Mark Pardue
700 Forest Mills Rd
Chesapeake, VA 23322
mark
History
In the 1980’s state governments were adding continued education requirements for professionals to renew their state licenses. This included Real Estate Brokers/Salesman, among others. My father owned a real estate school and added a state-approved continued education course to his school curriculum. Every two years, real estate professionals would take the course (with its updated laws and trending topics) and when they completed the course it would fulfill the state’s continued ed requirements.
n the 1990’s, online continued ed courses delivered through websites was approved and nation-wide schools would send licensees postcards every two years with their course and website info. One year, my father and I both took continued ed online courses - he took the course from one of the more prominent schools while I watched him go through the material and final exam, and then I took a different course from another one of the more prominent schools while he watched me go through the material and final exam. We were NOT impressed with the academic rigor of material, the websites layouts, or the process of setting up an account and password on the schools’ servers.
Dad asked me to put together a real good online course using his material and set it up on one of my websites I used for my consulting business.
What was Pass then Pay
One of the things we didn’t like was paying for a ‘pig in a poke’ before you could even see what the website and course were about. I thought that it was totally unnecessary to set up a server, have people set up accounts with passwords (that they could forget), and pay first. So, I invented Pass then Pay.
No account required, no payment until the end. Take the course for free. When you pass the final exam, if you want me to send your results to the state real estate board then pay for the course with your credit card.
Why was it an Industry Changer
I set the price at half of what the other schools were charging (after all, I had a lot less setup work and maintenance with my approach). After getting all of the material together and getting official state approval I sent out the marketing postcards. We had tons of students almost immediately. The rest of the schools offering online courses soon cut their prices in half and added a slightly more expensive “Pass then Pay’ option for their courses also, but by then it had very little impact on our volume of students because word-of-mouth had already begun spreading the accolades about this great course and easy website.
Implementation Technology
Copyright 2014 Mark Pardue. All rights reserved.
Mark Pardue
700 Forest Mills Rd
Chesapeake, VA 23322
mark