Shelby Kurz
RN BSN NC-BC
I was a 27-year-old ER travel nurse and totally burned out.
These were supposed to be the best years of my life...I was newly married, traveling the US with my husband, planning to start our family but in reality, I was absolutely miserable.
My job was draining the life out of me. It had been draining the life out of me for years. I didn’t know how I was going to keep going to work...I didn’t have anything left in my tank. I was running on fumes.
I remember feeling a physical magnetic push in my body away from the hospital every time I pulled into the parking lot. Everything in me wanted to just keep driving past the hospital and never look back. I was so desperate for a way out.
Then something happened that I will never forget.
During one of my night shifts, I clocked in and saw that one of my patients was an active shingles patient.
I was also 5 weeks pregnant and had never had chickenpox. As nurses, we know this is a BIG no-no.
I went to my charge nurse, told her I was pregnant and my concerns about caring for this patient and she looked at me like I had 2 heads when I asked if I could switch this patient with someone else. She told me to “figure it out” and turned her back.
This was the moment I realized I was a wheel in the machine. I wasn't even a real person. I knew I had to get out.
Luckily, before this happened, I was already studying how to become a Nurse Coach. I was studying a new way to practice nursing and even just the idea of it filled me with so much hope...hope that my life could be different. That I was not actually stuck working in this ER forever.
But could it be real or was it too good to be true?
Between drug overdoses, strokes, and heart attacks in the ER, I inhaled business advice from Instagram influencers and other health coaches. By the end of my deep research, I was left with many ways on how to grow my social media following, but no real advice on how to create income. I couldn’t find specific information that pertained to being a Nurse and an Entrepreneur…and there was no free information that actually helped me take action to get started.
I was paralyzed by information overload.
My travel contract was up at that hospital and they wanted me to re-sign. They offered me more money on a day shift position...but something in my gut kept screaming "NO!" so I listened.
I quit travel nursing and hired a business coach (for 10k!!!) all within the same week.
This decision changed my whole life. I signed my first client within 2 weeks of opening my practice and had my first 6k month within 4 months. I even took 4 months of maternity leave and came back to a 10k month in my business.
I couldn’t believe this was happening.
Was it still challenging?
Hell yes.
Did I have to constantly up-level and deal with my own limiting beliefs?
Every. single. day.
Would I have done all of this without a coach?
Probably not.
I ended up creating a 6 figure practice during a pandemic, while raising my first baby, moving across the country and also having major open heart surgery. The question isn't "is this possible?", the real question is "are you willing to see it through and not give up when you are in pursuit of what sets your heart on fire?"
I believe deep in my bones that the world needs more successful nurse coaches so that we can be the catalyst to overhaul the current medical system. This is a really tall order and there is power in numbers. We need YOU to be crazy-successful…we have work to do!
