Continuing Education Directory Earns Six Figures

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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There is a massive field known as continuing education. Now this term continuing education is used a couple of different ways. The first one is kind of generic, as in you can continue your education in lots of ways. There are continuing education courses at most colleges and universities for people who just want to learn without pursuing a degree. So that's one form of it.

The other one, and what we'll look at today is all about professional development. So lots of professions that have gatekeeper bodies where you have to be licensed and pay dues to retain your membership in that profession, they require some degree of ongoing annual continuing ed. You're typically required to have a certain number of credits completed each year. The details vary across different professions, different countries, et cetera. But again, this is a really, really big industry.

So in today's story, we'll look at an Australian woman who leaves her marketing agency to launch a profitable continuing education directory for architects in need of professional development credits. It meets a tremendous need. She saw this opportunity and she went for it. So I'm gonna give a shout out to our sponsor. I appreciate them.

And then I'll tell you exactly how she did it. [Music]

In 1993, the film Groundhog Day made its debut. If you're not familiar with it, it's the story of a weatherman who relives the same day over and over again. He feels doomed to spend the rest of his life in the same place, doing the same thing every single day. For Janelle Sultan in Sydney, Australia, that's what her reality felt like.

She spent 15 years of her life as the director of a marketing agency, and each day felt the same. Clients, tedious meetings, and a whole lot of stress. Something needed to change. After much deliberation, she knew it was time to move on. She wasn't sure at first what she was moving on to, but she knew she didn't wanna spend the rest of her life stuck on repeat.

So she began taking the steps towards disbanding her marketing agency. As part of that, she contacted each of her clients to let them know she was transitioning to something new. Some were upset and not so supportive, while others cheered her on and wished her well. And as a side note, this is typically how a leap goes. Some people will cheer you on, others will make you feel as if you're making the worst decision.

It's okay, you gotta do what's right for you. Janelle was approached by a couple of her clients asking for help with one final task, assisting with bookings for their continual professional development sessions for architects. This is known as CPD, not CBD, that's a whole different thing, CPD, at least in Australia. And not just in Australia, but elsewhere, architects and lots of other professions require a certain amount of continuing education hours, or in some places they're called formal points to keep their license. The objective of CPD is to maintain and enhance professional knowledge and skills of architects to better the community and profession.

At least that's what the governing bodies say. So we'll come back to that at the end because I think there's another reason as well. But to continue the story, Janelle was fairly checked out of her marketing agency job at this point, but she agreed to assist on a temporary basis. This then gave her the idea to check with a few other clients to see if they wanted to continue and offer similar CPD sessions. It wasn't long after she took on this temporary task that it turned into a more intentional one.

She quickly learned that there was a big demand for CPD sessions, get no platform or container out there to organize them all in one place. After she spent some time manually booking sessions, she knew there had to be a more efficient and less time-consuming way to do it. And that's when her idea for CPD Box was born. Janelle created an automated website where architects could book their own CPD sessions in one place. She reached out to clients and educators and invited them to list their classes on her site.

These clients pay a fee to list their classes as well as a booking fee when people book through her site. The listing fee is charged on a monthly basis or annually with a discount, and those booking fees are charged once a booking is completed. CPD Box is a win-win for both the educators looking to market their classes, seminars, and presentations, and for architects wishing to further their knowledge and get those important continuing education credits. By making it a one-stop site, it creates more efficiency and ease. And of course, it also creates income for Janelle.

Because this is a side hustle, right? It's not just a hobby, it's something she's doing to get ahead and create freedom for herself. Now, if it sounds complicated to build this kind of directory, it was actually pretty simple. She did all of it on her own. She had minimal startup costs of around $500.

And that covered her business name registration, the website, and email campaign software. This minimal investment has profited well, like extremely well. In her first month, just last year, she raked in $7,500. And since launching in 2018, she's now on track to make more than $100,000. By the next fiscal year, she's looking to restructure the business into a company so she can pay herself a wage.

She wants to reinvest back into the company to help with operations and marketing. And she's also looking to add an assistant to help balance her time. While she's very proud of this site and all she's made, she has struggled a bit with motivation and time. Being your own boss means you're setting your own schedule and creating your own systems. It takes discipline and determination to see it through.

And while she loves the fact that she's built this all on her own, she often finds that she doesn't have enough time to do it all by herself. Her advice for anybody wanting to build a similar platform is to start with relationships in the industry you want to work in. And from there, create a database of contacts and emails. She also recommends building a sequence of emails upfront so that it can be as automated as possible from the beginning. It will save you time and energy later on.

Last but not least, Janelle is happy to report that she is no longer living the Groundhog Day lifestyle. Each day is unique, keeps her on her toes as she expands her site and learns more. Despite the occasional challenges, she enjoys having a flexible schedule that allows her to drop off and pick up her son from school. She's also received lots of positive feedback about the project. In the future, she plans to expand beyond Australia and go worldwide.

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So on this topic of continuing education, I think I touched on this briefly in the episode. You know, there's a couple of different perspectives to this because one perspective is, well, continuing education, you know, it's essentially like furthering the industry, whether it's the architecture industry or any other industry that requires its members, you know, to maintain a certain number of credits and so on. You gotta stay current, you gotta update your skills, you know, make sure you're relevant as you go forward. So, you know, philosophically speaking, that sounds good, right? But it can also be like a lot of things that sound good in principle, but then when they go to actually be applied, you end up having unintended consequences.

And one of those consequences is, you know, this industry is huge. And a lot of professions require these credits simply to kind of protect themselves or to enrich themselves or keep the salaries of their members artificially high or to bring in more dues for themselves or, you know, whatever it is. So some parts of it, I think you could argue, are kind of a racket, you know, it's not necessarily all about helping people keep their skills current. So that's a comment about the industry, not about Janelle's project, because, you know, the other reality is, this is a huge market and it's not going anywhere. Like professions all over the world require their members to do this kind of thing.

And so what she's doing is essentially making it easier for them. There are so many different providers of continuing education or continued professional development, whatever it's called there. There's so many different providers, classes, seminars, different things you can do to maintain your hours, that it can be hard to wade through the sea of offerings and decide what's best for you. So she's providing this portal. So she is making it easy for both the people providing the services and the people who need to get their credits.

Now, also I wanted to mention, if you're looking for a side hustle idea, if you're associated with one of these industries that requires it, or if you have some familiarity with it, if you can find a way to offer certified continuing education credits, there's money to be made. Especially if you can do it in a way that's easier or more attractive than a traditional methods where people take days and days to go sit in a conference room. If you can find another way to do it that's approved and you can find a way to reach the members, you know, who can benefit from it and get those credits, can definitely be a big opportunity. So I will leave you with that today. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.

Our show notes for this episode are at sidehustleschool.com/798. We're gonna link up Janelle's site. If you happen to be in Australia and need some professional development, well, now you know where to go. And wherever you are in the world, thank you so much for listening. I really do feel honored and privileged to be able to bring you these stories every day.

Tomorrow is our weekly recap and we've got a whole new set of stories next week, beginning with episode 800. That's right, 800 coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Sidehustleschool. [Music]

from the Onward Project.