By Victoria Lewis, BSN, RN

Nursing skills like problem-solving, communication, and prioritization can translate naturally to entrepreneurship. Nurses with business ideas can benefit from trusting their instincts, doing their research, and taking the first step.

A few years ago, I never imagined I would be running my own business while also working as an OR nurse.

Entrepreneurship wasn’t part of the plan. In fact, becoming a nurse was already a significant career change for me. Once I finally made it into nursing, I thought I had found the career path I had been looking for.

What I didn’t expect was that my experience as a nurse would eventually lead me in another direction.

Nursing wasn’t my first career, but it was always in my heart

I grew up surrounded by people who worked in healthcare. Several members of my family are nurses, including my cousin, an oncology nurse I’ve always looked up to.

For a long time, nursing was something I felt drawn to, even though my career initially took me in a different direction.

Before becoming a nurse, I worked in healthcare advertising. During COVID, I was working remotely and being considered for a significant promotion. From the outside, it seemed like an obvious next step: more responsibility, a bigger title, and better pay. On paper, it was a great opportunity.

At the same time, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wanted something different.

After several conversations with my husband, I came back to something I had talked about for years: becoming a nurse. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it was something I needed to pursue.

Choosing nursing meant making a major change, but it also gave me the opportunity to pursue work that felt more aligned with what I wanted to do.

Finding my place in the operating room

When I started nursing school, I thought I might eventually work in labor and delivery. The operating room wasn’t really on my radar. I hadn’t had much exposure to OR nursing, and I didn’t fully understand what the role involved.

That changed during my last semester of nursing school, when I had the opportunity to spend time working with C-section procedures. I was immediately drawn to the operating room environment.

I appreciated the teamwork, the pace, and the way everyone in the room had a specific role while working toward the same goal. After shadowing in other surgical settings, I realized the OR was where I wanted to be.

As an OR nurse, I spend much of my day moving. I’m getting patients, gathering supplies, organizing the room, anticipating what the surgeon and surgical team will need, and helping make sure everything runs as smoothly as possible.

OR nurses are sometimes described as the conductors of the operating room, and I think that description fits. The role requires you to stay organized, communicate clearly, think ahead, and adjust quickly when circumstances change.

At the center of all that activity, though, is the patient. Patients undergoing surgery are often experiencing one of the most vulnerable moments of their lives. Being able to help someone feel safe, cared for, and comfortable during that experience is one of the things I value most about being a nurse.

At the same time, the physical demands of this area introduced me to a problem that would eventually lead to my own business, VIX.

The compression socks that started everything

When I first started working in the OR, I wore regular socks to work. As I spent more time around other nurses, I began hearing more about compression socks and noticed how many of my coworkers wore them during their shifts.

I decided to order a few pairs online, hoping they would make long days on my feet more comfortable. They helped a little bit, but I still wasn’t satisfied with how they felt.

I continued coming home after work with tired, aching feet and legs, and I talked about it often enough that my husband eventually asked me, “What are you going to do about it?”

That question stayed with me. I started thinking about what I would change if I could create the type of compression sock I wanted to wear. I wasn’t thinking about building a large company or even becoming an entrepreneur. I just wanted something that felt comfortable and worked well for the demands of my job.

From an idea to an actual business

When I started, I had no previous experience owning a business. I didn’t know how socks were manufactured or how to run an online store.

What I did have was an idea I wanted to explore. I spent months learning about fabrics, compression levels, and the construction of compression socks. I knew I wanted to explore bamboo-based fabric because I liked how soft and comfortable it felt.

However, I quickly learned that creating compression socks involved much more than choosing a fabric I liked. Compression socks are technical apparel, so the fabric blend, construction, and compression all must work together.

Fortunately, our manufacturer had experience in this area and guided me through the development process. I didn’t realize at first that there were manufacturers I could reach out to who could help me figure out how to turn my idea into an actual product. It took months of learning and refining the product before I felt comfortable sharing it with other people.

I asked coworkers to try the socks and give me their feedback. Having nurses who understood the demands of spending long shifts on their feet was especially valuable because they could tell me what was working and what could be improved.

Working as a nurse while building a business

Balancing nursing and entrepreneurship has been one of the more challenging parts of this experience. There have been plenty of days when I’ve finished a long shift, come home exhausted, and then needed to switch my attention to the business. That might mean packing orders, responding to customers, working through an operational issue, or handling whatever unexpected challenge came up that day.

Managing both roles requires a lot of energy and organization. Over time, I came to realize that many of my nursing skills also have helped me as a business owner.

As nurses, we’re constantly prioritizing tasks, solving problems, communicating with different personalities, adapting when plans change, and staying calm in high-pressure situations. Those skills are just as valuable when you’re trying to build and operate a business.

Nursing has taught me the importance of listening carefully to people, understanding their concerns, and making sure they feel heard. The circumstances are obviously very different when working with a patient versus a customer, but the importance of communication carries over.

To the nurse with a business idea: Trust your gut

I didn’t expect to leave healthcare advertising and become a nurse. Once I became a nurse, I didn’t expect that my experience in the OR would eventually inspire me to start my own business.

Both changes started with recognizing that I wanted something different and being willing to explore where that feeling might lead.

If you’re a nurse who has an idea for a product, service, or business that you keep coming back to, give yourself permission to explore it.

Do your research. Talk to people you trust. Connect with people who have experience in the area you’re interested in. Learn as much as you can before making major decisions, while recognizing that you probably won’t have every answer before you begin.

Much of building VIX Socks has involved learning as I go, listening to feedback, making adjustments, and becoming more comfortable with the fact that I won’t always know exactly what comes next.

I’ve learned that your career doesn’t have to fit neatly into one path. Sometimes an unexpected direction is worth exploring.