Ready to hear how Catie Harris, a nurse turned entrepreneur, built a thriving business? 🚀 In this episode, we dive into her inspiring journey, showing how a heart-led approach = BIG success. 💖
From conquering the fear of selling to crushing it in niche markets like legal nurse consulting and IV hydration, Caitie shares the secrets to growing a business by truly listening to your audience. 🎯
If you’re ready to make your entrepreneurial dreams a reality, this is the episode you don’t want to miss! 💥
🎧Tune in now to unlock the insights you need to start your own journey.
Key Takeaways from this Episode
- The essence of a heart-led business in nursing
- Overcoming the fear of selling through education
- Transitioning from hospital work to entrepreneurship
- The role of nursepreneurs in reshaping healthcare services
- Success stories from the nursepreneur community
- The impact of COVID-19 on nurses transitioning to business owners
- Legal nurse consulting and other niche business opportunities for nurses
- The psychological shift from employee to entrepreneur
About the Guest
Catie Harris, PhD, MBA, RN, is the founder and CEO of NursePreneurs, empowering nurses to become successful entrepreneurs. With over 20 years of healthcare experience, she combines nursing and business expertise to help nurses launch and scale profitable ventures, inspiring them to transform their careers and impact healthcare.
Additional Resources
- Website: www.nursepreneurs.com
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/catieharris99
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/nursepreneurs1
- Instagram: instagram.com/nurse_preneur
- Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/nursepreneurs
- TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@nursepreneurs
- Podcast: www.nursepreneurs.com/podcast
- Email: hello@nursepreneurs.com
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Explore the Dialogue’s Treasures: Unearth the insights within! Delve into the profound wisdom woven throughout our conversation.
Speaker 2: 0:01
Welcome to the Heart Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let’s go. Let your heart guide your business journey.
Tom: 0:38
Are you ready to take a catwalk with Catie Harris? She’s a dedicated doyen, a nursing noble woman, and the CEO of the Vivacious Venture Nursepreneurs. We’ll dive into her tale, a compelling cocktail of critical care, clever entrepreneurial, cuts, and courage. So tighten up your seatbelts for an enthralling journey in from the ICU to CEO. Expect nothing less than nursepreneurs wisdom in high doses. Without the need for health care insurance right here on the heart led business show, Catie, welcome to the show. Thank you
Catie: 1:17
so much. That was the most amazing intro I’ve ever gotten.
Tom: 1:21
You’re very welcome. And thank you for being here. The first question I always like to ask is to set the tone for the show is what’s your definition of a heart led business?
Catie: 1:32
So for me, a heart led business would really, it really gets to the roots of why we went into nursing in the first place, which is to care about other people, to help them, to, achieve their goals and to educate them. And I think when nurses. Bring that into business and don’t leave it behind. They end up doing extremely well. And it was something that I pulled over into my business as well. And part of it was because I was terrified selling. So I’m like, oh, I’m just going to focus on educating people, but, and. That ends up being the right answer, right? That was my instinct was to educate people and help them to make the choices, even if the choice isn’t to work with me, right? Maybe the choice is to work with somebody else. And I think that goes a long way. So when your motivation is to really help people to make the best choices sometimes it’s you, sometimes it’s not. To me, that is really the heart led business.
Tom: 2:30
I love that. That goes, that’s speaking my language as well. I always believe that in sales, we are problem solvers and it’s our duty obligation to find a solution for the prospect, whether that is with us or with somebody else. So yeah, we’re completely in sync on that. That’s awesome. So tell us a little bit about your business and what inspired you to start a heartled business?
Catie: 2:52
So I worked in the hospital for many years and I honestly, I love the hospital. It was my family away from family. We were very tight knit group. I’ve known and watched, my residents grow up from medical school through, I was going to say adulthood, but you’re already adult through attending is the word I was looking for through attending. And it was a lot of fun. I had a great time with them, but the problem was for me is that I kept hitting a sealing that it couldn’t get past. So as a ggerr, you can only do so much. And then it’s just well, I want to do more. So the next level is to become a nurse practitioner get your Masters and go to the next level. So that’s what I did, and I worked with the neurosurgeons and it took me about five years to really hit that, ceiling again, where I was just okay, I got it. I understand it. I do all the things with the surgeons. I go to the OR with them. I’m in the ICU. I do outpatient, I can do the whole gamut, but I can’t bill and I can’t keep moving forward. Like I’m, I was stuck and it was really frustrating. And basically because in the hospital setting, you always have to report. In a teaching setting anyway to the intern and the intern is a guy that just came out of med school that has no idea or gal for that matter, that has no idea what’s going on. Right. And I remember one morning coming in or I don’t know, I was reporting out to the intern, letting him know how my day went and stuff. And I told him some things that I did for a patient and he says to me, well, that’s not how we do things here. And I was like you see that manual over there that says how we do things? I wrote that manual. That’s what you’re looking at, right? And it was, that really set me off. And it was like a turning point for me because I was like, I don’t belong here anymore. I’ve outgrown this space and they’re not allowing me to grow anymore. And I’m the type of person that always has to be doing something new. I can’t do repetitive things that, actually teaching not a great field for me either because I, a new class comes in and it’s like, you, I already said this I said it five years ago, you weren’t here, but, so I have to constantly be growing. So really looked out and said, what is it that I could do? And one of the first things I did was start talking to other nurses. who were running businesses and that was the foundation of my podcast, which is the nurse for nurse podcast. And that really kickstarted the business was talking to them about what they were doing. And really inspiring.
Tom: 5:10
And so how did that translate into businesses that you now?
Catie: 5:15
Right. So in talking to the nurses, I, know every person that I interviewed, I was like, oh, I want to do that. I want to do that. I want to do that. Had a Facebook group at the time to just sharing the podcast and the nurses would say the same thing. How do I do that? How do I do that? So I started to say, okay, well, this person has started this business. They’re very successful. They’re doing, they make it look easy. Let’s do this for the nurses because that’s what they want. So one of the first ones we started was how to become a legal nurse consultant. So step by step course on how to do that. The, one of our most popular courses for years has been IV hydration. So, the nurses. can relate to it. They put IBs in all the time they hang And they’re like, well, I can do this. And it was something that they were very interested in. So I worked with one of the podcast guests to create a course to offer that to the nurses to help them get started in their business.
Tom: 6:05
That’s great. How long ago was that?
Catie: 6:07
Well I started, nurse printers in 2016. It took me a couple of years to figure out what the hell I was doing, so it didn’t really take off until about 2019. And ironically, 2020 was the year that we got like bombarded with nurses that were like, get me out of the hospital.
Tom: 6:23
So that’s really interesting. So you’re really, if I can paraphrase teaching nurses how to get out of the clinical setting and start their own business so that they have the freedom and have their own. Trajectory of where they want to take things. And so that you took that ceiling that you were running into, you broke through it, and now you’re showing others to how to break through that ceiling as well. So I get that?
Catie: 6:47
Yeah, exactly. And obviously not everybody wants to break through the ceiling. Some people are perfectly happy there and that’s great. But for those that do, instead of leaving the profession, which is what happens, people get so frustrated and they go, I don’t know, become a, Barista at Starbucks and that has happened, but I’m like, you have 20 years of experience, right? You can’t just leave the profession. There’s so much that you can do and it doesn’t have to be an IV hydration clinic. There’s a million things that you could apply to the business realm and really help people at scale.
Tom: 7:16
What was legal nurse? So what was that?
Catie: 7:18
So, legal nurse consulting, basically we work with, lawyers who are working on malpractice, or suits or, healthcare related suits because the lawyers don’t understand medical speak and they’ll get these charts and they’re, I’ve done it and I literally got, this was like 10 years ago, but they sent me like 15 massive boxes of documentation and I’m like, holy crap, what did I, hate this job. And you have to go through it and explore it. it paraphrases everything for the lawyer and explain whether this was a deviation from standard of care. So nurses that are very detailed oriented, and there’s a lot of them. This is perfect. It’s an at home job. You just, the hard part is obviously getting in with the lawyers, and making yourself, positioning yourself as a professional who can get the job done basically.
Tom: 8:01
Expert in the field.
Catie: 8:02
And an expert. Yeah.
Tom: 8:03
That’s fascinating. And it’s such a, business. It continues to surprise me over and over again, the more I talk to people and how many different niche type businesses there are out there. I think it’s really up to anybody’s imagination on what type of business that they can ultimately go into. And then it’s
Catie: 8:23
leading,
Tom: 8:24
what that problem is and then solving that problem for.
Catie: 8:27
Yeah, one of early podcast episodes that I did, and I was really blown away by this woman, but, she had a placenta encapsulation business and I was like I don’t know what you’re saying. Like, I don’t understand what you’re saying. So basically, she goes, and works with mothers who are about to give birth and when they do give birth, she takes the placenta and she turns it into pills so that they can take those pills. And there’s some, there’s a lot of science behind, ingesting the placenta after birth and the health benefits that are related with it. But I was like, who? Who, who thought of this? Like, it’s crazy. But she was doing really well. And apparently there’s a whole like, world of placenta encapsulation people and it gets popularized by celebrities who do it. And they’ve been doing it in China for centuries.
Tom: 9:11
Just fascinating. It reminds me of a TV show where they actually like sauteed the placenta.
Catie: 9:16
That’s getting a bit much. The pill I can handle, I don’t know if I could take a chomp out of it.
Tom: 9:20
That’s interesting. That’s cool. So let’s shift gears a little bit and let’s talk about business side and how you’ve been able to balance the being a heart led business and really thinking about people first, but putting people before profits and actually making a profit. you know how that’s evolved from you.
Catie: 9:40
Yeah. That’s, so the first course that I put together, it was, a basic six module, how to start your business type of course. And it literally took me two years to put the website together, put a webinar together and finally run out of things to do. So it was just look, you either put the webinar or one or move on to something else, right? Like it’s just, we’re not going anywhere anymore. So I launched the webinar and, Facebook ads have all this stuff. And I had like 300 people sign up for it. It was really great. Maybe, 50 people showed up and five people bought the program. It was like a four 99 program. And one, I was devastated Cause I thought that was terrible because everybody else was doing six figure webinar launches and I made, or so I thought. And I, here I made a couple thousand dollars,
Tom: 10:24
On your first webinar.
Catie: 10:26
My first webinar and later to find out that if I had scaled that it would have been great. But my first instinct. After those people bought was sheer terror. And all I wanted to do was give them their money back and just be like, oh I’ll just do it for free. And, it was part of that, imposter syndrome and the fear of taking people’s money. And was I good enough? So, It’s a roundabout way of answering your question, but the heart led aspect of that was, I felt like I should do it for free for them. And then coming going through more coaching and whatnot, getting out of that mindset, and showing that the only way that I could help people is if they did pay me, for that expertise. Like I could have just done that and then stopped, but then I wouldn’t have nursepreneurs, right? Like, It’s not a hobby that you want to get into for 10 years. It is something that needs to support you and your family. And it’s also, you do a disservice to people when you give them things for free, because now they no longer value it nearly as much as if they paid for it. So, you have to value what you’re giving to that person in exchange for money and it’s just something that you have to wrap your mind around.
Tom: 11:39
What was that mental shift like for you? Like how long did it take? Like what advice you got and all that good
Catie: 11:46
Definitely hard and I have to always remind myself that even if I’m pushing a big package on them, it’s because I know it’s going to help them and you really have to believe in what you’re offering. In order to do that, right, I don’t want to push big packages on people and just hope and pray that it maybe it works. I really want to know that what we’re offering, that I can stand behind and be proud. And then it becomes. And I’ve been on the reverse end of that, where somebody’s selling me. I had one guy who was selling me a big package and I was like, no, and he pushed and he pushed and I finally gave in and I was like, okay, fine. And it turned out to be one of the best programs that I had gone through. And of course I’ve been burnt the other way, but, this, they were so compelling and they were so proud of what they were doing that he pushed really hard and it was for my benefit.
Tom: 12:33
Did it feel like it was a really big push or how did that?
Catie: 12:37
Every objection I came up with, he was like, okay, but what are you going to do? I, you’ve spent an hour on the phone with me. You need marketing. This has to get done. If you hang up and walk away from this, what is your plan? And I’m like, I don’t have a plan, my plan is to hope and pray.
Tom: 12:52
Oh, no, that’s good. And did it feel like you were being pushed?
Catie: 12:56
It felt like I was being pushed, but it wasn’t an icky push. It wasn’t, because it really came across that he believed in what his team was doing. And just case study after case study and, call this person, here’s this guy’s website, this guy’s website, they had a lot of, they could back up a lot of it some.
Tom: 13:14
And it’s probably coming from his heart as well that he really knew that he could help you out and felt like you needed the help.
Catie: 13:22
Right. And that came through. That came through.
Tom: 13:24
That’s awesome. So speaking of transitions, how was the transition going from the hospital setting into working for yourself? Cause I know a lot of listeners out there are wantrepreneurs, so they want to do a business, but are afraid to cut the ties with the nine to five.
Catie: 13:43
Yeah. Well, yeah, for us, it’s a seven to seven. And the, problem with nurses is that they like to take on extra jobs, but they never let go of any jobs. So, I was, I had that problem too. I always had at least five jobs at any given time. Well I can spend the other four days, working on a business. However, it never works out that way because they have four or five jobs. They end up working five, 12 hour shifts a week, and they’re exhausted. Right. And then they’re like, oh, I’m going to do my business on the weekends. And it’s just yes, something’s got to go. Something that is not going to work out. And so, I’ve had a lot of conversations with nurses like that. But it’s definitely something that they can start on the side, start small, but they’re eventually going to come to a point and I had this with one of my students where she was working as an O. R. manager, and that’s a tough job because on paper it’s 40 hours a week, but in reality it’s like 60 hours a week. And it overflows into the weekends and stuff. And she had started an Ivy hydration business. And it started out with. Like one Thursday nights from, four to eight, she was doing IV hydration at a gym and that was a side gig, but they wanted her more, but the OR wasn’t allowing it. So, she had to decide what to do. Like, if she wanted to expand the business, she had to cut back on the hours. hospital, so she ended up going per diem, and it hurt. It really hurt for a while because it was a financial drop. It was a loss of predictable income, but it’s what catapulted her into, now she’s got multiple clinics and is doing extremely well. It’s a leap of faith in yourself.
Tom: 15:18
And so how was that for you personally doing the transition?
Catie: 15:22
The transition. Yeah, it is. It’s a huge leap of faith. And it took a long time because a lot of the stuff with nurse for nurse, I have a team for, and, but I left the hospital, I would say 2020 was the last day. So during COVID, I went into the OR and I’m like, I’m done. I just, I can’t, it felt like. I couldn’t really, be successful until I left that job. Cause it felt like if I was holding onto that hospital job, that somehow, I wasn’t successful at nursepreneurs. Right. So that was a, it was a big deal, to let that go. And, I did and it worked out in my favor, but it was terrifying and it was also one of those things where you’re like, Oh my God, I need to cancel every subscription that I have now and buckle down and we’ll eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But, fortunately that, that didn’t come to pass.
Tom: 16:12
I think, it’s that fortitude as well, just knowing that there isn’t a safety net, and you need to make it happen, and you’re confident in your abilities. I think that propels people so much more. Then they realize it does.
Catie: 16:28
Yeah, but, and over the years too, I always lived up or down to my income, right? So, when income’s good, we’re going on nice vacations, we’re doing this and that, and I’m buying crap on Amazon that I don’t need and furniture and when it, the income’s down, you just, you don’t buy that stuff.
Tom: 16:44
Exactly. Now, what do you like most about running your business?
Catie: 16:49
I started a whole peptide program and yeah, I really dove into that field, like full throttle and really sharing that with our nurses and, really looking forward to the wellness industry exploding in regenerative medicine. So bringing those aspects into what we’re doing at nurse printers and helping, pull the nurses along that pathway is so that they’re offering like the newest, latest, greatest medical technology that’s really helping people. So, and just making sure that they know about it, they’re aware of what’s going on in the industry and how they can incorporate it into their already existing businesses or, that’s a side hustle. They can certainly do one service line and do it mobile for a while.
Tom: 17:31
Oh, nice. That’s cool. And on the flip side of that, what is the, biggest challenge that in your business that you don’t particularly like to?
Catie: 17:40
Why I hate because I’m a visionary type personality. I don’t like detail. I don’t like being bogged down with it. the operations cause we do have a team and it makes me crazy. Cause you know, to me, It’s like, I’ll give you an outcome and just Get it done. And not everybody operates that way. They want step by step instructions, or it’s got to be written down and SOP somewhere. And I’m like, Oh my God, like, just you should know what I’m thinking. Just read my mind. What’s the problem? So, but that’s how I operate. I can’t tolerate people micromanaging me or saying you have to do it this way. It’s like, what is the outcome? And then leave me alone and I’ll come back with the outcome done. And don’t worry about how I got done. I’ll deal with that. But really realizing that a lot of people don’t operate that
Tom: 18:29
definitely as a visionary and a CEO of a company where you’re setting kind of the strategy and the bigger picture, that’s, it’s hard to flip to that detail levels. So do you have somebody on your team that compliments what you do?
Catie: 18:45
I do. Oh, yeah. And she’s amazing. So she manages, our, we have a lot of freelancers or contract workers. And to me, that’s like the bane of my existence of is, chasing people around to make sure that they’ve done what they’re supposed to do when they said they would do it. At the cost that they said they would do it and then holding them accountable. So she, she does that. That was like one of my first, Big hires, please get this off my plate.
Tom: 19:06
That’s awesome. How did it feel when, once she took over and you had that time back?
Catie: 19:13
It’s amazing Cause now I can be like, well, what, can you just fix this? Yeah, I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry about it. I’m like, oh, thank you.
Tom: 19:19
That’s awesome. Yeah. I have somebody like that on my team as well and it’s so invaluable to have.
Catie: 19:25
Yeah, you got to find a good one.
Tom: 19:27
Just like anything, you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find.
Catie: 19:31
Yeah, it’s true.
Tom: 19:32
Yeah. So what type of advice would you give to somebody that is wanting to start a business or. Expand their heart led business and, leave a corporate job.
Catie: 19:43
Yeah, I always tell my nurses that courage is being afraid and doing it anyway. And if they have found a problem that needs to be solved and there’s a lot of problems out there that to really dig into it. So what is it, what is the problem? And from a heart led business standpoint, really diving into from the client’s perspective or the potential client’s perspective what it means to them what it would mean if it didn’t exist. Really just basic business research, right? Interviewing people, finding out what their desires are, what their concerns are and what questions they have about it. And then really focus on providing a solution that addresses those those elements of the question of the problem.
Tom: 20:27
Oh that’s great advice because I think a lot of people go into business solving their own problem, which is I want to get rid of my nine to five or seven to seven, and that isn’t solving somebody else’s problem. It’s solving internal problem. And then the business doesn’t, isn’t successful because they don’t know what the consumer ultimately wants.
Catie: 20:47
Right. Because when you do start a business, you’re no longer the client, right? You can’t. See from the client’s perspective. So you really have to, and I made that mistake early on because I’m like, Oh, I know what nurses want. They want this. But that’s where the value of the Facebook group came in because, while I was pushing basic business education, they were like, no, we want step by step, like how do I set up this IV hydration business? I’m like, okay, fine. So that’s when I partnered with the IV hydration coach to bring that. And that really exploded the business because I actually listened to what they were saying. And, so that Facebook group is invaluable information for us. They talk about what they want all the time in there and it’s so helpful.
Tom: 21:27
And as an innovator yourself, like that’s like, yes, that’s gold, right? What your next 10 projects are.
Catie: 21:35
Exactly.
Tom: 21:36
Well, Catie, this has been just fascinating to hear your story, hear the story of some of your students as well. How can people learn more about nursepreneurs and things that you’re doing?
Catie: 21:45
Well, they can go to nurseprinters. com, which is our website. We have lots of free information on our website. We offer courses, workshops and marketing platform solutions. So they can go there. If they get on our email list, we do a weekly webinar that focuses on a different service line or business line or just marketing in general. And of course we have our podcast, the nursepreneurs podcast, which focuses on nurses in business and marketing techniques.
Tom: 22:15
Well, that that’s great. We will link all that up into the show notes as well. So that makes it easy for the listeners or viewers to check that all out. So Catie, thank you so much for being on the show today and sharing your wisdom. I certainly appreciate it. I know our listeners appreciate it as well.
Catie: 22:32
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Tom: 22:34
And thank you listeners for watching or listening to the show today, depending on what platform you’re on and make sure you’re checking out everything that Catie’s doing. And like I said, we’re going to show, put that all in the show notes as well. And if you could do me a solid favor, if you found this, episode helpful you could share it with a friend or a colleague that could use some of the advice that Catie has shared today. And until next time, lead with your heart.
Speaker: 23:00
You’ve been listening to the Heart Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.
