I was almost 30 um and so really I just felt like because of all the life experience I had coming up to that I kind of had a little more Focus once I did get into the nursing world I was like where do I fit in what am I good at what are my gifts what are my not so good things and so when I started out um in the ICU at UCLA I thought well maybe I'm GNA continue on and become like a nurse practitioner or a nurse anesthesist and I knew that that was the unit where if you wanted to keep going this is where you would go

I just kept seeing these doors open I started to recognize the significance of having a nurse speaking on a patient's behalf than a caregiver or daughter um and so I started having a lot of families say gosh Courtney I would hire you to just be the person here speaking um I would hire you to be Mom's patient quarterback I would hire you to go to all of Mom's appointments if that was a possibility

I just felt like there's got to be a better way to do this than Craigslist you know there's got to be a better way for people to find nurses than just a registry just an agency or standing outside of a really nice hospital at change of shift and looking for nice nurses like that's just not it doesn't make sense so kite has always been in my heart to build this thing where these nurses are vetted

I didn't know how to run a business I'd never started one before my first business in 2012 so I started researching I started grabbing books like I picked up a book called Home Care how-to and I look at the book now I'm like that's so cute didn't know anything but like you have to start somewhere and you have to know where you're going

I found that when I was in the ICU um you know the really Critical Care environment Innovation was huge when you would see what they could do you know I was in cardio ICU and they were doing heart lung transplants you name it like it was amazing to see what they could do

I found just technology can be really fantastic but it's also like you can't always rely on it it's not always going to work um we see that all the time like when zoom's not working or whatever is not working like you nurses know how to improvise so I do love that I love seeing what nurses come up with because it's like my patient still needs my help I'm not just going to just leave you know just because you don't have this thing you say I need like I'm GNA have to improvise somehow

I've just gone that like you said earlier I think there should be a clinical there should be a nurse on every single one of those teams that's working on whether it's technology whether it's medicine whether it's Delivery Systems like you really need someone like a nurse who sees the patient side of you sees the business side of you sees you know what all the other anary partners in the care system

I think one of the biggest ones is you feel a little lonely sometimes like if you're a solo entrepreneur you feel like you're thinking about things all the time and you're overthinking it and um I think if you can find a group of other entrepreneurs or nurses or people that are kind of in your field that are kind of going in the same direction or maybe a little bit ahead of you it's so good to get in with them

I got to say I think the most surprising thing was you know our company one of our companies got acquired about a year and a half ago and my business partner was much more interested in the acquisition we're in different places in our lives I was ready to scale our business I wanted to make it better I felt like we were just getting started but they made an offer that sounded really nice and it was really good for her and it became clear that like she's not really into it anymore

I thought I wasn't gonna stay on with that company I said oh yeah I'll sell the company but I'm not going to stay and watch someone else run it into the ground when I've worked so hard to do I've heard stories of that and I was like no no no I'm not going to stay I am not going to stay and then it came down to like it's time to turn over the company and she was staying and I was so grateful she was because I trusted her more than anyone else to do the right thing for our patients and our nurses

know that's got to be kind of Bittersweet to go through an acquisition process but also should be something that you're proud of and it's a rewarding to say someone else valued the work that you started and they get to continue it yeah no you're right 100% And I look back and I say to Kelly now I say I hope you feel this way but I honestly feel like I'm better off even through all the acquisition and the fighting and the whatever I said I actually feel like I'm better off and it's made me a better more empathetic nurse business owner all those things because I know what it looks like on the other side now and I just know how I would do it different now

there's so many of them I mean I I just I think automatically of um Joe he was one of my favorite patients of all time he was a guy um who had grown up and at the young age of like 8 years old contracted polio and he was in the hospital for the first year of his life uh not his first year for an entire year of his life they said he'd never walk again all the things and I met Joe when he was in his 80s he had already had a long life and when I met him he was kind of Knocking on Heaven's Door and his daughter-in-law had reached out to me and said hey I need someone local in Los Angeles to help see what's going on with Joe Joe's in the ER things are wrong blah blah blah

I just found I think what's made me successful is I never went into nursing or the businesses that I did thinking well this is a great business idea I I more or less looked at it as like what are the gaps that I can personally fill with my gifts and with my talents and my experience and I just kept open-minded about it enough until I found like this really good fit and sometimes it'd be like courney can you write a care plan for court and I'd be like well I've never done that before what does that entail and I'd learn how to do it and I'd do it