46. After the Exit: Living, Leading, and Learning Forward with Sarah Michelle Boes
EPISODE 46
Sarah Michelle Boes created and sold a multi-million dollar nurse practitioner test prep company before turning 30, only to face her newborn daughter's heart condition diagnosis just weeks after the acquisition. Her journey reveals how entrepreneurial success and personal crisis can intersect, forcing a profound reevaluation of what success truly means.
Catch the Conversation
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Sarah Michelle Boes created and sold a multi-million dollar nurse practitioner test prep company before turning 30, only to face her newborn daughter's heart condition diagnosis just weeks after the acquisition. Her journey reveals how entrepreneurial success and personal crisis can intersect, forcing a profound reevaluation of what success truly means.
Sarah Michelle Boes, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC, is the Founder of Sarah Michelle NP Reviews and also served as the Chief Nursing Officer at Blueprint Test Prep. With a robust educational background including a BSN from the University of Kentucky and an MSN in Nursing Education from Western Governors University, Sarah has extensive experience in oncology, intensive care, and nursing education. After obtaining her family nurse practitioner degree in 2020 she launched SMNP Reviews, an innovative platform that rapidly grew to a seven-figure business within seven months. Following SMNP Reviews’ acquisition by Blueprint in 2022, Sarah transitioned to a role where she continued to oversee the nursing vertical while integrating cutting-edge educational technologies.
You can connect with Sarah on her website, Instagram or LinkedIn.
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1:02
Sarah's Multi-Million Dollar Business Journey
4:49
Building a Business During COVID
9:52
From Teacher to Million-Dollar Founder
14:23
Selling at a Perfect Moment
21:37
Life After Exit: Redefining Success
29:14
The Memoir and What's Next
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Julie: 0:04
Welcome to Figure 8, where we feature inspiring stories of women entrepreneurs who have grown their businesses to seven and eight figures revenue. If you're in the mix of growing a bigger business, these stories are for you. Join us as we explore where the tough spots are, how to overcome them and how to prepare yourself for the next portion of the climb. I'm your host, Julie Ellis. I'm an author, entrepreneur and a growth and leadership coach who co-founded, grew and exited an eight-figure business. This led me to exploring why some women achieve great things, and that led to my book Big Gorgeous Goals. Let's explore the systems, processes and people that help us grow our businesses to new heights. If you're interested in growing your business, this podcast will help. Now let's get going.
Julie: 1:04
Hello and welcome to this episode of Figure 8. Today I am chatting with Sarah Boes, and Sarah created and sold a multi-million dollar company before she turned 30. But as soon as she sold the company, within a month, she was faced with a personal crisis, navigating one of the hardest moments of her life and it, you know, looking from the outside, she had everything, but, of course, navigating anything difficult and an acquisition none of that is easy, and so today she does lots of work talking about how to build resilient businesses, how to be resilient and how to become a philanthropist and an activist in your own life. Welcome to you, Sarah. I'm so glad to have you with me today.
Sarah: 1:50
Thank you so much, and thank you for letting me share part of my story today too.
Julie: 1:54
Ah yeah. So I was so amazed when I learned, I mean, how fast you were able to build your business, how much opportunity there was.
Sarah: 2:05
Yeah, I think part of all a lot of that. Two reasons, one, it was a very archaic market that hadn't been touched or done anything different in a long time, and two, I'm a little bit obsessive when I dive into things, and so when I came in with this challenger brand, I was like go big or go home.
Julie: 2:24
Yep, and so the business that you were able to build was really transforming testing for nurses.
Sarah: 2:32
So Sarah Michelle MP Reviews was a nurse practitioner test prep company and so essentially what we were doing was preparing people to take their board exams, which sounds really boring and monotonous but my kind of unique spin on it from my own experience of preparing for this exam and what it took to pass this exam I created test prep that was really centered around mental health as the focus, and so I tell people all the time, like you can know the content all day long, you can study and study and study 1000 hours, but if you can't manage your own anxiety then you still might not pass. And so I'd had a lot of trouble managing my own anxiety and really kind of building up my toolkit to be able to do that. And when I kind of opened up about the experience and shared some of those tools with others, I mean it was an immediate hit, immediately resonated with people.
Julie: 3:25
Yeah, interesting I think that's a universal kind of problem, right, is the test taking anxiety piece, and especially, I think, for so there's a lot of information to learn, but there's also a lot of like hands-on and experiential learning that comes with. But then you have to take all of that and distill it into being able to answer the right things on a test.
Sarah: 3:48
Absolutely, and it's just such a high stakes exam, I think, unless you're taking a medical style exam where literally your license depends on it and your future career depends on it and you can't do anything with that degree unless you pass. It just feels like the heaviest weight in the world to take those types of exams.
Julie: 4:06
Yeah, because yes, the alternative of yeah. So do you study for another year and take it again or do you move on and, like, re-educate yourself and take another career? Like that's a lot of pressure.
Sarah: 4:18
It's so much pressure, especially because by the time that you're becoming a nurse practitioner, a lot of those people are in the season of life, so of having families and getting married and all the things and there's just an even bigger pressure of I have to pass this thing Like there's no choice, like I have to pass the exam to be able to move on to the next phase of my life and all the money and time that you've put into getting that degree too.
Julie: 4:41
Yeah, And now you were sparked to start the company, not only because you wanted to kind of address those pieces, but also because some of the traditional review methods weren't available.
Sarah: 4:54
Well, the market was incredibly ancient in a lot of ways, and the fact that I actually started my business during 2020, it was the prime of COVID, and so what a lot of the older review courses would do is they would have a two-day in-person conference you would be taught at for up to 10-hour days and then you would go on your merry way and figure out what you need to study more on your own, and so what those companies thought during COVID was well, if we just flip this onto Zoom, it'll be the same experience.
Sarah: 5:23
It absolutely was not the same experience, and I was having a very beautiful experience at the same time, because I actually taught on Zoom for gosh nearly two years and I was teaching clinicals and labs to nursing students. So I was teaching bachelor students, and so I had all of this like fun, creativity time of how do I make a clinical on Zoom that's supposed to be in person in the hospital meaningful and purposeful for my students so that they still can become competent nurses someday. So, like we, literally we were putting catheters in the water bottles, catheters in the tissue boxes anything like innovative and creative I could do to really sink in that experience for them, but it was a great learning curve for me to see what worked and what didn't, and I was able to use a lot of those principles that I was experimenting with to then create this like course and business that really I mean truly changed my life.
Julie: 6:20
Yeah, and I mean you started inviting people. So you had this idea, you set up the course and you started inviting people to come and take it for free.
Sarah: 6:30
Yeah, it was a very whirlwind thing. Between the spark of having the idea and actually bringing the course into the world was less than a week. I was just like I have to do this thing, I've got to try it out. I just think I could do it differently. I don't necessarily think at the time I was like I can do this better, but I knew I could do it differently, with a different spin and my own like lens and perspective, and I thought that might be valuable because I had already seen the value with my younger nursing students, but me being anxious me, I was the first person in my class to test and so I had a whole, basically classroom of fellow students seeing online who were paying for their own exams from my same school because we all went to the same online nurse practitioner school and so I gave it to the 29 of them for free and our agreement was you can come in and take my course for free if you invite somebody to my group.
Sarah: 7:22
So I gave and take my course for free if you invite somebody to my group. So I gave the first 100 people for free and then my 101st person. I was like, oh, my goodness, I'm so nervous, but I'm going to try to sell this thing because people are already getting results. And that was a really cool experience for me too, for people to be like, wow, like I really felt, like I managed my anxiety today, or I was able to do this because of what was in the courses, and my 101st person was very upset with me that I was trying to charge $25 for a three-hour course yes, I know. And so she bartered with me down to $15.
Sarah: 8:00
So I sold my first course for $15 for that first day and I made $1,000 in a day. And sometimes I almost want to be like the rest was history, because once I got even just a taste of like oh my goodness, like my life could be different. Like what if I made a thousand dollars every day? Like what would that look like, especially coming from a nursing salary, because I wasn't working as a nurse practitioner yet. It was like fascinating to me and mind boggling to me and I was like, okay, I just want to repeat this tomorrow and I just want to repeat this the next day.
Julie: 8:29
Yeah, but obviously word of mouth spread like wildfire.
Julie: 8:35
You were doing something different.
Sarah: 8:37
Well, I was doing something different and you also have to think about the time that it was in, because everybody was online and everybody that was taking this exam and feeling even a little anxious was feeling super anxious because COVID was closing down testing centers. Like I showed up twice to take my own exam, the testing center was just closed, like there were lots of those kinds of things going on, and so everybody's looking online of what is everyone else's experience and then for me to show up and be like here is my recent experience during COVID and I have made a review course that I think can help with your anxiety.
Sarah: 9:12
People were just stoked huh, it's so amazing how that happened, though, and I mean I can see how it would be totally motivating to yeah. Yeah, I'm just like I'm gonna chase this thing. Yes, I will work all day through the door.
Sarah: 9:30
Yes, um, and it was actually really cool because, I mean, it only took seven months to hit my first million dollars, which is still crazy, and we did all of that with word of mouth, like all I had was a Facebook group and word of mouth. And it's still like I remember going to my first business retreat and they're like what about the emails you're sending and what's the funnel?
Sarah: 9:52
like this Emails? I know I was like I haven't sent an email in my life actually. I was like I talked to all my customers and they're like what do you mean? I'm like I talked to my Facebook messenger and I talked to him over here and I was like we do a lot of co-creation of like what do you want from courses? I can make that for you. And people were just like almost mind boggled by me.
Julie: 10:09
Right, what do you mean? Because you just didn't seem to be fitting into the playbook looked like for how you were building a business.
Sarah: 10:17
Yeah, there was no like blueprint. There was no business plan. It was really just me figuring out. Okay, what do people want? Can I create that? What does that look like and how can I support people? Because people were really looking for support during that time too.
Julie: 10:32
Yeah, and it's kind of interesting because, like I think about nursing, like it's not, you're not. You're using technology to give care and deliver care. That yes, but you're not sitting at a desk in front of a computer all day, it's not a typical, like it's a different kind of consumer that you're selling to as a startup.
Sarah: 10:53
Yeah, they're very tactical, which is why I had to very quickly, because you know, when you think about the different styles of learning, for example, a lot of these people are tactical learners. So I started with courses and that was very auditory and that works for some people. But I mean, it wasn't very long before I was having to create study guides and workbooks and different things to try to meet everybody where they were at, in their own learning style too.
Julie: 11:16
Well, just yeah how that content grows right. So from the base that you created and then yeah, when you get to a million, you have to have multiple kind of ways of delivery to meet people where they are.
Sarah: 11:32
Yeah, and eventually what I ended up creating that was kind of like my I hate even saying high ticket, but the premium offering, if you want to put it that way was I had all these recorded courses, a wesome. I had a Q bank, awesome. But what I really wanted was for someone, when I was taking my exam, to be like okay, today is day one, I want you to watch this video, do these questions and think about like these reflections, for example, and day two, I want you to do this. And so that was what I ended up creating about six months in. And that was really what kind of like skyrocketed to the next level Because you know, those two person, two day in-person conferences were no structure. And then for me to be like here's a five week plan and I know by the end of the five weeks, you'll be ready to pass this exam. I mean, people were running like people really wanted it
Julie: 12:26
Like a lot of things in my life are hard right now, like just show me.
Sarah: 12:31
Show me how you did it. I want to do it myself.
Julie: 12:35
Interesting and so you like okay so $1000 in the first day, you must have very quickly realized you were gonna replace your family's income, your job and your career was going to look really different from what you'd been doing before.
Sarah: 12:39
Yeah and that's actually an interesting experience for me too. I've talked to a lot of entrepreneurs because a lot of the coaching industry today in the world of business coaching is they're like you know, quit your job, dive right in. If you go a thousand percent, it will work. And there are parts of that that I agree with. But for me, I'm actually a pretty risk averse human. Like if you had asked me five years ago, before I started my business, I would have told you like I never would have started a business. That's too risky for me. And so I actually kept my teaching job and worked full time until I made a million dollars in the business. Like that for me was comfort and security.
Sarah: 13:32
Now, that was not my husband's experience. My husband was like, oh my God, you're making thousands of dollars. Like I'm going to quit my job tomorrow. I'm so excited and I mean it wasn't literally tomorrow, but it was like three months in he quit his job way before I did. But he was so wonderful in the fact that like he saw that I had kind of the golden ticket or the golden egg and he was like, let me clear as much out of the way for you as I possibly can and let's just build this thing and go crazy with it. Like I'm going to give you the space to dive in outside of your crazy. I'm still working my full-time job hours. Yes, that's good. He's got a pain in the dream. I don't always have the dream in the same way.
Julie: 14:14
Right, yeah, so, but then you did, you cross that million and left your job. And what was that like? From sort of like that one year to the two year point.
Sarah: 14:25
That was a really interesting time because it was growing so insanely fast that I felt like, a I was becoming a bottleneck and, b I was breaking everything that we touched, and so I really needed my own software and I really needed some personalized tools to be able to work with to deliver the things that I wanted to deliver, and I could do bits and pieces of that in the confines of like third party software. I really started to explore, ok, like what if I become like a Kaplan, for example, and we have all the different verticals, like I could do medical, I could do legal, we could have nursing, all the things and kind of my first dipping my toe into that experience was trying to build out a question bank app, because that was what everybody wanted and it's what people needed because, as you said earlier, nurses are on the go. So we spent nearly $150,000 on that question bank app and what we had at the end of it was a bunch of junk code and a wasted investment and I really had no clue what I was doing and what I was getting myself into, because I was just trying to figure things out as I went and you also have to think like I'm trying to build software, but I'm also a name and face of the brand. So like I'm having to show up on social media every day and I'm still teaching all the courses because that's what people expect from me, and so I was wearing so many hats at once. I feel like it was really even impossible to think about bridging myself out in a way where I could become a giant test prep brand, and ultimately what I decided was I didn't want to be.
Sarah: 16:04
I was like you know, I'm about to move into this really cool season in my life where, for the first time ever, I have flexibility of money and I could have flexibility of time. And like I knew that I wanted to become a mom and I knew that I had other aspirations and just like working a hundred hours a week. And so that was how we eventually got into the conversation between me and my husband of like it's always tricky when you're thinking about a sale because it's like you've got to. It's like you got to. It's like you have to time it so perfectly. You have to time it when there's like enough, you have to try to time as perfectly as you can, but you don't really know if it's the perfect time to do it, but there's got to be enough growth room left for somebody to find you enticing.
Sarah: 16:54
And we were growing so fast and I knew the market wasn't huge. I'm like how long will we continue to grow on this like rocket ship pace before it plateaus off? Because nobody wants to buy you on a plateau either. So what we eventually decided to do was go to market as a teaser, not actually to sell, but instead to see what is the value of this business, because, kind of like real estate, it's where someone's willing to pay for it. But for me, the real question I wanted to figure out was what is someone willing to pay for my business with my name and face still on it? Like, do I need to rebrand? Do I need to start making strategic decisions to take myself out? And then, in the process of doing that teaser, we ended up meeting the company that acquired mine. But that was not the initial plan.
Julie: 17:45
And who made you an offer you couldn't refuse.
Sarah: 17:47
Exactly. Well we did this really cool thing as a couple too, that before we ever went to any of the teaser meetings any of that we decided what our number was, so that way we could take all the emotions and all the extra out of it and we can make like a solid decision. Because once you start talking to people and you get excited and all those emotions start flying around, it's really hard to make grounded decisions.
Julie: 18:11
Or you get excited, you get a little offended because you know, like all the whole, range of emotions that comes out right. Your baby that they're talking about,
Sarah: 18:21
I'm like literally my name and face.
Julie: 18:24
and so you ended up selling them the business basically at that two-year mark.
Sarah: 18:29
Yeah, literally within like two weeks of the business turning two years old, I sold it and then, as you kind of hinted at earlier, I tell people all the time like literally I rode the highest high in my life selling my business. Like that's such a cool experience. I can now realize there's a lot more layers to selling your business than I could like think about and really capture then, because there's actually a little grief that goes alongside that too, so much grief
Julie: 18:56
We could talk for days.
Sarah: 18:58
I'm like I'm still working through that grief today.
Julie: 18:59
Yes, there is, but you kind of didn't get a chance to feel a lot.
Sarah: 19:06
No.
Julie: 19:06
Because you kind of crashed into a wall pretty fast.
Sarah: 19:15
Yeah, so I actually, the very first meeting that we had with our broker, slash banker, to even think about selling the business. That day I found I was pregnant, and so I sold my business when I was eight and a half months pregnant, which is like. At the time I was like, oh, this is perfect timing.
Sarah: 19:26
I'll get everybody settled.
Sarah: 19:29
I'll have everybody settled, everything good to go. I'll take a quick leave and I'll come back and work because I love to work. But I sold at eight and a half months pregnant and nine months pregnant. Just a couple of weeks later I had actually switched OBs because I felt like my OB at the time couldn't meet me where I was at with my anxiety and I just like looked at my husband one day and I'm like God, if anything goes wrong in the delivery room, this is not the human I want with us. I was like actually I want somewhere else entirely.
Sarah: 19:58
So we went to a whole new hospital system, the whole thing, and they did another anatomy scan as a liability check and when they did that they found out that my daughter actually had four heart defects check. And when they did that, they found out that my daughter actually had four heart defects. And so we had spent my entire pregnancy me thinking I was insane because I felt like something was wrong all the time. But we thought that we had a normal, healthy baby. And then it turns out we had a very, very sick baby who was going to have open heart surgery her first week of life and was going to have at least four more open heart surgeries throughout her lifetime. So it was just like. I can't even like begin to describe the whiplash of living that moment, cause I was like I was finally at peace in my pregnancy, I was finally at peace in the business. I was like we have all of this like freedom, and then to live in and out of the hospital for the next six months was jarring.
Julie: 20:51
Very, yeah, very jarring, and yet you gave yourself freedom to be able to do that. You know, you knew you had financial stability to be able to do it. Like all of the pieces did fall into place for a reason you did not expect.
Sarah: 21:06
No, just not for the reasons I expected fall into place, for a reason you did not expect.
Julie: 21:09
No, just not for the not the reasons I expected or how you would have wished for, but but it is amazing how, how that happened.
Sarah: 21:15
Yeah, I was so fortunate. I tell people I don't know what it is. I tend to nail timing pretty well Um, and I really like being able to be in my daughter's ICU room and not have to worry about going to work and be able to have my husband right there with me and be able to like make decisions as a team and advocate for her as a team, like that was priceless to me. That was absolutely priceless.
Julie: 21:42
Yeah, so now take us forward to today and and tell me how she's doing.
Sarah: 21:47
I love to tell people today that my daughter Meadow, she is the healthiest she has ever been. She had six surgeries by the time she was five months old, so she kind of went through it for a hot second. But we hope that she'll be school age before she has another one, and so we're kind of enjoying our gap time at the moment. And you know, when you find out that you're going to have a child with congenital heart disease, there's all these other worries that run through your mind of like is she going to develop, or develop appropriately? How is she going to turn out? What will our life look like day to day?
Sarah: 22:20
But most people who meet Meadow have no idea what she's been through. And actually there was a mom the other day, her like scared through the top of her dress, and she was like is she okay? And I've lifted up her dress and showed and she just literally had no idea and she had met Meadow probably 25 times. Um, so that's been really cool and really like I love being a mom so much, um, and I love that I also have the medical expertise to show up as her advocate alongside being her mom too.
Julie: 22:50
Yes.
Sarah: 22:51
Yes, that's huge.
Julie: 22:51
Which is incredibly important. Yeah, to have a voice for her.
Sarah: 22:55
Yes, and be able to understand what's going on and hospital standard time, as I like to call it, all the things.
Julie: 23:02
Yep. So you thought you were going to have a short maternity leave and then get back to work, and obviously the work looked a little bit different. How has that shaped what you've done since then?
Sarah: 23:17
I think that when you are a founder and an entrepreneur and you're used to being able to run at lightning speed, when you move into a bigger company. It's always going to be hard and I don't use the word always lightly, but I just think it's a really rough transition. It's not one that people talk about very much. I actually just found a really great book called Beyond the Exit, where this man his name is John Rube he interviewed gosh. There's probably 200 exited founders and it was super insightful to be able to just see people's different experiences with grief because, as we said earlier, there is so much grief and I kind of had a late entrance into that because I was just so emotionally overwhelmed with becoming a new mom but also becoming a heart mom at the same time.
Sarah: 24:06
So the last couple of years, I think for me especially because I sold in June of 2022, I've really been reworking and redefining what success means to me. Because I grew up in Eastern Kentucky, success to me meant you made lots of money and when you made lots of money, you have made it. But I went through an acquisition and I made a lot of money and I'm forever grateful for that. My life is forever changed by that. But that isn't my definition of success anymore, and I'm really grateful to be able to be fortunate enough to even explore what success looks like outside of that. I think it's something I'm still exploring.
Sarah: 24:44
Like I'm 30 years old today. Do I think I'm going to build again? Probably. But I don't want to just like rush into anything either, because for me, like being successful means that in the middle of the day if I want to go hang out with my daughter at the baby gym, I can do that. Or like she had a zoo play date last week, I got to surprise her at like. Those sorts of things kind of take precedence for me at the moment, and then I'll just keep reworking as time goes on too.
Julie: 25:13
Yeah, no, I think it is interesting how we can attach success to a dollar value, but then, once we have the dollar value, we're kind of like huh.
Sarah: 25:24
Or it becomes a moving goalpost. I'm like, oh, like I really wanted this number, but now, if I had this number, oh gosh, I got, like I really got to step away from that. So cause for me, like being a philanthropist, like always want a little bit more, to be able to give a little more.
Julie: 25:36
But yeah, I feel that. I feel that, with the investing I do in women entrepreneurs, I've always liked a little more to invest in one more person, right, yeah? Yeah, it's true, but I do think that's interesting and I'm very interested in that book. I'm definitely going to look it up.
Julie: 25:52
We'll put it in the show notes, because I mean, I talk in my book about getting stuck on the couch after, and you know, my coach told me don't do anything for 90 days. But you know, at day 91, I was no closer to doing anything than on day one. I just didn't have as many vacations planned, and so it was really a really difficult road to figuring out what I would do next.
Sarah: 26:16
Yeah, which I'm very much still in the thick of that transition. It's like it's such a liminal space to be like I could do anything, and on the surface that sounds great, but to live that it is really intimidating.
Julie: 26:31
Yes, yes, because you know what you lived already to get your business to where it was and sell it. Yeah, it is an interesting thing and I think there's like for me. I think there was a block about the grief part around looking ungrateful. Yes, right, like you know, people are like oh, wow, wow, wow. You just sold your business and, you know, took your money off the table. I don't really want to hear about why you're sad and so it's an interesting place to get stuck in and I'm, you know I'll be really interested to read the book because I think it isn't talked about all that often.
Sarah: 27:07
Well, and something I've even been exploring in my own books I'm in the process of writing my memoir right now is I didn't realize how deep seated it was for me being a successful entrepreneur so fast. Everybody's looking at me like what's next? And I mean I love that they asked me that. I love that they're curious. But I didn't realize how much I was really afraid of being a one and done and so then I was creating all this pressure of like I have to do something right away and I was like no, I don't have to do anything right away. I really need to take care of myself and my mental health and my daughter. I mean everything is settled, I'll know when it's time. Because when the first idea came to me like it was like a mosquito, it would not leave me alone. I was like I have to do this thing, I have to try it out. I just got to put it out there, so I know how simple and easy that moment can look to and I know I don't have to force it.
Julie: 27:58
And you don't want to force it, because then it's not the same with the same ease. And I'm not saying that means it was easy, but there's something about that. When you just have something that you know is going to do something, yeah and so yeah, but keeping your, but not ignoring the little signs either. Oh, yes.
Sarah: 28:20
Being aware, but not diving in too fast.
Julie: 28:24
Yeah, definitely, I'm figuring out what you want and letting go of the like for me. The other thing that I find was getting me caught was like the but I, you know, I have to be successful next time. In fact, I have to be more successful.
Sarah: 28:39
Oh, yes, I feel that in my bones and for me I want it to be fun, Like it has to be a little bit fun too.
Julie: 28:49
I'm big on. You can't work that hard and not have fun so important. It's so important. So you've been working on your memoir. I'm really excited to hear about that and to know when it comes out. Do you have a timeline yet, or is it still in progress?
Sarah: 29:05
It is progress, in progress but, like my personal goal is for it to be finished by the end of the summer, so fingers crossed. I've been writing like a thousand to fifteen hundred words a day, so I have a hundred thousand words like I have made momentum. Um, but me being me, I'm always reworking what I'm saying. That's part of the process.
Julie: 29:26
So yeah, yep, and then your editor will come and cut a whole bunch of stuff. You'll have another half a book when you're done.
Sarah: 29:36
I'm like I'm just writing it all and then whatever gets chopped is chopped, but I'm going to put it all out there and then we can figure it out, like I think that's the easiest path.
Julie: 29:45
I think that's exactly what you should do and I'm excited you will have to reach back out and we'll let all the listeners know when the book is coming, because I think people will be interested to hear more about your story.
Sarah: 29:57
Thank you, yeah, I think it's going to be interesting. At first, when I started it something we haven't talked about yet is I actually found out after I sold my business, after my daughter was sick, all the things I have obsessive compulsive disorder, and so when I first started the book I thought it was going to be a book about looking back and seeing how like I've always had OCD and how like in my childhood that wasn't so great, but when I was creating a business that was actually really helpful. But I think the more I've gotten into the book, I think I don't want to say it's more than just an OCD memoir. But there's so many other layers to it, so kind of in a pivot part of the book right now I'm kind of like reworking the through line a little bit, but I think it's is bigger than that.
Julie: 30:35
Thank you, but yes, just even on our kind of short conversations, but I'm really, really keen to see what you do next and where you land, because, um, and how you keep redefining success for yourself. Yeah.
Sarah: 31:01
That's fun too.
Julie: 31:03
Yeah, yeah, good. Well, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it and, uh, I'm looking forward to following on your journey. Yeah and Well, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it and I'm looking forward to following on your journey. Yeah.
Sarah: 31:11
And I'll let you know when the book comes out.
Julie: 31:13
Perfect, Thank you, Take care. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please remember to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you won't miss any episodes. Figure 8 isn't just a podcast. It's a way of seeing the big, gorgeous goals of women entrepreneurs coming to life. If you're interested in learning more, you can find my book Big Gorgeous Goals on Amazon, anywhere you might live. For more about my growth and leadership training programs, visit www.julieellis.ca to see how we might work together. Read my blog or sign up to get your free diagnostic. Are you ready for growth? Once again, that's www.julieellis.ca. When we work together, we all win. See you again soon for another episode of Figure 8.