From Burnout To Burning Bright + Resiliency with Sarah Michelle Boes (part 1)

What actually reignites a tired mind: more hustle or better design? We dig into the moments that drain us and the choices that light us back up, starting with Natalie’s behind-the-scenes look at a 13-hour reality-TV shoot and the mental gymnastics it demands. That raw, human story sets the tone for an episode about resilience that isn’t performative—it’s practical.

Our guest, Sarah Michelle Boes, MSN APRN FNP-BC, walks us through the unlikely rise of SMNP Reviews, a seven-figure brand built by solving the real problem nursing grads faced during COVID: anxiety and uncertainty, not just content gaps. She breaks down how a $15 review grew into sold-out live cohorts with a pass guarantee, why early word-of-mouth beats ads when the product truly works, and how hiring a coach plus two key team members unlocked her best ideas. We unpack the shift from creator-does-everything to leader-designs-experiences, the difference between time management and energy management, and the operational fixes that stop burnout before it starts.

Growth wasn’t tidy. Sarah shares the hard lessons from a costly “junk code” app, the strain of keywoman syndrome, and the decision to seek strategic partners without compromising values. She and her husband set a non-negotiable number, evaluated culture fit, walked away from a low offer, and ultimately exited on their terms—while preparing for a new season of life. Along the way, you’ll hear clear takeaways on building confidence into your product, guaranteeing outcomes you can control, and designing programs that reduce anxiety and increase mastery.

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Transcript

Show Welcome And Premise

Meet The Hosts

SPEAKER_00 0:06

All of us reach a point in time where we are depleted and need to somehow find a way to reignite the fire within. But how do we spark that flame? Welcome to Reignite Resilience, where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. We'll discuss the art of reigniting our passion and strategies to stoke our enthusiasm. And now here are your hosts, Natalie Davis and Pamela Cass.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Welcome back to another episode of Reignite Resilience. I am your co-host, Natalie Davis, and I'm so excited to be back with all of you. And joining me is your co-host Pam Cass. Hello, Pam.

SPEAKER_03 0:52

How are you today? I am fantastic. And I'm hoping that we're going to be able to just do a little chit-chat about what you just did recently or what just heard recently. No, you didn't do it recently, but it aired on Netflix recently.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

On Netflix, yes, now that I've officially appeared on Netflix, that's so interesting. Yeah. So I am officially okay with sharing and disclosing to the public that I was a contestant, and I use that term very, very loosely, on the Squid Game Challenge season two on Netflix. And so the first four episodes have been released at the time of this recording, and we'll have over the next couple of weeks more episodes that will be released. I am like all of you, I will be surprised to see who wins, but it was quite an experience. It the longest, craziest, wildest secret I think I've had to keep where I'm just like lying to everyone.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

How long did you have to keep the secret?

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Until this week. How long have you been keeping it? Oh, how long? 11 months. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:56

Like I would forget. I'd be like, I forgot I was on that.

Behind The Scenes: 13-Hour Shoot

SPEAKER_02 1:59

That's exactly where I was. I just continued on with life, you know? So spoiler alert, if you haven't watched it and you haven't come to this conclusion, I continued on with life as usual because I did not walk away with$4.56 million. So there's that. Next time. Exactly. A little bit of a spoiler alert. But yeah, no, I am happy to share my experience with the listeners because it is definitely one. It's uh I shared a little bit of an update video last week, just letting everyone know, like the first 15 minutes is where you'll see me in the show. If you look and squint hard and kind of turn your head sideways, I you can catch my cameo cameo appearances. But that first 15 minutes of the show was a 13-hour recording day. So we were on set putting together for 13 hours that 15-minute segment. So, you know, it's everything that happens in television magic. It's it's true what they say. It's, you know, get back in the same spot that you were in, say the same things that you said, even though it's like real. I think I'm okay in saying that. I don't know. Netflix will find me if I can't.

SPEAKER_03 3:05

Anyway, you didn't get bathroom breaks during that 13 hours, right?

Prep, Dehydration, And Mindset

SPEAKER_02 3:08

No, we did. We did. We actually did. We thought that we were going to play the game that we didn't get bathroom breaks. So that is part of it as well. If for the fans that are out there, we thought that the first game right out the gate would have been red light, green light, because that was the game that they played in season one. And so they said the same thing. Recording for that red light, green light game was like eight or nine hours. And so my cohort that I went through the game with, we decided that we were gonna stop drinking beverages 36 hours before the actual production. So I gave myself the last 24 hours before going into the dorm eight ounces of water to drink in 24 hours of time. And so I was probably not in the right frame of mind, which is probably what led to all of the emotion. I was dehydrated, I was emotional, I was excited, I was dehydrated.

SPEAKER_03 3:57

You couldn't even cry because you had no tears.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

There was no liquid in my body except for the blood that was running through my veins. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 4:05

That is, oh, that's awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

So yeah, you guys check it out if you haven't checked it out. Squid Game, season two, uh, Squid Game the Challenge, season two, I should say. It is the game itself. 456 players enter into a game to vibe for$4.56 million. So fun time, Wow.

SPEAKER_03 4:23

Wow. Wow, exactly. Right. To be continued. We have no idea who's you have no idea who's winning. So I don't know who's winning.

Guest Introduction: Sarah Bose

SPEAKER_02 4:30

And who knows what could happen after this. So we'll see. Just the beginning. Just the beginning. Oh my gosh. Well, I am excited because we have a guest joining us too. So I mean, outside of the excitement for Swiss, right? Of course. Yes. But but we have a guest joining us. So, Pam, before we dive into discussion, why don't you share with our listeners who's joining us and then last week?

SPEAKER_03 4:52

Absolutely. So I'm excited for this. So we have Sarah Michelle Bose, M S N A P R N, F N P B C. She is a powerhouse entrepreneur and the force behind SMNP Reviews, a seven-figure brand built in under one year. After her daughter's congenital heart disease diagnosis, Sarah turned pain into purpose, funding pediatric research, advocating for mental health, and leading female-driven philanthropy. She's here to talk about resilience, reinvention, and rising stronger in the face of adversity. Welcome to our show, Sarah. We are so excited for you to be here today. And I'm going to hand it over to you for you to just get us started on a little bit of your story.

From Bedside To Teaching During COVID

SPEAKER_01 5:41

Yeah, thank you for saying the alphabet soup behind my name because it very much is alphabet soup. But if you're in the nursing world at all, that alphabet soup is very important. All the little you know, all the letters mean something and they're all very important to us. But long story short, five years ago, I was very living a very, very different life. And as we kind of broached a little bit closer and closer to COVID at that time, I was in nurse practitioner school full-time. I was working as a bedside nurse full-time, and I was also doing a part-time teaching job. And so I was somewhere seven days a week, always running busy, busy, busy. And then COVID hit, I had actually put in my notice for my nursing job before I even knew COVID was going to be a thing. So literally left bedside nursing the week that the world shut down, which I'm always so grateful and like so fortunate for because what better timing? But it was a really surreal and bizarre experience for me to like live my life so intense and so fast and be somewhere every day to suddenly being home every day and learning how to teach my clinical students on Zoom and preparing for my own nurse practitioner exam that was coming up, and it kind of created this perfect recipe and storm for what would eventually be my business and pivot my life into entrepreneurship and now all the things I do today. So it's been a really fun and crazy, like five, five and a half years since then. And I feel like I have lived probably like 15 lifetimes since then as well.

SPEAKER_02 7:08

In the last five years.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Yeah, in the last five years.

SPEAKER_03 7:10

Yes. So when you decided to make that shift and leave the nursing, what caused you to make that shift? I know it just happened to coincide with, you know, the world shutting down. But what made you walk away?

SPEAKER_01 7:21

So I actually had a nurse practitioner job lined up. And so I was like, I think my teaching job can float me through. I've got these last little bit of clinicals left before I finish up nurse practitioner school. I know I've got that job waiting. And I was very pleasantly surprised my teaching job paid way more than I anticipated. And I made more there than I made as a bedside nurse. And so I was like, I'll just do this for a little bit. And then it was the most perfect of perfect timing.

SPEAKER_03 7:44

I love that.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

That's amazing. But to take the step into entrepreneurship because it is not for the weak at all. And you're really stepping into a space that all of your creative genius and your like your transferable skills from being a bedside nurse and a nurse practitioner, striving nurse practitioner, those all come into play with the entrepreneurship piece. Was it what you thought getting into that space to become an entrepreneur and building your own business?

SPEAKER_01 8:12

I don't want to say becoming an entrepreneur happened to me accidentally, but it was kind of accidentally. So I had a little bit of experience. I had had a side hustle at one point in time where I had started tutoring other nursing students. So this was back when I was in nursing school. I have since then I have two masters. So when I was actually getting my bachelor's in nursing school, I started tutoring other students. And what started is just one or two students by the end of the semester was 40 students. And so I quit my full-time job then to then tutor full-time, and I knew I loved to teach. And so I got just a little bit of a taste of like entrepreneurship. That's really not too entrepreneurial, but I think it is.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

I think it definitely is.

SPEAKER_03 8:51

Yeah, I would argue that is very entrepreneur because most people just would have been like, Oh, I'm just gonna do this to you know, help people out, but you made it a business.

Turning Anxiety Into A Review Course

Word Of Mouth And Early Sales

Hitting Six Figures And Infrastructure Strain

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Yeah, yeah. It just happened fast because, you know, there's a lot of beauty in word of mouth, and both my tutoring business but also my education business that I went on to create were very much fed by word of mouth. Absolutely. And how cool to be able to come in and do it so differently that people just are like excited to talk about it and like overjoyed to talk about it to someone else. And really, kind of the origins of my business is I was having so much anxiety leading up to taking the exam because it was during COVID at this point. And so I would show up to a testing center and it would just be closed. And so there's all this anticipation you build up and all this preparation you do, and then you go to do the thing, and they're like, Oh, nope, it's closed, but you have no idea. And that's like so painful. And that ultimately ended up happening to me four to five times to the point that, like, one time I had my exam rescheduled to a testing center in Dubai, like there was a glitch in the system. Yes, that face you just made was also my face. I was like, What do you mean, Dubai? I was like, Where is Dubai? I was like pulling up a glow, like it was yes. Nowhere near where you need to be to take the exam. No, no, I'm I'm in Kentucky. I am nowhere near Dubai, and I'm definitely not anywhere near Dubai during COVID when I'm not getting on a plane, anyways. Absolutely. But ultimately I went on to finally take the exam. And it was this crazy experience in and of itself because I was like, oh my God, I spent all this time and all this money and all this stress and anxiety to prepare for this thing. And I really didn't need to do any of that. Like it was the easiest exam I'd ever taken. And it was 175 questions. I finished it in less than an hour. Like, I mean, I was just flying through this thing, which really speaks a lot to my school as well, and like how well I was prepared and all those sorts of things. But as I was sitting in the parking lot waiting for my friend to come out, I was like, I really just need like the confidence in myself. And I need like some anxiety tools, and like really like the content wasn't the thing, and I thought that was the thing. And so it was less than a week later, I was like, Well, I've already been teaching on Zoom, like, could I just like put together a review course? And it's literally on like old school Microsoft PowerPoint, the very first iteration of the course. It is the ugliest thing I've ever seen, even though I thought it was beautiful at the time. And I put together this three-hour course and I gave it to all of my classmates for free. There were like 30 of them. And I was just like, invite somebody into this Facebook group. That's like my only request to be. I'll give it to you for free. Just invite somebody in. So I gave it to the first 100 people for free. And the first day I went to sell it, I was selling it for$25 for lifetime access to this three-hour course. So I knew nothing about entrepreneurship. Like I was not a business person, right? And my very first customer was like, Why would I pay you$25? My friend got it for free. And so she haggled me down to$15. And so for the whole first day I'm selling this thing, everybody paid$15. And I was very excited about that because I made$1,000 that day. And there were so many weeks that I didn't make a thousand dollars as a nurse. And I was like, oh my goodness, like if I could make a thousand dollars every day, like what would my life look like? Like, what would this be like? And growing up in the way that I did in really rural eastern Kentucky, like money was something we always chased. And so to have any kind of taste or access to money, like I was almost desperate in a way. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

But I think Sarah, like you say something that is so big, it's um just putting yourself in that space where you're asking, what if I made a thousand dollars in a day? Right? Or like in a week. In a week, like looking at this, like because ultimately what you grew it to was significantly more than this. But if I'm making a thousand dollars a week, what would my life look like?

SPEAKER_01 13:28

More than I made as a nurse.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

Yes. Yes, absolutely. Which kind of blows every belief that you would have had at that time out of the way.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Oh, yes. My brain was broken. Yes, and I was very overwhelmed at the same time because like my Facebook messenger is blowing up, and people are just sending me money on Vimo left and right and like trying to organize and keep track. Yeah, it was it was a lot. Yeah, I love that. Exciting.

SPEAKER_02 13:51

What did you do to give yourself the tools and knowledge to actually build a business? What did that journey look like?

SPEAKER_01 13:58

So in the beginning, it was just me and only me and my very wonderful and incredible husband who was like, Oh my god, like you're sitting on a golden egg. Let me get everything out of the way humanly possible. Like he saw the vision, he saw the dream, and I was very much like, this could end tomorrow, and this is probably gonna end tomorrow, and like this is a fluke thing, and like there's no way this continues to grow. But in that first month, we hit 20,000, which was insane. And then in month two, we were at 50,000 total, and I'm like, oh my god, like I just surpassed what I used to make as a nurse in a year, and it's been two months. What's going on? And then finally in month three, we hit 100 grand on my birthday that year in August. And I was like, Well, I guess we need a website. Like, I you know, I can't keep selling this on demo and Cash App.

Hiring A Coach And First Team Members

SPEAKER_02 14:44

Like, oh wow, I need a website and a Facebook group. That's it. That's what you that's it. Wow, and your Zoom records.

Designing A Low-Anxiety Live Program

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Yes, yes, yeah. But what was happening in that group is people would pass and then we come post this beautiful picture of them smells selves, like the biggest smile they've ever had, like, oh my god, Sarah, thank you so much. You gave me X, Y, and Z. And it just really fed itself. And there was just so much word of mouth and so much being generated around. And finally, it was in November of that year where I felt like I was about to tap out. We were just about to hit 250 grand, and I was like, this is plenty, this was cool, but I'm like so far out of my death because we had tried to create a website and failed three times. And at that point, what was happening was I was creating content and getting new stuff out all the time because what started is one course. By that point, it already grown to three different courses because people would just tell me what they want. So I just co-created it with them, which was like the magic and the success of it too. So I'm trying to endlessly create content and I'm still working my full-time teaching job because I'm insane and I'm worried about losing health insurance because that was my big fear. And at the same time, I am running this insane Facebook group where I am the point person for everyone. And I just like I don't know how to give perspective to that enough, but I was like the one trusted voice in the group. So everybody wanted to talk to me, which was cool, but also I'm like, I'm only one human, right? And with the website that we had at this point in time, it was bare bones, it was technically functional, it was the only one of the three that we have was even remotely functional. But every time someone canceled their subscription, because that was my goal, was to get to a subscription model because you don't need this forever, right? And I don't want them to just give it to their friends forever. So subscription model makes sense, but when someone would cancel their subscription, I would have to go in and manually reset them to have access to the end of their paid month. And so when you've got thousands of people doing that, and I'm watching thousands of subscriptions all the time, like I was pretty fraught and I was pretty burnt. And I had heard this story one time from a nursing friend who wanted to start a taco truck of all things about hiring a business coach and talking about her taco truck ideas of this business coach who told her it was a terrible idea, by the way, and it was a really terrible idea. And ultimately, I had kind of known this woman in an outsider view in the sense I got in the business coach, was also a massage therapist. She started her own massage therapy place. And the first time I went to get a massage there, it was like in an old apartment building. And like I pulled up and I was like, I must be in the wrong place. Like, there's no way this is this is sketchy, right? Yes. But by the next time I had gone, they had opened up a brand new space that had like 20 rooms. Oh wow. And then I watched her open up another space that had another 20 rooms. So she was growing, she was growing rapidly, and so I kind of had this instant rapport with her to be like, okay, like what do you think about business coaching for me? Like, what would that look like? And of course, as soon as she gets on the phone with me, she's like, You need coaching, like literally before you even started this business, you could have used coaching, but now you could really use some coaching. And I think the coaching world in general can be a little weird and a little scammy, but that was not my experience with Becca whatsoever. She was incredible. And in my first call with her, she was like, I've never told anyone to do this ever. She's like, But by the time I hear from you again in six days, like I need you to have hired someone. I don't care who you hire, but like you've got to start building out infrastructure and a team, and it can't be all you all the time. And in the first two weeks that I had business coaching, I hired two people. I hired a virtual assistant and I hired a person that I went to nursing school with, and we kind of reconnected as she was preparing for her nurse practitioner exam. So we also kind of had some built-in rapport, and I knew I could trust her a little bit. And even just having those two humans, I was able to come up with what was the big idea and what kind of really like shifted the business forward was everything up to that point was recorded, and I really wanted to do something live, and my students really wanted something live from me and to be able to interact with me, but I didn't want to do it just to do it. I wanted to be able to do it in my own way and for it to be unique from what else was in the market. But having those two humans gave me the gap space to have my creative brain back on and create what that could look like, and that really I mean, that went that took us from a six-figure brand to a seven-figure brand. I mean, just in a couple of months.

SPEAKER_03 19:01

And so, what did that look like? What did that live thing look like that you created?

Pass Guarantees And Sold-Out Cohorts

Founder Role, Control, And Letting Go

SPEAKER_01 19:06

So, everything in the space, it's a very old school kind of space. I always talk about old dogs and new dogs. So I kind of like came in as a new dog a little bit was two-day in-person 10-hour conference center days. And that's a lot. I mean, that's a lot on a good day. That's a hell of a lot on Zoom. Like, that is just too much on Zoom. And they're lecturing at you, they're not incorporating you into it. And so my vision was how do we make this as least anxiety-inducing as possible? And so I wanted to create a structure and a program where it's like, okay, you're today is day one, and you're gonna watch these videos of mine, and you're gonna answer these practice questions, and you're gonna learn the content from my videos, and then we're gonna meet up at the end of the week and we're actually gonna go through case scenarios together to see did I actually ingrain what I was learning and do I still have any gaps left and really like build up my confidence in that material. And so that kind of evolved into a five-week program of like this is what you do every day, but if you do all the things I say, like you're literally guaranteed the pass. Like I put up a pass guarantee on it, and people were hooked. I mean, the first cohort I did had 30 people, which honestly, for something I threw together and sold in four days, I was like, 30 people is incredible. Like that was way overshot what I thought was gonna sign up. And then by the time that it was February or March, I was already opening up slots for the May cohorts, which is when a lot of people graduate. Most people graduate in May and December. And I think I had a hundred spots and they sold out in about 37 seconds.

SPEAKER_03 20:34

Wow. And I was like, Again, people telling us people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

I was like, Well, uh, I guess I need to build a team and figure out how to do more of these. And like, I guess it can't just be me and Anna, the one other nurse practitioner anymore. Like, we we gotta have like a whole squad of us. But yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:50

Oh wow. So you answered a need, an urgent need that people had, and you gave them the guarantee that you're guaranteed you're gonna pass if you do this program. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

It's so interesting, Sarah, how you you talk about like the relief that you had from being able to get back into that creative space, right? Because that goes back to filling really that purpose for you. You wanted to be able to have an impact and help other people. And so you got caught up in the mundane, like you're doing the bookkeeping and you're monitoring the unsubscribes and the refund request and the exact yeah, so it was very painful for me.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

I was like, I want to have like the creative part's the fun part, you know?

SPEAKER_03 21:28

Yes, yeah, you're the visionary, and yeah, the people that were running it behind the scenes. Yeah, perfect.

Breaking Software And The App Setback

SPEAKER_02 21:33

Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. So, like going back and looking at where you were in that point, right? I mean, hiring two new people to your business in the first week of coaching is a huge step, right? And so I'm sure that there was some type of fear, anxiety, reservation around that.

Considering Partners And The Keywoman Problem

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Oh, I was a control freak. That was part of why it works so well with Anna, because like she already knew me. Yeah, but with my virtual assistant, I mean, literally, God bless that sweet girl. She it first started where I was like 10 hours a week. I was like, I just need someone 10 hours a week. And then she worked 10 hours that first week, and I was like, what about 40? Like, could you work 40? Because that sounds wonderful. Like that sounds good to you. But those first couple of people were really hard for me, I will say that Anna ended up staying with me until I sold my business, and she kind of almost like serves in the role I was in previously now that I've exited the business entirely. So, I mean, that speaks to her and like how dedicated she's been and like how instrumental she was in building the business. So I really like I looked out with her, but it was really scary for me to bring people in because the other layer of that is like once you get a couple of people and you start to feel like a real business, because for a long time I was like, this is a side hustle thing, right? And I was like, okay, I guess this like we hit a million, I guess we're a real business now, like this is cool. But then you gotta think like people are depending on you, and like people want health insurance, and now you've got like new problems to figure out. They always say, you know, next level, next devil, but it very much was that, and it was intimidating for me for a bit to have people depending on me. A lot of the people I brought in initially were people that already knew me. I mean, I literally have my siblings working for me at one point, just because I was like, just I wanted to feel cozy and you know, it's easier to communicate with people that already know me, but it was really just like mass control.

SPEAKER_02 23:17

Yes, exactly. Because they already know you, so they expect nothing less. They're like, oh no, Sarah's gonna let you know exactly what needs to happen. Oh yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Yeah, I can own that about myself. Yes. But I think the little details really matter, and I think that they really added up for some people and some of our students.

SPEAKER_03 23:34

So absolutely from building the business.

SPEAKER_02 23:38

So you you've taken us through this spot of like building this up to a seven-figure business, right? Once you you've hired on staff. And so then what is the exit? What did that season look like for you?

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Oh man, you know, I thought about this a lot because I was like, what really was like the turning point of like, oh, I should sell? And I definitely think for me, and I'm working on a memoir right now, so I'm like really evaluating this whole process, but we were breaking everything we touched software-wise. And so that was one problem in and of itself. Like, no third-party platform could really serve all the needs of my learners. And I had decided that, you know, the one lingering thing that we didn't have was a question bank. And, you know, when people were doing my life study group program, for example, I would be like, go do these practice questions at this other source. And so I really wanted to rein that in and be a one-stop shop because who wants to go to multiple places if they don't have to? It's bad business all the way around. And everybody wanted to be really accessible and on the go. So I was like, um, it's gotta be an app. Like we gotta start with an app. And in my head, I was like, how complicated could it be to build a question bank app? Like they're already out there. I feel like that's pretty mundane, run of the mill. It is not run of the mill whatsoever.

SPEAKER_03 24:50

It's so innocent.

The Decision To Sell

Offer, Number, And Exit

Closing And Listener Actions

SPEAKER_01 24:51

And I was so far out of my depth. And we eventually got to a point where the app we created, it was like every time they fixed something, something else broke. And I just like couldn't wrap my head around that experience. So I ended up taking it to a different development team, and they're like, oh yeah, that happens when they build it on junk code. And then he said, the whole app is junk code, and we would have to start over entirely. Oh wow. And this was a six-figure investment. It was the biggest investment I had made in my business today, and to realize it was all junk code just from literally my own naivety and my own, like almost like blissful ignorance in some ways. And so I was like, Man, like if I if I'm gonna keep moving forward, like I almost need a strategic partner. Like I need someone that's kind of got this figured out a bit. Like I'm kind of siloed over here on this island, and obviously no one else in the MP space is gonna speak to me about how to grow my business past their business. That doesn't make sense. Not at all. Yep. And I have met another business mentor at the time who was also incredible. She actually built a unicorn, which is just like wild to think about. And she said, you know, if you're looking at strategic partners and you're looking probably possibly at selling as well. And she's like, you know, you might want to consider like what would it look like to sell? She said, However, I don't think your business is in a position to sell. And it might not even be in a position for a strategic partner because it has keywoman syndrome, and your name and your face is everywhere, and you're the sole human, which in the MP space and in the test prep space is actually pretty common because people like that feeling like a connection with a human, right? And so I did me and my husband decided together that we were just going to contact. He labeled himself as a growth strategist, but he was really more so like a broker, and just be like, Hey, like, what do you think the value of our business is with my name and my face still on it? And he was like, Well, selling a business is like selling real estate, and so it's worth what someone's willing to pay. And so the only way to know what it's worth is to like go out to the market and see around. And the first day that we met him, you know, we were already kind of on this path and thinking about this and whether we were gonna do a rebrand, what the future looked like. Like we were getting to a point where we were like really dreaming about the five-year future of a 10-year future, etc. The very first day we met with that broker, I also found out I was pregnant, which was not like unexpected. I was like, we're at a good point in our lives. Like, yeah, we're billionaires, we have a successful business, we have the home that we always dreamed of. We have a farm out here in Kentucky, which we thought we would have when we were like 70, not in our 30s. And I always make that point that we had ultimately decided that we might even pursue selling or seeing what that looked like before we knew about Meadow, because it would be very demeaning and demoralizing to me as an entrepreneur and a human for people to be like, Oh, like she sold because she was pregnant. And I was like, Oh no, no, no, no, babe. And actually, when we went out to tease in the market, I found a company that I loved and adored and had this really incredible experience with. Like the first time we met them, half their executive team was women, and that's a really big deal in this kind of space. And ultimately, their first offer was nowhere close to what me and my husband had decided. We actually decided what our number was before we ever went to the teaser process, just in case, you know, we got excited about somebody. And so we left them behind and said, see you later. Maybe we can talk later this year, but I'm just gonna keep growing and building and doing the thing that I'm already doing. And it's probably a month, month and a half after we said goodbye, they came back with our magic number. And I was like, Oh, or sell it. Like, okay, let's do it. And for context, like my daughter was born in August and we sold in June of 2022.

SPEAKER_03 28:38

Okay. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

That was boom, boom. Good for you. That's a quick turnaround.

SPEAKER_02 28:41

I mean, that's from like, let's just test it out, let's just see.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Uh-huh. Yeah. They're like, oh, okay, like strategic partners, there's a lot of fit, there's culture fit, and they're FaceTime California, so they're very progressive. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 28:55

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