Ep #88: The Power of Business Coaching with Becca Pike

Welcome to Becoming a Stress-Free Nurse Practitioner, a show for new NPs and students that want to pass their board exam the first time and make that transition from RN to NP as seamless as possible. I’m your host Sarah Michelle. Now, let’s dive into today’s episode.

Sarah: Hey, friends today is a really cool and special podcast because I have a guest with me who is literally my favorite honorary NP that I know, and her name is Becca Pike. So me and Becca, we met a few years ago now, at the end of 2020 when I felt like I was drowning in Facebook Messenger and a non functioning website to be able to deliver to all of you these awesome review courses. 

And so Becca helped me clean up my business, clean up my life a little bit, and ultimately helped lead SMNP to where it is today, because she was my first and my longest business coach that I had. I thought it would be really cool to bring her on the podcast, let her talk about her coaching a little bit, because I know it’s a little bit of a foreign item to some of you. But coaching fully and truly changed my life. And so welcome, Becca. 

Becca: Oh, thank you for having me. Great intro, I feel so special. 

Sarah: I worked really hard on that, you know. 

Becca: I love it. I love it. No, I’m glad to be here. Thank you. 

Sarah: So I think the first thing that everyone needs to know about Becca, and this is just like her as a person, is she tells it how it is. There’s never any fluff. She’s going to tell you exactly how she feels about whatever I ask. So everyone may want to prepare. 

Becca: I have actually been working on trying to bring more softness. 

Sarah: Oh, that’s a different vibe. 

Becca: I know, I think I’m growing up, I’m maturing, I am trying to stop making people mad. 

Sarah: No, I think there’s a certain degree of where it makes sense, especially as a business coach. You have to be able to differentiate yourself and how you bring yourself forward. But you don’t have to be mean either. But I don’t think you’ve ever been mean to me by any length. 

Becca: Yeah, no, in all seriousness I think it probably is the best quality to have as a coach. Because when someone hires a coach, they want to know the nooks and the crannies and the spiderwebs of what’s going wrong in their business and how to change it. So glossing over or sugarcoating doesn’t help with that. 

Sarah: No, 0%. I think the biggest place that I wanted to start and I don’t know if you have an answer to this question or not, is how have you infiltrated the world of nurse practitioners? Because, y’all, Becca has coached so many nurse practitioners and you would think we’re all in a club together. We definitely, like none of us knew each other, but she coaches so many of us. 

So how do you think that happened? Do you think it’s something about you? Something about us? 

Becca: No, it was a complete happy accident. This is how it went down. I used to waitress with this girl named Corey. And yes, 10 years after we were done waitressing together she messaged me on Facebook because she had become an NP and she wanted to start a business. She wanted to start a med spa. 

And she was like, I hear that you’re a business coach, could you help us? And so me and her and all of her co-owners met. Before they even started their med spa, we met at this taco place, and we agreed to work together to launch their med spa. And I’m still working with them today. It has been for years, they’re making millions of dollars in their med spa, their business is beautiful. They have staffed up like an entire community. 

And ironically, they in the first year told some of their NP friends. I started working with them. And then they told some of their NP friends, I started working with them. All of a sudden I’m on some NP podcasts, kind of like this one but in other avenues. And then those NPs started working with me. And it’s so funny to me that this has happened because I am not an NP. 

Sarah: Not even close. 

Becca: Not even close. Like not even a little bit. You guys are doing the Lord’s work out there, I am so impressed with NPs. And so I have now coached so many of you guys and I love it. And it just feels like it was such a happy accident. And it’s so funny because literally I was coaching a med spa and I was like, “So, tell me again what is Botox? What is filler? Okay, remind me again, which one is…” But it works, you don’t have to understand the product to coach great in business. 

Sarah: Yeah, and to give everyone a little bit of background about me and Becca, I also met her by happy accident because Becca has built this awesome, massive massage company. And so I got massages there. I had no idea who Becca Pike was. 

At the time it had just moved over to Massage Strong was the name, but I was like, “Wow look at this woman who built this giant business. Obviously she can help me.” That was my thought. It was like you had instant rapport with me even though I literally did not know you at all. I was like I’ll just call this woman up and see what she thinks about my business. 

Becca: Yeah, I love that used to come to Massage Strong before we ever met, that makes me so happy. 

Sarah: So how long did you have strong before you moved over into business coaching? 

Becca: I would say about four years. Yeah, so I started Massage Strong as just a massage therapist. And to be quite honest, that was my very first tippy toe into business. And I became a massage therapist, I didn’t know that I wanted to own my own company whatsoever. In fact, when I was in massage school, I kind of didn’t even listen to the business courses because I was like, “That’ll never be me. I just want to work for a chiropractor or I want to work for a physical therapist.” 

I knew that I wanted to do more like injury therapy, kinesiology based stuff. I have a Kinesiology degree from the University of Kentucky and I knew that that’s the road I wanted to go down, which was more sports medicine. And I started working for a chiropractor and he was working me 7am to 7pm, Monday through Saturday. I mean, it was crazy. I was pregnant, I remember being morning sick for 90% of the time that I was working for him. 

But he did this really awesome thing where on Sundays, he told me, hey, on Sundays, you can use the office. We’re closed down, you can see your own clients and you can keep 100% of it and just do your thing. And I was like, okay, cool, I might take advantage of that. And what I realized was he was paying me $17 an hour, Monday through Saturday, seven to seven. And on Sundays, if I saw five people, I could make my entire week’s salary on that Sunday. 

And, Sarah, a beast was born. I was like, wait a minute, what am I doing? I am working my butt off for this guy. And he has provided me with a great service, a great office, it’s all good. But I have a handful of clients that want to come see me every week. I could just go rent a place and in one day, make the rent. And then the next 29 days of the month, I could just get to pocket it. 

I know it sounds so simple, but it was like such a light bulb moment for me. And that is when Massage Strong was born at the time it was called Becca Pike Massage. And it was Becca Pike Massage for a couple years. And it grew from there. I mean, now we’ve got two brand new locations, we’ve got 34 LMTs that work for us, a full GM front desk staff situation, and it just blew up. And it all came from this one man letting me massage on Sundays in his office. 

Sarah: I feel like a lot of business owners have that lightbulb moment. Because I did the same thing. Like we talked about on your podcast a couple weeks ago, the first day I sold it I was selling it at $15. I made $1,000 in a day and I was like, “What just happened to me? I don’t make $1,000 in a week sometimes working as a nurse.” 

Now, as a nurse practitioner, it was a little bit different, but still just to even have the possibility in my brain of, “Ooh, I could make $1,000 in a day,” was all I needed to be like, “Okay, this is all I want to do. Let me see what happens.” 

Becca: Yes. And I think people have this misconception that if you own a business and you’re successful in business, then you must have a business brain. You must be smarter than me, you must understand business more than me. And let me tell you guys something, it was absolutely not true. I have never considered myself above average intelligence in any way, especially not in math or statistics or anything business wise. 

All I knew was that I could massage people and rent a space out and make money. But I remember having all of this mind drama, and I remember coming home to my husband and being like, I think maybe I want to start a business. But I don’t know how to do taxes for a business. I don’t know what I need. I definitely don’t know how to have a website. I don’t even know how to run someone’s credit card. Like I can’t fathom – 

Sarah: That’s the big scary thing. 

Becca: Yes. So there was no part of me that was advanced at all in business. I just took such baby steps at a time. And I think that’s why all of my businesses have been pretty successful, because I haven’t gotten caught up in the huge picture of things. I’m just like, okay, what’s one step that I can do this week that is going to advance it a little bit more? 

Sarah: The next best thing. 

Becca: Yeah. And even when it’s scary, even when it’s hard, just like one at a time and that adds up so much. 

Sarah: Yeah, and I think that’s the beautiful part of business coaching, too. Because you can learn from someone who ideally, I mean, if I’m going to have a business coach, it’s going to be someone who’s done it before. There are business coaches out there that haven’t lived it, but you’ve definitely lived it. And I think that brings so much flavor and so much more insight to all the coaching you provide, too. 

Becca: Wow, thank you. Yeah, and I think that one of the best things that you can find in a business coach is someone that is not going to overwhelm you with the big picture. 

Sara: Yeah. 

Becca: If someone were to have come to me in the very beginning when I was just starting my first business, you know, massaging out of the chiropractor’s office, if they had come to me and they said, “Hey, it’s possible for you to have 30 something employees and two brand new locations,” I would have crapped my pants, for lack of better words. 

Sarah: I’m going to run far away from that. 

Becca: There is no way my brain could have handled that, right? But instead, it was just like, okay, what’s the next little step? I never thought super far in advance. I definitely never thought that I would be where we are today at all. 

And so it’s the same with coaching. And when I was coaching you, right, we did it step by step. Like what is the next thing? Okay, we need an assistant. What does that look like? 

Sarah: Right now. 

Becca: Yeah, you need to hire someone right now. This is what you’re going to do, you’re going to get on indeed.com, okay? You’re going to put a little application up and you’re going to wait. You’re going to bring them in, you’re going to interview them, this is how you’re going to interview them, right? 

And so very bite-sized things that were doable step by step by step, that would equal out to be a much larger result. 

Sarah: Can you imagine if you had told me at the end of 2020, “Sarah, one day we’re going to sell your business and this is what we’re going to do.” I would have been like, “Okay, we can’t even talk on the phone, I’ve got to go.” Like I can’t even, like I don’t have a functioning website today. I have no employees. I can’t even possibly picture all the things to come. 

Becca: Listen, I had to flex a lot of, what’s the word? Just like patience and calmness with you because I could see what you were sitting on. 

Sarah: So much patience. 

Becca: Well, not patience for you. Patience for me knowing what was possible for your business and you not knowing it yet. I could see it. I could see how successful this was going to be. And I was trying to stay calm because inside I was like – 

Sarah: Fire alarms. 

Becca: Inside I am, “Holy shit, this girl is going to get so big. She’s going to help so many people. This is going to grow so fast, she has no idea.” And I couldn’t approach you like that, that would have been terrible for your nervous system, right? 

So I had to flex a lot of patients with myself and with our coaching of just being like, yes, like this is safe. This amount of growing this quickly is safe, it’s fine, nothing’s wrong. 

Sarah: It’s not just going to disappear tomorrow. That was always my big fear. I’m like, all the students are just going to go away tomorrow. Just leave. 

Becca: Everyone feels that way, and especially the faster you grow. The slower you grow, the longer that you have time to wrap your head around every little detail. But the faster your business grows, you don’t have as much time to hit equilibrium. You don’t have enough time to grasp what’s happening around you, so it can feel very unsafe. 

And I have to remind a lot of my clients that grow very quickly that it’s safe. It’s safe to grow quickly. It’s safe to be in charge of a lot of moving parts. There’s no time when you’re growing a business that you can’t just stop and take a step back.

You always have the ability to relax, to stop taking on new clients. You always have the ability to bring in more brains, more help, more support. And sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. Sometimes it feels like you’re just all alone and you’re balancing 30 plates on your arms that are spinning. 

Sarah: Yeah, I think it’s interesting thinking about nurse practitioners as business owners because I feel like nursing as a whole is a very safe and stable profession. And entrepreneurship does not feel safe at all, especially when you’re starting. 

I mean, now I feel a little bit safer in what I do. But in the beginning I did not feel safe in any capacity ever. But trying to pick parts of being a nurse practitioner and the stability and entrepreneurship piece and the risk tolerance, it’s a lot to meld together. So it’s interesting to me that there are so many nurse practitioners out there that are entrepreneurs because there are quite a few. 

Becca: Yeah, well, you guys have the brain and the drive for it. I am forever impressed with NPs. I don’t know if it’s the schooling you guys went through, I don’t know if it’s the type of personality that wants to become an NP, there’s so many angles to it. But I will tell you right now that 100% of the NPs that I’ve worked with have blown me out of the water with their work ethic and their ability to face their fears and face problems and problem solve. It’s been really cool to watch. 

Sarah: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of side gig nature in NPs as well because working as a nurse it’s like, well, you can be a travel nurse or you could work over here at this hospital part time, and work over here PRN and do this. So there is a lot of flexibility. And I think maybe that’s where they kind of come together just a little bit. 

Becca: Yeah, I’ve got a travel nurse upstairs at my breakfast table right at this moment. She stayed the night here last night. 

Sarah: That’s wild. 

Becca: I know. And she is going to become an NP. And she’s on her way right now. And she’s been a good friend of mine for 15 years and she travels all around. Right now she’s stationed out in California, but she came in last night, literally popping in staying the night, and I gave her a good breakfast before she leaves again. 

But we were sitting at my breakfast table and she was telling me, she was like, “I’ve been working in the ICU for 10 years.” 

Sarah: That’s a long time. 

Becca: She works night shift, she is exhausted. She just blew out her knee and she was like, “I thought my life was ruined because I blew out my knee and I lost my job because of it because I can’t work at all.” And she said, “I thought that it was the end.” 

She was like, “And now I’m realizing that I don’t want to work in the hospital anymore. I don’t want to work that hard anymore. I want to start my own business. Whether it’s a med spa, whether it’s just like I travel around and do little Botox parties, whether I’m just doing contract work.” 

And we got to talking about it and I’m just so in awe of how you guys work. And what’s expected of you all. Yeah, I don’t know that there’s any other profession like it. 

Sarah: No, there’s just so much abundance of opportunity when you have this degree, because that’s what I told my sister. My sister was like, “Should I be a nurse?” And I’m like, well, I mean, there are good and bad of any degree that you’re going to choose, so I’m not going to push you one way or another. But the thing that I always come back to with my nursing degree is there’s just so much opportunity to do so many different things. 

And that was part of why I chose it. A, I like the stability, but B, my brain gets bored, which is why entrepreneurship usually works out pretty well for me, because there’s always something new to do. But in nursing, there’s always something new to do as well. 

Becca: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but she loves her career, she’s very sad that, you know, she’s not going to be working in ICU anymore. But she’s also really excited about opportunities that are out there for RNs and NPs. 

Sarah: When does she finish school? 

Becca: I don’t know. But I told her, I was like, “I know this program.” 

Sarah: They teach NPs. 

Becca: She told me she knew it. She was like, “Oh yeah, I know that. I know that program.”

Sarah: Oh, that’s cool. 

Becca: And I was like, “I know the owner. I know the CEO.” She was like, “Really?” 

Sarah: Listen, Becca, like the coolest moment of my life. It was the week before Christmas last year, Meadow was in the hospital. I popped open my eyes and ears because there’s shift change going on. And the nurse that was coming in, she’s like, “I just graduated nurse practitioner school yesterday.” So immediately my ears are like, “Ooh.” 

And then someone was like, “Are you going to do a review course? Are you going to take your test soon?” Et cetera. And she’s like, “Well, there’s this girl named Sarah Michelle that I’ve heard of, so I’m going to do that course.” 

Becca: Oh my gosh. 

Sarah: And I was like, “Oh, that’s me.”

Becca: Did you tell them? Did you tell them? 

Sarah: Yeah, I was so excited. 

Becca: Did they die? 

Sarah: I was like, “Let me give you a free course.” Yeah, they’re like, “No.” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s me.” And she was like, “Really?” And I’m like, “Do I look that different from my website picture?” It’s fine. 

Becca: Probably, you had been in the hospital with your baby. 

Sarah: I know, I had been in the hospital for a month, I looked like a dead zombie. But I was like, “Yes, that’s me”. But it was really fun. 

Becca: She was like, “You look way more dead than I expected.” 

Sarah: Yeah, you’re not what I anticipated. But yeah, that stuff was really cool. 

Becca: That’s awesome. 

Sarah: Really, really cool. 

Becca: It’s fun to be recognized for your hard work. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Becca: I’m starting to get a little bit of that, too. And it’s just like when you work so hard towards something, and I remember, I remember you building this business. I mean, it was no joke, you were like 24/7 building this business. 

Sarah: All day. 

Becca: You should get all the recognition, for sure. 

Sarah: Well, it’s fun because it’s just like a small sub sector of people, and we don’t go out very much because we work remotely, right? But when I’m in the hospital every now and again I’ll be like, “Ooh, that’s me.” 

Becca: That’s amazing. 

Sarah: I think the biggest thing I wanted to make sure I touch on in this podcast, which I have not done yet, is what does a coaching session even look like? Because I feel like there’s a lot of hoopla and there’s a lot of assumptions out there. And so if you, I mean, I only have my own experience, if you can kind of walk through what that even looks like for someone that might be considering, I think that would be really helpful. 

Becca: Yeah, awesome. Well, different coaches provide their sessions differently. Some coaches do it in a very structured manner. They know exactly what they’re going to be talking about. They know exactly what curriculum they’re going to be going over. I am the opposite of that. 

Sarah: Yeah, you’re not that. 

Becca: Yeah. I believe that how can I know what my client needs until I start talking to them? I don’t know where they’re at in their business. I don’t know exactly what they need. And that changes week to week, as you know. Week to week something comes up, there’s new fires to put out, you have to know what’s going on. 

So when you have a session with me it’s 60 to 90 minutes, depending on what you bought. And we spend the first 10 minutes just being like, okay, where are we at? What are the fires that need to be put out? What are the goals that we are trying to figure out? Where do we want to be in the next two weeks, right? 

And sometimes we even look at where we want to be in the next six months, let’s work backwards. So it’s literally just a conversation where the client gets to come to me and they just get to use my brain. I have now built three businesses, I’m getting ready to acquire a fourth business. And I’ve been through it all. I have been through it all, okay? 

Sarah: You have survived. 

Becca: I have survived. And so many questions come up when you’re starting a business and it can feel really lonely. And you find that you’re just spending all this time Googling and looking up like what am I supposed to be doing? And then you do it and it doesn’t work and sometimes it just feels like you’re taking one step forward and three steps back. 

And to me, having a coach is just streamlining the process. I can tell my clients something in 30 seconds that could have taken them three months of trying themselves to eventually get back to that answer. So to me, it is like paying for a cheat sheet. It is paying for someone to just tell you what to do instead of spending months or years guessing. But ultimately it looks like a conversation and usually there’s a lot of laughter, a lot of crying, a lot of just friendship that, as you know, comes along with it. 

Sarah: Yeah, we’ll be friends forever. 

Becca: Forever. We should get buried next to each other. 

Sarah: I don’t know about that. 

Becca: Tell Ben. Tell Ben it’s my turn. 

Sarah: Okay. But I think a lot of it is just expediting the process. 

Becca: Oh, 100%. 

Sarah: I think that was what I was really looking for because, as you know, when we started I had no website and everything was on Facebook Messenger. And I was talking to students all day, every day. And that wasn’t sustainable. And I had all these visions of where I wanted to go, but I couldn’t connect A to B and B to C. And so it literally was you helping me connect the dots so I could get to the bigger vision one day. 

Becca: Yeah. Yeah, and I think my second favorite thing about coaching, so number one is it expedites the process. You don’t have to just guess over and over and try things and throw spaghetti against the wall. You just get to be told what your options are and which ones are best. 

Secondly, I love getting coached and realizing that things that I think are a big deal are not a big deal, right? So just having someone that’s like, hey, listen, yeah, people’s cards are going to get declined, or they’re going to default on their payment, or like something that feels huge to a brand new business owner, it feels like this is the end of the world, like their contractor just quit on them without any notice. 

To have someone to fall back on that says, hey, this sucks and I am so sorry this happened. But this is what you’re going to do and it’s going to be totally fine. And even though your brain is making this a huge deal right now, like in 72 hours you’re going to be completely back to normal and this is probably going to happen again. So let’s learn from it, let’s figure it out. 

Just having, I mean, I guess for lack of better words, just support. Like someone to show you and to help you breathe through some of those things that you have to deal with when you start a business, it’s just priceless. 

Sarah: The example I immediately thought of was having to fire my first employee, which was really, really, really hard. And it took me months to do and you’re like, “You’ve just got to do it, you’ve just got to do it.” And I’m like, “I don’t know, I’ll give her a little bit more time.” 

And then I went to fire her and she thanked me for firing her. And I’m like, I built this up to be so big in my head and Becca said this wasn’t that big of a deal, people get fired sometimes, it’s not the right fit. And I spent six months dragging this out when she felt the same way and didn’t quit. 

Becca: Well, I don’t know if you remember this, but the thing that finally broke the camel’s back and got you to do it is when we had the conversation that your job is to protect the whole team and not just one person. And if you want to be a leader, you’ve got to make sure that you are protecting the other people in your staff, in your community. And I feel like a light bulb went off for you. 

Sarah: Yeah, a different perspective. 

Becca: Yeah, I’m not just hurting one person, I’m helping five other people. And that is when the light switch went off for you, I remember. And I was like, oh, that’s pretty cool. That’s cool that that’s the way Sarah’s brain works. 

Sarah: And that’s the beauty of a business coach, because obviously I wasn’t getting there on my own. I was like she’d probably still be working here if I didn’t have you. 

Becca: You’re like, “It’s fine. Everything’s fine. Nothing is a problem. Everything is okay.” 

Sarah: We both had our lives, it’s fine. 

Becca: Meanwhile, she’s just like putting up fires all over the office and you’re like, “It’s okay.” 

Sarah: It’s all fine. That’s what we’ve got the sprinklers for. It’s all fine. 

Becca: Yes. 

Sarah: Well, cool. Thank you so much, Becca, for coming on the podcast. How can people find you if they’re interested in business coaching? Because you share a lot online for people who do have a little bit of interest, even if they’re just curious. 

Becca: Yeah, absolutely. So if you are looking just for free business advice, I have a podcast and we drop a new episode weekly. It is called The Hell Yes Entrepreneur. You can find it on any major podcast platform. You can find me on Instagram, @1BeccaPike. And you can also just go old school to my website, it is called hellyescoachingonline.com. 

Sarah: Perfect, and all of this will be in the show notes for everyone. And that’s it for this week. So thank you guys. 

As an extra bonus, friends, if you’re looking for support no matter what phase of your nurse practitioner journey you’re currently in, I have communities available for both students and new nurse practitioners. In these communities, we work to uplift one another and grow this profession together every single day. Links to join will be included for you in the show notes.