The Healthy Enterprise

In this episode, Sarah Bellenger, nurse veteran and entrepreneur, shares her journey creating Manage You, an app designed to fix inefficiencies in healthcare credentialing. She discusses the challenges of launching tech in a traditional industry, overcoming skepticism, and the importance of innovation and female leadership in healthcare. Sarah also reflects on funding disparities for women entrepreneurs and her vision for Manage You’s future impact on the industry.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Sarah Bellenger and Manage You
03:07 The Need for Credentialing Solutions
05:53 The Development Journey of Manage You
08:48 Challenges in Healthcare Credentialing
12:06 The App's Features and User Experience
14:58 Expanding Manage You's Reach
18:03 Future Developments and Scalability
20:58 Entrepreneurial Insights and Challenges
23:51 The Role of Women in Entrepreneurship
26:47 Vision for the Future of Credentialing
30:00 Conclusion and Call to Action

Guest Information:
  • Guest's Name: Sarah Bellenger
  • Guest's Title/Position: Founder & Chief Executive Officer
  • Guest's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahrbellenger/
  • Company / Affiliation: Manage You App https://www.manageyouapp.com/
  • Guest's Bio: Sarah Bellenger is a clinician, Army veteran, and healthcare leader with over two decades of experience in patient care, team leadership, and system-wide operations. Her career spans cardiac ICU nursing, managing anesthesia teams across the U.S. and abroad, and even supporting executive health at the White House. After earning her MBA and serving in multiple leadership roles, Sarah recognized a recurring problem: capable professionals were burning out—not from the work itself, but from the inefficiencies surrounding it.
    Driven by her own experiences, including losing critical credentials during frequent relocations, Sarah founded Manage You—a mobile app that helps healthcare professionals and teams centralize documents, track deadlines, and simplify renewals. Her mission is clear: to reduce administrative burdens so clinicians can focus on what matters most—caring for patients.
Takeaways:
  • Sarah Bellenger is a nurse veteran and entrepreneur.
  • Manage You addresses the inefficiencies in the credentialing process.
  • Credentialing is a $39 billion industry with significant waste.
  • The app allows users to store and manage their credentials efficiently.
  • Users receive reminders for expiring documents directly on their phones.
  • The app is designed to be user-friendly and secure.
  • Sarah emphasizes the importance of networking and mentorship in entrepreneurship.
  • Women face unique challenges in securing venture capital funding.
  • The future of credentialing may involve digital verification and AI.
  • Sarah is committed to making healthcare credentialing more efficient.

Creators and Guests

Host
Heath Fletcher
With over 30 years in creative marketing and visual storytelling, I’ve built a career on turning ideas into impact. From brand transformation to media production, podcast development, and outreach strategies, I craft compelling narratives that don’t just capture attention—they accelerate growth and drive measurable results.
Producer
Meghna Deshraj
Meghna Deshraj is the CEO and Founder of Bullzeye Media Marketing, where she partners with eCommerce brands, healthcare institutions, and small businesses to scale profitably without outside funding. Under her leadership, Bullzeye has driven over $580M in annual growth and more than $1B in collective direct revenue for its clients. With a background spanning corporate strategy, IT, finance, and process optimization, Meghna brings a unique blend of data-driven marketing expertise and operational leadership. A Certified Six Sigma Black Belt with deep experience in program management and business transformation, she has successfully led global teams, large-scale integrations, and organizational change initiatives. Her superpower lies in marketing strategy and consulting, fueled by a passion for helping businesses grow through innovation, efficiency, and strong client relationships.
Guest
Sarah Bellenger
Sarah Bellenger is a clinician, Army veteran, and healthcare leader with over two decades of experience in patient care, team leadership, and system-wide operations. Her career spans cardiac ICU nursing, managing anesthesia teams across the U.S. and abroad, and even supporting executive health at the White House. After earning her MBA and serving in multiple leadership roles, Sarah recognized a recurring problem: capable professionals were burning out—not from the work itself, but from the inefficiencies surrounding it. Driven by her own experiences, including losing critical credentials during frequent relocations, Sarah founded ManageYou—a mobile app that helps healthcare professionals and teams centralize documents, track deadlines, and simplify renewals. Her mission is clear: to reduce administrative burdens so clinicians can focus on what matters most—caring for patients.

What is The Healthy Enterprise?

Join host Heath Fletcher on The Healthy Enterprise as he explores how healthcare leaders and innovators are transforming the industry from the inside out. Whether you’re a provider, tech entrepreneur, marketing strategist, or industry executive, these conversations deliver actionable strategies, innovative solutions, and human-centered insights to help you grow, lead, and make a lasting impact.

Created and produced by Bullzeye Media Marketing — let’s make something great together.

Heath Fletcher:

Hello again. Welcome to the Healthy Enterprise. If you're a returning listener, then thank you so much for coming back. And if it's your first time, then welcome. My guest today is Sarah Bellenger.

Heath Fletcher:

She's a clinician, army veteran, and a health care leader who spent over two decades navigating the intense demands of patient care. She is also the founder and CEO of Manage You, a mobile app that gives high performing professionals like herself and health care teams one central place to store their most important documents, track their deadlines, and stay on top of renewals. Let's meet Sarah. Sarah, welcome. Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Healthy Enterprise.

Heath Fletcher:

I'm looking forward to getting you to share your experience with starting your company. And so why don't you why don't you lead us off? Introduce yourself and and tell us about the Manage You App.

Sarah Bellenger:

Thank you for having me, Heath. I've enjoyed, getting to know you and the Healthy Enterprise podcast. I am a nurse veteran and an entrepreneur. I have, spent twenty years in the US army, and then I've been now I'm a nurse anesthetist. I've been a nurse for twenty five years.

Sarah Bellenger:

And all of my time doing management and being in the military and all different types of health systems has exposed me to a bunch of different opportunities to make teams better. And so what I've done is created an app that will help teams and individuals be more efficient with their credentialing process. So, that's after seeing all the the waste that of time and money that we put into the process, we developed this, or I developed it, the concept, and then found a team of developers in order to make sure that we had a product that was great for health care. So that's what I've done.

Heath Fletcher:

Amazing. And who's more qualified to to come up with something like that than someone who has lived it, worked it, breathed it, hated it Yeah. And understood it.

Sarah Bellenger:

Yeah. Right.

Heath Fletcher:

To It's

Sarah Bellenger:

a 39,000,000,000 industry credentialing is. And so that includes the education, all the state fees, association fees. I mean, it's just a huge, you know, mammoth of a problem, and we spend so much time managing these pieces of paper. And so that's why I just couldn't ignore it any longer. I went to business school and figured out, you know, hey.

Sarah Bellenger:

Some of these things are in silos, and we we can do better. So just bridging the silos into, you know, education, credentialing, administration, and making sure we're getting heard too.

Heath Fletcher:

Right. And I think you said the word paper. So people are going some people are going paper. What are you talking about paper? And it's still it's it's not a paperless environment, is it?

Sarah Bellenger:

Not at all. No. Many hospitals, one I worked in last year, they've they still hand you a folder and say, okay. Here's the cover sheets. Fill in these pieces of paper.

Sarah Bellenger:

Oh my gosh. Mhmm. And that's the reason we went to an app first, and so I developed a phone app for two reasons. First was that the paper, you first, you see a piece of paper when you get your nursing certificate, your diploma from college, your high school diploma, and you have to scan those. And so instead of making it a feature where you had to go find a scanner, we used a photography.

Sarah Bellenger:

You know? You can scan it with your phone. And then the second reason is all those pieces pieces of paper, you always need them when you don't have them. So now you have those pieces of paper stored in one place.

Heath Fletcher:

Now people who are in the know who have have lived your experience as well understand this this need for credentialing and and need for having access to it. But maybe explain why why why would you need it on at such at at at at your hand in in your palm of your hands so often that you would have to go to this extent?

Sarah Bellenger:

Mhmm. So you have stuff, papers expiring all of the time, plus you're doing training throughout the day and the week in a hospital or even education units anytime of the day. And so when you go to those trainings, usually, people just wait to get a certificate emailed to them or sent to them. But now you're in control of having them when you need them or if somebody loses them. So that's one reason.

Sarah Bellenger:

The second reason is nobody has any, you know, time that is this hour is when I'm gonna get all my emails about my credentials expiring. And so the second reason is that you can now get those expirations sent right to your phone, and so you can do something about it right away. These pieces of paper and these credentials are connected to you and your professionalism and maintaining your job, but they're also connected to the hospital. So the hospital is responsible for you being credentialed appropriately, and so they need to ensure that's done. So say somebody audits you and they need your nursing diploma or they need your, your doctorate from your last school, they will be asking for that right away, and you need to be able to have those things.

Sarah Bellenger:

So, sure, you can have a day or two, but all those days that are wasted could possibly mean expired documents and lost money.

Heath Fletcher:

Right. And you may be not necessarily even in your own country, for example, because it is for for for professionals that are traveling and and working internationally. Right? Mhmm. There you are standing in a in a foreign country ready to work, and you don't have your credentials all all ready to go, or you didn't know that they were expiring.

Heath Fletcher:

Wow.

Sarah Bellenger:

Right. Like, work. We, you know, we have many nurses from other countries, many physicians from other countries in America, you know, Canada, India, The Philippines, all of this. And now you can have these documents readily available at your fingertips. And so admission work is another great one.

Sarah Bellenger:

You need to get credentialed before you go, but usually you go to a staging area first.

Heath Fletcher:

Mhmm. Mhmm. And this really puts the the ownership on the individual and and allows them to have control over over these documents and and keeping them up to date. Right? Yeah.

Sarah Bellenger:

That's

Heath Fletcher:

brilliant. Did you kind of did you have a couple of experiences where you ran do you personally ran into where that big was a roadblock?

Sarah Bellenger:

Sure. I started having these experiences in about 02/2002. I was running a unit, and one of the nurses license expired. And so I had to work for him for two months. So it was, you know, 02/2002, and I was in Hawaii working, and there was no Internet to send us a nursing certificate.

Sarah Bellenger:

So that's fine. I love working. I love my job, but, you know, now we have less people to cover shifts. That would be one example. Definitely, recently had a physician that I had to send to Saturday morning CPR so that he could work on Monday.

Sarah Bellenger:

Many times, we've had people looking for education certificates, CPR, ACLS, where they're labeled differently coming from a company in their email. And so they can't find their certificate to send to the education office because it's, say, numbered 172AK. Right?

Heath Fletcher:

Right.

Sarah Bellenger:

It's not usually it's not always labeled with what you would think it's labeled.

Heath Fletcher:

Right.

Sarah Bellenger:

And so or somebody that didn't teach the class sends it to you. So there have been many incident incidents of that. Of course, sitting in credentialing offices for joint commission or for credentials review for CMS or Medicare, those happen too. And so you have to go find people's diplomas, etcetera. And then the final example is a a very personal one.

Sarah Bellenger:

I lost my anesthesia degree, right after COVID started. And so, of course, I found it two weeks after it finally arrived, but that was six weeks later. And so that's a very expensive thing to lose. But after being in the military, I had moved 10 times, and it was stuck in a box. Right.

Sarah Bellenger:

And so I paid for another one, got it later, and just really reflected upon that to say, I need to make sure I get this app going. That was the moment when I really said this is the time.

Heath Fletcher:

That was the day you woke up and said, I'm gonna be an entrepreneur and start my own business.

Sarah Bellenger:

Oh, health care and entrepreneur are just you know it was very it's been a a very surprisingly tough trail. Of course, you know, we know, but we're also seasoned in being strong and having grit. And Persistence? Come mhmm. We'd come through COVID.

Sarah Bellenger:

I was a nurse manager of an anesthesia group during COVID. You know?

Heath Fletcher:

Wow.

Sarah Bellenger:

We were yeah. But this is hard. Yeah. It's hard on you know, for very different reasons.

Heath Fletcher:

Let's share a few. Like, in the sense, I mean, you're also talking about a technology. You're talking about working in a system that's very old and set in its ways. What other what what other examples are you thinking of?

Sarah Bellenger:

Sure. Things that have been surprising are reaching out to people. You know, we'd all say everyone's so connected with social media and email and all of these different modes. But, really, it's so much harder to explain to people what the app does or how it does because people, you know, have a seven second attention span now. Yeah.

Sarah Bellenger:

And explaining the app is very simple with intention, but seven seconds is, very quick. So they, that has been you know, I guess it's called you know, marketing to my peers has been difficult. Getting the app out, you know, of course, the development part and learning how that all works is what has been exciting to learn. You know? Oh my gosh.

Sarah Bellenger:

You know, why aren't we doing this yet? That's been more of the opportunity, for and surprise there. I have lots of great ideas, and the other thing is, of course, they're expensive. And you can't do them all at once, and you have to have a list and a priority of how you're gonna do it. And that's great for anesthesia people because we you know, it's pretty sequential.

Sarah Bellenger:

You're not usually doing 20 things at once, but, you know, it's clear what has to come first. So that has helped. I have been pleasantly surprised by the all the support of my colleagues and fellow teammates, and that's been nice as they've learned along with me.

Heath Fletcher:

And so where is the app now? What stage are you in in development?

Sarah Bellenger:

Mhmm. So we're fully developed, and we have spent a year testing with our customers. And so the app is in both app stores, so Apple and Google, Google Play, and Apple App Store, and you can use it for two free documents and then get a subscription. Now what we've done is in recent months, we have expanded it so that hospitals and small groups can get the app to share with their team. So we're branching into credentialing offices and administrative teams sharing the app to get the documents more quickly so that those providers can then start working more quickly.

Sarah Bellenger:

Because we all know that there's plenty of open positions to the left and the right of you or when you're taking call at two in the morning and you're thinking, oh gosh. I wish that I could have a, you know, another person here, to the tune of thousands of dollars a day that are lost in billing because we don't have the ability to run rooms or keep beds open in a hospital for nurses. So the app is all is all set, and it's, it's helping teams across the country and around the world. We have some users in The Philippines and Germany. One person interested in Dubai for his group.

Sarah Bellenger:

So, it's kind of all over, the con the world.

Heath Fletcher:

Well, that's great. So global. It's everybody everyone has access to it then, so there's no really limitations as to where you live or work or play. You can have access to that app. That's great.

Heath Fletcher:

And initial initial feedback's been good. You've had some positive responses, it sounds like.

Sarah Bellenger:

Mhmm. We've had, a great responses and then plenty of, hey. I want it to do this or I want it to do that. And Right. Our top requests are usually security, and the app is as secure as a government website.

Sarah Bellenger:

But that's definitely on our list to continue to grow, with with that in mind. And then, education has been a very big question about when they start using when they're in there with three or five documents, they say, okay. I've got this nursing diploma and or, you know, I have my internal medicine degree, and now I need to maintain my continuing education. How do I do that? And so, that's that's a big one too, you know, making sure that you have those different education documents, which you can store under a tab just as easily as you store the other things, the other diplomas.

Heath Fletcher:

So is that a scalable option? Like, that is that somebody you can bring on later, the the education piece?

Sarah Bellenger:

It's there already.

Heath Fletcher:

Oh, it's there already? Oh, okay. I thought this is one of the ones that people are asking for. Let's do this. So you're already doing that.

Heath Fletcher:

Oh, wow.

Sarah Bellenger:

We took care of those things in the first year. We wanted to get the high hitters that people really thought were important and that those two, you know, came up most of the time. And so we did install ways for you to organize that. And then, of course, we haven't talked about this, but, you know, making sure that you could share it with anybody that you needed to. So whether it's a state association or whether it's the credential manager at your hospital or your, clinic clinic site, you can share it with everybody.

Sarah Bellenger:

And so Right. Initially, we had had some more, not as open ways to share it, and so we went and fixed that. So, we're now scaling to larger sized companies. So we we had it with just, you know, five person, 10 person kinds of companies to ensure that we were hitting all the parts that they wanted it to as all the functions. And so now we're branching into bigger companies, and so they can help their staff get those documents more quickly.

Sarah Bellenger:

Because, I mean, it's an average, you know, it's about 7,000 to $9,000 in just managing per person per credentials. So

Heath Fletcher:

That's what it costs an institution to manage that. Wow. Mhmm. Wow. And this changes that dramatically.

Sarah Bellenger:

Mhmm.

Heath Fletcher:

Yeah. Wow. That's great. That's a great so that's the next step that's going to large teams. And it's ready for that now, or you're working on that right at the moment?

Sarah Bellenger:

It is ready for that now. That has been our kind of our first half of the year goal. And so now we're starting to work into some more web app functions where you can, deal with portals. So we've talked about paper and how that is there. And I'm in rural health, so I get it.

Sarah Bellenger:

There's lots of paper. But the other thing is everyone has a portal. So everyone says, just fill the portal with all your documents. And so now we're working into where you can log in to your manage. You on the computer and drag and drop into whichever portal you need to be able to do.

Sarah Bellenger:

And so, currently, you can send it, and that works 99% of the time. Yeah. But we're just trying to keep the customers happy and make sure there's more options. So we're working on that and, increased, there's gonna be a dashboard for the administrator. So if a large facility with, say, 50 a 100 people signs up, So you have a 100 people on there.

Sarah Bellenger:

There's creating a dashboard for the administrator. So, just different tools for them to see that the that their customers are using it, that their health care providers, etcetera, are using it.

Heath Fletcher:

So how long has it been now since the day that the idea kinda came to mind and you're and you started researching? How long has it been in the process?

Sarah Bellenger:

A total of three years. So I spent the first year developing and not really telling anybody I was doing this just to see if it would work because I didn't trust you know, I didn't know that it was gonna

Heath Fletcher:

Of course.

Sarah Bellenger:

Yeah. I mean, I had

Heath Fletcher:

that phase was mostly about just learning and and and understanding, the technology, or this what was out there? Were you kinda doing that kind of research as well?

Sarah Bellenger:

Yes. And one of the specific examples about that research goes back to the function of it. You know, I said that we were going to scan the documents, and we had tried a scanner where it would read the documents, for example, which uses optical character recognition. And, well, when we put the when we scanned diplomas specifically, all the scripted font did not come out. It was only 20% effective, and nothing's more annoying than fixing what already got scanned in incorrectly.

Sarah Bellenger:

Right? We've all done that plenty. And so, you know, we spent that's one of, example of how we really tried to make sure you know, it wasn't perfect, but make sure that it was really close to doing what we wanted it to do effectively and efficiently. And so we, me and the developing team, they you know, we went through all those checks and then and then moved into the next year when I'm like, okay. Let's ask some people how they feel about it.

Sarah Bellenger:

So, we moved into that. And then a big step

Heath Fletcher:

for beta test. Mhmm. Yeah.

Sarah Bellenger:

But for any app that's out there, I mean or it was, I guess, two years ago, things are changing so quickly now. But, you have to run through a rigorous test for the App Stores because they don't even want you to beta test things that are not, you know, efficient or done. Mhmm. So you do have to have a certain level of product before you're even giving it to your your friends and family. Right.

Sarah Bellenger:

And so, did that. Next.

Heath Fletcher:

And so, like, you don't have to worry about like, you're not you're not necessarily the certify you're not certifying that these documents are have not been altered or, I mean, really, all you're you're providing people on a a device that allows them to take a picture of their document, upload it, and accessible to other people. So, I mean, you don't have to go through anything like having to validate that that that diploma has not been altered in any way, shape, or form. Like, that's not that's not your responsibility. That's just up to the individual user. Their that their documents are true and accurate and and, you know, do they have to go through some sort of validation process that way?

Heath Fletcher:

Like, I, you know, I agree that, you know, policies and procedures and waivers and everything else.

Sarah Bellenger:

Uh-huh. And it's a great question, and it's a big chunk of why it's so expensive. It's called PrimeSource verification. And so when you get hired somewhere as a health care provider, the credentialing office, PrimeSource verifies those same documents. But, you know, maybe someday would be really great if we had a digital credential in general where they're prime source verified when they go in.

Sarah Bellenger:

And so I've been working on things that are familiar to that kind of concept around, how to protect your documents at the highest level. The problem is is it's not people aren't gonna pay for it yet, and and it's really not there. What's happening is we it's kind of like the OCR, which is, optical character recognition, which has come really far since we did our initial beta test two years ago. And we're looking at implementing it possibly the end of this year because the effectiveness has increased. And that with AI, which you would be amiss if you were a developer not recognizing it's there, but with those different types of AI tools and scanners and the ability to get these documents more secure, it's it hopefully is coming.

Sarah Bellenger:

What we're gonna see that health care is gonna have to do is go from a to h as opposed to a to b to c because we're so far behind in this credentialing problem that, you know, it it's gonna take a big solution in order to fix it. And the last thing about the documents being encrypted or being prime source verified on their own, like you were asking about, is that they become huge. And so I for example, when I graduated from business school, they sent me my diploma, and they gave us a paper copy, and then they sent us a digital one. Well, it broke my email. So, yeah, I had to go and, like, ask for permission for them to delete it so that I could then get the you know, get my email back and say download it to a drive so that I could have it.

Sarah Bellenger:

So that would have been great on the day that I lost mine, but, you know, you can't be sending digitally encrypted documents. Say there's 20 on a typical credentialing packet. Right. One's your TB shot, which changes all the time. So, you know, that's the thing is probably three or five or maybe 10 of my 40 documents are ones that don't change that are about health care and, you know, being who you say you are.

Sarah Bellenger:

But the other 30 change all the time and have to be sent all the time to different, you know, different affiliations. So that's why, you know, we we're thinking about these new things and how to go, but we also don't you know, we we also need to wait in order to be able to get them to function and also to be able to be, cost effective.

Heath Fletcher:

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, that's the that's the key for people to wanna use it. It has to be well, they can justify the cost. But, I mean, as long as that's what do they what do they always say?

Heath Fletcher:

As long as it costs about the same as a cup of coffee.

Sarah Bellenger:

Right. That's exactly it. Right? Right.

Heath Fletcher:

Right.

Sarah Bellenger:

That's exactly it. And, you know, we've worked through this as like, we've talked before, you and me. It's just we're working through it to make it so that people can afford to help themselves. And, you know, again, they're we want hospitals to help us do a better job at sending them documents. You know, if we have them there where we can get them or a tool at least to be able to say, hey.

Sarah Bellenger:

Use this. We can do a better job. We wanna do a great job. Mhmm. Just need the tools.

Heath Fletcher:

Have you run into any pushbacks or skepticism or, you know, I mean, that never happens when you're an entrepreneur where people say, you're not gonna succeed at this. Everyone's always on board.

Sarah Bellenger:

Oh, no. I have lots of people. Like, many people say, how many of you are doing this? And I'm like, it's just me. They're like, wow.

Sarah Bellenger:

This is a big problem. And I go, I know, but you guys haven't done anything about it. And, you know, nobody else has made a, you know, a huge effort. Of course, I have competitors, and want us all to succeed because, you know, that means that we're actually helping people. Yeah.

Sarah Bellenger:

The thing that is different about my app is versus the the ones I know about are that were very general. I found that people were there's too if there's too many boxes to fill out, people don't keep going. And so the big thing is that I attach expiration dates to documents. That's all that's the difference between Dropbox and iCloud and Google Drive and Manage You is you actually get reminders that things are gonna expire, and you can everything's in one place, not 17,000 credential files across many drives. And so, you said, you know, there's competitors, and there's definitely naysayers on entrepreneurship.

Sarah Bellenger:

And in health care, you know, it's hard to get thing you know, we're used to dealing with the FDA and, you know, everybody and all of the CDC and many different letter organizations in order to go through

Heath Fletcher:

Yeah.

Sarah Bellenger:

And get processes approved. And so, I mean, I'm just trying my best to help people one at a time, but at the same at the same moment, it needs to scale and it will into bigger facilities so that it's helping those people communicate more clearly and quickly.

Heath Fletcher:

Yeah. It's a slow moving vehicle.

Sarah Bellenger:

Yeah. But there's plenty of naysayers.

Heath Fletcher:

Oh, yeah. The world's not short of those.

Sarah Bellenger:

No. They're everywhere. And in health care, everyone's like, do you know? Do you have to start an IV, or do I have to take this medicine? So it's kind of like I've already been primed for that too.

Heath Fletcher:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So just a question. I don't know why I have this question.

Heath Fletcher:

But so some you you I I'm gonna upload my document that is one that expires, for example, that has a time limit on it. So Mhmm. Say it's a year from now, I upload it and I set the time on it Mhmm. For its expiry date so that when I'm uploading it, I'm setting the time expiry, and that sets the that sets it. And then it automatically triggers the reminder, like, hey.

Sarah Bellenger:

Mhmm.

Heath Fletcher:

This is gonna expire in thirty days, ten days, five days, one day, that kind of Cool. That's great. I mean

Sarah Bellenger:

You can test more than so you you said it's set for thirty days. But if it's something high, so many documents you have to do education or they're very expensive, you know, up thousands of dollars, etcetera. And so you want to have more than one. And so you can set the more than ones, and then it's a email or and a text notification. And here's another benefit that I've found that people really like about the fact that it's coming from one place.

Sarah Bellenger:

And so those emails are all called are from manage you. So instead of having to look for Texas, Canada, Philippines, whatever, shot record, you know, it comes up as manage you so you know those next expirations. And the other thing, like you said, if you're validating a document or putting in a new one, is you can now keep all of your documents for if you get audited. So Mhmm. Somebody says, I'm gonna audit you for the last three years of this certification period.

Sarah Bellenger:

I wanna see all of your education. It's already already there. So you can just send you know, click the documents and send them.

Heath Fletcher:

And there's a desktop version as well?

Sarah Bellenger:

It's coming. That's what will be launched in the next few weeks. That's where we are with the web app. Mhmm.

Heath Fletcher:

Oh, okay. Excellent. Let's let's talk about you as an entrepreneur now. So you've had to adapt to a whole new environment, which is different from nursing. You're still you're still working as a nurse, though.

Heath Fletcher:

Yeah. And and the CEO. And the

Sarah Bellenger:

the word? Anesthetist.

Heath Fletcher:

I can never get that word. CRNA. So you're still doing that. So that means you haven't quit your job yet. So you're you're you're transitioned from one career type to another in this process.

Heath Fletcher:

What what have what have you learned about yourself? And, you know, what characteristics have you adopted in in this new entrepreneur space for you? And you're kind of a solopreneur too. Right? Mhmm.

Heath Fletcher:

You've you've been adding people to your team, but, really, it's it's you, you know, driving this train. Right?

Sarah Bellenger:

Yes. It was my idea, and then I'm always looking for helpers and free advice. It doesn't hurt my feelings if somebody I I I take it all in as something like they're my other team members. But I definitely I mean, I've had a wide variety of amazing jobs and people I've worked with and mentors. And so just really trying to keep, you know, going back to that, and give myself grace that this is new, and I'm trying to figure out how to help people still just like being a a nurse and a nurse anesthetist and, you know, deployed with international soldiers.

Sarah Bellenger:

I worked in DC at the White House. I had three years there. You know, just so many levels of making sure things are right all the time or communicating across international lines, etcetera. And so just being patient with myself to know we're trying our best to make something great. And so that takes a lot of patience.

Sarah Bellenger:

That is it's good for everybody. So been working, you know, on on that and reaching out to people when you have questions because I have hundreds every day. And then that's been a great tool for networking, which we like to talk about in health care, but we don't do it because we're all doing our job. And so kind of that's been the bridge that's made me able to go from being a nurse anesthetist to being in the business world is really, hey. I'm trying my best here.

Sarah Bellenger:

Can you tell me somebody that might be able to help me? And I'm in Nashville. And so just having so many great mentors here and feeling how that can be has encouraged me to keep going. It's been always important to me, but it definitely has gotten more important as this has transpired and grown.

Heath Fletcher:

Do you get a bit more attention from other female leaders or other female CEOs of their companies who are kinda like, you can do this? Do you get do you find that from more of your female colleagues?

Sarah Bellenger:

It's a good question, and it's a very good point considering I spent twenty years in the army, and I'm in the most male dominated nursing profession. So I'm very used to being not you know, a very small portion of females. So watching them communicate on a civilian side on a different capacity than I have learned has been a wonderful way to learn new techniques. And so, we you know, I've had hundreds of military leadership classes, and they're very similar. So don't think that they're all, you know, learning how to be patent or something, but they but we do a great job about communicating.

Sarah Bellenger:

And the importance of communication in health care is so is so high on the on the level of things we need to do. So that has been important. But watching the other female leaders as I've come out of the military has been very high on my, importance list. And I would say that there are a few that have been amazing, and I do think that, people re that it is that there probably are more that reach out to me when I ask for help. Just if I'm just thinking back at my LinkedIn or my emails, one or two physicians across the country have taken Manage U and presented it at health tech conferences, which I really appreciate because they love the product and I you know, getting it out to different audiences because I'm in the Operating Room doing anesthesia.

Sarah Bellenger:

And so, you know, having that network has been good has been very important. But there's an interesting fact out there. You know, 2% of venture capital money goes to women founded businesses, and that's a pretty low number. And I'm not looking to go venture capital, but when you hear that, it just really puts an objective identifier on the numbers. And

Heath Fletcher:

Wow. It's a low number.

Sarah Bellenger:

Two. Yeah.

Heath Fletcher:

2%.

Sarah Bellenger:

That's a number. Yesterday. It's no. So Wow. But internally, you know, digesting that and just saying don't waste your time there is kind of what's where I've gone with that.

Heath Fletcher:

Well, that's a good point. And you've gotten this far without having to do that.

Sarah Bellenger:

Right. And, you know, so then when I talk to somebody else, another woman or or another teammate, male, you know, just understanding that that's probably not the best option. You know, I don't wanna be the 2.175% person No. Because that effort is not gonna be, really worth it as a especially as a solopreneur. But, an interesting idea that for the app that would be not nothing to do with being female would be if we could make it a national or an international credential, and then everybody would wanna be on board.

Sarah Bellenger:

And so, you know, showing the organization and making the platform so that it helps everybody would speak to any type of provider.

Heath Fletcher:

Mhmm. What would it take to get to that point?

Sarah Bellenger:

Money. Time. Yeah. So yeah. Actually, it's that's the long term plan.

Sarah Bellenger:

The long term plan

Heath Fletcher:

is the goal. Okay.

Sarah Bellenger:

That is goal. And it's lofty. And a lot of people are probably laughing at me right now because I'm laughing at me. But I think that, you know, we should have done this years ago, and it should have been growing along with all sorts of document storage to make sure your providers are credentialed and are not fake. Right.

Sarah Bellenger:

And that's where I think something's gonna happen where we end up wanting to make, sure that people are who they say they are. And it's gonna start with health care.

Heath Fletcher:

Well, slip through the cracks.

Sarah Bellenger:

Well, right. There's tons of podcasts out there about

Heath Fletcher:

Absolutely. About creating people. Stories that we don't hear about that never make them evening news, right, of people pretending to be somebody they're not.

Sarah Bellenger:

You got it, Heath. Yeah. But I think that that's the end result. And, honestly, they're like, I I spoke of, you know, storage and being able to share large volume documents. We're working to create an API or a connection between the credentialing person and the app so that they can just it's a one button send.

Sarah Bellenger:

You don't even have to open your email. But all those things can happen in the next few months. The larger scale, you know, where where where you start to talk about AI and encrypted documents and wallets and how to share them, that's when the money will need to go. But Mhmm. It's gonna get there really fast, so really quickly.

Sarah Bellenger:

So it'll just be, you know, a matter of getting there.

Heath Fletcher:

Well, it'll get to the point too when somebody's coming to you saying, I wanna invest.

Sarah Bellenger:

Mhmm.

Heath Fletcher:

You know, I wanna invest in this. I wanna invest in you. You know? And from what I've heard that a lot of times that when investors are looking at at, you know, opportunities like this, it isn't always about the product. They often look for a decent product or something that's viable in the market, but they really focus their attention on the founder Mhmm.

Heath Fletcher:

The originator, the CEO, the person that brought this to life because they what I've heard is that that that's what that's what will take it to the next level is somebody who is willing to take their dream and let go of it to a certain extent. Because as soon as you got investors involved, you got new you got extra decision makers and and people to satisfy as far as what their goals are and what they want out of it in the end. So there is a stepping point where it's like, okay. It's mine until I get it across this line, and then I have to somewhat let go.

Sarah Bellenger:

Right.

Heath Fletcher:

How do you feel you'll manage when you get to that stage?

Sarah Bellenger:

How will I manage me? I

Heath Fletcher:

Manage me. That's a new app.

Sarah Bellenger:

Know, I I definitely am going to be able to let go of it. But I to me, I want to see this succeed for health care. There's so many projects that we start and don't finish or that people sell too early because they only halfway fix the problem.

Heath Fletcher:

Right.

Sarah Bellenger:

And that's that's the deal with why I have, I don't know, a 100 apps on my phone is because they all do some part of something. Right. And this is a medical productivity app, and there aren't many other ones out there. You know? We have lots of static dictionaries and look up a drug and figure out a, interaction, but this one's actually about you.

Sarah Bellenger:

And so one would be protecting the information. I wanna I'm not gonna sell anybody's things. Mhmm. I wanna make sure that it's very protected and it's at the highest levels that they can afford. Two, I want hospitals to get people onboarded more quickly.

Sarah Bellenger:

We don't like waiting to get a new job and be able to give them a product where they can do really well and and quickly to get people safely credentialed. And then and then truly save people time and money because this that's where once we I can see that it's working for that at scale, I would be willing to, you know, give it to the right helpers.

Heath Fletcher:

Well, you found you found an a problem, and you found a solution for it. And that's what they say is the core of of a of a successful business is if you can find that and fix it, you've got a you've got a winning opportunity. So that's exciting. I'm exciting for you. I'm excited for you.

Heath Fletcher:

This is it's going to I I feel like it's gonna go the right direction.

Sarah Bellenger:

Right. I appreciate that. And Yeah. It's been great to get to know all the different facets of the business side and, you know, podcasting and help I appreciate, the Healthy Enterprise helping me share the idea because, you know, all of your other podcast guests have been along the same lines where they wanna fix something. And Yeah.

Sarah Bellenger:

This is a great place to say, you know, I built that is the NPR version of it. Right? You know, there's just other you know? But health care doesn't take the time to listen to each other and get it out there. So thank you for helping us.

Heath Fletcher:

You're very welcome. Well, it's it's a it's a big system. The health care system is big, and it's and it's been, you know, in some ways, we're operating many of these in in the same ways for many, many decades. And, you know, it's just when something gets that large and that and and that heavy, it it's hard to imagine how to fix it. But Mhmm.

Heath Fletcher:

You know, it just takes couple of brave people to sort of say, well, I know enough about this. I I can make this I can make this change. I can help take us take this across this other line.

Sarah Bellenger:

So Speak up.

Heath Fletcher:

And it just needs a few people. Yeah. Exactly. So a brave hearts and souls to to jump in as entrepreneurs and take this on. So, yeah, thank you for sharing this with me and and our listeners.

Heath Fletcher:

And now how can people find you? How can people access the the app?

Sarah Bellenger:

Well, it's on both app stores, so you can look it up in app Apple App Store or Google Play. And then, we have a website. It's, manageyouapp.com. And then, I'm always on LinkedIn. That's usually where I try I try to do the other socials, but I'm not as good at them.

Sarah Bellenger:

But LinkedIn, absolutely, would love to hear from anybody that has a great idea about how we can be better and help you with saving time and money in your credentialing process.

Heath Fletcher:

Awesome. And then at some point, I'm gonna have you back on here so you can tell us how this all succeeded and what the end of the what the end of the story looks like.

Sarah Bellenger:

I can't wait.

Heath Fletcher:

Yeah. Me too. Thanks, Sarah.

Sarah Bellenger:

Thank you very much, Heath. Very welcome. Okay.

Heath Fletcher:

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Sarah. What a lovely person. I just, I hope the best for her. Sounds like a fantastic idea. And exactly that, she has found a niche problem in a in a large industry, and she's really honed in on something that I think it deserves, some attention.

Heath Fletcher:

And I think as soon as she hits that tipping point, it is gonna take off like crazy. It's, it's definitely, in need, and, her persistence and patience is really, paying off. And I think that her her career and her life as a as a nurse practitioner, especially as an as a nurse anesthetist whoo. I got that. I would usually screw that word up.

Heath Fletcher:

Is, you know, is showing its value right here. You know, patience is the name of the game and focused focused energy on a positive outcome. That's where she would have learned to do that. In an industry of called credentialing that is worth over $39,000,000,000 of significant waste, there's an opportunity there. So I hope Sarah makes it.

Heath Fletcher:

Please check out her website, Manage You. And, if you need this app, go get it. Give it a try. Thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time. Stay healthy, and have a great day.