Catie Harris, a nurse practitioner who now helps nurses start their own businesses, joins Niiamah Ashong on the Outlier's Edge Podcast to talk about her path from the hospital to creating a business and a podcast for nurses. She shares how her first launch became a math problem to solve, and why permission and role models matter to the nurses she serves. What emerged is her view of business as a leadership role, and visibility as the decision to be seen.
Episode at a glance
- Guest: Catie Harris, Nurse practitioner who helps nurses start their own businesses
- Host: Niiamah Ashong, coach to outlier leaders
- Show: Outlier’s Edge Podcast, released June 28, 2022
- Format: conversation, 44 minutes
- Topics: From the hospital to business, Role models and permission, Turning results into a math problem, Consistency builds trust, Visibility as a leader, Leaders are made, not born
What Catie brought to the conversation
Catie Harris worked as a nurse practitioner for about 20 years before a role recruiting nurse practitioners for clinics introduced her to nurses who had started their own businesses, and she was inspired. She started a podcast to find nurses in business and learn how they came up with their ideas, committed to a weekly show, and had done around 120 episodes by the time of this conversation. Drawing on an MBA and businesses she had started before, she created a program to help nurses start businesses, launched it in January 2017, and grew it into multiple programs and offerings. She's most excited about her impact program and the team she has built for it, designed as a high-touch experience where the team is in the trenches with every nurse.
What emerged
The conversation turned from the business to Catie Harris as a leader. She named something she didn't appreciate at first: coming into a business means coming into a leadership role, and after years of feeling invisible in the hospital, she had to decide that her voice mattered. Niiamah Ashong named visibility as more than reach: it's the willingness to be seen, which he saw in the small choices she makes to show up fully. Her closing insight is that leaders are made, and once a person decides to be the leader, the path becomes very clear.
Questions this episode answers
How can nurses turn their expertise into a business?
Catie Harris focuses first on getting the ideas out of a nurse's head, so they can see how their expertise can become a business model that can be monetized in the right package. Her students have started IV hydration clinics, concierge nursing businesses and clinical research work. She says it's the nurses articulating what they want to do, and her role is to give them the space and the permission to do it.
How should a leader read the results of a first launch?
Catie Harris's first course launch in January 2017 brought four buyers, and her coaches showed her mathematically that it was a huge win. She now teaches nurses that once they can sell something to three people, they have a math problem to work out, and the math can sustain and grow the business.
Why does consistency matter when building trust?
Catie Harris says it's hard to sell courses if nobody knows who the seller is and what they do, so building the brand, giving things away for free and releasing her podcast every week became a priority. She sees showing up every week as a trust factor that tells people hers is a real professional business.
Why is starting a business also stepping into leadership?
Catie Harris says coming into a business means coming into a leadership role, something she didn't appreciate at first after years of feeling invisible in the hospital. She believes leadership isn't assumed for nurses in the medical world, so as more nurses come into business, the priorities are being visible, stepping into leadership roles and being their best selves in those roles.
What does visibility really mean for a leader?
Niiamah Ashong describes a level of visibility beyond reaching more people: the vulnerability of being seen. He points to the small choices Catie Harris makes, like setting up her space so people can really see her, as signs of trust and commitment, and notes that every leader finds their own way to be visible, the way she chose podcasting.
In their words
You can sell something to three people, then we have a math problem.
Catie Harris
Why be the best when you can be the only?
Niiamah Ashong
Leaders are not born, they're made, and you make the decision that you're going to be the leader.
Catie Harris
Key moments
00:31 – Role models for nurses in business
02:04 – Seeing nurses beyond the hospital
05:08 – Committing to a weekly podcast
12:15 – The first course launch
17:30 – Turning results into a math problem
21:34 – Permission and role models
30:19 – Visibility as being seen
33:55 – Building leadership in nurses
40:34 – A high-touch program and team
43:36 – Leaders are made, not born
About Niiamah Ashong
Niiamah Ashong is a coach to outlier leaders, host of the Outlier’s Edge Podcast, and founder of the Trailblazer Collective. He coaches leaders who are creating something only they can make: a company, a body of work or a movement. Make a difference with your difference.
Work with Niiamah: 1:1 with Niiamah | World of Difference
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