"I used to walk around the woods singing and believing that I lived in Fern Gully.”
The first time I met Amy McMillin, we were waiting our turn for headshots in a tiny photography studio tucked inside one of Medina's historic brick buildings.
The kind of place with squeaky wood floors and tall vintage windows where afternoon sunlight spills sideways across the room.
Amy stood in a dusty sunbeam holding two jackets.
One was a safe navy blue number.
The other was bright pink, and I mean BRIGHT pink.
A few coworkers had apparently tried to steer her toward the safer option. The pink jacket, they thought, was a little much.
Amy chose the pink one.
At the time, I hadn't even properly introduced myself. I was mostly sitting quietly, observing the room while everyone waited for their turn in front of the camera.
Amy was impossible to miss.
Not because of the jacket.
Because she seemed to generate her own weather.
She was cheering for the other women. Laughing easily. Making everyone feel comfortable. The kind of person who somehow manages to be the sunshine in the room without making the room about herself.
A few weeks later, I invited her out for coffee.
By then I already knew I wanted her in Bedrock, the founder community I help lead. She was smart, accomplished, thoughtful, and clearly the kind of person other entrepreneurs would benefit from knowing.
I expected the woman from the headshots.
Instead, she showed up in yoga pants, a messy bun, and what may have been the softest oversized sweatshirt ever manufactured.
No makeup.
Latte in hand.
Ready to talk.
Within minutes we were swapping stories, laughing, making Seinfeld references, and talking about everything from entrepreneurship to family to the strange ways people become who they are.
It struck me how rare that combination is.
Amy is polished without being pretentious.
Professional without being performative.
Confident and somehow still unsure of herself.
When I invited her to join Bedrock, her response genuinely caught me off guard.
"What do you think I have to offer?"
I almost laughed.
Here was a woman who had built a thriving healthcare business, assembled a talented team, changed countless lives, and created the kind of culture most leaders only talk about.
And yet part of her still seemed genuinely surprised that anyone would see her that way.
The more I got to know Amy, the more I realized that tension has followed her throughout her life.
People kept trying to hand her a smaller version of herself.
And she kept quietly becoming more.
Amy grew up in Norwalk, Ohio, the daughter of a mason and a postal worker.
Her mother was eighteen when she was born.
Her father was twenty-two.
Money was tight.
The family lived in a trailer park while her parents worked hard to build a life.
Eventually, relatives pitched in to help build the family a home. "My uncles and my dad built a home for us. All of them had a trade and then when it was time they would each contribute and build a home for their siblings."
If you've spent any time in Northeast Ohio, you probably know people like this.
Maybe you are people like this.
The details change, the values don't.
Work hard.
Help family.
Figure it out.
Show up.
Don't complain.
The kind of people who see problems as puzzles.
The kind of people who build things with their hands.
The kind of people who humbly carry entire communities on their backs.
But don't mistake that work ethic for joylessness.
"We found ways to play," she told me. Family trips, campgrounds, bonfires, and enough horror movies to make anyone question how they became a functional adult.
To this day, Amy carries that same philosophy with her.
"I work hard and I play hard."
It's a simple sentence, but it explains a lot about the life she's built.
For Amy, success was never about grinding herself into the ground. It was about creating enough freedom to be present for the people she loves, explore the world around her, and squeeze every drop out of this one wild life she's been given.
Amy's family story stretches back through generations of those hardworking people.
One grandfather immigrated from Ukraine after surviving a Polish Nazi work camp as a child. Another left school after eighth grade, built a business, raised eight children and became a cornerstone of his community. Her father owned a business. Her brother owns a business.
Nobody handed them much.
So they learned how to build.
Homes.
Businesses.
Families.
Lives.
Amy inherited that work ethic.
But she also inherited something else.
Curiosity.
Imagination.
A desire to see what was beyond the horizon.
"I used to walk around the woods singing and believing that I lived in Fern Gully," she told me. "A lot of imagination, a lot of freedom."
While the adults around her were building houses, Amy was building possibilities.
The challenge was that not everyone could see them.
Like many ambitious kids from working-class families, she grew up surrounded by people who loved her deeply but often underestimated what she might become.
Not because they didn't believe in her.
Because they wanted her safe.
Their lives had taught them that security mattered.
Stability mattered.
Practicality mattered.
College wasn't a given.
Entrepreneurship certainly wasn't.
At one point, Amy remembers her parents encouraging her to become a paralegal.
Not a lawyer.
A paralegal.
Because that felt realistic.
Because that felt attainable.
Because that fit inside the box.
The thing about Amy, though, is that she has spent her entire life politely ignoring ceilings.
A neighbor lovingly known as Big George saw something in her and told her parents, "If you don't send that girl to college, I will."
That conversation changed everything.
Amy eventually found her way into physical therapy, drawn by equal parts science, problem-solving, and a fascination with figuring out why people hurt.
"I like to solve the mystery," she says.
For fifteen years, she built a successful career inside a major, hugely respected local healthcare system.
She loved her patients.
She loved her coworkers.
She worked hard.
Really hard.
The extra projects, the extra effort, the constant search for better ways to do things. The ideas. The initiatives. The willingness to care just a little bit more than everyone expected.
And then came a performance review she still remembers.
Her manager asked why she worked so hard.
What motivated her.
Why she consistently exceeded expectations.
Amy's answer was simple.
She wanted a five percent raise.
Not because she was chasing money.
Because she wanted her contribution to matter.
Because she wanted her effort to mean something.
Instead, she was told something that eventually changed the trajectory of her life.
"That's not how you get your raises here. It's about the time that you're willing to put in over the years."
The statement wasn't meant to be cruel.
It was just honest.
And somehow that made it worse.
After fifteen years of bringing ideas, solving problems, exceeding expectations, and pouring herself into her work, Amy realized the system wasn't measuring impact.
It was measuring tenure.
The message wasn't simply that she wouldn't get the raise.
The message was that all the things she believed created value weren't actually the metric.
For someone wired like Amy, that realization landed hard.
Because if hard work, innovation, initiative, and care weren't the things being rewarded, what exactly was she striving for?
Soon after, the pandemic arrived.
And once again, Amy found herself stuck in a box that didn't make sense.
Vestibular patients—people suffering from dizziness and balance disorders—were deemed nonessential.
As she began seeing patients outside the traditional system, a simple question occurred to her:
Why were dizzy people driving themselves to appointments in the first place?
The more she thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed. Why were people already struggling with balance being asked to get behind the wheel? Why were families rearranging work schedules and childcare to get loved ones to appointments? Why was healthcare being built around the convenience of the system instead of the needs of the patient?
The question eventually became Custom Care Rehab.
Not because Amy dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur.
Because she saw a problem and couldn't stop trying to solve it.
The first years were terrifying.
She worked both jobs.
Made cold calls.
Built relationships.
Saw patients before work, after work, and on weekends.
Slowly, methodically, she built enough momentum to convince herself this thing might actually work.
Today, Custom Care Rehab has grown into a team-based practice serving patients throughout Northeast Ohio.
Amy remains one of the region's leading vestibular specialists along with a hand-picked team of carefully selected providers offering orthopedic physical therapy, women's health services, strength and longevity programming, and lymphatic massage.
But after spending time with Amy, it's clear the business itself isn't what drives her.
People do.
The thing that kept surfacing throughout our conversation wasn't physical therapy.
It was protection.
Amy talks about patients the way some people talk about family.
With affection.
With concern.
With a quiet fierceness.
Almost a mama-bear energy.
She wants people to feel safe, because she knows how often they don't.
She wants them to feel heard, because she knows how often they aren't.
She wants them to feel seen, because she knows how easy it is to become a diagnosis instead of a person.
Growing up, she spent much of her childhood with her grandparents. Family gatherings revolved around Sunday dinners, stories, and relationships.
When she talks about healthcare, she doesn't start with injuries.
She starts with people.
"I would treat you like a family member."
It's a simple statement.
But it explains almost everything.
"If I came at you and said, 'Hi, I'm Amy, I'll be your therapist, tell me about how you hurt your back,' then you identify as an injury versus a whole person."
That philosophy has become the foundation of Custom Care Rehab.
Not just for Amy.
For the entire team.
Because while the practice has expanded, the mission remains the same:
Make people feel cared for.
Make people feel heard.
Make people feel safe.
Then get to work.
Amy lights up when she talks about her business.
She lights up when she talks about her patients.
She lights up when she talks about making an impact.
But if there's one thing that seems to tie all those passions together, it's the future.
Her children.
Listening to her talk about them, you can see the same values that shaped her being passed to the next generation.
Not entitlement.
Not shortcuts.
Responsibility.
Work ethic.
Gratitude.
The understanding that opportunities are gifts—and that gifts should be used well.
She told me about her teenage daughter attending a business program through the University of Akron, becoming the program's only female CEO and helping her team win the competition.
The pride in her voice was impossible to miss.
And it struck me that this is how legacies are built.
A grandfather survives war.
A family builds houses together.
Parents work long hours to create stability.
A neighbor insists a bright young girl belongs in college.
That girl builds a business.
And now she's teaching her own children that nothing worthwhile comes free and that hard work still matters.
When I asked Amy how she defines success, her answer blew through me like a warm breeze off Lake Erie.
"I'm already there."
Not because she's finished.
Not because she's done growing.
But because success, to her, was never about accumulating more things.
It was about creating freedom.
Freedom to help people.
Freedom to be present for her family.
Freedom to build something aligned with her values.
Freedom to make a bigger impact.
Today, that impact reaches patients throughout Northeast Ohio who are looking for something many people feel is missing from modern healthcare.
Not just expertise.
Not just treatment.
Not just results.
Humanity.
If you've been struggling with dizziness, pain, recovery after an injury, women's health concerns, mobility challenges, or simply finding a healthcare provider who makes you feel genuinely seen, heard, and cared for, it may be worth learning more about Amy and the team at Custom Care Rehab.
Because after hearing her story, I'm convinced people don't choose Amy and her team simply because they're excellent at what they do.
They choose them because they trust them.
Because they feel safe with them.
Because they know someone is listening.
And because somewhere along the way, Amy stopped asking whether she belonged in the room.
She started building rooms of her own.
And then she filled them with people who care.
Ways to connect with Amy and Custom Care Rehab:
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