Ripple Effect: RevIVe MedSpa

[00:00:41] Hurricane Harvey presented challenges for people that they just-for some would have just been insurmountable, but it brought together this community in ways that nobody ever expected.

[00:01:22] I'm Dr. Lindsey Jackson, actually general surgeon by training, that went into emergency medicine. I have a Ph.D. and a Master's in cell biology and was always interested in IV Nutrition and IV vitamins, so started RevIVe Medspa in 2015.

[00:01:44] The thing that I think we treat the most commonly is just illness. So people coming down with the flu, sinus problems, the vomiting bug that goes around. They can come in here and generally get a pretty quick fix. We have medications and vitamins so it's kind of a combination therapy. So that's our most common scenario. But we also see other populations like people who've had gastric bypass surgery and don't absorb these nutrients from their food or with chronic inflammatory conditions and also with cancer. We see a lot of cancer patients and focus on nutrition for them when they go through chemotherapy.

[00:02:19] So there's really two very different business points. The IV side with its clientele, and the medspa with its clientele as well, but it's worked well to blend them. Some clients benefit from both services. And so it's been a nice blend.

[00:02:41] RevIVe MedSpa. This is Summer. I can help you.

[00:02:44] OK, so the night that it happened we had ended up staying home because we heard it was going be a really bad.

[00:02:52] We had walked to my sister-in-law's, who lives two streets over. And a friend texted and said "Oh my gosh the water's getting up to the cars." I thought that there's no way.

[00:03:06] And literally when we open up her door it was coming up. We couldn't even see the road, we couldn't see the grass. And we just cannot believe like how quickly the water. I mean it just. Everything floods so quickly.

[00:03:29] We didn't realize that Dr. Jackson had gotten rescued. Nothing. And so she had sent us a group text saying, "Hey, we just had to be rescued by boat." She took a picture of RevIVe and when she sent that picture my heart just dropped. And we had just expanded. She just bought all this furniture. I mean within weeks. It was just gone.

[00:03:56] That was not something we ever really saw happening or had planned for in any way. When it came through, it pretty much destroyed everything that we had here. We had five feet of water in the facility so we lost all of our equipment, all of our furniture which was less than a year old. The first week was pretty tenuous. We also lost our home so we were taken from the home by boat and I was staying across town where I couldn't even access the facility for the first week. Luckily some of our workers they live locally and they live closer to the spot they were able to kayak here and get a look inside of what we were dealing with so that we could start making plans for where we were going to go from there.

[00:04:35] Front reception desk.

[00:04:38] Everything floating.

[00:04:38] Our workers. Our treatment rooms. There was no electricity.

[00:04:49] Everything under water. Yup. And they gutted it.

[00:05:01] We did have some clientele but depended on weekly IV infusions for malabsorption issues or are cancer patients. So we're like we need to keep this going. So the fact that we were taken in by a competitor and also by another facility that was using MINDBODY in a chiropractic office and they kept our customers, they kept us in business at a time that we were unable to afford to do that. And so we were able to pay that forward on day one when we were able to reopen here by taking in the business that's located just across from the parking lot. Their building has been condemned. They were in the same situation we were except they weren't able to rebuild the facility because they needed to come to see if it was able to be rebuilt. So we just we just brought them in. They've been here ever since with us and it's been nice to see already helping everybody else.

[00:05:55] We are actually behind us in the park. We got almost five feet of water. It was a 3200-square foot house. So a really big house. We had all services. We had hair, massage, skin care, makeup, all that stuff, everything but nails. So we were all in there and then the flood kind of happened.

[00:06:49] Basically walking in right after it all happened. I prepared myself because I saw my home first I saw that it flooded.

[00:06:56] So I had a chance to prepare what was going to happen at the salon. I knew that everything was going to be destroyed, everything was underwater. I knew everything would be turned over. So I was prepared for that. But once I started walking around. That's when it hit me: Everything I had worked hard for is gone.

[00:07:21] It was heartbreaking. I broke down eventually. It's just it's kind of shellshock and you're like wow all of this can be gone in minutes. It can just go away and you work so hard and give up so much to make it your dream come true and then it's gone.

[00:07:36] You really have to find the peace of mind where you can just trust that everything is going to be OK. Not only do you have friends who lift you up and families that lifts you up. That's what ends up pushing you. And it does put everything into perspective: all these things are things. You can't take them with you. They don't make you who you are. And so you can replace things. And so that's what I tell myself when I come and see my favorite things destroyed. I'm like, "It's okay. You can buy other things it's OK you can work towards that. It will be ok.

[00:08:25] Having community step in and do this for us and rebuild us with such a huge thing because I really was like thinking this is a sign that maybe I'm supposed to focus on my family or stay in emergency medicine or something that they just showed me they showed me that this is my place.

[00:09:32] I never would I never would have guessed we would be here and certainly not expanding again or doubling in size again. It's... I would just say thank you to all of those people. I mean it's just it's just amazing.