Sara Avalos Podcast Transcript
Sara Avalos joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Sarah Avalos. Sarah Avalos is a multifaceted master’s prepared nursing professional with a rich and diverse background, spanning various critical areas in healthcare. Her journey through the nursing profession is more than just a career trajectory.
It’s a testament to her deep-rooted understanding of the multifaceted nature of nursing and the healthcare industry at large. Sarah has served in various roles in her career, including a combat medic in the U. S. Army during 9-11. Serving her country in a time of need, Sarah began her healthcare journey with invaluable frontline experience.
She has also served as an infection preventionist, nurse educator, program manager, and nurse consultant.
Brian Thomas: Well, good afternoon, Sarah. Welcome to the show.
Sara Avalos: Thank you for having me, Brian.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I appreciate you making the time, jumping on to do a fabulous conversation behind the mic today. And Sarah, we’re going to jump right into your questions here.
I want to talk a little bit about your career in healthcare. You started out as a combat medic and thank you for your service. By the way, uh, you were a nurse, a compliance officer, consultant, senior executive. And now the owner and CEO of MD Solve Systems. Could you share with our audience the secret to your career growth and what inspires you?
Sara Avalos: Thank you for the question, Brian. I came from poverty, and I was told that I was not capable and not smart. So in joining the military, it pushed me into very uncomfortable situations. And through that made me see that I was in fact capable. And I think that that’s part of the secret sauce, if you will, is to put yourself in an uncomfortable situation.
I moved in different countries. I’ve lived across the country; the US and I lived in Japan. And what ends up happening is that you go to a new place. You have to learn everything, the culture, because every state is a new culture. I don’t know if every health, every state is like their own country when it comes to healthcare, and I’m sure you could, you know about that.
And with that uncomfortable situation, then learning a new skill, new job, new everything. And then what I did is I trained, I learned it so well that I trained who would succeed me. And so that always made me feel really good about going to each places, each of these places. And I’m sure you’re probably wondering why I moved.
And after being a combat medic, I then became a military spouse. And then I had to move every three years. And so What inspires me is that realizing that we are capable of more than we think we are and learning through mistakes and that it’s okay not to be perfect.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Thank you. And I love everybody on the show here has a unique story.
Very special. That’s special to me. I’ve had about 750 odd guests now, and each 1 of them has been so special. I appreciate you sharing where you started out from. And where you got today through all the challenges and opportunities that were presented in your life. So thank you. And Sarah, with your diverse skill set and experience, it’s no wonder you started a health care consultancy.
What was the genesis behind your company?
Sara Avalos: So, in learning. As my profession shows that I’m an, I’m a registered nurse and a master’s prepared nurse, my first graduate degree is in nursing education. And the 2nd was in nursing informatics. And so, knowing that with emerging technologies, I realized that I needed to learn more than at the bedside.
So, I learned to program, and I learned CSS, Python, HTML, SQL, and that’s how I developed a platform, MD Solve. Now, this is a proprietary software, and modular, where I put different software together to make it a unique, you know, offering. And really, made me feel that I was capable because I had learned so many things along the way, I felt like, well, I became a nurse, and I learned all these things.
Why not program? And because it replicates, right? So, you build it once and you can modify little things, but it can just continue to exponentially serve you and. In doing so, serving other people serving nurse entrepreneurs health care practices that I serve. And I also put it on the secure server, making it HIPAA compliant.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. And it’s coming out. We can hear it through your story again. Sarah, you know, you became a nurse to help others, but transitioning you’re actually helping the clinicians now. So, you haven’t given up, given that up, but you did take that extra step, that extra challenge and learn this technology.
So you can support the clinicians now. And that’s an amazing story. So, thank you. And Sarah, you work with many health care and nurse entrepreneurs. What’s the one thing that most businesses look to you for help on?
Sara Avalos: So as I’m in the beginning stages within the first year of starting MD Solve, I find that people ask me about different things knowing that I have that background in compliance.
So, compliance consultancy is something that even this week I have another meeting about. What I’ve also been sought out For is and I’m sorry that it’s not one private practices that need communications platform and automations and front desk management. One in particular that comes to mind is where a physician doesn’t even have front desk staff, but the software serves as the front desk management.
And all she does is see patient after patient. So that’s been rewarding to see that it helps even when somebody doesn’t have a front desk, you know, or even the money to make that happen. The other thing that comes up is like coaching new nurse entrepreneurs because they see that their training is nursing, but finding their voice and finding their transition point where they have so many skill sets that transfer.
Into communications into teaching into being entrepreneurs and like Ivy drip. Businesses or house call businesses, all different kinds of things that nurses can do outside just an acute care position.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And again, love the fact that you’re able to. Again, identify a problem that a lot of these nurse entrepreneurs have, and you’re able to provide a solution for them.
So, appreciate that share. And Sarah, last question of the day here, are you leveraging any of that new and emerging tech in your business? And if not, have you found a cool tool or app you might share with us today?
Sara Avalos: Sure, and hopefully it’s not something you’ve heard before, but maybe you have. So, I utilize OpenAI’s API and I connected it to my platform in order to serve as a conversational chat.
With ChatGPT, we’ve heard this before. It’s been in the news everywhere. But to actually have that secure connection where computer talks to computer. In, in, in the cloud interface, so that has been super helpful in, whereas before they, you couldn’t have that kind of unique conversation. It was very, if this than that prior to chat GPT.
And with that, it’s just phenomenal in that space in health care and answering questions and so forth. So chat dot open. A. I. Dot com and I would recommend using the paid plan so that way you can use a free plugins and those plugins give you that much more unique. Breath of way to use chat instead of just typing in.
So that I have done, and then and I would recommend folks use it as an idea and writing assistant. The other 1 is Eureka dot IO. So E U R E K A A dot I O, um, anybody can type that in. And it’s a course book validation and content creation software, where you could see what people are searching for, what people are wanting to learn and know.
So that way, if somebody wants to, doesn’t know what to write, and wants to write a book, or wants to create a course, or a workshop, or anything like that, that software is good for that. Purpose.
Brian Thomas: for sharing. And absolutely. I would say the last eight months, maybe 10 months. It’s been all about conversational or generative AI.
We talk. Probably about every other podcast, maybe more about chat GPT and absolutely we leverage it here as well. And by the way, Sarah, we, I’ve interviewed a lot of folks out of Silicon Valley that have been working on this stuff for years and then all of a sudden. You know, open AI comes out with chat GP, chat GPT for the masses which has really flipped some things upside down, but appreciate what you’re doing with the platform and given us our audience some great ideas.
So thank you again. And Sarah, it was such a pleasure having you on today. And I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Sara Avalos: Thank you, Brian. Thank you for having me.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Sara Avalos Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
