DNP Ep. 38: The Journey of the T-Shirt NICU Nurse

Sandra Pagenta: Hi guys, welcome to the doctor nurse podcast. Today. I have a special guest Courtney El-Refai is a NICU travel nurse and the owner of a new apparel shop called minimal nurse. She finished her BSN in 2015 and jumped immediately into the NICU. After being there for a couple years, she decided to take her, take her hand at travel nursing, which she started in 2017.

During her different rotations through different travel contracts. She decided to go ahead and one take her per diem job and to launch her own personal t-shirt business. So she’s got one of her t-shirts on guys, but she’s going to come on and tell us about her journey. Welcome Courtney. Thank you for coming onto the podcast today.

Thanks

Courtney El Refai: for having me, Sandra.

Sandra Pagenta: Yeah, so let’s dive right in. Explain to my guests exactly what your job title is, how you see your role and kind of what your day to day looks like with having your hand in so many.

Courtney El Refai: Sure. So my title would be a registered nurse. I’m actually a certified NICU nurse.

So I got my certification a few years back. I’m also a travel nurse, as you mentioned, and now a newfound nurse entrepreneur. So my days mostly look like when I’m not doing shifts in the NICU or in the hospital, I spend my free days working on my business, fulfilling orders, working on new designs and a bunch of admin stuff behind the scenes.

So yeah, I’m quite busy.

Sandra Pagenta: Yes. How do you find time to do all that? How do you split up your time? Explain to me kind of what your main travel job is, the per diem job and kind of how often you go out for that, and then how you find time in between to do your t-shirt business. So

Courtney El Refai: my per diem job actually started from a travel assignment that I took out in Berkeley, California.

And I was a travel nurse there for about three months, and I learned a lot about how nurses are treated in California versus other states. They have safe patient ratios, they have unions, they have better pay. [00:02:00] You get all your breaks. So I actually decided to stay per diem at that hospital where I’ve been pretty for the past three and a half years now.

So taking a per diem job, Give me an opportunity to take a break from travel nursing for a little while. So right when COVID hit actually I was living in Washington and I was just flying to California once or twice a month to work my per diem shifts. And when I was home, I was basically free and didn’t didn’t work.

So that gave me a lot of free time to kind of launch my business idea and sort of work on things from behind the scenes. But now that I’m doing another travel. I’m trying to cut back on my per diem days so that I can keep all my days free days towards my business.

Sandra Pagenta: Wait a minute. So you are flying to California to do this job because they treat nurses so, well, it sounds like nursing utopia.

Courtney El Refai: Yes, definitely. And now I’m living in Georgia, so now I’m flying cross country and keeping my per diem job. I love it. And yeah, I definitely, probably won’t be leaving there anytime.

Sandra Pagenta: My goodness, this is incredible. How many hours a week do you [00:03:00] spend on your personal visits and how many hours a week or a month are you spending out in California or wherever?

Courtney El Refai: So usually I work about, I have to work a minimum of four shifts a month in California. They’re eight hour shifts. So definitely not too challenging. I try to work at least six to eight if that’s my only job, but now that I’m doing a travel assignment, I kind of keep to the minimum and I’d probably say.

This is probably an underestimate, but at least 20 hours a week on my business. My husband definitely helps me a lot when I’m working my shifts, helping print t-shirts and fulfill orders and things like that too. So

Sandra Pagenta: sweetheart. Oh, that’s so great. And interesting.. For the travel nurse job. How many hours a week are you working there?

36 hours. 3 36. Okay. So you do 36 hours and then you cluster your days for whatever you go out to California. So you’ll do four days in a row kind of deal.

Courtney El Refai: Exactly. So before I took this travel assignment, I actually had three months off from my previous assignment. So for those three months, I was just strictly doing my per diem and focusing on my [00:04:00] business.

And now I’ve picked up an assignment. I can kind of space out my contracts a little bit more with the per diem as a backup.

Sandra Pagenta: It sounds like you are your own boss in that arena too. It feels like it.

Courtney El Refai: Yeah.

Sandra Pagenta: Yeah, it does. That’s incredible because you choose when you work, you choose the amount of time and actually you’re even choosing the state and the play.

Oh my gosh, this just so great. I mean, it sounds like a different form of entrepreneurship that maybe you’re not ready to fully launch into a business, but being a travel nurse, I feel like it gets the juices in the gears going for eventually launching into your own thing because you really are being autonomous.

Courtney El Refai: Exactly. Definitely. I control when I’m off, I control when I’m working. So that’s pretty nice. Yeah,

Sandra Pagenta: I agree. So that’s neat. I really liked that. How did you get to this specific spot Courtney? You didn’t wake up one day and all of a sudden have a t-shirt business and , this great travel job and [00:05:00] this awesome per diem job.

How did all this stuff kind of aligned for you? Take me back to when you first decided to become a.

Courtney El Refai: Okay. So when I first decided to become a nurse, I knew I would only ever want to do NICU. So I knew I needed to find a new grad job in the NICU. And I would say that’s probably my number one advice for anyone.

If you, if what specialty you want to work in, just go for it. Because a lot of people say it’s difficult to get in the NICU as a new grad. And while it can be tough. It’s definitely doable. So I got my first job in the NICU. I knew I wanted to do travel nursing. So I worked for about two and a half years, making sure I had enough experience and felt comfortable to travel nurse.

And then two and a half years later, I took my first contract. So I kind of all along nursing school knew this was my goal. And my plan was to eventually be a NICU travel nurse. And I knew there were a lot of steps that I needed to take in order to make that happen. So I just took it day by day and kind of made my plan, put my plans.

Sandra Pagenta: Love it. So I only want to talk about your t-shirt business, right? Because this is stemming from this creative [00:06:00] juice flowing hobby type thing. How did this get started? How did you get inspired to start?

Courtney El Refai: Okay. So my business started, as I mentioned earlier. Luckily my per diem job allowed me the opportunity to take a lot of time off from work.

So when I was living in Washington state right before COVID hit. I had plans on moving to Washington and, , getting a job there, maybe making some friends, meeting people and then the whole world shut down. So I ended up just keeping my per diem job for about a year and a half to two years.

I took a break from travel nursing and just flew down to California, like I mentioned earlier once or twice a month. And that left me with a lot of free time at home and the free time at home. Had me doing a lot of projects. I started doing like arts and crafts. I started doing creative things that I hadn’t done in a really long time.

And I just got the idea to design my own NICU nurse. T-shirt so. So I actually created my original design, which is the shirt that I’ve got on right now, just NICU nurse on a t-shirt. And I ordered a few for myself to wear to work. [00:07:00] And when I went, when I went to work and wear the shirt, I took a picture.

I posted it on my social media and I didn’t realize how many nurses I had met all over the country from, , travel nursing and working in so many different places. And I was flooded with requests. Shirts with their own specialties. People wanted Nikki shirts. They wanted, , they really wanted the shirts.

So within a month I actually fulfilled over 300 t-shirts and this was before I even intended on ever doing a business, no business. This was just for fun. And after that, There was definitely ups and downs with suddenly fulfilling 300 t-shirt orders with no experience. Yeah. I realized that I needed to streamline us in a better way and maybe have a website and create a business away that people can actually continue to order.

Cause I didn’t realize so many nurses would be.

Sandra Pagenta: Gotcha. That is incredible. What I love about what you just said was it started from creating space from work. Exactly. I think that a lot of nurses get so caught up and at least for me, I [00:08:00] also was in the same, just that rat race of work, work, work, make money, make money, make money, put your head down and just work.

And what I really want nurses to see and to realize is that say, you give yourself. Three four weeks off. Exactly. People were like, why? I could never know, do that and allow yourself to go from looking straight down, head down like a, like an animal eating grass. Look around. And taken the scenery. It’s

Courtney El Refai: almost like you have to get bored.

You have, yeah. You have to give yourself time to get bored for these creative things to come to your mind.

Sandra Pagenta: Yes, I completely agree. And so a lot of nurses are gonna wonder like, well, I don’t know what to do. My whole thing is sit alone, have nothing to do something come to you. And it’s just so neat that I love that about your story.

How many hours a week you said you worked 20 hours a week on your business, and that is creating. Is that also designing? Do you make the. [00:09:00] How does this all?

Courtney El Refai: Yeah. So at first I ordered the shirt from a printing company because I knew nothing about printing t-shirts. And as I mentioned, I had over 300 orders of t-shirts within a month.

And I was just going through this printing company, having shirts delivered to my house, repackaging, relabeling, and, and sending them out. And it was honestly a little bit messy. When I decided that I wanted to, , make an official business and, and launch my own website, I talked to my husband and I was like, yeah, we’re going to kind of have to learn how to make these shirts at home.

So we learned how to make the shirts ourselves. We bought all the supplies. So that does take a lot of the time would be actually fulfilling the t-shirt orders. I make all the designs, myself, all the social media posts, all the, , admin stuff behind the scenes emails, reaching out to nurse influencers, trying to get my brand in front of as many nurses as I can.

So that 20 hours is really just. Everything combined.

Sandra Pagenta: Yeah, that makes sense because you’re right. I mean, even with the podcast , I’m doing my own marketing, my own everything, and you’re, you’re a one-woman show, so it’s a lot of work, but it’s actually a super [00:10:00] rewarding as you work on your business, how does it make you feel when you go to your job?

Courtney El Refai: So it feels kind of nice. Now that I have kind of my own stream of income that I created for myself, when I go to work, I’m not as worried, like for example, this travel assignment I’m on right now, it’s only eight weeks. I could get canceled at any time. , if anything did happen, I feel comfortable knowing I have a backup of , aside from.

Such as my t-shirt business. So it feels like a little bit, like I’m less dependent on my actual nursing job, if that makes sense.

Sandra Pagenta: I love that. I think that’s phenomenal. I think that was another one of my questions. Exactly. How does it work? But it sounds like you’re building your own, you’re building the shirts, you’re doing the actual manufacturing and so you kind of cut that person out so you can immediately ship out to people.

Throughout this process, I know there’s been highs. I know there’s been lows, but would you describe for me and my listeners? Because they’re thinking, oh man, she just had it easy. She just walked into this. Yeah. So tell me about a [00:11:00] struggle that you’ve had throughout this whole process and throughout your nursing career that you thought that’s it I’m over it’s toast.

Yeah,

Courtney El Refai: honestly, this business when I, when I first did the t-shirts that large 300 group order from, , all these nurses that I. Throughout the country. Through my social media, I was working with a printing company and like I mentioned earlier, it was mid COVID. So, , I had people sending me money, all different, , some people were sending me, Venmo’s not even saying their name, not even saying like anything.

Suddenly I had all this, , all these people placing orders with me. The t-shirt manufacturing company was having their own supply issues because of COVID. So actually what happened is a lot of people paid for t-shirts in certain colors that the printing company didn’t even offer at the moment because of, , supply shortages.

So it honestly was quite frustrating. And I had to reach out to a lot of people to ask them if they wanted their money back or if they wanted to change their, their shirt color. There was also a lot of other issues with the printing company that I didn’t expect, like sending the wrong size or sending the wrong color.

When I got the shirts, then I had to sort through them all shipped them all out. So I actually did I kind of [00:12:00] paused for many months debating whether or not I really did want to launch this business because I thought if this was just my first experience and it was so overwhelming, people were upset.

Things are taking long. I didn’t know if I could really handle that which is why I decided I needed to just take everything in house and learn how to make them myself. Cut down on the time. And , I only sell what I have in stock, so I know that there’s not going to be anyone buying something.

I’m not going to be able to provide. Yeah, there’s definitely a lot, a lot. You learn when you first start a business.

Sandra Pagenta: Yeah. And so as far as what you just said, it, I’m going to ask a up question just because I’m interested. So you said you can only sell what you have in stock. Does that mean you have to keep up with the website, like you update, like, okay, I’ve got five of these shirts.

Exactly. It’s like, yeah. Updating on the website.

Courtney El Refai: Exactly. And the reason why is, like I mentioned before, is that I didn’t have a website. People were buying shirts for me that I actually didn’t have in stock. I was relying on the printing company and they were showing they had them in stock, but really behind the scenes, they didn’t because of the supply issues that happened from COVID.

I want to make sure that if anyone ever [00:13:00] places an order on my website, I have everything I need to send them out. The next day if needed. So I definitely do keep up with my own inventory. I order my own supplies. I keep track of everything and it’s been a lot smoother since then. ,

Sandra Pagenta: another thing that I would like to just let my listeners hear is the skills that you’re ascertaining as you’ve been learning this new thing.

I mean, you’re learning not only about business, but you’re learning about manufacturing. You’re learning about inventory. You’re learning about how to make t-shirts and. PR pressing, or what do you

Courtney El Refai: call that? He pressing

Sandra Pagenta: heat pressing you’re learning all these different skills. So even though at your job as a NICU nurse, you might have it down.

You might be like, I’m the girl. I know what I’m doing. You’re putting yourself in positions that you’re uncomfortable in. And that is where. Happens. It happens. It happens. And it occurs in the areas where you’re like, I don’t know what I’m doing and it doesn’t have to be nursing. You don’t have to go into a new field of nursing that you’re [00:14:00] uncomfortable and new at to grow.

And I want my listeners to hear that you can grow in a completely different field. Unrelated to nursing. Nursing is still fueling this. And so, , my

Courtney El Refai: t-shirts as well. I mean, I do make nurse related t-shirts but had, I just decided to make a design of anything else, , that’s not nursing related at all.

I would have been learning all of these things as well. I just so happened to kind of tie it into nursing a little bit accidentally because I, , made the shirts for work. Yeah, definitely. Any nurse can start any business nursing related or not nursing related. It’s all, it’s all beneficial.

Sandra Pagenta: I love that Courtney beautifully said so throughout this journey, that was a low have you can, can you tell me your real high, like a moment that you realized.

Oh, I’ve this, this is incredible right here. Like any moments in your career, I mean, professionally, but also in your entrepreneurial space?

Courtney El Refai: Well, professionally I’d say like my biggest high, the best feeling was when I felt like I actually had enough [00:15:00] experience and knowledge as a NICU nurse to take my first travel assignment because I’d worked two and a half years at two different hospitals, made sure I tried taking care of all different types of patients.

And when I finally felt like I could work as a travel nurse and take care of any baby in this. That was just like a key moment for me that I was super proud of. And as far as my business, , I made the website myself as well. , when you’re a solo entrepreneur, you do everything yourself.

So I made my own website. It took me so long. I was just so proud of like how it turned out. And when I launched it, I actually had a timer set up on my Instagram. Didn’t really have a big following, but there were people like waiting on my website before I went live. And that had to have been like the best feeling ever.

And of course like your first order always feels amazing too. So.

Sandra Pagenta: It’s so true. When you start to see that people are excited for you, that people are supporting you and exactly. I, yeah, I think that’s incredible. Good, good high, good. Low. I like those. I know. Any mentors has anybody come alongside of you?

I know you would shout it out to your husband. It sounds like you guys are a close team. [00:16:00] Anybody else along the way, that’s really kind of taken you under your wing again in the entrepreneurial space, but also production. ,

Courtney El Refai: I can’t think of anyone specifically. I feel like every unit there’s always going to be those nurses that take you under their wing, especially as travel nurse, you always have to find out your resource people.

Who’s going to be there to help you because a lot of people they’re just there to do their job, ? And when you’re there as a travel nurse, you don’t often get orientation and you’re often don’t know how hospitals do certain things. So I’d say probably those helpful nurses at each hospital I worked at are, are my mentor to keep.

Traveling and sort of the same with my, with my business. I see a lot of nurse entrepreneurs especially apparel brands and other t-shirt companies that aren’t nurse related. They’re kind of my role models as well. I see their successes and try some of their tactics and try some of their marketing ideas.

And they’ve been working well for me.

Sandra Pagenta: So Courtney, what is next for your apparel company? What are you rolling out now?

Courtney El Refai: So I actually just announced the new sweatshirt that I had have had in mind for a while. It’s an embroidered sweater. This is the word nurse. One of [00:17:00] the things I’ve noticed is that I have a lot of special.

Designs. And some people message me and they say, oh, I can’t find my specialty. And I’m just, like I said, I’m one person I’m not able to make this exactly specialties for every single nurse. So I’m trying to make it a little bit more products that any nurse can order or buy or represent. So this nurse.

So far, I’ve gotten messages like crazy already. I haven’t launched in set until Saturday. But I’m just trying to reach out to more nurses and not focus too much on the specialty. Just so other people can feel included as well. Sure.

Sandra Pagenta: For the embroidery, are you doing the work yourself? Nope.

Courtney El Refai: So I actually, I ordered the sweatshirts in bulk and then I found a local embroidery shop and I took them to her.

She embroidered them for me and I just got them back a few days ago and they looked great. You’re launching it.

Sandra Pagenta: I was thinking just between you and me. I really hope that you do a nurse practitioner one and just read it out loud. Yeah. I saw them. I thought they looked phenomenal and I was thinking,

Courtney El Refai: you never

Sandra Pagenta: know.

[00:18:00] Stay tuned. All right. For the last question of our interview, could you give me any advice you have for a new nurse starting off on her career, who would doesn’t know where to start? And so a piece of advice for her to keep, and then a piece of advice for her to talk.

Courtney El Refai: I’d say, yeah, this is a good question.

A piece of advice to keep would be to just stay true to yourself. Follow your heart. If something is telling you a certain specialty or area of nursing is pulling you towards it, I would say. Trust your gut and try your best to go with that. And I guess a piece of advice, the toss would be anyone who says otherwise.

Like, like I mentioned earlier, NICU nurses, a lot of times they hear stuff from other nurses, oh, you need to start with med surge, or you need to start in other areas and get experience first. And that is absolutely not true. If NICU is really where you want. There are so many new grad programs that will take you straight out of college and teach you everything to be a NICU nurse.

So stay true to yourself and go for it.

Sandra Pagenta: I love it. You heard it here. Folks do not go to med [00:19:00] surge. Don’t do that. I love it. I’m going to have to write a book. Just don’t go to med surg book.

All right. So. For the last part of the rapid fire questions, questions, questions. All right. Tell me because you’re in fashion. What is your favorite fashion designer?

Courtney El Refai: Oh my gosh. Favorite fashion designer. You got me here. I don’t really have a favorite fashion designer.

Sandra Pagenta: Oh my gosh.

I’m my

Courtney El Refai: own inspiration. I mean, maybe so, but I feel like, I feel like travel nursing actually had, has gotten, made me shed so much. I’ve shed all my belongings, really everything we owned fit in our car at one point. So I really didn’t have a lot in terms of like clothing and things like that. I think fashion wasn’t really like my main focus with traveling.

It was more about just. Functionality Bible. Yeah.

Sandra Pagenta: So then what about, okay, so then what’s your favorite functional brand or maybe you have like [00:20:00] a favorite? Nothing you don’t, you’re just, you’re just, you’re just surviving over there.

Courtney El Refai: Nikki survival. No, I do like, I do like places like H and M. I feel like they have functional clothing.

That is also a little bit, , more elevated. Yeah, pretty affordable, but also nice.

Sandra Pagenta: There you go. That’s what we’ll go with. And then I guess, how do you get inspired to create, what do you do? What’s your regimen. So when I

Courtney El Refai: want to create, usually I’ll make sure I have a free day, no work, no plans.

I’ll get some coffee, got to have the coffee. Usually I’ll have an idea in mind and I’ll just kinda, I’ll just kind of go for it. I’ll try it out. One project that kinda got into during COVID was I made some resin art, so I bought some supplies and started working with resin and just gave myself a free day sort of same thing that happened with my t-shirt designs.

I just had free days of, , sitting in on my computer, maybe looking on Pinterest, getting ideas. Just trying things out. I like

Sandra Pagenta: that. So I feel like that’s, that’s my three questions. I think I asked you three, right? The clothes, the do, we kind of answer the designer of the clothes [00:21:00] and inspiration we got there.

We were good. Well, thank you, Courtney, for coming onto the podcast. Where can people find you? Give a shameless plug?

Courtney El Refai: Yeah, so my website is minimal nurse.com and our Instagram is minimal dot nurse. You can find us there and see all our past. Oh,

Sandra Pagenta: tell me, how did you come up with the name minimal?

Courtney El Refai: Honestly it just came to my head one day.

I feel like it was representative of me, especially with having sold all my stuff and all of my furniture, everything we owned fit in our car, and I was just kind of living as this travel nurse and the most minimal lifestyle. So it just kind of stuck and it also kind of goes along with my designs, trying to be a little minimalist.

Sandra Pagenta: I like that. Very cool. Well, thank you guys for listening. Thanks for Courtney for sharing your journey and just allowing people to see that it is possible to have your hand in both worlds and that you need to create space, create space between your workdays so that you could be alone and you can see what’s inside of you.

That’s trying to get out. And I love that about your journey so much, Courtney and. [00:22:00] Don’t forget to enjoy the journey in nursing and in your careers. Thanks for coming along today, guys.

Courtney El Refai:  Thanks for having me.