Episode 126 transcript:

Business birth story. I started my business in 2011. And it started out as just like a CPR Christmas like I was just teaching CPR. I was finishing up my master's and I was teaching parents CPR because I felt it was something they really need to learn. My background is a pediatric ICU nurse. So often we would teach parents CPR but without them practicing. And and I found it like very weird that you didn't practice them. They're just watching a video, especially NICU parents that before they leave the hospital, they have to watch a CPR video. So I started teaching in their homes and they felt more comfortable at the mannequins and things like that. Fast forward to 2012 I finished my master's program. I graduated in May. I was pregnant at the time I graduated may we bought a new home a bigger home in June and I gave birth in July. And it was just so many things. All of a sudden, like so many life changes of moving into a new home my mother in law had put up all my stuff citing the word anything. Had a new degree. You know, I had worked so hard for and I couldn't even use it yet. And then I had a new baby. And it was a rush of emotions. And unfortunately, I fell into severe postpartum depression. And it was to the point where I couldn't breastfeed anymore. Like I just didn't even want to get out of bed. And I was like, somebody should be like, checking on me. Like, I don't feel like I should have to go into a doctor's office. Everything felt like a struggle. And my brother who is a pastor and a professor, he would he would check on me because I think he understood depression. If we think about depression and mental health and African American community, it's kind of a taboo and things that we don't talk about. You're just supposed to kind of pray about it and people call through it. But that was and my brother's like, you need to be the change you want to see he's like, I know what the problem is. So you want to work. He said, that is your therapy, helping other mothers overcome this. And so that's when I started I started my I say, Well, I am a nurse practitioner. I'm equipped to do this and you know, I've been helping parents. My whole career masters career was as a case manager at a homeless shelter. Um, before I became a nurse, and I did that. So just to blend all that together was really amazing. And it just felt like the right fit and it's been fitting for the past. 11 years. So I contract with homeless shelters and provide prenatal support. A lot of prenatal perinatal case management to pregnant homeless teens, and then I do their postpartum care afterwards, because they're transient. A lot of them do not go back to the hospital for their visit. COVID complicated things tenfold because you couldn't bring your baby with you, but you just gave birth to see your postpartum visit, which makes no sense whatsoever. So they didn't have childcare. So I've been I've provided the care in their homes, in their hotel rooms. Some of them went extended stay in safe palaces, and shelter rooms and things like that. So that's what my practices recently in last July, I moved from New Orleans. I was a new one was easy and moved from there because my husband's job relocated us to Houston, Texas. So I'm finding my way here. Houston is huge. And it proved and I think that's why I really started the program. The Online Business School is because I needed to find a way to up my telehealth and my digital skills. Because I still want to reach folks in New Orleans. I had to find another way here in Houston because I can't drive all day. You know, and what was accuracy six patients in a day. Here I came to see three. And so that's why I really, you know, wanted to hone in on those technical skills of how can I do this virtually? How can I reach the masses, and also like incorporate classes and things like that. So that's what I'm currently working on is doing a constant.

Thank you for you. I was getting emotional by so much of this. Like I knew the just before from when we spoke last fall, but there was a lot of it that I hadn't heard and, man. I mean, it's an honor to know everyone I know and it's really it's an honor to know you. I'm really grateful to know you and to see what heart centered work you bring to the world and how you're helping is just, it's just really magical and inspiring, really inspiring. How is the shift to telehealth and the courses and such I know I see a lot of what you do on social you're really like building you have these cool videos that are so educational and digestible. Like I love it particularly if you don't follow nurse Nikki on social you should and I don't say should lightly but you had this one that stands out where you were just like really educational video that you have this great model of a vulva. You're teaching children and adults really like how to clean themselves properly, like things like that and it's these short videos that are just they're really informative, educational, digestible information.

Yeah, I started that out of how to reach the masses. And I started that, like maybe June of 2020. And I was like, you know, it's getting really hot outside people have a lot of yeast. Let me tell them about yeast infections. And it started going from there. And then it wasn't until I made the how to clean your vagina video that it just went viral. Like on YouTube. I didn't know this until recently because I've been getting a lot of DMS. Well, can I ask a clarifying question about the how to clean your vagina video? I might. It's been viewed over 800,000 times.

Okay. I didn't know that. And so right now.

I have 21,000 subscribers. I had no idea. Like I just put it there. Leave it. And at one point like last, it was December. It was in December, my daughter she's like into YouTube. And she likes to watch videos when he was playing with toys, which is the weirdest thing. But mommy's on YouTube and she said, Come on, and I was like, Look, I have all these videos and I'm just like scrolling through so she could see my face. Not to like, see that? She knows my boba model. Understand what I'm teaching. When I'm looking and had 100,000 views and I'm like 100,000 People are watching. I was like, Man, are people really getting their information from you to know how to clean them for diamond? And I went through and read some of the comments. And there weren't young women and young lady teenagers who was like, I don't have a mom. She passed away no one could no one taught me this. Thank you so much. My dad didn't want to teach me my I shall be your video because I don't know how to do it like it was and it was like 4050 or women like he taught me something. They were women who for religious reasons. They hadn't been taught these things sector touch themselves, and they like you made me feel comfortable. I always thought it would have been taught that it was gross. And I was like, I just had tears in my eyes like I was like, Oh my god. This is weird. And I was so overwhelmed with emotion that I took it down. I cannot take like it was 200 comments I went through and responded to every single comment took me three hours. And I said they're responding to every single comment. And then I told my friend I'm like, I have to take it down. It's too much pressure. I can't have this much pressure. I'm not Beyonce. She was like, Wait, boy. It's just too much. I don't want to be a celebrity about vagina. And she's like you are doing God's work. What is wrong with you? You were Appier telling the masses folks were riding dirty literally. And you are speaking the truth. Say put it back up. Now. When you put it back up, all your comments go away. So I was like, Hey, why don't have to deal with this. Let them use continue. You go from where you started. And so it was like it's 800,000 as of last week. And it was like 600 So I'm like, okay, okay, I think the comics, I should say you don't have to respond to the comments. People put their videos up all the time. You don't have to respond. They will find you so that's how they they're finding me on they're emailing me. They are making appointment so you know to just ask the question, like, no question. If I'm used and I'm like, Yes, I just had no idea. So I made a kid version of it, too. And I got it this sweetest videos from little kids. This little boy she said I watched your video. I think I could do everything you said I will work on it the next time I go to the back. Home. I've had dads watch the video that are expected dads and they would watch the video about and they were some of them were having and they watch the video to learn how to clean because there's one that he had four boys and he was having a girl he's like, I watched the video. And I sent it to my friend because he's having a girl too. And I was like, Oh my goodness. I did not know this would happen. But I think authenticity is the foundation of my business like I I think for a long time I shied away from amplifying my voice because it's seven and sassy and but it's me and I thought that that's not what people want it but clearly they just want somebody that they can relate to. And that's warm and inviting. And I'm glad that it's working. You know, like, I'm not out here. I don't even know how to monetize that. But I'm just glad that we need to talk. They're helping you know, it's helping folks feel better and educate people. So we need to

talk we have to talk so I took some notes because we have things to talk about in the membership. So we have a live stream q&a coming up soon. I sure hope you can make it live because I have things that I want to talk to you about about not just monetizing it, but like there's just a lot of layers about the human feeling of like, oh my gosh, I'm not Beyonce, take it down. Like you know, this is a lot like there's a lot of layers underneath that and there's a lot of things behind it and it's so normal and you've already walked ourselves through parts of it right you put it back up and you're like wait a minute, no this in your friend helped you. I was like, put it back up. You're doing God's work like what a good friend. I love that you have that person as a friend. That's the kind of friends that we need in our lives of friends who are like cheering us on when we are like, we need that reminder of how magical we are. Even if it seems so silly. It's not silly to so many people. I mean, I didn't go my religion does not you know, prevent me from talking about claiming myself properly or whatever. I don't have those things, but I wasn't taught that either. In school like they didn't teach me that in my education, sex education and your body parts education. I never remember learning any of that in school. There really was just it just something you just don't talk about. And it's such a like taboo thing to discuss, like why why Okay, are we that weird about cleaning our feet? No, because if you have stinky feet, the parents the family will tell you that you have to clean your feet like in between your toes the bottom of your feet. So why are we weird about cleaning our vagina, like talking about cleaning our vagina like it? You know, it's so interesting, right? Because my daughters they say things a lot about my son walks around the house with no shirt on most of the time. She's always comfortable in his basketball shorts and you know, my five year old will say like, oh, it's because he's a boy. Oh, he gets to walk around like that because he doesn't have movies because he's a boy and I never said that. I don't have to say it though. That's what she sees. She sees it everywhere. She sees it in our house. She sees it on TV. You know that boys? Are without sure on movies or whatever. So it's really interesting, right? Because there's this general discomfort but what happens if we don't show up? The way you're showing up is that these young children with you know, little girls and now these dads like all of the people all the people don't know how to care. For and clean a body part.

Right? Bro even know the parts. I had a person DME and they were like, my IP of the same hole that I put out and I'm like, You don't you don't if you do need to go to that. But she argued me she's like, No, no, I have the exact same hole and I'm like, my pee comes out. I'm a no it doesn't. I was like, but if it does, because there's a possibility that you need to go get it checked.

Out. Right? What this is, this is wild. And I didn't even realize that that video had gone viral. You hadn't told me that. And I'm like, and then we need to talk about monetization because this is business and it is you know, business. It's not all about money, right? It's not you know, from working with me to it's not about leading with like, How can I monetize you

I was totally like I just like almost dropped my phone. 100,000 People need to know how to clean and then there was a course it opens you up for criticism. You know, like there are people on there, and it could be so many people saying you're doing a great job. Thank you so much. And there's one person like, I can't believe healthcare providers are still calling this the vagina. It's clearly the vulva. And it's like I pointed that out in the video, but I call it Regina because that is the common name that a lot of people use, but I point out what we're actually cleaning and what is the vagina and what is it? And I was like, why am I why am I responding? Like in my head, but by giving this energy, so it does open you up to criticism, the more exposure you have, and I think that's one of the things that kind of holds me back in my business if there were any like shortcoming that I have or, or a negative thing about growth for me is criticism. Because of the, you know, like people just watching it's like, Oh, I could have done that. Or, you know, you could have done this better or anything with them like don't I'm doing the best I can like I don't make any money from my practice as far as me take it as consulting work and teaching and all that kind of stuff. But for my patient care, it goes all back into my clinic, because I don't take insurance and I want to make sure that support for everyone and we give away a lot of free services. Because of the money we've made in other places. So i i Yeah, the criticism piece is is a hard one for me to swallow. There's a lot of affirmation that I'm doing a good job. I know this is good work, like back and forth. You know, talking to them, like directly. I'm doing a good job. But I'm giving it more energy and they've already moved on to the next negative comment that they can make. So I have to work on that.

Well, you know, I actually heard I saw something go around social media recently and I think I shared it to my Instagram stories. I'm not sure if he saw it but I think it was Einstein. There was this story about Einstein writing on a chalkboard in front of a group of kids and like writing all this stuff. Gosh, I wish I could remember it perfectly but the gist was that he made one mistake. And I think I want to say it was either intentional just to prove a point or something like that. And everybody laughed at him was like, Oh my God, you know, Albert Einstein makes a mistake and and it was like, but there was all this correctness. One mistake and everybody's in uproar over a little piece. And it's like why do we put so much energy sent myself to for a long time I did the same thing. I would get some because I get stuff too. I've had comments or I've had people you know that say things or send me an email or they get really angry about an email I wrote and they have negative things to say about it. And I'm like, okay, so I have to talk myself. through it as well. And remind myself that like I will never be able to please everybody. If chocolate can't please everybody. I sure as heck. can't please everybody. If Beyonce can't please everybody. I cannot please everybody and I have to be okay with that. And you're right, like the bigger you go and the bigger your reach gets, the more likely that there will be people who don't like us. And that's a hard human feeling to navigate is not being liked. What's been helpful to me is remembering those things you know and like you said your you have your talks about I'm doing a good job. And remembering that oftentimes the people who are nitpicking us are not in the arena. They're sitting there on the other side of the keyboard being real brave in the dark, with a lot of things to say to criticize, and they're not in the arena. They're out there putting their own videos out helping people. They're taking people down and trying. And so, you know, it's not that they're bad, right? It's just that I'm not available for that. And we don't have to, you know, we really constantly have to work on, you know, I just don't need to be available for that. There. It's going to happen. It does happen and all we can do is focus on what we're here to do and who we're here to help. They're probably not part of that. And for former people of recovering people pleaser, that's a tricky thing. Yes, you know, because we want we don't want to feel like there's people that don't like us. Because we're trying real hard to get people to like us, you know, and the truth is like there's a whole lot of people that like you and your southern accent, and everything you bring to the table and your mission and all of this so I'm proud but not in like a weird way just like it's so exciting to hear. I love it. So now are you're in a space where you're doing telehealth, you're still doing some in person stuff for folks that are homeless right now. And you are building classes is that something else? That is next?

Yeah, yeah. So building out classes and particularly for birth workers. Just building building upon some of the knowledge that I have and how we can expand birth clickers and lactation specialists. I think it's more than breastfeeding. It's more than given a person time they take a shower, like it is really delving into like, how do we truly improve maternal health outcomes? If we were to learn to look at it, you know, and what are some of the barriers that we can uproot? And how can we plant seeds for growth? So that is looking at all the different things like do they have and and teaching postpartum specialists and lactation specialists how to make referrals? So if they need food bank, or if they need, you know, and everyone's having a hard time now guess it's $4 million a gallon. Okay. Great. So childcare services like how to access it. So how to be a community advocate, health advocate in that space of not just for that family, but how can we serve the community in a better way and just knowing what we're up against, like what do our numbers looking like? I just taught a group of a friend has a it's called hospital doula training programs. So she teaches them about being in the hospital which we don't talk about a whole lot because it can be very intimidating. We kind of give them all the knowledge of birth and labor and things like that. And then we put them in the hospital setting, which can totally throw you off if you're not used to that system care. We we kind of the doula trainings and birth worker trainings that we do now in the community is more of a community based, you know, home birth birth center, but to be in a hospital. And that setting is it takes a different layer and so this training does that. And so I came in to teach the postpartum piece. And just to go over some of the things that we're looking at as far as you know, they sent home healthy babies they not gonna send home or unhealthy baby. They do have to send home unhealthy, unhealthy parents all the time, they're stable, but they're unhealthy, especially if they're unsupported. If you didn't get their medication at the hospital, they have to go fill a prescription, if they're swollen if they you know don't do not understand the instructions. That's an unhealthy situation. So just teaching postpartum specialists how to navigate that and help their clients along the road to recovery because babies are healthy and parents are healing.

I have thoughts on all of this episodes and I want to teach that I want to help you and give options because I'm into options so I have options I'm going to present to you but I'm not going to coach you right here right now. So we'll do it on the I was writing notes on this one too because I options were coming up like things you could do with this. So I'll share it and you know in our coaching session coming up here. Okay, so, question about this is a theme that I'm bringing into all of this new series of the business birth stories is about deprogramming for a bit in business specifically. So can you share one way that you're deprogramming and unschooling your business?

That's the interesting question. I think, for me, it is not I use this word. I try not to have his word in my vocabulary of grind and hustle because I just live my passion. And because grind and hustle, it gets you in trouble with boundaries. It keeps you have longer thing which you need to be thinking for longer than you need to be more than you need to be. And it isolates you into a space it's gonna be a very lonely space. And so I have to choose my words wisely and choose my boundaries, you know, and in will certain words out of my life, we're not grindy we're not hustlin you know, anything like that. I'm living my passion. And with that, the passion of it all is that I'm able to do my business and serve and earn in addition to be with my family. And that's it and I can't say that's easy by any means. I fall short sometimes and sometimes it's heavy on the kids like last week, I had so many amazing plants

to do work, and to my kids had strep tested positive for strep and flu. And I was like, well, here I am. I'm at home,

and I had to lean into that. But well, we grind and we hustle we kind of lose focus of why we even got into this business. We got into it for a flexibility and to help our community but also to serve a part of ourselves we don't get into this is there's a selfish part about this business and when you get into it because it makes you feel good. Right and I wasn't feeling good when I was grinding and hustling. So that's why I've had to deprogram because I've been in that place. I had, I have I had a nervous breakdown to prove it. That was my souvenir the therapy receipts to prove it and moving forward. I don't want to go back there. So whatever I need to do to to serve and earn to appropriately but also for my family as well as the house manager that I that's that that's the place. Okay, answers your questions are

really really good one. That's a good one. And I too, have been working on that one. We are so that story is so deep. It's so deep. That performance thing, at least for me, it felt like performance, you know you perform perform for value. you value yourself based on your performance. How much can you perform? And so when you take that away when it's like oh, well maybe hustle is too hard and it's too much and it's completely depleting me and I'm drowning. Well when you take that away what happens to your value if your value has been driven by based on your performance up until now? So there's there's layers and it's such a good one. It's such a good one. Thank you. That was a good one. I appreciate that. I'd love to tell people where they can find you. Do you go is your Instagram just at nurse Nikki right.

It's at nurse Nikki NP NP nurse Nikki. Nikki, I had to trademark my snake eating fake. Because when people first started looking for me, there's a very famous porn star same name so one of my husband's co workers, he was like, hey, so your wife, I was looking for services and I came upon something else, kind of like the other person's website a little better. This is a problem. So you should know. Oh, that's awesome two years ago and so since then, I've been working very hard on SEO. Yeah. Yeah. So it's an

awesome, thank you. That's awesome. That's hilarious. Awesome. Thank you. I'm gonna share your info so people can hang out with you and I have so much that I want to unpack with you and our coaching live stream this month. This is April as of the time we're recording this. So. Yes. And I'm so excited to share. I appreciate you hanging with me today. Thank you for having me. I appreciate you asking me. Thanks. I'll see you soon. In the group. i Bye bye. It was really fun.