The Savvy Entrepreneur

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.

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!

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!

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!

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.

Meridth Hammer tried hard to be a good employee, but when she was laid off during the 2007 crash, she ultimately decided it was time to open her own law firm.  She set up the Hammer Legal Group in Indianoplis, and was successful for several years.

Then she got an offer she couldn't refuse at the Cook County Clerk's Office, but eventually knew she wanted to get back to running her own firm, so she started the firm back up from scratch in Chicago.  Her practice focuses on wills, trusts, probate, and real estate.

Along the way, she learned a lot -- about setting up and maintaining a business, about what works and what doesn't, about real estate shenanigans, and most importantly, about herself.  She also shares stories of some of the strong women in her life that have been an inspiration to her along the way.

She candidly shares with The Savvy Entrepreneur some of the challenges along the way, with humility, humor, and absolutely a "can-do" attitude.

Click on the arrow to listen and be inspired!  Or, click here if you'd/ prefer to read a transcript of our chat.  Either way, it's well worth your time!

Kim Meckwood joins The Savvy Entrepreneur Show to share how she invented & developed the Click & Carry device and has successfully grown her business.

She came up with the idea of the Click & Carry to help carry multiple bags of groceries.   Her idea?  A simple handle device that helps shoppers manage and carry multiple bags at once comfortably, either in your hands or over your shoulder, because there's a comfy gel grip  for a hands free carry.

People use it to carry books, paint cans, walk multiple dogs, and even skis and ski boots.

It's a simple device, but there were lots of challenges designing, manufacturing, and marketing the product. Kim shares some of those, as well as how she resourcefully pushed through.

She also shares details about her appearance on Shark Tank, along with advice for people who want to be on the show.

Click on the arrow to take a listen!

Some people have their best singing moments in the shower.  For Qeepsake founder Jeff McNeil, he thought of the idea for the company one morning while showering.  After kicking around the idea with his co-founder and wife, they started the company as a way to more easily keep track of and document key events in their five kids' lives.

The idea was to prompt Qeepsake subscribers with occasional text questions, like "What is you child's favorite outfit these days?" And Qeepsake then would file all those memories of that child all together.

These days, Qeepsake has expanded to lots more questions, more customized questions, the capacity to uptake photos with captions, and even to produce a

Sample Qeepsake Memory Book

memory book.

It currently has several tens of thousands of subscribers, an investor, and a successful appearance on Shark Tank.

The journey wasn't easy -- there were lots of technology issues, and funding was a real challenge.  Jeff candidly shares with The Savvy Entrepreneur many of the speedbumps and joys of founding and growing Qeepsake.

Click on the arrow to listen to this inspiring story!

The ecosystem for startups has been steadily growing in Traverse City, Michigan and the entire Northern Michigan region.  It's a lovely, affordable place to live, and as remote work grows, more and more skilled workers have gravitated to the area.

And Michigan, and particularly Northern Michigan, have done a great job of supporting the ecosystem for those who want to create their own businesses.  Traverse City has steadily created more and more resources for startups and entrepreneurs, in spite of the pandemic.

And that has led to an outpouring of enthusiasm and events in the form of an inaugural Norther Michigan Startup Week.  Two of the organizers are 20 Fathoms, a co-working space, and TCNewTech, an organization helping startups with training and connections and other support.

Keri Amlotte, from 20 Fathoms, and Jennifer Szunko, from TCNewTech, join The Savvy Entrepreneur to talk about some of the key activities surrounding Northern Michigan Startup Week.  They also share their thoughts on how to successfully build a startup ecosystem.

Click on the arrow to the left and listen to how Northern Michigan is steadily growing its entrepreneurial community.

Monika Joshi, Founder of Art of Pure, shares with The Savvy Entrepreneur her quest to source and sell sustainable health and beauty products.

A former New York City investment banker, she grew tired of the long hours and time away from her young family.  When she and her family moved back to Chicago, Monika knew it was time to do something different,

When her daughter began struggling with eczema and other skin issues, the dermatologist suggested putting her on steroids.  Monika felt there must be other, more natural alternatives to try first.

That led her on a journey to find truly natural products but all types and health and beauty needs --something that sounds like it should be easy, but definitely is not!  And at that point, Art of Pure was born.

Click on the arrow to take a listen to Monika's story and some of the bumps and challenges she's faced along the way creating and growing Art of Pure.  Or you can read a transcript of the interview here.