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In this episode, we get to speak with Courtney Harring. She’s a co-founder at Med Snake Media, and she has been running this full-service growth and billing company with her co-founder Shaneé Moret. She’s got a fantastic story. We had a chance to chat earlier in the green room, and I’ve known her for over a year. It has been amazing to watch her journey and growth come full circle. She’s been working on some fantastic things. And I’m super excited to have her on the podcast to share her journey.

Our Guest

Courtney Harring

Hacks to take Away

  • There’s a lot of things that you get from school, but I also think that people with creative minds need to also be cultivated.
  • How she got into social work as her profession.
  • How she completely changed everything in her life.
  • Hardcore marketing for a health care facility.
  • Talking about mental stability.

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Read Full Transcript

Junaid Ahmed 0:10
Thank you for tuning in to hacks and hobbies with your host Junaid. In Season Two of hacks and hobbies were visited by our amazing guests coming from all walks of life, what to learn their story, their struggles and their journey on how they got to where they are today. So stick around.

In this episode, we get to speak with Courtney herring. She's a co founder at med snake media, and she has been running this full service growth and billing company. She's got an amazing story. We had a chance to chat earlier in the green room and I've been connected with her for over a year. And it's been really amazing to watch her journey and come offers full circle and she's doing some really amazing things. And I'm super excited to have her on the podcast. Courtney, thank you so much for taking the time and coming on to the podcast.

Courtney Harring 1:18
Well, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be on this podcast. I am just so excited to be able to tell my story and also kind of go through my journey and dismiss

Junaid Ahmed 1:38
That's beautiful. So as we were talking in the green room, you know, you're going over some of the things like like whenever, as as entrepreneurs, we know that we never get what we want when we need it. You know, if you want some pride, there's there's, there's an ambulance running by, or there's something happening. That's like a Okay, you know, just need to disconnect, like calm myself nerves down, and then see what can come out of this opportunity. And as entrepreneurs, we get to a point where we know exactly where we can find something. Sometimes things don't work out, but other times just like, okay, I can make the situation and work make it work for me. It's like, Hey, you know this was happening, blah, blah. So, tell us a little story about tell a little tell us and journey, a version of your journey that no one's heard before. And you know where to saw where, where did miss snake media came from and what inspired you to start yourself?

Courtney Harring 2:50
So something that probably no one has heard before is I never really fit in, in a lot of different ways. is in school, I was always the outspoken one, I was also the person that didn't really follow. You know, wasn't bullied, I didn't have friends, things like that. That's not where the story is going. But I just, I couldn't I guess follow rules, I thought that some of the rules were honestly dumb. Or they didn't make any sense, and how some of the things, you know, that I wasn't good at. And I'll just say this, I wasn't ever good at math. And I'm saying this because I always knew I didn't want to do anything in math. So it was kind of like, you know, why are we focusing on this? Like, how is this going to help my life and how is this going to mold me into the person, you know, that I need to be? So I want to start out with, of course, school is important. There's a lot of things that you get from school, but I also think that people with creative minds needs to also be cultivated. And one of the things about me is I am an artist, I can draw very, very well. Only drawing painting is different now. But I can, you know, different medium. So, drawing definitely pencil I'm more of a of a dreamer, someone to think outside of the box. And a lot of times that can be seen as just kind of not good, right and not conforming to society and doing exactly what I'm supposed to do A, B and C. So I'll kind of move to you know, college one of the things that I did was that really helped me grow was I am a division one athlete, full scholarship athlete here in the for the 200, high John's as well as all the relays That was the only place that my mind was quiet. My mind is always thinking, it's always running. And the only time it's not running is if I'm running, literally running. Yeah, I think I'm learning so much energy. Right? That I can't think, right. That's, that's my piece. That's my piece. And so I always thought it was a little bit weird because no one really talked about mental stability kind of around me and how important that also is. Right in our journey in life. Yeah. And so I am still working on that meaning, you know, trying to incorporate like meditation. And also just taking a moment taking a pause and actually doing this podcast is actually making me stop and think about what am I doing So again, I'm going to thank you for even having me on here.

Yeah, just you know.

Yeah. Thank you.

Junaid Ahmed 6:14
So what's next? So you you're a nonconformist. I'm going to just say that because, yeah, being because it's there's, there's something about school that wants you to make you conform. And and that's because the system, the schooling system is over 100 years old. They're designed for the industrial age where they want to, to stay in one place for eight hours. So this star would three hours, then they go to five hours. Then for full time work, you know, for school, then you're there eight hours. So they're training you to be in one place and working machine. And so they're making you conform, and it's totally okay now to know Not to be that conforming person, like, No, I'm going to be my own individual person. I'm going to come up with my own, you know, things that I'm passionate about and, and stuff. So totally awesome, totally get it. I was the same way. And then you come around about, you know, having your mind running all the time, which is, which is a beautiful thing, because you're constantly thinking you're constantly solving problems, you're constantly taking a stand, but then again, we do need to go to sleep because that's where, you know, they say that sleep. Lack of sleep is what causes memory loss because you're storing all that stuff in that short term memory. It's not getting the time to get transferred over to long term memory. So and it's amazing to see that you know, your your mind mind comes down when you're actually running and then you You're actually doing the transfer. So really cool. Really cool. points that you points. But yeah, I'm totally happy and glad that you're able to calm down and think about what you're actually doing and you know, share that with us.

Courtney Harring 8:19
Thank you so much. Absolutely. So fast forward to, I've gone to school, I went to college, I get a job. So my profession is social work. So because, you know, I'm creative, and I love people. I got into that business. And one of the things that I was doing was crisis work. So I was the one who came in if you were homicidal, or suicidal, or had any kind of audio visual hallucinations, I was the one that did your assessment, and decided if you were safe enough to be in the community. I was really good at that. I able to I was able to connect with people make very quick connection, right to get them to wherever they needed to be to be safe. And what happened was, I was doing well in that job and I got pregnant. I was 36 at the time, and things were just happening and it wasn't safe anymore, right? I'm not just walking around with my body. I had another body with me, right? So I had to do something different. So then I started working with veterans. I hadn't my son, and 10 weeks of him being out. They said that physically, he's possibly dying. Oh my god. So I lost my job during this time. And that was because I wasn't there. And Thank goodness, he is, you know, healthy now, but basically we had bone marrow biopsy, we had spinal tap. He also had, you know, just all of these things. So think about a 10 week old baby, having all of these problems, and then the I also lose my job. So I'm like, Okay, I'm pregnant, really? And I don't know, I have a baby now and I don't know. Yeah, so I was mad. And I tell people all the time, I was mad at a lot of things. I was mad spiritually. I was mad at my decisions in life. I had money, right? I didn't have a child without of, you know, well, I didn't have the money to do that. He does have a bad and we are together. But I'm just saying I wanted to make sure that I had everything I needed, personally, whether I was married on married or not. So what occurred was, I kind of slipped into a depression and postpartum I think And they didn't know if he was going to die or land. And there was some major liver issues and they couldn't figure it out. So during this time I went to huge depression. I had to move because I didn't have a job. I've been living with my boyfriend at the time. I we had to figure it out, live always been independent. So I decided to make my own business. Because the reason why I was in the predicament that I was in, was because I had the flexibility that I needed in order to raise my family. That wouldn't have happened to me.

Junaid Ahmed 11:36
Right? I mean, that's like,

Courtney Harring 11:38
so if I had the flexibility to go to the hospital, and I didn't have to clock in, I still would have had my job. Yeah. So I thought about that. And I said, Why can't I do this? Why can't I have, you know, flexibility and a job and make a living. So that's when I decided to Nice, nice first employee, or entrepreneur ventures was, it was called VC billing and consultant. And my child's name is Tyler. A lot of people were like, oh my gosh. Are you in VC? I'm like, No, it's just his initials. I didn't know what else to say. Okay. Yeah. So I was not creative with the name. So basically, I created that. And that's when I kind of started. Honestly, also, LinkedIn started to become a journey during that time, and I got on there and it was crazy. The first month. I got like four clients. They were small. Yeah, nothing big. But I was getting clients and I was able to pay my car. No, I know. It sounds so silly. So all I want to do is pay my card.

That was my goal. Yeah. Five, right, my insurance and my card.

That's my goal. And I was doing that. And I felt so accomplished. Because I had went through my savings with this doctor's bills. You know, I went through everything and I just wanted to pay my car, you know, especially now you're right. It's so it seems so minor, but it was everything to me.

Yeah.

So I continued to go on LinkedIn. I didn't create any content. I don't think I created a video until maybe January. Oh, wow. But I yeah, I got on LinkedIn around 2018, I would say, started playing with it. And then I saw this amazing person, which is Shay Moray, on there, and she did a video and I don't even know what the video was about. What she resonated with me. And I said, I think she said something like, you know, contact people. Like you can't just be on here like people aren't going to just come to you, right? You're going to have to reach out. So I reached out to her and our first conversation was probably over an hour. And it was because she also had a two year old, we had a lot of, of things that were in common. And one of the things was both of our children had been sick at one point and very early ages. So she understood the isolation that I had, because when your kid is, is supposedly sick, nobody, you're kind of isolated, because you're not the person on Facebook, showing your kid with tubes and all this stuff and, you know, in a picture, right or you're not Easter hunting or going to Halloween, he's not doing that he's in the hospital. So it's kind of isolating. Because you see things on social media, right and it kind of isolates you even though it may be real or not real like people might not be happy on their But you know, it's always portrayed. So what was interesting was I had a billing company, and she has a marketing company, and we're both passionate about health care, because that to save either our lives or children's lives. Yeah. And we said, Why don't we come together? So a lot of people told us that we were completely not like, why would you have a billing company? Yeah, and then a marketing company. And I'll tell you why. One of the things that I do is I can build the practice, from, you know, the inception all the way until it, you know, being an actual practice or taking insurance or cash or whatever, I could run your whole business. Yeah. But what happens is, let's say open your, your, your health care, business, whatever it might be private practice. You don't have any clients. Just you need someone to move. market for you. And that is exactly what was happening. I had open for practices and all of them, they didn't have any clients. So guess what, I wasn't getting any money because there's no billing either. You don't have any clients. So that's how men's naked media came to be. Because we were referring back and forth to one another. She would even get, you know, marketing people, and then they didn't know how to build, or they didn't have the insurance panels that they needed. They needed credentialing. So it just went back and forth. And we're like, let's just form this. We get along. We have respect more than we get along. And even if I don't like what she says, I still listen to what she said. That makes sense. Yeah. And that's what you have to do in a partnership.

Perspective first.

And that's kind of where it Gone. So as you know, my business partner is amazing. With marketing. She just has this natural. People just want to listen to her. They want to look at her. They want to see what's going on what does she do? And she's helped me Even my kind of market my side of the business. So we started our business December of 2018. And we are now in what September Holy, Holy Moly September. And we are now filling for over one p clients, just for my billing section. We are now billing for three rural hospital and we have four other hospitals coming up. So we have completely changed everything in our lives.

Junaid Ahmed 17:55
Yeah.

Courtney Harring 17:57
Our business has just completely and that's just On my side, her side as well, for the marketing. She probably also has like 1520 clients, hardcore marketing for their health care facility. So we've grown from literally like five clients to over

a six figure businesses will be done

in a matter of seven months, eight months,

Junaid Ahmed 18:29
which is amazing. Not me. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Courtney Harring 18:34
So, right now we're scaling. There's just so many things that we have to do. One of the things that, you know, people ask me is, how do you think you got here so quickly? One of the things is, number one, I had a business partner, it's really hard to go this alone, right? Some kind of community, right? Isn't it scary to be alone and and It's just like, what are they doing?

Junaid Ahmed 19:02
Yeah. I go every day.

Courtney Harring 19:06
Yeah, well, you just need to call me Just

call me and we'll do it. We'll do it. We'll get it together.

It's hard to go in alone. I have to be put in check. When you're doing this business or any type of business, you don't know everything. No, you have to be humble and ready to learn. And that's another key component, right that we need in here. You're not perfect. And you've got to really check yourself and sometimes the only person that can check yourself, check you is your business partner.

So we've had a lot of checking lately.

Because we've had this scale.

We now have over 10 employees.

And we're just we're just moving forward. Yeah. Thank you.

Junaid Ahmed 20:03
That's so amazing. I love that story. You know, for the longest time, you know, there's there's a big difference between a freelancer and an entrepreneur. And a lot of people can do freelancing because you know, you'd have to do it on your own. Again, you're using your own time. But I've been telling this to everybody that I talked to, you know, when you're doing it alone, you only have 24 hours. As soon as you add a second person, you now have 48 hours in that 24 hours. Yet another person, you're just multiplying that time so now your one hour becomes five hours when you have five people. You've just compounded you know you exponentially expanded that our you know, when people say, you know, I wish there was more out hours in the day. This is how you get more hours in a day. That's right, you build a team, right? No Go hundred hours in that one hour, you know, because now you got hundred people working on that same project and it makes so much sense. You know, there's a there's Michael Hyatt, um, he talks about, you know, he just came out with a book called free to focus and lifetime and as entrepreneurs, we are going it alone. We're going to do this alone and show we have support from our spouses and our partners and our family. But we're still doing it alone. And so it Michael Hyatt talks about virtual assistants hire an assist, assistant hire, you know, build a, a sap or a, you know, your preset, I can't remember but it's the process. You know, what's your process of what you're doing? And so then you can grow your business. Because now you have these things in place you can bring people in to take different parts of this SAP and Mala. It's it's so powerful. And you know, you're telling me, you know, you've got 10 employees, you've got you, you have grown, you know, from two clients to a six figure business in eight months, nine months, which is like, wow, that's powerful.

That's amazing. Yeah.

Courtney Harring 22:36
Well, what I love is that you explained exactly what we are trying to do in our businesses. One of the things that we're doing right now is we're almost we say that we're cloning each other. So I have a supervisor and billing supervisor who's able to do exactly what I can do here. There's no way I guess, you know, we've got a humble ourselves, right? Oh, yeah. So we think we can do everything. But that's not the way it is. Right? We can't do all of this stuff. You're never going to sleep. I also liked the way that you said, you have to basically invest to get more time. And I'll shout this out. I have a two year old he was not in school. Well, guess what? When I started to get 10 clients, he had to be in school. I couldn't work at night. Do I had to pay the God knows I'm going to shout them out. 1400 dollars a month.

Junaid Ahmed 23:34
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I totally get your

Courtney Harring 23:37
time. Yes. So yeah, I was upset I losing 1400 dollars. But look at all the time I got, you know, so that's also scaling. You know, you got to scale your personal life. And you also have to scale in business. And I think that's where a lot of people fail and they don't want to hand it over. But be joining us when you hand over that problem. That I see oh my gosh, somebody else has it. I just have to check in

that.

Junaid Ahmed 24:07
It is. It is really, really, really cool to be able to do that. Because when I started podcasting, I was you know, I had at the time and that was, you know, staying up late. And I was editing all my episodes and one episode. Sure have spent an hour recording it, but it would take me another three hours to edit the episode. And initially, it was like, all right, no, this is no big deal. I can just get it done. Have a process in place. Then I had interviewed over 40 people now 40 episodes. That's 120 hours for me to edit. Yes. And I don't have 120 words. Yeah, you don't have it? No. So then I was like, I'm going to bring somebody in who's an expert. You can take the simple task and get it done. And this gives me the final product. So then I can go and publish it. Right? It was it's like a weight off your shoulders like you can now. Oh my god,

Courtney Harring 25:16
right? And especially with the brains that we have that they're all just running, like, that's a nightmare. Like that's her good story is right. You're like, Oh my god, I have all this stuff to do, and I can't even do it. And one of the things that I will tell people is get an assistant. Yeah, can make your appointment, Lord who wants to, you know, go back and forth with someone on when can they meet? You have time to that? You know, I now tell my assistant and you say, I'm here because one of the things that I I'll also give just a little tip, you know that you need to scale when you Missing appointments.

Junaid Ahmed 26:01
Yes.

Courtney Harring 26:04
And that was me. I started missing appointments. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, why can I do this and what's going on? And it was because I had too much stuff, you know, or information, like you said in my brain. And most of the time I'm driving, or I'm multitasking, and it's great because I get to send my assistant, hey, it pings in my brain. I send it to her like I'm base camp, and I'm like, hey, make an appointment for this person I haven't heard from or whatever is going on. Yeah. And it's gone and I get to purge. It's almost like purging information. And you know, someone else is going to take care of

Junaid Ahmed 26:43
it. It's just like what so this is exactly what I'm geniuses do right? When they say you know, you need to journal. That's exactly what you're doing. You're putting all your ideas down on paper. You don't have to put them on your mind anymore. They they discovered that Storage full of notes. And these notes, you know, this is Albert Einstein storage is full of books with his notes. Because in order to use your mind as a processor you to

stop,

make it a storage. And that's what most people do. Right? Most people do they, their have all these thoughts in their heads. Like someday I'm going to do this, but now they're walking around with these backpacks and these, you know, these basically you're you're walking around on top of your head, a big suitcase of all the ideas that you're going to do. Well, that's going to wear you down. So if you're writing down your brain is now free to process information. So just like that, you know, you're you're handing of these tasks to somebody else so they can take an action and do it. You've delegated you know, delegating so important and The more I see it, the more I realized that what I've not been doing like I look around my we've moved into our house about two years ago. It's over two years. My office still not complete, because I need somebody to help me write this down. My workshop is not complete because I don't have that extra help. No, I'm, I'm looking at. I'm looking at my wife like, Hey, can you help me? Then when she's on? She's like, Oh, I need to do this in the kitchen. I need to reorganize.

Courtney Harring 28:29
Yes. You guys got Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah,

Junaid Ahmed 28:35
exactly. And, you know, I'm like, Oh, my God, we need somebody. So now, I'm like, I need somebody to help me organize this office. I have somebody to file this stuff away.

Courtney Harring 28:49
Yes. Yeah. It's crazy. And and, you know, I just moved like, 3030 days ago. Yeah, I am just like, Oh my gosh, like who's gonna help me with the closet? I mean, the stuff is in the closet.

Junaid Ahmed 29:07
Yes. But

Courtney Harring 29:07
I mean, we moved. So you know, I just threw it in there.

Junaid Ahmed 29:11
Yep. still needs to be organized.

Courtney Harring 29:14
Right. It's still need to be organized. So that'll be on my list

as well. Yeah. Because you as well, but it's something but again, I think be cognizant of that is again, just so amazing and important. I think, again, some people are just in their own world think that they can do everything and it doesn't work like that. It doesn't. And you have to delegate and you have to be okay with someone else touching your stuff.

Junaid Ahmed 29:47
Yes, that's

the hardest thing. I mean, no reason why you're, you know,

Courtney Harring 29:55
just crazy. Okay for someone to touch your thoughts or to know your little Secret, right? There's still not going to make the secret sauce like you, right? I don't care what recipe or whatever you're doing, but you've got to give it away. And I love the way that you said, you know, purging, getting it out of your system, getting it out of your brain got so important. Yeah.

Junaid Ahmed 30:22
Because it's like, it's like our computers, right? our phones, they start to start becoming really slow after a couple of years because we've you've you've stored so much stuff in that it's running out of memory. It's not that the phones have gotten slower there as fast as how they were when they first when you first bought it. They're still as fast as they you know that it's just that we have because we have grown we have become faster and using our applications. Right. So and and when you mentioned about you know your closet every three months we're going through our kids closet, we have three kids. So every three months, every four months, like all right, these kids are these clothes are not going to fit in my on my one year old daughter anymore. Gotta get doing that all the time. And like, you know, that's, that's part of life, you're always growing like our entire body is brand new every week, because we have all those dead cells are gone, you have brand new cells. So just like that, we need to be able to let go and bring people in here. All right, absolutely. So we've just got a few questions and we can wrap this up. Sure. What is one hobby that you wish you got into?

Courtney Harring 31:49
So I know this is gonna sound hilarious, but I love to play video games. So I want to actually get back into the hobby of playing video games. And one of my biggest love of video games is Call of Duty. Yeah, I am one of those people. Before my son, I was really, really good. And I had a plan and all of that stuff. So I feel like I need to get back to that. And yes, I am almost 40 but I'm good.

Junaid Ahmed 32:24
No, absolutely. I totally get that and I would love to get back to my video gaming to got a virtual I've got virtual reality set up and I can play all sorts of game recently they just introduced you could play racquetball by yourself in the ritual room. You're inside the sphere and it's crazy. All right. Next one, what is your favorite movie or TV show?

Courtney Harring 32:53
Oh, my favorite movie, which is also hilarious is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and it's the old One with Gene Wilder of nervous I thinking oh my god, you gotta watch

it Oh

yeah, I'm like a kid.

Junaid Ahmed 33:13
Really? Yeah, no, I get to man. I I sit and watch animated movies all the time. Yeah, if I can. It's like, it's like, Okay. What movie would you choose if you get to play character in it?

Courtney Harring 33:33
Oh my so I would say the movie a movie and I had one that sounds silly but like Alice in Wonderland. Alice

Junaid Ahmed 33:51
absolutely could totally be Alice. That's the

Courtney Harring 33:55
fun one walking around. Yeah, and weird world. raining, raining.

Junaid Ahmed 34:02
Yeah and honey. And that's exactly what they did and Ready Player One. They had to be at this movie and play and figure out okay, what do you need to do and and the book version look sounds really cool. Then they were they were able to squeeze into the movie so yeah. favorite superhero? Who would that be?

Courtney Harring 34:23
Oh my goodness. So I really, I feel well right now. It's Apple, man.

I like the water. How dope is that?

Junaid Ahmed 34:35
That's a really dope, my. Yeah, did it really

Courtney Harring 34:39
sounds good. They did a really good work on that movie. And that was super cool. And I do think that, you know, I loved how they tied in, especially the oceans and how we're polluting it. Yeah, and I thought that was a really good touch on explaining that to people that we've got a really beautiful something here for our you know, water people. There's no water people but unit

Junaid Ahmed 35:06
yeah water animal. Beautiful. I love it. So who would be? So that's your superhero documentary. Last question. If you were a board game, what would it be?

Oh my clue. clue. That's an awesome game.

Courtney Harring 35:30
I love that because you always have to say can I like different alternatives? Right and again, never the fame.

Junaid Ahmed 35:36
Yes, that was the same. Awesome. Well, where can my audience find you?

Courtney Harring 35:42
So you can find me on LinkedIn and it's just Courtney herring. And then I, you know, obviously, med snake media all one word.com is my business website.

Junaid Ahmed 36:00
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Courtney for your time. I know as an entrepreneur, it's so hard to find time. But if we have the proper systems in place, and a team, then we can make a more time. Yes. Awesome. Great. Love you Love it. Exactly. Thanks so much for your time. And we'll talk to you soon. Okay. Congratulations, you made it to the end of the episode. Thanks so much for listening to our guest on this episode. Please send me an email at Junaid at hats and hobbies. com to tell me what you loved about our guests today. You could find links mentioned in this episode of the hacks and hobbies. com website.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Junaid Ahmed has been a user experience designer for over 15 years. As a UX professional, he uses the user-centered design philosophy to come up with solutions. Trust the system, it works!

“People say that we only live once, but I believe in living every day!”

Junaid has been interviewing people from all walks of life on his podcast Hacks and Hobbies.