Transcript
The Revival RN Story with Erin Jedrusik
Speaker 1: Welcome to Purpose City. Stories of humanity in action. Sponsored by, Executive Wealth Management. Guests on Purpose City do not necessarily [00:00:30] reflect an endorsement of Executive Wealth Management.
Ken: Welcome to Purpose City. Today's topic is the Revival RN story. And I have with me Erin Jedrusik.
Erin: You got it.
Ken: That's right.
Erin: You got it.
Ken: And Butch Herzog from Executive Wealth Management and you can introduce who's on the table.
Erin: Okay. This is Coco. Which if you don't know that then you've been hiding in a hole.
Ken: Yeah. So Coco ... So [00:01:00] why would we know that? Coco obviously has a face of a celebrity.
Erin: She does have the face of a celebrity. Coco is our spa puppy at Revival RN. She's two years old. She's been coming to work with me every day since then and I'm pretty certain that most people come to my office to see Coco. I'm also fairly certainly that's the only reason you invited me here today.
Ken: Yeah. So we'll get into it but you do injectables. That's the right word right?
Erin: Yep.
Ken: That sounded odd when I said it out loud. So injectables being face-
Erin: Cosmetic injectables. People commonly know [00:01:30] Botox, derma fillers, things like that.
Ken: Okay. And have you done any of those procedures on Coco?
Erin: Not yet. She's only two. She's a little early in the game but you know, we'll keep her young.
Ken: And what breed?
Butch: What's that in dog years?
Erin: She is a Shih Tzu but she was the brunt of the litter so she's extraordinarily tiny at three pounds.
Ken: So that's be 14 right? He wanted to know how many was that in dog years.
Butch: I'm not sure. Yeah.
Ken: And I always try to, especially the beginning, just turn the conversation [00:02:00] towards myself.
Erin: Of course.
Ken: So this is my attempt. Is I actually contacted you and asked, how do I get a dog like Coco at one time?
Erin: Yes.
Ken: And I almost did.
Erin: You almost did.
Ken: But Coco's one in a million.
Erin: However, there's probably about six others out there since people have met Coco that have come from the same parents.
Ken: I literally tried to get a foof dog like that. So I came close. I got the same breeder. And I totally forgot the breeds name that I had. I don't [00:02:30] have the dog anymore but the dog is happy in another home because the dog had ... I didn't have time. It was a puppy and it did not have the mannerisms like this one.
Erin: She's very special. This cannot be replicated.
Ken: Mine was Joey if you remember. Then it was Hank.
Erin: I didn't remember the name.
Ken: Well, I was asking about names. Remember I was like ... I think Hank. What do you think about Hank? And then I had Joey. I think I tried Waylen. I even did Hank three.
Erin: Hank three.
Ken: Yeah because there's Hank Williams Junior. No, no, no.
Erin: Oh, the third.
Ken: There's Hank Williams and [00:03:00] there's Hank Williams Junior and then he has a son Hank Three does music. I thought Hank Three just sounds a little edgier thank Hank.
Erin: People want to replicate Coco. I literally hit the dog jackpot.
Ken: Yeah. Because it's super cute but I can't walk around with a dog like that so I had to name it something like a Hank three. Even Joey was too cute.
Erin: Just got to leave the dress off and you're good.
Ken: Yeah.
Butch: I feel like you can't name a dog after a human name. Like Frank or-
Erin: Sometimes I think it's cute.
Butch: There's Bill. There's Bill.
Erin: Sometimes I think it's cute. Something I think it's cute. It depends.
Ken: [00:03:30] Coco's a good name.
Erin: Yeah.
Ken: I got two.
Erin: We had a contest to name Coco. She was nameless for about a month and a half. I couldn't come up with one and so I ran a contest at work, did a big giveaway and then I had thousands of names and I had to decipher it down so she was nameless for a while.
Ken: Sometimes it's both though, like I made my son Max and that was the number one dog name that year. Almost every year. So you can have a human-
Erin: You didn't tell him that did you?
Ken: Dog name. I didn't name him because of that but it just happened to be that [00:04:00] way.
Erin: Okay.
Ken: So Butch is with Executive Wealth Management.
Butch: Good morning.
Ken: What do you do there? Good morning. What do you do and what do they do?
Butch: Well, Good morning everybody. I am a private wealth advisor which is kind of a fancy term for a financial advisor over at Executive Wealth Management. More or less we manage the financial lives and decisions for all of our clients. So we try to make their lives simpler. We try to be that guide, navigate any financial decisions [00:04:30] they might have and really in the end we just build relationships and do it for the longterm.
Ken: And because you particularly are the cohost today I have to ask you a brief history of the company.
Butch: Good question.
Ken: Yeah.
Butch: Yeah. I've actually been familiar with the company ever since I was born. And it was started by my father back in '81. Some say '85.
Ken: So you're the fourth.
Butch: I'm the fourth.
Ken: And he's the third.
Butch: [00:05:00] And he's the third. And I've been around, or at least I've seeing him operate out of the company for that long. I've been kind of keeping tabs until I came back a couple years ago. Back to town. I was in Chicago.
Ken: And you have a dog.
Butch: I have two.
Erin: What kind of dog?
Butch: One is a ... The new one, Bertie, she's a ... Oh shoot. Sarah's going to kill me on this one. A poodle and a brittany spaniel.
Erin: Okay.
Butch: So much energy. And the other one is [00:05:30] a border collie and a husky that I got in college for free and turned out to be a great dog.
Erin: That's awesome.
Butch: I love dogs.
Erin: Coco's treats can help with-
Ken: Coco. Calm down Coco.
Erin: Well Coco's CBD treats can help calm your hyper one so we'll talk about that.
Butch: I have in my notes if you see, dogs with an arrow to CBD because I saw it on your website. I was doing my research. And I was like, well not for my hyper one, for my [00:06:00] one who gets car anxiety. Will that help?
Erin: Oh it'll absolutely help.
Butch: Okay we'll take this offline because I actually have dog CBD.
Erin: Well, if you play your cards right I'm pretty sure my assistant's showing up here at the end with some treats for you guys. You can take some home to your baby tonight.
Butch: All right.
Ken: So yeah, tell us about that. So that's partially besides your dog being like your in house celebrity, your social media celebrity, she's now on product.
Erin: Yeah. She is now on product. So Treehouse [00:06:30] CBD is a Michigan owned company. They manufacture full spectrum high quality CBD which is used for a lot of reasons. I'm sure you guys at least are somewhat familiar with it. So it can be anxiety, muscular pain, joint stiffness. For Coco, it helps her eat. It gives her an appetite. She's a little bit of a little nugget so it's always a problem. A lot of benefits to it for humans and animals as well. So we manufacture our own line of CBD cream at Revival RN. We also sell bath bombs. It just is kind of a popular thing. People really like them. They work really good. [00:07:00] And so for a limited time they are featuring Coco on their CBD dog treats which gave me a perfect opportunity to say, let's do something really fun and cool with this which is what I like to do. So the entire month we turned it into a giant fundraiser for Waggin Tails which is a local animal rescue. So we've got a big event coming up, but the entire month anyone that comes in our spa and buys our treats, we donate all the money to the rescue and doing all kinds of giveaways and fun things with it too. So we're riding coattails of Coco to help save [00:07:30] some of the homeless puppies.
Ken: Nice. This is totally random. But every time I hear CBD I think of CDB. Anybody in here know what that is? Culture. It has to do with music. I'm even looking in the peanut gallery behind me.
Erin: You're going to lose me if it's music.
Ken: Do you know?
Butch: No.
Ken: Charlie Daniels Band.
Erin: No.
Butch: Yeah, no.
Ken: Bringing myself back into it. Interviewing him once at his house outside Nashville. And in his garage he had like this 1970s Camaro or something. And it had a big [00:08:00] lighting bolt that said CDB.
Butch: Is that The Devil Went Down to Georgia?
Ken: Yeah. Devil Went Down to Georgia.
Butch: Okay.
Erin: I got it. Now I got it. Yeah, yeah. Got it. I know songs. I don't know names.
Butch: Are we going to put that on? I'm kidding.
Erin: Oh now we need ... Cue Devil Went Down to Georgia.
Ken: That would be awesome. The dog moves. Hello Coco.
Erin: She is alive.
Ken: So what else do you ... So Revival RN.
Erin: Yes.
Ken: Tell me how [00:08:30] you went from a nurse or even what led you to be a nurse and then to Revival RN, to expanding to a wellness spa. That whole series of what motivates you? How does that happen?
Erin: It happens from I think a lot of different facets. Before I was a nurse ... I've been a nurse for 17 years. I've been a nurse for 17 years before in my previous life before I was [00:09:00] aesthetic injector and specialized in the industry I'm in now I worked primarily at Mott Children's Hospital at U of M in pediatric intensive care. I know you're familiar. Right?
Ken: Yeah. Our paths could have crossed and didn't know it.
Erin: I think that at some point they probably did. And so I spent a tremendous amount of time there. My specialty was pediatrics, trauma nursing and honestly, when I worked there, I was like, "I will never leave. I love this job. I'm going to do this till the day I die." It was both rewarding and heartbreaking. [00:09:30] People didn't understand how I could do that. I'd have friends and family members, "Babies are dying in there every day. How do you go to work? How do you do this? These are things people don't see in their entire lifetime." One, I love working with kids. I've always loved working with kids. Everything I've done ... Not now, but everything I've done up until this point has pretty much been revolved around working with children. And my perspective on that was whether I'm here or not, these kids are sick. These kids are sick. They're dying. They have these things going on. And I am [00:10:00] trained and capable of taking care of them. And if it was my baby in the ICU or my teenager in the pediatric ICU, I would want someone like me taking care of it. And it's not really about me.
Ken: So you're a nurse in pediatric ICUs. So for those that aren't familiar with that world ... And we both are. From two different perspectives.
Erin: Absolutely.
Ken: I knew of nurses in there and got to know families in there as I was one of those families at one time. So people get a perspective of what [00:10:30] life is outside of your home is there's families in these ICUs that nurses are helping that have kids that are growing up, they're of school age, and all they've ever known is living in that hospital room. Maybe even in a guarded bed, almost like in a bubble kind of situation. And anyone could ... He's probably 10 years old. He's had every birthday there. Every Christmas. So that's been his family's life [00:11:00] for 10 years. And had 80 plus surgeries. That's his whole life. All he knows is living in a hospital, in an ICU. And perfectly happy. If you think of an ICU kid that's just laying there ... No. This is a normal active kid that has one specific problem that just, they can't quite fix it. They can't quite let him go. He has to recover from something minor. Well, it could be major but it's a minor surgery. It just [00:11:30] doesn't take and they redo it and they redo it. And the family has this hope of maybe going home next month and they just never do.
Erin: Coolest thing about kids, kids don't feel sorry for themselves. You throw one of us in a hospital it'll be like, "I don't feel good. My belly, my arm." Kids are like, "I'm fine, I'm fine." Because they want to play video games. They want to get the hell out of there. They want to go do something fun. So they're cool kids. So we saved a ton of lives, we lost a ton. It was a double edged sword. [00:12:00] Said I would stay there forever and then I had two kids of my own. And that changes things, right?
Ken: Yeah.
Erin: So I have now ... They're grownish. They're still babies to me. My youngest son is 14 and my oldest son is 16. And my world revolves around these two young men. So when I had them, working holidays and weekends and midnights probably for the next 10 years because there's not a big turnover in the ICU. It's such a specialty. I chose my kids at some point in time. And [00:12:30] so I always say I sold out but ...
Ken: Would I be right in saying ... And this is totally a layperson's guess, but having been on the family side of it, did you get trained extra for putting in IVs or do you think you become a more specialty than other nurses because special needs kids are so difficult to find a vein, to do it in a way that doesn't hurt them or scare them? I mean that takes [00:13:00] maybe on the job learned skill.
Erin: It's an acquired skill. It's something that comes with time. It's the kind of skill that the more you do it, the better you get at it. And in different departments, different divisions, different dynamics determines kind of how you do that. So when I worked in emergency medicine it was unfortunately pinning down a screaming toddler while someone's got his little leg locked so I can put an IV in his foot. In the ICU the child might be sedated because they're so sick that they're on a ventilator. Different [00:13:30] dynamics there.
Ken: And what you do is so serious because now you have children with problems going under and that causes this whole other risk factor of waking up properly.
Erin: It's a lot.
Ken: It's a lot.
Erin: It's a lot. And there was this crossover when we worked there. So some of these children go home and they still need care when they go home. And many of them go home on ventilators. Chronic lung conditions, preemies, different things like that. So the University [00:14:00] of Michigan had a home care division. There's several different divisions but one of them was pediatric home care and so we would provide respite care, private duty nursing in the home. And that was a service that U of M provided. So a lot of us nurses that worked in the ICU that specialized in this, we already were taking care of these children. Some of them we had known for three months, six months longer. They had spent time with us then would go home. So we would go and do ... It was kind of like a moonlighting job for us to go to their homes and take care of these children. [00:14:30] So I kind of started doing a little bit of both. And eventually the home care division offered me a position as a supervisor for which I quickly said no multiple times. And eventually they talked me into it. The nice schedule versus, like I said, the time away from my kids won out. So I got into that field for a short period of time. Still working for U of M. Working as a nursing supervisor overseeing several different divisions of that.
And it was a cool gig [00:15:00] and it was something I enjoyed doing. But I'm just not the kind of girl to sit behind a desk. I just don't roll that way so.
Butch: I'm very familiar with the Ronald McDonald house over there. If you're ever feeling sorry for yourself just stop by there. Just see the ...
Erin: The years I spent in the ICU ... The years I spent working there, the things I that I saw, the things that I experienced, the things that I watched families go through, it changes your perspective on everything. Every day of my life, every minute I'm awake, you think about that. There's not a day you don't. And [00:15:30] all of a sudden the things that you're stressed out about or you're worried about or you think the sky is falling really aren't that big of a deal.
Butch: So I know that you are very philanthropic. Does this kind of spark your philanthropic ... I guess your goals or your philanthropic vein?
Erin: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Butch: To get into that?
Erin: Yeah. I think I've always kind of had a little bit in me to kind of always want to help others and do things in small and big scales depending where the opportunities [00:16:00] were. Obviously having my business now creates a platform, creates and opportunity for me to do more of that. I provide services that are very highly sought after, can be very expensive. So kind of leveraging that is a way to raise money and help those that need it is something that I've been fortunate enough to do. Doing it back before that, yes, absolutely I think I've always been that way. [00:16:30] The nursing component of that, that just changes. It does. It gives you more empathy. It gives you a different understanding when you're in there and you see families going through these things and you realize kind of how bad it really can be. It just kind of puts perspective on things.
Ken: Yeah, for sure. Affects you the rest of your life. As you know, I had a special needs daughter full care. In and out of ICUs on a continual basis. I would spend many weekends there. [00:17:00] But it's hard to say I never felt sorry for myself but it was hard to when I would see families that don't ever get out of there or they never take their kid home. I'd have to go to work all day and then come home in the evening, not to home but to an ICU. And I'd do that on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, all week. And then let wife go home who's been there for five days so she can sleep in a bed and then I'd sleep where there's no place to sleep in an ICU for a weekend basically. [00:17:30] That's a tough life but for me it'd be spurts.
Erin: Yep.
Ken: But there's people there that do that all the time and that stays with you even though that's not part of my life anymore.
Erin: Yeah. And I think that any nurse you talk to, no matter where they work or what kind of nursing they do, probably has a story. There's always ... I don't know a nurse that doesn't have something that drove them to become a nurse. People don't usually become nurses because of the paycheck or bragging rights or whatever it may be. There's usually something, [00:18:00] some personal experience they had. Whether they were sick or someone they knew was sick or something that they went through that kind of brought them to that reality that this is kind of what I want to do.
For me, I always knew I wanted to help people. Yeah. But in what capacity at 19, 20 years old? I didn't know. I came out of high school ... I had probably medically speaking or personally speaking kind of the two biggest experiences that I went through [00:18:30] that probably was ... Not probably. It was definitely what made me decide that really this is what I want to do with my life and how I want to do it is I had ... When I was in high school we discovered I had scoliosis. So people don't know what that is. But basically means my spine was crooked.
Ken: Yeah. It's when you're in grade school and they make you bend over and touch your toes and someone looks at your spine.
Erin: Except I apparently missed that day every day of my life until I was 15 years old. So many people along that road dropped the ball. Don't ask me how. But all of a sudden here I was at 15, almost 16 years old in a doctor's [00:19:00] office and I bend over and they're like whoa. I'm like The Hunchback of Notre Dame if I bend over. My rib cage is so shifted it just sits like this. We were all clueless. And he's like, "Hey, you got to get this girl in." Well, I was a major athlete. My whole world as a child and as a teenager and in high school revolved around sports. I was a figure skater, I was a gymnast, I was a cheerleader. In middle school I did track and swimming. You name it. If it was a sport, I was playing it and that was my livelihood. And it went from zero [00:19:30] to 100 because they missed it. So we went to children's hospital. We went to a lot of places but we started there. And it went from like hey, you're back's a little crooked, let's go get some x-rays to the doctor coming in the room and saying, "This is so severe that we've passed any window of doing anything other than surgery." And as an adult you process that very differently than you do at 15, 16 years old.
You get told you can't go to a party, the world is over. You get grounded [00:20:00] and it's ending. You might as well just die. At that age all I could hear, everything else was white noise, was you're never going to play sports again. You're never going to compete in figure skating again. We're going to cut your spine down to your spinal cord. We're going to wake you up in the middle of that surgery to make sure you're not paralyzed. You might be paralyzed. We're going to put 12 inch rods in your spine. We're going to drill it together and you may never walk again. And there was a whole lot of more important things said but that was all that I heard. [00:20:30] So that hit me hard. So I went from straight A student and major athlete to I didn't want to get out of bed. I didn't want to do anything. My world was over. So I struggled a lot in my second half of junior year, senior year. Kind of pushed through, suffered with some depression and issues and it was just a complete flip flop.
So ultimately I waited until I graduated high school, had the surgery when I was 19. It was horrific. It became kind of my passion when I worked in the ICU because that's where children [00:21:00] that have scoliosis surgery go. So I could relate to that. But when I was in that hospital for that time in that excruciating pain, there was these nurses. There was good and there was okay, but there was extraordinary. There was those people that just got it. They knew how bad it was and they knew that those teeny tiny little things meant everything to me. And to this day there's a couple of those nurses that I will never forget. So there was that moment. And then I come out of that and ... I [00:21:30] don't think it maybe was a year later, my grandma was sick. So my grandma has Alzheimer's and dementia. There was a lot of dynamics in my family at the time. I think I was 19, maybe 20. And there was nobody in my family stepping up to the plate to take care of grandma. So that fell on me. So we ended up with nursing homes and then I tried to take care of her at home for a while, then when got her a nursing home, then they abused her and didn't take care of her.
So then that whole thing changed and I found myself at 19 years old trying to navigate [00:22:00] probate court and explain to them that I need to be her legal guardian at 19 and there's no family around, it's just me. And grandma has no money. So I'm not a kid in here trying to get some paycheck. There's nothing. Just some sweatpants in a locker and that's about it. So going through that process and taking care of my grandma and watching people that were really ... There's no other way to say it. There was some really horrible people that didn't take care of her and then there was some really great people that did. And I think after going through both of those situations my [00:22:30] job in automotive industry became very unimportant to me very quickly. So at 20 years old I had a full career. I was an account manager for an automotive company. I had my own house. Most of my friends were still partying and I had a company car, my own house and a whole career and I literally walked away from all of it. I sold my house, I quit my job, I worked at a bar, and I went to nursing school and that was that.
Ken: Wow. Fast forward a little bit to if you add ... I'm glad you added the background of your scoliosis [00:23:00] story because let's talk a little bit about your ninja warrior activities. If anybody heard that you just said you had scoliosis and they saw what you do-
Butch: Back surgery. Scoliosis.
Erin: Somehow I didn't think we were going to dodge that one. Yeah. Okay. So fast forward now into-
Ken: So you basically made the career switch for the benefit of being a mom. Career switch from leaving pediatric-
Erin: Pediatric [00:23:30] ICU to ultimately office and then from there I went into emergency medicine when I started injecting. So that was kind of ... There was this kind of transition period during that. But about the time that I started Revival RN ... I started injecting in 2013. I started becoming an aesthetic injector at that time. Started specializing in it. Being an injector, doing cosmetic injectables, some of it's medical based too. Treatments. Some of it's [00:24:00] aesthetic. But it's very much an art as it is a science. And I say this over and over again. People hear me say this all the time. It's very much an art as it is a science. So I study facial anatomy and structure and we train all the time in our industry. It's the kind of profession that changes and it's medicine. So you go through this and this has continued since 2013 since I started. But very early on when I started injecting like baby, baby, baby, I realized that I was just really good at this. [00:24:30] I just had an eye for it. And I couldn't really explain it. Kind of like ... I always use the analogy that a kid that just can play the piano and no one taught him. And you're like, well how did you know how to do that? And he's like, "I don't know, I just do."
There was something about facial anatomy, there was something about the aesthetics of it that just clicked with me. So I knew really early on that I was good at it. I loved it. I enjoyed it. And that was kind of what drove the business in the early stages. So fast forward 2017 where you're [00:25:00] getting to ninja world. I decided to go out on my own, start Revival RN. I started small first before we opened our expansion in 2019. At the same time I'd just gone through a divorce. So here I am a single mom and two kids and I had just quit my job and started my own business. Who the hell does that right?
Ken: Right.
Erin: And it was scary but I think always in my life I've always had a lot of guts and drive and like here we go. Everyone's got their little mottos or things that they kind of live by or [00:25:30] think. And I always say this when people ask me about it is, whether it's work or my family or my friends or ninja or anything else that I've done in my life, my criteria is what is the absolute worst thing that can happen? What is the absolute worst case scenario here? Can I live with that? If I can live with that, then I'm doing it. And so you play that out and I decide, yep, worst case scenario, I can live with this. I can always go back to the ICU if things don't workout or whatever. So [00:26:00] I go off and I do that. But we're struggling. You got family dynamics are changed and I got two young boys. There's a lot going on. I'm trying to start a business. My boys are like, "This ninja warrior, American Ninja Warrior, mom." This show and they're watching obsessively and I'm not paying attention. And they're like there's a gym in Howell and it opened and we got to go. And I'm like that sounds kind of crazy but kind of fun, right?
So like if you're going to do it, I'm going to do it. So we go and we check it out. I know you guys have seen America Ninja Warrior. You've seen the show, right?
Ken: Yeah. [00:26:30] Oh yeah.
Erin: So you know the drill. It's exactly how it is on the show. And we loved it and it stuck. And so we started going and they have a competition team. They said, "Hey, why don't you guys join our competition team?" And it rolled into two and a half years of the coolest time I've ever spent with my kids. The best shape I was ever in in my life. We traveled and competed. It was like being the hockey mom that played hockey. You go to like these weekend ... I had friends that did it with me. One of the owners of the gym, Sarah, and I became great friends. We'd go to Canada for a weekend and we'd roll in on [00:27:00] a Friday and the older kids and the adults would compete on Saturday and you could drink the beer at night because you were done competing while the kids swam in the pool and then the little ones competed on Sunday and you came back and ...
It kind of consumes [inaudible 00:27:12] in the best possible way. And meanwhile everybody's like, "You are absolutely insane. Your spine is completely fused. What are you doing? Like you can't be swinging from bars and jumping off of buildings. This is insane."
Butch: And that's what drove you.
Erin: Yeah. And I was like, watch me. I'm that [00:27:30] girl that's like, tell me I can't do something. You want to get me to do something, tell me I can't do it. Now you're going to really watch me do it. And I had to find different ways around it. Sometimes I had to do things a little bit differently than somebody else. But that was the strongest my back ever was. And it was a great experience. And so we did that for a few years and it was awesome.
Butch: Well, it goes for so many areas of your life. Whether it's athletic, whether it be social ... Well, hi Coco.
Ken: Coco has awoken.
Erin: Nap time is [00:28:00] over.
Butch: But it goes for so many facets of your life. Stepping out of your comfort zone and taking chances and embracing change.
Erin: Right.
Butch: Change is good. But most people perceive it as bad because they're afraid of it.
Erin: They're afraid of it.
Butch: They're used to what they're used to. I'm not preaching or anything. I'm learning. Constantly learning. Thank you Coco.
Ken: What kind of hand cream do you have on?
Butch: I don't know. But I'm constantly learning and then in finance too, things are going to change. And [00:28:30] it's how you react to the change. It's such a great story about perseverance, change, taking risks. It's pretty inspiring.
Erin: Yeah. We're no different. You have a story, I have a story, Ken has a story. We've all been through experiences. The difference maybe between me and someone else is I have a big mouth and I talk about it.
Ken: You make up for the rest of us.
Erin: Right. I have no shame in my game so I'll tell you all the dirty and the good. Like I'll tell you all the dumb [00:29:00] things I did when I opened my own business that I had to learn the hard way.
Butch: We want to hear about those.
Erin: I will. I couldn't tell you how many times the other injectors come to me and say, "I want to start my own business. You're doing this, you're doing an awesome job. Give me advice." I said, "I will save you the time. Sit down with me and I will tell you everything I did wrong so that you don't do it." Let's not reinvent the wheel here. But it's a learning curve. But all of those things. I mean, you have a choice. I have a choice. You have back surgery, that's a choice. Am I going to roll over and be like oh, my back's hurt, I can't do anything? No. [00:29:30] I'm going to find a way to do it. Am I going to be faced with challenges? Absolutely. Same with a business. Was it scary? Was it risky to go out and do that and take that leap of faith? Absolutely. But it's kind of back to that, what's the worst case scenario?
Ken: Right. So who inspires you? Do you have any icons, motivations, personal or just people out there? Any forms of ... I have for instance, my grandfather's not [00:30:00] around anymore but I still try to live a life where I think he would be proud of. Like I respected his life and I want to live one similar.
Erin: Oh yeah. Absolutely. I mean we all have those people in our lives. And I've been fortunate enough that I've got a lot of friends and a lot of supporters and I've surrounded myself with a lot of really great people that have taught me over the years and motivated me and pushed me and challenged me. And I think when you surround yourself with people like that that does help you grow and mature and do those things. But I think for me, I'm kind of old school. When [00:30:30] I was a little kid, most of what I got, most of my drive I think came from my daddy. And my dad is still around and he's awesome. But when you're a young kid and you're growing up what you're old over and over and over again is what you believe. And so there's unfortunately circumstances where kids are told you can't do it, you're incapable, you're not smart enough, you're not good enough, you're ugly, you're this or all of these things and these kids have no self esteem and no self confidence. Society [00:31:00] and all the things out there just make this worse that we didn't have when we were kids.
But I grew up in this weird bubble. Very normal bubble. Weird now maybe to some people but to me it was very normal where I just came from a very loving family. My mom told me she loved me about a hundred times a day and it was annoying as hell. And I tell my kids the same thing all day long.
Ken: I was going say, probably your kids are saying the same thing now.
Erin: Yeah. My teenagers don't go to bed without saying I love you back or they are in trouble and I will turn their light on. But you hear it over and over again, you feel loved. And my dad was the same [00:31:30] way but my dad was an entrepreneur. My dad owned his own business. My uncle owned his own business. I always say, it's kind of in your blood. Some people just have that and some people don't. And I'm like I think it was just always in my blood. I always wanted my own business. Before I had an injectable business I owned a security company and a daycare. Small businesses but things that I did before that were kind of cool and fun. But my dad was always like, "You can do anything you want if you work hard enough. Find a way. Someone tells you no, figure out how to do it. No [00:32:00] one's going to take care of you. You're a girl, right? Old school. Go find someone to marry you and ... No. Absolutely not. Take care of yourself. You work hard, you do the right things. Doesn't matter if you're working at McDonald's or what you're doing. You work 100%." And so you kind of get some grit from that and you get some work ethic.
And I had a ... He'll tell you now, "How many jobs did you have when you were a kid? How many jobs?" Like a million. I worked a million jobs and nobody made me have one of them. I would work two, three jobs at one time because why not? Why not? What am I going to do? I go play with my friends after work. I'm going to [00:32:30] go have a job and do these things. So I had that kind of instilled in me from him all the time. It wasn't like a passing conversation. It was an ongoing conversation all the time. So by the time I was 19 and I moved out and they were both absolutely like no, you are not going. I was so independent and so stubborn and I had a lot of pride. So I went off on my own at 19 and got my own apartment and I ate my ramen noodles and I drank my kool-aid and I didn't ask my parents for a penny because dad told me not to. [00:33:00] And to this day, I never have.
Ken: Ramen. Ramen right?
Erin: I say ramen.
Ken: I know.
Erin: I know it's wrong.
Ken: Everybody loves ramen.
Erin: I know it's wrong.
Ken: You're getting it mixed up.
Erin: But I say ramen.
Ken: But ramen really should raise their prices. This is a little off topic.
Erin: What do they cost now?
Ken: They're amazing. I don't know. They're like free.
Erin: They were like 33 cents when I was a kid and I don't know how I still know that but I do.
Ken: Right.
Butch: Well, Ken, their target market is lower end.
Erin: Poor.
Butch: Poor.
Ken: I know.
Erin: I was poor.
Ken: People scraping.
Erin: Right.
Ken: So if they raise the prices.
Erin: [00:33:30] But the point of that story was is that I ate my ramen noodles and drank my kool-aid and I never had any debt. And at 19 years old I didn't have a credit card. I paid my bills. I lived within my means. And we all go through times in your life where you have more and you have less right? But my whole life I've kind of lived that way and just worked hard, took care of myself, found a way to get it done and never put myself in a situation where I had to turn to others for help.
Butch: [00:34:00] I respect that. I'm just listening. I'm like drawing parallels from what you're saying to like what I'm hearing from clients all the time. Because everyone has a story.
Erin: Right. Everyone.
Butch: Every background's different. Every current situation's different. And there's some tried and true truths. Fundamental truths which is that management. Saving more than you spend. Or excuse me, spending less than you earn and saving some for yourself.
Erin: It's a hard lesson to learn if you [00:34:30] aren't taught it I think.
Butch: You're right.
Erin: I think it's a really hard lesson to learn. It's very easy to want that thing that's in front of you. Whether it's within your means or not.
Butch: We live in a world of instant gratification.
Erin: Right. We want it, we want it, we want it. So to have that self control to say I do want it and I'll get it one day, but I'm going to have to keep working really, really hard to get there.
Butch: So question. How did you transition from a nurse to a ... [00:35:00] What's the official title right now?
Erin: Aesthetic injector. Nurse injector. Cosmetic injector. There's a lot of interchangeable terms. But aesthetic injector.
Butch: Is that a normal pathway?
Erin: No. Not at all.
Butch: There's not like a pre req you have to be a nurse first?
Erin: No.
Butch: Okay.
Erin: No. No. Not at all. Oh, getting sad that everyone's leaving you? You can come off the table. Come take a little chill with me Coco. So when I was young ... I mean, I'm old now.
Ken: You are young. Come on.
Erin: I'm not going to say how old I am. I will. I'm 42. [00:35:30] I don't care. I'm 42. When I was probably 24, 25 I started getting Botox. Because I went to my dermatologist and I was like 24, which is really pathetic. I was like, "I feel like I'm really old and my face is ugly and you need to make me look pretty again." Which is obnoxious. And you get the chemical peels and you get this. But one day he looked at me and he ... It was the cosmetic dermatology center at U of M because ... And he had payroll deduction which is even worse. Because you're like, "Oh, just take it out of my paycheck."
Butch: [00:36:00] Never going to see it.
Erin: Never going to see that. And he's like, "You know what? I think if you let me put a little Botox ..." Because I was very animated. I'm still animated but the forehead just doesn't move as much now. And he's like, "I think if we smooth out those lines a little bit and did a couple of things you'd feel really good." So $1,500 later I'm happy as a clam. I'm like this is awesome. I can't afford to do this all the time at that age but I would go see him when I could. And then I kind of started to get intrigued by it. And I'm like, "Well, when are you going to give me a job? Why don't you hire [00:36:30] me? Teach me how to do this?" He's like, "Yeah right, you're never going to get in here. It's never going to happen." And well, but I don't like being told no so that's not going to fly with me. So I go home and I start doing my research. And I would say I probably spent about six months doing research on the industry. What is it? Is it growing? Is it viable? What does it take to do this? Is it safe? What's the investment into this and all these things.
And I remember going to my family. They'll probably be upset for me saying this but it's just the truth. And pretty much everybody told me I was stupid. [00:37:00] Pretty much that was the consensus. Maybe not in those exact words but they were like, "You just want to have a wrinkle free forehead for free and that's a terrible idea. Why would you go start ... You're not going to go start a business and make a career out of it. You're a nurse." But I don't like to be told no so watch me. Watch me. So I went off. And it's kind of a good old boys club as an injector and it's not fair. A few years fast forward from now I'd love nothing more than to have kind of like a little residency [00:37:30] program to help injectors get into our industry and really help them build and have the skillset to do it and then help them find job placement. Because there's a big gap between those two in our industry right now. But I kind of ... I was going to go out and do it on my own. I crossed paths with someone that had already established a business. We decided hey, let's not be each other's competition. Let's work together. So I started working there with somebody else. I got experience over the next probably five years.
And then as I mentioned before, decided to [00:38:00] go out on my own and started Revival RN and it kind of evolved from there into what I have now.
Ken: So you mentioned part art and you found you were good at it. But would that mean ... So you can train people where to put the needles and the face anatomy. Does the art come in in that they don't come out looking like Joan Rivers? I didn't ... Can I say names? But where it looks natural. I mean is that the art of it? If it's a natural flow to what their face is. [00:38:30] Like a good haircut for a certain face, not the same haircut for everybody kind of thing.
Erin: Exactly. Right. Exactly. No two faces are created equal. I have a million, I say tools, in my toolbox. Whether it be products that I use, injectables that I use, techniques that I use. I train all the time. And how I'm going to treat you is going to be different than how I'm going to treat you. And the science piece of it too is we call it the golden ratio or five proportions. There's balance to our faces that we want and there's measurements and we use calipers to do this and [00:39:00] to create that. But humans know what that is even without the training that I have. You can look at somebody and ... Let's use an extreme example like a Victoria Secret model. Or someone like some dude on the cover of GG and you're like, that is a very attractive human being. You don't necessarily know why, but you're like, that is a very attractive human being. And we study-
Ken: It's balance.
Erin: Yeah. That balance and that science. So there's that component to it. And then there's the training and skills behind. What I do people can confuse [00:39:30] as like oh, it's a spa, you do facials, you do massages. This is a medical practice. There is very serious complications that can come from what we do. The extensive training that I have and those that are really prevalent in my industry have is far beyond what you could ever imagine to make sure that what we're doing is safe and that we don't injure people. And people should always be very conscious of choosing their injector because of that.
Butch: That's really interesting is the uneducated mind-
Ken: In [00:40:00] this area.
Butch: It's not just your typical spa, right?
Erin: No. Not at all.
Butch: What are the, I guess, main services that you guys provide for your clients and clientele? Just, again, for the uneducated mind.
Erin: Yeah. No, absolutely. It's kind of a unique dynamic, the business model that I have compared to others in the industry. A medical spa, what people traditionally think of is you [00:40:30] have an injector, you do Botox and fillers and things like that. A lot of lasers. I think lasers are awesome. I go to all my friends for them. I just don't want to own them. And it's really medical clinically based. So my business is almost kind of divided into two. So if you ever come by, and I invite you to come by and check it out, the front end of my business is what I kind of consider my medical spa. We do IV vitamin therapy which is a very popular service. And that can be used to treat anything from symptom management for clients of ours [00:41:00] that have cancer to a hangover to wellness. There's people that come in on a regular basis to keep their vitamins and nutrients in their body and that proactive wellness and taking good care of themselves. There's obviously your injectable practice which is what I do. So that's the Botox, the dermal fillers, all the antiaging. We do it medically too.
Some people do it for migraines, grinding, clenching, bruxism. There's a lot of other things for that. So that's the medical piece. That's where we have a medical director that oversees our practice. That's where the [00:41:30] safety and all of that comes into play and all of my years of experience as a nurse comes into play.
Ken: So you have a medical doctor that is an overseer?
Erin: Yep. So he's not an injector but he has to ... Dr. Huss has to oversee our practice. Every state has different rules and regulations and that's ours in Michigan. But then what I spun and I did different than other places do is if you walk through my back doors, I have a traditional day spa. So you think about going on vacation with your wife [00:42:00] and you're going to go get some couples massage or a nice facial, go in the sauna, things like that. That's what we're creating there. There's not a lot of that out in our area. There's just not. You're on vacations places, yes. You kind of go east side you'll find it. In our town there's just not a place where you really can go and spend an afternoon. So we have a beautiful day spa where we provide all of these kind of relaxing and rejuvenating experiences and services.
Butch: [00:42:30] That is unique. Again, now I feel like I know what you're talking about but I wouldn't know the first thing about injections.
Erin: No. I mean, yeah, that's my job.
Butch: Do you see a lot of guys go in there?
Erin: I do.
Ken: What? She's the only one I would trust my face with.
Butch: Asking for a friend.
Erin: I do. We do. And with the most utmost confidentiality I will walk in ... We're a small town. Brighton's a strong community. We all support each other. I have more than a few times walked into a store and seen a client of mine and walked right [00:43:00] past them like have no idea who they are. Because I don't know who they're with. If I go up to you and I'm like, "Hey, what's up Butch?", and I walk away, your wife's going to be like, "Who is she and why do you know her?"
Butch: And why haven't you bought me one of those packages?
Erin: Right.
Ken: I confess right now, if my family listens, that I've been a client of Erin's.
Butch: Well, you look great. Explains a lot.
Ken: Well, I'm actually 94.
Erin: No comment. Yeah, he is. He is. So that's the structure of our business. [00:43:30] I built my business around a lot of trust with my clientele. So my business is primarily word of mouth. Yeah, social media. I have fun on Instagram. I goof around. We post pictures of Coco here in the studio and we do fun things like that. But really at the end of the day I'm not going to recommend something to my clients, I'm going to offer something to my clients unless I really think I can knock it out of the park. And I do. I'm good at what I do and so they trust me. [00:44:00] And I've built a reputation around that. So when I opened Revival RN in 2017 and had been injecting since 2013, my business grew exponentially and very rapidly. So I went from a small space to a medium space to I got to figure this out. And things happened pretty quick. I opened our full wellness center which is in Green Oak Village Place mall. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful facility. It was a fun project. I had no idea what I was doing. [00:44:30] I've never built a home or anything.
But I still have literally the piece of paper where I drew out and was like I want the room here and here. And the cool thing is I would sit with these architects and they're like, "She's just a dumb girl. That's never going to happen."
Butch: You knew what you wanted though.
Erin: And I like, "Yeah, it is." And I'm looking at their computers, I'm like, "Just move the little line over here and move that little line." And they're just shaking their heads like, "When is she going to go?" And finally something clicked with them and they were like, "Oh, maybe. Wait, yeah. Maybe." So [00:45:00] the way the building ... I gutted it. Built it from scratch so it's like a second home to me. I'm really proud of it. Is almost identical to the little pieces of paper I first drew way back when the project started.
Butch: You should frame those.
Erin: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, it's cool. It's cool.
Ken: When I first was sharing the idea of this podcast, you and your shop is really I've used as the example. Butch knows this is true. I've used this as the example of what this podcast should be about. I don't know if I used you by name, but Revival [00:45:30] RN. It's a successful business and the person that owns it is a really authentic, genuine and caring person. And those are the kind of people I want to talk about or to and just find out what they're like, what their story is. So I appreciate you doing that. And I think when I first met you and then I saw subsequent times after that your charitable nature. But it was a story of ... Well, a sad story. And you do know what I'm [00:46:00] talking about so I'm not going to lead up to it. And you tell a little bit about it and then Butch has-
Erin: Has something to share?
Ken: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Erin: Absolutely. I'm always looking for opportunities to help others when I can and they come about sometimes. These things fall into our plates and we react. So I left work one day. I was still ... The new spa wasn't open yet. It was under construction. So I was working out of a small space and building out the other one and I leave work one day and I do a lot of Instagram social [00:46:30] media and I have a Facebook account, but I'm not real active on Facebook. And I leave work and I open my phone and there's a bajillion messages in my Facebook and I'm like, "What is going on here?" And open it up and I'm kind of trying to sort through it and someone had tagged me on a group page in town and it said they were looking for someone to do IV vitamin therapy which I do. Specifically vitamin C therapy for a girl that had cancer. So I get home and I'm kind of sorting these messages and I'm trying to sort it out. Meanwhile a friend of mine texts me and says, "Hey, do you do vitamin therapy [00:47:00] with vitamin C?" And I said, "Yeah."
And she said, "Well, my friend's daughter is really sick and she's got cancer. And she was getting these treatments before and she can't some now and they really need someone to do it." So I was like, "Okay. Give me her number." And literally this played out in like 30 minutes and I call her mom, Debbie, and I'm like, "Hey, I got these messages. What can I do for you guys?" Find out she's just a few minutes down the road from me. She's right in my town. And her daughter's very, very young, newly married. Her husband Kyle, they have this beautiful [00:47:30] boy, Liam. Little cute, red head, curly haired kid. And I said, "Let me come over." Because as a nurse too, I need to assess the situation. I need to know medically is it safe for me to do this. General sense, I'm treating healthy people in my spa. So now I've got to get my medical director involved, do an assessment. But I've also had a friend of mine that I lost from cancer and I know how awful that can be and you just feel like crap and you just want to feel good.
So I stopped and picked up a few things and we stopped by and I am spending the whole evening with them. And when I left I just was so compelled [00:48:00] that I've got to do something to help them. Financially they're struggling, she's sick. They've got all these things going on. And I'm kind of a knee jerk reaction kind of girl. Most of what I do is not calculated at all. And I didn't have a space and how am I going to do this? And I scrambled around and I think Ken was involved a little bit. So I called my friend that owns this space which is a yoga studio in town and I said, "Listen, I need to have an event for this girl. I need a place to do it. Can I use your space?" And she said, "Absolutely. You can do whatever you [00:48:30] want." And then I'm like, "Okay. How can I make the most amount of money in the least amount of time? We have no time here. Time is of the essence. What am I going to do?"
So I made up, no idea if it was going to work or not, this speed dating for Botox where I was going to do as much Botox as I could possibly do in a two hour window of time and I was going to give it all away for free and it was all going to be donations for Becky and her family. And I had a tremendous amount of people that came out of the woodwork to support me. Nurses that volunteered [00:49:00] to help me make this happen. I mean, I had to be the person with the needle but they took care of everything else. And then we did a ton of giveaways. Free filler, free Botox. Anything I could give away, gave it away. That meant more raffle tickets, more opportunities. And it just created this frenzy. And about a couple days before, unfortunately, Becky passed away. So we didn't make it to the event for her but she left behind a young husband and a young child and so obviously [00:49:30] we were going to move forward with the event and do that. So as a result of that we raised, I think it $7,500 in about two hours for this family, which is amazing.
Our community is really strong out here and people are really supportive and very, very generous. So we were able to do that for the family and I've stayed in touch with them. And when Ken asked me to come out here he said, "If there's somebody you want to bring out," and I said, "I'd love to remember Becky and talk about her a little bit." Her mom's out of town right now. She's in Alaska. So she sent something [00:50:00] over for us and I think Butch has that.
Butch: I do. This is an email from her. The mom. I'm going to read it out loud real quick. Pretty inspiring, honestly. There's a consistent theme here, Erin. You like to serve people I feel like. Whether it's your time as a nurse in, I think, Mott. Right? Did you say Mott?
Erin: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Butch: Your goals for the future about trying to set up a consultative station for future-
Erin: [00:50:30] Injectors.
Butch: Injectors and then put them on their own. It's pretty incredible. So this email ... "We met Erin about a week before Becky passed. We were looking for someone who could come out to the house and give her a vitamin C treatment. A friend of mine gave me Erin's number and from that point on this amazing lady reached out to us in more ways than you can begin to imagine. First she came over and met Becky and Kyle. And when she came she brought [00:51:00] a little gift for Becky. Becky was so excited to receive that. I think I recall there was a new pair of pajamas so that she would feel good and a couple oils and hand creams and stuff for her. Erin stayed for probably an hour and a half to two hours that night just talking. The day before Becky died we were at the hospital and I called Erin to ask her a question. Becky did not want to come to our house. She knew she was dying. I asked Erin what I should do because with all my heart I wanted her to come home. Erin very calmly talked me down off the railing I was on [00:51:30] and said, 'You need to do what Becky wants you to do.'"
"Erin told me, 'If you want to crawl into bed with Becky, hold her, whatever you need to do as a mama, do it.' So Becky went on that night to a hospice center for 24 hours and she was gone. Two days later, Erin came to our house with gift cards, packages, saying that she had gotten from another friend for Liam. We were blown away the generosity. The next year [00:52:00] on March 24th, I lost my husband. We were married for 43 years and he died from COVID. And just a week later I tested positive for COVID myself. I gave Erin a call and asked if she wouldn't mind giving Kyle and I vitamin C shots. Of course, no hesitation, she was right there. I believe that the vitamin C shots helped me fight COVID. She continues to this day to check in on me to see how I'm doing every now and then. And we only met weeks before Becky died. This young lady is an amazing woman. So thankful God brought her [00:52:30] into my life."
That is an incredible testimony.
Ken: Yeah. Thanks Butch. Erin is amazing. Your Mrs. Amazing. And I'd only trust you with my face. You know that. And I appreciate you being here.
Erin: Thank you for having me.
Ken: Sure. And people are hurting around us, whether it's the rain falling that hard on people's lives or just a bummer day [00:53:00] and I think just every day if we take a little bit of time just to look at others and not just ourselves. Like all the way back to the ICU thing. No matter how bad my situation was, there's people that had it way worse and I'll never forget them. No matter how bad our day is going, it's probably not as bad as her last couple years has been. So I'm appreciative of anyone who takes time to see those people and help them, [00:53:30] whether it's with their business or just personally. We can all do a little bit. We all have our own issues to bear in life and burdens, but it's always nice if someone comes along and helps you with them. And I appreciate you helping people in the community.
Erin: Thank you. I appreciate that you guys are doing this and helping to share these and help others so I think that's going to open that platform and open that door to do that so I think it's great.
Ken: Thank you. And thanks for bringing Coco.
Erin: Of course. [00:54:00] She wasn't very feisty but ... You know. You get what you get. You get snuggles and love with her.
Butch: She was great.
Ken: It's hilarious. She's like a living stuffed animal.
Erin: It is.
Butch: So how do people find you?
Erin: My website's revivalrn.com. My Instagram's @revivalrn. Facebook.
Ken: How do they find Coco?
Erin: And we are located in Green Oak Village Place Mall over by Buffalo Wild Wings. Anyone that's over that side of town can find us there. [00:54:30] Coco is always there. If I am there, Coco is there.
Ken: How do they find her on social media?
Erin: Oh, we can find Coco on @lilcocofluff.
Butch: Check the screen right now.
Erin: I think it's up on the screen. Oh yeah.
Butch: So will they just call and set an appointment, walk in?
Erin: They can call or text us. We're with the new ages. People like to text. As much as we all want a phone conversation, people are busy. We call it our bat phone at work. It's the bat phone. It's got a bat symbol on it and it's our work phone. So you can call or text us and we can schedule consultations or treatments. My consultations are always free. A lot of people are [00:55:00] uneasy or unsure about injectables. They don't know what it is, they don't know what it costs, they don't what they do, they're nervous. So I do really detailed and thorough consultations and I offer that service for free to help people put together a plan that they're comfortable with.
Butch: Great.
Ken: Great. Thanks Erin. Thanks Butch.
Butch: Thank you Erin.
Erin: Thank you guys.
Butch: Ken.
Ken: Thanks. Okay. And we are going to close out by learning a little bit more about what Butch Herzog does at Executive Wealth Management.
Butch: Hello, I'm Albert Herzog, Certified Financial Planner, Private Wealth Advisor here at Executive Wealth [00:55:30] Management. I actually started when I was young. My father was the founder of Executive Wealth Management. Knowing what I wanted to do allowed me to be a student of this industry from a very young age. After working for two of the major wirehouses, I had a few options of where I wanted to work. I chose to work at Executive Wealth Management because I align myself with their build, defend, and advance philosophies. There's a certain value that you place on each and every relationship that's hard to find elsewhere. I believe everyone could use a financial advisor. I believe that whether [00:56:00] you're just getting started in your career or you're just ending your career, I believe there's decisions that everybody comes across constantly that can have a major effect on your life and your overall lifestyle. If a disciplined approach and compassionate service is something that you're interested in, I welcome the opportunity to meet with you.
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