Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Solving America's Nursing Crisis: Shane Brown discusses NurseIO's AI-Powered Revolution

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Solving America's Nursing Crisis: Shane Brown discusses NurseIO's AI-Powered Revolution · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
0:17
today's guest is Shane Brown, the chief executive officer of
0:21
Nurse IO. They are an app based technology
0:24
platform that connects healthcare professionals with
0:28
facilities seeking per diem staff.
0:31
With a strong focus on freedom and flexibility, They empower
0:35
nurses, Cnas, and other care providers to quickly locate
0:39
shifts, pick convenient schedules, and earn income on
0:43
their terms. Shane has extensive experience
0:47
in medical device commercialization, having held
0:50
leadership roles at Abbott Laboratories and Saint Jude
0:53
Medical. Over the years, he has steered
0:56
multiple organizations through mergers and acquisitions and
0:59
help drive rapid revenue growth, even contributing to the IP OS
1:04
of leading medical device companies.
1:07
Known as a servant leader, Shane is passionate about creating
1:11
innovative staffing solutions that empower healthcare workers
1:15
and ensure patient care is never compromised.
1:18
Now before we get into all that good stuff, today's episode is
1:21
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company qualifies? Contact us today at Add Back
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benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
1:51
today, the CEO of Nurse IO, Shane Brown.
1:55
Thanks for making the time to Share your story today.
1:57
Yeah. Glad to be here, Anthony.
1:59
So Shane, before we talk about Nurse IO, how that came to be,
2:03
how your opportunity to join the team came about, I want to
2:06
understand a bit about your track record in medical device
2:11
companies. You've had several notable
2:14
roles, sales, business development, executive
2:17
leadership at a number of medical device companies,
2:20
including some that would go on to be acquired or go public.
2:25
Is there a particular lesson from some of those high stakes
2:29
moments of building these companies to significant scale
2:34
that continues to influence how you operate in Business Today?
2:39
Yeah, good question. I think the coming off the
2:42
college campus I, it was, you know, a time when software was
2:47
a, a big thing and and people were jumping into software,
2:50
people were jumping into kind of business to business sales, all
2:53
sorts of different things. What initially attracted me to
2:56
healthcare broadly and medical device more narrowly was that
3:01
hopefully you could do a little bit of good along the way.
3:04
It wasn't just going to be a paycheck.
3:06
And I think that Compass has served me well over the years.
3:10
Like the medical device industry, the healthcare
3:12
industry, the healthcare IT industry, digital health
3:16
industry, They're all really bare knuckle fighting
3:20
industries. There's a lot of good
3:21
competitors. There's amazing technologies.
3:24
But that kind of North Star has helped me stay focused on just
3:28
trying to provide some good, whether that's a innovative
3:32
device or an interesting algorithm or something that's
3:35
going to help your neighbor or my mother or, you know, our
3:39
children to, to be able to run a little bit better or to breathe
3:43
a little bit better or to have less burden from a, from a
3:46
cancerous tumor. All that stuff has has driven
3:49
me. So even as I, you know,
3:51
thankfully worked my way up the quote UN quote ladder, I knew
3:54
somebody in the organization was tableside or bedside with a
3:59
patient. And that's always meant a lot to
4:01
me. So with a lot of flights over
4:05
the years, with a lot of frustration and exhilaration and
4:09
exhaustion and everything else, it's always made me feel pretty
4:14
good when I fall asleep, that I'm part of something a lot
4:18
bigger than myself. That's really cool.
4:21
Obviously, all of us, we want to do well in our jobs.
4:23
There's incentives, especially in the roles that you've had to
4:27
grow the company to make money. Sometimes you're just hitting
4:30
your head against the wall and it's got to feel really good
4:32
when you know that, hey, there's a bigger picture here of helping
4:36
people, saving lives, making them healthier, right?
4:40
There is, there is and and I a mentor of mine was, was pretty
4:44
profound with advice last year kind of mid last year, kind of
4:50
spring last year. I left a chapter of a of a
4:54
company that was doing really and continues to do really,
4:57
really strong innovative work for patients that are suffering
5:00
from brain tumors for, for various reasons.
5:04
The company was getting pretty complicated.
5:06
The venture capital board was, you know, very involved,
5:10
etcetera, etcetera. But I, I ended up leaving that
5:13
company and, and the advice that I was given, which was, was
5:18
really, really, really perceptive, was put together
5:21
your four or five non negotiables in order for your
5:25
next role. And, and at the time I thought
5:27
it was, you know, kind of a little bit of a like a hokey,
5:30
you know, every Wall Street Journal article will tell you to
5:32
do the same thing. Harvard Business reviews will
5:35
tell you do the same thing. Anybody in your neighborhood
5:37
will tell you to do the same thing.
5:38
Like really think, you know, be deliberate about your next step.
5:42
But I actually was after, you know, I put my skepticism aside.
5:46
I actually, I think I have the card right here somewhere.
5:49
But I, I sat and for an afternoon, I thought about it, I
5:53
prayed about it, I thought about it some more.
5:56
I, you know, walk through, I, I force ranked one through 5 of
6:01
what I wanted in the next role that I was going to jump into,
6:05
knowing that I dedicated a lot of myself to the roles that I'm
6:08
in. And financial compensation was
6:12
#5 and. Interesting.
6:15
It was, it was the scope of the responsibility that it's a
6:18
really fulfilling and needed solution.
6:21
That it was, you know, people that I wanted to work with and
6:24
for and, you know, in the same sandbox, so to speak.
6:30
And that we were providing something real and, and location
6:33
was important at this stage of life with, with three kids that
6:35
I, I didn't want to be gone 45 weeks out of the year anymore.
6:40
I wanted to actually live where I slept on the weekends and I
6:44
wanted to be part of the day-to-day family.
6:46
So all these worlds came together and, and compensation
6:50
was #5 to that. And that doesn't mean that I'm a
6:53
St. and that doesn't mean I don't like, you know, to, to
6:56
vacation well with my family and to live well and all those
6:58
things. But in terms of the opportunity
7:02
that I wanted to jump into and how I want to spend the rest of
7:04
my life, compensation's part of the puzzle.
7:07
It it's definitely not my driving force.
7:09
Interesting. OK, so how did the door open up
7:12
for this opportunity at Nurse IO?
7:14
That's a, that's a good story too.
7:16
So I, I've, I've had a friend up here in North Scottsdale for a
7:19
while, just a, a nice man that we kind of knew similar circles,
7:24
you know, kind of church circles, so to speak.
7:27
And, and he and I would have coffee once or twice a year for
7:30
several years. And he started talking about
7:34
this company nurse IO. And this was several months ago,
7:38
it was just more than a year ago.
7:39
And, and he was talking about this company and he's the board
7:43
chair of this company and, and he's on, you know, kind of the
7:46
autumn of his career and more board seats than, than
7:49
operational roles. And he started talking about it.
7:52
And because he was talking like I, I obviously paid attention
7:56
and I thought about it and everything else.
7:58
He never offered me the job. He, you know, was just talking
8:01
about how cool the opportunity will be when the company's ready
8:05
to bring in a healthcare CEO. And, and so we kept on, you
8:09
know, every couple months we get together for coffee and just
8:11
talk about everything under the sun, including nurse IO.
8:15
So this got into kind of Thanksgiving time frame last
8:18
year, late November, early December.
8:21
And he said, hey, this company's gone through the Med tech
8:24
accelerator from the Mayo Clinic and, and Arizona State
8:28
University. And they now are absolutely
8:31
recommending because of the growth trajectory, because of
8:34
the need to raise some money, because of a launch into the big
8:38
hospital markets across the country, that they need a
8:40
healthcare CEO. And the founders are willing to
8:43
step back in a humble way and bring in a true healthcare CEO.
8:48
And so then I started thinking about this.
8:50
I was like, OK, I can you know in that they're.
8:53
Getting serious? You could tell like.
8:55
You could tell that it was no longer, it wasn't the board
8:57
chair just frivolously kind of looking around the marketplace
9:02
and still trying to sell internally.
9:03
Why all these things were important.
9:06
It was the validation from a legit accelerator of people that
9:10
know how to launch small companies and scale.
9:13
It was a board chair who has 50 years of experience in
9:15
healthcare. It was a meeting with the the
9:19
two founders who are both real people.
9:22
They are best friends from from rural New Mexico and high school
9:26
that had made their way to the Phoenix area independently.
9:28
And we just were really entrepreneurial and they, they
9:32
found this distressed asset that in, in nurse staffing that was
9:37
kind of brick and mortar calling around and saying, hey, we have
9:41
4 nurses in our lobby, do you need a nurse today in your
9:44
facility? And, and they were savvy enough
9:47
to fund the company by themselves.
9:50
They didn't take in any outside capital, truly bootstrap to
9:53
several $1,000,000 of revenue. They brought in a fantastic CTO
9:59
who digitized everything, who was very forward thinking about
10:02
an app, about AI, about development and AI, about, you
10:07
know, credentialing, all sorts of different things.
10:10
And this company got to a really good place during COVID because
10:13
everybody was looking for staff to go to a nursing home or a
10:17
detox center or whatever else. So Long story short, when you
10:20
combined, it was a Phoenix area company based in Scottsdale and
10:25
close to my home. It was AI and forward thinking
10:29
is going to be a great learning experience for me.
10:31
It was people that I wanted to work with and wanted to work for
10:36
both by the board chairman and the two founders who, you know,
10:39
control the board. All these things came together
10:41
and it went back to my North star of how can we help that
10:46
patient on the table with a really good clinician.
10:48
And I could just, but for now at least, forget about the widget
10:52
that was going to help that clinician help the patient and
10:55
just try to consume myself with getting the right clinicians at
10:59
the bedside to help that patient on the table.
11:02
This just checked all your boxes, right place, right time.
11:06
The four things that came before that number 5 compensation on
11:10
that that list of non negotiables.
11:13
And so OK, so tell us, we kind of touched on it in the intro,
11:18
but I wanna hear like in more detail from you.
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What is Nurse IO doing that's different from sort of more
11:24
traditional medical staffing firms?
11:27
So nurse, the traditional nurse IO business has been a double
11:31
sided marketplace. So if you picture a healthcare
11:35
facility, there's enormous nursing shortages all over the
11:39
country, almost every single facility you can think of, from
11:42
a assisted living center to a nursing home to a hospital to a
11:46
surgery center. Give us an idea, how many
11:49
openings are we talking about at any given time?
11:51
Depending on the data source, between 500,000 and 1,000,000
11:54
openings in the United States today.
11:57
Today not like, oh like there's 10,000 this week and 10,000 next
12:01
week. Like in in this given moment,
12:03
you're somewhere between half a million and a million openings.
12:05
There it's an enormous, it's one of the biggest problems in the
12:09
healthcare today. You have a lot of and for a lot
12:13
of some of them are systemic, some of them are COVID related.
12:16
So systemic. Our population is getting older,
12:19
right and unfortunately more unhealthy.
12:22
And then when you talk about detox and behavioral health,
12:26
mental health has never been, you know, where it is today.
12:30
It keeps on growing. People struggling with addiction
12:34
has never been higher and it continues to grow.
12:36
Clinicians are getting older and they are retiring.
12:40
A lot of people, up to 15% of nurses exited the full time
12:45
workforce during COVID because it was not fulfilling work or
12:49
they didn't they didn't agree with, you know, the, the
12:52
vaccination mandates or they, you know, just wanted to do
12:57
something else with their life. They like they everybody, a lot
13:00
of people, all of us. I certainly did got
13:01
introspective with what do I want my career to look like?
13:04
I've had a chance to get off the road for a couple months or, you
13:08
know, a year or whatever. Now what is the next chapter?
13:11
Hold. So a lot of clinicians retired.
13:14
The need has never been bigger, and it continues to get more.
13:17
There's not enough nursing schools that, you know, so
13:20
systemically there's not enough supply of nurses coming in.
13:24
And a lot of people just wanted more control and empowerment of
13:27
their career. They don't want to ask somebody
13:29
for paid time off. They want to be able to just
13:32
say, hey, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm leap.
13:33
Phoenix is really hot in the summer, right?
13:35
So somebody may just make the decision, I'm going to leave for
13:39
three months and I'm going to travel all over the national
13:41
parks or the baseball stadiums in the United States or
13:44
whatever. And then I want to work more in,
13:47
in, you know, September to Christmas time to make up for
13:51
the months that I was gone. And people want that control.
13:53
My, your parents are aging or you, you want to coach your
13:57
son's baseball team or your daughter's soccer team or
14:00
whatever. People want more control and
14:03
they want more empowerment. And that's what I think we do
14:06
really well. Say more about that.
14:08
How are you giving them more control and more empowerment?
14:11
Are they just sort of picking like, hey, I want to work once,
14:14
get like one shift today and I don't know, I'll figure out
14:17
tomorrow when tomorrow comes. Yeah.
14:20
So you can you picture somebody opening up an app and it's not
14:23
Uber Eats and it's not Lyft or Waymo.
14:27
There's there instead of picking, you know, a pasta that
14:30
they want delivered or a cheese steak that they want delivered
14:33
or that they want to go, you know, to a friend's house and,
14:36
and not worry about parking. So they're going to take an
14:38
Uber. We're putting everything in
14:40
people's hands. So a facility will post a shift
14:43
on our app and, and that shift will have a pictures of the
14:48
facility. It will enter exact rates that
14:51
people will get paid once they fulfill the shift.
14:54
It will. You know, some places are, hey,
14:56
if you work a whole day on Saturday, we are going to offer
14:59
you a shift lunch or free parking or free bus fare or
15:02
whatever. So people are seeing exactly
15:05
what it is. They're saying, OK, this is at a
15:08
detox center and I'm going to work there 2 hour or six hours
15:12
on Saturday and four hours on Sunday morning.
15:15
And this is rated well by other clinicians.
15:18
It's a place that that helps get, you know, people up to
15:22
speed that are clinicians. It's welcoming, it's accepting.
15:25
It's. There's like reviews like you
15:27
would see like on an Uber or something.
15:29
OK, so we have two way reviews and so people are open with open
15:33
eyes are able to say wow, that facility, that's number one,
15:37
it's 15 miles from my house. I only want to go 5 miles within
15:41
a range from my house or it's assisted living and I only
15:46
really want to do hospital work from here on out.
15:49
And so they're, they're getting a tremendous amount of details
15:52
and, and you can kind of trial run things too, right?
15:55
So if you're, you've been in a hospital, rigid hospital
15:57
environment your whole career and you want to take a step back
16:00
or you want to moonlight and make a little bit extra money
16:02
because life is obviously expensive.
16:04
Now you could say, you know what, I've been in hospitals my
16:06
whole career. I want to try a shift or two or
16:09
three weekends in behavioral health or detox or school
16:14
nursing or whatever. And so it's, it's letting people
16:17
chart their own path via our app rather than just going and
16:22
working for, you know, hospital Y in their community and, and
16:27
being subject to all the good, bad and other things that go
16:29
with one job for 40 or 50 hours over 25 years.
16:34
Is it cumbersome then for them to get paid?
16:37
Like are they having to, you know, wait for a check to come
16:40
from that hospital or that detox center or how do you guys sort
16:43
of facilitate that? Yeah, we were.
16:46
We were the first in the marketplace.
16:47
And I think it's because we listen really well.
16:49
You know, I think a lot of companies can design interesting
16:52
technology and can market themselves really well.
16:55
I think we do a really good job of listening.
16:57
And so if you put yourself in the shoes of a single dad or a
17:01
single mom or you know, somebody who's trying to make a little
17:05
bit of money to pay some bills, we decided to go to same day pay
17:11
in a very transparent way. And so if I finish my shift at
17:14
the hospital or the surgery center or the the nursing home
17:18
at 6:00 PM by 8:00 PM, I'm going to get paid by our app and then
17:25
we go and collect from the facility.
17:27
So you're. Floating that money to to your
17:30
worker, your employee, your contractor.
17:33
We are. We are.
17:34
Before you're getting paid by by your customer.
17:38
Because we know how important that is, you know, ACNA or a
17:41
nursing assistant, they, they, they want to know not just what
17:46
they're getting paid. They want to know exactly when
17:48
they're going to get paid. And a couple weeks in the future
17:51
doesn't feel real good when you're trying to bring groceries
17:53
home or you're trying to figure out, you know, the family budget
17:56
for the next week or day or whatever.
17:59
So that was really important to us and we're able to do that.
18:03
It's not necessarily the best thing for our business because
18:06
to your point, we have to float and and if we pay that same day,
18:10
we don't invoice until the following Monday and we may not
18:13
collect for 15 days or 30 days or ever from somebody.
18:17
But we think it's that important to do to be a good partner for
18:22
these nurses. So they come back to our app
18:24
rather than somebody else's marketplace and say I work for
18:27
nurse IO and Nurse IO empowers me to pick up shifts all over my
18:31
neighborhood and I'm going to get paid that same day.
18:33
You eliminate those headaches for the nurses having to try to
18:37
collect or waiting on a more traditional paycheck, you know,
18:41
might be a week or two from now. And you guys take on that risk
18:44
and that hassle because you really want to take care of the
18:46
nurses, those frontline. Workers we're, we're in effect
18:49
our own payday loan service without charging, you know, 15%
18:56
or some predatory rate like we're, we're doing it because
18:59
it's the right thing to do. That's great.
19:02
And types of facilities, I heard you mentioned detox hospitals,
19:07
was there assisted care? So like senior living what?
19:10
What other kinds of facilities are your client base?
19:13
Yeah. Our, our traditional business
19:15
has been behavioral health centers, detox centers,
19:19
rehabilitation centers, like physical rehab centers where,
19:23
where people have to learn how to walk again or learn how to,
19:27
you know, use their hands again after a stroke or after a, a
19:30
spinal, you know, fusion or whatever.
19:33
Skilled assistant, skilled assistant living nursing homes,
19:39
kind of, we call it post acute and sub acute.
19:42
That's been the bread and butter of the company.
19:45
And we're like on the eve on the verge of jumping into to the
19:50
hospital market with some really good indicators that we will be
19:53
very well received in big hospital systems across the
19:56
country. Also, ambulatory surgery centers
20:00
are doing a lot of procedures and they, you know, if they miss
20:04
a couple staff members on a day, they can't do as many
20:07
procedures. And so the revenue suffers
20:09
greatly. So it's, it's, it's basically
20:12
anywhere nurses are, nursing assistants are.
20:15
And and then within that, everything that we can do to
20:17
make sure a facility is well staffed.
20:20
Talk to me about the company's growth, like how many markets
20:24
are you guys in? Let's just start there.
20:26
How many markets are you in right now, Shane?
20:29
We're technically 90% of our businesses in Arizona.
20:34
We have toe in the water in three other States and we know
20:39
because of both demographics and the need of hospitals.
20:42
So you combine those two for the need and then the we also know
20:46
the regulatory burden of different states.
20:49
So if you want to go to California, it's an enormous
20:51
demographic, but the regulatory environment is so high that
20:56
doesn't make sense for a really small company that wants to grow
20:59
to jump into that market next. We know that it's in our future.
21:02
We know we want to provide great service for those clinicians in
21:05
those facilities. But we are, we've identified 10
21:09
more markets that we want to go into in the next 6 to 12 months
21:13
that are both good demographically that have nurses
21:16
on nurse iOS app already and will be a, a, a regulatory
21:22
climate that we can succeed in. OK.
21:25
So say that number again, 10 markets in the next 6 to 12
21:28
months. Yeah, sounds like a pretty big
21:30
lift. I mean, one market alone, you've
21:33
got the regulatory hurdles, you've got to find, you know, a
21:37
stable of nurses, you've got to have the client relationships
21:41
there. You have to have sort of that
21:42
supply demand balance to keep everybody happy.
21:46
How do you sort of think about going into a new market?
21:49
Yeah, we try to stay as focused and as intelligent as we can.
21:54
Meaning the ambitious side of me and probably the, the, the me
21:59
from 15 years ago would just say, OK, we know we have product
22:02
market fit in this market. Now it's time to conquer the
22:04
world. Let's go big, let's go broad,
22:07
let's go deep. Let's let's boil the ocean.
22:09
Let's go, let's go, let's go. The the reality is we have less
22:13
than 10 full time employees. So we cast a, a shadow in the
22:17
marketplace that's much bigger than our actual company.
22:19
That's part being bootstrapped to, you know, for several years
22:23
and no outside investors or no outside debt.
22:27
But we also do things very efficiently, meaning we onboard
22:31
clinicians very quickly. We credential clinicians very
22:36
appropriately and and very responsibly, but also quickly.
22:40
We know before we go into a marketplace, we know those
22:43
facilities. We know the proximity to
22:47
clinicians that want to work in the in the gig economy that want
22:51
to pick up shifts. So we have a lot of intelligence
22:53
that is not like, you know, my first sales job, I would fly
22:59
into, you know, Albuquerque, NM, and I would open up a Yellow
23:01
Pages and I would look through, you know, where the surgeons
23:04
offices were and then I'd go visit those surgeon offices.
23:07
We now have so much Intel at our hands that whether it's a
23:11
digital presence or a outreach from me or outreach from our
23:15
sales and marketing team or our founders, we know where the
23:19
needs should be from pattern recognition.
23:21
And then our AI tools help us to stay really focused.
23:25
I'd like to hear more about what you're using AI for because you
23:29
mentioned about being able to onboard and credential very
23:32
quickly. Is that one of the places that
23:35
it comes into play? It's one of them.
23:36
It's what so on a, so just to separate the two things on the
23:40
development side of our algorithm of our software, of
23:43
our, you know, product offering, more than 90% of our development
23:49
is happening with AI. It's called cursor AI is is what
23:53
we use and that helps us to in real time again, listen to the
23:58
marketplace and in real time we can put in, we can hear about
24:01
something with a clinician or a facility, let's say Monday at
24:05
noon, we can initiate those changes within our dev software,
24:10
our AI dev software and that can hit the marketplace that night.
24:15
Our app would be totally different or a software can be
24:17
totally changed by that. Whether that's hey, we need to
24:21
alert people in hours rather than minutes, whether that is
24:24
the rating system, you know, we want to make it easier for
24:27
people to leave reviews, whether that is hey, blue is more, you
24:31
know, eye-catching than red, whatever that is.
24:34
We can listen quickly and then implement just almost just as
24:38
fast and then credentialing and onboarding that you're talking
24:41
about. We think we have a distinct
24:44
competitive advantage. We don't have a team of 25
24:47
people checking TB tests and CPR certification and license.
24:52
Typical at other firms. It's not the, the big, the big
24:56
onboarding teams are typical at other firms.
24:58
I I'm not going to give away necessarily the secret sauce of
25:01
how we do that, but we know that the way we do it is even more
25:06
thorough and way faster. Oh come on, pull back the
25:11
curtain of little bit Shane now. We, we have very good AI tools
25:17
that we've developed that are proprietary for us that help us
25:21
scan people's credentials. And then we're able to stand by
25:25
those credentials that they're accurate, they're not
25:27
fraudulent. That and, and, and a lot of
25:30
people, if a lot of people are taking, you know, a month to
25:33
onboard credentials, we can do that in in a fraction of the
25:37
time. Mike, a few days, a couple
25:41
hours. Most of the time we're within 24
25:44
hours. Wow, that's impressive.
25:47
I have to think that that's a bit like, not only is it sort of
25:50
saving you that labor cost of having somebody, you know, like
25:54
manually set aside to, you know, review that, but it also gets
25:58
your providers, your clinicians into the position to be placed
26:04
at a client's site much more quickly.
26:06
It's going to keep them happy, right?
26:08
They come to your site, they don't want to wait a month
26:10
before you know they're they're ready to work today.
26:12
Right, right. And especially if you go back to
26:15
that example of somebody who wants to get paid pretty
26:18
quickly, whether they're moonlighting their life's more
26:20
expensive or there's, you know, an unforeseen expense that comes
26:25
into their household budget, whatever else.
26:27
If you don't want to wait by the phone and then apply a bunch of
26:30
places, you want to get to work as fast as you can after you
26:33
decide you want to get to work. And because if you get to work
26:37
and then you work for somebody like us, then you're going to
26:40
get paid right away. And that that's different than
26:43
hoping and praying for an opportunity weeks from now they
26:46
can get to going, you know, the next day if they decide to do
26:49
so. So you mentioned 10 different
26:52
markets that you got your eye on.
26:54
Are you ready to mention any of them yet?
26:57
No, I'd I'd prefer not to. That's fair.
27:01
OK, so wow, all kinds of places we could go with this.
27:05
Let's talk about your mission. Freedom is our culture.
27:10
What's the meaning behind that statement?
27:12
And say a little bit more about how it guides your approach to
27:18
empowering both your clients or the healthcare facilities as
27:22
well as the nursing professionals.
27:25
So there was a study I'll, I'll start on the facility side.
27:29
So many facilities were left short handed during the COVID
27:33
spikes in 2020 and 2021 and 2022 that they had to sign up a lot
27:38
of what are called travel nurses or locums or longer term
27:42
contract people. And, and that's a good Band-Aid,
27:45
right? You know, you have somebody who
27:48
is in Ohio and they pick up a contract in Alaska or California
27:51
and they just go out there for six months and they work.
27:53
So on the surface that that makes a lot of sense.
27:56
In reality, those programs are drastically more expensive than
28:00
full time staff, like 50% more in a lot of ways.
28:04
And so you and I are working on the same shift.
28:07
I'm a full time employee, You're a traveller.
28:10
You and I are doing the same job for the same time frame and
28:13
you're getting paid 50% more than I am.
28:15
It's bad for morale. It's destroyed a lot of the
28:19
budgets and hospitals, almost over 40% of hospitals are
28:22
underwater in terms of profitability.
28:25
And most of that is because of Labor spend.
28:27
And most of that is because of the spikes of, you know, the the
28:31
stop gaps that had to be put in, you know, as the the working
28:35
field was changing. So that that facility in that
28:39
example or those facilities, they now have the freedom of
28:42
saying, hey, maybe we don't need to renew the contract for that
28:45
really expensive resource that's doing the same job as everybody
28:48
else. But maybe if we have in our back
28:50
pocket a per diem app solution like we have, then if somebody
28:56
goes out on on PTO or maternity leave, or, you know, is it calls
29:01
in sick or has a sick child that they can't come in for their
29:04
shift. We can press the easy button on
29:07
the nurse IO app and get that shift filled with somebody who's
29:11
aligned with our cost structure and our budget and is just as
29:14
professional and has the same licenses and has the same
29:17
education as somebody that we're paying 50% more.
29:20
So that gives the staffing people, the chief operating
29:23
officer or the chief nursing officer or the, you know, HR
29:28
representative, that gives them freedom to do what's right for
29:31
that ward in that facility, for that shift and all on the
29:36
clinician side of things or the healthcare professional side of
29:38
things. I now have the freedom to work
29:41
where I want to, when I want to. It doesn't, it's not more
29:45
complicated than that for us. We know people can say I'm open
29:49
to 100 mile radius, I'm open to a 2 mile radius.
29:53
I would prefer to stay towards a detox center or an assisted
29:58
living center rather than, you know, something totally
30:01
different from that. And oh, by the way, I've been
30:05
rated very highly from this facility and I know that they
30:09
like me. And so I'm going to put that as
30:11
one of my favorites. So the second that that, you
30:13
know, a facility puts a shift out to the marketplace, I'm
30:17
going to get notified by that. So whether I'm at my full time
30:20
job or I'm, you know, working outside in the yard, I'm going
30:23
to get a notification that, you know, Saint Mary's Hospital 2
30:27
miles away in the ICU need someone and I love working
30:32
there. So that's the freedom I have to
30:34
pick the place to pick the rate and and to be prioritized as
30:38
somebody that you know has been rated very well from that
30:40
facility. Shane, when you guys go into a
30:44
new healthcare facility, you want to bring them on as a new
30:48
client. What's the biggest piece of
30:50
pushback that you typically get and how do you answer that?
30:55
The bigger the facility is or the bigger the organization is,
30:58
the more stakeholders there are. And, and as we all do, it's
31:01
human nature. We all have our pet projects and
31:04
we all take a thin slice of information.
31:06
So if we're approaching somebody, they could be like,
31:09
hey, we have a staffing agency, we have a contract through our
31:11
GPO or we have, you know, we've been using this, you know, brick
31:16
and mortar staffing company across town for 35 years.
31:20
When they truly understand what we're doing on the per diem
31:24
side, let alone compared to the other per diem providers, even
31:29
just take because like right now you could say our competition is
31:35
solutions that are similar to what we do, not as good, not as
31:37
fast, not as as foolproof, not as easy.
31:41
But there's still a lot of brick and mortar staffing companies
31:44
that have people that they're paying every day, whether
31:47
they're working or not and they're paying benefits and
31:49
they're doing a lot of different things.
31:52
Our advantage is the analytic because of AI, the analytics
31:56
that we can pull from things, the rating systems the same day
32:00
pay, the transparency of of our rates compared to the clinicians
32:04
rates. All of these things help
32:06
everybody be really transparent and free to, to do what they
32:10
need to do. And it differentiates us
32:12
frankly. You know, there's theoretically
32:14
a lot of people can jump up and fill a gap in staffing, whether
32:18
that's full time or traveller, long term contract or per diem.
32:22
We just think that we do it the right way and we do it very
32:26
quickly. What unique challenges Shane
32:29
have you guys encountered while fusing healthcare specifically
32:33
with this technology to complex fields?
32:37
Has your team overcome that? I think launching and evolving
32:41
the product. Yeah, I think the biggest, the
32:43
biggest hurdle and it's and it's, it's a good problem to
32:46
have. The biggest hurdle we have is
32:49
the need to stay focused with limited resources.
32:52
Meaning every time I'm in a conversation at a dinner party
32:56
or sidelines of a soccer game or, you know, talking to a
32:59
potential investor, everybody has an idea about how we could
33:03
have a marketplace for, you know, jugglers in the in the
33:06
circus or, you know, lion tamers or bull riders or whatever else.
33:11
There's there's no shortage of ideas and, and probably a lot of
33:14
them would be lucrative, not necessarily the circus one, but
33:17
a lot of the ones that people approach us with would be
33:20
lucrative for us. We're a lot more consumed with
33:23
healthcare and in the areas where we can generally make a
33:27
difference and land there and expand and do better and better
33:32
there. And then if there are things in
33:34
two or three or five years that makes sense, we can certainly
33:37
get into that, whether if even if that's including physicians
33:40
or you know, all sorts of different other healthcare
33:43
providers that are not nurses. We are comfortable and confident
33:47
that our technology, our team and our algorithm will transfer
33:50
very well to other markets. But our number one opportunity
33:55
is always to be even more focused and even more deliberate
33:59
and disciplined about what we need to accomplish today,
34:02
tomorrow and over the next 30, sixty, 90 days.
34:05
Let's explore this for a moment, Shane, because I'm kind of
34:07
curious about this. You're already, you know, you
34:10
have relationships with a lot of these facilities that, you know,
34:13
they need the nurses and you're providing those and a lot of
34:16
them, as you just mentioned, you know, they need physicians too.
34:20
Like how do you sort of think about that?
34:23
Because you know, with the entrepreneurial brain that guys
34:25
like us have, you want to go after those opportunities,
34:29
right? That's kind of feels like low
34:31
hanging fruit. At the same time, you've been
34:34
through this enough to know the value in being hyper focused,
34:38
especially, you know, at the young stage that you guys are
34:41
at. So kind of walk us through like
34:43
how you wrap your head around balancing those two things.
34:46
Well, I think the complexity of different marketplaces is
34:50
something to keep in mind. So I don't know if if a brain
34:55
surgeon for or a neurosurgeon would be applicable to something
34:58
like this, but there are a lot of physicians that moonlight by
35:01
themselves. I have a one of my best friends
35:05
from high school who's an ER doc and, and if he wants to pick up
35:10
another shift, it's not the most professional process.
35:13
You know, there's, there's a Facebook page for Chicagoland
35:18
emergency room doctors. They're almost openly
35:21
negotiating. These are, you know, highly
35:23
educated, professional, credentialed physicians.
35:28
And they're basically, basically negotiating in front of their
35:31
neighbors. And so we know that all these
35:34
things, there's a need, but with a small team with limited
35:38
resources for now, it's very important that we're focused.
35:42
And, and the reason why it's important is not just resource
35:45
allocation and, and proving its credibility.
35:49
You know, I, I personally wouldn't want somebody to
35:52
approach me if I was the president of a hospital or CEO
35:54
of a hospital or nursing director.
35:56
I wouldn't want somebody to approach me and say, hey, you
36:00
know, behind door number one, I can offer you this whole team of
36:04
people behind door number two. And oh, by the way, I have
36:07
parking lot attendance and I have housekeeping and I have,
36:11
you know, people that are going to work on weekends to to help
36:15
traffic in and out. And I got.
36:16
Jugglers and jesters and yeah. We got it all.
36:20
But you know, I wouldn't want to be approached that way.
36:22
I'd like to know somebody is passionate about what I'm
36:25
passionate about. So if I'm a chief nursing
36:27
officer, I don't want to talk about an ER doc.
36:29
I want to talk about getting the 2nd shift tomorrow filled.
36:34
It makes a lot of sense. They want to see that you're
36:36
focused. It's certainly helpful for you
36:37
guys at this young stage. And you see a lot more value in
36:42
going into new geographical markets, first really
36:45
establishing yourself, establishing the brand name and
36:49
then you can look 2345 years down the road at maybe adding on
36:54
some of those other positions if it makes sense.
36:56
That's the fun part. The fun part is we have a very
36:59
big challenge and puzzle to crack now, but there are a lot
37:03
of puzzles that are waiting to be solved.
37:05
And, and I think the, the speed and the team and the
37:08
technological, you know, progress that we've made, I
37:12
think we're going to be able to help a lot of different puzzles.
37:15
Shane, what's a serious challenge that you've had to
37:18
overcome in your business or personal life?
37:21
What it was it? How'd you get through it?
37:22
What did you learn? Yeah, you know, this is pretty
37:26
pretty near. And dear is I've always tried to
37:30
be as transparent as possible and have very genuine and real
37:35
relationships. And, and that served me well for
37:39
a long time. You know, I certainly wasn't
37:40
somebody who was running into the office, quote, UN quote, on
37:43
Monday and telling everybody about my weekend.
37:46
But I, I, I, I, I genuinely value people and I want to be
37:52
valued by people. I've been in a couple scenarios,
37:56
including, you know, fairly recently, not with Nursaio, but
38:00
previous to Nursaio where everything was from a board
38:04
perspective, everything was a spreadsheet rather than the, the
38:09
depth of somebody's character or the intangibles of leadership
38:14
that, you know, don't show up on a balance sheet, but are
38:19
trending in the right direction, meaning a venture capital
38:23
community. And I've worked with a lot of
38:25
really good venture capital investors I really have that are
38:28
genuinely vested in the company financially.
38:31
They care, they want to make introductions, they want to help
38:35
to pressure test strategies and all sorts other stuff.
38:37
But there's also, you know, that 10% of venture capital investors
38:41
that even though they've never worked in a company, they're
38:45
there, They have a great MBA, they have great analytical
38:48
skills, they're brilliant people.
38:50
They think they know everything about operating a company.
38:53
And, and they're, they're in a tough position too, right?
38:56
Like they're, they have to report back to their, their,
38:58
their investors and their GPS and their limited partners and
39:01
everything else. But the board interactions that
39:04
I thrive under and the venture capital relationships that I
39:08
truly treasure to this day over several different stops are
39:12
those that trust the operators. And yeah, you know, there's, if
39:17
you put it together and you get buy in for a strategy,
39:20
Healthcare is not the fastest moving business.
39:23
It's really not, you know, you're having to change
39:25
consensus of all the neurosurgeons in the country or
39:29
the FDA or, you know, CMS for payment for, for a device.
39:35
All these things take time. And so it's you can't default
39:39
to, hey, you told us on last Wednesday that you were
39:42
incorporating a new go to market strategy.
39:45
It's now Friday afternoon. How come we haven't seen any
39:47
uptick yet? Things take time and you have to
39:50
really know the business fairly well.
39:52
You have to be secure in your knowledge and you have to be
39:55
very trusting of operators. That doesn't mean you should sit
39:57
on your hands and let the operating team do whatever they
40:00
want. You have a vested interest.
40:02
It's very important for you and your reputation and your fund
40:05
that you're doing things properly.
40:07
But if you're relying on a low trust environment and you know,
40:13
almost micromanagement, you're never going to capitalize on the
40:16
true potential of an organization that genuinely
40:19
believes in the leader in in place.
40:21
So I went through that in the last couple years and like I'd
40:25
LED off with I'm a genuine people and I like genuine
40:29
relationships and, and I was put in a position where there were
40:35
things going on behind the scenes, you know, potentially
40:38
from a board level that we're not appreciating the blood,
40:41
sweat and tears that I was doing day-to-day.
40:44
And I just wish that there was more candor, there was more
40:47
transparency. There's more honor to the
40:50
agreements that were set forth when I was joining the company.
40:54
But those are things I don't blame anybody.
40:56
It's, it's not the way I would have conducted things, but they
40:59
have to do what's best for their investment.
41:02
It's just some of the stylistic things that I wish were handled
41:06
a little bit differently. Knowing that there's some
41:08
presidents or CEO's that no matter what you say to them,
41:13
it's not going to impact them any way, shape or form.
41:16
They have a big ego potentially or really, really, really thick
41:20
skin. I think the people in this day
41:23
and age, especially, they respond to people that are real
41:26
people that are in a in a, in a chair that's, you know,
41:29
perceived as higher up on the food chain, meaning, you know,
41:33
ultimately an investor has every right to remove an executive,
41:38
But I think that that sets organizations back.
41:41
And so, but I had to go through, I was a casualty of that.
41:43
I ended up leaving on my own terms, but I was a casualty of
41:47
that. And and that hurt in a big way.
41:49
It didn't change who I thought I was as a person or anything
41:52
existential, but it was wow. I just spent so many years
41:58
dedicating every free moment and oz of thought and emotion to
42:04
this venture that you, you, you can't marry yourself to a
42:07
company, right? You marry yourself to a spouse.
42:10
You marry yourself to raising children or dogs or whatever
42:14
else that are, you know, you're blessed with, but you can't put
42:18
yourself worth or your confidence in the hands of
42:22
anybody in a corporate realm because it is what it is.
42:25
It's it's people that are hopefully doing what they think
42:27
is best but don't exactly understand the entire picture.
42:32
It sounds like you sent you found yourself in an environment
42:35
where the culture of the leadership did not align with
42:39
you and your values. And like, good on you for, you
42:44
know, taking a step back from that.
42:46
And I applaud sort of that mindset of, you know, you can't
42:50
allow allow that to sort of define your value, your worth,
42:53
who you are. But let's be honest, Shane,
42:56
that's easier said than done, right?
42:58
Like you would put so much of your blood, sweat and tears into
43:02
that. That's a tough transition to
43:04
make where it's like, man, I have been busting my rear end
43:07
here and I'm not getting appreciated.
43:09
And now I'm in a position where I've just got to step away from
43:13
this. Like, did you really not have
43:16
sort of that existential crisis even to some degree?
43:20
No, you know, I'm, I'm fortunate enough that I was born with a
43:24
lot of confidence and, and my parents will attest to that.
43:26
So will my older siblings because I was always heckling
43:29
them, but I was born with a lot of confidence.
43:32
I've accomplished a lot and I I feel good about what I've
43:35
accomplished and I've amazing amount of of belief in my faith
43:41
and in my, you know, family and closest relationships that.
43:45
So I think the foundation is, you know, was really set.
43:48
Some of it I was born with some of it I was blessed with some of
43:50
it has just built over time and so truly no existential threat,
43:55
but it definitely punches you in the gut a little bit of wow,
44:01
that's how it went down. You know, wow, you know that
44:04
that person. There's this adage that you see
44:06
a lot on social media now of like having somebody in the room
44:10
when you're not in the room that thinks as highly of you as you
44:15
know, when they're sitting in front of you type stuff.
44:16
I'm, I'm butchering the, the meme, but in effect, finding out
44:21
afterwards. The people in the room, there
44:23
are some that were very supportive and there were some
44:25
that were very supportive when I was sitting in front of them for
44:28
lunch or dinner or a meeting, but that were the exact opposite
44:31
behind closed doors. That's the part where if you're
44:35
serious about relationships and you want to be a genuine person
44:37
and you want to be, you know, trusting, those are the things
44:40
that make you scratch your head like, wait a minute, it's.
44:43
Hard to understand that lack of authenticity when that's not the
44:46
way that you're wired. Right, exactly so so it what it
44:50
did is back to the priority list of the five things for the next
44:54
venture. And as I say, it opened up you
44:56
you just to to sort of re evaluate things.
44:58
It it re evaluated my priorities, probably 10 years
45:01
ago it would have been title compensation, you know, really
45:06
flashy technology. Now, those things are #5 you
45:11
know, the, the location, the people, the board, the founders,
45:15
all those things are very, very important to me.
45:17
And I'm thankful now for that last experience because I
45:20
wouldn't have been able to distill down to my true north
45:24
now without some of those hiccups or punches in the guts
45:28
or whatever else in that last chapter.
45:30
I wouldn't be what I'm doing today.
45:32
I wouldn't. Understand what it is that you
45:34
wouldn't have had Sort of that compare contrast to say like
45:38
that is something I do not care for.
45:40
That is not me, unless that had been sort of thrust upon you.
45:44
Exactly. And I've been, I was asked to
45:46
join a board myself for the first time.
45:49
In terms of a corporate board, I've been on nonprofit boards
45:51
and other things, but corporately it's given me a
45:55
whole different perspective on asking questions and empowering
45:59
an operating leader rather than second guessing, gossiping,
46:05
poking, you know, micromanaging. It's like, hey, you've probably
46:08
already thought about this, but if you haven't, maybe, you know,
46:13
could we talk about XY and Z? That's a lot different than you
46:16
really need to do this. It's like, yeah, we did that six
46:18
months ago and it didn't work. You know, there's you have to
46:21
give people some trust and some benefit of the doubt.
46:24
Shane, how would you describe your superpower?
46:29
Oh, I don't know if I have a superpower.
46:32
I, I think, I think I'm, I've been fortunate enough to be
46:36
surrounded by really strong mentors to, to be raised in a
46:41
really phenomenal family, to, to have a wife that has been
46:46
really, really good for me, to have a faith that drives
46:49
everything that I do. I don't personally have a
46:52
superpower, but I, I'm very appreciative of the people that
46:57
have, you know, helped to form me along the way, whether that
47:01
was a sports coach or a teacher or my parents or my older
47:05
siblings or, you know, somebody in the community that took an
47:08
interest into my smile and what I was trying to do and, and help
47:12
to corral me into a different way.
47:13
So my superpower is probably appreciation.
47:16
Like I, I genuinely appreciate people that go out of the way to
47:20
make an introduction for me or I know on the side that they are
47:24
in that room, the proverbial backroom, and they're saying,
47:27
yeah, I met with him yesterday. He's he's he's what he says he
47:31
is rather than, Oh yeah, you're great, you're great.
47:34
And then get the dagger ready behind the scenes.
47:37
I love that answer, your superpowers appreciation, but
47:40
let me push a little bit because you've had a lot of success.
47:43
You know, you've alluded to that.
47:45
We've talked, you know, we've touched just on a handful of
47:47
things that you've done. You know, are you a good
47:50
salesman? Are you good at sort of seeing
47:52
the chess board in a different way than other people are?
47:55
Are you good at sort of identifying talent and spotting,
47:58
oh, that person should be here kind of a thing.
48:00
Like, let's set a humility aside a little bit.
48:05
That's that's. I can tell it's a little
48:08
uncomfortable for you. It's uncomfortable.
48:10
I don't like interviewing. I'm not talking about like a
48:13
podcast interview. I don't like interviewing for a
48:15
job because then I have to talk about myself.
48:17
So I think that I and then this, this isn't self depreciating.
48:24
I think I'm pretty simple minded, meaning I've been
48:27
involved in all these really complicated fields,
48:29
electrophysiology, like you're talking to a physician that's
48:32
looking that has a catheter in somebody's heart and they're,
48:35
they're putting energy to interrupt a, a bad arrhythmia.
48:39
They're looking at a 64 lead EKG and they're able in real time
48:44
with a heat source in their hands in somebody's heart to
48:47
say, oh, in lead 13 in the third segment.
48:52
I know if I ablate where that's coming from, I'm going to help
48:54
this person get out of atrial fibrillation or SVT, that that's
48:59
really complicated. I don't think I could do that no
49:02
matter how much education I had. It's just a processing speed
49:05
that's very, very fast. But what I'm able to do is to
49:08
build trust quickly and to distill really complicated
49:11
things into very simple distilled messages, meaning like
49:16
I could when I was in that role in electrophysiology.
49:19
I could travel the world and talk to any electrophysiologist
49:22
that I wanted to. It wasn't to go toe to toe on
49:26
the 13th lead and the 4th segment of that of that patient,
49:30
but it was to ask the right questions to build trust to, you
49:33
know, you know, plant a couple seeds for them to think about
49:37
that ultimately helped the organization refine the product
49:40
road map or to pick up business or whatever.
49:42
But I think I'm pretty good at communicating and I'm pretty
49:45
good at distilling complicated things into into more distilled
49:49
messages. And, and I think the
49:51
relationships have served me well.
49:53
Yeah, I think that personally, professionally, a a appetite for
49:57
relationship, but also, you know, being able to build trust
50:01
quickly has benefited me in all realms of my life.
50:04
I'd tell you what, I've had the pleasure of working with some
50:07
folks that, excuse me, are, are really good at sort of taking
50:11
complicated topics and being able to break them down into,
50:16
you know, bullet points that are distilled and like easy to wrap
50:20
your head around. And it just, it's, it's one
50:23
thing to sort of like just talk about it on the surface here.
50:26
But when you sort of see it in play, it's such an easier way to
50:30
get folks on board with the mission and moving forward.
50:33
Whether it's your team members, whether you're trying to
50:36
present, you know, a new idea to your clients, whether you're
50:39
trying to get, you know, providers on board.
50:42
When you can think of that language that makes this complex
50:45
idea really easy to distill down and digest it, it's pretty
50:49
powerful. They say the average American is
50:53
bombarded with over 5000 promotional messages a day.
50:58
And that could be everything, right?
50:59
That could be on TikTok, that could be on a billboard, that
51:02
could be in the midst, you know, a commercial in the midst of a
51:05
podcast. It could be a lot of different
51:06
things. So try to Fast forward to that
51:09
of a really talented clinician who has a full docket of
51:14
surgeries on that day or patients on that day or budgets
51:18
to pour through on that day. They're getting bombarded like
51:21
everybody else in the country is getting bombarded.
51:23
And they also have a really complicated, important,
51:26
beneficial or, you know, vital job to do.
51:29
So I think the old adage with marketing you, you, I'm sure you
51:33
know these same things as like 7 different ways to seven
51:37
different times to, for a message to resonate with
51:40
somebody. I think it's even more
51:41
appropriate now that that making things easy for people to
51:45
digest. If they want to dive deeper,
51:47
then be prepared to dive as deep as anybody wants to to peel that
51:50
onion. But in the meantime, make it
51:52
very basic. You know, like people reach out
51:56
blindly on LinkedIn now, like non-stop.
51:59
And it's like, I don't need a manufacturing solution.
52:01
I'm not manufacturing anything. I don't need a workforce
52:05
solution for 18 countries. I'm in one state of 1 country.
52:09
You know, it's like if people just did a little bit of
52:11
homework, it would it would go a lot better because otherwise
52:16
you're just doing blind outreaches and hoping that if
52:18
you have a broad net, it's going to yield something back to you.
52:21
How about spending more time and making a very narrow approach
52:25
plan and knowing a little bit about somebody you're reaching
52:27
out to. So people are actually not gun
52:30
shy about going into LinkedIn to go to their mailbox because they
52:33
know it's going to be 750 people in 24 hours that have nothing to
52:37
do with the business that you're running.
52:39
I think that that we sort of shifted the message there a
52:42
little bit, but I think it's a really powerful one for, you
52:44
know, folks to absorb, you know, especially folks who are in kind
52:47
of the sales and marketing side of things because I hear this a
52:49
lot from people. They're like, yeah, I'm tired of
52:52
getting bombarded with the things that hit my inbox all the
52:55
time. Are you need to need merchant
52:58
cash advances? No, never have never been in the
53:01
position for that. Like do do a little homework.
53:05
And so, you know, and I think there is sort of this mentality
53:08
out there that, hey, let's just take a shotgun to the wall.
53:11
I'm going to hit 999 people that are not a fit for this, but
53:16
maybe I'll get one. And if you were to take the time
53:20
to do a little bit of research, get to know somebody a little
53:23
bit before you reach out, you've got a much more tailored
53:26
message, you can offer something of true value to them.
53:29
I, I think there's a lot of wisdom in that.
53:31
So I'm I'm glad we sort of took that little tangent there.
53:34
Are you trying to politely say that I went off off slope?
53:39
I think it's great. I mean, that's the beauty of
53:41
these conversations. We're not locked into a specific
53:45
structure. It's just I, I, I told you
53:47
before we went live, like I'm going to ask some questions and
53:50
I don't know where it's going to go.
53:51
So you and I'll just roll with it.
53:54
So I think that was great. Yep, thank.
53:57
You one thing I'm curious to hear you know somebody who's had
53:59
the kind of success that you've had, Shane, are there particular
54:02
things that help to keep you on schedule, on target, centered,
54:09
help you start your day different habits, routines that
54:14
are are really instructive and helpful for you?
54:17
Yeah, I think up until a couple years ago, I was one of those
54:20
obnoxious people who didn't need to sleep very much.
54:23
Like I'd literally be, you know, the last person had a function
54:27
in the then the first person in the gym the next morning with
54:30
like four or five hours in between.
54:33
I, I think the routines are important to me and I'm, I'm
54:36
not, you know, as young as I was several years ago that it's very
54:40
important for me first thing in the morning.
54:42
And it's still really early. It's, it's 4:30, it's five, it's
54:46
5:30. But it's still of some sort of
54:50
reflection, whether that's a formal Bible study or a, or a
54:54
just a quiet time to reflect a little bit and to pray or to
54:59
just be quiet and silent and, and have peace.
55:02
That's kind of why I've told my family forever.
55:05
Like, why do you get up so early?
55:06
It's because that's time that I don't have to feel guilty about
55:09
anything. Like I'm not taking away from
55:11
the family. Everybody else is asleep.
55:13
I'm not taking away from my job. I'm not taking away from an
55:16
organization that I'm working for.
55:18
I'm taking, you know, if, if you look at debits and credits, I'm,
55:23
I'm debiting out of my own, you know, bank to wake up at 4:30
55:27
where a lot of people are waking up at 6:30, meaning like I can
55:31
do whatever I want with that time.
55:32
And, and so that's, I didn't start out as a, as a, you know,
55:36
out of college as a like a real early bird, you know, wake up
55:40
with a Roosters type of person. But I definitely am now.
55:43
And because it allows me that devotional time, that Bible
55:46
study, that prayer time, that quiet time.
55:48
And then most days of the week, whether it's 5 or 6, sometimes 7
55:53
is some form of exercise, whether that is a good lift or a
55:58
good hike or, you know, kind of a, a run, walk or a quick jog,
56:02
whatever that is. That helps me a tremendous
56:05
amount. And then now, like even when I
56:08
was that obnoxious person that, you know, got 4 hours of sleep a
56:11
night, I never drank coffee like I had never had a couple years
56:15
ago. I was like, hey, I like coffee
56:17
ice cream. I like the smell of it.
56:18
I'm tired of going to coffee meetings and having hot
56:20
chocolate like a little kid or having a, having a bottle of
56:24
water for the 10th time in the day that I really enjoy coffee.
56:27
Now my wife makes a great French press and we have a couple
56:30
minutes after I come home from the gym before I jump into my
56:34
schedule where we have coffee together and it's a nice French
56:37
press and we're sitting outside in Arizona.
56:39
And, you know, it's, it's a nice way for us to, to be connected
56:42
as well. So those routines back to answer
56:44
your question directly, routines help me to stay, you know, very
56:50
grounded. I noticed like when we go on
56:53
vacation or we were at a family reunion last week, I almost can
56:57
sense myself getting a wave. Like obviously you're not able
57:01
to do all those things if you're running around with the family,
57:04
you know, on vacation or with your in laws or whatever else
57:07
and you're trying to do a lot of different things in the course
57:09
of a day. But I can, I can feel the
57:11
difference in myself. I can feel myself getting
57:13
impatient. I can feel myself not thinking
57:15
as clearly. I can feel myself, you know, not
57:18
the best version of myself when I'm grounded in my routines and
57:22
my foundations, especially in the morning, I'm good to go.
57:25
I'm good to go. That's Shane Brown time you get
57:27
up, you you have time for exercising personal reflection
57:31
the the prayer it sounds like then you sort of ease your way
57:35
into like social interaction. The coffee with your wife sounds
57:38
like a a nice way to to kind of ease into that.
57:40
That's beautiful. Just one more question for you,
57:44
Shane. But before I ask you, I want to
57:45
do 2 things. First of all, everyone
57:47
listening, I want to ask you to pause just for a second.
57:50
Go to your favorite podcast app, hit that follow button.
57:54
I want you to continue to get more great interviews like we've
57:56
had today with Shane Brown from Nurse IO.
57:59
Shane, I also want to let people know the best way to either get
58:03
in touch with you directly to follow your story or that of
58:07
Nurse IO. What would that be?
58:09
Yeah, Shane at nurseio.com is my e-mail address.
58:14
I don't hide behind it. I I actually love hearing from
58:17
people. And take a moment and just
58:20
tailor your message to him, whatever it is.
58:22
Sorry. Don't just say, hey, we want to
58:25
sell you, you know, 50 acres in London.
58:27
Like I that's not the business I'm in.
58:29
So don't send me that e-mail. But LinkedIn, I think is no
58:34
matter I was critical of the, the bombardment of the inbox,
58:38
but I think the companies that care and the the people that
58:41
have been experienced in different realms, it's still a
58:44
really good forum for idea sharing and everything else on
58:49
Twitter slash X, there's a nurse IO follow there.
58:53
You know, there's, there's Facebook pages, but I think the
58:55
best way is probably LinkedIn or to e-mail me directly or to be
58:59
on X. That's great.
59:01
Whether you're a facility or a clinician or you're just really
59:04
interested on where staffing is going in the future, I'd love to
59:08
love to be in touch. And we'll try to include links
59:12
to all those things you just mentioned in the show notes for
59:14
folks. So last question for you, Shane,
59:16
you and I reconnect a year from now and you're really excited.
59:19
You are celebrating some big thing.
59:21
What's that big thing you're celebrating a year from now?
59:24
Yeah, I think, I think the the launch into the 10 more markets
59:28
is going to be fun. We're going to learn a lot.
59:31
Hopefully we do more beneficial execution than distracting
59:36
beneficial. But either way we'll learn a
59:37
lot. The launch of our brand new
59:39
software program is going to be more details to follow, but it
59:44
is it's going to take the industry by store.
59:48
What are we talking about here? What?
59:49
What can you say at this point? Well, we're talking about it.
59:52
A company that was built on an app that now will have a
59:56
comprehensive suite on staff optimization tools.
1:00:00
So we will no longer be a 1 trick pony.
1:00:02
We will now be in a place to help people schedule, to help
1:00:06
people credential, to help people to analyze their spend,
1:00:10
to find, you know, the best and the brightest.
1:00:13
All of those things are going to be in our new suite.
1:00:15
And we're about to sign an agreement in the next couple
1:00:17
weeks that is goes from a soft launch of our new software to
1:00:22
prime time in in a few weeks time.
1:00:25
So. When is this out right now?
1:00:27
You said soft. No, the soft launch hasn't
1:00:30
happened yet. Off launch is is happening, but
1:00:32
just kind of really tight circle just to make sure that we we
1:00:36
think it's as good as we are and the reviews are better than
1:00:39
imagined. And so we're going from a very
1:00:41
competitive marketplace because there's several companies that
1:00:45
do what we do in terms of matchmaking and connecting
1:00:48
clinicians with with healthcare facilities to truly helping
1:00:52
hospitals and assisted living and all these facilities to
1:00:56
staff better, to manage their spend, to appreciate their
1:01:00
employees better, to genuinely help out in a lot bigger way.
1:01:04
And oh, by the way, the app is still a tool, but it will be a
1:01:09
part of a suite of tools rather than just one tool.
1:01:12
My goodness, I feel like we buried the lead here, Shane,
1:01:15
like that. That sounds pretty amazing.
1:01:17
We're going to have to have you back on when that's been out in
1:01:20
the market and we can talk about that a little bit more because
1:01:22
that sounds. Good.
1:01:23
Yeah, yeah. Excited about that.
1:01:25
Well, Shane, Shane Brown from Nurse, I want to be the first to
1:01:28
thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us
1:01:30
today. I really appreciate it.
1:01:32
Hey, I had fun Anthony, I appreciate the forum and it was
1:01:35
really nice getting to know you. Folks, that's a wrap on another
1:01:38
episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:01:40
Thanks for learning with us today.