By Katie Caldwell
Meet Ellis Mair, EdM, ATC, an athletic trainer and entrepreneur who co-founded Go4Ellis, a company that started out by connecting ATs to youth sports events and now links ATs and RNs to per diem work opportunities throughout the country. Where did the name Go4Ellis come from? When Mair was working as an AT at events, someone in need would radio for help, saying “Ellis come in!” Her response? “Go for Ellis.”
It was a lacrosse tournament that first introduced Ellis Mair to athletic training in a per diem environment. She was connected to NXT through an old athletic director while working at a high school and started asking the owners of the company questions about emergency action plans and automated external defibrillators (AEDs).
“They brought me on as a consultant,” she said. “I did all their emergency action planning, developed policies, and hired athletic trainers to work at all their events.”
Eventually, NXT grew to a point where they were running over 40 lacrosse tournaments in 14 different states, and they hired Mair as the full-time director of health and safety – what she believes was the first position of its kind in youth sports agencies.
In addition to drafting emergency action plans and ensuring all their events were safe, Mair was also responsible for finding and hiring athletic trainers to cover the tournaments in various states. “Sometimes I needed to hire over 30 people over the course of a weekend,” she said, adding that “Every community had their own solutions, and it was a mess to coordinate.”
She said it was hard to find athletic trainers because she had to know somebody. That’s what inspired her idea to take the model behind Uber or Care.com and apply it to per diem athletic training. “Our initial goal was to make youth sports safer by making athletic trainers more accessible. If we could get all of the athletic trainers on one platform it would make it easier for event operators to find us. If I was having this much trouble find athletic trainers, I couldn’t imagine how hard it was for a coach or tournament operator to find an AT.
And through this, Go4Ellis was born. Now Go4, the company initially started with an app to link athletic trainers with per diem opportunities. Mair said she and her two partners branched out from youth sport as they discovered other areas of need, such as colleges, secondary schools, and championships. Since the platform opened nationally in 2019, athletic trainers have worked over 100,000 per diem jobs, made over $10 million dollars and cared for over 16.3 million patients.
Then the pandemic hit and sports were cancelled.
“So that was fun,” Mair quipped. “In a matter of 24 hours, we lost over $1 million in jobs on the platform.”
However, Mair said the app turned out to be a blessing during the pandemic.
“We have an app with 10,000 healthcare professionals and we were heading into a global healthcare crisis,” she said. “Your job is safe facility set-up whether it’s a football field or a hospital.” With that in mind, Go4Ellis had shifts on the platform for working in the pandemic within 12 days. “It started off with just doing temperature checks, and then we grew,” she said. Soon, athletic trainers were working with the New York City Health+ Hospitals in their hotel quarantine units and even ended up placing ATs in settings such as the Frito Lay and Oreo factories.
“Athletic trainers were thrilled to be involved,” Mair said. “I give everybody on the platform so much credit for their bravery. These were not normal work settings and the environment was still so unpredictable.” “They didn’t even bat an eye.”
As the world began opening up again, the NCAA reached out to Go4Ellis asking for help with COVID testing of athletes. But Mair said they ran into a supply issue.
“We couldn’t do all the COVID testing with athletic trainers,” she explained. “At this point, all of these athletic trainers were back to work at their own schools so we ended up opening the platform up to nurses.”
Mair said the app has allowed her to share with other athletic trainers something she learned early in her career: a work-home life balance.
“It’s been nice to be able to show that people can have lives,” she said. “And a flexible schedule is possible.”
“A tenant of our company is that we would like to approach the delivery of healthcare differently. We want to focus on supporting the healthcare provider with whatever they need to be successful ,” she continued. “If you have an unhappy, burned-out healthcare provider, they’re just not going to be able to provide good care and that ultimately will result in patient outcomes.”
The company has grown to offer contract services as well but is taking a different approach to it: advocating for the athletic trainers.
“If people aren’t going to pay enough for the athletic trainers, that’s fine,” she said. “But we’re not going to take that contract.”
Mair said it’s been amazing to watch the company grow but stay true to its mission. “We’re growing in a way where we always have the athletic trainer’s best interest in mind,” she said. “Best thing for the patient and the best thing for the healthcare provider.”
Athletic training has so many career paths, including starting your own business. Explore your options today!