Romin Zandi was just sixteen when he realized that he didn’t want to be 40 years old and look back on his life to see that he hadn’t done anything. “I got that realization from going to a self-development workshop,” he says. “It taught me that there [are] different areas of my life, and for me to be successful and be fulfilled in my life, I have to work on different areas.” He knew he was an individual with his own life and could do whatever he wanted.

He later visited a hookah lounge, where he met his best friend and mentor, who taught him the trade, art, and culture of being a DJ. Romin has always loved taking care of people and being a host, and seeing that he could use music to accomplish that was mind-blowing for him.

Mentors Throughout His Life

Romin contributes his success to the presence of great mentors in his life. “I’ve had a lot of sparks, a lot of people who guide me in the right direction or give me different ideas,” he says. The most important one was his older brother, who got him into that first self-development course that set the path for the rest of his life.

In high school, Romin spent his time in business and IT. During his senior year he did an IT internship, where he learned life skills from more mentors, such as how to properly answer an email, conduct himself in an interview, follow up with people, and be professional. These are skills people think they will learn in college, but they don’t. Learning them in high school allowed him to hit the ground running when he left school.

Another important thing his internship taught him was that he did not want to work a nine-to-five job. He was already disc jockeying at the time, and he decided to stick with that. “I’ve been deejaying now for almost seven years,” he says. “I got started in high school, and then I went full-time in 2014 when I established my LLC.”

Mentoring Others

Investing in mentors and people is something that Romin has always done and continues to do. He recently had a famous MC coach from New Jersey come work with his staff to teach different techniques and make sure they’re all continuing their education and sharpening their skills. Romin, too, visits his old high school to speak with students about business, hustling, and figuring out their own paths and passions. He’s also started to speak to business classes at colleges. “I come from a different perspective because I started young and have achieved a lot in the last couple years, versus people who are older,” says Romin. “I can relate to the youth.”

Teenagers can’t tell Romin that they can’t make the same decisions he did, because he was in their shoes when he made those decisions. He’s grateful and excited to speak with them and mentor them. “I want to give back to the youth and younger kids,” he says. When society is so busy telling people that they are defined by the jobs they do and the money they make, he wants them to know that those things don’t define them and they should instead go after their passion.

Advice for Becoming a DJ at a Young Age

There could have been pushback from people in older generations who perhaps don’t want to go to a business lunch meeting with someone as young as Romin. To avoid that, Romin simply doesn’t advertise or act his age. “I worked on learning how to be mature. I worked on learning how to dress well,” he says. “I worked on how to communicate well and articulate myself very well so I don’t come across as a young person who doesn’t know how to communicate or follow up with an email.”

His work on those areas was both to enhance himself as an individual, but also to enhance his business. Deejaying is his passion and creative outlet, but he doesn’t forget that it’s also his business. He still has to get up in the mornings, keep himself healthy, invest in technology and systems, and continue his education. He invests in surrounding himself with the right people to help him continue to develop such skills.

On the Horizon

“The next step for myself, my business, and my team is bringing on more staff and DJs, training more crew, and hiring more people on the backend side,” Romin says. He’ll be investing in more equipment, lighting, and production elements that will make his events better and more unique to his clients.

You can find out more at the Zandi Entertainment website. 

Tim Hipp started Wellness Solutions in 1999, and it was great. “I was the guy who didn’t have to sleep,” he says. “I was always on.” However, between 2008 and 2012, his health took a turn because of Lyme disease. The debilitating u-turn meant it took him days to recover from a workout, a difficult change for a man who was used to having endless energy. “With Lyme you have constant inflammation, you have constant fatigue,” says Tim. “Every day you feel like you have the flu.”

His condition inspired him to create a place to help people beat pain and fatigue. RxR3 Recovery Lounge isn’t just for athletes. “Everybody suffers. Pain [and] fatigue equivocate themselves to poor performance,” he explains. Some folks make millions of dollars off of one great idea, but they can’t do that if they are too fatigued to work on their idea. If he can help them get there, that’s awesome. If he can help a mother not to have a short fuse with her kid who just spilled the milk for the fifth time, he’s thrilled. “That’s the continuation of giving over and over again,” says Tim.

RxR3 Recovery Lounge

“Our overall goal is to meet people where they are,” says Tim. Pain doesn’t discriminate between gender, race, or age. Everybody suffers from pain, so that’s where they start. Beyond that, they look at challenges with energy and fatigue. Aging clients also look back on what they were able to handle when they were younger. “We try to help them recognize that age is just a number and re-energize them,” he says.

Pain begins in the brain.”The brain is getting signals from the body of what it needs,” says Tim. Pain is a feeling, and the brain sometimes reacts with overkill. To clean the brain, he usually has people start with the float. “That’s sensory deprivation. We’re floating in ten to twelve inches of water [and] 1,100 pounds of Epsom salt,” he says. The water is the same temperature as your skin, so you no longer have to thermo-regulate yourself. There’s no input, sight, or sound. “Within fifteen to twenty minutes, blood pressure on average drops fifteen points,” Tim says. When you sleep, the brain uses glia cells to clean itself. “When you’re in that relaxed state [in the float,] you’re not asleep, but you’re not really awake, either.” The brain cleans itself while you float, and when you come out of it, the injury that you thought was really bad might not be that bad anymore.

Another thing RxR3 provides is oxygen. “We don’t look at oxygen as a nutrient, we just take it for granted,” Tim says. “And we’re not really good breathers.” Giving the body oxygen and pressurizing the system to push oxygen deeper into the tissue changes everything.

In addition to the sensory deprivation float and the oxygen, clients can take advantage of a sauna, cryo, and whole-body vibration.

Helping Others Help Others

“I’m not a biohacker, I’m not trying to create a superhuman,” Tim explains. “I’m just saying that what we’ve established over the past 40 to 50 years as average is really below average. I’m trying to raise and arrive us all at a new norm so that I can be a great neighbor.” If his neighbor needs help carrying a 500-pound couch, Tim wants to be able to say yes. “I want to be able to give everybody who comes through our door that ability to say yes,” he says, even if it’s just for picking up a child, loading groceries, or simply being active. Everybody is below the line because the norm is below the line. Tim wants everybody to be at the line, and excelling past it. That’s living versus existing. Getting up, going to work, eating, going to bed, and then hitting replay isn’t living. True living is what you can do for others. “If I care more about you than I do myself, that’s living,” says Tim.

Tim’s superpower is perseverance and endurance, but he contends that every entrepreneur and business owner must have those things to make it. Another superpower is the desire to help others. “If I can help someone help somebody else to help somebody else, it’s that length of chain,” he says. “I’m okay staying in the background. I like being a secret superhero.”

The Bigger Mission

We’re running on a break-fix model. Tim wants to change mindsets to help people look at healthcare differently. “I can’t schedule break-fix. I don’t know when something’s going to break,” he says. “But if I can schedule maintenance and keep things going, that’s a game changer.” Being break-fix and reactive instead of proactive also means we’re heavily prescribed. Doctors want to give people opioids so that they no longer care about the pain, but that doesn’t fix the pain, and it often causes the patients to nosedive. “Reset the pattern,” says Tim. “Go from existing to living.”

You can learn more about Tim and RxR3 Recovery Lounge at the website.

Doneen Hoffman

You’re at a point in your life where you’d like to move into an assisted living home, but you’ve got a huge house with 40 years’ worth of junk stored up to deal with. Oh no!

You’re an empty nester and your large house feels a bit too quiet without the pitter-patter (or thud) of teenage feet. It’s time to downsize. But you’ve got 20 years’ worth of accumulated stuff to get rid of. What a pain!

That shiny company across the pond has offered you a great job and you’d love to take it, but how could you possibly get rid of all your stuff in time to hop on a flight and get there? Help!

You could panic, you could live in your big creaky house and just continue to dream of a low-maintenance condo, or you could turn down great opportunities. Or you could call Doneen Hoffman, founder and owner of Estate Professional Services, to come and deftly remove the stress of accumulated stuff from your life.

Doneen specializes in estate sales, clean-outs, and appraisal services. All you have to do is separate what you want to keep from what you don’t, and she will handle the rest.

The Real-Life eBay

Like eBay, Estate Professional Services works with a buyer, a seller, and someone in between to buy and sell cool stuff. Unlike eBay, there’s no need to pay for shipping and handling, and Doneen sets the prices as opposed to the selling being done auction-style.

There are three ways to get rid of items in your house. One is a liquidation company, which isn’t great for the client because they will give you the lowest possible price for your items, then turn around and re-sell them for their profit. The second is an auction company, which isn’t great for the client because not only do some of them charge to store the items, but everything starts at 99 cents. Your $3,000 table might sell for $5, and there’s nothing you can do about it. The third is estate sale companies like Doneen’s, who set the prices and handle everything for you.

What Estate Professional Services does differently is understand that there may be items that clients are on the fence about whether or not to keep. Those clients have an option to have the item sold, but only if Doneen can get a certain price for it. It gives them more control and more flexibility, and no one’s $3,000 table stacked high with years’ worth of memories will go for a paltry $5.

Marketing a Sale

Doneen uses social media to reach her buyers. She takes pictures of the items she’ll be selling and posts them on estate sales websites. She creates a FB event for the sales. “It’s a soft media marketing before the sale, then the week of the sale is when we really push the marketing, where it goes on Craigslist, it gets pinned to the top of our Facebook page, it goes out to all the local Facebook yard sale stuff, everywhere,” she says.

Social media works well because she has over 6,000 followers on Facebook and her buyers and clients alike can post reviews of her services, which leads to more buyers and more clients. “People coming to the sales are the younger generation and the middle-aged generation,” Doneen explains. “The older generation is the downsizing.” Younger and middle-aged people also tend to be on social media.

Her marketing strategy has worked so well that last year, she had to turn down work left and right. She may have to do the same this year. “I’d rather have quality versus quantity,” she says. “I want to have a good sale, and if it’s a big sale, I want to make sure that we staff it correctly.” Over-committing to sales isn’t good for anyone involved.

Keeping eBay at Bay with a Personal Touch

The next big thing in the estate sales industry may well be online auctions. “I see a lot of that,” Doneen says. “But I like more the personal, going inside a home.” Sometimes sales have to be online, however. Some gated communities don’t allow estate sales. Calling them in-home parties instead can wriggle around the stringent rules for some HOAs, but not all.

As for Doneen, her future is going to involve continuing to get more qualified staff on her team and gaining more sales. She has everything else already in place.

Get Cash if You’re a Client, Find a Bargain if You’re a Buyer

Clients and buyers alike can find Doneen at her website, Facebook, or through estate sale websites such as estatesales.net and estatesales.org.

Nick Mann

The impact of a teacher who encouraged Nick Mann to try out his elementary school’s running program has stuck with him his entire life. It’s no surprise then, that Nick’s passion is impacting his community’s youth. It’s easier to establish healthy habits from a young age than it is to switch to healthy habits when you’re older. Often for adults, it takes a bad event or negative health news to inspire them to get their lives and fitness in order. What if he could inspire a generation to have their lives and fitness in order in the first place?

Filling a Need

When Nick decided to open his business, he knew he wanted to impact youth as well as adults. “I see a lack of services of a high-quality environment,” he says. “We see not only obesity in adults, but childhood obesity. Kids are on their phones or playing video games. They’re not outside being active, being healthy.” The food industry isn’t in the business of helping with that, and it all adds up to a real need for health, fitness, and quality for youth that isn’t being served by anything else.

Now, after three years of knocking on middle and high school doors and talking to school leaders to get things rolling, Nick has summer camps and after-school programs for the youth of the community.

It’s easy to confuse ‘after-school program’ with ‘daycare.’ Don’t do it. “I’m not rolling out balls for them to play with, with no real structure,” Nick says. “We teach leadership and teamwork.” Your kid is going to sweat, learn, and be a better person.

The progress is not only physical, but also emotional and mental. Nick had a kid who started the program as extremely overweight and unable do a sit-up five months ago. When a new kid started and was struggling, that kid was the first to walk over and help him. That kid is now doing extra sit-ups with the new kid to make him feel comfortable. “A kid had compassion for another kid in the realm of just being a human,” Nick says. “That was worth more than anything.” That’s why impacting the youth of the community is his passion project.

A Memorable Kid

Kids with disabilities can easily fall through the cracks. Sometimes they’re actively pushed through the cracks. Nick is not interested in the cracks. “I gave a scholarship to a young man who was profoundly deaf and was unable to play sports,” Nick says. “A lot of coaches wouldn’t give him the opportunity because they couldn’t communicate.” That kid’s teacher was one of the members of Nick’s gym, Occoquan Bay Performance. She brought him in, and signed for Nick and his coaches on the first day. But Nick knew the kid didn’t need the signing. “I’ll demonstrate, he’ll figure it out,” Nick says. And he did.

One day as they were just throwing a football around the gym, that left-handed kid threw a spiral across 5,000 square feet. The great potential and untapped abilities were astounding. A few months later, he made the wrestling team at his school, and after Nick was able to attend a match, he came up and gave Nick a big hug. “I was like man, this is what it’s all about,” Nick says. “Impact.” And years from now, when that kid is in a nursing home, Nick wants him to be able to think back to one day in a gym throwing a football around when it clicked for him that he could do anything he wanted.

Establishing the Lifestyle

“I’m super excited about the youth program,” Nick says. “[They] work really hard and they love the after-school program.” The program meets for three days a week, which is great for kids who haven’t done much fitness before, but many of them wanted more. They have so much energy. So Nick started inviting some of them to Occoquan Bay Performance on the after-school program’s two off-days. “I’m excited to see that program grow,” he says. “I would love to just have youth everywhere.”

The program has kids as young as eight years old. Nick loves that they are able to establish a lifestyle and mindset of health and fitness in kids that they can carry forth for years to come. “That’s the biggest impact we can make,” he says.

Learn More 

Find out more about Occoquan Bay Performance at the website, or find them on Facebook or Instagram. Follow Nick on Facebook.

John Patrick

John Patrick, also known as JP, knows a thing or two about rocking out. As a drummer for the band Virginia Coalition from high school until he was 30 years old, and now the founder of Rock of Ages Music (ROAM) school, he’s been rocking out his whole life.

After leaving Virginia Coalition and trying on an office job for size, JP realized that he could never escape the music. He began giving private drum lessons, which eventually evolved into opening up ROAM, which now has over 250 private students in the school and about 70 kids making up about 24 bands in the rock school.

Everybody Can Speak Music

Right now, ROAM offers music lessons to those who can afford it. JP wants to expand into introducing less advantaged people to music as well. “I want to branch out more into low-income families,” he says. “There’s plenty of that in any city in the country. The goal would be to get there to start helping to become more a part of the community that actually raised me.” He would like to grow ROAM large enough to use the business as a platform to connect with more people who have not been fortunate enough to get involved with music. “Music is a language, and anybody can speak it,” says JP. “But not everybody has the chance to try.”

It’s About the Community

ROAM is located right in the middle of a very cool and unique neighborhood. “This is a great neighborhood that loves the arts,” JP says. Kids can walk there from home or school, and the community encourages the arts. “This is a very unique community that really helps itself,” he says. “All the people are so helpful, so kind [and] giving.”

You can’t have a community without communication, so it’s lucky that communication is JP’s superpower. “I’m very comfortable talking to anybody,” he says. “I think that’s important, especially when operating a business like this. You have to be a people person.” He likes engaging with people and learning from people. Rock and roll is a human experience.

Let the Students Choose

Some parents are so eager for their children to learn the language of music that they bring them to ROAM before they know if the child is even interested in music, or before the child is old enough to know for themselves if they are interested. However, that interest must start at home. “I’d be happy to take your money and experiment with your child to see what kind of instrument they want to hook onto while you’re paying me,” says JP. “But that’s not honest.”

Instead, he advises observing the child at home. If they don’t gravitate towards music, that’s fine. If they are constantly singing, air-drumming, or air-guitaring, bring them in. “It’s all about where their mind is,” he says. “And if it’s there, we can work with that.”

Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution…

You have to hear music to learn it and teach it. “There’s a lot of things going on right now with online Skype lessons, which is great,” says JP. But there’s no substitute for human-to-human interaction. “I think the future is not getting that human interaction lost in the digital age we’re entering, figuring out how to keep it human.”

Learning music is a human process. Some parents bring a child in who has been learning online for a few months, and those students do some stuff, but “it’s the one-on-one interaction that actually shows you the proper technique,” he says. When you watch a video, the instructor of that video isn’t watching you back. “You’re not getting that nuance, and that’s where the human interaction comes in and you can show the nuance and hear the nuance, and that’s the big difference.”

Except When It Is

On the horizon for ROAM, JP is looking to eventually move the rock school from the private lesson school. They’d still be affiliated, just not in the same building. “There’s definitely a lot of toes getting stepped on here right now,” JP says. “And a lot of ears.”

Get Rocking

If your child wants to learn the language of music, get them involved in ROAM by visiting the website.

Christian Myers

How did you learn to ride a bike? Chances are, an adult put you on a bike and pushed, and eventually let go, and you made the choice to either stay upright or fall. How did you learn to fix a bike? Chances are … you didn’t. VeloCity Bicycle Co-op is here to help.

Christian Myers is the co-founder of VeloCity, whose mission is to grow and empower an inclusive biking community through education and affordability. “You can come here with no knowledge and leave feeling that you’ve learned something,” Christian says. “You’re not going to be looked down on because you don’t know how to put air in your tires. No one is going to judge you.”

VeloCity Bicycle Co-op

A lot of people have different definitions of what makes a co-op. For VeloCity, the co-op refers to the volunteers. If you volunteer with them, you recieve benefits such as discounts on parts through their distributors, use of the stands, and the ability to learn and hone your skills.

“For everyone else, it’s a place you can come in where you can get assistance,” says Christian. “We ask for a $15 donation an hour. Throw your bike on the stand and we’ll help you fix it.”

You can have someone work on your bike for you, you can work on your bike yourself, you can buy a refurbished donated bike, or you can buy a frame and parts and build your own bike.

Working with Kids

Christian had gotten into some trouble as a kid, back in the days when children ran amuck outside after school until dinnertime. Perhaps if there had been a VeloCity in his town growing up, he would still have been naughty, but it may have helped. “It would definitely have been a really cool place to be,” he says. “There was nothing at all like this when I was a kid.”

He wanted to create a space where kids could better spend their time, hang out, and feel safe. “What better way to get in touch with a child than bicycles? Bicycles were freedom for me,” he says.

Freedom

In the Land of the Free, people are sometimes bound by transportation restrictions. Christian knew one girl who walked for miles to get to work every day, even with changing bus stops. Although now people can just call a car to come pick them up, their freedom is still hampered by lack of transportation, and simple solutions like bikes are sometimes overlooked.

One community near to VeloCity is mostly Spanish-speaking, and the community members have two or three jobs to scrape by and transport themselves by riding their bikes. When the bikes break down, they bring them to Christian. “They come and see me because a lot of the bigger shops seem not to have as much time for them,” he says. VeloCity will never look down on a lack of knowledge or broken English. “We break barriers through this shop, which is awesome,” says Christian. “We’re going to work with you. No one’s going to judge you.”

Community Programs

VeloCity runs several programs through the city of Alexandria and the police department to help the community. Through Teams Work, four or five kids come and work with Christian for six weeks in the summer, six hours per day, Monday through Thursday. “We do everything from learn how to scrub the floor to actually working on bikes and interacting with the public,” Christian says.

The Earn-a-Bike program lets children come to the shop, choose a bike to work on, and learn how to properly care for it and repair it. By the end, hopefully each child will have earned their bike. Allowing them to work for it and earn it themselves instead of just giving them the bike instills a pride of ownership.

During the holidays, however, they do give bikes away. They save up the childrens’ bikes that they receive, fix them up with new tires and refurbishments, and give them to children. “Their faces and how they light up, hands-down, that’s what it’s all about,” says Christian.

They also work with a transition shelter to help people get back into the workforce, and with juvenile probations kids.

VeloCity will put you on a bike and push. Now, will you choose to stay upright, or will you fall?

Learn More

Learn more about VeloCity and how they help the community at the website.

Paige Crouch was a Sunday school teacher in 1987, but one rainy Sunday, her car hydroplaned. “I tried steering into it, pumping the brakes, nothing was working,” Paige says. “So I raised my arms and gave it to God, and ended up hitting three small trees that were growing together.” She survived the crash and became a quadriplegic.

It was the start of a new journey. “Everything in your life changes,” she says. “You feel infantile. I’m dependent for everything.” The recovery process was grueling, but she learned how to manage her life and body. “It’s still a journey.”

Near Death-by-Pencil

After learning about an artist who did paintings with his mouth, Paige decided to give it a try. “I had my brother make a stand-up easel out of plywood, and put a pencil in my mouth, and literally almost stabbed myself in the back of the throat,” Paige says. “I gave up on it.”

The idea wouldn’t leave, though, so years later she tried again using a hand splint to make strokes that resembled impressionism. “I was happy with that, but one day I had my assistant put the brush in my mouth,” she says. She wanted to try again. “And I did it and voila. I was able to do it more purposefully, and it just turned out so good that I wanted to continue with it.”

Foot and Mouth Painting Artists

Paige learned about Foot and Mouth Painting Artists through her physical therapist. The organization is a world-wide company with around 800 artists, about 70 of whom are based in the United States. She applied by sending in six of her original paintings. “They were like my babies at the time, but I let them go,” she says. “About nine months later I was interviewed by their manager in the Atlanta office, and they accepted me.” She’s been under contract with them for about twelve years.

Being accepted opened up a whole new world. Her scholarship through the organization gives her incentive to keep going. She sends a painting to them every four to six weeks, and they pick the ones they like and send her a bonus for them, which is extra incentive. “It encourages you to keep going,” she says. “You never know what is going to make a hit.”

Practice May Not Make Perfect, But It Helps

The more you do something, the better you get at it. Although Paige didn’t start painting until she was 42 years old, she does it a lot. In fact, she spends over 60 hours a month painting, but that doesn’t mean everything’s perfect. “It’s hit or miss, and I still make what I call happy mistakes,” she says. “I paint with the brush about twelve inches away from the canvas, and I need to back away every once in awhile to see what I’ve done in another perspective.” The journey is ongoing.

Each painting takes about 50 hours to complete. “Because I have a neck injury, I can only paint for two or three hours at a time, and then I take a break,” she says.

Demo Days

Paige demonstrates her painting at churches, schools, and rehab centers. “They can see me paint and know what I’m doing. It’s better to have a visual sometimes,” she says. Then there’s a Q&A session, and she’s always getting new and different questions from her audience.

Her favorite demo so far was at Falls Church High School. “I met a boy with cerebral palsy that spoke through a computer, and he asked me if I’d ever heard of Action Wheelchair Art,” she says. She had not heard of them before then, but she’s glad she has now, thanks to him.

The students all also wanted to get their picture taken with her. “I felt like a celebrity,” she says. “It was wonderful.” It was a far cry from when she felt like a label upon first learning that she was quadriplegic.

Paige’s hope with the demo days is to inspire others, and not just those with disabilities. “I’m hoping people will be inspired to just keep trying,” she says. “Go forth, try new things, and live life however you have to.” It’s very common for people with injuries such as hers to retreat into a deep, dark hole and never come out. Young men who become paralyzed have an especially high suicide rate. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Advice for the Newly Injured

For those just starting on this journey, Paige advises them to never give up. “Believe in yourself and any higher spirit you may have,” she says. Her deep faith has kept her going. “Don’t give up. It will get better.”

Contact Information

You can find Paige’s paintings on her Facebook page. Nothing is set in stone, but she may also be performing demos at Melwood and Arlington in summer of 2018. Keep your eyes peeled for Paige’s nephew Michael Murphy, who does Michael Murphy Speaks inspirational speeches and who is also training for the 2022 mono-skiing Paralympics.

Dr. Jordan Kocen

Dr. Jordan Kocen always wanted to be a veterinarian. The passion for helping animals exudes from him. “I don’t remember ever wanting to do anything else,” Jordan says. “As I went further in my education, it just felt right.” Veterinarian school wasn’t a means to an end for him, it was part of his journey.

After practicing conventional veterinary medicine for ten years, Jordan began practicing holistic medicine exclusively in 1995. After twenty years of success stories, he opened Veterinary Holistic Center in 2015.

His Services

Jordan has staffed his center with doctors who do physical therapy, massage therapy, and animal chiropractic. He himself does acupuncture, homeopathy, and Chinese herbs. When clients come to see him, he can pair them with the system of medicine that will be the best fit for them.

The success of the treatments mean the success of the center. Pet owners may come in with one dog, and the next time they have a problem, they come to him sooner instead of trying and exhausting conventional veterinary medicine first.

Don’t Believe in It? Good.

There are many misconceptions about holistic medicine. A common one is that it’s a scam. Another is that since conventional medicine is the standard, it should always be tried first. Many clients come in for their first visit with Jordan and have to let him know that they don’t believe in holistic woo-woo witch-doctoring. “Good,” he says. “It’s not a belief system. It’s a physiologic process.” He’s stimulating the nerve endings and spinal cord. He’s getting hormones and chemicals released. He’s revving up the body’s normal physiological processes. “If it’s not real, then you’re going to see it’s not real,” he says.

Other veterinarians were often quietly supportive, until Jordan treated their own pets. Now they’re believers. “It is a science. It’s medicine,” he says. As scientists, once they see that it works, he believes they should be trying to figure out why it works so they can get more efficient with it.

The three things that Jordan’s clients should know are whether or not any given treatment has a reasonable expectation of a positive outcome, what the good and bad about it is, and how long it should take to know whether it’s working or not.

Calm Down, It’s Not a Competition

Veterinary Holistic Center isn’t competing with conventional veterinarian practices. In fact, many conventional practices refer clients to the center, and many conventional practices also have doctors who do holistic therapies. Jordan’s practice, by design, doesn’t offer any conventional medicine, annual exams, diagnostics, surgeries, or boarding. They leave all of that to conventional veterinarian practices. What Jordan does is get the pet well enough to go back to their regular veterinarian for their annual exams. “It’s good for the animals, the owner’s happy, the regular vet’s happy. The goal is to help the animals get better,” says Jordan. “That’s why we became veterinarians in the first place.”

Opening Veterinary Holistic Center

After Jordan began taking a course on acupuncture, he had his first two acupuncture patients — one dog, one cat, both pets of other veterinarians at the general practice where he worked. He was shocked at the success of those first two patients, and so were their owners. Word spread, and his schedule began getting scrunched to where 80-90% of his days were just doing alternative therapies. Other veterinarians at the practice were doing great conventional medicine, so they didn’t need him to do it. Also, there were no other holistic centers in the area.

However, Jordan himself couldn’t do all of the holistic therapies. He was only trained in acupuncture, homeopathy, and Chinese herbal medicine. “I had been referring people to the chiropractors [and] massage therapists, but I didn’t know their schedules,” he says. He didn’t know if they were traveling or when they’d be in their offices. He also felt incompetent trying to scribble down their phone numbers on scraps of paper for clients. “Why couldn’t we be all in one place? I can’t offer those services,” says Jordan. “I can’t learn a whole lot more, and I don’t need to when you have other people who can do that very well.” He began thinking of what would be required and involved to get his own holistic practice off the ground.

He envisioned a place where he could bring other therapies in and veterinarians could collaborate on a lot of therapies to give the client the mix that served them the best. And that’s exactly what Veterinary Holistic Center has accomplished.

Contact Information

You can find Veterinary Holistic Center and more information about the therapies they offer at their website, or find Jordan at local events and occasional seminars. Don’t believe it? You don’t have to. Just come see it, and reserve the right to change your mind.