Lori Shaffer Clarke on The Culture Playbook Behind One of the Most Connected Teams in Pediatric Therapy

This episode is not a straight line success story. Lori built a business, sold it to a competitor who lied about their culture, walked away, lost her company during COVID, and started over with 89 employees in 2020. Five years later she has close to 500.Will and Lori get into what actually holds a culture together at scale. Weekly virtual training with clinic directors. A mentor role built specifically to protect new grads from burnout, including covering caseloads so a stressed therapist can catch up. Massage therapists brought into the clinics. A theme every year, from servant leadership to teamwork, that shapes training all the way down.Topics covered:Building a mentor layer that protects new clinicians instead of just supervising themWhy Lori invested in leadership development instead of training all 500 employees the same wayThe decision to close her original private pay clinic during the 2008 recessionWhat changed when she sold her business and saw a culture that only claimed to follow the golden ruleStarting over in 2020 with under 100 employees and reaching 500 in five yearsWhy she waited over a decade before doing formal strategic planningReading body language as a core leadership skillIf you are trying to figure out how to scale a clinic without losing what made it feel human in the first place, this conversation gives you a real blueprint.Send us Fan MailRockstars specialize in helping support or replace all non-clinical roles.Learn how a Rockstar can help scale your physical therapy practice.Subscribe here to our completely free Stress-Free PT Newsletter for your weekly dose of joy.