Ep11 Nurse Capital: Beth Brooks on Empowering Nurse Entrepreneurs

[00:00:12] Hello and welcome to the Nurse Rosas Insights Podcast. I'm here with Beth Brooks and she is a nurse who has definitely gone beyond the bedside. And I can't wait for you to hear all about it. Beth, could you tell us just real quickly what your venture capital adventure is about?

[00:00:33] Beth Brooks Okay. Yes. Well, hi, Rosa, and thank you for having me today. What is my venture capital idea about? I'm the kind of person that has had this very interesting career in nursing. I've done lots of different things. I've worked in higher education. I've worked on, you know, in large healthcare systems. I've worked for some different vendors, for lack of a better term. And I always like a challenge.

[00:01:03] Beth Brooks And I always like to learn something new. And I always like to do something I haven't done before. So this last probably six or eight years, when I had left my most recent full time position, I sort of wanted to figure out what's next and wanted to and I had lots of opportunities to do things that were interesting, but I had sort of done those things before and I really wanted to try something new. So I started mentoring at the healthcare technology incubator here in Chicago, which is called MAP.

[00:01:33] Beth Brooks And, you know, I started mentoring, which is called MAP. And how does it matter? And, you know, fast forward three years, I'm mentoring and meeting all these startup companies and never met a nurse entrepreneur, a nurse owner. And I thought, well, you know, that's sort of odd. And so then I was at a conference with a young nurse entrepreneur. And she said, why isn't there an investment fund of nurse executives to executive leaders, nurse leaders to invest in other nurses? And I thought, huh, well, that's a good question, you know, and then you go,

[00:02:03] go and do your homework and, you know, do some internet searching. And lo and behold,

[00:02:10] there wasn't a fund owned by nurses that invested in nurses. Certainly there are a lot of other

[00:02:16] venture capital firms that invest in healthcare startups. And then at the same time, this has

[00:02:23] been going on probably the last eight or 10 years, there's been more and more activity with women

[00:02:28] starting venture capital funds because it's been very hard for women founders.

[00:02:33] To receive venture capital investments from men who are always venture capitalists, right?

[00:02:40] So it was one of those kind of all the stars aligned, right? We've got more nurse entrepreneurs,

[00:02:48] we've got more women owning funds, and then boom, here we are. So this has definitely become my

[00:02:54] passion project. And I spend most of my time, I do a couple of other things, but trying to spend my

[00:03:02] time working with mentoring nurse founders, and then doing a little teaching on the side around

[00:03:10] innovation. So that's kind of the story. Yeah. Do you teach in like a college setting or do you just

[00:03:17] do seminars? I'm teaching in a college setting right now. I have an undergraduate class, or excuse

[00:03:24] me, a graduate class that I'm teaching on innovation and finance. And so part of what I have the students

[00:03:31] do is most of them come into the program, it's a health innovation program. So most of them come

[00:03:38] into the program wanting to start a business, or they have an idea, or they're wanting to implement

[00:03:44] an innovation at their job. And so this curriculum prepares them for that. And then my course focuses on

[00:03:52] the financing piece, you know, how do you, how do you raise money if it's a new idea, but if you're

[00:03:59] trying to implement an innovation at your work, you typically have to make the business case,

[00:04:05] you know, you just can't say, hey, let's implement, blah, blah, blah, you usually have to convince the

[00:04:11] higher powers that be that this innovation is a good idea and a financially good idea. So that's kind

[00:04:19] of what I'm doing. It's not really a language that nurses are taught in nursing school. Is it,

[00:04:24] did they teach you finance in your nursing school program?

[00:04:29] Yeah. I, you know, that's one of the challenges, right? Because nurses typically get a little bit

[00:04:35] of finance in the leadership and management course their senior year. And by then it's their second

[00:04:40] semester seniors. And usually they're kind of, you know, mentally checked out and ready to begin

[00:04:46] their career. So that might be the only. Overwhelmed with a lot of other health information

[00:04:51] for the NCLEX. Yeah. So they're, it's not what they're focused on. So you're right. Nurses don't

[00:04:57] necessarily receive a lot of education and finance. But we do see the need for things like new products

[00:05:05] or new processes through our work. And so trying to bridge that gap between meeting the needs and

[00:05:13] making it make financial sense is an additional skillset they would need to develop or require

[00:05:20] some mentorship. So what about you? What is your like bedside nursing journey? Tell us about when you

[00:05:28] went to nursing school and got started. Golly. So I did my baccalaureate many years ago. Now I won't date

[00:05:35] myself. Many years ago. And my first staff nurse position was here. I'm in Chicago. So my first

[00:05:43] position was here at Rush. So I'm a Rush nurse. Grew up in the days when Luther Christman was still the

[00:05:50] vice president for nursing when it was primary nursing. And it was all primary nursing and all

[00:05:56] RN staff. So that was the model that nurse had back in those days. And, you know, right or wrong,

[00:06:04] that model has stuck in my head. So it's been interesting to see over the course of time how

[00:06:11] our care delivery models have changed. And, you know, I still don't think we have quite figured out

[00:06:19] the right, well, the right mix because you cannot, you cannot remove that nurse from the bedside. But

[00:06:25] that's another, that's another problem. That's another topic. Can you define that for us? What is

[00:06:30] primary nursing? What is the primary nursing model? In my definition of primary nursing, and I think

[00:06:36] this is, you know, the pure definition of primary nursing, it is back, you know, baccalaureate

[00:06:44] prepared registered nurses at the bedside taking care of a patient from admission to discharge. So

[00:06:51] that patient and that family has the same nurse during the entire admission. Now, you have to

[00:06:58] remember that was a long time ago. And that was before DR, you know, that was right when DRGs were coming

[00:07:02] in. So admissions, you know, length of stays were a little bit longer than they are now. But we've

[00:07:08] gone from, you know, primary nursing, all nursing staff decided that that was too expensive, which I'm

[00:07:15] not so sure that's the case, but that's another podcast. And then we've added, you know, we've had

[00:07:24] team nursing and functional nursing and then primary nursing, but then we've got primary nursing that's

[00:07:29] not necessarily all RN staff. So I'm used to primary nursing that was all RN staff, which is not an

[00:07:39] affordable model. But there are other ways to keep those baccalaureate nurses leading the team.

[00:07:47] And that's not to say the ADN nurses can't lead the team. I don't want to cause a big uproar. But

[00:07:56] yeah, that's what I'm, that's what I grew up in was primary nursing, all RN staff.

[00:08:01] Well, I think you pointed out an important element there. I started with an ADN. So I did a two-year

[00:08:09] associate degree program, already had a bachelor's in something else, right? So I had all those core

[00:08:14] classes and just wanted to enter the profession and be able to work in the profession as soon as

[00:08:21] possible in order to pay to get the BSN later. And so, um, so that's what I did. And yeah, there was

[00:08:30] definitely a absence of that whole like management preparation in the ADN program. And so having an

[00:08:41] associate degree nurse that doesn't necessarily, um, get educated on the elements of how the,

[00:08:51] the hospital is working and best practices and even really theory, because you're very focused on

[00:08:57] the practical steps and assessment, which is incredibly important for patient care,

[00:09:03] but, um, might make it hard for associate degree nurses to then enter into those leadership

[00:09:09] conversations without that frame of reference. Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, I don't know when

[00:09:15] you went to school, Rosa, but I also think that we've done a better job now of making it a little

[00:09:21] bit easier to articulate between ADN and BSN and we've hopefully the education system has hopefully,

[00:09:29] um, you know, there's at least, at least my sense is that there are more BSN completion programs.

[00:09:36] There's more flexibility, there's more online learning. So, um, hopefully we're,

[00:09:42] you know, many, many nurses enter as ADN and that's perfectly fine, but it's the complexity does

[00:09:49] require more, I think more education too. And I don't think there was, I don't remember there

[00:09:56] being much in my BSN program about, um, the business of healthcare still. And so in order to, like you

[00:10:05] said, say, how does this innovation we want to make, make financial sense, a lot of nurses are not

[00:10:12] sure what the next step is. So what was the next step for you? You started at Rush as a bedside nurse.

[00:10:19] So where did you go from there? Um, I, you know, I'm one of those nurses who, when I was in my

[00:10:25] baccalaureate program and in that leadership and management class, I thought in the book, I'm going

[00:10:31] to be the next nurse vice president. That's what I want to be. So I sort of knew that I had sort of

[00:10:38] the business. I grew up in a family where, you know, my dad owned his own business. And so I, I,

[00:10:45] I don't know if that, how much that influenced me, but I sort of knew I wanted to be on the,

[00:10:49] on the leadership side. Now, I don't know that that necessarily meant the business side,

[00:10:54] but I knew I wanted to be on the leadership side. And so I went back to school and did my master's

[00:10:59] degree, um, here in Chicago at Northwestern, which, and I did my nursing master's degree

[00:11:05] in nursing administration. It's what we called it in those days, because I knew I wanted more

[00:11:10] of those business skills. And then my program was at Northwestern. So we were able to take

[00:11:15] our electives at the Kellogg school of business. So that was really, really helpful. I don't have an MBA,

[00:11:22] but, um, I still feel like I have a pretty good understanding of the business side of healthcare.

[00:11:31] Yeah. Well, I guess so. If you were confident enough to start your own venture capital.

[00:11:39] So what, what was next after that? Um, then I had a really very varied career. You know, I,

[00:11:47] I did, I spent some time, um, as a director of nursing and then that was really not, the title

[00:11:55] was a little bit of a misnomer because I was in charge of like, um, pay nursing staff development.

[00:12:01] I worked on magnet program. I worked on clinical development, clinical ladder. I had the clinical

[00:12:08] nurse specialists reported to me, the IV team. So I had this kind of interesting constellation. So I

[00:12:14] wasn't like a director over nursing units. So I had more of like the support areas. And, um, I've,

[00:12:22] that was when I was finishing my master's degree. And then I don't honestly, Rosa, sometimes I don't

[00:12:28] know how this happened, but I, I ended up thinking, Oh my gosh, my GRE scores are going to expire.

[00:12:36] I better go back to school. You know, when you're a rush nurse, Luther Christman threw down the gauntlet

[00:12:42] when we were new grads, you know, you all have to get a doctorate. And so that sort of stuck with me.

[00:12:48] And so then, um, try and think, then I applied for the PhD program at UIC and that's where I did my

[00:12:55] PhD. So, you know, give me a challenge and I'll, I'll try to, I'll probably take it on.

[00:13:03] So you have a PhD now. And what is your PhD in?

[00:13:07] It's in nursing science. I, um, yeah, I know many nurses choose to do their PhD in a different

[00:13:15] field or choose an ADD or now choose a DNP. But for me, um, I knew that I could do the PhD

[00:13:23] in nursing. I'm a nurse. I'm a nurse's nurse. My brain is wired like a nurse, but then I could take

[00:13:30] my electives at other, in other colleges. And so that allowed me to add more business marketing.

[00:13:38] I'm trying to think what else. Yeah. Those were the two. I took a lot of, all of my electives in

[00:13:43] the college of business and I took one in the college of public health, which was marketing.

[00:13:49] Yeah. That's what I'm interested in. Marketing public health messaging. Let's put some accurate

[00:13:56] information out there and get it delivered. Exactly. It's hard to know why we're here.

[00:14:01] Exactly. Yeah. So, um, now when it says nursing science though, was there a lot of research involved?

[00:14:10] So, um, so yeah, so there's a lot of nurses, I think that, and, and, you know, I, well, let me,

[00:14:17] let's trying to think how best to answer this. So, you know, in the old days before there were a lot

[00:14:23] of nursing PhD programs, a lot of nursing executives or nursing leaders went and did the EDD,

[00:14:30] the doctorate of education. Right. And that was sort of, you saw many, many nurse leaders with

[00:14:35] ADD. And then as doctoral programs in nursing came into existence, and I actually read a whole book about

[00:14:42] that. Um, then you began to see PhD programs in nursing science. And so my PhD is in nursing. So

[00:14:52] those core courses are around nursing, you know, nursing theory, um, nursing, uh, measurement.

[00:15:00] So they're like in a PhD program, you typically are going to see course. You can always have statistics

[00:15:06] courses. You'll have a measurement course. You'll probably have a research design course, whether

[00:15:10] it's qualitative methods or quantitative methods. Um, there'll probably be in some kind of theory

[00:15:18] course. And then you have those electives. And so for me, I just felt that I wanted my terminal degree

[00:15:26] to be out of the college of nursing and, and the graduate college. Um, and I felt like a PhD,

[00:15:35] everybody kind of knows what that is, um, that type of degree. And it is about science. So you do have to

[00:15:42] do an original research project. You do have to do the preliminary oral exams. Um, so it is the same

[00:15:50] as any PhD in any discipline. And then now in the last, what, 20 years, 15 years, the DNP has come in

[00:16:00] to our educational landscape. And so now nursing has a clinical doctorate and then a research doctorate.

[00:16:08] And it's the same medicine is a clinical doctorate and physicians do a PhD. You see the MD PhD in

[00:16:16] education. You have the EdD, which is the practice doctorate, or you have a PhD. And then we of course

[00:16:22] get into all of our, our farm D like everybody now in healthcare, the pharmacists, the occupational,

[00:16:29] all the therapies, diet, dietitians, everybody has a, has a, that terminal degree is now the doctorate.

[00:16:36] Um, and it's typically the clinical doctorate. And then you can add that or do the science doctorate,

[00:16:43] which would be the DNP, excuse me, the PhD. Yeah. So yeah. And so when you started telling us

[00:16:50] at the beginning about your own venture capital fund, were you saying it is funded by these nurse

[00:16:56] leaders that have these like terminal degrees and they want to invest in the future of the profession?

[00:17:01] That's right. That's exactly right. Can you tell us some more about that? Like who would,

[00:17:07] are there any of the other founders you want to give a shout out to?

[00:17:10] So the, so my partner's Marla Weston and Marla is, um, a general partner. We're both co-founders of

[00:17:17] the fund or limited partners who are the investors in the fund are nurse leaders from all across the

[00:17:24] country. They're not all doctorally prepared. We do have some that are, you know, masters prepared

[00:17:31] and that's perfectly fine. That doesn't, uh, uh, it's not a prerequisite for joining us. Thank you.

[00:17:38] Thank you. Yes. We have a nurse attorney. We have, you know, we have a little bit of everything,

[00:17:44] right? Because nursing is very varied. Um, and, and that was intentional so that when we are looking

[00:17:52] at an investment opportunity, let's say it's a pediatric solution. One of our limited partners

[00:17:59] is a pediatrics nurse. And so she is better able than I would be to evaluate a business that's

[00:18:07] offering pediatric kind of care, right? So our LPs are, are across the spectrum in nursing. And yes,

[00:18:16] I think if you ask them, they would all tell you that we're doing this to put our money where our

[00:18:22] mouths are and support nurses, because this kind of investing is very risky. There's no guarantee that

[00:18:30] you'll get your money back. We're, we're going to, you know, we want to work really hard so that we

[00:18:36] do have a good return for our, our investors, but you know, it's risky. And so these,

[00:18:44] there's 16 limited partners, um, they thank goodness that they wanted to take the risk and

[00:18:51] had the financial wherewithal and, um, we're all on the journey together and we're all learning

[00:18:57] together too. So, so when you're evaluating applications, I guess, uh, people who want

[00:19:05] to have you evaluate their business for investment, do you have a shark tank type meeting?

[00:19:11] Is it nurse shark tank? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, kind of, sort of, um, we have a three-step process.

[00:19:19] So we usually will spend, and one of the things we want to do at Nurse Capital too, Rosa, is build

[00:19:25] community and build community among nurse entrepreneurs. Because even if you're a nurse

[00:19:30] entrepreneur and you're in a, an incubator or an accelerator program and you're getting all the

[00:19:36] support that they offer, you're still probably the only nurse. And so you still need support and a

[00:19:42] network. And so part of what we're doing is building a, building a network. So I personally will meet

[00:19:49] with every single nurse that sends us a pitch deck. Now, some of them there and they're learning,

[00:19:57] right? We don't invest in angel, we're not angel investors, you know, so there's language and things

[00:20:03] to learn, but we will, if a nurse sends us a pitch deck, we will evaluate that pitch deck. And then

[00:20:09] from, and make a decision, yes or no, is this nurse's company, um, fit our investment thesis,

[00:20:17] which are kind of our criteria. And if it does, then we have a deeper conversation. It never,

[00:20:23] the decision to invest never happens in one phone call. Right, right. Right. It's like anything.

[00:20:28] Do you involve all of the investors in that? What we do is we have an investment committee.

[00:20:35] And so we will ask a subset of those LPs if they're available to serve for a year on the

[00:20:44] investment committee. And so we just bring in a small subset, um, and try to, um, have those people

[00:20:54] on the investment committee, those nurse leaders that have the experience that's relative to the

[00:20:59] company we're evaluating. Like if the pediatrics nurse was not on the committee, you might ask her

[00:21:06] to come in for that one. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And, and even, even too, like if we were to get a

[00:21:13] company, a pitch deck that was out of our expertise, you know, we would, we have some outside nurses that

[00:21:20] we can call on and say, Hey, will you participate in due diligence on this investment opportunity? So,

[00:21:27] you know, and our networks are big enough that we can pick up the phone and call people to help.

[00:21:33] Right. Um, but there's a lot of nurses, but it's a small world. That's right. That's right. And,

[00:21:40] and, you know, we know, right. The model that we're using for our fund is called an operator model.

[00:21:46] And what that means is that your limited partners have operations experience in healthcare.

[00:21:53] Theoretically, those models should have better returns. And so that was why we chose that model.

[00:22:00] But that also means that we know pretty quick if there's a there, there, as my, as my partner,

[00:22:08] Marla will say, she's like, I'll know, we'll know if there's a there, there, and you know,

[00:22:14] pretty quickly if there's a there, there, and then you can dig deeper.

[00:22:19] Well, let me thank you on behalf of all nurses for your work to invest in nursing led businesses,

[00:22:28] because I think even the ones who are not maybe chosen by nurse capital are still benefiting from

[00:22:34] the whole idea that this is a thing you can do. And this is important. And also just giving hope,

[00:22:41] because I think we have a lot of, you know, of us are aware that there's a very like male dominated

[00:22:47] finance world administration tends to be pretty dominated by people who don't have medical

[00:22:55] experience. And so just creating this space and like, you're kind of providing that mentorship to

[00:23:02] the people who are just sharing their pitch decks with you, as opposed to sharing it with someone who's

[00:23:07] not a nurse and doesn't have a frame of reference from where they're coming from. That is a huge gift.

[00:23:13] And so I'm really thankful you're doing that. And I can see why Jean Ross in our prior episode on

[00:23:20] primary record was like, if I had a grant for a billion dollars, I would give it to Beth Brooks and

[00:23:26] say, send this somewhere. I know you'll use it real good.

[00:23:30] That Jean is so wonderful. I spoke with her today and I, and she's, and what's interesting about this

[00:23:36] is, you know, if you gave me a billion dollars, Rosa, that's what I would do. I would just put it

[00:23:42] in nurse capital. And I suppose that sounds selfish, but.

[00:23:46] It's not though you're giving it to other people and investing in the future and taking a risk.

[00:23:52] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:23:53] Because there's always that risk. Your investment may not show you those returns.

[00:23:58] Right.

[00:23:59] For whatever reason.

[00:24:00] Right. And there's so many nurses like you who are, you know, I, I know I'm not supposed to,

[00:24:05] it's ageism. I shouldn't say younger, but you are. There's the nurses that are in the thirties

[00:24:10] and 40 year age range. You are the future and we need to support you in the future. So you are the

[00:24:17] future. And everyone that I talked to, so many of these nurses are like, I want to be an investor.

[00:24:23] Like that's their goal because they want to help other nurses. So that's great.

[00:24:29] Well, my children think that I was here when the dinosaurs were walking the earth. So you can call

[00:24:34] me young all day long because I am not going to hear it when I go upstairs in the kitchen.

[00:24:41] I hear you.

[00:24:42] Yeah. Well, so I guess that was the answer to the billion dollar question. Um,

[00:24:51] so I don't know if I should ask this or not, so I might take it out, but, um,

[00:24:59] do you have an idea of something that you wish somebody would make that you could invest in?

[00:25:07] Oh, that's an interesting question.

[00:25:08] Like what would your dream thing be to invest that nobody's created?

[00:25:12] Oh my gosh. If I had a magic wand, I've said this for years and I know it's probably terribly

[00:25:20] impractical, but I would, I would like to start a building, a facility, a something that is completely

[00:25:30] nurse led and nurse driven care delivery. And I don't, you know, I'd like to blow up the whole system,

[00:25:36] um, um, because this medical model is not working for us. And I think, um, I think a nursing model of,

[00:25:44] you know, and I don't know what that would look like, but that's what I would do. I would just,

[00:25:49] so what idea have we, you know, that's, what's really hard because a lot of the easy stuff has

[00:25:55] already been cherry picked off. And that's, there's some literature about that. Some of the hard

[00:26:00] problems, like what Jean Ross is trying to do, that is a hard problem to solve. And I'm finding it's

[00:26:07] the nurses who are solving the hard stuff. Yeah. But we see the suffering and that it's going to be

[00:26:14] hard anyway. So how about we make it a little less bad? Exactly. Alleviate some suffering.

[00:26:22] No, I think it's worth trying to make it a little bit better. That's right. And if we could,

[00:26:29] you know, if I, we had a company, you know, I think the, the lack of reimbursement for nursing

[00:26:35] services is really holding us back because boy, if we could get reimbursed for the care we provide,

[00:26:41] the world would be our oyster. Yeah. That would be pretty phenomenal. We had Melissa Mills on here

[00:26:47] talking about the commission for nursing reimbursement as well. Yeah. So I really

[00:26:54] appreciate that call out as well. A lot of people trying to do really big things, systemic things and

[00:27:01] building really big models of care. Um, as so I really appreciate your investment, your time. Thank

[00:27:09] you for coming on the show today. Um, if people have, uh, would like to learn more about, uh,

[00:27:17] nurse capital, where can they find you? The best place is, uh, well, I guess two things. Um,

[00:27:24] nurse capital.net is our website. So that's pretty easy to find. And then on LinkedIn,

[00:27:29] I'm, I'm on LinkedIn. So I would say those are the, the two places you will find us, find me.

[00:27:37] Fantastic. All right. Well, thank you so much. And if you've enjoyed this episode of the nurse

[00:27:42] Rosa's insights podcast, subscribe, wherever you're listing. So you can hear the next answer to the

[00:27:48] billion dollar question that might save healthcare. And I'll see you in the next episode. How about that?