How Veterinary Professionals Can Turn Their Expertise Into a Scalable Continuing Education Business

Welcome back to the Veterinary Business Podcast, where we bring together practical conversations for veterinary professionals who want to grow stronger businesses, build better systems, and think more strategically about the future of their careers. Today, we're talking about a topic that many veterinary professionals may not have seriously considered yet: how your clinical knowledge, leadership experience, and hard-earned expertise can become the foundation for a scalable continuing education business. Veterinary professionals spend years building specialized knowledge, but in many cases, that expertise only generates income when they're physically in the clinic, seeing patients, managing teams, or solving problems in real time. So the question becomes: Is there a smarter way to package that knowledge, serve your profession, and create a business model that is not completely dependent on your time? To help us explore that, we're joined by Justin Allan Montgomery, founder of The Elite Nurse Practitioner and ProCourseStart. Justin holds degrees in biology, chemistry, nursing, and a Master of Science in Nursing. He started The Elite Nurse Practitioner in 2019 to help nurse practitioners build unique clinical and business skills, start their own practices, and gain more autonomy in their careers. In just a few years, Justin scaled The Elite Nurse Practitioner into a seven-figure yearly income business by creating consistent, valuable education around a very specific problem in his profession: lack of autonomy and being underpaid. Today, he helps other professionals understand how to build profession-focused online course businesses that create more leverage, more impact, and more freedom. Justin, welcome to the podcast. We're really excited to have this conversation with you.

Thanks for having me on. I look forward to enlightening veterinarians on another business they probably never thought of.

Justin, many veterinary professionals are used to earning income by providing services directly—seeing patients, managing a practice, leading a team, or consulting one-on-one. What is the core mindset shift they need to make before they can even consider turning their expertise into a continuing education business?

I think that to start a continuing education business, you need to realize that there are other models a medical or veterinary professional can pursue outside of simply utilizing the skills and knowledge you learned in school and through your practice. You can actually leverage that information and knowledge and turn it into a fairly passive business. I think one of the biggest mindset shifts a veterinarian should make—and this includes really any kind of medical professional who uses their hands and sees patients—is realizing that you can let your knowledge work for you instead of through you. Most people let their knowledge work through them. They're the vessel that the knowledge has to work through so they can treat a patient, make money, generate business, and so on. But you can actually package your knowledge and turn it into something that works for you—a business that's generally passive in nature. Most medical professionals don't really think about that.

For someone who thinks, "I'm just doing my job. I don't have anything unique to teach," how would you help them see the value in their experience?

I think you need to ask yourself: Do people ask me for advice? Do other professionals in this space ask me for help? Do they come to me with complex cases? Do they ask me to teach them a skill or procedure? Have you been in practice long enough that you feel you've developed a unique perspective on treating a patient a certain way? Have you developed a way to perform a procedure differently compared to what most people do? For most professionals out there, if you've been in practice for more than five years, there's probably something you know that you're pretty good at compared with a new graduate. Any new graduate would pay a lot of money to be able to get five years ahead of the curve. You have valuable knowledge. Think about a new veterinarian who has just graduated from school. I'm pretty sure they would pay money to learn from you about an advanced skill, advanced operation, or something similar. I can guarantee that most of your listeners can probably leverage something they have and package it into a course.

When someone has years of clinical or business experience, it can be tempting to turn everything they know into a course. How should veterinary professionals identify the right course topic—one that solves a real problem, feels valuable to the professional, and has actual business potential?

First, you need to ensure that the topic you want to teach is actually going to be in demand. A lot of people get into the continuing education space, come up with an idea, create a course, and then try to sell it—and it's just crickets. At the end of the day, what they're teaching isn't really that valuable to people. You need to ensure there's going to be some kind of demand for it. The best way to do that is to ask yourself: Does this actually solve a problem? Is this a real solution? Is this something that's transformative for a student? After they take this course, complete this training, or obtain this continuing education, can they step into practice and actually be a more competent veterinarian or medical professional? If the answer is no, you probably don't have a very good idea. You have to ask yourself those questions: Is this valuable? Is it transformative?

What would be a simple way to validate a course idea before spending months building the whole thing?

Ask yourself the questions I just mentioned, and then do some market research. Actually see what's going on out there. The internet is a very big place, but it's a very powerful tool if you use it the right way. You can utilize a variety of AI tools and large language models such as Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity and ask them to conduct deep research on whatever topic you're interested in teaching. Then use that research to validate the idea. Are there people asking questions about this? Is this a topic that's being discussed in Facebook groups, on message boards, in subreddits, and elsewhere? Is this something people are talking about? Does it actually solve a problem? Is this a problem people are discussing? If it is, chances are it will probably work.

Sometimes we can have a lot of ideas, but we don't really know where to start. How should someone decide which one to start with if they have several possible course ideas?

I think you need to rank them by potential demand. Ask: What's the biggest problem this solves? Let's say you come up with five ideas. Rank the problems, solutions, and transformations associated with each one. For example, if you teach people how to start a very specific, highly niched veterinary practice—or teach someone how to create or scale their veterinary practice—the transformation could be more money, more autonomy, and more freedom. That transformation may rank fairly high compared with teaching someone how to suture a post-operative wound, for example. You have to look at the transformation and the student's end goal. What's the most valuable transformation versus the least valuable? What's the biggest problem you're solving? If you do that, you should be able to determine what's likely to be in higher demand and what's going to be more valuable.

That gives us a very clear way to think about it. A course business still needs trust, credibility, and an audience. From your experience building The Elite Nurse Practitioner, what role did consistent content, positioning, and visibility play in turning your expertise into a scalable business?

If you're a veterinarian who wants to start a continuing education business, you need to understand that it's going to be an online business. It's going to be a digital business. At the end of the day, it's an e-commerce business. You need to understand how that works because it's completely different from a veterinary practice. It's a totally different model. It exists 100% online in the digital space. So how do you actually get clients? With a veterinary practice, people might see your Google Business listing and call you, or they might get a referral from someone down the street or from their neighbor. With a continuing education business, you have to market it online. The good news about marketing to veterinarians is that it's a very specific target. It's fairly easy to identify veterinarians compared with trying to sell a general consumer product where you're potentially targeting everyone. With a continuing education business that teaches veterinary education, you're targeting veterinary professionals. But you have to create content that's specific to them, and it needs to align with what you're actually teaching. As an example, let's say you wanted to create a continuing education business for veterinarians about how to prepare a veterinary practice for private equity acquisition. I just made that up because I know private equity companies are buying a lot of veterinary practices, and most people probably have no idea what that process looks like. If you wanted to create a course about that, the content you create on your website would need to focus on that topic. You might discuss things such as veterinarians being tired of the grind or wanting to understand how to prepare for an exit. You talk about those topics through your videos and articles, and you create content on your website. By doing that, veterinarians begin gravitating toward your site. They see the content you post on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms. They begin following you because they're interested in what you're discussing. Once they follow you, they start listening to you more and more. Eventually, if they're genuinely interested in what you're talking about, they'll realize you have a course that guides them through the process in significantly more detail than what you provide for free. Maybe you also have a high-level mastermind or another product or service that guides people through the process. A small percentage—a single-digit percentage—of your audience might actually purchase your course, mastermind, product, or service. But that product or service could be high-ticket. It could be something that's $1,000 or $5,000. You may only need a dozen or two customers a month to generate a healthy income. That's the model from a very high-level standpoint.

What do you think matters more in the beginning: having a large audience or having the right audience?

I think having the right audience is probably more important. Let's say you create a CE business as a veterinarian and build an audience of people who aren't veterinarians or even veterinary technicians. Maybe they're simply people who are really interested in animals. Those people aren't going to buy your course. They're not veterinary professionals. A big audience isn't necessarily a good thing. When I scaled The Elite Nurse Practitioner, my CE business, to seven figures and had an eight-figure exit event through that business that allowed me to retire before the age of 40, my audience wasn't enormous. I had around 7,000 followers on Instagram, about 20,000 followers on my Facebook page, and roughly 1,000 YouTube subscribers. But those followers were high-quality followers. They were people who actually bought from me. At the end of the day, this is a business. Having the right audience matters more than simply having people follow or like you if they're never going to buy from you. That's how you need to approach it.

What kind of content helped people trust you the most when you were building The Elite Nurse Practitioner?

It was motivational content. It wasn't really content about starting a practice. Through The Elite Nurse Practitioner, I taught not only nurse practitioners, but also MDs, PAs, and DOs how to start medical practices. I had content about those topics, but the content that really gained a following for me was more motivational. It was more like, "Hey, I'm going to open your eyes to something. You're working for this practice making $80 an hour. Do you realize that if you were doing this on your own, you could be making $300 an hour?" It was about opening their eyes and motivating them—telling them to get off their butt and do it themselves, stop wasting their time, and stop making other people rich. That kind of content was really what gained my following. It wasn't necessarily highly specific content about starting a practice.

That point about visibility and trust is such an important one because whether someone is building a continuing education business, growing a veterinary practice, or trying to become better known in their local market, people need to understand who you are, what you offer, and why they should choose you. For veterinary practice owners, that visibility often starts online. Before a pet owner ever calls a clinic, they're usually checking Google, reading reviews, looking at the website, comparing nearby practices, and trying to decide who feels more trustworthy. That is exactly why Veterinary Business Institute offers a free Marketing Strategy Meeting for veterinary practices. In this session, Lila Stone and the Ekwa Marketing team review your practice's online presence and prepare a customized veterinary marketing plan based on your market, your visibility, and your growth opportunities. They look at areas such as your Google presence, local visibility, website, reviews, and how effectively your practice is positioned to attract high-quality new patients. The goal is to help you understand where new-patient opportunities may be getting missed and what can be done to create a more consistent flow of new-patient calls. There is no pressure and no hard sell. It's designed to give veterinary practice owners a clearer picture of what's working, what's not, and what steps could strengthen their online growth. You can book a free Marketing Strategy Meeting at www.veterinarybusinessinstitute.com/msm. And with that in mind, Justin, I'd love to bring the conversation back to the early building stage. Once someone has a clear idea and understands their audience, what are the first practical steps they should take to build a course business without overwhelming themselves or taking too much time away from their main work?

First, you need to understand the steps involved. Validate your idea and come up with an actual idea. Then develop your value proposition. What value are you proposing to the world? Most people don't ask themselves that question when they start a business. Most veterinarians who start a practice—and really any medical professional who starts a practice—already know the value proposition, so they never have to identify it. The value proposition is, "I'm treating patients. I'm helping them feel better. That's the value I'm delivering." With other businesses, you have to define your value proposition. What's the value you're proposing to the world? With a CE business, come up with your value proposition first. It may sound very pie-in-the-sky, but you need to create it because it sets the foundation of your business. A simple equation is: What specific problem am I solving for a specific group of people, and what's the solution to that problem? What's the problem? Who am I targeting? What's the solution? Come up with that. From there, you're building an online business and creating everything in a way that's ready to launch. I usually recommend building out your product—your course—first. It doesn't matter if you build a CE business if you don't actually have a product to sell. Get the product developed. Get the course created. Once the course is created, you can build the CE business around it. Building a course isn't necessarily hard. Most people can build a course. We've all been to school for many years. We can do that. Building the course is relatively simple. Selling the course is what's difficult. You need to create the business, build your website, and develop the platforms you'll use to spread the message. You need to create your social media pages and establish the channels through which you'll reach people. Then you need to develop content. I usually recommend publishing content at least two or three times a week. That might be two or three videos. It might be one video and two articles. Whatever you're comfortable with, start putting it out there. Post it on your social platforms, distribute it through email, publish it on your website, and allow people to start finding it. It usually takes three to six months for this kind of business to gain meaningful traction. My biggest piece of advice for people who want to get into this is to be patient.

How can someone make progress on this kind of business while still working full time or managing a practice?

The good news is that this kind of business only takes about 100 to 140 hours to start. A lot of the work can be automated, and you can use AI to help create many of the components. Anywhere between 100 and 140 hours is what I generally consider the initial time investment. For most of my clients whom I guide through this, I usually tell them, "Spend 10 hours a week on this for 12 weeks, and your CE business and your course will be developed." I think most people, if they really want to do this, can find 10 hours a week—a couple of hours during the evenings and a few hours on the weekend. You can work full time and do this. You don't have to quit your job. You don't have to cut down your working hours. When I built The Elite Nurse Practitioner, I was working full time at an urgent care, and I had three practices that I had started and was operating. All of my clients are still working full time and doing this more or less as a side project. It takes most of them around three months to get the CE business and their first course developed. Once it's developed, you can expect to spend about 10 hours a week keeping it operational. That involves developing content regularly, publishing and distributing that content, answering emails and messages, and handling customer service. You'll spend more time if you're developing new courses, but overall, it's about 10 hours a week to keep the business operational. You can do this on a part-time basis.

Before we end this conversation, for working professionals who want more autonomy, more income potential, or a bigger impact beyond the walls of their practice, what final advice would you give about building something scalable around their expertise?

My final advice would be to realize that this isn't as difficult as you might think. Many of you may fear creating an online business because it's completely new and outside of your wheelhouse. The learning curve isn't as steep as you think. I've had clients who spent 10 or 15 hours a week on this, got their CE business up and running, and within six to 12 months were generating $50,000 a month in passive income. I've had one client who started their CE business and, within 10 months, quit their job and stopped practicing to focus entirely on the CE business. The initial ceiling isn't that difficult to reach with a CE business. You can get there relatively quickly. Getting beyond that ceiling is what requires a significant amount of work if you really want to scale it into a seven-figure business. But reaching a level where you're generating an additional $300,000 or $400,000 a year can be relatively straightforward compared with taking the business beyond that. There aren't a lot of roadblocks and speed bumps if you approach the business model the right way and you're willing to change one component of your profession: becoming a marketer. At the end of the day, operating an online business—especially a CE business—is largely about marketing it. Creating the courses themselves isn't necessarily the difficult part. Marketing the business is. For most business owners, marketing is one of the most important functions of the business, and with a CE business that's especially true. You need to realize that. A lot of people can't stand marketing. They don't want to put their face out there. They don't want to do social media. If that's the case, a CE business probably isn't going to be the right decision for you. You have to make sure you're comfortable with that part of the business.

Justin, this has been such a valuable conversation. Thank you for sharing not only the strategy behind building a continuing education business, but also the mindset behind it—moving from simply trading time for income to creating something that can scale, serve others, and open up new opportunities. For veterinary professionals listening, the big takeaway is that your expertise has value beyond the work you do day to day. Whether you're a practice owner, an aspiring owner, a clinical leader, or someone with a specialized area of knowledge, there may be a real opportunity to package what you know in a way that helps others while also creating more leverage in your own career. The key is to start with a real problem, understand the audience clearly, build trust through valuable content, and take practical steps instead of trying to create everything at once. Justin, thank you again for joining us and for giving our listeners a fresh way to think about professional growth, education, and long-term independence. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in to the Veterinary Business Podcast. We hope today's episode gives you something practical to think about as you continue building a stronger, more sustainable future in veterinary medicine. Thank you.