Make Communication Possible: Interview with Catie Harris, Founder of NursePreneurs

I recently went one on one with Catie Harris, founder of NursePreneurs.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

Catie: This is a loaded question to ask!  I wonder myself how I got here because it’s been quite a different journey than I anticipated.  I used to think (and still do to some extent) that there was a right way to do things.  There should be a right way to set up a business and it should be a straight path.  Except, my path was a roller coaster of emotion, expenses, and really at times just cluelessness.  When I started the journey, I figured I would just have to do a couple of things and I would be on my way.  But what I learned is that the business is an evolution and an outgrowth of the entirety of my knowledge, experience, and ability to connect and work with others.  The business itself has taken on a life of its own.  It’s no longer what I want, but it has become a response to what my audience wants, and I think that is a sign of maturity in a business.

I had tons of failures and setbacks, like any entrepreneur as well as really exciting adventures and “lucky” events.  I went through many different iterations of courses to offer my audience because I wanted to give them the “right” way to start a business.  Unfortunately, my “right” system didn’t appeal to anyone.  It was hard to sell and there was no way I could support myself trying to provide what was needed.  I would get really frustrated when I would see my audience gravitate towards the noise of messages like “triple your income”, “no experience needed”, “simple and easy to do”.  

While I’m fundamentally against pushing those marketing concepts because they are mostly bogus, I had to admit they were able to get my audience in their sphere of influence.  They were more persuasive than I was.  Even though it pained me to do it, I had to give serious consideration to the marketing strategies that were being used and the message being sent.

The message as far as I could tell is that my audience, who are nurses, were looking for a way to start a business—essentially the right way.  They were already working a ton and didn’t have 30 additional hours a week to learn everything needed to do online marketing.  I wanted to incorporate the concept of simple and easy by making it as plug and play as I could, knowing there would ultimately need to be some effort on the part of the client.  However, the first couple of wins needed to be easy and simple in order to draw them in further and further.

From this discovery, my company began to put together a type of business in a box: a coaching program for nurses in distinct areas of interest, for instance, IV Hydration, Concierge Nursing, Staffing Agency, and many more.  This concept was wildly popular and gained a lot of attention quickly.

Adam: How did you come up with your business idea? What advice do you have for others on how to come up with great ideas?

Catie: The idea of it truly came from listening to what my audience was saying.  I kept shutting them out because I thought I knew best of what they should do.  And to that effect, we certainly are able to guide them in the right direction once they are in one of our programs, but now, we lead with meeting the nurses where they are.  And right now they are burnt out and ready for something new.  They want to get the business up and running quickly so they can back off their overtime hours and extra jobs.

Adam: How did you know your business idea was worth pursuing? What advice do you have on how to best test a business idea? 

Catie: My advice for anyone who wants to test a business idea is to pick an audience you enjoy working with, and just immerse yourself in their world.  Really dial into what they complain about. This was hard for me because I thought complaints were negative energy, but in reality, they are a goldmine of ideas.  Once I reframed complaints as a possible business model, I couldn’t get enough of what the problems were.  Here I was searching out problems, prodding for problems, and trying to figure out what would be the ideal solution.  This was fun for me because I do love solving problems.

Solving problems is also one of my own problems.  Once I find a problem to solve and come up with a solution, I’m ready to move onto the next one.  It’s like entrepreneurial ADD.  I don’t necessarily want to implement the solution, just come up with it.

This hurt me early on because I had started some of these coaching programs.  It was fun to create them and set them up, but then when nurses started buying them, I actually had to teach them as well.  I was miserable and felt incredibly stuck in a rut that I had created.  I decided it was better to hire coaches to do the coaching.  This allows me to constantly find new programs and hand them off to a lead coach.

This growth led to other challenges – such as hiring and communicating with a team, creating processes and quality control measures.  A lot of stuff that I didn’t need when it was just me, but became crucial when there was more than just me.  I built up a team of 11 and unsurprisingly if I spoke to team member A, then team member B would get frustrated because she didn’t know what was going on, etc.

This was a hard lesson because I realized that I could destroy my own company with growth if I couldn’t grow into a leadership position.  The communication problems were my problems and they reflected the state of my mind.  While my entrepreneurial mind had 20 projects on the table that I loved to talk about, mentioning them in passing was incredibly detrimental. 

The staff would work on something I said, only to find out later, I didn’t mean to start that right away, or they would not start on a project because they thought I was musing aloud. 

Adam: What are the key steps you have taken to grow your business? What advice do you have for others on how to take their businesses to the next level?

Catie: When the business is growing, my best advice is to start writing everything down about how to do it.  Have brainstorming sessions that are separate from operational meetings. Make sure everyone is aware of what is a project is really being implemented and one that we would like to do at some point in the future.

I would also recommend bringing someone on your team sooner than you may even need that person, just so your first task to them could be to document everything you do.

Your processes are essential to your brand and will dictate what type of business you ultimately run.  

 Adam: What are your best sales and marketing tips? 

Catie: Our business has grown largely through search engine and social media.  Just recently we brought on a Facebook Ads team to run cold traffic to one of our best selling services and that has been amazing.  But we focused largely on providing valuable content on youtube and connecting with nurses on LinkedIn.  My social media manager currently has me creating Instagram Reels and she is pushing me to have more of a presence on Clubhouse, but there is only so much you can do.  I think it’s important to establish a presence where your audience is and really work to build out one main channel that funnels potential clients.  Everything else is icing on the cake.

When you try to focus on too many things at once, you realize quickly that something will suffer.  I used to have a list of 20 non-negotiables a day.  Invariably I would never get through that long never-ending list of things that “must” get done.  Clearly, I did have negotiables.  One really important lesson I learned was I could only do so much at any one time and I could only do so much WELL.  If it wasn’t the social media account that suffered, then it could be the website, or the finances, or my relationship with my son, or my friends and family.  Something would give.

Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?

Catie: What I’ve found to be the defining qualities of an effective leader are excellent communication skills, directness, and the ability to take feedback.  It was important to me that my team argue with me.  If they just agree with everything I say, then we can’t grow.  And because I’m a visionary more than an implementor, this has very strong potential to cause chaos and confusion in the business.

Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams?

Catie: My best advice on building, leading, and managing teams is at all times, make communication possible. When building a team, you have to distinguish who is worthy, who can easily flow through the current of the work, and those who are as invested as you are. There has to be someone who really knows how to lead, and that someone should be effective in a way that s/he will be listened to and knows how to listen to the team as well. Managing teams will follow easily if you have managed to successfully select the right ones to belong, and the right one to lead.

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?

Catie: My three best tips are to be realistic about what you can actually get done, read between the lines of what your audience is saying every day, and schedule a lot of downtime. Too idealistic goals will only lead you to frustrations, but the lack of idealism will make you end up with something that lacks. The key is to be realistic. Your audience is one of the most important assets of your business, that’s why it is crucial to listen to them. You will not be able to do more or better by overworking yourself. Burnout will always be on the way. Your downtime matters too, a lot

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Catie: This last piece of advice has been the most powerful piece of advice in my life.  If you are constantly working on something, you can’t grow.  The job of a visionary or a leader is to strategize and explore.  This can’t happen when the mind is doing task-oriented stuff.  I schedule a lot of downtime in my life.  It’s when my best ideas come to me.  My staff is also braced for changes or big new projects whenever I return from vacation or time off.

 The busier you are and the more likely your business will drown without you, is directly related to how much you need to schedule time off.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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