Justin: A lot has changed in the last two years, I feel like, even just with my role. 
Sarah: Tell me about it. You've been thrown through the ringer. Everybody's been thrown through the ringer. Happy birthday to Bundle Birth. We're celebrating. This episode will come out after the anniversary, so if you took advantage of the anniversary celebrations and joined us live for happy hour, we had fun online, but two years ago now, it was 2022, we did an anniversary episode and talked about the history of Bundle Birth and how it got started and blah, blah.
If you haven't heard that, we'll link it down below, but we want to talk about some updates on where we've been since and give you the behind-the-scenes of Bundle Birth business. It's not just business but relationships and team growth and what we've been working on and look at this last year, the last two years, because she just said right before that, we didn't even have Move. We hadn't even done our learning retreat. We didn't have Motion, our app. You talk about what someone can do with a whole lot of energy and a whole lot of Celsius on subscription-
Justin: And determination.
Sarah: -and determination and tears. You can do a lot and we have done a lot. In lieu of the most recent episode about adult friendships and celebrating each other, I want to celebrate us as a team and those of you who are listening as a part of our team. You may not be officially hired, but you are our people. Our Bundle Birth community keeps us going. We've said this forever, but without you, we're nothing and it's all so boring. You're all very much to us near and dear to our hearts. We think about you all the time.
We want to hear your stories. We want you to leave reviews so we can hear and read your stories and celebrate your wins, et cetera and really be there to support you for the long haul because seven years of business is a long time.
Justin: It's a long time. Didn't you say if you can make it past how many years you're going to keep going?
Sarah: Five. 80% of businesses die in the first year. Then of the leftovers, 80% of those die within five. If you make it past five, you're in the elite. We are elite. I am shocked. I am so grateful to still be here.
Justin: In 2024, it was exceptionally hard for you.
Sarah: 2024 was the hardest year of my life and I've had some very hard years. It was hard personally. It was hard professionally, especially hard professionally, but with more growth comes bigger problems, and more challenges. I would not have been able to weather this last year if it weren't for the many other challenges of the years before that. I've been building towards it. it's like your $100,000 problem is nothing once you have your $1 million problem. Once you have your $1 million problem, that's nothing to your $100 million problem. [chuckles] It really is true.
I'm so grateful for the support and for just the little things that have come along this last year, to keep me going and that were just so important to even just my personal stamina because I've never cried more, to be honest, it's been a really hard year. We're here now and we're going to celebrate it and we're going to celebrate the hard. I will probably let you in on a lot of the hard, and give you the really true inside scoop as we celebrate seven years of business and we ain't going nowhere.
This is going to be the best year of our lives. We are going to recover so hard from this awful year. Also, I want to be very clear that I am not saying that the year was awful. I am saying that the year was hard. There were moments where I thought it was awful, but in general, I think one of the reasons why I did make it was because I never gave in to saying that I'm having a bad day or this is a bad, whatever. It was like, it's really hard, and being honest about my feelings. I questioned shutting the business at one point, but I still got past that.
Let's go back and let's talk through some of the key things that have happened over the last couple of years and maybe some key memories, some things that we've learned, some behind the scenes of the last couple of years. Maybe we make this an annual thing where every year we look back on the year and we're like, "Here's the behind-the-scenes, here's the juicy scoop." When you saw this go live, you have no idea. Oh, my God. It was a mess in the back. [laughs] I hope that's fun for everyone. It's fun for me to reminisce and really celebrate. Then also see how far we've come because we've come really far.
Justin: Even I think from what I can gather, just even the podcast, we're still here. You're still listening to us.
Sarah: Seriously.
Justin: We started it technically in 2022.
Sarah: Stop.
Justin: Come on.
Sarah: Season five wrapped.
Justin: It's going to be three years this summer, Sarah.
Sarah: I remember you tried to talk me into it and I was like, "I am not managing this." You're like, "I'll manage the whole thing." Look at you now.
Justin: I managed nothing.
[laughter]
I show up. I am disconnected.
[laughter]
Sarah: Thank you for that. I have fixed that problem now too. First lesson is that there is always so much more to everything that you see, everything, and it's so cute. I love this about our team. Our team will bring an idea and they'll be like, "Oh, it's just so easy. It's this and this." I really try to have a good attitude, but internally I'm like, "Well, but this and this and this, and this is what it's going to cost. We need a vendor for that. This with the sales tax. If we sell here now we are, we incur legal fees. Then we have this contract that we need because of that.
That needs to be built out in the website with the bubble." We are a full-blown business. I know I've said that we're playing business, but we are no longer playing business. We are getting our shit together. We have our ducks so much more in a row. I have an HR rep.
Justin: You have you Hannah.
Sarah: Thank God for Hannah. She was my lifesaver, but we now have HR, have a whole legal team. We have our web team. We have our app developer. We have our financial. It sounds so fancy, but really it's like we're all Googling our way to success around here. It's just like, talk about growth on the podcast and all of that. Now the podcast is managed by a team of people.
Justin: Oh, thank God.
Sarah: Thank God.
Justin: I'm PTSD listening to all those episodes.
Sarah: Again, that goes to show that it's easy to be like, "I'll manage it. It'll be fine. It's not that hard." Then you do it and you're like, "Holy crap. It's a lot." We figured it out. We're brilliant.
Justin: You are brilliant.
Sarah: You are too.
Justin: We are brilliant.
Sarah: We are brilliant.
Justin: It's changed a little bit. I feel like every season we've decreased the episodes. [laughs] We're on 12. I think 12 feels good because it is a lot of work. I was just wrapping up maternity leave here. I'm officially back. This season was unique and we've had some great guests and some popular episodes. There's no stopping what we see.
Sarah: It's planned out for season six. We will be back.
Justin: We'll save some of the bigger ones, but a couple other things, we've added new classes and new live events. I feel like for a while it was Physiologic Birth, that was it. Now there are so many--
Sarah: And mentorship.
Justin: Yes, but for live. You guys just added RNCOB, which is so good. I can't wait to sit and actually watch the whole thing. I was only been able to pop in the last times and then beginner fetal monitoring. We did that. We have another one coming. I don't know if you want to announce that.
Sarah: Should we give them a sneaky?
Justin: It's up to you.
Sarah: Sure. I'm the boss. Let's do it. I'm the worst at keeping secrets. You can tell them.
Justin: We launched RNCOB and then there's been a push, so many messages. I remember from a while ago, CEFM. Heidi, who you've heard on the podcast, and if you've taken RNCOB and you've seen her face more pop up on Instagram, she's one of our Bundle Birth educators. She and I are writing and going to put on a CEFM class coming this year. We're excited about it. Look out for that. Just more options, more like we just want to keep educating. What's great about Bundle Birth Nurses and being with Sarah is that we've always said there's no red tape.
There is some red tape, especially now, there's a little bit more red tape, just the business in general. You get an idea and you want to run with it and you're passionate about it and let's teach it. you want to teach and do things that you love. For you, Sarah, you've said, "I want more educators. I don't want to have to teach at all." You're finding them and they're great. We're able to just teach people. Someone mentioned this at a retreat of Peloton instructors. You get to find your person that you go with, like your pal.
I think it's fun seeing different educators and seeing people connect with different educators differently, and it's fun. That happened.
Sarah: Along those lines, we have built a team, y'all. We are fueled by an incredible team of people who really care about you and who are dedicated to your success and who are literally strategizing in rooms like, "How do we care for them better? How do we help them feel seen, safe, and soothed? How do we remember what their needs are?" It's just so lovely to be a part of a group of people. One, to not be doing everything by myself, which I don't know how I did that before, but also, more problems now than before because we just have more that we've taken on.
We've been able to take on more because of everybody's purchases. I do want to say that I realize that so many of you have paid out of pocket for so many of our programs and for Motion and for Mentorship and for Move Learning Retreat and all those things. That money is going towards a team of people who are constantly, again, strategizing on how to be better for you and how to encourage you and, to all of us, myself included, to be able to keep strategizing and help reaching out with hospitals.
Now we're actually moving back towards families and being able to offer things to families to help educate and support them so when they show up to you, you're all on the same page. It really all goes towards the mission of changing the game in obstetrics. It's been so fun to see all of everything develop over time and really be able to still be here. It's really because of those of you that have invested in what we offer. Really it's that value proposition that we offer value out and you offer value back and that does not go unnoticed, trust me, especially this last year.
We've been able to add those new products, we've added new classes and we added an app which don't ever do. I'm just kidding. [laughs] I'm kidding. I know we talked about Motion, we had a whole app. I actually feel better about it now than I did when we recorded that episode. I was like, "I'm not sure that this is smart," but it is. I've learned so much through the app development process. Holy freaking moly. I think my biggest takeaway through that was that we really can do anything.
What I love about Motion is that it takes all of our practical tools and puts them in your hands and helps you actually apply them to the bedside. So much of our learning is, you learn, you come to a class and that's the traditional way of learning. There's so much nuance to birth and to working with different patients and then you throw some pain management in there and it just gets really messy or a labor dystocia, it gets really stuck. We really wanted to help you keep labor progressing and be able to take everything we teach and really put it into practice.
That was a challenging process, but also, we're here, it's out in the world, we're in maintenance for it. We're trying to figure out next steps to try to move it into a hospital build so that your hospitals can purchase it and put it on your phones. That's not currently available, but that would be dreams of next steps once we have the finances to reinvest.
Justin: We know that everything's working for you. Something's going to happen. There's a reason we have it in-- there's a bigger picture there and I'm excited to see what that is.
Sarah: There has to be. [chuckles] I have to live in hope of that and the hope that we can get back to it because when we launched, it was like if you were around for launch, holy moly, that also was just a brutal season of rejection after rejection from the app store. Finally, it got launched. It's an MVP, meaning the minimum viable product. I will say one of the challenges for me has been knowing all the potential and where we want to continue to build and grow and redesign and add features or add algorithms to it. We ran out of money.
We've put it into maintenance. That's hard, that's business. If you want to contribute 199 a month to an ad-free version or upgrade and throw us $12, if 10,000 people did that, we could do a lot of good with that money. Regardless, we're grateful to all of you for anything and everything, even just listening to the podcast. That has been a huge part of the last year of the history of Bundle Birth and now we have an app. Actually, it's ranked in the app store for medical apps since its inception.
That's in-app purchases which most of the purchases are done through our website because you get a better deal if you purchase a subscription on our website. If those were included, we'd be doing even better which is just crazy. I think it ranked number seven of all medical apps, It's in the top 10 and there's 35,000 medical apps y'all.
Justin: Amazing.
Sarah: People pay millions of dollars for advertising to rank in the top 10 ever. In the top 100 ever.
Justin: We paid $0 for advertising.
Sarah: Yes, we've never spent a dime on advertising. That just is so fun, and again, such a testimony I think to the value that Motion offers. It is definitely a practice change of working it into your workflow and how it fits because we all have our system of how we use it at the bedside. Once you figure that out, I use it at birth. Which is crazy because it's my brain. I'm like, "Wait, what am I missing?"
Justin: What does my brain say to do? Another big thing for this year was we announced again that we're going to Move. [laughs]
Sarah: Oh, yes, that happened this year. Holy Nike balls. We are crazy, but also I'm very grateful.
Justin: We knew leaving Move last time [crosstalk]
Sarah: It was going to be tempting, I know.
Justin: No, but it had to.
Sarah: It's like, "Oh, God, okay."
Justin: You sat there like, "How could I not do this again?"
Sarah: I know. It was way beyond successful. We said that, that's what we were manifesting going into it. It was like, "What would this look like for it to be--" What did we call it? There was a word. Blow it out of the water. It was like, "We're not trying to just do it. We're trying to nail it," and we did. It was beyond anything I could have ever dreamed even. Actually, it was all my dreams come true.
Justin: Speaking of behind-the-scenes, are you going to read the book again? What's the title of the book?
Sarah: The Art of Gathering.
Justin: The Art of Gathering. That's such a good book.
Sarah: We'll drop that book rec in the bottom if you're looking for a really inspiring book and helpful for life and gatherings. We're doing Move Learning Retreat again. If you're coming, we can't wait to see you. It's not for a hot second more, but it's going to be here before you know it. Thank God we didn't do two years. I would have had a nervous breakdown if it would have been this upcoming year.
Justin: I think you would have.
Sarah: It would have not been okay. There would have been no chance. For the sake of my mental health, thank you for waiting. We're doing that again. Then the big one was we did Move. We did it.
Justin: Yes, that's true. Going back a little bit more.
Sarah: Again, just so funny, we're also [crosstalk]
Justin: I got COVID during it. What a disaster.
Sarah: Talk about a flex and flow.
Justin: Honestly, it was great. There's two pivotal things that happened with me getting COVID. I think one, if we're going to be a little vulnerable, Sarah has this irrational fear that no one knows her from Instagram because my face is on there, was more so. I was like, "Everyone knows you, Sarah." I'm a safety net in that sense of people knew me on Instagram.
Sarah: We're so good together. We're such a good team socially and at nursing and stuff.
Justin: Yin and yang. [laughs]
Sarah: Yes, we really are a yin and yang, yo.
Justin: As awful as that was, I didn't know. I was in my COVID bubble feeling like absolute garbage. I didn't know the mental breakdowns that Sarah was having outside of that. She was just preparing for being alone. Ultimately though, I think it was great. It was like ripping the Band-Aid off what needed to happen for you to just show up how you were going to show up. I even think about opening night on the stage. I would have been an uncomfortable presence on that stage. You killed it. What happened was supposed to happen. Everything that's happened.
Then I really found out that I am a massive introvert that needed space before coming out. When I was coming out of my room and out of quarantine, I was so excited to talk to every single person. I had the energy to do that at the end of the week. That was crazy. I think there's an episode on that post-Move. I went part-time. I went per diem. I was part-time. I am per diem in the land of nurses.
Sarah: That feels like a good transition for you.
Justin: Yes, it was good. It became a better life balance. I had a baby. We all know that.
Sarah: I'm pulling up the timeline from retreat.
Justin: It was our fifth one or fourth one?
Sarah: Four.
Justin: It was cool looking around retreat this year because the first retreat, it was just me, Sarah, and Ashley. Last year was already much bigger. Prophetess was there, Amy was there, Jen was there. Hannah was there both last year too, and then Hannah, but now she lives here. Then Heidi, Sarah. It's so fun. Then you have the online version. Like you said, 15 people.
Sarah: Plus contractors.
Justin: That's everything what you dreamed.
Sarah: It is. We talked about it years ago. I just was like, "Someday we'll have a team," and we do. At team retreat, we go to Palm Springs and everyone's invited. Some people come in person, but we do at least an annual team review for people who are online. I did like a timeline of the things that we accomplished this last year. Should I fly through it?
Justin: Yes.
Sarah: I feel like it might be interesting for people to hear holy moly, they're really working. Let me tell you, we are working. It's easy to think we're just an Instagram business when there's a lot more going on. Last January 2024, we'll focus on this year because 2023 was basically like adding to the team and prepping for and recovering from Move and then beginning looking and putting together the app with app development was the end of 2023 going into 2024. We were working on Motion and then we announced member Physiologic Coping.
We did another live class that was all of [unintelligible 00:20:41] content with Krista, and that is actually available online on demand, still. You can purchase that on your own and get all of that content. It's like a part two to Physiologic Birth. If you haven't taken Physiologic Birth, start with Physiologic Birth and then do Physiologic Coping and you're golden. We decided to redesign Motion in January. We had designs and I had a designer and I just was like, "This is not it. It's just not it." We paid to redesign it, to have it work and look so much better.
That was a brutal move which pushed the launch date for for Motion. We announced Move. We transitioned all of our emails over. Now we have Bundle Birth emails, like the professional company that we are. We changed web developers. We went through the process to follow all guidelines for HIPAA, which don't ever do that. That's the first one.
Justin: That was awful.
Sarah: If you can avoid being a HIPAA-compliant organization, holy moly. That is the worst. It's so nuanced. You think like, "Oh, you just don't share page." No, it is a whole thing.
Justin: We have to really thank God for Hannah as a patient.
Sarah: We went through the HIPAA process and we passed. Thank God for Hannah. We started our January mentorship cohort. Hannah transitioned to director of strategy and Prophetess transitioned to director of finance. That was one month worth. In February, we kept working on Motion. I spoke at A1 California. We had Physiologic Birth, we had live Physiologic Coping. Ashley joined the team. I had a virtual Bundle Birth baby and we found Lauren, our new web designer that we've been working with for the last year on all sorts of new website designs.
By March, we were still working on Motion. We did beta testing for Motion. We did a few hospital visits. We started Motion rejections and I went through a brutal breakup. Just throwing that in there as that was real good timing, real good timing. The day I was supposed to get engaged, just throw the T in, so fun. Then by April, we had our vision cast day, which that was a day where we sort of just reset the business after we launched Motion finally. We have all of the Motion launch. We brought in an email marketing system.
I had six years of business without email marketing. Join our email list. We'll link it down below. We have a monthly newsletter that eventually we launched. We started using Slack for our team channel and then Kaiser. We did a deal with Kaiser and we've been training them all year in Kaiser Southern California. Kaiser, Northern California, we're ready for you when you want to come, and all the other hospitals out there. [chuckles] By May, I had another Bundle Birth baby. I had a client. We had Physiologic Coping as a live class.
We launched our fetal monitoring badge buddy. We launched season four of the podcast. We got our WeBank certification, which is women-owned business. We will qualify for diversity spend. Tell your hospitals. We began developing the family site and then we put together a brand kit and guidelines, which again, we didn't have. By June, we went to A1 National, filmed a visualization class for families, which filmed and wrote a whole class and filmed it, which I just finished editing two days ago. We launched basic fetal monitoring, which Justine teaches.
We hired Anthony to help with Physiologic Birth boxes and we launched a 13 free mentorship email process that you all can get. We'll link everything down below, but we did all of this by July. This is halfway through the year, y'all. That's crazy. By July, we put out labor warmup posters and tear-offs. We did a family's photo shoot. We launched RNC sales. We had advanced fetal monitoring. We had another mentorship cohort and we put out a guide to getting your education for free. If you want help with your reimbursements, that is now out there.
By August, we had another Bundle Birth baby, which is a client of mine, Physiologic Birth. Hannah transitioned to full-time and moved here and in with me. We went to the global leadership summit. We had another family's photo shoot. We had basic fetal monitoring. We launched a monthly nurse's newsletter, The Buzz, which has free information every month on the first of the month. We had our first Shifting the Pitocin Paradigm class, which now is every four months, did all of our Move testing.
We were supposed to launch Move sales that month and we had to cut it and pull it. By September, I went to the Summit of Greatness and the small business expo. We had three Bundle Birth babies. We were putting together the RNC OB workbook. We did some hospital visits and then we kept working on some family stuff. By October, we launched Move General and Presale. Baby Noah was born. Baby gray was born, our web developer, Josh's baby. We had advanced fetal monitoring. We had our first RNC OB class. We had Shifting the Pitocin Paradigm.
We moved to Shipping Fulfillment. That one from a business perspective has been the best thing we ever did. We've been shipping out of the office in LA and packing all of our own stuff. All of your orders have been handpacked by us up until October. Now they're in a warehouse, which means we can also scale. We can add new products. If you have product ideas, things you want from us, let us know. Almost done y'all. This is much longer than I was expecting. I hope it's interesting.
Justin: One person is going to find it interesting.
Sarah: I know. Should we cut it?
Justin: For sure. No, not a bad way. I'm saying someone will find it interesting.
Sarah: Thanks for listening y'all. By November, we launched podcast season five. I was like, "I'm sorry. I didn't realize it was going to take so long." We had our big black Friday sale. We did our first hospital black Friday sale. We had Physiologic Birth and I got to teach some doctors at a hospital, which was so fun.
Justin: That's really cool. I didn't know you were doing that.
Sarah: I'm not like doing it, but I did that.
Justin: I know you did it. When you shared that at retreat, I was so excited for you. I've never been on the [crosstalk]
Sarah: Oh yes. I know. I was invited to a doctor's collaborative meeting thing to teach on Physiologic Birth. So cool. Then December we had our team retreat. We had mentorship open. We did all of our year-end stuff. Then I edited the Childbirth class finally, and we're getting ready for 2025. We're a little more than just an Instagram. There's a few things going on.
Justin: We're still a small business.
Sarah: We're still a small business technically, which you know by the fact that there are technically six full-time people doing all of that. Once again, I say all of that, thank you for listening and celebrating with us because it is fun to look back on the last year and be like, "Whoa," because when you're in the thick of it, it can feel like, "What even are we doing?" regardless of it being a hard year, we accomplished so much and now we're so much more better gelled, people were new to the team in 2023 and now off to the races, and ready for 2025.
Justin: Oh, you know what you forgot Sarah, is that you now have a podcast recording studio.
Sarah: Oh no, I did. I'm in the closet of my old bedroom, y'all.
Justin: It's your old bedroom. I forgot about that.
Sarah: It is. This used to be where my clothes were and now they're on the other side. Now we have a soundproof little room that I'm in. We're in an apartment basically. It mirrors my apartment on the other side. We made that move in 2021.
Justin: It was the best thing you ever did. I think about filming Physiologic Birth in your apartment and just a mess. I'm thinking about the mentorship Physiologic Birth [unintelligible 00:27:57] was chaos. That was like the beginning of the end.
Sarah: We started mentorship and we'd filmed four months and then the apartment became available. I was like, "I don't know how we're going to pay for this, but we got to jump, we've got to do this." It happened so quickly. I moved within three weeks and then we had this empty space that we've built out. We rearranged the office in December to make it more functional because we've just grown into it versus allowed it to work for all of our growth. The back room, because this last year, my office has been my dining room table.
Then when my sister moved in, I no longer had my dining room table, and so we actually moved my dining room table into the back room. Now we have a meeting room with wall space for all the Post-it noting that we do for a lot of our brainstorms and our strategy sessions. Our whole calendar is on the wall. it's very fun. It's a very creative business. I love it. Can I just say?
Justin: You can say.
Sarah: I cannot imagine doing anything else with my life. I can't believe how many incredible people have come into my life because of this business. As hard as this year has been, yes, I'm crying now. Finally. This happened at retreat where the whole retreat, my whole thing was, I am so grateful for this team and for how they've showed up and how they've just weathered the storm or Jen that just offered Shifting the Pitocin Paradigm at a point where I was like, "I can't run payroll." The team doesn't even really know this.
Now hopefully we're out of the woods because we've been fronted with some Move Learning retreat money to get us through. It's been financially very challenging year. That on top of all. the like business challenges and the various other things that weren't mentioned and just the stress of managing a team and all of that. I have pulled every string and I got to a place where I had pulled every string and my options were scale back, cut programs, or dissolve the business. I looked into it.
Justin: You didn't end up having to do any of those things.
Sarah: I fought very hard and we're here now.
Justin: It's nice hearing you say how much you love it, even after all that.
Sarah: I will say that in August when my sister got here, I was having a hard time showing up to work. It wasn't that I was depressed, it was just absolutely no motivation and just I'm so tired. What is the point? This is my vulnerable moment. I have given my soul to all of you. I've sacrificed my relationships, my health at times. I've prioritized that over the last couple of years, but my health and I barely sleep. What fuels me is my why.
For those of you that have been burnt out or that hate your job at the time, knowing why you're doing what you're doing or I say this, when people write in and they tell their stories of how stuff that we've done has impacted them recently, Rachel shared that like this educator had everyone do a podcast-- listen to the Pause At the Door episode. That they did reflections as a unit on what did they take away from the episode, and I'm like, "That's so nice."
Those educators, man, they're on my heart. Seriously. That's the thing, all of you are on my heart and mind. I get angry about ever representing the challenges that you face in the hospital. I won't do it. At times, yes, I need to make business choices, but we will not be people that exploit other people. We will not. That has caused me to make hard decisions that have been business sacrifices. I got to a place where I resented everybody and just was like "All this hard work for what? You can't pay $12.99 for a Motion subscription?"
I don't sleep. I'm still single. All I want in life is to get married and have a baby. It's because I don't have time to go out. If I go out and I try to date or I try to meet anyone, the business suffers. I have committed to be responsible in what I've committed to. Sure, I'm overcommitted, but how did I get here? Then my question was, I didn't make this choice. When did I decide that this was going to be my life? I never made a conscious choice that this was going to be my life. I fell into this.
I've done it because I want to be useful in the world and because I care and because I think we can be better. I see so much hope, but this is not how I want to live. This is not work-life balance. I am not exemplifying what I believe in. Again, you can't pay $199 a month for no ads, or you can't just come to a class? Those of you that have, and those of you that are listening are those people, but this is real talk. If 100,000 of our followers gave $2 a month, I would be able to sleep, instead of me doing it myself, which has been the types of things, or I'd be able to get a massage.
I haven't done any of that this year because I've been wanting to keep the team. Anyway, you're getting the real, real. This is a juicy one. Oh my God. [laughs] It's because I care and because I will do anything-- that's not true. I will do a lot, and it's like, put your money where your mouth is. My money is in it and my mouth is also in it. My sister comes in August and God, I'm on a rant always. I remember her looking at me and I had a meltdown at the Summit of Greatness. I went to the Summit of Greatness, which is Lewis Howes' leadership conference thing.
It was the best two days I've had in so long and so inspirational and exactly what I needed in that season of life. Of course, they open up tickets discounted and they're wanting us to buy tickets. I accidentally bought four instead of two.
Justin: Four?
Sarah: Four tickets instead of two. It came out to be $1,300 and I had a panic attack and I'm weeping with my sister there, weeping. I'm like, "I have to reverse it." I couldn't even do the two. I shouldn't have done the two. I know it's what was needed, but full-blown. Through the whole lunch, she's just sitting there staring at me, and then all this stuff comes out. She looked at me and she was like, "I didn't realize how bad it was." She knows because she's like been on calls and she's been updated.
My whole soul came out of my mouth that day. I was just on a unfiltered rant. Her arriving at the time that she did saved this business and saved me. Also, the only way to the other side is through-- I will say the other thing is that financially, I had to cut my coach and I had to cut my therapist and I cut my partner out of my life. I've had very little support this whole year on the hardest year of my life. You talk about what it takes. It's like, thank God I have a little bit of faith, barely, and a lot of hard that I've already been through with a lot of internal tools and the team and other friends like you or others to help keep me going, but brutal.
Justin: Brutal.
Sarah: The only way to is through and Hannah came in and relieved me of a little bit of pressure when I needed just a breather. I never really got a breather, but one, I will say that we were able to launch Move sales and that fronted where we were able to catch up on overdue payments. That financial pressure was relieved for a hot second. Instantly I was able to see clearly and decide. This goes for all of us. You can take something personal from this because now it just feels like a therapy session for me. Inside scoop that I think when hard is there you have the choice to give in or you have the choice to go through and find your way out.
I had to face myself in a way of, "Okay, you didn't choose this life." I didn't. I never made a conscious choice that I'm going to be some CEO and know all things business. I got a nursing degree and that was my victim moment. I was saying, "I didn't choose this and they don't even appreciate it. All these things I do, why do I do it? Why am I sacrificing so much for people who don't give any rats, anything to us?" Which is just so not true. It's so not true. Okay. Hear me loud.
Justin: We say that stuff about patients. I think that stuff about patients when we're burnt out. It's so relatable.
Sarah: I feel like I had to come to Jesus of, well, then, you make a choice because it's one or two ways. You can choose to not, and just say, "I'm done." In my head, I was like, "Yes, right. I would let everyone down," and blah, blah, blah, all these things and all this time. It was like, "Well, but you are not a victim to your circumstance. You either level up and level out of this season and you make a choice and you move forward or you stay in this miserable place or you quit, just quit, go back to the bedside."
The moment I said that, I was like, "Okay, I'm not going to do that. I won't be satisfied. It's not for me. It's not what I'm called to." I had to make a conscious choice and be like, "Okay, I may not have chosen this, but I am choosing this life going forward and I know what it is. Before when I chose this life. I didn't know what it was, but now, I still don't know what it is but I definitely know more of what it is." Then make a choice and then own it and be done. Move on. I had to be there for a while. It was a few months, but then that victim mindset of, it's everybody else's fault is so toxic.
I will say that I'm not ashamed of it. It was what it was. I'm not going to choose to judge myself. I'm not going to be mean to myself in the process. It was my process, but now I have chosen it. I feel energized. Hannah came in and whipped some and I just said, "This isn't working," and she's fixed it. She's found solutions. That is her job as director of strategy. I'm not good at hiring. She'll find people and be like, "They're great." I'm like, "Great, let's hire them." Sure enough, they're great. I have help.
Now going into 2025, I feel so excited and I feel like I have released-- mind you, there's a little less financial pressure. Eventually, that will come, but it's onward and forward. We made it through this season. I didn't have to fire--
Justin: You made it through 2024. You made it through developing that app.
Sarah: Oh my God. I don't ever want to do that kind of stress again. It was paycheck to paycheck. By paycheck, I mean payroll to payroll, sort of like, "Okay, where can we cut?" I'm like, "We can't because the mission will suffer." That's where that knowing your mission and knowing your why it was like, "I don't care what it takes." When my director of finance is saying I can't bring on Hannah full-time. I'm like, "Yes, I know, but this is the only way that this business survives." I got very creative and we figured it out and it's the best thing we ever did.
Instead of making decisions out of fear--
Justin: That was my first thought was like, "Where are you selling your feet?"
Sarah: I know. [laughs] Oh, I looked into it. I looked into selling my poop. Do you know can do that too? You can send [unintelligible 00:41:49] a lot of money. I applied. I didn't qualify.
Justin: Here's my thing though. Wait, where are you selling your poop to?
Sarah: Some microbiome lab. I didn't qualify. I know it's sad because I think you have to have celiacs or something. I don't know. It's a whole thing, but you can sell your shit and send it in. I looked into it. I didn't know. I felt like the public image of my feet was a little much and may mess up the brand.
Justin: It's a big joke, right? Whatever.
Sarah: If it were possible and if it would have been presented to me, it absolutely would have been something that I did.
Justin: I just don't want to encourage fetishes though. I don't know if that should be [unintelligible 00:42:30]
Sarah: Why?
Justin: I don't know. I guess I think-- I don't know. I'm not opposed. If you sell your feet, you sell your feet. I have really ugly feet. No one's buying my feet. [laughs]
Sarah: I dated a guy with a foot fetish once. We're not getting into that, [laughs] but it was very interesting.
[laughter]
I feel like I don't want to encourage harmful fetishes. I feel like people can have their fetishes.
Justin: I'm not going to judge them for doing it. If people are making money doing that, great.
Sarah: You know that, this is such a tangent, my YouTube video with the nipple is that 10 million views? There are just a lot of interesting fetishes out there. You like to watch a lactating nipple, all the power to you. I try not to judge. I don't like harmful fetishes. Suck a toe. That's great. Whatever.
Justin: That was my intrusive thought when you said that though.
Sarah: Oh no, it's great. I thought about it. I let go of the foot picture thing, but I looked into selling my shit for sure. You can make a lot of money, but I was like, "Well, we got--"
Justin: I will be Googling that.
Sarah: For sure. Anyway, moral of the story is it's been a hard year and we're on the other side. I hope that you can learn from hearing someone's journey through. Really I had to feel my feels and really ask myself that question and woman up, and really make a decision to own it. If you're feeling burnt out and you're feeling like a victim to your circumstance, or you're feeling like woe is me because I was born into this family or I, this and that, acknowledge. Then, okay. Now what?
Staying there is never helpful. Staying there for a moment, fine, but the only way to is through. I really feel like this year will be our best year yet. It's going to be the comeback story and it's going to be the five mil families coming to us on the family side. Please send your families to us. We have a whole new website coming for families that we will let you know about that's coming at the end of March, early April, probably. Stay tuned for that. We have season six coming.
We have a whole hospital build for our hospital partners coming that won't be launched this year, but what we will launch for hospitals is an advanced Physiologic Birth class. We'll drop the manager link. If you want to submit your manager's email to us, we'll send up a quick email and just say, "Hey, someone on your unit is interested in our stuff and wants you to look into bringing us to you." It's totally anonymous. Then they can unsubscribe in that moment if they want, but otherwise, it puts them on our hospital list so we can share with them all of our offerings for hospital. That's fun.
The family stuff is really a part of the bigger mission of bringing families, hospitals, medical people, doulas, the whole birth world together so that we can optimize people's experiences. The other thing I'll be working on this year is all the Move learning retreat stuff. I'm going to Cancun at the beginning of February and getting going with our vendors and getting planning all of the programming. Then we'll open up our culture core applications and let you add on excursions and whatnot. We do actually still have a few double rooms left.
If you want to come, we'd love to meet you in person at Move. We have more mentorship cohorts launching. We have a potential app for mentorship coming.
Justin: There's a new mentorship page. Just so freaking beautiful
Sarah: There's a new mentorship page. We have new website updates. We'll have some new products and all sorts of new fun surprises. I feel energized. I feel ready. I don't know that I feel rested, but I feel like internally and mentally like let's go. It's going to be an amazing year. I'm coming back to YouTube.
Justin: Oh yes.
Sarah: Putting that out there. Oh, my God. We're filming on Saturday and we found an editing team today, by the way. That was a really fun win. There's just never-ending stuff. Thank you for being a part of this community. Thank you for these seven years. I'm going to get emotional again. Thank you for coming to classes and sending us DMs and listening to the podcast and downloading Motion and sharing your tips and being amazing nurses that you are at the bedside and giving care that changes the world.
That's really what it is. To year eight, being the most successful. I can't wait to do this episode in a year and be like, "Look at what we did. It was so much better. It was still challenging, I'm sure." You talk about just potential. That's what's so exciting about being here is just the amount of ideas and movement and growth and projects and classes and ways that we have in our queue to help and support you to live your absolute best life, both inside and outside of work is what we say. We really mean that it's exhausting to think about, but it's so exciting because we will never run out of things to do. Thank you for being a part of it.
Justin: Thanks for spending your time with us during this episode of Happy Hour with Bundle Birth Nurses. If you like what you heard, it helps us both. If you subscribe, rate, leave a raving review, and share this episode with a friend. If you want more from us, head to bundlebirthnurses.com or follow us on Instagram.
Sarah: Now it's your turn to go and rest your soul and think about what you need to move through to get to the other side. Remember that you are not a victim to your circumstances. You have full control of your attitude. Remember your why, if you're feeling down and out, and as we go into this next year. We'll see you next season.