Translating nursing education, expertise, and experience into a business can be simplified by applying the nursing process.

Assess your nursing experience to determine what type of business you might pursue. For example, here are some options for critical care nurses:

• Teach critical care nursing to others (one program might prepare nurses to obtain their CCRN).
• Start a high-tech home care agency.
• Provide consulting services for enhancing quality and/or risk management policies and procedures to various healthcare settings.

Plan how you will establish the business. You must develop a good working plan for the start-up.

Consider —

WHO will be your customers,

WHO will be your competitors,

WHAT will the customers require from the business,

WHAT will it cost you to begin my business,

WHEN will services/products be required, and

WHY would the potential customers buy from me as compared to my competitors?

Answers to these questions will form the basis of your business plan and allow you to assess the viability of your business idea. The plan should be written and include your primary goal for beginning the business and your future goal(s) for its growth.

Monitor the business idea for viability. How many others have been successful or failed? What factors contributed to their success or failure? How long have they been in business? These questions can be answered through networking. Meeting, speaking and interacting with other nurses who have become entrepreneurs will be one of the most important avenues for predicting your potential for success.

My experience has shown that the large majority of nurse entrepreneurs are more than willing to help other nurses consider and explore business ownership opportunities. Perhaps the most valuable insight gained can be the avoidance of mistakes made by others. Each time you learn of one mistake, it is a valuable lesson for your own business venture.

Networking is a critical success factor! It is an ongoing process that allows us to expand not only our knowledge base, but also our contact base within our diverse profession.

Evaluate. There are two strategic considerations when evaluating:

First, evaluate all of the information you have gathered for developing your plan. Will my business be viable? Should I alter any of my original goal(s) to meet the assumptions of the information that I have gained? These are important questions to answer to minimize the potential for mistakes in start-up and maximize the potential for success.

Second, create an ongoing evaluation plan for your business. As in nursing, follow-up is important. Each of the steps above must be constantly repeated to evaluate your product/service within the changing health care environment. The impact of change within the environment in which you currently practice nursing may also affect the business you have started. The challenge is to evaluate and make changes as required in order to maintain the long-term viability of your business.

As you consider the possibility of owning your own business, remember that we, as nurses, use all of our knowledge, experience, and expertise to assist the patient through the complex healthcare system toward the goal of wellness. This same knowledge, experience and expertise is our most valuable assets in helping to establish a rewarding and profitable business.