Built a Multimillion Dollar Business on Venmo. Here’s What I Learned.

Six years ago, if you had asked me whether I would ever start a business, I would have laughed.

I was one of the most risk-averse people I knew. My husband was exploring the idea of starting his own owner-operator trucking business at the time, and I declined. And declined. And declined again. Entrepreneurship felt like something other people did. People with business training, startup capital, a plan.

I had none of those things.

What I had was a problem I needed solved. And it turns out, that is one of the most powerful places a business can start.

Start With What’s Missing

The idea for Sarah Michelle NP Reviews came out of my own experience.

I have a master’s in nursing education and a post-master’s as a family nurse practitioner. I love to teach. And throughout my career, I watched anxiety show up again and again as a defining factor in how students performed: in clinical settings, in coursework, and especially on licensing exams. I had been helping students manage test anxiety for years. I had tips, frameworks, and a deep belief that mental health is part of the exam-taking equation, not separate from it.

But when I looked around for resources that treated it that way, resources that addressed the whole student and not just the content, they didn’t exist. Not in the NP exam space. Not the way I knew they needed to.

So I built it myself.

I had no business training. No software infrastructure. No grand launch strategy. I was a brand new nurse practitioner who had just passed the exam, and I started selling Zoom recordings on Facebook Messenger. People paid me on Venmo or Cash App. That was the whole operation.

It was nothing fancy. And it worked.

The Magic of Being a Curious Novice

Looking back, I think the scrappiness was actually an asset.

I leaned into being a curious novice. I didn’t have years of industry experience telling me what couldn’t be done or how things were supposed to work. I just had a genuine need, a real connection to my students, and a willingness to figure it out as I went.

And I collaborated with my students every step of the way. I talked to them. I asked them what they needed. I created products that met them where they were. The business grew because it was built in conversation with the people it was serving, not handed down to them from above.

What happened next felt like overnight success to people on the outside. But from the inside, it made complete sense. For the first time, a lot of these nurse practitioner students, people who had been quietly told to mask and hide their anxiety throughout nursing school and NP school, felt seen. Heard. Validated for an experience they had been carrying alone for a long time.

When you build something people truly need, and you make them feel understood in the process, it grows.

The Decision That Changed Everything

At some point, the business outgrew every piece of software I touched. It had become a multimillion dollar operation, and I was facing a decision I hadn’t anticipated.

Did I want to become a conglomerate? Did I want to expand into the MCAT, LSAT, all the other exam verticals? Or did I just love nursing?

I just loved nursing.

I didn’t want to bottleneck the business by trying to be everything. And I knew my students needed resources, software, infrastructure, support systems, that I didn’t have the capacity to build on my own. When a strategic partner came along who already had those verticals built out, who had the infrastructure and tools my students needed, the decision started to become clear.

I went through an acquisition.

Building my business changed my life. And selling my business changed my life too, just in a completely different way.

The Part Nobody Warns You About

The hardest part of selling wasn’t the process. It was what came after.

Going from entrepreneur to employee overnight is a transition that people don’t talk about honestly enough. I’ve since had this conversation with many people who have been through it, and the pattern is consistent: it is not a transition most people do well.

When you are an entrepreneur, you are an entrepreneur at your core. The autonomy, the ownership, the direct connection between your decisions and their outcomes, that becomes part of how you understand yourself. Going back to operating inside someone else’s structure, someone else’s vision, is genuinely hard. I won’t say it’s impossible. But I will say it is a real loss that deserves to be acknowledged.

For me, it opened a door to a new chapter, one that eventually led me to astrology, to advocacy, to the work I do now. But the transition itself was not easy, and I want to be honest about that.

What I Want You to Take From This

If you have an idea, just start. I mean that sincerely.

You do not need a business plan. You do not need the right software or a polished brand or a fully formed strategy. You need an idea that solves a real problem, the willingness to be a curious novice, and the courage to start before you feel ready.

I started selling Zoom recordings on Facebook Messenger. That business became something that changed thousands of students’ lives and changed mine.

And if you’re on the other side, if you’re thinking about selling something you’ve built or navigating that entrepreneur-to-employee transition, I want you to know that the complexity of those feelings is real and valid. Building a business changes you. Selling one changes you too. Both of those things can be true at the same time.

I love consulting with people who are in the thick of it, whether they’re just starting out or figuring out what comes next. Because every part of this process deserves an honest conversation.

Interested in talking through your own business journey? Get in touch.