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America's nursing shortage and lack of healthcare access for many people are well-documented.  Bre Loughlin and her company, Nurse Disrupted, are actually doing something about it.  She recently joined The Savvy Entrepreneur show to share her story.

Nurse Disrupted provides a turnkey system where healthcare access is limited, and staffs it with online nurses who screen patients and either assist them or get them to the next step in healthcare treatment.  The company started with homeless shelters during the pandemic in Dane County, Wisconsin (the home of Madison).  It has since expanded to locations in Milwaukee and elsewhere in Wisconsin, and the calls for help are starting to come in from all over the country.

The system is anonymous and super-easy to use.  Payment for the systems comes from public health grants as well as large health systems who are desperate to reach rural, inner city, and other poorly-served populations.  The company is now funded through outside investors, and is growing rapidly.

But it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows and unicorns.  Bre shares some of the challenges she faced and how she overcame them.  She also offers her thoughts on lessons learned that may make the journey easier for others.

Nurse Disrupted is the inspirational story of a startup company that does well by doing good.  It's a clever product and service, and helps meet a desperate need.

Click on the arrow to listen and be inspired!  Or read a transcript of the interview here.

 

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Annette Gilchrist started out as a cancer researcher before starting MyGenomeRx, on online platform that identifies potential gene-drug interactions.

She joined The Savvy Entrepreneur to share the story of shy she founded MyGenomeRx, and how she's built & grown the company.

Annette's medical research background led her to teach pharmacists, and as part of one of her courses, she had pharmacy students use their DNA to identify potential gene-drug interactions.  She quickly realized that there were a lot of potential interactions, but no good websites to easily access this information.

She partnered with a coding whiz and they developed MyGenomeRx, a site where you can enter your DNA from ancestry.com, 23and me, or other source.  For a small fee, the platform then identifies gene markers that may cause your body to uptake a drug faster than normal, slower than normal, or have no response to at all.

Researchers are constantly finding indications of these, all of which help both patients & physicians determine which drug and dosage to use.

Annette shares some of the challenges of creating such a huge matching platform and of generating a report that is easily understandable.  It's also a story of how to find the right co-founder, and the challenges of  creating a company as a side hustle for both of them, not to mention the challenges of marketing and pricing.  It helps that this is not Annette's first “rodeo” as a founding entrepreneur, and she talks about how some of the learnings with her first company have helped as she's built and grown MyGenomeRx.

It's an interesting story, and Annette openly shares some of the challenges she's faced along the way.  And she candidly shares some of the lessons she's learned and advice for other budding entrepreneurs.

Click on the arrow to listen to the fascinating story of MyGenomeRx — and you might even decide it's a good idea to find out your own drug-gene interactions.   Or go here to read a transcript of the interview!

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Mike & Malaika Wells are a husband-wife duo who co-founded Do Well Brands, a Chicago startup. They're figuring things out as they go, not afraid to pivot where needed, and most definitely enjoying the journey along the way.

They'll keep you laughing as they finish each other's sentences and have friendly back & forths. They share how their quest for better, healthier foods & beverages led them to found and grow Do Well Brands.

Click on the arrow to take a listen! It's inspirational, full of helpful advice, and sure to make you smile!

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Lidia Varesco Racoma, founder of Lidia Varesco Design, is passionate about helping non-profits and other mission-based organizations raise their brand profile through effective storytelling.

She shares with The Savvy Entrepreneur radio show the three biggest branding mistakes that most organizations make:  (1) they don't articulate their “why” effectively enough (2) they don't do enough market research to find out whether their message is truly resonating with their stakeholders and reaching those stakeholders with the right platform and the right content; and (3) they focus too much on the features and benefits of their product or service, and not enough on how they will add value to their customers.

She shares plenty of tips and suggestions that have worked for her clients over the years.  Spoiler alert:  one of those tips is to pick a message and create a campaign with regular, consistent pieces of your message, rather than just posting here and there as the spirit moves you.  Non-spoiler alert:  there's lots more of those kind of practical tips in our interview!

Click on the arrow to listen, or go here if you'd prefer to read a transcript of the show.  It's well worth your time to listen to or read!

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Karen Renee, CEO of eCourtReporters, says that she and her business partner Judy Gerulat run their business the same way they ride their Harleys — full-speed ahead, with no reverse.

Renee joined The Savvy Entrepreneur radio show to share some of the bumps in the road, as well as some of the many successes as eCourt Reporters got started and has grown rapidly.  eCourt Reporters was founded to help lawyers more easily find available and qualified court reporters.  Finding those reporters is not always easy, something that Renee, who formerly ran her own court reporter agency, knew from personal experience.  She wanted eCourt Reporters to be essentially an “Uber” for court reporters.

She also felt that court reporters deserved a bigger piece of the pie, because agencies take up to 50% of the fees paid by lawyers.

eCourt Reporters now sources qualified court reporters in all 50 states, and is growing quickly.  The lawyer/court reporter matching platform is appealing because it is free for both court reporters (and legal videographers) and lawyers to use — eCourt Reporters only gets paid when a court reporting job is successfully completed & the court reporter is paid.

A complex matching platform like theirs, one with hundreds of users and growing, and with many different parameters that can be searched, wasn't easily built and took resources of all kinds.

Renee found as well that pitching was a challenge, although (like everything in her business), she ultimately found success.

She talks about the helpful resources she found along the way, and offers some very candid tips for entrepreneurs — especially for women entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs needing to build a tech platform, and for those pitching for funding.

Click on the arrow to listen to the show — you'll be pulled in by Renee's candid, no-nonsense style and sparkling sense of humor.  Or, go here to read a transcript.

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