they continuously read the articles that you're, you're sending them and they get this random email one day, 30% off our courses, they're probably going to click on it. Because they click on, they click on it all the time and they see, oh, wow, they, you know, like they have a course that teaches about that topic. I've been reading about this topic for the last two months. Okay, I'm gonna check it out. And then just simply by doing that, you, you just, you give them the torch. It's really in their power to do it. You're not really pushing it. You're just kind of telling them, hey, this is on sale. Just FYI, every once in a while, like I said, you can, you can mention it in your articles, you know. Oh, by the way, we teach, you know, we teach this in a lot more detail in our course. You know, you can always kind of throw it out there a little bit. So that's kind of how that works. Does that make sense?

Bryan McAnulty [00:34:28]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it sounds great. So my next question, I'm curious. My producer wrote this in, so I guess they found that you have some kind of opinion on this. What is your unpopular opinion about passive income?

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:34:42]:

My unpopular opinion about passive income? That they're really, at the end of the day, there's no such thing as a true passive income stream unless you're buying a dividend producing stock or a bond. I think that's, that's the only passive income you guys are going to get. I'm sorry, there's. There's no such thing as passive income unless you're buying a bond. And I would even argue that even buying a stock that pays a dividend isn't really a passive income because you still have to monitor it. Is a stock dropping in price, you have to keep, you still have to keep an eye on it. I mean, you want to exit if the stock, you know, the stock's dropping or whatever, if it's going up, do you sell for a profit? There's still some management of that asset, right? With a bond, you just buy it and you just get your, you know, you get your interest every three months or whatever and you just wait till maturity and you get your money back. That's truly passive.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:35:36]:

And so there's no such thing as truly passive income. A continuing education course business is partially passive income. Most businesses that generate passive income in quotation marks that, you know, people try to push on you, it's partially passive, you see, still have to put some effort and time into it. Now with a continuing education course business, your job after the product is developed is to really just market it. And you do that by producing consistent content. So like, it might take you five to ten hours a week to produce some consistent content and distribute it. That's your job at that point. So then it becomes partially passive. Your product is on sale 24/7. Anyone can buy it at any time, unless you want to do like webinars or masterminds or, you know, boot camps or things like that. But if you have an evergreen course product on sale 24/7, so that aspect of it's passive, but you still got to put the work into it to get to put it, you know, in front of people's eyes.

Bryan McAnulty [00:36:36]:

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. Yeah, I always say that people should think of it as leveraged income. And, and if you're in this thinking, oh, I want this magical passive income, it's just not the right way to think about it. You should find something that you enjoy to do because there is going to be work involved, but it can create this leveraged income that the impact, the income that you can receive from the work you do can, can scale separate of your time, but there's still time involved in it. Definitely.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:37:07]:

100 agree. Leveraged income is really the way, the way you put it. Yeah. Like it's, it's leveraged income and it's an income that scales. Like, you can ex. It exponentially scales. Guys, you know, the first course I ever developed, we, you know, we launched it. This would have been in early 2020, very first course, and I made like 50,000 bucks in a week. And I was like, whoa, I'm onto something here. Now I will caveat that and say, though I spent six months prior building an audience through consistent content. And then when I launched my first course, I didn't market it at all. I didn't, I didn't spend a dollar advertising it. I just sold it to, to my audience that I built. I made 50,000 bucks. Now every single month after that, I produced a new course every month. And so you just do the math. If you're developing a new course every month, every year, that's 12 courses. After three years, that's almost 40 courses right? Now. Do the math, right? If each one is selling couple thousand dollars every month, it just exponentially stacks on top of each other every single month. And before you know it, you're, you know, you're generating $100,000 a month in income. Yeah, it's leveraged. It just. And it takes some time.

Bryan McAnulty [00:38:27]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's hard to see in the very beginning when you're just starting out, but if you can stick with it long enough, it can really compound. So if somebody was just starting out today with zero followers, if, if you were doing that, what would you say to them to do in the next seven days?

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:38:45]:

In the next seven days, I would say find a target demographic that is underserved and then figure out what kind of value proposition you can create for those people. Essentially, what problem are you going to solve? Right? I mean, what's the, you know, value proposition is the value you propose to the world. That's basically what it means. So figure out an underserved market in the professional space. And this can be anyone, guys, teachers, lawyers, doctors, nurses, etc. Find an underserved market and figure out how can I leverage some of the knowledge and skills that I have to develop a solution for one of the problems that they have. And nowadays, you know, when I first created The Elite Nurse Practitioner back in 2019, 2020, there was really, there was no such thing as ChatGPT. I didn't have these tools that you have now and you can really leverage AI to help you figure out, you know, where are those underserved markets. I mean, there's so much information online out there that you can utilize AI's research functions to find these things for you, you know, so if you know how to prompt AI the right way, they can give you some pretty good ideas on some underserved markets and some problems that affect those markets. And if you can come in there with a solution, then you got a business. It's really not that hard.

Bryan McAnulty [00:40:15]:

Yeah, yeah, I'll add to that to help anybody out if, if you're not yet. I don't know what to say. But like somebody using ChatGPT kind of non stop, like some of us here, I would say don't just ask like the, the auto mode in ChatGPT, hey, give me some information. You can, you can still speed up the process with that, but go to the deep research button and then ask it. You'll get this giant report. It'll check all these different sources and, and do something that could have taken you hours and it just gives it to you of what you need to know.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:40:48]:

Yeah, the deep research function, 100%. Use it. Have it scan Reddit in Facebook, in Google and all these places and tell it, you know, I'm, I want to find, find me a market of people within the legal space or the programming space or whatever space and figure out like find me the top 10 problems discussed and break this down for me. I mean, it could be a simple prompt and go through those problems and then with the knowledge that you have inside your head, can you develop a solution to those problems or do you know a way that you can utilize AI to help you develop a solution to those problems? If you can, you got a business, people are willing to pay money, you know, if you can solve their problems. So.

Bryan McAnulty [00:41:34]:

Yep. So on the show, I like to have every guest ask a question to the audience. If you could ask our audience anything, whether something you're curious about or kind of just want to get people thinking, what would that be?

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:41:45]:

I think the biggest question you ask yourself if you're interested in doing this to get the wheels turning in your head is what, where does my knowledge, where does my specialty lie in my brain in terms of like my knowledge base and how can I utilize my knowledge and actually turn it into a product? How can I, instead of, instead of having my knowledge work through me. How can I have my knowledge work for me? If you can answer that question, then you should be able to develop a pretty solid course business. And if you're, and if the knowledge in your brain can be specific to a profession, then you can start a continuing education course business. So ask yourself that, how do I stop having my knowledge work through me and instead have my knowledge work for me? That way you leverage it and you turn it into something that's actually scalable. Having your knowledge work through you, that's not scalable. That's. You're, you're, you're doing a job. You're using your knowledge to actually perform a task instead. If you can put your knowledge out into a product and let it work for you instead, that's something that's scalable. There's no way I would have made a, you know, there's, there's no way I would have grown or scaled an eight figure continuing education course business by just doing consultations. There's just no way that would have happened.

Bryan McAnulty [00:43:03]:

So, yeah, yeah, a great way to think about it. Justin, thanks so much for coming on the show. Great interview. Before we get going, where else can people find you online?

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:43:12]:

Yeah, you can just, you can look up. My new business is called ProCourseStart. This is where I teach people how to start a continuing education course business, professional focused course business. You know, there's a lot of resources out there that'll teach you how to start a course business or maybe even a continuing education course business. Where my specialty lies though, is I teach you how to start a continuing education course business. That is that the foundation is, is, is set in a way that it turns into a seven to eight figure course business. I'm not really interested in helping someone start a course business that generates $5,000 a month. That's, that's not what we're doing. I'm teaching you how to create an enterprise level continued education course business so you can make seven figures. So that's kind of what I do now. You know, I basically retired, but I got kind of bored so, you know, so started that.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:43:53]:

And yes, it's procoursestart.com. You can check it out there for your listeners. They can go to procoursestart.com/podcast-tca and just a little landing page for the podcast discount on our blueprint product. And you can also schedule a call if you're interested in joining the Mastermind or if you want to, if you just have a question, just in general, just email me. I answer. I'm a VA and I'm an AI agent. I answer the emails. So. [email protected].

Bryan McAnulty [00:44:35]:

All right. Awesome, Justin. Thanks so much. Okay.

Justin Allan Montgomery [00:44:37]:

Appreciate it, Bryan. Thank you.

Bryan McAnulty [00:44:39]:

I'd like to take a moment to invite you to join our free community of over 5,000 [email protected] if you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, check out The Heights Platform YouTube channel every Tuesday at 9am US Central. To get notified when new episodes release, join our [email protected] until then, keep learning and I'll see you in the next episode.