EP 137: Scaling People Ops with Kristin Oja

Host: Kerri Roberts · Run time: ~51 minutes

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📖 Read the full transcript below

Episode Summary

Most people think scaling a business is about doing more of what already works. It’s not. Kristin Oja built STAT Wellness from one location into a multi-state operation, and in this episode she’s honest about what actually made that possible. It wasn’t a bigger marketing budget or a slicker brand. It was the people systems underneath the growth: how she hires, how she sets expectations, how she talks to her team about money, and how she decides when the business is ready for the next location instead of just wanting it to be. She frames business growth in stages the way you’d frame a person growing up. Childhood, adolescence, young adulthood. Each stage needs something different from the founder, and skipping a stage is how you end up with a company that looks bigger than it can actually carry. Culture gets all the credit for scaling. But culture is the roof. What Kristin built first was the foundation. That’s the whole conversation.

In This Episode

• Why Kristin frames business growth in stages (childhood, adolescence, young adulthood) and what “tying knots” means before you open the next location

• How she hires for culture and growth mindset, not just clinical skill

• The two core values that run STAT Wellness: relentless customer service and a growth mindset

• Why she’s radically transparent with her team, including the financials, and how that built ownership instead of chaos

• Where she draws the line between transparency and boundaries as a leader

• How she uses data and KPIs so decisions get made on numbers, not feelings

• The parental leave call that tested her culture, and how she thought through fairness

Why she treats ChatGPT like a business therapist when she needs to think out loud

Chapter Timestamps

0:00 Introduction to Kristin Oja and her business journey

1:12 The founding of STAT Wellness and its unique approach

2:46 The challenges of scaling from one to multiple locations

4:24 Business stages: childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood

6:05 Current focus: tying knots and stabilizing growth

7:50 Leadership team and organizational structure

11:21 Evolving leadership and delegation strategies

12:55 Hiring process and culture fit at STAT Wellness

14:20 Core values: relentless customer service and growth mindset

16:34 Maintaining humility and transparency as a leader

18:37 Handling tough decisions and transparency with the team

24:21 Personal growth as a leader and adjusting personality traits

27:28 Financial transparency and ownership of revenue

30:10 Using data and KPIs to drive business decisions

42:29 Final advice: stay true to your why and core values

49:50 Kristin Oja’s podcast and contact information

Resources Mentioned

The HR Easy Button (book): saltandlightadvisors.com/thehreasybutton — paperback, hardback, and Kindle on Amazon

HR Foundations (course, under $50): saltandlightadvisors.com/hrfoundations

Companion blog post: How to Scale People Operations Without Losing Your Culture — saltandlightadvisors.com/blog

STAT Wellness (Kristin’s practice): Home - STAT Wellness

Kristin Oja’s podcast: Little By - Podcast - Apple Podcasts

Your Action Item

Pick one number in your business you’ve been running on gut instead of data. Revenue per employee, no-show rate, time-to-hire, whatever it is. Put a real KPI on it this week and tell one other person on your team what it is. Transparency and measurement are the two things Kristin credits most for scaling well, and you can start both today with a single number.

GET THE MONDAY EMAIL

If this episode resonated, you’ll like the Monday morning email. Every Monday at 5:28am, Kerri sends one practical idea for leaders who want to do this work better — including the conversations behind episodes like this one. 1,000+ leaders. 50%+ open rate. saltandlight.myflodesk.com/saltandlightadvisors

Full Transcript

Kristin, welcome to the pod. Thank you so much for having me, Kerri. I'm so excited for this discussion. Me too, me too. And I feel like even just in our chat before the show kicked off, we've got a lot of things that we can talk about and things that I know my listeners are gonna love to tune into. But first let's just start out by hearing from you. I know you've got a business that has really scaled and you've got a lot going on. So tell me about STAT right now and what you've got going on in your workplace.

The Founding of STAT Wellness and Its Unique Approach

Yeah, absolutely. So we opened our first location in 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia. If anybody's from the Southeast, that's kind of our market — we have tried to saturate. But like a lot of entrepreneurs, I was solving problems. I was seeing issues in the emergency room, I was seeing issues in functional medicine and integrative medicine, and I was curious and I kept wanting to create a business model that was gonna help solve some of the issues I was seeing. And so I came up with this concept called STAT Wellness, and we were the first in the nation to blend functional medicine with strength training under one roof. And so every bank, every investor, every VC, every single person told me there was no proof of concept. So I had to figure it out on my own. That was 2019.

Now, fast forward to 2026, we just opened our eighth location. We went from one employee with me at the beginning to almost a hundred by the end of this year, and over 12,000 patients. So that's a little bit about STAT. We wanna be the nation's most trusted wellness ecosystem, and I really put a lot of emphasis on trust, because the wellness industry is a trillion-dollar industry and there's a lot of noise.

Yeah, gosh, there's so many ways we could go from there. I love that you just had to push forward on that proof of concept, because the reality of it is most of us get into our businesses because we think we can do it better, faster in some way. Even though there are similar businesses to yours and mine and everyone else's, we usually, as an entrepreneur, feel like there's some other angle — whether it's service delivery or style or the actual product or whatever it is that we can do differently. So you kind of have to pave your own way, because if it's the exact same as somebody else's business, sure, they've proven that they can sell, but what's gonna differentiate? So I love that you did that.

The Challenges of Scaling From One to Multiple Locations

What was it like going from one location to two? When was the breaking point where you're like, this is getting complicated? Was it from one to two, or has it gotten harder from seven to eight? When was the tough part?

Business Stages: Childhood, Adolescence, and Young Adulthood

Yeah, so we describe this a lot as raising children. I have three kids. I know not everybody listening is a parent, but a lot of the things I've experienced as a parent, I have experienced as a business owner. So infancy is what we describe as that one location, where you're physically tired, you're trying to learn to run a business, you have no idea what you're doing, and you're questioning like, am I even mature enough to do this? This is a lot of responsibility. I was working around the clock trying to figure it out because I didn't have any capital — as I mentioned, no banks or anything. So that was physically exhausting, but I had a lot of control over it. I was there every day, I had one location, I could oversee everything, I could control the quality.

I also think a lot of the listeners that are entrepreneurs might relate — there was this loneliness that kicked in about six months after opening that I don't think we talk about enough. Because you go to a baby shower, you go to a wedding shower, you go to a Thanksgiving meal, and you're talking about the weather and things going on in people's lives, and you're like, no, no, I want to figure out how to pay payroll, I wanna figure out how to pay my rent. I don't want to wear this paisley dress and talk about the weather. You start to feel like you're an outsider in your own community.

When we opened our second location in Roswell, Georgia — a suburb of Atlanta — we describe that as toddler. We were wobbling. We kind of are on our feet, we kind of know what we're doing, but we're not super sturdy, because I can't be in two places. So we started to hire some different operators and get more support at the foundation level, but it still felt manageable. The third location, Peachtree City, also felt very manageable — a drive away, same time zone. I think where we started to get really into what we refer to as the messy middle is where we went into a new time zone, in a new city, in a new state that had no idea who we were. That is when we describe it as adolescent. My three locations in Metro Atlanta were like childhood — the five- to ten-year-old that you never hear about, that loves their parents, that just kind of operates and is gaining their independence. You're like, this is a sweet spot.

But why stop at childhood? Let's just keep going, right? So then we go to Nashville, Tennessee. And I didn't even think about what one hour time change would do for infrastructure. I thought, I'm gonna build the biggest, most beautiful location we've ever built, I'm gonna spend the most on this build, people are gonna be waiting around the building when we open doors. What you quickly realize is you have brand awareness in your community, your city, and your state — you go to a whole new state and people don't know who we are. I'm like, was this my ego? We just have such a great thing in Georgia, it's gonna be the exact same in Tennessee. And the great thing is it has grown, but it's been much more like starting over, back to what our Atlanta market was when we had one location. It was grassroots — we have to go out in the community.

Current Focus: Tying Knots and Stabilizing Growth

We've since opened up some more in Georgia, Sandy Springs coming, Charleston in South Carolina, and we just opened Charlotte in North Carolina. So we're at eight, and we describe right now as adolescence and the messy middle. We're just trying to get our team to rally into the changes. I'm envisioning our business as all these wires everywhere, and I'm like, okay, we've got a good foundation, but we're stretching ourselves in ways that we never have, and we need to tie off these knots and finish it out. So we're not opening any other locations in 2026. We did three this year, and we're gonna spend the next six months tying all those loose ends, getting through the messy middle, getting through the adolescence. And then I hope we're young adults going into 2027, and I can put my consulting hat on, I can really be a CEO founder.

Right now, to your question — that was a very long-winded answer — I would say this is the hardest season we've been in. All different states: South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, a hundred employees, all different personalities. They don't all know me. I'm not working in the space with every single one of them every day. And we do a lot, which I'm really excited to talk about — help with culture and people and hiring right — and we have a lot of infrastructure in place and we do some really cool things, but it's still challenging. So have me back on here next year and let's see if I'm a young adult. But right now I'm just sitting in the messy middle.

Yeah, and you know what, I think most people relate to that the best, because it's hard to get out of that phase. Unless you are being truly intentional, taking the pause like what you're doing, a lot of businesses never get there, because they just keep taking the opportunities — if they've got funding sources coming, or people are demanding it of them, they just keep growing, but they end up being that by default instead of by design. So I love that you're taking a break, and hopefully that helps with your sanity too.

Leadership Team and Organizational Structure

When you're talking about "we," do you have a business partner that you work with? Do you have a COO? What's your executive leadership team look like?

Yeah, so backing up to 2025, we brought on our first investors, a minority deal. It was 100% owned by me from 2019 to 2025. After Nashville, that largest location, I realized it was gonna take us two years to be able to open up another location. I've always said I don't want to take money to just take money — I want to take money and knowledge. So we do have a board now, a leadership board that's outside of STAT.

And we do have a COO, which is a funny story — it's actually my husband, who didn't want me to start STAT Wellness in the first place. After three to four years he was like, can I get out of corporate America and work with you? I see how you're working so hard for a goal, but you're passionate and you're loving it and you're glowing. I don't want to be sitting in my cubicle just plugging away at this corporation that I do care about, but I care so much more about what you're doing. So he came on as COO.

And then Sarah Rose, who I've talked about on every single podcast since I've started, was my first employee that I hired in 2018, before we even opened our first doors in 2019. I had no way of paying her, I had no business plan, but I put her on salary and I titled her director of operations. And it's so funny — she was our director of operations when it was just me and her, and she's still our director of operations, but now over eight locations and a hundred employees. She just keeps learning and growing, and she's out on maternity leave right now, which has tilted our whole business because she just knows everything.

So we've got a director of operations. Our operations side is the most stacked — we've got the COO, the director of operations, the regional manager, the office managers, and then the patient care specialists. And we have an SVP over growth and revenue, doing more of the business partnerships. And we have director levels over every department. Because we're such a comprehensive wellness practice — we like to call ourselves modern health now — we have physical therapists, so we have a director over physical therapy. We have health coaches, dietitians, and functional medicine providers, so we have a director over clinical care. We have group fitness, personal training, and small group training, so we have a director of movement. As we continue to grow, we'll eventually bring on a chief medical officer, and eventually bring in some marketing — right now we fractionalize all of that. But that's a little bit about our leadership team, and it just continues to evolve and grow, and our leaders continue to grow too.

Evolving Leadership and Delegation Strategies

I love to hear you're doing fractional for some options, because so many times businesses want to create their fiefdom, for lack of a better term — they want to build this big powerhouse team, which does feel good, to have people at your right and your left. But there are some services — for HR, for example, I'm always telling people the average amount of HR people per 100 is 1.04 full-time people. And usually that means payroll is not in HR, so there's some spread from that. So many people want to hire that very early, and when they do, they end up scope-creeping and being a jack of all trades, which from a clarity perspective is hard. And then as you continue to scale, usually you don't have the right person in the right seat on the bus. So how have you grown people? I know you talked about Sarah, it sounds like she's grown a ton. What does that look like as you've gotten bigger and bigger? Have there been times where you've said, okay, this person hasn't grown with the business and they need to transition, we need to bring people in from outside? What's been your philosophy on that?

Yes. So we did not have layers of leadership from 2019 to 2024. We were five years in the business and we were super bottlenecked — everything went through me. Hopefully a lot of the listeners have been able to do it in a shorter period than I did, but everything went through me for five years. And it became very clear to me in early 2024, about two years ago, that I have to elevate and delegate.

I feel very grateful — our leaders were employees of ours before and they got elevated. The only person that has successfully been able to come in from the outside is our SVP of growth and revenue, and they're really focused on new lead generation. When we've hired people at executive level for a role that our team has done day in and day out for so many years, it has created a really negative culture for our team, because they're having to train their bosses on how to do workflow. And I know every business is different, but for some of these really operational-level positions, it has worked so much better for us to elevate and delegate and then hire people under them — and we hire really good people from the beginning. So when we bring people in from the outside and they go over some of the people that have been with us for five, six years, it creates a "you're just coming in here and telling me what to do." You gotta build rapport, you gotta understand the process, you gotta understand the operations. That's a hard thing to come into.

Hiring Process and Culture Fit at STAT Wellness

That is so — talk to me about your hiring process. I'm sure when people heard you say "we hire really good people," they're like, how? How do you do that? That's always such a challenge for businesses.

Yes. So for us, our culture is really, really important to me. And I'm sure there's other people similar to me — I will hire a person over a skill, always. And it's interesting: my leaders, now that they report to me, we do a once-a-year staff retreat and we don't talk about work, we just go and have fun together, we hang out, we bring our kids, we bring our families. And now when I talk to our team, they've started telling me, this is the right person, I can see him or her at our retreat, hanging out with our team, being a part of our STAT culture. I used to say "STAT family," but people have told me I can't call it a family because it's a business, so I just say it's STAT culture. When one of our employees said that to me, I was like, wow, that is what we need to think about — can I see this person fitting in at our retreat? That does not mean we're all the same, but it means we have a team-based approach, we've got each other's back.

Core Values: Relentless Customer Service and Growth Mindset

One of our core values is ego is the enemy. We do a lot of things to make sure we hire the right people, but number one is getting very, very clear on what our core values are. As a company, internally, we have four core values, and when we interview, we explain what is good about our core values and what is really unsexy.

One of our core values is relentless customer service. We tell people we expect relentless customer service, and that feels very stressful — the word relentless — because it can be. We're in a B2C business and we deal with 12,000 different personalities, and it is challenging. Every day is not glamorous. But people know when they get hired by us that we care so much about that customer experience.

We also talk a lot about growth mindset. If our team is not trying to be the best version of themselves at any level of our company, it sticks out. If you're not trying to get stronger, or exercise, or prioritize sleep, or learn what foods make you feel good and how you balance your blood sugar — if at a personal level you're not making the steps to grow, it sticks out. So we hire people at all levels that are looking to grow personally or professionally. It doesn't mean everybody needs to fight for that next promotion, but they do want to read and stay relevant in what's happening in wellness.

And again, ego is the enemy. We have a very servant-based leadership style. I always talk about my job as a CEO and founder as, how can I improve other people's jobs? Put me at the bottom and let me look up to my organization on how I can improve. And people feel that. When we had some of our team in town training for our new Charlotte office, we all went to dinner together, and I was asking them, how do you feel, what are you thinking about the STAT culture? And one of the employees said, I think the word is refreshing. It's really refreshing to come into an organization where I truly feel we're all peers. I feel like I could go to you about anything, I could go to my lead health coach, or the director of clinical care. That ego-is-the-enemy really resonates when people come in for their first day of training, and that's because of how much emphasis we put into it.

And then we say patient focused. I've told people all along, we have grown the business based on patient experience, not profit and loss. Businesses that are based in healthcare — and this is my opinion — if you're running a business in healthcare based on a P&L, your patients are gonna feel it. There are so many decisions I would do differently if I was just running the business based on a P&L. But in healthcare, you should not and cannot run a business based on that. So I focus so much on the experience.

Maintaining Humility and Transparency as a Leader

There's a lot in there. I would say there's one thing that stood out to me that I feel like is a really thread-the-needle piece of culture. When you have ego as the enemy, even as the CEO, it's a beautiful sentiment. My question to you is, how do you keep that level of appropriate authority and distance from your employee population when there are tough calls to be made, or when you can't completely share with transparency some change or direction?

We are a pretty transparent company, and I didn't used to be. A lot of our financials we didn't share, but we share a lot more now than we ever have — we're actually moving in the direction of more transparency. We say hire slow and fire quickly, so when somebody's not a right fit, we do fire them. We had somebody we had to let go, and what I learned in this experience was I really should have done a company-wide, hands-on meeting to explain what happened without getting into the nitty-gritty. Of course, I called every single person in the location that this happened to, and I talked to them on the phone. But I had no idea how some of our other locations would interpret the situation, and it really kind of bummed me out, because I'm like, you guys have worked with me for over seven years, and this is the narrative that came back to you?

I strive on being transparent and I strive on sharing — that doesn't mean every single nitty-gritty detail, but it does go with, hey, I trust you guys as employees of STAT to be able to understand why this business decision was made. I want you to have a glass door into my office. I run the business in a way that if everything became public, how would I feel? And I feel really good about every decision I make. I want my team to know the hard decisions, the easy decisions, and everything in between. I always tell our leaders, you need to understand what every single person under you is doing — how they're doing their role, how they're doing their job, what the hard challenges are, and help them discover efficiencies and innovation. If your employees way down the line come to you, and you go four people down below you and you had no idea what their job looks like, you need to take the time over the next week and sit with them and watch them. It is our expectation as leaders to know the nitty-gritty of what our team's doing, and that's the only way we can be effective leaders.

I've really learned, just as a founder personally, I'm a very transparent person with my own life too. I always say I have zero secrets — even on podcasts, I'm like, ask me anything, I tell everything to everyone. But one of the things I always remind myself when I'm at staff retreats is that I really want to get to know my team and ask them questions, versus being the person that overshares. If they ask me a specific question, hey, yeah, I feel comfortable sharing this with you. But I lean in on understanding and knowing my employees.

Handling Tough Decisions and Transparency With the Team

I will say, on the negative side, because we do have this culture, people think it's appropriate to ask questions that I would never ask if I were an employee. Like, hey, can I cut my hours by 50% and make my same salary? No, you can't cut your hours by 50% and make your same salary. But we do have a culture where they think they could ask, and share what's going on in their life, and we'll understand, because we do care about them as a person. So there is a balance, and it's hard.

The more I've learned over the years — and maybe this answers the question — the clearer I am with each role's expectations and responsibilities, and we've developed what we call scorecards, the easier it is. It's not, well, I really like you as a person, or hey, we're really good friends, or ego is the enemy and we all just take care of each other and there's no hierarchy. It's, here is the expectation for the role, here is the scorecard, here's how we're evaluating your performance. And it's not emotional, it's business. So when someone comes to us and asks that question, I can say, no, because your expectation is that you're bringing in three times your pay. If you go to 50% and get your same salary, you're not gonna be able to hit your quota, so that's gonna set you up for failure and set us up for failure. Yes, you can go to 50% and get your same 50% pay, so that we can stay in line with our scorecard, and you can stay with us long term at that 50% capacity if that's all you can do right now.

Fairness — I don't know if this was just embedded in me growing up, but I run the company on what is fair, and I want every person to know how they're being measured, how other people are being measured, and what success looks like. So when I have to tell you no — like, yes, I wish you got eight weeks of parental leave, but you have to be with us for a year to get that, and you're at ten months, and if I gave this to you, then I have to give it to every other person. It's not because I'm mean, I wish I could, but how am I going to create a culture of fairness if I do something for you and then someone else I can't do it for?

So we've created a lot of black and white where we can. It lets me know that for every single person that works at STAT, this is what's gonna happen, this is our experience, this is the flow. And it takes away a lot of the emotional piece. If you become friends, how do you make those tough decisions? It's not that tough of a decision, because it's very clearly written and we're all on the same page. You have to work 30 open clinical hours — we're all working 30 open clinical hours, you can just make them however you want. If you look at me from 2019 to 2020, I was not as clear on what each role was, the expectations, the scorecard, how they were being evaluated. I would create positions for a person's strength. And now, as I've been in business this long, I'm like, no, no, no — I need to be very clear on what the position is for the business, and the right person needs to be in that seat, versus me creating something for a person.

Personal Growth as a Leader and Adjusting Personality Traits

Yeah, it makes a ton of sense, and I feel like I cued you up to say that exact thing. I'm constantly preaching about transparency and clarity, and usually my clients will be like, well, it's easy for you to say because you're not in the business. And I'm like, no, it's just literally what makes you successful or not. It makes your culture clean or not. It's not my opinion, it's the way it works. Usually I see clients resist that truth, and they'll say things like, well, we just like to be ambiguous, because then we can bless people. And I'm like, no, that's not a blessing — that makes people feel like they're treated unfairly. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. It's not actually a blessing to people, it's hurting people and it's hurting your culture. But was there a moment that you were like, I cannot operate like this anymore? What was the catalyst that really helped you flip that switch over to scorecards and clarity, and realizing that that is a great part of your culture and not HR boring stuff?

I think there were multiple pieces, and it evolved over time. Early on, one of the big things was me just knowing my personality and how much I care deeply for every person that works with us and every patient. I always joke, if somebody left us a bad review, I would have offered them my 401k. So my personality is not going to succeed as a leader if I do not put some parameters in place. Part of it was, I'm not even allowed to go to meetings and make a decision, because I'm a yes girl — yes, yes, let's do it. So my team knows I'm not allowed to make decisions in meetings, I have to say, I really love that idea, let me let you know tomorrow. I have to sit and process. My team's helped me become a better leader by recognizing my personality.

We do the Enneagram on everybody at our company, and it really helps me understand myself and all of our team. I'm a seven, so a seven sees opportunity in everything — we love everybody, we wanna have fun, celebrate people. I'm a seven-eight-three, so I have a lot of that three achieving in me too. Those scorecards at the beginning were the first layer of my version of transparency, which was to protect myself, to be able to have business decisions that weren't personal, because my mind is celebrating you. You could be a horrible employee, hit 10% of your numbers, not fit our culture, but I'm celebrating you because you did one really awesome thing in the last six months, and I want to celebrate that. So I needed to do it for my personality. That was the first step.

Kudos to you for making those personal adjustments, because that's hard as the leader — to say, okay, there are parts about my personality I want to embrace and the business needs to go along with that, and then there are parts about my personality that I need to make sure aren't hindering the business. I think that's where I see a lot of CEOs get stuck. I'm an Enneagram three, which is such a stereotypical business owner Enneagram, but I try to surround myself with sevens, because I don't know how to celebrate very well. To think, this is good, let's get excited about it — I forget to do that. Two of my best friends are sevens.

Financial Transparency and Ownership of Revenue

The second thing was, I felt like at the beginning I shouldn't be transparent with our numbers, because people don't understand. If I say we're bringing in five million in revenue, people in their mind are gonna think we're super rich — they're not gonna understand how much expenses we have and what that means for profit, or even if they see a profit, how that's affecting future growth. That took me a while. But then it made me realize, they don't need to know. It doesn't matter. If they look at it and they think Cam and I are just sitting on a yacht, they can think Cam and I are sitting on a yacht. I know I'm not sitting on a yacht, I know what our financials look like, and that's all that matters. I want them in the loop for the transparency so they can see, are we growing or not, what locations need more support, let's lean in together.

And ultimately, the last piece of all this decision-making was, I can't be the only one responsible for numbers. If I'm the only person looking at all of our numbers, the P&L, running reports, running expenses, making sure we're hitting payroll — as we're growing to eight locations and a hundred employees, that is a bottlenecked business. So this year, in 2026, I had different departments own the revenue for that category. When it comes to movement, director of movement, you own our movement revenue — you're gonna report our revenue to me, tell me what's going well, what's not, your ideas on how to improve or celebrate the situation. Every month we do leadership meetings and they own their revenue and they talk about what's gone up, what's gone down. And what has come out of that is everybody feels a sense of responsibility beyond just, am I showing up and doing my job. They feel a fiscal responsibility. Maybe they're not seeing the numbers that they want, but they have this leadership team that's there to rally and support. So all ships rise. It created this ownership, this sense of responsibility through transparency.

So first the scorecards were for me personally, to make me a better leader and create some parameters, and let me have those tougher conversations that aren't really that tough when you bring it to just business. When it's emotional, everything is tough. When it's about the person, everything is tough. When it's about the numbers, it's a lot easier. Then it was, let's share with the organization how we're doing from a revenue and profit perspective, let's trend the up and the down — that was still me. Then the last piece was, now you get to own revenue in this department. And they also know they're not gonna lose their job if the numbers aren't there, but they're starting to think, and it's been really fun over the last seven months to see how they're interpreting the data. Now they understand why I've made the business decisions I've made over the years, why we put policies in place. It's been an iteration, and it's constantly changing and evolving, but those are some of the big buckets that led us to the transparency.

Onboarding at STAT Wellness

We've talked about monitoring performance and your scorecards, which I love. Talk to me about what onboarding looks like, because I know that's a critical time — and when I say onboarding, it can be anywhere from when the offer is accepted to, let's say, ninety days.

This is the piece that we're improving the most over the next six months. We have certain onboarding experiences that have been really fine-toothed and are awesome. When we hire a new functional medicine provider, we put them through an eight-week residency, and every day is mapped out where they go and experience all the different services we offer, so when they experience it, they can talk about it. They have different modules, case studies, weekly calls after they finish their eight-week residency. So we've done a really awesome job there.

Where I feel like our gap in the organization is, is in standardizing the things we can standardize. For a long time in functional medicine, I kept saying everything is personalized, everything is customizable, there is no specific journey. But what I've learned over these years, and what we're changing, is that there are a lot of STAT absolutes and a lot of standardization, even in the personalization. So we're changing our onboarding to where they watch videos of me talking about the organization, the mission, the vision, who we are. They get to see the organizational chart, see who they report to — really creating a lot of that that is evergreen. Everybody gets that time with me. And we're creating a lot more of — I don't like to use the word sales funnel — but storytelling: what is our origin, what is our treatment approach, how does your journey at STAT look, and how can you implement all these different services? We're gonna make it a five-minute script at the beginning of every new patient, so that people know what we do and what we offer, and we're standardizing that.

What I found is I would work with patients and they would go see another provider and be like, I didn't even know you guys did physical therapy. And I'm like, literally you sat in the waiting room next to a huge banner that said physical therapy across it, but they had no idea. Or they've been working with us for three years and they didn't know that we did peptides, because we don't advertise all over our social media that we're a peptide clinic. So we're trying to figure out, how do we do just a five-minute spiel to standardize what we do and to storytell? That's where we're in the improvement, that messy middle, because our onboarding has been very department-specific — some departments are amazing, and some we need more at the high level, who we are at STAT from my mouth.

But to us, what's really important is that they really know our core values, and we've got really good detailed handbooks. We also do quarterly corporate Zooms with all of our employees, and our new hires join this. We do a really cool thing that we call rewind to innovate. Rewind is looking to the past — let's talk about what we've been doing, what's been going well, what's not been going as well in each department at all of our different locations. And then they end the meeting by, okay, innovate — what can we do to increase efficiency or innovate our roles? They get that time with other nurses, nurse practitioners, physical therapists, to figure out across all the different locations what's working really well and what's not. And then they get a voice to present at the corporate-wide Zoom. Our new hires love that quarterly opportunity to really hear the nitty-gritty of what the role has been doing, and to know that they have a voice they can present to help their role function to the best it can within the STAT umbrella.

Having a designated time when they know they're gonna be able to do that is huge, because otherwise it's easy to accidentally make people feel like their voice doesn't matter, even though it does, if they don't have a clear avenue. Some leaders are better about asking those types of questions than others. So really cool that you all have that set up from a quarterly perspective.

Compensation, Turnover, and Pricing

Let's end on money. Let's talk about money a little bit. What's turnover look like in general, and how do you stay competitive when it comes to compensation and benefits?

Through the pandemic, through everything, we have never sold out. Our team has always gotten at least a 3% raise every single year, and they've gotten bonuses and promotions. I'd rather our numbers not look as good as an organization, to keep good talent. If you work at STAT, at least a 3% raise is standard. Even if it's a pandemic, even if we have to close our business, even if I have to figure it out, the world is getting more expensive and you're gonna get taken care of and get a 3% raise to stay with inflation. So I have to, as a leader, figure out how to have enough money in the bank to make sure people get at least that. That can be challenging — there can be times where my numbers don't look great because I put more out in profit and gave more raises. But those people are what's gonna help our business advance, and I gotta keep them. So those are very easy business decisions for me to make.

The harder piece is, how do we keep making sure our revenue is increasing to match our expenses? This is the most complex thing ever, because we don't change our prices. We'll be in a very expensive building and our prices are the same, we'll be in a way less expensive building and our prices are the same. As an organization, we want simple, transparent pricing, the same way you've heard me talk about our business as a whole. Listeners can go to statwellness.com and look at our a la carte pricing — everything is written out — and our membership pricing. We want to be transparent from a patient perspective and as an employee too, and it gets us better leads when people call, because they've already seen our prices.

But if you think about it — we've been open since 2019, we keep doing at least a 3% raise, we keep opening new locations, we keep hiring more people, so our expenses are going up and up. How do you make sure your revenue matches that? We've only increased our prices twice since we've opened. So it's hard. We are in it for the long run, and we're looking at how we create lifelong members and lifelong clients. We do memberships and a la carte. At seven of our locations, about 70% of our revenue is a la carte, and 30 to 40% comes in from memberships. We love that recurrent membership money that I can rely on. Well, we opened up Nashville and we're almost 90% members, and we priced our membership based on that 70-30 model. So you're gonna get shocked when you go into new markets. There is always something that surprises you when it comes to money.

Using Data and KPIs to Drive Business Decisions

As the founder of the company, or as a CEO, or whoever it is — know where you're making your money and know where you're spending your money. Take time and know those KPIs, know what levers you need to turn, know what has the biggest impact. That's where your decisions come in. What I have found when I've worked with a lot of people is they really don't know. They don't know their margins, they don't know where most of their revenue is coming in, they're not running these reports on a regular basis.

Even if you're a brand-new business or you're just getting started, you need to know where your business is making money and where you're spending money. It's really important to get very clear on these levers, because those levers you constantly are tweaking and turning as the company is developing and maturing. For us, that functional medicine a la carte is very important to how successful our business is, while also fostering memberships. If we get to where our providers are at 85% capacity, I know I need to bring on another functional medicine provider, and that lever is going to make the biggest impact. So I can worry about all these little things, but you have to worry about the things that are gonna have the biggest impact, no matter what size your company is. When a pandemic happens, I know what levers to pull. A lot of business owners don't know where they're spending the most money, they don't know what their expense report looks like. To me, if you don't know that, set up time with your CPA, your CFO, whoever it is, and ask those questions.

Final Advice: Stay True to Your Why and Core Values

Let me ask you one final wrap-up thought. For an owner listening who's drowning, who has zero HR foundation or business foundation when it comes to the people-operations side of things, where would you tell them to start?

I think it depends on each person, but what I would do is write down everything you do in a week, and circle all of the things that could be blended together into one person or one task. Because what I've found is, when you hire smart, you're trying to buy back time as an early founder or owner. I'm constantly thinking, when I'm hiring someone, how do I hire someone that allows me to buy back time? If I write everything I'm doing in a week, and I can allocate it out — even if it took me 10 hours and it's a full-time job, I just bought back 10 hours at my rate with somebody else. I'm really big now into virtual assistants and some of the things you can do to operate much more cost-effectively than I could back in 2019, with all the resources, the AI, the offshore, all these things we have. My suggestion is, I don't think there's one magic person for each person's role, but there is something that you can automate or hire that's gonna buy back time. Because that's what it's about as a founder — how do you spend your time doing the things that are the greatest genius or greatest good for the business, and get out of the weeds?

Yeah, that's so good. Earlier you said make sure that you're hiring for the needs of the business instead of the person's skill set, and that is such a hard thing to get CEOs away from — thinking about what an individual can do versus what the business actually needs. If that person doesn't work out, that's a bummer; give them the opportunity to grow their skill set and come along with you, but if they can't, there is certainly a person who can. Another thing I wanted to mention for the listeners: if you can't run the Pareto principle on your business, meaning you don't know where 80% of your revenue comes from, then it's time to spend some time looking at your numbers. Tell your CFO, if you've got a fractional CFO, or your outsourced accountant, to talk to you like you're an idiot and start from the beginning. Sometimes they don't want to belittle you, so they're telling you things assuming that you know, and you have to tell them that you don't understand. Or, if that makes you feel embarrassed, just say, I'm wanting to get back to basics and really look at this from a different lens, can we start like we're starting all over again and talk about my financials? Most CPAs, most accountants would love to get into the nitty-gritty with you, and if they wouldn't, they're not a very good one. Or take the report you're getting, throw it into Claude or ChatGPT, and say, I don't really understand my numbers, help me to see the patterns. When I took a look at where 80% of my revenue was coming from, I realized I was spending all of my marketing time and energy on where 20% of my revenue was coming from, trying to expand that 20%. And I'd say most people listening would say, well, yeah, because you want to grow that. That's not it. You want to double down on what the market has already paid you for, where that 80% of your revenue is coming from. Double down on that. Stop paying attention to the 20% — if it comes your way or it grows, great, but you've already got this proof of concept in your 80%.

Well, and with the ChatGPT — we have a paid account, so I feel more comfortable putting things in there. If it's a free account, you might want to just get a paid one. Even me — I look at my numbers all the time, I run these reports, I have really good KPIs and benchmarks, and I feel like I understand our numbers really well. I was feeling really bummed going into one of our board meetings, because I set a goal for myself to be at 30% year-over-year growth, and we're at 20% right now. So I threw it into ChatGPT and said, analyze this, help me understand — we're at 20%, we're having all of this movement, all this growth. And it painted a different picture that, when I say it out loud, sounds so basic. It said, Kristin, you have a business that has increased by over $600,000 in revenue every single year, and you've shown that over and over. As your revenue goes up, even though you're having the same growth, your percentage goes down, because it's harder to make that same amount of money. Look back in the past three years, you've gone up over 300%, and that's super healthy. So it was like my cheerleader that I needed at that time. I already knew my numbers, I already knew what was going on, but I'd set this expectation for myself and I felt like I was failing. I said, help me build a narrative, and it said, I don't have to have you build a narrative, you're in a service-based industry that's grown this amount year after year consistently through all the ups and downs of the economy — that is a strong business. It helps you look at it and ask those questions in real time, if you're comfortable putting your numbers in. Now I see why people use ChatGPT as their therapist. It was my business therapist. I went into that conversation feeling down about myself, and now I want to go celebrate our success.

That's awesome. Is there anything that you'd like to add to our listeners before we close out today?

My thing, and this is kind of a summary of everything, is: no matter what industry you're in, no matter what your competitors are doing, no matter what's going on in the world, stay true to your why. Be really clear on why you started, and what you as a person in this world's core values are, and use that as your North Star. Because business gets hard — numbers go down, profit goes down, you lose really great employees, you gain really great employees, you gain not-so-great employees. Business is so unpredictable. But what is set in stone, or should be, is why you started the business in the first place, and what you want your clients to feel. I have to remind myself during the hard days — I get emails that we have changed people's lives. That is our why at STAT Wellness, having an impact in people's lives. If I have a hundred people, there's going to be somebody that's disappointed, right? That's just the way the world works. But why focus on that one person that's disappointed? Focus on the 99, or the 90, or the 85 that have had an amazing experience. So know your why, feel good about the product you have, and focus on that, and not these little distractions that happen behind the scenes. Because if I listened to those voices, my business would not be where it's at today. Running a business is hard, it's challenging, you get faced with things you never thought. Once you think you know what's going on, something else flips upside down. As we've talked about, it is chaotic, but there are a lot of lessons in the chaos, there are a lot of things going well in the chaos, and there are things that you can tweak in the chaos. It's just, do you know why you're doing what you're doing, and do you feel good about the product you have? That's gotten me through a lot of challenges.

That's so true.

Kristin Oja's Podcast and Contact Information

I know you've got a show too. Tell us about your show, and then how people can find you.

Yeah, so my podcast is called Little By. It's one of my ways I view healthcare — little by little, little becomes a lot. I talk a lot about small, simple changes that we can make to become the best versions of ourselves. So if you're interested in more of the physical health space, the functional medicine space, becoming the best version of yourself, I highly suggest you listen to it. It's a little bit less on the business side and more on the personal growth side. The business is statwellness.com — in October we're going through a rebrand, so the website we have right now is the one we had with one location, and we're getting a new logo, a new brand, so make sure to check it out. My personal page is KristinOja.com, and I'm @kristinojadnp on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, all the places.

Okay, awesome. We'll make sure to link all of that in the show notes. Kristin, thanks so much for coming today. And just like we said, folks — there is chaos in business, there always will be, but as always, don't waste the chaos. Embrace it. Until next time.

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