by Joyce Lancaster

In high school, Chris was in accelerated classes, but ended up not having enough credits to graduate because he skipped so much school. He eventually joined his parents in Tennessee where he sold furniture and then cars. “I had an office, business cards and demo cars to drive.” Pretty cool stuff for a 19 year old,” he says. When a friend in California needed a roommate, Chris headed to Redondo Beach. “I worked for a dot.com company, but got laid off and started working as a club promoter,” he states. It was a job that provided a crazy lifestyle entitling him to VIP treatment in a town full of VIPs. Realizing this lifestyle was literally killing him, he moved back to Lewisburg, Tennessee, an hour south of Nashville and as far from Los Angeles as he could get. “It was a big ego hit to go from being a club promoter in Hollywood to waiting tables at Shoney’s,” he laughs. He began to develop “Go Publish Yourself” in his spare time, a resource website for writes who want to self-publish. He soon decided to return to Michigan and attended community college, with his eye always on University of Michigan.

While in school he reinvented himself and he studied graphic and web design and became involved in student leadership. He continued to work on his website and in 2004, 2005 and 2006 Writer’s Digest named it one of the best websites for writers. It also reached number two on Google for self-publishing searches. His efforts didn’t go unnoticed. In 2006, while living off his student loans, he sold the site to Click Industries for a tidy five-figure sum, and then began to design websites for small businesses. A year later, he was accepted at the University of Michigan where he is now in the B.G.S. (Bachelor of General Studies) program with concentrations in business, psychology, sociology and Asian studies.

In 2007, a former professor recommended him for a project which was headed up by CQIN (Continuous Quality Improvement Network), and was funded by the U.S. Department of Labor. “The project focused on developing a curriculum for innovation and the team consisted of 14 members hand-picked from across the country, including executives from Disney, Sony, Warner Brothers, CBS and IDEO,” he explains. Right away he found himself to be useful as an overall idea guy. He says, “By day two I was adopted as one of their own and treated like a peer even though they were wildly successful business men and women in their 40s to 60s.”

Today, Chris is amazingly fit, healthy and enthusiastic. His business, Positively Wired, designs and maintains websites for clients. While finishing his degree at U-M, he works on an academic web-based venture called Mindful Muscle. “This site combines my passions of meditation and strength training. Doing them together takes what is usually thought of as a superficial activity and makes it spiritual,” he explains. Chris has assembled a top notch team of researchers to provide the latest information on strength training, meditation and wellness as well as designing a killer website. His fiancé, Laura Maus, is a nurse earning her CRNA (Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist) through U-M. They plan to get married when they finish school and move west to a warm climate like Phoenix. It’s a fitting place for someone who knows how to rise from the ashes.

Positively Wired
Chris Willets
Phone: 734-389-5011
Websites: www.positivelywired.com or www.mindfulmuscle.com