Welcome to the Nursepreneur Academy podcast where nurses like you discover how to break free from the bedside and build a flexible, profitable business using the skills, knowledge and experiences you already have. I'm your host Liam Caswell, an RN turned full time six figure nursepreneur. In 2021, Everything changed for me in my career.

I left my senior nursing role to build an online nurse led personal brand. One that gives me the freedom to work from anywhere, leverage the skills the hospital paid me to learn, and create both the income and impact I always knew I was capable of. Now it's your turn. I'm here to show you the possibilities beyond bedside and help you transition into a nurse led business that fits your needs and likes.

Whether you dream of working from home, earning what you're truly worth, or making an impact on your own terms, I'm gonna guide you every step of the way. Together, my friend, we'll make traditional nursing as you know it, optional. Now, let's get down to it and let's build your profitable business.

 When I started my nurse career coaching business, I made every mistake you can think of. I had no specific targeted niche. I had too many offers and had no real strategy. For about 18 months, I DIY'd my business and whilst I generated 30k whilst working full time as a nurse unit manager alongside my side hustle as a career coach, I was burnt out.

I resented my business and I was ready to quit and give up. But the good news for you, my friend, is you can learn from my failures. So in this episode today, I'm going to share with you my story around how I pretty much fucked up my nurse career coaching business model and how you can avoid doing the same.

And I'm going to give you some actionable tips that you can start to think about today to build a profitable, sustainable business from the start. So the first mistake that I made, which messed up my business model, I'll stop swearing, is that I did not niche down soon enough. Whilst I was very niche at the start, I was helping nurses as a nurse career coach.

Nursing is a big, broad ass niche. There's a lot of different nurses. Who was I? The nurse career coach for highly ambitious nurses? Or was I working with graduate nurses? Or was I working with people who wanted to leave the system? Or was I working with people who wanted to pivot into corporate?

There were so many variations of the niche, and what ended up happening was, because I was so broad with my niche, I attracted a lot of people, but then I had to create multiple offers to serve these people. On one hand, I'd be coaching nurses who are trying to leave the system, and I would create frameworks and methodologies for them.

And then on the other side, I'm helping a graduate nurse to get into the first graduate program. And then I had nurses who were being performance managed who needed coaching support so that they could protect themselves just in case they needed to pivot and go into a different career. And then I had nurses who were ambitious driven wanted to stay in the system.

They wanted to be promoted. So I had to create lots of different variations of my offer for different people. And then that was reflected in my content. And because I didn't have a hyper fixated specific niche, I was speaking to everybody but not to my ideal client. And I was giving generic advice that didn't really resonate with anyone.

And I think that's why I didn't grow on social media as much when I first started. Because I was just throwing shit at the wall and hoping for the best. Now, did it work? Arguably yes, you could say yes it did. But did it make my business really complex to run? And did I find it really challenging and overwhelming?

Whilst working a side like a nursing side hassle job? Because I was at this point I was working agency and clinical facilitation and marking for the universities. It just made it so complex and I would just overwhelmed all the time. So I want you to learn from my mistakes. I want you to really think about how when you are identifying your business model that we think about how can we be hyper niche?

We want to be so niche that people are like, Oh my goodness, Liam is the person for that. Liam is the go to for that. And so what I did was I allowed myself to pivot, change. Start from where I was very broad and then look at the market and go where is the need and I seem to attract a lot of graduate nurses.

So I started to dive deeper into them. What are they looking for? What are they saying in the Facebook groups? What's happening online? Okay, they really need help with applications, interviews and CV cover letter and to land their dream graduate job. What does the market provide? Everybody else is just offering the same thing.

They're just offering CV coaching. They'll do the resume for 100 bucks. How can I do this differently? And so that's where I really started to lock in the niche. And I was like, I serve graduate nurses so much so that it became apparent on my page because people would be messaging me saying, Hey Liam, I'm not a graduate nurse, but can you help me?

And to me, that was a sign that my niching was working. I was leaning into what problem do I solve for the grads? How can I help them get from A to B? And I really hyper fixated on a smaller specific audience. And I'm gonna tell you this. I was scared. I was worried because I thought, Oh, my God, if I do this, then it means that I can't help the nurses that are more senior, but the reality is they still came through and I still took some of them on, but I had more of a filter for who I took, and it helped the algorithm, it helped my messaging, it helped my sales, so not niching down, if you're listening to this and you've got one niche, or some of you I know have got two niches, and you speak to two different subsections of a market, It is a recipe for a business burn out.

And you do not have to do that. It's not possible for you to scale that to 100k. Not in the time that you have. I know you're amazing, you're incredible, not in the time that you have working alongside your nursing job. So you either double down and niche down, or you manage your expectations around.

The result but why would you delay getting to 100k and making nursing optional when the process that's been tried and tested by Hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs before you is niching down and locking in a specific hyper niche So much so that when I hired my most recent business coach, she said, Oh, my God, I know who you are like, I've seen your stuff online.

And you're the nursing career coach. And that spoke to me like, Oh, my goodness, that makes so much sense. Like she understood who I was and what I had to offer because I did the work to niche Dan. Mistake number two I've alluded to here, but I had far too many offers.

Oh my goodness. When I first started that I was self Solving all the problems for all the people CV. I got you cover letter. I got you selection criteria. I got you Oh, you just want selection criteria. I'll do that for you. Oh, you just need a statement of claims. I'll do that for you I had so many different price points so many different offers my stripe account, which is where I take payments was like To this day still has three million offers in there.

It's ridiculous at three million different price points because I was creating offers based on what everybody was coming to me for. And that was not smart. I was trading time for money and I was overcomplicating my offers and so I felt as a people pleasing high performer every offer needed like a little micro course with it and it needed downloadables because I was so unsure on the value that I had to provide and I thought oh my god if I just give them more then they'll see it as more valuable and that was a lesson that I learned the hard way like Most people, you won't like to hear this.

For those of you that want to build out huge courses, most people won't go through your course. Most people will not go through the whole thing. They'll go through what they need to. They'll take from it what they can, and it still means it's valuable. It doesn't mean it's less valuable because they didn't do it.

Think about e learning at work. No one does it. They don't want to do it. They have to do it, right? And the same is true online. But don't make that mean anything about you and don't make that mean that you need to have a curriculum or a course assigned alongside your offer. You don't. I've sold offers with thousands of dollars, price point that don't have those attachments.

So anyway, I digress, but I had multiple things. I had templates over the years that I was selling. I had one to one coaching, like a one off coaching hour, power hour, I had interview coaching, your performance management offer, my reinvent your career offer, which I just came across the other day again, your research, your CV offer, improve your interview offer, my nurse career academy, my graduate career launch program, whilst they were all variations of the same offer, it confused me, it confused the people, confused the market, and sometimes when I was on sales, I was like, what am I selling here today?

Am I selling this or that? So don't overcomplicate your business with multiple different offers. You want to create one offer that solves one painkiller problem that they're experiencing and that you can become the go to solution provider for and charge a premium. We do not want complexity in our business, and the reason why is because every offer you have basically needs a whole ecosystem of sales and marketing around it.

So I want you to really think about that the next time you're thinking, you know what, I'll create this. No, don't create it. Embed it into your offer that already exists, if it's relevant and if it adds value. We have to get really good as nursepreneurs filtering. We have to get really good at not overwhelming ourselves and our people, trying to prove that we are worthy and capable, right?

You are worthy, you are capable, you are incredible. Having more offers does not make you a better entrepreneur. In fact, it means to me that you're distracted. And the first thing that we will be doing together, if you choose to work with me at any point, is streamlining the shit out of your business so you can finally breathe and create one offer that is going to scale to six figures.

So we want to simplify your services and your offers so that you can deliver consistent results before you start introducing other offers. Not saying you can't ever do it, right? It's your business. You get to do what you want. You can join my academy and say I'm not listening to you. I did all of that at the start.

I did not listen to my business coach and it impacted my income and I wish I had. That's all I'm going to say about it. Number three, mistake number three was not starting an email list. Oh boy. If there's something that I wish I could do and go back and start, it would be an email list. When I first started, I relied on sales through social media, literally just Instagram.

And I would be posting and I'd be DMing and I would be booking sales calls through DMs on Instagram. And listen, it worked, but it was exhausting and I always had to be on and I felt like anytime somebody messaged me and they were a potential client, like even if it was 1030 at night, I was like needing to jump on and like people please and respond back to them.

And it wasn't until 18 months to two years in my business that I started to see that other people were using email lists and curating emails and sending them to people so that they could nurture them through a sales process. And I was like, Maybe I should do that. And I invested in an email marketing program.

I was a couple of thousand US dollars. And I really loved it. And I built out my first email list and an email funnel. And it was trash. It was absolutely terrible. Like my first funnel was terrible, but it converted and I started getting some sales. And from there I started to see the power of email.

Because in this day and age, especially with what's happened recently with the TikTok ban in the US, we don't own our social media. We're on rented land. And if you want to build a sustainable, scalable business as an entrepreneur, regardless of your business model, you need to not rely on believing that tomorrow your followers can't all be wiped from you.

And that your community that you've created and this movement that you've created online can't just be wiped from underneath your feet. It's terrifying. How would you make money? If you had no other way to do it. So building an email list is an absolute non negotiable. And actively building your email list, not like posting it once to your stories and putting it on your feed, hoping that people will see it, like no one's seeing it.

You have to share it time and time again, you have to drop it in absolutely everywhere. So this is why I'm going to say, if you're building a business, make sure you download my Bedside to Business Roadmap. So you get on my email list, so that if you ever need to work with me, that's the place it's going to happen, and you're going to get immense value.

From the road map and from the emails, but that is the beauty of an email list, right? Imagine a day in your future where as an entrepreneur, you maybe need to generate some cash. Maybe you've had a really good month, but you're like, Oh, we're gonna go on holiday next month and I want to generate some extra income.

If you were nursing, you'd have to go and bust your ass at bedside and do overtime and do a ridiculous, 60, 70 hour week. With your manager saying you shouldn't be doing this, and you're like, I need money, cost a living, holiday, can't afford it. With an email list, you literally write a couple of emails, go to a coffee shop, write a couple of emails, and send it to your list, and you'll generate income.

That is the power of email when done well. So I would, if I was you, and you're either a new nursepreneur or you're already in nursepreneurship, you need to think about starting an email list immediately, even if it's just a small one. You need to have something that gives people value ahead of time, that is so valuable that they could have and should have paid for it, just like my Bedside to Business Roadmap that you can download for free, and you collect their email.

And you start building trust with them and you show them why you are the best option for them and building their business. So you must start thinking about building an email list. Number four. This is a big one. This is a common trait in nurses, is that we over invest in certifications because we've been told that the more certifications we have, the, the more ability we have to get promoted and to move up the chain, which is total BS.

And also not only that, nursing is it's not the only industry because every industry does this, but have you ever thought about how we get told or sold this lie, do your masters, do your PhD, become an NP? For what? For 2 percent extra pay? You invest tens of thousands of dollars and your time, your own time, and the result is like an extra 80 bucks in your payslip every fortnight?

Hell to the no. Absolutely no. So whilst I made this mistake, I over invested in certifications, and spent money on things that I definitely shouldn't have, I was going through a healing process and I was recovering from burnout and I did not believe in myself and I wish that I'd spent more time in therapy.

I've already had to believe in myself and there's a whole story narrative that comes with that. But I did. I spent thousands on a coaching certification. I did NLP. And I thought it changed my life. And then, I thought I was going to change the world with NLP, which many of you will probably feel the same way.

And then I realized, oh, I didn't have the skills because NLP course doesn't teach you how to actually build a business. They just give you words that no one actually uses in their day to day life. So you're like, okay, what do I do with this? Then I did a coaching certification. Then I did some great Brené Brown courses.

And look, I loved all of it because here's what I've learned to be true as nurses. There are two things that we're really great at. We're really great at clinical Nursing and delivering patient care, right? Because we've practiced that and we've learned that and that feels safe to us. We're also really great at learning because we've been conditioned from an early age to be a learner, right?

And that's a great asset. That's a great thing. But when you're building business, like being a good clinician and being a learner is beneficial and it's helpful, but we need to get into entrepreneurial action taking. And when we're overinvesting in certifications and we're procrastinating learning, is what I call it, we're procrastinating learning, instead of building our business and taking actions and being strategic with our time, you're just doubly compounding the loss.

Basically, you've invested in the course, it's cost you money, and then you're not also making money. So we want to just be hyper aware of that and not overinvest in certifications because you don't need them to start helping people. You can help somebody today. Based on where you're at with the skills, knowledge and experiences that you have, if you package them up in a way that is so aligned with you, that helps and serves people to get from where are to where where they want to be.

Like it's totally doable. So don't focus on qualifications, focus on building your entrepreneurial skill set. Unless you need a cosmetic or IV hydration, if that's the path that you're taking, okay? And I'm not poo pooing certifications, they are valuable. And if you've got them, that's great, but I will tell you this, no one cares.

No one cares, your client doesn't care. And that sucks to hear, but I say that because I'm saving you from talking about the NLP. If I see another person talk about NLP techniques, and like how I'm gonna help you remove this chakra your client doesn't care. I think it's chakra, but your client does not care about your modality.

They do not care about your coach speak. They don't understand your speaking jargon to them. They want to know if it's going to make them feel more confident. They want to know if they're going to get the result. Okay, so just be really careful with over investing qualifications and certifications. And just make sure that you're not getting them for your ego, okay?

And that they're actually going to serve your business. And you can get real good at lying to yourself here. I did that for a long time. And now, I do not invest in certifications. I do not do it now. I've done so many of them. And I'm like, no, I have enough. I have more than enough. Mistake number five is underpricing.

services. And this is a big one that many of us come up against. And I did this because effectively I built my business the wrong way. The first coach that I invested in did not provide a solid curriculum around how to build out a highly valuable coaching offering that solved real problems. And I messed around for about a year trying to work that out.

And put in the hard yards. I got up at four a. m. for coaching calls in the Canadian time zone. And I just really put in a lot of time and effort in here. And I didn't allow myself to see the value that I was offering. So it wasn't just the coaching programs challenge, but I didn't see the value in what I was offering.

And I had so many limiting beliefs around what people would pay for. And I know you have them too. Because you'll say things like, Oh, no one will pay for that. Or why would they pay me for that? Or how could I charge 2000 for a resume? I did all of the things. When I first started out, my first client, August 2020, I charged them 100 for a CV, cover letter selection criteria, and interview coaching package.

Do you know how long it took me to do that? Hours. So long. It took me so long. It was my first client, I had no systems and processes, I had to design everything, I was under so much pressure, I put so much pressure on myself, I was like, oh my god, they need to get it this is a make or break, my business is gonna collapse if I don't do it, like drama.

com. But 100 bucks, like legit, I worked for 2 an hour. Seriously, like that took me probably 20 hours. On top of more like by the time I did the CV, this was pre ChatGPT, this was pre having any AI. It's 2020. I started far too low, and then I incrementally edged my way up. I went to 250, then 375, then 500, then 750, and the whole time I was so worried about it.

Like what people would think and what people would say but people wanted to buy from me people wanted the service They wanted my skills knowledge and experience, but I kept undervaluing myself So much so that it took me 18 months to be able to then get to the point where I was like no This is worth 2, 000, but even then my first round of my graduate career launch program.

I charged 999 for a group coaching experience. They basically got 12 months of coaching and we did unlimited CV cover letter selection criteria and interview coaching. What the fuck? That was insane. And I still thought it was too cheap. I still thought it was too expensive because I didn't see the value.

So what I help my nurse preneurs do is really build belief in their offering and see what they're bringing to the and price it accordingly. In accordance to the market and we're not pricing it based on what you're worth, right? Even though I do say that sometimes like you are worth infinity.

You are worth Infinity amount like infinite amounts of money Because you just are you were born worthy and capable of achieving that kind of result but we price it based on the value that we're providing And we stack the offer in a way that makes the price point make complete sense based on your market research, okay?

Our goal is not to meet the market. The goal is not to say everybody else is charging 150 bucks a day, so let's charge 149. There is no world where dropping your prices or discounting them gets you to your result faster. You just need more clients, and it took me far too long to realize that.

Where I spent so many hours on sales calls where people would be like, it's too expensive. It's a thousand dollars, but then I'd see the same people online going and buying a friggin Porsche. I'm not kidding you, nurses buying Porsches and they would struggle to pay their monthly payments and I'm here struggling as a business, like I was struggling in those days because I undercharged so much.

So don't do that to yourself. If you want to escape bedside or you want to make nursing optional, you have to lean into learning more about pricing, the psychology behind sales and pricing and making sure your offer is so valuable that when you say the price, you're like, of course it's that price and you don't discount it.

And if they don't take it, it's not a problem. You move on because you've got a whole pool of people that want what you have to offer. So do not underprice your services. Have a chat with me and let's work it out together. Mistake number six is spraying and praying on social media. The start of my Instagram account, I've posted

1, 700 times. I spread and prayed on socials, I spread and prayed on the podcast. I did what most of you are probably doing now, which is oh. I have this idea. I'm going to put it out there and I'm going to hope that it brings me clients and the reality is like no one cares. No one's looking and the algorithm is designed to deliver content to people that they're searching for, that they're looking for.

That's trending. So we have to be really strategic about what we put out online. We can be authentic and aligned, but we have to be strategic. So what ended up happening was my messaging was all over the place, had multiple different offers. So I was having to Communicate five different offers. So one day I'd be talking about the grad stuff, the next day I'd be talking about performance management, the next day I'd be talking about a pivot in your career and reinvent your career, and no one knew what was happening.

And there's a lot of research that talks about how in order for somebody to actually buy from you, they need to consume seven hours of content. 11 touch points across the Internet on four different channels. And if you think about it, if you have four different offers, that means you need them to consume like each niche subsection of your offer.

That was a study done by Google. I say that as evidence to say We have to be very strategic about what we do online. We can have fun with it and be creative with it in a unique way that stands out.

But you have to lock in and speak to a type of person, an audience, an ideal client, a past version of yourself, so that your content Is not just spring and praying you're not copy and pasting other people's work. You're not just Posting pictures of quotes and hoping that you'll get a client So we want a content strategy that aligns with your niche and you're offering it's that client centric marketing Framework that I talk about in my bedside to business road map that puts your client at the center, and we build all the assets around it so that you have this constant stream of people coming into your world, wanting what it is that you have to offer, we want to move away from just posting every day because, some stranger on the Internet told us we have to post every day, and we want to focus on high quality curated content that solves your ideal clients pain points specifically.

We're educating them, we're inspiring them, we're solving their problems and then we're inviting them to come and take the next step. I didn't do this for years. Literally the first years of my business. I just tried to sell online and so many of you are just selling and putting up sales posts and you don't have an audience and you don't have people that are warmed up and that are ready to buy from you.

So just be really mindful of that and to be really aware of. What it actually takes to go from follower, like somebody that just lands on your page, to being a client. Think of it like the inpatient hospital journey. It's like your business client journey. We've got to curate that. We've got to make that a beautiful experience.

Patients, when they have a really positive hospital experience, it didn't just happen. There processes and systems in place that made that come to fruition and the same is true in your business, right? So spring and praying on social media is not going to get you the result that you want And it literally nearly broke my business because it burnt me out and made me feel like I wasn't good enough Because I was just throwing shit at the wall and hoping it would stick

it makes complete sense Because people couldn't come to my page and binge my content because it wasn't easily curated them So you don't have to be a social media guru. You don't have to be pretty and aesthetically stunning. You don't even have to be that great at design. You just have to be willing to learn how to curate a feed that speaks to your ideal clients so that they can binge your content and then go, this is the person that I want to work with.

So hopefully they've been valuable. So we talked about not niching down, too many offers, not starting an email list, over investing in certifications. Underpricing my services, keeping me broke ass coaching, spraying and preying on social media. Okay, and you're probably thinking to yourself, Liam those are all the things that you did that didn't work.

Then what does work? I want you to think about starting with a clear plan, defining your niche, creating one signature offer, and outlining your business goals and reverse engineering them so you can see what your first 12 months, 2 years, and 3 years looks like in business. We're going to focus on the foundations, okay, we're going to build an email list, we're going to build a 100k offer, we're going to clarify our messaging and do client centric marketing and social media, and we're going to test out our ideas and co create our offering.

And our social media content with your ideal client. That's something I teach in the Nursepreneur Academy, so that we're not throwing shit at the wall. You're going to learn from my mistakes and you're going to avoid trying to do it all at once, right? Simplicity, a simple nursepreneur six figure business is an absolute joy to run and I'm learning that now because that's what I have and I love it.

I have so much spaciousness and joy and happiness and I love serving my clients and I have the systems and processes in place that now make this possible to scale. So many of you talk about scaling when you've got your first client. You don't even have the systems and processes in place. I made all of those mistakes.

Don't make them. They will keep you at bedside longer. Okay? And then the last point I'm going to make is investing smartly. Building a business, you're going to have to invest, right? You're going to have to invest in filling and closing the skill gap. But invest in the skills that will actually generate income and move the needle, like learning how to niche, learning how to build an incredible offer, how to do marketing analysis, how to market, how to create social media content that moves the needle, learn from somebody that's walked the path.

And if that's you, and you're thinking about what that looks like for you, I am the go to nursepreneur coach. In the space that is helping nurses do it in the modern way in the digital era, package up the skills, unique skills, knowledge and experiences that you have right now, and I've literally created like the nurse NBA like it's the NBA for business for nurses so that you can have all the business foundations so that you can go out and make nursing optional and start building your business the right way, avoiding all of the mistakes.

Imagine what it would be like to not have to go through any of this. and to be able to start generating income and building a business that has profit and purpose at its core so that you can dabble in nursing and nursing becomes your side hustle. That's what's possible when you Avoid all of these mistakes that I've had.

So mistakes are part of the journey, and you'll have your own flavor of them, right? But I don't want you to make the same mistakes that I did now, right? Learn from my lessons with the right focus, the strategy and the bedside to business roadmap, you can build a thriving nursepreneur business that's profitable.

and that's purpose filled that you absolutely love to run every single day. So if that's you, make sure you download my Bedside to Business Roadmap. I'd love you to get your hands on it. I step you through everything that I would do if I was starting a nursepreneur business today to build it up to six figures to 100k to make nursing optional.

And I'd love to hear your thoughts, like what surprised you from this episode? What lessons learnt? Are you taking away from this episode? Come and play alongside us at the Nursepreneur Academy on Instagram this year. I'm doubling down and I'm focusing so you'll just find me there and I cannot wait to chat to you there and hear about your business ideas

I'll see you in the next one.   A pay rise bedside nursing could never provide. Freedom from hospital politics and the flexibility to work on your own terms without the shift work? You, my friend, are one step closer to creating your bedside escape plan. I want to hear your insights, takeaways, and questions. Connect with me over on Instagram at nursepreneuracademy or email me at hello at liamcaswell.

If you're the type of nurse that's ready to explore your options for building a nurse like business, Leave us a review, screenshot it, and send it to my email or my Instagram, and I'll send you my Bedside to Business Roadmap, my step by step process to building a six figure nurse led business as a thank you.

Until next week, keep dreaming big, taking bold action, and betting on yourself, because this is the year you make nursing optional.