“Nurse Mike” Serves Up Hacks for Life and Learning - Mike Linares, Founder and CEO of Simple Nursing

DR. RISHI DESAI: Hi, I'm Rishi Desai. Today on Raise the Line, I'm happy to be joined by Mike Linares, Founder and CEO of Simple Nursing. Mike is a nurse, a traveler, a podcast host, and a successful entrepreneur. His learning platform, Simple Nursing, has helped over 400,000 RNs, LVNs, and LPN students become very successful. What started out as a simple YouTube channel grew into a mission-driven business that makes a positive impact in the lives of many, many students around the world today. Thank you so much for being with us today.

MIKE LINARES: Thanks, Rishi. It's been an honor. I've been following Osmosis for a long time now, and I love what you guys are doing, so it's really cool to be here.

DR. DESAI: Well, listen, you have an incredible story, and I want to just kind of dive right into it. Do you mind just talking through your background, maybe even start with when you first learned about nursing or got excited about nursing, way back when?

LINARES: It's funny, because every time I tell someone this journey, everyone's like, "No way!"

I never wanted to be a nurse. Just to put that out there as the shocker. I would actually talk people out of being nurses—guys, specifically. I was young and dumb. I was 18 to 21. I worked in an ambulance, and thought nursing was a female profession, super sexist in the sense that I was super immature, didn't really know about the world. I was gonna go the physician assistant route and didn't really have the bachelor's degree, but I worked on the ambulance a long time. I had the number of hours to apply to three different schools. After not getting into those three different schools, I had all the prereqs, I'm like, “You know what? Why not go into nursing.” I started working the ER as a tech, and I'm like, "Whoa, nurses are like doing everything in the ER." I had such a lack of knowledge that I thought it was like Grey's Anatomy, all the doctors help to ambulate the patients, or the physician assistants. I'm like, "No, 80% of the hospital is nursing. Man, this is cool." That's what really got me into applying to nursing schools. 

Around 2012, there was a huge impaction of trying to get into nursing schools in California. So the only ones that I really applied to were three-year waiting lists. I'm like, "What?" So I had to apply to 10 different schools for two semesters. Out of applying basically 20 times, to basically 20 different schools, I got into one on a lottery ticket. They're like, “We're gonna call you if something happens, and the seat opens.” I got called five days before the actual semester started. 

DR. DESAI: Wow!

LINARES: I know. And I'm like, "Alright, let's go for it."

DR. DESAI: You know what's funny about that? I'm really curious to explore a little bit more about that misconception because I think a lot of people might have that misconception. What would you say to someone that's maybe 16–18 years old, thinking about life options, and may not have had the experience to work in an ER like you did. What would you say to that person that says, "Oh, it's not for men. It's a female profession.”?

LINARES: Yes, it's funny, because when you don't know what you don't know, I think that's the hardest place to make decisions. Especially if you're asking a network of people. The biggest recommendation if you're in high school, or if you just don't have enough knowledge, is go volunteer, or go through a CNA course, or an EMT course, and start working in the hospital. Let's say you want to work in the ER, let's say you want to work in the ICU, you're not sure of what specialty. Start working as a tech, and you're going to see all the specialties in action. Because so many times I see nursing students hit me up and they're like, "Oh, I want to do this for the longest time." When you really ask them their mission of, “Why?” they really don't know, because their mom did it, their aunt did it, or they think they look cute in scrubs. When they actually get to the clinical rotations, they're like, “I didn't think it was gonna be this way.” So I think, getting your hands dirty, getting into the actual nitty-gritty of it, is kind of like a sampler platter. You can taste before you buy and commit to the whole thing.

DR. DESAI: You mentioned it, so I'll ask you about it. You said CNA. A lot of people may not know what a CNA is. There are all these other acronyms: LVN, LPN, RN, NP. Can you explain, in your own words, what are the different roles of nurses? How does one decide what they want to be, if they're not really that aware of these different kinds of roles within nursing?

LINARES: Yes, nursing in and of itself, I call it the nursing mafia. Because you can become a physician assistant, which is basically like a nurse practitioner. What nurse practitioners can get in a six-year timeframe, physician assistants can kind of leapfrog in a two-year timeframe, if they have a bachelor's degree. But really starting out at the beginning of your journey, if you don't know what you want to do, let's say you're still in high school, or let's say you're considering nursing, you can do a six-month or even eight-week course that's a certified nursing assistant or CNA, and you can immediately start working within less than one semester—almost no prereqs, I don't believe, unless they changed it. That's pretty amazing, because you don't have to go through an entire year of an LVN program, which is a licensed vocational nurse, or a two-year program for a registered nurse, with all these prereqs. You can actually start seeing what you're going to be seeing in a career as a nurse or an LPN almost immediately. 

That's one of the best things, the best kind of life hacks that I would say. It's also the journey that I followed. I followed the EMT route, which is an emergency medical technician, which took about six months, it's almost the same timeframe, but EMT is focused on the ambulance and you can cross over into the ER in some critical care settings. So it's pretty nice.

DR. DESAI: So that's how you got in—you worked as an EMT. You got into nursing. Walk me through what that journey was like, as a student. How did you like it? What were some surprises for you?

LINARES: Yes, so, I'm super honest, almost too honest. Before nursing, I was on the ambulance for about six years, ER two years. I thought I was a hotshot. A young 20 year old, and I was also giving courses on EKGs. I'm really immature and just think I'm hot stuff. I'm going to the nursing program, thinking, "Oh, this is gonna be supercritical care, and only critical care drips and IVs and things," and the first semester of nursing school is not that. It's like, here's how to ambulate a patient to the bathroom. Here's how to take a vital sign. I'm like, "What the heck is this place?" 

The first impression for me is like, we're playing patty cake, or playing in the sandbox. That does not do well for my young, immature ego at the time. I start getting this chip on my shoulder, I start not caring in nursing school, just because it's so elementary to me at the time. But at the same time, I'm helping other students out and kind of giving back to my fellow classmates. But I do show up late and turn in assignments late, which kind of gives me a bad rap. Especially in a first impression in a very strict, kind of militaristic nursing school, where you have to have everything pressed, on time, over-prepared. 

So I had this bad rap going into my first semester and leading into my second semester. I'm not proud of this by any means, but I think I still own the record for the most write-ups in the first semester. I think I had five or something like that. But trust me, it's a good story because it shows my journey, that I wasn't perfect. Not a lot of people have to be perfect to make something; it's how you finish, not how you start.

DR. DESAI: What is the culture like? This is so interesting to me. You talked about having everything kind of pressed, showing up on time. It almost sounds like—I don't have a military background, but it sounds like you're comparing it to what a military culture would be like. Was that at your school? Or is that just generally what nursing school culture is like at a lot of places?

LINARES: Yes. It's really funny because I didn't expect it to be that way. Now, EMT and the ambulance, you do have to shine your shoes and wipe down the rig and be professional. But it seemed like nursing school kind of went overboard in the sense that they made it a little bit extra hard in terms of your preparation and coming down on you just a little bit harder. I'm not sure if that's just my nursing school, but I've heard other people have the same experience.

Now I've also asked my medical friends in medical school, as well as my PA friends, physician assistant school, and they're like, "Oh, no, it's usually holistic,” and they try to help the students learn. It seemed like in nursing school, they were trying to figure out ways to kind of like ding you or fail you, or challenge you on a certain clinical setting. I've gotten some feedback, specifically near Los Angeles, California, at other schools doing that. Now, my experience is probably totally different. Because I was the immature guy that was too prideful at the moment, and everyone's trying to come down on me. I'm like, we have to tame this wild horse kind of thing.

DR. DESAI: Wow. So you did schooling in Southern California, in LA?

LINARES: Yes. In Cerritos College, right outside LA about 20–30 minutes outside.

DR. DESAI: You know what's funny about that? I don't think you knew this, but I grew up in Buena Park, which is next to Cerritos, and so I know Cerritos pretty well. Awesome, great area. So you went through school, you describe yourself as kind of this wild stallion; I'm imagining this horse kind of running amok. You're in your early 20s at this point?

LINARES: Yes, early 20s. I would say 23? 22-ish?

DR. DESAI: It sounds like you enjoyed helping your peers, helping them learn stuff that you already knew. When did you feel like Simple Nursing was maybe a calling, maybe the next obvious evolution in your journey? How did that happen?

LINARES: Yes, so I'm going to kind of bifurcate and answer your question, but indirectly. So I was a serial, not entrepreneur, but I wanted to kind of create a business online and travel and work remotely. That was after reading The 4-Hour Workweek, if you guys are familiar with that book. Tim Ferriss kind of outlines this crazy idea at the time, it's like, "Hey, what if you could work remotely?" which is totally common now in COVID. But at 21, in 2008, I was like, "You know what? That would be amazing!" I was a personal trainer at the time, as well as working on the ambulance. I tried a few business ideas out for training and tried to actually launch two or three fitness channels on YouTube, and totally failed. That's why I went back to nursing school.  My dad's like, "Stop going for get-rich-quick schemes and just go to nursing school. Make your mom and I proud," and I'm like, "All right, all right." 

But I had a heart for teaching, and I loved teaching. So long story short, I'm helping my peers out. I was an EKG instructor at this mini-course for paramedics. Around semester three, I have one of those hard-nosed instructors. I really have a bad rap anyways, going into that semester. None of the class was prepared. But no one really spoke up, she kind of just singled me out and says, "Hey, you're not prepared, you have this bad rap, you're gone." So I got failed out my third semester of nursing school. 

My dean was super cool, really amazing, and really understanding. She basically sat me down and was like, "Mike, you can do all the things that we need you to do, we just need to see if you're serious. Just show up, jump through the hoops, get it done, and get out of my hair. I know you're gonna pass your board exams, but I just need to know you're serious. We're gonna get you in the next semester. But show me you're serious and complete a project for us." She's like, "It can be any project you want to do. But just do something that shows that you're serious." So I'm like, "Okay." 

Going back to my Fitness Bootcamp days, I'm like, "Hey, what if I did a 14-day boot camp for new nurses, and brought them in and gave them some study hacks and memory tricks and things they can remember?" It kind of started there, of kind of hacking the system of how to time manage, how to organize your study time, certain memory tricks for hard topics. It was in kind of that mode where people were like, "Put this on YouTube." And I was like, "That is the dumbest idea in the world. No one's ever gonna watch me, a failed out nursing student,” especially with other previous business failures before. I'm like, “YouTube doesn't work. I was super passionate about fitness, but no one watches me on that.” 

So one day, I'm just like, "You know what? What the heck, I'm just gonna try it out. I have a whiteboard from Walmart and an iPhone, and I can just make five videos. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Perfectly fine. But maybe it's useful.” But little did I know that Khan Academy was launching at the time, in 2012, which is the same year, pretty much. I think they launched two years before, 2010-ish. 

I kind of rode this wave of online education that was kind of new, which I didn't know about. I utilized a lot of the personality stuff that I got from YouTube, a lively intro, keeping it short and sweet, and throwing a lot of memory tricks in. Even though my whiteboard drawings were really horrible, to my surprise, a lot of people started watching and I'm got a few thousand views. I still remember the day I'm like 500 subscribers on YouTube. I'm like, "Whoa, I hit the big time. This is nuts!" Then I'm like, "You know what? I'm gonna make another five videos and another five." Then I remember my last semester in nursing school. I'm like, "Okay, what if I just quit my job?" I was working as a tech. “I'm going to be a nurse in six months anyways, I have some money saved, and what if I just started pumping out a lot of videos and start charging as a study resource?” So I remember going from 50 videos to making 100 videos a month on this little whiteboard, and ended up with 1200 videos by the end of my graduation. 

Little by little, more nursing students would figure out and I would get a following and it just kind of snowballed into this thing. I never was mission-driven of like, “I'm going to change the world for education.” I just wanted to make an online business where I could travel and work remote. But it was really beautiful. I would say six months after I graduated, I was invited to the Florida State Nursing Convention, where over 700 schools are represented, about 2,000 students. A lot of students are just coming up to me, thanking me for helping them pass their exams. They were saying, like, “I probably wouldn't be a nurse today, because I wasn't getting it. But you helped me in this YouTube video." And I was like, "Wow." That's when it became mission-driven. It became personal. It was just really touching. That's when it kind of all changed.

DR. DESAI: That's an amazing story. I'm curious, at what point did you feel like your school, I mean, the ones that kind of initially incepted this idea of a project to show you were serious. At what point did the school recognize what you were doing and be like, “Wow, this isn't just like a, show me you're serious, check the box. This is a thing.” How did that happen?

LINARES: Yes, really good question. No one even knew it was a thing until I graduated. They still kind of didn't know it was a thing. And my dean, she was like, "Mike, you did it. You graduated." I'm like, "Thank you so much." I was really grateful for her for letting me back in the program. But she was funny because she's like, "Are people actually even watching you on YouTube, or subscribing to your study resources?" I'm like, "Yeah, it's actually like a thing." She's like, "Okay, what are you gonna actually do-do?" I'm like, "I'll probably still work as a nurse." 

Then it wasn't until the day that someone from the East Coast, I want to say Tennessee or Kansas, actually gave her a call on her office line, and was saying, "Is Michael Linares an educator at your college?" and she's like, "No, he's a student here." They were trying to ask all these questions about me, and she's like, "Listen, he's a student, I will not disclose any personal information over the phone. Goodbye, have a good day." She was more protective of me. She was like, "Listen, these people are calling, but I'm protecting your information." She wasn't annoyed, like, "Are you advertising Cerritos?" I was actually reassuring her. I'm like, “I'm not attached to the school, I just said I went here. I'm a student trying to be transparent.” But yes, it was funny. 

DR. DESAI: That's really cool that people are reaching out to learn about you. Initially in your story, you didn't know that men could be nurses or that that was a thing. Here you are, you're not just a male nurse, you also happen to be one of the most popular nurses out there. So I wonder if you can just speak about how you're now the embodiment of breaking the stereotype that you once held. Do you know what I mean?

LINARES: Yes, of course. I believe when I went in, it was a 90% female-dominated field, and 10% men. It might have changed in recent years. But it was really cool because I felt like I was representing the minority in terms of our demographic, and kind of making it cool to be a male nurse, and just getting that wider audience and that wider acceptance. Because even to this day, I get international students from say, India, or even other parts of Europe, and they call me “doctor” because they just assume if I'm wearing scrubs, and I'm a guy, I'm a doctor. But it was cool because at the beginning of our new videos, I just say, "I'm nurse Mike, and welcome to our YouTube channel." Then everyone's like, "Oh, wow, you're actually a nurse, and you're a guy." So it's actually really rewarding because I'm breaking the mold. I'm glad to be here.

DR. DESAI: You know what's funny? I'll just share a very quick story with you. I was wearing scrubs; I'm a pediatrician, so I was with a young boy, and he's like, "Oh, thank you. Are you my nurse?" I was like, "No, I'm not. I'm the doctor. But I'm curious. Why did you think that?" He's like, "Well, because you did all the work." Because it was in a situation where—I remember this night very well. I was working basically solo for a little while, so I ended up doing a lot of the stuff. He's like, "Oh, because you did all the work." I was like, "Oh! Got it.”

LINARES: Kids are so honest, though, aren't they?

DR. DESAI: Yes, totally! He was like, "I just thought you were the nurse because you did everything." And I was like, "Okay, good to know. I appreciate that.”

LINARES: I know you're gonna say something like, "Oh, because you're super feminine." But yes, that's really cool. He actually noticed the hard work; that's amazing. 

DR. DESAI: Yes, totally. I was like, "Yeah, it's very observant of you.” He's like, “You know, because you did everything.” And I was like, "Yeah, that's true that nurses do everything, and today I did everything, which is unusual for me to do everything." But the fact that I'm doing all the work, means that I'm a nurse. That's your takeaway. That's what you see, I get it. It totally makes sense. 

I guess one question I have is—you mentioned this in passing—it's a personal issue for me, which is, a lot of baseline health issues in this country, as you know because of your interest in fitness, come down to really basic stuff like fitness and eating well. That's really 99% of our world's problems, frankly. Given your passion for fitness, and now that you have this kind of platform, I'm just curious: What is your sense of how diet, nutrition, and fitness are taught in nursing programs? Do you feel like it's taught in the right way? Do you feel like we're moving the needle on that? What's your sense on that?

LINARES: Oh, man, it's so archaic, and we're still in the Stone Age.  I'm not sure if it's the actual nursing curricula, or the boards, per se, but maybe it's the culture of where the medical industry is right now. I mean, look at the hospital food, it's just like, “Here's the macros.” Just general macros, even it might be nutrient-poor, and they're not really getting to the root. I hate to say it, but it's the elephant in the room, where there's more money in treating conditions, not really curing it and being a holistic approach—which I think will actually change, because I think a lot of our generation is waking up to it, and the younger generation for sure, is probably going to move that needle farther down the line. 

I think a lot more people are more health-conscious in our day and age instead of our parents', even our grandparents', where they didn't have gyms, or no one really cared about a carb or a gluten diet. So it might be a generational thing. But I will say that I'm trying to make a positive impact helping our students by talking a lot more about mental health at our welcome series. Specifically, when they join a course or kind of want to jump into the resources, I'm like, “Whoah, let's slow it down. Let's talk about your time management; let's talk about making some new time, making some mental health time for you guys. As well as, on the day of your tests, you've got to have brain fuel. You're only going to get out what you put in.” So I talk a lot about eating whole eggs, that the cholesterol in eggs, it's actually good fats for your brain, as well as omega-3s. Just some general health and wellness tips as a student. 

But to really answer your question, overall, I think we're still in the Stone Age. We've probably made some progress in the last 50 years, but I think it's going to be totally different in the next 50. I love that we're actually using vitamin infusions, in certain hospitals, at least, to treat alcoholism, and we're using more and more vitamins in high concentrated doses, which is really cool. But even the most recent medications that are coming out, and kind of like these one-off clinics, and how they're getting to the root of certain diseases, is pretty amazing with just a holistic approach. 

DR. DESAI: Yes, that's something that I think you have a special ability to do, obviously, because of your personal interest in it, but also you have this platform, and people are kind of looking to learn, to not just pass exams, but also to become the best version of themselves as nurses as they can. So I think that that's a really, really great thing that you do. We're a teaching company, we love to learn about things. Anytime there's a knowledge gap, I'm always excited to kind of fill it. Is there anything that you'd like to teach me and our audience about today that maybe could be like a common myth or something that like, just a lot of people just don't know, anything at all that you'd like to?

LINARES: Oh man, there's so much. I love hacks, like mental health hacks. I try to do a mind-body-spirit hack every year. One of the biggest hacks or things that a lot of people kind of don't know about unless they're in trendy LA or New York, for mental health, for me, personally, is sensory deprivation tanks, or what they call float tanks. So I did an experiment. Everyone says meditation is so good for your mental health, but I'm too ADD for meditation, because if I open my eyes, and I see something or hear something, I'm like, “I'm screwed. I have to do it again.” So I'm like, “I'm going to force myself to do this. I'm going to do 30 hours in 30 days in this sensory deprivation tank.” If you guys don't know, you can just Google image it. Joe Rogan talks a lot about it. You go inside this little pod; I call it a Dunk Tank. You float on about 1000 pounds of Epsom salt. 

It's called sensory deprivation because they take away your five senses. You can't hear anything, it's pitch black, you can't taste, touch, smell, whatever, and you're just floating in there for an hour to two hours. It's kind of forced meditation. For me, I saw the big benefits and breakthroughs around hour 15. I would do like an hour, two hours a day for five days a week. But man, by the end of that 30 days, you come out as a brand new Milk Dud. You come out as a brand new person. The weirdest part is, a lot of the things that meditators talk about, if you guys ever listen to Eckhart Tolle, about waking up, or The Power of Now, it's very textbook, he tries to talk to you about like the Krebs cycle, and he taught the molecular of sugar, but you never can really taste sugar. So this kind of application is like, you're actually tasting stuff and actually seeing the manifestations of what he's talking about and separating your ego, and kind of separating yourself that there's kind of like certain—I don't know how to say it, but there's certain space between always reacting to something and separating yourself from who you are now and who you want to be. 

It's really hard to explain, but all I'm saying is that if you are going through a tough time, and you have some mental health things that you need to work through, for me, personally, I chose that because I was super stressed in 2017, and had a few panic attacks, which I didn't know were panic attacks, and I just thought was a breathing issue like asthma. The doctor was like, “Yeah, you pretty much did have a lot of stress.” So I'm like, “Okay, meditation. Okay, the fastest hack for meditation is dunk tank.” So I try to do that once or twice every year. But that was the biggest impact. 

I can give you some more hacks too. I'm really into longevity science and Ben Greenfield right now, so I'm fooling around with some NAD as well as glutathione patches, and I might do some IV infusions with that. It's amazing how science right now is just accelerating so much where we can actually kind of reverse our biological clock just a little bit. Super interesting.

DR. DESAI: It is incredibly interesting, and I'll ask you a follow-up question in just a minute, but I think one of the hardest things for folks is to figure out, where can they get reliable information? A lot of times it's hard to read primary sources because it's dense, and it's hard to understand how to tease apart all the different findings. I'm just curious, what do you find to be some of the most useful credible sources for your information about longevity, or around sensory deprivation? Where do you typically go to learn about it? 

LINARES: Yes, the most credible source is osmosis.org, get your subscription—no, I'm kidding. 

DR. DESAI: Wow, I was not expecting that. Kind words. 

LINARES: Honestly, I don't have a most credible source other than Wikipedia. Nah, I'm just kidding. No, other than just listening to these podcasts from these doctors who are actually scientists in the field. I listened to a two-hour podcast—I forget who it's by—I just went on iTunes or whatever podcast platform and just typed in NAD. A few popped up. There was a two-hour-long one about a scientist who is actually doing funding for NAD right now, talking about longevity and about his scientific findings. Half the podcast I couldn't even understand what he was saying, because it was just too scientific. But the gist of it was that his laboratory is basically finding that energy helps the little batteries in the cell, the mitochondria. It basically helps to restore and repair those little cells. The findings that they're finding in mice, that like an old mouse—he made an analogy of old mouse and young mouse—pretty much had almost the same biological age. He was just going through his findings, which is the most amazing part. 

I don't have actual scientific data for the sensory deprivation tank. But then again, it was just like, "You know what, I'm not injecting anything into my body, I'm just going in this dunk tank and seeing what happens." I mean, it makes sense, though. If you take away all your senses, and you're forced to do meditation, some good things are gonna happen. Now, I did get the 30-hour marker from, I believe it was a book that quoted the Dalai Lama, the guru on meditation. He was saying that 50 hours is the threshold that you need to get to have regular practice, regular meditation. So I'm like, "Okay, if I get the 30 hours, because they say in a dunk tank, or float tank, 30 hours counts as double, so that's like 60 hours in a month, then I'll be kind of at that threshold." I got some amazing things right around 15 hours. Even if you guys don't have major burnout problems or mental health issues, I would say it's good for anyone just to try it once, like a 30-day challenge; it's gonna be crazy. 

DR. DESAI: Well, it's rare to find folks that walk the walk in addition to talking the talk and your amazing ability to be honest about your—you mentioned anxiety in the past, your struggles as a student way back when, when you were a wild stallion. All of that honesty, I think, makes you extremely relatable, and obviously very charismatic as well. So, I do want to thank you for taking the time to walk us through your journey with being an EMT, becoming a nurse, Simple Nursing, and now your journey into becoming the best version of yourself. Thank you for all of that.

LINARES: Thanks, Rishi. Appreciate it, man, and thank you so much for some of those podcasts. I really respect Osmosis in the space. I think you guys are the gold standard of animation learning, and I just love what you guys are doing, so keep on killing it, man.

DR. DESAI: Well, thank you for saying all that as well. I'm Rishi Desai. Thanks for checking out today's show. Remember to do your part to flatten the curve and raise the line. We're all in this together.