Monetizing Your Expertise: A Conversation With Kathy Weidner

John Corcoran: 10:39 Yeah. And you found that it was something that was of a lot of value to the practitioners out there who are struggling, you know, to go into it because they care about alleviating pain. And then it turns out that they have to also be an expert at billing and coding and dealing with insurance and all that kind of stuff. Kathy Weidner: 10:57 They do not learn that in school. That is for sure. Frankly, which is, you know, the reason my business has flourished over these years is just because we fill a need. But the real boost came after about 18 months in Washington, DC. It became very clear I did not want to raise my son there, and the government again asked my husband to take the position, one of the regional headquarters, which is Denver, and we moved to Denver. And at the last presentation that I did, a doctor came up to me afterward and said, you’re an amazing presenter. Obviously, you know what you’re doing. I have a company. We do consulting. I’d love to have you join us if anything changes. I said, well, as a matter of fact, I’m about to move and so be it. I became a consultant with a national consulting company, working with doctors of all types, multidisciplinary practices. ET cetera. And it was during the six years there that I really honed my ability to take what I knew and turn it into educational material in an online learning management system, which is what I did for this guy. John Corcoran: 12:04 And so but that’s a whole new skill set, right? Like creating knowledge and expertise and then getting people to pay for access to that knowledge and expertise in a learning management system or a university or whatever. I’ve seen so many people, so many professionals that want to make that shift. Yeah. And struggle with it. So talk a little bit about how you went about it. You know, even just the nuts and bolts of like, how do I capture my knowledge and expertise? How do I put it into a website or a medium where people can access it? I mean, all of those things probably were things you struggled with, I imagine, in the early days. Kathy Weidner: 12:43 Well, and when I worked at that consulting company, I sort of naturally had the talent of creating material. And like, you had a need, you had, you know, make once use many kinds of a mentality. And so several of the contracted coaches because we also coach the doctors and I was on the sales team as well, and we would develop the material because we didn’t want to have to keep saying it over and over again, you know. And so slowly but surely, they had a website and all of that happened. And after six years, I just sort of felt like I could do it better, stronger, faster myself. And I made the decision that I was going to leave. I left on very, very good terms. I was very authentic about what I was doing and etc. and then I think it was probably a lot of bravado, to be honest with you, because I just started with, hey, I know how to, I have this whole list of doctors. I’m going to just do an online presentation. Well, then someone said, why don’t you record it? Or why don’t you press it into a CD? If you can imagine a CD. John Corcoran: 13:48 This is the mid 2000. Kathy Weidner: 13:50 This would have been. Yeah 2000. Well 15 years. So yeah. 2008 probably was about the time. Yeah. And so during those days, I just found out how to absolutely press these CDs. And then when I was out speaking, I would sell them for like $25 because I didn’t know any better. And then all of a sudden someone said, well, why don’t you just put these into a website? And so we built from scratch a website that had all of the material, you know, grouped into courses and all, not even using a platform at that point. And we bumped and bruised our way through all of that. Until now, we’ve advanced through two other learning management systems to get where we are now. But it is a gift to be able to know what it is. And then I hired two retired educational design specialists who had worked for L.L. Bean, doing all of their training materials, and they were older ladies that just wanted some side work and so they would help us design everything. Hey, you got too many words here. We need a picture or, you know, those kinds of things. So it was truly having the right village around me. John Corcoran: 15:07 And so now you have a lot of your expertise and it is gathered up into a learning management system, in which people can pay a fee or a subscription fee in order to get access to that. Where do you draw the line now between what you go out and you talk about freely? And where do you draw the line and say, well, if you want more of that, then that’s what my subscription is for. How do you just figure out what the line is? Kathy Weidner: 15:38 John? It’s a very fine line, truly. And I find that I live by the mantra you can never give yourself poor. And so from my perspective and all the a lot of the time when I’m out speaking, it’s for continuing education credit. So it does have to have meat on the bone. It can’t be fluff. But a great example is just literally yesterday. We put on our own live webinar on the topic of billing, as it turned out, and it was billing 101 a primer for, you know, CAS and DCS and over 500 people registered. And we had 300 and some odd lives. And, you know, it certainly could have taught that same bit of information in 12 hours to go deeper. So there’s a surface overview. I want to say there’s probably very much a marketing angle to that where you say just enough to make them go, wait a minute, I don’t do it that way and then want to ask for more. Our company also, you know, does one on one coaching, we also do consultations. It’s not an analysis service. It’s not just the. John Corcoran: 16:48 It’s not just to get knowledge. Yeah. No because you probably developed that over time, figuring out that we need to have other people that can do more for you or be done with you? Model? Kathy Weidner: 16:59 Yeah, totally. And the problem also is, frankly, like most of us, I would imagine I want someone to tell me what to do. I don’t want to go read or learn about it myself. So that is a true downside of what this is. Now we built it. So actually we have a certification in there that people can work toward and, you know, have the certification. Most assistants in our industry don’t have any way to have, you know, letters after their name or something. So, you know, we’ve tried to come at it from that angle where it is truly education. And then there’s a live help desk. There’s an email help desk. They have us right at their fingertips. And everyone who works for me in this capacity is a certified specialist. So they’re going to get the right answer. One of our core values is to insist on accuracy because it is technical. John Corcoran: 17:48 And is one of the challenges for you, is keeping up with the changes, or is there enough material in there that you don’t feel like you have to constantly be updating it? Kathy Weidner: 17:57 To be honest, We’re on top of it between all of us, and we’re pretty well connected. In the industry and in healthcare in general. We also hold certifications ourselves that we have to go get continuing ed for. So when we do that, it might learn of something coming. You know, some change with lately it’s all about Medicare Advantage plans and we know what’s in the library enough to say, okay, like this publication from Medicare that we use as a resource. Once a quarter, people go through all of them and they look at them to see if they’ve been updated so that we just swap it out. So I do have a development team that helps me with that kind of stuff for sure. John Corcoran: 18:39 Yeah, yeah. Let’s talk, let’s shift to talking about entrepreneurs organization because we connected through Entrepreneurs organization. And I know that you have been very involved with that community. First of all, what, you know, drew you to the Entrepreneurs’ Organization in the first place. Kathy Weidner: 18:56 So the same doctor that I went to work for and helped build their learning management system, that consultant who saw me speak. He was a member, I believe, in Florida. And I was speaking in Florida at an event at the Doral, and I hollered and said, hey, I’m going to be here. Do you want to have lunch? He came over to have lunch with me, and I would say the best word to describe what I was doing was whining about how lonely it is. You know, I’ve been in business at that point by myself, probably, I guess, let’s say eight years ago, probably six years. Seven years. And I was saying, look, you know, I’m a woman. I’m an older woman. My friends don’t understand why I travel so much. I am frustrated. He goes, you need to go look at this thing called EO. And really an impetus for me was I wanted a community, but I also wanted to be around more women like me. Women who in fact have to be the boss, run a business and whatnot. I came right home. My husband and I got on a call with who was the membership chair at that time, and I was like, boom, this is what I want to do. And I was off to the races. My entry point was like three months later, I think. And then, you know, because I traveled so much, I kind of didn’t tap into everything I could in the beginning. The first several years, I was missing events and all. I had a forum, of course, which I loved, but I didn’t even partake in all of it. And then Covid hit, and all of the things I was doing out there in the world were canceled or moved to virtual. So all of a sudden I had more time and I was tapped on the shoulder and they asked if I would like to help with membership. And I have a membership based company, so it made sense to me. John Corcoran: 20:45 And you mentioned your husband was on that call. Is he in the business? Kathy Weidner: 20:49 He is. And he is. Well, he’s not on the paperwork. I do deem him as my partner in everything we do. At that time, he was much more involved. He’s since kind of semi-retired and kind of covers fractional CFO duties for us. But at that time it was a big expense to consider EO and a big time commitment. What I thought was a time commitment at that point. And so I really wanted to just have him hear what I was hearing so that as I made this decision, I was doing it kind of as a family, so that, yeah, he was he was all in which in my years as membership chair, I always tried to do that myself was to, you know, it’s one of the questions on a, on a local application is does your team and your family support you, you know, joining and doing this? Because I do think it’s really important. John Corcoran: 21:42 Oh, that’s a question I haven’t asked. As membership chair of our chapter, I need to incorporate that into our process. Thank you. Kathy Weidner: 21:49 Yeah it’s good. John Corcoran: 21:50 And so you went from being active in your forum to being involved on the board level, to being involved on the regional level. Talk a little bit about the impact that that has had going through that journey and kind of elevating and getting more involved on a regional level. Kathy Weidner: 22:11 Well, I think the number one foundational piece for me is that I get so much more out of everything. First of all, EO absolutely invests so much money, time and energy in developing its leaders and everything that I would learn in the portfolio that I’m attached to, which is the growth portfolio, applied exactly to my business, literally. I was at a meeting this morning and they were talking about, you know, this next year, it’s about the leaders of next year. And EO has a vision for 2030. And the comment that was made was, we don’t really have to get more members every year than we’re doing now. What we have to do is stop. Stop having better retention and numbers. John Corcoran: 23:03 Churn rate. Kathy Weidner: 23:04 Lower the churn rate. John Corcoran: 23:05 Which is probably something that you’re, you’re quite knowledgeable in. Kathy Weidner: 23:08 Well, that’s the whole point right. So it hit me when I, you know, and literally I had a sales meeting with my team a little earlier today and I said, let’s look at this from the standpoint of our new people coming in or here. And you can see that, you know, it is doing what it’s doing. But as with most things, if you stop the churn, you grow anyway. And that’s a little obvious thing, probably. But then the way I heard it that day, it hit me and I brought it back to my team. But I think not only the leadership training, the fact that it’s attached to membership, but the number one thing for me has been expanding. I’m going to say my network, but not for networking. Like I have more people that I know who I feel like including you, John. I could pull up the phone and go, I have this problem. You seem to know about this. Can you help me? And anywhere in the world. And so at the regional level, in my role, we’re connected to a global portfolio. So there’s one of me as a growth director in all ten regions. So I have ten counterparts around the world. They’ve become some of my closest friends because we’re all doing the same thing. We’re at these same meetings together. And in the short term, I guess it kind of fulfilled what I was looking for way back when was having better connection, better people, where everything else about EO is gravy for me because of the connections and the connection from my heart that I have with all these people, and in my purview over what I do in the region. I feel so close to really all the people that I work with. And, you know, I was just at a meeting all last week in Puerto Vallarta for all the US regions and, you know, hugs. And how are you doing and how’s it been? And that’s just I, I crave that as a human. And this is the place that I got it many years ago when I was super active in church. I kind of got that from church, not so much anymore. And so it sort of filled the need for that for me. I don’t have a big family, so I don’t have that. And of course then all the gravy that comes with it, all the learning, all of the advantages, all of the experience shared, all of the activities, all the travel. It’s all gravy. John Corcoran: 25:28 It’s all that community that you were craving to solve the loneliness on that call that you described years earlier. And I feel the same way. You know, sometimes it blows my mind a little bit to think that you’ve got these connections with people that are dispersed all around the globe, living in different communities, different cities all over the globe. But you feel like you have this really strong connection with people that you don’t see in person all that frequently, but, you know, you feel like a really strong connection with them. Kathy Weidner: 25:55 It’s really because we’re the same person, we’re entrepreneurs, and I think that common bond really binds us together. That’s why the forum works as well as it does. Right? Because you’re talking to people who’ve been there and done that, and they have experiences to share with you. And you’re not truly alone. John Corcoran: 26:14 Yeah, yeah. And on that note, we’ll wrap up. Kathy, this has been great. I really loved hearing your stories and everything. Where can people go to check you out and learn more about you? Kathy Weidner: 26:24 Our website is www.kmcuniversity.com, I’m on WhatsApp as well. Of course all over the place you can always find me but that our website is probably the best place. John Corcoran: 26:37 Excellent Kathy, thanks so much. Kathy Weidner: 26:39 My pleasure. Outro: 26:43 Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.