Today we’d like to introduce you to Christina Wehry.
Hi Christina Wehry, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Novos is the result of my husband’s and my passion for excellence. My husband, Jonathan Pierce, formed this company because of his conviction that athletes deserve the best care in their training and therapy. When athletes don’t have the best training and therapy their potential gets limited, often in career-ending ways. My husband experienced this firsthand, as a youth, then collegiate, then professional track athlete. He saw mishandled training turned into injuries. He saw mishandled injuries end careers for otherwise talented athletes. It can sound like a privileged sob story, but for kids who wouldn’t be able to afford college without their athletic scholarship, it certainly isn’t. For the mother who refuels herself by training for marathons, it certainly isn’t. For the tactical athlete and his teammates who may live or die on the strength or endurance of their bodies, it certainly isn’t. Athleticism is life. We take this work seriously. What is now called Novos started as Kinetik Performance in 2016. We have grown from my husband as our sole provider in a single treatment room to a team of 11 with 20 interns cycling through our 10,000 sq ft. facility each year.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Every successful business has overcome challenges; we are not the exception. A few lessons that stand out to me right now are hiring the right people, navigating the pandemic, and managing our husband/wife merger.
We had to learn how to identify culture fit when hiring. For example, a skillful practitioner or coach may not understand how to collaborate. We work closely with our athletes’ other providers and heavily rely on intra-office collaboration, so knowing how to collaborate and being excited about it is a must for our team.
The COVID pandemic provided us with many challenges. Our business type was mandated to shut down, but we didn’t want to leave our team without the income they relied on. We had to take on significant personal debt to maintain payroll. We felt it was our responsibility to do so, and it created financial strain for years.
When my wife and I got pregnant with our daughter, we knew it wouldn’t be sustainable for her to maintain her business, and her involvement in Novos, while finishing her Doctorate in Chinese Medicine. In her third trimester we merged her clients into the Novos ecosystem and she began focusing her out-of-home working hours on managing the business. That raised some eyebrows with the team at the time, we had to overcome some prickly feelings about it. With time everyone saw how beneficial her involvement was, and still is, but there were some stressful months.
We’ve been impressed with Novos, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Novos is San Diego’s premier Sports Performance Facility. We are heading into our tenth year and couldn’t be more excited about the work we do. We work with youth, college, elite, tactical, and recreational athletes. We offer training and therapy for elite performance, whatever your current level of athleticism. We are known for our diligence and attention to detail. We approach every athlete with data-driven assessments and regularly reassess for measurable improvements in performance and injury risks. Every member of our team is constantly learning. We hold three hours of in-office education each week, we provide stipends for continuing education, and we have an extensive library that is available for every one of our staff. We pride ourselves on being able to look at each athlete through multiple disciplines; it is important to us to see the whole picture. That’s what everyone says sets us apart, and we get to the root of issues because we have so much collective knowledge. Whether an athlete comes to us because of a nagging injury that won’t go away or because they just aren’t seeing the performance improvement they need, we can figure out what’s going wrong and course correct. We have small group fitness classes for all ages, semi-private and one-on-one training, and we have highly skilled therapists. Orthopedic surgeons regularly refer patients to us for pre- or post-operative care, or when they think we can get the job done to avoid surgery. We’ve worked with 36 professional franchise teams, hundreds of Olympians, Nike has sent us their athletes from around the world, the list goes on and on. If any of your readers are interested in knowing if we can help, we will give them a free virtual consult to answer all their questions.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
What is there to dislike about San Diego? My husband and I feel so fortunate to have landed here. We are both from the East Coast. He was born in New York, and I was born in Kentucky. We fell in love with San Diego independently of each other but around the same time! We’ve both been here over 12 years. We met here. We love how active this city is. There is an emphasis on health and longevity that many cities don’t have. It’s the perfect home for Novos.
Pricing:
- Free Virtual Consult for anyone who has questions about what’s going on in their body
- Free Trial Day for anyone to see what we are all about
- Made to Move group fitness class $30
- Initial Assessment Therapy $299
- Needs Analysis Training $299
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.novosathlete.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/novosathlete/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NOVOSATHLETE/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@NovosAthlete
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/novos-san-diego
- Other: https://share.google/FZT52h0BJtHGCle3l
Image Credits
Image of Founder Jonathan Pierce and his wife, co-owner, Christina Wehry.
