Bedpan Banter

Getting Better, Not Bitter: SimpleNursing's Reinvention Story

• SimpleNursing • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Nurse Mike reveals how Simple Nursing almost went bankrupt before finding its true purpose and transforming into an evidence-based nursing education platform. Through strategic partnerships, data-driven content creation, and patience the company reinvented itself by analyzing thousands of NCLEX questions to provide what students actually need.

Don't be scared, be prepared. Nursing school doesn't have to be the scary, confusing, daunting, mysterious thing it's made out to be.


To submit your stories & comments, visit: https://simplenursing.com/podcast/

Nurse Mike:

So let's talk about the transition of when Simple Nursing was going to go bankrupt. The long story of this, or short story long, is.

Nurse Mike:

Simple Nursing kind of started as an accident If you guys have saw the other videos of the origin story of simple nursing where we kind of just made videos on a like little webcam $30 whiteboard in my dad's like little library with a sock to erase the board. So it was kind of bootstrapped a little bit Actually a lot of it it was. It was a family affair, if you will. My brother's wife was working the phones as customer service. It was only supposed to be a six-month gig, turned into like a six-year gig and then my buddy from high school was doing sales and just anyone who called he would talk about the program and try to get them into a membership to help them, you know, decrease study time, and he was my carpal buddy from nursing school.

Nurse Mike:

Simple Nursing starts to go bankrupt around 2015 to 2018-ish and the reason for that is because we weren't really an educational company. We were just like literally a family business. And there was this book that I lived by and I loved called the 4-Hour Workweek, where the concept was, if you make a business online, just like, set up all the automation and then you can only work four hours a week and since you work online, you can work anywhere in the world. So I was traveling a lot and working remote and doing that thing before COVID, like way before COVID 2015-ish, and I was like living my best life. But the thing that the author, timothy Ferris if you're watching this, he didn't tell me that competitors will come in, and so we were like the only taco truck on the street, if you will, the only real big YouTube channel for nursing. But right around 2015, we started getting other personalities that were just copying my style, but in better lighting, better colors, better audio, because remember that we had that really crappy webcam I think only one that you guys know of is is still doing it today, and I think the lesson for me at the time was like, okay, you have two choices you can become bitter or you become better.

Nurse Mike:

And so, as we're watching 2015, we're decreasing like 30, 20 to 30 percent year over year, but the weirdest part is like no one in the family my brother's wife, my buddy from nursing school that was doing sales. My dad was like our CFO, like doing our accounting. No one had a concern that we were going down. It was really weird time Cause. I'm like we all got into boardroom I still remember this like in 2018. I'm like guys, look at these numbers. They're going down, down. So we have a decision here either, in the next 18 months, if this keeps on going, all of us here are gonna be without a job, including me. So I'm like what are we doing and why?

Nurse Mike:

And I get if everyone liked the little talking stick and the wildest part is everyone in the room, including my dad, was saying like you know things other than helping nursing students. Like, oh, my brother's wife gets to work from home. My buddy from nursing school like oh yeah, this is really cool. You know, uh, sidekick money and blah blah. And my dad like, oh yeah, this will save for your retirement and we'll set you up with a roth ira and all this stuff. And that really hit me and hit home, because I'm like the biggest question that you'll see on podcasts, especially with business or entrepreneurial stuff or self-help, is focus on the what and the why, and for me, the what and the why was to help nursing students pass nursing school and really to be something that I would use in nursing school like the Disneyland, right? And no one around the table on the team had the answer of helping students. And that was huge wake-up call to me because I'm like, of course we should go bankrupt. Of course we shouldn't be a business if we're not helping the end user. We don't want to be like another big box brand or a big you know textbook company with a big question bank that really doesn't really really listen to customers.

Nurse Mike:

So that's when I started going back to the drawing board. I'm like, okay, we need to redo all 2,000 videos that we had at the time. We need to do it in a new way. I don't know if actually anyone really knows this, but we took the color palette from a Cosmopolitan magazine and that's how we designed all the colors in our new animated videos which you see on YouTube now. But it was still like there's so much free stuff on YouTube. What if we can't even compete anymore? You really can't compete with free. So I had to really think about, like, okay, how are we going to redesign this whole thing. So it wasn't just the animation part, which still cost a lot of money. It's like $100 a minute. That was on the cheap end too. We researched 70 different animation companies and everyone in the first world was like $500 a minute at the time. But we're looking at that. But I'm like okay, well, how are these videos going to be even better? And I kind of just like let go and let God I was like Jesus take the wheel.

Nurse Mike:

I still remember like praying, like you know. Actually, this is like a real personal story too. It was a huge access point between me thinking we're going to go bankrupt. I'm going to go back to work as a nurse, which I hadn't been working as a nurse for years at that point and I'm like I don't even know if I'll be a great nurse, I'm just a great educator and I didn't have a master's degree at the time. So I still remember my mom. I grew up super Christian. I was actually supposed to be a youth pastor growing up. Anyways, I was on a trip with my mom and she's like you should fast and pray and like really give this to the Lord. So I'm like okay.

Nurse Mike:

So I got on my knees and I didn't eat for two days and I was like, well, god, what do you really want from me? How are we going to really impact students? Are we really just here just to pay bills and die and really just make money? Like, what are we doing and why? And it really just came to me like, okay, we need to get myself out of the way, get your own ego out of the way. This is not like a self-made story of like, we're going to pull it up by your bootstraps.

Nurse Mike:

And you know, like an American dream, and everyone in the company didn't have the experience head of growth or growth development or corporate experience of, you know, leading a company of that size. If you will, I still remember the day it was the summer, I think, of 2018, I was like, okay, what's 50% of nothing? Well, it's still nothing. So, oh my God, if you become the majority shareholder of my part in the business and we make you the CEO, every money we make, I'll give you over 50% into donations and nonprofits and things that are outside of myself, you know, like charity work. And I tell you what, like seven days later, I met my business partner, lyman King, and I was working with a few business coaches and we just outlined exactly what that perfect person would be, because they always my business coaches always say like you're only one person away from a totally different life. I'm like, okay, so we put it down and it was like, okay, you need to be a five-year expert in digital marketing. You needed to, like, manage a few million dollars in ad spend, which obviously we didn't have a few million dollars, but it was just the experience level, right. But really the underlying underbelly of it was, you know, not just someone with experience, but someone with grit, like willing to win at all costs and really actually being more passionate about growth and the business itself and really expanding it than I was, which is really tough to do as a business owner. You want to find other people that are really more passionate than you are, and they always call it the three Ps People first, then your product and then how you pitch it or sell it.

Nurse Mike:

After that come to Jesus moment, and my mom was praying for us and had her little mustard seeds and a little prayer group on it. Lyman King shows up and I'm trying to talk this guy out of. You know, helping us, because this guy is actually making really good money a few hundred thousand dollars a year and he has a baby on the way. And I'm like dude, like I don't want to wreck this guy's life. I care about him. So for five weeks, I'm like, dude, you don't want to take this job, like don't want to do this. And he was persistent about it and really had that great. He's like I really want to build something with my hands. Like, put my name on. I'm like, okay, all right, if this is what you want to do. So he ended up, uh, straddling his full-time job at the time and dabbling in simple nursing and helping us restructure.

Nurse Mike:

And that's how, 2019, we just kind of like for the first time after three and a half years of losing, we stabilized. I drained my entire savings account and I'm like I'm gonna go out with my finger on the trigger, even if no one watches these videos or if it's no one's gonna pay for these or if it really helps no one. I know that I did my best and I chose to get better and not bitter. And 2020 comes around, where we just invested a ton of money, like basically my whole savings, into, uh, this new pharmacology boot camp or pharmacology videos, and 2020 comes around and then, man, like it's like a rocket ship for like I think we increased that year by like 300 because we had some of the best newest animated videos on youtube.

Nurse Mike:

But it wasn't just the animation, it was because we took 10 000 and collects questions and we put them in the algorithm and it was genius too. It was basically the. The concept was it was like why do people say that certain things will be on the NCLEX when we know that they're not on the NCLEX? So, for example, take any topic like a heart attack, right, myocardial infarction there's a few videos on youtube that are like oh yeah, these 12 cardiac enzymes are going to be on your NCLEX. It's like, how do they really know that? So we took five big question banks for the NCLEX 2,000 questions each and then we put them into this algorithm of like okay, out of 10,000 questions, let's focus in on myocardial infarction. Where do all the questions come from? Is it signs and symptoms? Is it signs and symptoms? Is it treatments? What cardiac enzymes are they asking for? And only one cardiac enzyme came up time and time again and it was troponin.

Nurse Mike:

So we did this evidence-based approach with a few professors from University of Tennessee that systematized our entire video set and it was like we're going to teach and really get to the point on NCLEX standards and only give you the need-to-know information. So I think that was the biggest competitive advantage between anyone else on YouTube not only the animation, but also the memory tricks and really the need-to-know topics. All right, guys, we're doing a new segment called Call Like Confessions. We're doing segments throughout this entire podcast, but this one we're answering a couple questions that people submitted to me and we're answering them right now. So keep your eye on social media because we're going to be dripping these out.

Nurse Mike:

So first question, kevin, all the way from Kenya, is what's one piece of advice that you'd give to every nursing student right now? I think the biggest piece of advice is don't be scared, be prepared. Nursing school is so systematized it doesn't have to be the scary, confusing, daunting, mysterious thing. If you ever find yourself confused or lost. The reason why we do simple nursing is because I wanted to use it as a nurse, and if you simply watch one video before you study on that particular topic we've seen it time and time again, hundreds of thousands of students in the past decade it will decrease your study time. It'll highlight the book for you. Basically, one eight-minute video will wrap up an hour of you being lost in your textbook. So if you just literally do that one thing, we've seen students have decreased stress, decreased study time dramatically like 60% less study time and doubling doubling the productivity. And a lot of students don't use it correctly. They'll like watch it before their test and it really doesn't help as well. So I know that this is not supposed to be like a you know self-promotion plug, but honestly it's one of the best things that I wish I had and we're just trying to have other students use it.

Nurse Mike:

All right, trevor H from Portland Oregon. What's the worst piece of nursing advice that I ever got? Med-surg, Everyone's got to be a med-surg nurse. You ever hear that before? I know I have Okay. So how many instructors and deans and you know I call them the old crust of faculty that always say like you got gotta do it the way I did it. It's like going pantyhose shopping with your grandma. It's like well, these are sturdy, you know, these are great. It doesn't like. No, I'm like if med surge nursing was the only nursing, I would not be a nurse. I tell you that much Because I was, like, born and raised in the emergency room, like on the ambulance. I'm like I'm going to be an ER nurse critical care. So that's the worst piece of nursing advice you don't need to be a med-surg nurse to be a great nurse. I've seen a lot of new grads with no medical experience go into the ER, icu and other places. Just know it's going to be a steep learning curve if you're not already working as a tech in those units. But you don't have to be a med-surg nurse. Don't let them fool you.

Nurse Mike:

A lot of students ask what is next for Simple Nursing. So we have a lot of new goodies here. So we are dropping a new album with Memory Music. If you guys didn't know, we have three albums on Spotify, apple Music, google Play really anywhere and it's basically parodies of popular songs. So, for example, journey Don't Stop Believing. We do Don't Stop Breathing. And then the Liver Cirrhosis song. It's beginning to look a lot like cirrhosis. It's great. So we're going to be dropping a few new songs. So please follow us on social if you want to keep up to date with the newest releases. We also have new tools. So think about this right. Simple Nursing has helped you through nursing school, two years, right, a few thousand videos. Then we help you with your NCLEX, with our NCLEX prep. We just released an exit prep for ATI and HESI, or really your proctor exam. But the next part is really, really cool. We have just released a new grad prep course.

Nurse Mike:

A lot of students were asking what do I do after the NCLEX and how do I prepare as a new grad. So we made 30 videos where we deep dive into interviewing hiring managers from some of the top, most prestigious hospitals and really they drill down into like, what interview questions do you ask? Why do you ask those? What do you look for? Resume builder tips. We follow around preceptors, get their advice on where new grads mess up. And then we have so many other videos where we sit down with a new grad herself after a year of being a new grad, and also Professor Allison, who teaches new grads.

Nurse Mike:

And the last thing that we're working on, which I love, it's basically kind of like a netflix for ceu. So you guys don't know this yet, or maybe you do. Uh, continue education units. You need, I think, 30 every two years. They can be a pain in the butt, like old case studies are dry and crusty. So I I'm like guys like what if we did like a streaming service, right, kind of like Netflix or it was like medical mystery case studies and maybe different podcasts, where you can get all of your CEOs in one bundle, and also like your skills videos and everything. So that's going to be dropping soon, so please follow us. Oh, and I'm getting a call right now. Who do we have here? Diddly d is that? Hey, mike, I think I'm here at the studio. Can you let me in? Natalie! What's going on?! Yeah, come on down. Come on down to the front stage. All right, guys, I gotta go, but we will see you next time with a very special guest. So remember, don't be scared, be prepared and don't let the bedpans bite.