We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Michelle Paris a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Michelle, great to have you with us today and excited to have you share your wisdom with our readers. Over the years, after speaking with countless do-ers, makers, builders, entrepreneurs, artists and more we’ve noticed that the ability to take risks is central to almost all stories of triumph and so we’re really interested in hearing about your journey with risk and how you developed your risk-taking ability.
There is actually a gene that encodes for thrill seeking. Once I took a scuba, diving continuing Ed course with Duke medical school and divers Alert net work, and there was a group of 30 doctors who are all Thrillseekers. When I was 14, the choir Director, let me play guitar and sing with a group on stage for a performance, but would not give me a solo. I turned the microphone up from the guitar to my voice and stole the solo. When I was 18 I jumped out of an airplane, twice. When I was 23 I started scuba diving. and when I was 31 I began purchasing and starting businesses. When I was 45, I started dancing tango. All of these “risks“, are actually seeking thrills. I was never afraid of failure, but I was afraid of success. Now I’m not really afraid of anything other than dying.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I love anything in healthcare and everything in business. Healthcare has lots of grays; we think we know what to do, we are pretty sure what will help. But the element of individuality leads to lots of grays in both response, and treatment planning. Doing QuickBooks on weekends was fun because it was simply black and white.
I have bought and sold five chiropractic practices. I have been a consultant for people wanting to position their practices for sale or wanting to purchase practices. And I have been a green builder, which surprisingly, is very much like being a healthcare provider. How all the pieces fit together and impact one another is really similar.
When the pandemic began, the chiropractic office was able to continue operating, but the Medspa was nonessential. My son got sick and I couldn’t get him tested and I then wound up worrying about my patients and staff. So I opened a Covid lab. For 25 months I work 16 to 18 hour days, seven days a week. I never wanted to be able to cause a business as much as I wanted to close this one. Actually, I never wanted to close any of them before! But closing the Covid lab would be because the pandemic was over so that was my goal.
In the meantime, after several months, the med so I was able to open so I was actually running three businesses with 42 employees. Some days I would adjust patients in the chiropractic office, other days I would swab Patients for Covid and call all the positives. And other days I was sticking needles in peoples faces to make them beautiful.
I sold the chiropractic office to my associate doctor had been with me for five years. I closed the Covid lab, and I decided to run the med spot exactly how I wanted to, with no employees and no hassle and just two days a week. I moved the office into half of a duplex that I am and now have complete freedom.
However, I have another business idea that I don’t know that I will be able to not start. Starting businesses is the thrill! When it helps people also, that’s the purpose.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1. Read and research way more than you think you need to. Be willing to walk away from the business idea even though you’ve put 500 hours into it. If it’s not a good one, it’s not a good one.
2. Assume that you can figure out how to do absolutely anything, and that a folder in the middle of the road is just something to figure out how to get around.
3. Live in a different country and learn to speak that language. Living in Mexico for four years when I was 23, probably impacted my future life more than anything else. I was in sales and learned how to evaluate people and their motivations in about 15 seconds. so sales is important and absolutely anything you try to do, but living in another country creates a different level of empathy.
If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?
The challenges I am facing now are completely unfamiliar. The first one is that I have just turned 60 and for the first time I am no longer a “young woman“. I still look good, but it doesn’t matter. I am definitely not young and being ageless for your entire adult life, actually ends. not caring what people think is one of the benefits and genuine authentic connection is the other.
The second challenge I’m facing is what I want to do for my next act. I don’t think that I want to work 16 hours a day any longer and I’m clear that I do not want to have employees, but finding purpose is a huge challenge. Because my entire career has focused on literally helping and fixing others, I am flummoxed. Typically people get to this age and they’ve worked in a cubicle or in a field that did not feel like they were actually helping other people. So they are Pivot during this time is towards really having meaning and purpose by giving back. But when your career has involved consistently giving back, figuring out what’s next is a challenge. I really want to focus on me and I’m not so interested in giving back. Does that make sense? I know it sounds crazy, but I am tired of caretaking.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.RejuvaWell.com
- Instagram: Rejuva_well
- Facebook: Facebook.com/atxmedspa.com
- Linkedin: Michelleparisdc
