Pop Quiz Monday with Drs. Gameli Dekayie and Chantale Stephens-Archer, Founders at Quench Wellness
The Pop Quiz, Monday is a fun little exam that we love to give to savvy business owners. The examination is not a surprise after all since the interviewee already knew about the questions in advance. However, we can always pretend and have fun with the scenario of a young entrepreneur sitting in class nervously biting on their pencil. They are ready to take a pop quiz on a chapter that they were supposed to read the night before. Instead, they played Metroid all night on their SNES (Oops, this was me in high school). The real purpose of the pop quiz is that this is a fun way to introduce business tips from real-world experiences that you can not learn in a classroom. We want to thank our entrepreneur for being a good sport and volunteering their time to answer a few questions to help our community grow from their knowledge.
I want to introduce you to our guest today who will be taking our Pop Quiz Monday.
- Can you please tell everyone your name?
Drs. Gameli Dekayie and Chantale Stephens-Archer, better known as Dr. G and Dr. C. We are best friends and physicians. Dr. Dekayie is a practicing ER physician, and Dr. Stephens-Archer is a practicing hospitalist, and together we are the owners of Quench Wellness clinic located in Chicago’s South Loop.
2. Tell us about your business and what you do?
The name Quench Wellness literally came from the concept of “ quenching our client’s thirst.” We recognize that with our busy lifestyles it is challenging to get our full 64 fl ounces plus of water a day, 5–9 full servings of fruits or vegetables, sleep 8 hours a day, working out 5x/ week, live entirely stress free and hormonally balance all while taking the dog out, making dinner and working a full-time job. It just seems impossible!
Quench Wellness encourages our clients to live the best version of themselves by restoring depleted vitamins and nutrients lost in their day to day hectic lives. We offer to replenish intravenous vitamin infusions that bypass the harsh environment of the gut and enters directly into the bloodstream, thereby increasing absorption and providing optimal benefit. So whether it is glutathione in the beauty blend, taurine in the performance blend or B12 in the lipotropic B shot; in the process of replenishing the body of depleted vitamins and nutrients we can detoxify the body, restore beautiful skin, enhance performance optimization, reduce recovery time, aid in weight loss and boost fertility.
We also offer a headache blend, immunity blend, boss blend, jetsetter blend, and hangover blend. The concept also applies to our hormone pellet therapy that rebalances hormone levels responsible for energy, mood, and vitality. Our most intimate service is our non-surgical vaginal revitalization that restores vaginal lubrication and elasticity. We offer a medically sound wellness experience grounded in preventative health principles steeped in peace and comfort. Everyone can benefit from living a healthier life.
3. Why did you want to become an entrepreneur?
With over 22 years of combined experience in the health industry, we have seen firsthand the toll that chronic illnesses can take on our bodies, our communities and the healthcare system at large. In 2004, nearly 5.5 billion dollars in hospital charges resulted from dehydration admissions. The vast majority of hospitalizations due to dehydration are avoidable. The potential national savings from avoidable hospitalizations due to dehydration could have been as much as $1.14 billion dollars. Moreover, this is only with dehydration, consider the other chronic medical conditions.
Many times, in our encounters with severely chronically ill patients, we are adjusting or prescribing meds to no avail, and we wondered if we had encountered this patient ten years earlier, what course would their health have taken? We wanted to offer something different; a preventative, proactive approach to medicine rather than reactive. We believe that this is the direction that medicine is going. This business is a passion project, and the more we do it, the more empowered and energized we feel. We never thought of ourselves as just doctors. We have always done more than we expected of ourselves.
4. What are the challenging aspects of running a business?
It’s even harder than medical school because there’s no roadmap for being a successful business person. An integral component of our success is finding a killer squad or a dream team. We are medically trained, so the medicine and the science of it all comes easy to us. Know what you know and know what you don’t know. The real challenge is finding people to compensate for your deficits. For us, that meant a healthcare lawyer, a business coach, a marketing strategist and a clinical manager sound in implementing policies. A successful business allows everyone to operate in their strengths. The outcomes are so much better and rewarding for everyone.
5. What do you love most about your job?
We love educating people on more natural options to approach their health. People’s eyes light up when we tell them our mission and the services we offer. It’s not complicated; vitamins make us feel better. When your hormones are balanced, you feel better. And, addressing intimate health, especially for women, makes them FEEL BETTER!
6. How do you have fun at work (team building, pranks, etc..)?
We try to live our mission: living the best versions of ourselves. So, we try to enjoy our time together while celebrating what we do well and learning from what we don’t. We celebrate accomplishments, birthdays; we even celebrate when someone is moving on to another position because we know it is part of their journey. We encourage wellness in the space all around us.
7. What would one piece of advice that you give to a new business owner?
Be careful to pursue an entrepreneurial passion that can be fueled by your skills, vocation, and capabilities that can change the piece of the world you inhabit. Ask yourself these four questions: Do I love it? Am I great at it? Can I get paid for it? Does the world need it?
Thank you for taking our pop quiz today. You get an A+ for effort. You can learn more about our interviewee and their business by visiting them on the web:
Website https://quenchwellness.com/
FB https://www.facebook.com/quenchwellnesssouthloop/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/quenchwellness_southloop/
Twitter https://twitter.com/quenchsouthloop
