This Nerdy Nurse is Helping Nurses Build Confidence - Ep.83
Brittney Wilson, BSN, RN, the nurse behind The Nerdy Nurse and co-founder of Health Media Academy, is an award-winning author and blogger, international keynote speaker, and community strategist in the nursing and healthcare technology communities.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Naseema McElroy: [00:00:00] All right, Nurses on Fire. We have an amazing guest at Brittany Wilson joining us. Hey Brittany.
Brittney Wilson: [00:00:07] Hey!
Naseema McElroy: [00:00:08] And Brittany is from the Nerdy Nurse. Brittany, before we talk about your business, can you walk us through your nursing journey?
Brittney Wilson: [00:00:15] I'll give you nutshell version. So I became a nurse and I immediately went to med surge, like a good little nurse, you know, spent, spent my time there.
I quickly realized that I was probably not going to be ultimately happy there. And frankly, I was bullied. Pretty profusily cause I asked a lot of questions. And when you asked more than one nurse, the same question, they think you don't trust them. And thus I became a non favorite on the unit.
So when I was looking to see what was next, my assumption was that I had to go get a master's degree and do all the normal things that nurses think they have to do to go somewhere else. And I found a specialty called informatics. Which you didn't need a master's degree for, it might be helpful, but you can kind of talk your way into it.
And so at the same time I had started a blog and basically leveraged the technical expertise and project management skills I had from the bedside and the blog and all that together to landed myself a career in informatics. And from there I worked for an online community startup for several years.
Still running the blog, starting to make money from the blog, but still doing a day job. And then I transitioned Somebody I worked with on the blog actually asked me to come and work for them at a big corporate company. And I did and I actually worked in design products for healthcare professional development for several years.
And then they kind of asked me nicely if I would come and manage and build their community. And so for the last three years, I've actually been doing that and still running the blog. I guess where I am right now is I have a full-time day job, which I love. I have no intention to quit. I never wanted to escape that.
I guess I wanted to escape the bedside, but I did that many years ago. But I, I love what I get to do through relationships and communities. And I continue to have my digital marketing enterprise as it were and. And adding other passive income streams as we go along actually just recently added to short term rental.
So that's, I guess where, where we are.
Naseema McElroy: [00:02:12] Wow. Well, you are definitely a nurse that's on fire, but where did like the whole nerdy nurse moniker come from?
Brittney Wilson: [00:02:24] Yeah. So when I started the blog, it was anonymous. And then I realized that I wanted to be more of a public persona, that I was proud of the things I was putting there or prompt some of the things I was putting there.
And I did a, a good long look at all the content I was producing and. Did a big audit and called the things that I wasn't as could it wasn't as proud of a lot of complaining about people that were mean to me at work in the beginning. Cause that's why I started as I started online with Twitter, trying to make a connection with people.
Cause I wasn't getting it with the nursing peers I had. So I looked at and the things that were interesting to me and the things I wanted to write about and what I thought made sense. I've always been a bit of a nerd. I've always been more technical leaning into that. And so the alliteration was beautiful and I thought, well, I guess I'll be the nerdy nurse instead of a nerdy nurse. And we'll go from there. I own both domain names, but the nerdy nurse always just sounded more catchy to me.
Naseema McElroy: [00:03:24] I like it. It's just like claim it! Like I am the one, that is me. So I think that that's fantastic. But I want to know. So you still work full time in informatics, and then all this other stuff that you're doing this entrepreneurship is secondary. Another source of income.
Brittney Wilson: [00:03:42] Yeah, I would say, I mean, secondary feels. I know you can't serve two masters, but I don't think it works like that. I'll go ahead and lay it out here. I have a secret weapon that probably a lot of other people haven't considered or scares them, but my husband's been a stay at home dad since our children were born for for 12 years. So I can get done a lot more than I think most people can get done. So I definitely devote full attention to my day job, but then I also outsource and automate and hire contractors to do the stuff for my site. So what most people would need to put, you know, 40 hours a week to get it done I can put in five and get done because I have help. And I basically handle strategy at this point.
Naseema McElroy: [00:04:25] I love it. Stay at home. Dad. Listen, I swear when I was little, like I always thought I was going to have, have a husband that was a stay at home dad. It was just how I was wired and then end up working out like that.
But I am here for it and it's amazing that you have that support at home because that is something that is hard to find, cause we're used to wearing all the hats and so kudos to your husband for that, but also kudos to you for outsourcing things in your business so that you can optimize all of your time.
And I think that that's important when you're running a business. And so I like that you're able to do all of those things. Still have your full-time job and still you're creating this digital marketing empire. So for nurses that aren't familiar with the world of digital marketing, could you explain a little bit of what digital marketing is and how you tie that into nursing?
Brittney Wilson: [00:05:21] Digital marketing is a pretty generic term that wraps up a lot of different things that you do online, whether that be social media, email marketing, your blog, e-commerce it's basically the full gambit of tools that you can use to interact with people on the internet. And I refer to myself as a digital marketer or blogger something like that because I actually don't like the term influencer.
And while I've probably started my business more in that direction. It doesn't feel fair to say that largely because I don't produce all the content myself. It's this is not a one man band it's, it's more of a brand and empire is a funny way to put it, but I guess that's accurate. And I also think that influence marketing has gotten fairly taught toxic and inauthentic social media is not what it was 10 years ago.
So I don't put myself in that category. And one of the interesting things about digital marketing is it's very scary to people and they tend to invest all their eggs in the wrong baskets. What I see right now is people spend almost all their time on time, sucks, like social media, Facebook, and they're spending all their time there and they don't have a website at all. They don't have an email list at all. They're not paying attention to. Search engine optimization, they're ignoring Pinterest completely, which is the second largest search engine. So digital marketing looks at all of those things, finds the things that are going to produce the biggest ROI 80/20, and has you build strategies and all the little buckets that lead back to your big bucket, which is your funnel and whatever converts for sales and provides value.
Naseema McElroy: [00:06:53] Excellent explanation. And I know you mentioned that you monetize your blog pretty early on, so you're getting revenue from that. And that was something that you leveraged to get into informatics. What did you use to monetize your blog initially?
Brittney Wilson: [00:07:09] So early is I guess, relative I'll probably blog for two or three years before I even dreamed. And in fact, I will tell you, I felt very guilty about the thought of it about potentially monetizing. And I'm going to call this nurse guilt and I actually see a lot of nurses right now who refuse to do certain things because they feel like it's somehow dirty to earn a dollar for investing hours and hours of their time.
Influencers in particular have huge Instagrams they'll work for free scrubs. Like. That's sort of sad, but we've been conditioned to think that we're servants we're supposed to kill ourselves for everybody else. So about three years in and the first way I started doing it was through affiliate marketing is actually still our primary source of income.
I do not enjoy personally creating products. They take too long. I know other people do, and they're great at it. I've created a few and I have a lot of friends that I work with that do that. I enjoy the marketing aspect. I enjoy telling people about other people's products. And so it became a really a neat thing to do.
I could spend. Four to eight hours. A good article takes four to eight hours writing a very highly optimized article for SEO, but somebody else's product that I know works well and other people will benefit from it. Put a link in there and earn almost as much money as they're earning in the profit margin.
So that would be where I started. I have written a couple books. If you work with a publisher, those aren't moneymakers, they are. Large business cards and I've self published and that one was certainly more profitable. I have published a course because people begged for it. And then various other partnerships, sponsorships, I sell sponsored articles.
And I've done some public speaking. I mean, when you, when you start on this journey, you sort of try everything until you find the things that fit for you and affiliate marketing is still my favorite one.
Naseema McElroy: [00:09:01] So besides affiliate marketing, what are your other main revenue drivers?
Brittney Wilson: [00:09:07] So sponsorship, I guess. And then ad direct AB ad revenue. I take anywhere from five to 10 sponsorships or articles sponsored article partnerships per year, where I do it. I campaign alongside of them. And because I do so few and I have. A very targeted audience, not large email lists. I charge quite abit for that. So I can, I can afford to do very few because I do really well.
And the audience is already there and built in. So I would say that those are my three. When I look at it, it sort of waxes and wanes, but it's still frankly, probably 70 or 80% affiliate revenue. From a handful of key partnerships. I want to stress that because I think what happens when people look at doing affiliate marketing, they throw everything under the sun out there and post links and get upset that they're not selling anything.
You've got to really target, you know, your top five things that you want to tell people about and focus on those and produce content around those and stop trying to spray and pray.
Naseema McElroy: [00:10:01] I love that because in this space, you'll get hit up every single day by people who want you to be an affiliate for them.
And it's tempting because you're like, Oh yeah, I can make money here. I can make money there. But honestly you only have so many hours in a day. And so really honing in on the ones that are really going to be mutually beneficial is super important. So I want to talk more about your audience. How would you define your demographic and how did you kind of start making sure that you were speaking directly to them?
Brittney Wilson: [00:10:33] You know, I actually am committed the mortal sin with my demographic because I don't really have a very specific one. And part of me struggles with that because I know you're supposed to niche down and I teach, I have a book where I write about, you know, picking a particular niche of how you break through.
I got in early enough in the scene where I can talk about all nursing topics and still, you know, make search. So I really talk about all nursing topics and I do focus a little bit more on the technical side. The tagline I'm using right now is helping nurses build confidence. So my target audience is really any nurse who needs to build confidence or.
Find something to, to make their life better. And again I would not recommend anyone else ever do that. It's probably, it probably is not the best decision, but because I did it early enough, I was able to do that. I, I still have a flare for a more technical but my audience ranges across the board, frankly, I rungiveaways and sometimes my audience are just people who want to be involved in the giveaway.
So it's, probably one of the things I would say, if you're listening to this, don't do what I did, but it's what I did. And that's who they are.
Naseema McElroy: [00:11:39] I mean, I think, but it speaks to just your brand and the maturity of it, because you can do that. Most people coming into the game now, it probably would be really, really hard to do.
But. Hey, it works for you. And if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So I don't understand why you struggle with it because it's like one of those. Yeah. Like you said, those Cardinal sins, but I mean like it's working for you and that's what matters. So. I want to know, like if a nurse is interested and becoming an influencer and let's just use it.
Cause I know like that's how usually how people get into this space. Right. It's really, they're sharing their stories. They're a personal brand and then they later turned into, they can later you know, develop that into whatever they want to do. And so how does it nurse transition from the bedside to going into digital marketing are doing this as a side hustle to create more revenue.
Brittney Wilson: [00:12:39] So I liked the, the model of trying something organically before you put a big business strategy around it. So I always like to test the waters, even on your personal Facebook page, on your Twitter, to start asking questions and connecting with people to see, frankly, if you're interesting. And, and Instagram is probably one of the best places to do it.
The reach there is just better and you can connect with people and grow a following and get exposure more quickly than any of the other ones. Now, the algorithms have destroyed most of the others. And if I were going to do it right today, I would go on Tik TOK. And I would build my following there.
That's probably the place that I would spend time creating micro content, not investing a lot of energy and seeing if it took off. And then frankly, if that content didn't come, didn't take off. I would shift for a few months and focus on other content until I found an area that I could provide value in.
That was resonated with people. And then I would start to build the other things that I need now, along the way, I would probably register a few domain names because when she start talking about something, somebody else snatch in and swipe that sucker from end. So I'd rather spend the $12 to. A few times to snatch up a domain name.
And then once I got good resignation on Tik TOK. I would go and grab those other social accounts and then start building a website to collect some emails from so I could figure out how I was going to make money on that.
Naseema McElroy: [00:14:02] That's what I was just about to transition to the collection of emails, because I think like that's the thing that a lot of people miss out on, they depend on these other platforms for their audiences and they don't create their art curate their own audiences from it.
So as far as like building an email list, so first you have to have a website that it's going to be linked to, but How do people start to build those lists so they can reach people directly.
Brittney Wilson: [00:14:30] I'm going to talk a little politics, but very soft politics. So right now we're in a freedom of speech crisis, I guess, is the right way to pull it where social media is essentially choosing, who gets to have a voice and who doesn't, they're choosing which thoughts and language that they wish to share and not to get into semantics of what's right and wrong, or what is acceptable speech, or like, even if we agree with it, The fact of the matter is, is that if you're on Twitter or Facebook or anywhere, they get to decide if you can be there. And so anytime you're building an audience on somebody else's platform that you don't own, they can shut you down at any time. It could be because you're being politically adversarial. It could be just because they felt like could, they don't really have to have a reason they can point to any arbitrary thing.
Naseema McElroy: [00:15:17] And they don't have to explain it to you either. Exactly. They don't have to explain it to you and believe me, I've gotten a business page shut down. And they, they said, because you were talking about finances, I was like, wow,
Brittney Wilson: [00:15:31] this is one of those areas that you've gotta be very special. It's heavily regulated.
You can't promise so much like it, it's one of those things they can take at any point in time. And so, because of that, because we know they do that, we've seen hundreds of counts. Spans thousands of accounts, banned pages get deleted. People are being blocked off of Facebook for a week now for liking things.
I mean, it's, this is not a joke. I hope that this is the wake up call that people are going to need to say, wow, I really can not rely on anybody else. I need to. Own my audience. And the only way to own your audience is to collect permission and their emails to talk to them directly and send emails. The other benefit of that is you're going to reach a lot more of them on Facebook reach now is about 1%.
If you're lucky of your audience I'm sure Twitter and other platforms is variable, depending on how engaged you are, how well you play the game. But email marketing is almost consistently around 20% penetration for most people around 5% click through or action. Right? And if you can get that every time you send an email, I think it's worth spending some time on it and not hoping that the Twitter gods send some traffic your way and instead collecting the people who, you know, want to hear your message and always being able to communicate with them.
Naseema McElroy: [00:16:42] Yes. I love that. I love that. So yeah, you guys, if you are really serious about creating a platform that you want to grow, get an email list started as early as possible is really, really important. So
Brittney Wilson: [00:16:58] before your website, even, I mean, you can create a landing page before your website. Yeah. Yes,
Naseema McElroy: [00:17:03] exactly.
Yeah, you can create. Yeah, because you can create landing pages through a place where you can collect emails and these are places like if you talk about brand names, you would be like a convert kit or a MailChimp. I like convert kit. Cause I'm, I'm partial, you know?
Brittney Wilson: [00:17:21] It's the best.
Naseema McElroy: [00:17:22] Yeah, Convertkit is really good. I'm not an affiliate, so
Brittney Wilson: [00:17:28] I am, I'm happy to share my link
Naseema McElroy: [00:17:30] Brittany, I want to know, like, do you help nurses transition into the digital marketing space. Was that what your course is about or how do nurses work with you?
Brittney Wilson: [00:17:40] A little I don't do any consulting or one-on-one coaching or anything like that, largely because it would be expensive and I still have nurse guilt and I just don't, I don't do that. I do help a few of my friends.
I work with them on some things but out of large demand, people kept asking the question and frankly, I gave a lot of energy to people who never did anything with it. So in order to make sure that I valued my time and still provided the resource. I did write a book with Katie Kleber Fresh RN.com called the "Nurse's Guide to Blogging".
And it's really about, I guess, if you want to put it together, all of digital marketing influence marketing, but we focused on blogging because we think that's the most consistent way to gain predictable and scalable traffic where you don't have to spend all your waking time on you know, Facebook live and Instagram reels or even Tik TOK.
So that is a more encompassing strategy to build an entire infrastructure that will let you sell our market just about anything. Focusing on the blog is that as the center spoke of your wagon wheel and then we do have a related course. It's a few years old, but it's cheap. Frankly, it's $159.
You can go to HealthMedia academy.com to get that it's basically the live version of the book. So they go together. The book is only $20. You can get it on Amazon. When Katie and I did this together, we never intended for this to be some big thing that we would launch off and makemillions of dollars.
It really was to answer the questions that so many people had, like, how can I do this and be a nurse? What are the pitfalls and to just lay out a roadmap that people could follow. So they didn't have to stumble as much as we did, you know, we spent thousands of hours doing things wrong. And so this book is basically to save you that if you can spend $20 and get a thousand hours worth of lessons learned, I think that's a pretty good deal.
Naseema McElroy: [00:19:30] I think that's well worth it. And I loved it that you created a sense of resource because you can be point people, right? They're like, Hey, everything is written right here. And then you don't have like, The dread of wasting your time.
Brittney Wilson: [00:19:45] It's important to say right here, because I'm sure that you get, and I get in anyone who's been on your podcast is going to get, can I pick your brain? Can I call you? Can I have some coffee and I did it so much cause I really enjoy helping people.
People won't talk about it, but they would never do anything with it. And I don't like investing in people who aren't willing to invest in themselves. And so I created the book, not as a big moneymaker. I mean it earns revenue. It's certainly better than working with a publisher, but I created the book.
So I could say, read this and then get back to me with your questions, read this, and then come in and ask the questions in my nurse entrepreneurs, Facebook group. Because you know, you got to put some work forward before I'm going to be able to help you and I'm willing to help. And I frankly, used to reach out and help everyone until I got burned a few times.
I used to proactively do that and try to help people be profitable, but especially the ones who were creating good content, but. People got to put in the work first and they, they can't reach out to somebody who's doing it and do it well. And it has put in all these hours and expect to learn all that for free from them.
When they have it even done, two Google searches on the topic.
Naseema McElroy: [00:20:48] Believe me. I know I could not have said it better than you because I get it daily. And I'm just like, if you just would have done that one thing, you know, but then I see people investing in. Those dumbest things, but you know, we can probably talk about this for a long time, but I really want to know what's next for you, Brittany, what are you bringing to the world to help nurses?
Brittney Wilson: [00:21:17] One of the things I've actually done recently is lose about 70 pounds. It's taken several years to do it very slowly. I think that's the right way to do it.
Naseema McElroy: [00:21:25] Congradulations. Yes.
Brittney Wilson: [00:21:28] Thank you. I'll tell you a little bit of, I guess, the background to that. I've been heavy for as long as I remember, I've always, I was always the fat kid.
I was the fat nurse. There's a lot of emotional stuff that goes along with that, but I started to really question in the past five years or so, if that was creating barriers for me in the workplace. Specifically around being taken seriously. Did people think I was lazy? Unmotivated? Does it make you look less smart?
And unfortunately the research says it does. And as someone who's lost 70 pounds, I can tell you that you look it up. You know, there are perceptions that people have. And even, if not everybody has that perception, the second I knew that people thought that about me. I assumed everyone thought that about me.
So I went on a journey to lose weight and it took a long time. And I was frankly, pretty embarrassed about the fact that I was doing it at all. I hated the idea of it. And I did it through ketogenic eating and last-mile change and lots of extra water and sleep. And so now that I've done that, and I know how difficult the emotional aspect of it was.
Food was always a a reward system when I was growing up and a tool for comfort and relief for potential depression and anxiety. And when you remove those coping mechanisms, you've got to create others. So throughout that in the end, I was like, okay, well, I've done this. This was something that, as a nurse, I should have been able to do easily.
I knew exactly what to do, but it was the hardest thing. I have done in my entire life and people who have never been overweight don't understand that people who have only ever been 10 pounds, you've got to be morbidly obese. You've got to be 50, 70, a hundred plus pounds ever way to understand how freaking difficult is to eat right and exercise when the world has made it so convenient to do anything but, right. Like I know it sounds simple, but it's really the hardest thing I've ever done. So. The latest thing I've done. And I'm not there. I don't have any monetization attached to it. I'm committing the mortal sin there, but I'm just trying to help nurses feel comfortable talking about this and feel supported and not feel judged because I've been there and I've done it.
So I started at Facebook group called "Nurse Health and Wealth". I'm calling in Nurse Health and Wealth because I like talking about financial stuff too, but I didn't want to like pigeonhole. And so I think what you can do is you can go on a health journey while you go on a wealth journey and I'm sharing things about the short-term rental that I just invested in what I'm eating every day, low carb recipes.
It's not a strictly low-carb. Great, but that's what I did. So that's where we're at. If you look on Facebook for, at, you know, facebook.com/groups, nurse health, wealth, nurse health, and wealth, and the search, you'll find that you can join a board. See what I eat. People seem to be really interested in that.
I record videos. I talk about emotional things that I think largely get missed when you do the research. It is 90% mental health, emotional health and support. And so that's what I'm trying to help people do now.
Naseema McElroy: [00:24:19] Well, again, big congratulations because that's an incredible feat. And I feel you, I mean, I know I can relate, but it is hard to eat healthy, especially like trying to get my kids to eat healthy Lord.
Oh, my God. It's a struggle even at like, even from a baby and she's just transitioning from breast milk, but it's just so hard because of all the convenience foods and all the junk food, that's just right there. So kudos to you for that. And I think it's incredible that. And it just speaks to your personality that you created this free group and where you're sharing to help people with that.
And I think that's what we do as nurses. And that's how I love nurses is that we're really into serving others and that's. That's just our thing. And so I appreciate everything that you've done. I think you've built an incredible platform. Nurses can learn so much from you. And so I just wanted to like, just big you up here, I'm super honored that you joined us and gave us some real, real gyms to work with, especially people who I know.
There's so many nurses out there who want to be right. Influencers. I want to be personal brands that want to do things outside of nursing, but tie Tennessee. And I think that you have created an incredible roadmap. And I think that it's. Super good that you have actually created those resources, the book and the website in order to walk people through how they can be successful in the process, like without spending the thousands of hours, like both you and I have done in making mistakes.
And so and it's also just a great place to get people to take action. But yeah, Brittany, I just. Overall appreciate you. Thank you for sharing your story with nurses on fire. And I can't wait to see what you are doing like in the future. And I can tell you, I cheer you on, on your weight loss journey and just think you're incredible.
So thank you so much.
Brittney Wilson: [00:26:23] Yes, my pleasure. Thank you for providing this service for nurses. It's so valuable. For some reason, we think we're not worthy of this and we are, and I sincerely appreciate that someone like you in the people that have come on your show have done let nurses know that they are worthy.
That money is not dirty. We need money to survive, and we need to take care of ourselves in order to take care of others. So. Thank you for what you're doing. Exactly.
Thank you. Yes, we show up as better nurses when we're taking care of, and that includes our finances. That includes our health. So that's super important.
Naseema McElroy: [00:26:57] So thanks again, Brittany.
Hey there I’m Naseema
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