WHITEHALL — Megan Nelson first launched her Elivate Lounge & Beauty Bar business (stylized elIVate), which provides IV hydration, vitamins, Botox injections and other similar services, as a mobile business out of her Newaygo home in 2022, inspired by the mobile nurses who provide on-demand services to celebrities like the Kardashians.
"(They) would have these mobile nurses come to their house and do infusions and stuff, and (I thought), 'How cool a job would that have been?' I think it's awesome," Nelson said. "I was just fascinated by it."
That dream resulted in a storefront in Newaygo a year later, and Saturday, Nelson celebrated the grand opening of her second Elivate location in Whitehall in the back of the Shepherd and Shepherd building, hoping to bring her health-focused business to White Lake residents. The business has grown quicker than Nelson ever imagined.
She's done it, she said, with a local focus; she's teamed with local registered nurses to provide services. Elivate will not have specific open hours to start with - the RNs on staff also work at nearby hospitals - but is available by appointment, and aims to work with its clients' schedule to the degree it can.
"We have our phone number everywhere," Nelson said. "We do our best to accommodate everybody's appointments. It's not unusual for us to say, 'If you can't make it until 6, I'll run in and do something for you.'"
Nelson herself was a nurse in her former career. She said she was an emergency room nurse for eight years and an operating room nurse for two more. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she and coworkers found their mental health was suffering due to job stress, and that led to the idea of Elivate.
"I started researching on how I could do it, and I found a franchise where it provides the medical director, the pharmacist, the ability for me to order all these meds, and still be able to take care of the community and love what I'm doing," Nelson said.
IV drips are one of the business' specialties, and it offers several different ones tailored to various needs. One targets migraine headaches, another morning sickness early in pregnancies, and another even aims to reverse the aftereffects of a hangover. Nelson said using IV drips rather than oral medication enables the nutrients to get where the body needs them most rather than being broken down by the digestive system.
For those who don't have time to sit for a full drip, there are also injections, such as B12 shots and biotin shots. Dermal fillers such as Botox and GLP-1 weight loss medications can also be given by injection. Some such products require consultation with a doctor, and Elivate offers that as well via telemedicine.
Nelson said customers have included elite athletes who felt their performance approved by receiving vitamins through an IV, as well as people battling the effects of cold and flu season, like the "particularly hard" one of 2024-25.
"I was doing between 8-12 immunity drips a week with people wanting to stay out of the ER or coming off of a sickness, (thinking,) 'I'm not unwell, but I want to feel better, so I would just love that vitamin boost,'" Nelson said.
"I never thought it would be as big as it has gotten. I never would have thought I would have ever gotten a second location."
