Sarah Michelle is the founder of SMNP Reviews, an educational platform that helps students pass nurse practitioner exams. She’s also a public speaker, podcast host, mother, and of course, a former nurse practitioner herself.

I’ve had the honor of helping Sarah with a big keynote presentation over the past few months. When I learned more about her and heard her story, I knew I had to get her on the podcast so she could share it with you all.

In this episode, Sarah and I talk about how she started her business, how mental health is built into its core, collaborating with her students, and more.

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How Sarah Michelle’s idea for her business was born

Imagine that you’re taking a test that determines your future. Your career rides on it. Your income, the education you’ve invested in. Not to mention the money you’ve spent on taking the exam itself. That’s a lot of pressure to ace a test, right?

That’s what becoming a nurse practitioner is like. And if you’re anxious, perfectionistic, and Type A (as Sarah Michelle described herself), that pressure is tenfold. Add COVID anxiety into the mix, and you can just imagine how students like Sarah Michelle were feeling.

There are plenty of exam reviews for nurses out there, but Sarah Michelle found that none of them were giving her the confidence she needed to feel good about the exam. These resources lectured, talked, spit information — but none included her in the conversation.

Don’t worry; Sarah Michelle breezed through her exam in the end. (She finished 175 questions in less than an hour! Mind. Blown.) She was ready. All she needed was that confidence boost, that reassurance that she knew what she was doing…and would pass.

Existing test prep and exam reviews didn’t have that, but Sarah Michelle was about to change that. She knew she could do it better.

Building a course and collaborating with her students

Within a week, Sarah Michelle created a “crash course” that spoke to students with anxiety at its core. It resonated with people from the get-go. So many nurse practitioner students with anxiety no longer felt isolated after taking her course. In the first two months of launching her business, she made more than her annual salary as a nurse.

Two things helped Sarah Michelle build her business so quickly: timing and need. Schooling and clinicals were cut short because of COVID. Students who passed the exam weren’t given a graduation ceremony. Everyone was left sort of high and dry.

So, Sarah Michelle gave away the first iteration of her course to her classmates for free, as long as they invited one person into her Facebook group. She got 500 people into her group overnight.

Not only did Sarah Michelle see that people wanted what she was offering, she used her platform to support her students. She used her Facebook group to support its members, but also dig deeper into what they needed help with. She built out more resources and offers thanks to that collaborative environment in her Facebook group.

When Sarah Michelle knew it was time to sell

With the company growing at such a fast pace a year and a half later, Sarah Michelle felt like a bottleneck slowing things down. She was working so hard within the business that she had no time to work on the business. Working 80 to 100 hour weeks was not sustainable, especially with her goals of having a family and having a farm.

Sarah Michelle met with Blueprint Prep (which owns SMNP Reviews now) and was impressed from the start. They were growing themselves, too. And Sarah Michelle connected with the CEO, who was the founder of the LSAT portion of Blueprint themselves. That founder-to-founder connection is important, people!

Sarah Michelle sold SMNP Reviews in mid-June, and in early August, gave birth to her daughter, Meadow. Sarah Michelle described it as a “whirlwind,” with the grief of selling her business on top of having a baby with a heart defect. “It was a lot, but I’m so grateful that I sold when I did. My husband always says I have the best timing in the world.”

Speaking, writing, podcasting, and more

Now, Sarah Michelle is shifting her attention elsewhere. She’s leaning more into addressing nursing education as a whole, especially mental health and bias against those with anxiety. As the Chief Nursing Officer of Blueprint Prep, Sarah Michelle wants to speak about student resources, mental health, and making change.

She’s also writing a book, getting more involved in congenital heart disease advocacy, rebranding her podcast, and speaking (of course)!

Sarah Michelle’s first keynote speech is coming up. And it’s very different from her first webinar that she recorded on Zoom, which she described as “awful.” But the impact she realized she was making during that first talk? Incredible.

To tag along on Sarah Michelle’s journey and learn more about her, follow her on Instagram @sarahmichellenp. You can also subscribe to her rebranded podcast called The Real Deal Nurse Practitioner Club, but start with Episode #1 to get the whole story!