Timothy Zercher 0:00

Justin, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you taking time. Yeah, thank you, Tim. Glad to be here. Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm excited to learn a little bit about your team. You've spent years building large-scale crisis systems. But what first drew you into this field and what what has made you stay? What's made you stay committed to it?

Justin Chase 0:17

I've worked in behavioral health for over 20 years. And I fell into the crisis space when I work at the state. And the fact that you could impact lives every single day and be able to support the supporters, the help, the helpers is what I get passionate about. And so that's been the drive that keeps me going every single day. We've got an incredible mission as an organization and being able to support the life-saving work that happens every single day.

Timothy Zercher 0:42

I love that. I love that. And I'm sure the fact that your work is literally saving lives helps on the dark Monday mornings when you don't want to go into work. So a lot of people talk about improving access and behavioral health, but your work kind of goes a step beyond that into true system design. Where do you think most organizations and specifically most leaders still kind of underestimate what it takes to build out a crisis system that really works?

Justin Chase 1:09

Yeah, the challenges we see when in general with the crisis system is the handoff points between the call center to mobile crisis to facility base and the facility base to ongoing care. And that gap, especially between the crisis system and ongoing supports, is really where the big void lands right now and currently. And so that's with the bridging and the connectivity behind it. How do we get people to quick follow up our first appointments post-crisis event and that gap that exists, especially if somebody's in need of medication assistance or pretty swift into other therapeutic services that delay we're seeing some folks are struggling four months, six months to get a practitioner appointment out of a crisis, then they're recycling through the crisis system when they really need is ongoing support.

Timothy Zercher 1:57

I love that. I think that more people need to look at those handoff points, not even just in crisis system design. I think that's the problem across almost all of behavioral health, is that those handoff points, even when it's a non-crisis situation, handoffs are often the place that things drop. Yeah. So you've been vocal about what you call heart-led leadership. How do you balance that compassion and that humanity with the pressure of running a complex, high-volume, high-importance system at scale?

Justin Chase 2:28

To me, the balance is around clarity, clear expectations tied to a compassionate approach and really taking on this. The heart-led leadership really drives from servant leadership. Nothing I would ask that I'm not willing to do myself and be able to pass that on. Things like balancing work-life balance, but also maintaining high-level expectations. If we're seeing a high rate of burnout, to me, that comes back to an administration and a structural issue at the corporate level versus necessarily on the front line challenges there. And so if I'm asking too much of the staff, then I need to reevaluate that, but also form standards and expectations where the boundaries are, where limits are. You know, we have we serve with grace, but we also have accountability. Our staff are paramount for us to support, but also the community that we serve takes the biggest priority.

Timothy Zercher 3:17

Of course. Because for your staff, it's a job, right? But for the people you're serving and the time you're serving them, it's life and death almost always. What have you found is the hardest part of growing an organization and growing your team?

Justin Chase 3:29

To me, the biggest challenge with growth is maintaining the culture, maintaining the mission-centric aspect. And so for us, growing over the years has been how do we keep the you could say the mom and pop feel and the close connectivity with your team at scale? And how do you maintain culture and really being able to create a replicable model is a challenge? You have to move more to an enterprise and a corporate feel in some areas, but you also want to maintain that the warm fuzzies of connectivity and human connection. And so that's the struggle. That's the tipping point that really trying to navigate through as an organization grows up scale. Absolutely.

Timothy Zercher 4:05

Absolutely. How big is Solara? Is it and it is pronounced Solari, right?

Justin Chase 4:09

Correct, correct.

Timothy Zercher 4:10

Yeah. How big are you guys these days?

Justin Chase 4:12

So we uh just about to cross 100 million total revenue and just shy of 800 employees in 14 states.

Timothy Zercher 4:19

Yeah, very hard to maintain consistent culture when you get that large and especially spread out that far.

unknown 4:25

Yeah.

Timothy Zercher 4:26

Yeah. Since we are a marketing team that specializes in behavioral health, we have to ask some marketing type questions on these interviews. The first one is what works best for you right now in terms of gaining new partnerships? Because I know you don't often do direct client acquisition. You most do most of your business through partnerships, but what works best to secure new ones?

Justin Chase 4:45

For us, our success really has come from really around word of mouth and building partnerships over time. So having a conversation with state leadership, having coordination with county or city-based behavioral health leaders that are looking for solutions and they may not be ready for quite ready for the type of programming that we offer, but we can also plant the seed and build over time. To me, it's all about relationships. And so by the time an RFP drops, we really want to make sure that we're engaged in understanding the local community and the local needs that are there.

Timothy Zercher 5:14

Yeah, which I think makes sense. I think that's I think that's it comes down to relationships almost no matter what kind of marketing activity you do. It always comes down to relationships and if people trust you and if they want to work with you. Yeah. Last question What marketing tactic or strategy are you either watching really carefully in the marketplace right now? Because you guys operate in a lot of different markets, or are you even considering using for yourself and your team?

Justin Chase 5:40

You know, the two pieces is how can we tap into AI tools to be able to aid and assist? That's probably the universal answer, probably most are offering right now is a quick standard to evaluate that to be able to increase the reach. And for us, marketing is a balance between public awareness about the programs, but also managing scale and making sure that we have the resources to meet the needs. And so as awareness becomes higher about crisis support services, so does utilization. And how do we manage the growth needs and capacity increases that come with that? And so it's a delicate balancing point, but we're working in local communities. We use a lot of Medicaid penetration rate analysis to see local communities. So we do a lot more direct marketing strategies versus large billboards or commercials and those types of aspects.

Timothy Zercher 6:28

I love that. Yeah. Well, I think that makes sense because for most of your services, I would assume the decision maker is not necessarily Jack and Jill on the street that might actually need the crisis service, but it's somewhere, someone up in county leadership that's talking about who do we provide, who do we contract with as that provider.

Justin Chase 6:46

Correct.

Timothy Zercher 6:46

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Justin. We appreciate you taking time. And I know that you're doing a lot of work in a lot of communities and saving a lot of lives. So thank you for the work that you're doing as well. Thank you. Appreciate the time. Absolutely.