She’s Got Sol

Written by: Courtnii Byrd

When the hospital in Dr. Michelle Cooke’s community closed, every physician on staff lost their job, her included. Just like that, the patients who had trusted them for care had nowhere to go.

“There was no bigger wake-up call that the current healthcare model was failing,” she says.

Dr. Cooke was a primary care doctor. She never planned on becoming an entrepreneur. But what she kept coming back to was simple: her skills hadn’t gone anywhere, and neither had her community’s needs. “I knew I had to build a way to keep serving them.” That’s how Sol Direct Primary Care got started.

Getting it off the ground was a whole different challenge.

Medical training teaches you to treat patients, not run a business, and she didn’t have a roadmap or many entrepreneurs around her to learn from. “The hardest part was simply not knowing where to begin,” she admits. So she went looking for help wherever she could find it. She read about startups, listened to podcasts, and studied how other people had built their businesses.

She also made a point of looking after her own health and fitness, because she knew she’d need the stamina. She didn’t have all the answers, and she says so. “I learned enough to take the next step, and then kept going.”

Today, Sol is built around Black women’s health and wellness, and she doesn’t soften that. Because the practice is independent and doesn’t rely on insurance companies or government contracts, she’s free to celebrate Blackness openly. You can see it in how women are welcomed and in how closely they’re listened to once they’re in the room. “Our culture and community are the brand,” she says, calling it the practice’s superpower. When you’re clear about who you’re here for, people can tell. Black women who come to Sol feel safe, seen, and valued, and that trust has helped the business grow.

It wasn’t always this focused. Sol began as a general primary care practice, and things shifted when she committed fully to the mission. The messaging sharpened, and it drew in women who felt it was speaking to them. Their needs started shaping what the practice offered. Alongside primary care, Sol added hair restoration, skincare, and aesthetic services designed with melanin in mind. “Even in Atlanta, there are gaps in care that centers Black women,” she says, and Sol grew by filling them.

On what Dr. Cooke hopes a woman feels the first time she experiences Sol, and the answer is relief. “I want Black women to feel, ‘Finally, someone sees me—and I can exhale.'” So many women spend their days taking care of everyone else, she says, and there just aren’t enough places where their own health comes first. She wants Sol to be one of them, a place where a woman can be vulnerable, put her burdens down, and let someone take care of her.

“I want it to feel like a sacred space where she can show up fully as herself, feel celebrated in her Blackness, and leave feeling lighter, supported, and proud of who she is.” It started with a hospital closing. It became a practice built on trust, shaped by the women it serves, and led by a doctor who decided her community deserved better.