43: Your Profitable Market with The Stay At Home Nurse, Deanna Gillingham, RN

Today’s episode is with my friend, Deanna Gillingham. Deanna has QUITE a story from how she started her business as a stay-at-home nurse – there’s more on that.

The Stay At Home Nurse – Deanna

This episode dives into Deanna’s journey, starting from her first job. She is a nurse with a lot of experience in many hospital units, oncology, hospice, and more. She also worked in case management, that’s when she pivoted and became a writer/entrepreneur, and now she’s starting her second business!

She turned to entrepreneurship and become a stay-at-home nurse when she realizes she was making money for others and not for herself. And she wants to enjoy being location-independent. At first, it was not even included in her plan, and didn’t think that it was possible! She started to listen to a podcast which opened her to different opportunities out there. She started to explore, thinking about what would work for her, what she would want her life to look like, and what can she do to support that lifestyle.

So, she started writing as her business. The funny thing is, she can’t even write a proper sentence after 20 years of fragmented sentences that she had to take a class in writing for her book. It took about a year and sinking money after she is published for her to make anything out of it.

Her book was a compilation of blog articles about helping someone pass a certain exam. She purposefully set up her blogs following along with the exam blueprint provided for her by a testing organization. So, then when it is time for her to assemble the book, everything is there and in order. She just had to put it into a word document and upload it into Create Space.

She helps people pass the Certified Case Manager Exam, and because she learned SEO for her website, people she markets to, like case managers, can easily find her. And she had them sign up for her email list, so they can be notified when the next article came out. She had 65 dedicated people who left a book review on Amazon, where her book started. The nice thing was she had a background in case management, and it was easier for her to find them. With that, she started a Facebook page and provided something that they wanted, so that kept everybody coming in. It has had a huge following in such a short time.

Deanna’s best piece of advice for writers finding a “profitable market”:

Don’t think of your niche as too small to be profitable, become the authority in that area, stick with it, help others, collaborate, and meet people in person to build your network.

Deanna Gillingham, RN

And this year, she’s excited to announce that she’ll be starting her podcast “The Stay At Home Nurse.” As she said, small niches are great, but she’s ready to branch out. Plus, every five years, she gets antsy that it was time for her to start something else. The goal of her podcast is to help nurses find different things to do other than traditional bedside nursing and see the benefit of getting through those first few rough years!

What you should do:

Subscribe to Deanna’s New Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-stay-at-home-nurse/id1495084649

If you want to write for the Stay At Home Nurse, pitch her: https://thestayathomenurse.com/write-for-us/