Yvette Nowry on building care around trust and relationships
Yvette Nowry is Co-Founder of Luminate Wellness and Recovery, which provides concierge nursing, post-operative care and personalized medical support. Nowry explains how trusted relationships brought the business its first clients, why it expanded beyond one specialty, and what thoughtful care looks like in practice.
Build trust through excellent care before worrying about looking like a large business. In concierge nursing, clinical skill is expected, but personal attention and the experience clients remember can turn early relationships into referrals.
What’s the short story of how your business started, and what makes it genuinely different from the other options your customers have?
Luminate honestly started in the operating room. I was an OR nurse in Beverly Hills working alongside incredible plastic and reconstructive surgeons, and I kept seeing the same thing. Patients would get absolutely world-class care in the doctor’s office, then go home to figure out everything else on their own. And the more I saw, the more I realized it wasn’t just surgery. It was anyone managing their health, an aging parent, a busy schedule, or a big life moment, without someone in their corner.
Erion and I met through the private aftercare world. She had spent years running her own recovery company, and I was coming from the OR and nursing leadership. We had both seen the same gap from different sides: people can get amazing medical care and still feel completely overwhelmed by everything around it. We knew we could fix that together, and that’s how Luminate was born.
What makes us different is that we believe great care is about how you make someone feel, not just what you do for them. Anyone can check vitals or manage a medication list. That’s the service part, and of course we do it at the highest level. Our nurses are hospital-trained and bring real clinical expertise. But they’re also hospitality-forward. They notice how a client takes their coffee, which music calms them down, and what’s worrying them that they haven’t said out loud. Whether it’s ongoing concierge nursing, coordinating care for an entire family, or traveling with a loved one so they never miss a moment, we want every client to feel completely seen and taken care of. Our motto is “where clinical excellence meets genuine warmth,” and we mean every word of it.
How did you win your first customers, and where does most of your new business come from today?
Relationships, all day! Our first clients came from the surgeons I’d worked next to for years and the relationships Erion had built through her aftercare company. Those doctors already knew and trusted us, so sending their patients our way felt natural. And we treated every single one of those early clients like they were our only client, because honestly, at the time they almost were!
Today most of our business still comes from physicians, but the circle has grown so much. We work with luxury hotel partners, concierge doctors, and family offices, and a lot of new clients come because a friend experienced Luminate and couldn’t stop talking about it. People don’t just tell their friends they had a nurse. They tell them about the experience we curated for them and the amazing care they received. That’s my favorite kind of referral.
What’s one decision that changed the direction of your business, and one mistake that taught you the most?
The decision was thinking bigger than one specialty. Because of our backgrounds, a lot of our early clients came to us through the plastic surgery world. But we quickly realized that anyone going through a health moment, big or small, deserves to feel this cared for. That one decision took us from a Beverly Hills nursing company known in the plastic surgery world to a national concierge nursing and care management company.
The mistake was our very first conference, in Atlanta. We had our banners, our brochures, and all the excitement in the world… and somehow we missed the email saying setup was the day before. We showed up Thursday night to an empty booth space. They let us in at 6 a.m., which felt like 3 a.m. on California time, and Erion and I built our first booth on zero sleep, laughing the whole time. The funny part is that nobody who stopped by had any idea. They just met two people who were genuinely excited to talk to them. The lesson: read every email, ask for help, and know that no matter what’s happening behind the scenes, the person in front of you should only feel taken care of.
What has changed in your industry or in what your customers expect over the last couple of years, and how have you adapted?
People aren’t just thinking about getting better anymore. They’re thinking about living well, for longer, with the people they love. Longevity and wellness have become such a big part of how our clients see their health. They want to be proactive instead of waiting for something to go wrong, and they want care that fits into their life instead of putting it on pause.
So we’ve grown into a true care management partner. We stay on top of appointments, medication refills, and follow-ups, and we coordinate directly with our clients’ doctors so nothing falls through the cracks. Our goal is to anticipate what someone needs before they even have to ask. Life is busy, and healthcare can feel like a full-time job. We take that off our clients’ plates so they can focus on actually living.
And sometimes living means making memories. Say Grandpa’s health isn’t what it used to be, but the family has a wedding in Greece and they want him there. We can make that happen. A nurse travels with him, his medications and care plan are handled, and everyone gets to just be present. Our favorite part is going one step further than anyone expects, like making sure he’s rested and feeling his best right before the toast, so he’s not just at the wedding, he’s really there for it.
To us, that’s what concierge wellness really means. It isn’t only about what happens after a procedure. It’s about giving people more time, more freedom, and more moments with the people who matter most.
If you were advising someone starting out in your industry today, what would you tell them to do first, and what would you tell them to ignore?
Do first: get your hospital experience. It teaches you to stay calm, think fast, and be the most prepared person in the room, and in concierge care that’s everything. Then focus on building real trust with doctors and clients. This industry runs on relationships, and every patient you care for is a chance to show people who you are.
Remember that clinical skill is expected. What people remember is how you made them feel. Find the small, personal ways to go above and beyond, because that’s where the magic is. And take care of your team the same way you want them to take care of your clients. Your nurses can only pour into people if someone is pouring into them, too.
And honestly? Be a little delusional. Believe in your vision before anyone else does. When we started, we dreamed so much bigger than where we were, and that belief carried us through the hard days.
Ignore: the pressure to look big right away. You don’t need a fancy website or a huge following to start. You need a few people who trust you completely and care that’s so exceptional they can’t help but tell everyone they know. Build that first, and the rest will follow.
Thank you to Yvette Nowry and the team at Luminate Wellness and Recovery for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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