This as-told-to essay is predicated on a dialog with Sarah Michelle Boes, the founding father of Sarah Michelle NP Opinions (SMNP), which was acquired by Blueprint Check Prep in 2022. Boes at present serves because the chief nursing officer for Blueprint Check Prep and hosts the podcast Turning into A Stress-Free Nurse Practitioner. She earned her BSN from the College of Kentucky, her MSN in Nursing Training from Western Governors College and her post-MSN-FNP from Japanese Kentucky College. The piece has been edited and condensed for readability.
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Sarah Michelle Boes
I grew up in rural Japanese Kentucky, and I all the time had this ardour for being a instructor. I had my coronary heart set on it. However my dad and mom are lecturers, and so they’re like, “Completely not. You’ll be able to’t try this.” There are lots of politics and forms inside instructing. It is much more than simply being an educator. Then, once I was an adolescent, my grandmother was recognized with stage 4 lung most cancers. With out nice entry to premium healthcare in our space, we needed to journey two hours to Lexington to get that analysis and obtain a care plan that she might take again house. That was over the summer time, so I went together with her, and that was my first introduction to nursing on the Markey Most cancers Middle.
These nurses have been unbelievable. I really feel like oncology nurses, typically, are type of angels. Not solely did they care for her, however in addition they took care of me. It was only a nice expertise. So, figuring out that I wasn’t going to have the ability to be a instructor, I used to be like, Properly, nursing — I really feel like I might get one thing performed. And there can be a instructing facet as a result of there’s lots of affected person training, however I would additionally get a human reference to folks, which I thrive off of. So it was a no brainer, and I attended the College of Kentucky, which assured me admission to their program — and that is a extremely massive deal.
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I grappled with nervousness throughout nursing faculty. A category was infamous for hunting down folks, and everybody dreaded taking it. I had a ton of hysteria in that class specifically, a lot in order that my teacher was like, “I do not assume nursing is for you. You are too anxious to be a protected nurse.” I had to decide on to remain. The grading scale in nursing can also be very totally different: In most packages, something lower than a 76 means you fail — and on the primary examination in that class, I received a 74. I actually failed the primary examination by one query. So I had to determine the way to deal with my nervousness, to consider the instruments I might use.
So, I began to determine the way to handle that class and my nervousness. Then, I started tutoring, finally quitting my full-time job as a supervisor to assist college students full-time. I taught them the abilities that had helped me sort out that difficult class differently, and my nervousness did not decide up once more till I used to be a nurse practitioner — as a result of it had been a very long time since I would taken a high-stakes examination. There was nobody to show to get perspective as a result of I used to be the primary nurse in my household, and I did not know many individuals who have been nurse practitioners.
What’s extra, I took my nurse practitioner examination within the prime of Covid, Might 2020. So it was chaos. Testing facilities have been down, and a few locations would allow you to take it on-line at house, however others would not. By the point I took the examination in the course of Might, it had been canceled 5 occasions, three of which I would already arrived on the testing middle. So, there was lots of nervousness concerned. I used to be like, Am I ever going to take this check? My job is using on this.
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I used to be so harassed that I ended up breaking a tooth in my sleep as a result of I used to be grinding them so arduous. I used to be going to must get a dental implant to the tune of $7,000; my hair was additionally falling out. However I completed the 175-question examination in lower than an hour, and I handed. I used to be like, I can not imagine I used to be stressing over this factor. This was a lot simpler than my nursing examination. All I wanted was confidence in myself as a result of I would spent years in colleges and a whole lot of hours in scientific making ready. None of my opinions had given me that confidence.
That realization — and the truth that I nonetheless needed to pay for a $7,000 dental implant — motivated me to place collectively my first evaluate course. I began my enterprise as a result of I used to be like, I can not afford this $7,000 implant. I figured if I put collectively just a little evaluate course and even simply earned $500, that might assist pay for it. And I began to consider the way it may very well be performed in another way — the way it may very well be much less like somebody lecturing you and extra like finding out with a pal. So, I got here up with a Q&A method, which I would used as a tutor in nursing faculty and once I taught nursing college students on the collegiate degree.
Inside every week of passing the examination, I made my first three-hour course. I truly gave it out to all of my classmates free of charge. There have been 30 of us, and I used to be like, “Hey guys, I am going to offer you this course free of charge in the event you invite another person into the group once I give it to you.” I gave the course to the primary 100 individuals who got here into the group. Then, not even a few days later, somebody who had taken the course went on to move, and it type of exploded by phrase of mouth. It received wild actually rapidly. The primary individual I attempted to promote it to for $25 received mad as a result of her pal had gotten it free of charge, so she haggled me all the way down to $15. Nonetheless, I made $1,000 on the primary day I began promoting, and I did not even make $1,000 in every week as a nurse. I used to be like, What if I made $1,000 a day, day by day? What would life seem like?
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By the top of June and July, I would surpassed what I used to make yearly as a nurse. I instructed my nurse practitioner job I would not be coming. I wished to see how far I might take the enterprise, however being affordable and by no means having run a enterprise earlier than, I stored my full-time instructing job, simply in case. However each spare hour I had, each weekend, was all in regards to the enterprise. As a result of I used to be so anxious about it being a startup, fragile and new, I waited to stop my instructing job till I made $1 million. We hit seven figures in seven months.
A couple of 12 months and a half in, I used to be nonetheless utilizing third-party software program to host my programs — nothing was in-house or actually in unison. It received to the purpose the place my college students have been actually breaking the software program; I wanted my very own. We truly spent $100,000 making an attempt to construct an app that ended up fully falling aside. That was actually arduous, however we simply stored operating up in opposition to expertise, and I spotted I used to be the bottleneck to this factor. The enterprise wished to develop, so I began wanting into different choices.
We thought of a sale and put out some teasers, hoping to get constructive suggestions. Because it turned out, the check prep supplier Blueprint had some inner conferences in regards to the prospect earlier than I even despatched out the teaser. They’d medical stuff, and so they had LSAT stuff, however they did not have any nursing materials on the time. And I wished to take some stress off myself as a result of every week into sending out the teasers, I came upon I used to be pregnant. I by no means need folks to assume I offered as a result of I used to be pregnant; it simply coincided with the timing.
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We beloved the Blueprint group, however the deal simply wasn’t proper at first. My husband and I had selected a quantity earlier than we had a single dialog, and I would suggest any entrepreneur do the identical. In any other case, it may be arduous to navigate a deal when feelings are operating excessive. So the primary deal wasn’t our quantity, and we walked away. Then they got here again with our quantity, and we ended up promoting across the two-year mark. That cash has been life-changing.
At 36 weeks pregnant, we came upon that my daughter was going to have a congenital coronary heart defect. We had no thought. So every part type of flipped on its head actually rapidly. After I gave beginning, the cash gave us the pliability and talent to be with our daughter when she wanted it the very most. She had six surgical procedures in her first 5 months of life, two of which have been open-heart surgical procedures. So, very loopy, chaotic occasions, and what a blessing to have the ability to haven’t solely a maternity depart, but additionally a medical depart, and to have the ability to be absolutely current for that — and never solely me but additionally my husband. We may very well be there collectively and help each other.
Now, my daughter is nineteen months previous, and for the previous 12 months, we have been working to do a legacy present to our native kids’s hospital, the place they actually saved her life. Hopefully, subsequent month, fingers crossed, every part’s going to be completed, and so they’re truly going to dedicate the Norton Kids’s Coronary heart Institute to my daughter. They’re making an attempt to construct out a premier coronary heart program there, and you must have the funds to have the ability to try this. So the cash offers us lots of freedom and adaptability — my husband’s additionally beginning up his personal enterprise — however our work with the kids’s hospital is essentially the most significant and impactful accomplishment.
