August 2024 Startup Grant Awarded to Holiatry Health & Wellness

We’re excited to announce the $10,000 Startup Grant recipient for August 2024. Congratulations to Shelby Pope, founder of Holiatry Health & Wellness.

Recently, WomensNet Advisory Board member Marcia Layton Turner sat down with Shelby for an exclusive interview. You can listen to their conversation and view the transcript below.

Video Transcript

WomensNet: Hi, WomensNet Community. Welcome to a conversation with our grant winners for August, 2024. Today we have the pleasure of chatting with Shelby Pope of Holiatry Health & Wellness, who’s our startup grant winner. Earlier this year, WomensNet decided to increase the number of monthly 10,000 grants that we give from one to three. So that’s why you’re seeing three lovely faces on the screen here. The Startup Grant is for entrepreneurs who are more in the idea or the seed phase of developing their business, or who haven’t yet hit $10,000 in sales. I’m Marcia Layton Turner. I’m one of several women’s net advisory board members, and I have the great pleasure to learn from all of our winners. So thank you all for being here, I appreciate your time. Shelby, What’s a little backstory about your company?

Shelby: Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be on. Holiatry Health & Wellness is a micro practice primary care model that, is NP, nurse practitioner started. I started that because I’ve been a nurse practitioner for four years now and a nurse for 11 years. I have worked in large corporate medicine for the last decade, and I have found that I don’t want to treat people like cattle anymore. To be perfectly clear, I want to give patients the opportunity to sit and build a rapport with me. So, I’m starting primary care in my community. and the whole format for that is that it’s going to be very small and intimate so that I can allow patients to have the time that they needed to get the quality of care that they deserve.

WomensNet: Awesome. I apologize for mispronouncing Holiatry!

Shelby: No, it’s fine. It happens all the time. There’s a whole backstory on that, but yes, it’s fine!

WomensNet: And so what is your local community, Where are you based?

Shelby: So I’m based in Skiatook, Oklahoma. It’s about 30 minutes north of Tulsa. When I was in grad school at the University of Tulsa here in Tulsa, Oklahoma  I had a project of where we had to create our dream business, of what that model looked like. And within that week, I had a dream about this primary care clinic that I started and I saw a billboard in the back, which was named Holiatry. I didn’t even know that that was a word. I ended up Googling it and found out that it meant holism, understanding a person from every aspect. I took it as a sign from the universe and I ran with it. So here we are!

WomensNet: As you should! So let’s talk a little bit about any resources that you three turned to or came across that you found particularly helpful that you think other women business owners might also benefit from.

Shelby: What’s specifically coming to mind for me in nursing and medicine, is that networking is really essential. I found that pairing with other nurse practitioners that have started their own businesses has been tremendously beneficial. I think probably a lot of women listening to this could relate, that the abundance mindset, where there’s enough to go around for all of us is so essential. Like it’s, it’s okay to support other women, it’s okay to root for our equal success. We all want to do better. And then another  tool that I’ve used is a book called Startup DPC, which means direct primary care. It doesn’t exactly align perfectly, but it, it’s a step-by-step process of starting your own private clinic. And that was tremendously beneficial.

WomensNet: Wonderful. I love the variety, that’s great. So I think you also touched on marketing and PR publicity a little bit. So, so let’s shift to that. What are some marketing strategies that you used or are looking into that you found work really well or that you’re going to try because you’ve heard good things?

Shelby: So I bought a commercial place in my community and it’s about six to eight weeks out from being completed with the renovations. So I’m kind of in that weird middle ground of, if I mark it too early, I might actually burn myself a little bit, like kind of turn people off that want book appointments. So word of mouth has worked really well so far. I bought a hideous building, it was known around my entire community because it was painted so horrifically. And now I’ve, I’ve since painted it white and that alone has spread the whole gossip circle around Skiatook, like, “who bought such and such building, it looks beautiful.” And so people are getting really excited about a new primary care service that’s coming to town. But I’ve actually worked in the community before years ago and like Julia said, when you offer a great service, people are willing to come back to you. And that’s a lot of what is at the core of what I’m doing. So a lot of my previous patients are getting really excited that I’m coming back and already wanting to book. So I think offering a great service word of mouth depending on the service line. Obviously like with retail stuff, this probably wouldn’t work as well with, but my whole goal is a micro practice, so too much marketing could actually not be a great thing. So I’m going to try to try to minimize it as much as possible and just keep it more intimate.

WomensNet: I hear what you’re saying about being overwhelmed in a micro practice, but the good news is then you can pick and choose. 

Shelby: That’s very true!

WomensNet: Awesome. So what’s one thing that the Women’s Net community can do to show support for your company? 

Shelby: So I have a Facebook page, so if you could like my Facebook page, Holiatry Health and Wellness, that would be great! Holiatry spelled, H-O-L-I-A-T-R-Y. And then this is, this is a little quirky ask. If you see an exceptional provider that works in large healthcare systems and has maybe vocalized having some disinterest or frustrations with that line of work, maybe give them a little plug like, “Hey, you should do your own thing.” It’s okay. Like, we don’t have to be under the big corporate belt. We can go out and do our own things if we find that we’re getting moral injuries over and over again because That’s what leads to burnout and that’s what I think genuinely drives a lot of the quality issues with healthcare now. So encourage your providers to be independent.

WomensNet: Interesting, I like it! Well, thank you so much for sharing your stories and your advice with the Women’s Net community. And congratulations again on being our August winner!