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This told essay is based on a conversation with Sarah Michelle Boes, founder of Sarah Michelle NP Reviews (SMNP), which was acquired by Blueprint Test Prep in 2022. Boes currently serves as Chief Nursing Officer for Blueprint Test Prep. She hosts the podcast Becoming A Stress-Free Nurse Practitioner. She earned her BSN at the University of Kentucky, Western she earned her MSN in Nursing Education at Governors University, and Eastern she earned her MSN-FNP at the University of Kentucky. This section has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Image credit: Courtesy of Sarah Michelle Bose
I grew up in rural eastern Kentucky and always had a passion to be a teacher. I set my mind to it. But my parents are teachers, so they say, “No way. You can’t do that.” There is a lot of politics and bureaucracy in the educational field. It’s more than just being an educator. Then, when I was a teenager, my grandmother was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. We didn’t have great access to premium health care in our area, so I had to travel two hours to Lexington to get her diagnosed and receive a care plan that she could take home. did not. It was late summer so I went with my girlfriend. That was my first introduction to nursing at Marquee Cancer Center.
Those nurses were amazing. I think oncology nurses are generally angel-like beings. Not only did they take care of her, they took care of me too. It was a great experience. So she knew she couldn’t be a teacher and thought, Well, nursing care — I feel like I can accomplish something. There’s a lot of patient education, so there’s the teaching aspect, but you also get that human connection with people, and that’s what helps me grow. So, without even thinking about it, I went to the University of Kentucky and they guaranteed me admission to their program. And that was a really big deal.
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I struggled with anxiety during nursing school. One class was so notorious for excluding people that everyone was afraid to take it. In that class in particular, I had so much anxiety that the instructor said, “I don’t think nursing is for you. You worry too much to be a safe nurse.” I had to choose to stay. Nursing grading standards also vary widely. For most programs, a score below 76 means failure. And on the first exam in that class, I got her a 74. I literally failed my first exam by one question. So I had to find ways to combat anxiety and think about the tools I could use.
So I started thinking about how to deal with the class and my anxiety. I then started tutoring and eventually quit my full-time job as a manager to support students full-time. I taught them skills that helped them approach that difficult class in a different way. And my anxiety didn’t come back again until I became a nurse. It’s been a while since I took a high-stakes test. test. I was the first nurse in my family and didn’t know many people who were nurse practitioners, so I didn’t have anyone to turn to for perspective.
Additionally, I took my nursing exam in May 2020 during the height of COVID-19. So it was a big mess. Testing centers were down, and while some people were able to take the test online from home, others were unable to do so. By the time I took the exam in mid-May, it had been canceled five times, three of which had already arrived at the exam center. So there was a lot of anxiety. I liked Will I ever take this test? My job depends on it.
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I was so stressed that I ground my teeth so hard that I broke them while I was sleeping. She had to get dental implants for $7,000. Her hair was also falling out. However, she completed the 175-question exam within an hour and passed. I liked I can’t believe I was stressed out over something like this. It was much easier than my nursing exam. All I needed was to have confidence in myself because I had spent years in school and hundreds of hours preparing for clinicals. None of my reviews gave me such confidence.
That realization, and the fact that I would have to pay $7,000 for dental implants, motivated me to create my first review course. The reason I started my business was I can’t afford this $7,000 implant. I figured if I could make even $500 by doing a quick refresher course, it would pay for itself. And I started thinking about how I could do it differently, how I could make sure I was studying with my friends instead of being lectured to by someone. So I came up with the Q&A approach that I used as a tutor in nursing school and when teaching nursing students at the university level.
I took my first 3-hour course within a week of passing the exam. I actually handed it out to all my classmates for free. There were about 30 people, and I thought, ”Hey guys, if you invite others to your group when you offer this course, we’ll give you this course for free. ” We offered this course to the first 100 people who joined our group. Within days, people who took the course passed the course and word of mouth exploded. It got wild really quickly. The first guy I tried to sell it to for $25 got mad because his friend got it for free and haggled the price down to $15. Still, I made $1,000 the first day I started selling, but as a nurse I made less than $1,000 in a week. I liked What if you earned $1,000 a day, every day? What would your life be like?
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By the end of June and July, I had made more than I was making in a year as a nurse. I told the nurse that I would not be coming to her workplace. I wanted to see how far I could go in business, but being reasonable and having never run a business before, I continued with my full-time teaching job just in case. But all my free time every weekend was about business. I waited to quit my teaching job until I had made $1 million because I was so nervous about it being a startup and being fragile and new. Achieved 7 figures in 7 months.
After about a year and a half, I was still using third-party software to host my courses. There was nothing in-house or really working together. It got to the point where my students literally broke the software. I needed my own. In fact, we spent him $100,000 building an app that ended up completely falling apart. It was really hard, but as I continued to struggle with technology, I realized that I was the bottleneck to this problem. The business wanted to grow, so they started looking at other options.
We’ve put it up for sale and released some teasers in hopes of getting some constructive feedback. As it turns out, test prep provider Blueprint had several internal meetings about this prospect before I sent out the teaser. They had medical materials and he had LSAT materials, but they didn’t have nursing materials at the time. And I found out she was pregnant a week after I sent the teaser, so I wanted to take some pressure off myself. I never want people to think I sold it because I got pregnant. The timing was just right.
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We loved the Blueprint team, but the deal wasn’t right for us initially. Her husband and I decided on a number before we had a single conversation, and I encourage entrepreneurs to do the same. Otherwise, it can be difficult to proceed with a trade when emotions run high. So the first transaction wasn’t our number so we walked away. Then they gave us our number and he ended up selling it in about two years. That money changed my life.
At 36 weeks pregnant, we found out that our daughter had a congenital heart defect. We had no idea. So everything turned upside down really quickly. When I gave birth, that money gave me the flexibility to be there for her daughter when she needed it most. She underwent six surgeries in the first five months of her life, two of which were open heart surgeries. So what a blessing, in such crazy and chaotic times, to be able to take not only maternity leave but also medical leave and be fully present for it, and not just me, but my husband as well. We can be there together and support each other.
My daughter is now 19 months old, and for the past year we have been working to create a bequest to the local children’s hospital that literally saved her life. I hope everything goes well next month and the Norton Children’s Heart Institute will actually be dedicated to my daughter. They’re trying to build the best cardiac program there, but they need funding to make it happen. So money has given us a lot of freedom and flexibility – my husband has also started his own business – but our work with children’s hospitals has been our most meaningful and impactful accomplishment. is.
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