Timothy Zercher 0:00

Well, Olivier, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you taking time.

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Thank you so much, Tim. I'm so excited to be joining you today and having this conversation.

Timothy Zercher 0:09

Absolutely. So your career has evolved from marketing and business development into executive leadership roles in behavioral health. What drew you into this industry and what keeps you passionate about doing the work?

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Yeah, that's a great question that I really appreciate. And it makes me just think of the fact of where we're from doesn't define where we're going, but it can influence the story and how the pages unfold. And after I graduated from Emery Law with my Juris Masters, I entered the workforce and connected with an opportunity to serve as a director of business development and climbed up the ropes until I was a chief strategy officer for an organization providing PHP, IOP, and day treatment. And sorry, sometimes I speak an acronym, but partial hospitalization programs, intensive outpatient programs, and programs similar to those. And so my parents both have committed their lives to serving and uplifting communities. My mom is still a social worker. My dad's retired MYPD. So, but something about the influence of servant leadership raising me to just give me that continuous passion to keep connecting, keep identifying, and keep bridging those gaps.

Timothy Zercher 1:25

I love that. I love that. So you've worked across addiction treatment, behavioral health, and community partnerships. What have you learned about the biggest barriers that still block individuals and sometimes organizations from providing access to care?

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Yeah, that's a great question. And I feel like it's multi-pronged in how I think about it because I'm starting to just see these three elements as being reoccurring themes that I'm seeing. One, especially when considering college and university-aged individuals, they know the resources that are out there, but the utilization remains low because there needs to be more approachable conversations. The campaign dollars can go from here until the moon, but if the conversations aren't feeling approachable when these are already conversations that are kind of tricky to navigate because we don't want to stigmatize anyone or make them feel judged by whatever they're navigating. So I feel like there's a need for more approachable ways of which we connect the dots to go beyond the marketing campaigns and into the community. And having collaboration is the second element that I feel like it varies in regions. Some regions, like for example, I know Ohio, Colorado, and a few other states have incredible community coalitions, collaboratives, just different elements that keep the conversation going in the community. And those conversations can remove so many barriers behind the scenes. So I feel like it's so important to continue those nationwide and even globally. And the third would be: I think there is a need for more community events. I can't say that enough. Even when there's offerings of free food, that will create an enticing factor to the community that will get them to come, bring their families, and learn about the 20 resources that have tables around them. So I just feel like that we as an industry need to ensure that we're remaining collaborative and we remain curious of the communities we're serving. Because at the time that we get comfortable with thinking we know how the system works, we know how referral generation works, we know how to activate, then we stop being inquisitive. So I think there is a need for us to continuously be curious about the communities we're serving.

Timothy Zercher 3:52

Absolutely. So a lot of your work focuses, and you kind of touched on this already, on building partnerships between organizations and systems of care. What separates partnerships that really create powerful impact from those that never move beyond good intentions?

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Oh, that's such a timely question. And I would say one of the things that comes to mind is are you making an effort to have yourself be a consistent part of their schedule? Are you creating a monthly partner check-in so that you guys, no matter how busy the conference season gets, the emails pulling us away, are you taking time to see how you can get on their calendar for a few weeks out for next week, the following week? And are you looking within your organization to socialize the information you've gotten from them and see how you can be a good partner to them? I love to invite other providers or organizations to come and present on their services to our intake and helpline service team so that they can understand, learn more about their services, because there has to be reciprocity and collaboration. And I want to uplift and put awareness to what our partners are working on just as much as I hope that they'd want to do that for us as well. So finding ways to continue making that relationship, just engaging on both ends. And whether that be finding someone on your internal team that might have great conversations with someone else on their team, just being creative and your approach of connectivity will help us move beyond good intentions, in my from my perspective.

Timothy Zercher 5:27

Yeah, yeah, I totally see what you're saying. And I know we we spoke one time. I think you have a very good process for doing that, for staying active, like you said, for making space on your calendar for your partners. Would you share to for our listeners just a couple of tips in in that regard of how you make space, how you make time to connect?

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Absolutely. So one of the things that I love to do when we're on the call live, if I see that we have five to ten minutes left, I'm gonna ask if they feel okay with us putting an event on the calendar for the following month and letting them know that they can modify the date, we can change it. It doesn't have to stay true to the exact date and time that we're choosing now. It's flexible. But how about we put something on the calendar so you can keep me updated on what you have going on and vice versa? And at Cinebridge Behaveral Health, we also have the capacity to build a co-branded booking appointment page. So that is another unique way that we can encourage activation in the partnership by having both of our brands identified on that booking appointment page and sharing that with our populations that are interested in our services. Another project that we're kicking off is we're building partnership pages on our website for Cinebridge Behavioral Health, which I think is really amazing because we'll have an opportunity to share more information on our partners. And that just shows our good faith in wanting to amplify their work and work with them and serving the communities together. So there's just yeah, there's a lot of few things that come to mind, but those are a few.

Timothy Zercher 7:04

I love that. I love that. That makes complete sense. And what have you found is the hardest part of growing a team or even growing an organization?

SPEAKER_01 7:13

I would say one of the hardest elements in leading a team in this work that's extremely competitive is just rerouting them in their why. Why did you decide to join this team? Why did you choose healthcare? Because when you know each team member's why, or even just having, let's say, you have a department of 50 business development specialists and 100 partner success managers, even in those team meetings, you can use one of those websites to have everyone scan a QR code and the words that they're used, feeling to describe whatever the new processes or implementation next steps are. Have those words populate on the screen and just keeping those results anonymous. So everyone feels like they can have a say in how the processes are evolving. Because we want everyone to have buy-in. Because if we don't have buy-in at all levels, then we won't get desired movement or action. So I feel like personally, we have to figure out what motivates them in this space. Because I feel like for you to work in healthcare, that's a unique calling in some way, shape, or form. So if we can find a way to connect those dots together and get them excited, it removes that anxiety of census that we hear, as we know we have to be mindful of that, but it removes that anxiety and gets them back present and oriented into the goal of connectivity.

Timothy Zercher 8:45

I love that. I love that. That makes complete sense. And because we are a marketing agency that focuses on behavioral health, I always have to ask them just marketing questions. And I know you have a background in marketing as well. What have you at Kind Bridge found works best for finding those new partners, especially outside of word of mouth, since word of mouth should always be number one?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Yeah, that's a great question. I think what we're starting to see is we're starting to have organizations reach out to us now, which we're very excited about. I feel like I have to give credit to our marketing team for the articles that they've written. I think you and I have talked about this as well. Those articles really help the algorithm with storytelling for resource sharing for individuals. Hopefully, fingers crossed, we can always hope, but the algorithm does what it wants anyway. But I feel like those consistent articles and we've integrated those articles into our app as well that we have. So finding different ways to maintain those points of conversation and from different angles, because our voice might be the same as a unified brand, but it's gonna vary based on platform, which you know from your expertise as well. Of course.

Timothy Zercher 9:58

Yeah. And what is one marketing tactic, what one marketing strategy that you or your team are just evaluating for upcoming as, or even just watching in the marketplace because I know there's a lot of change happening.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

There's so much change happening. I would say, and I'm sure our chief marketing officer would have like a whole long list of things that's on their radar. My perspective personally, I am assessing these tools that are available that can help with a how AI recognizes you from individuals searching for information. That's something I'm curious in learning more about. I'll say that.

Timothy Zercher 10:36

So that makes sense. That makes sense. I think anybody who is smart is trying to learn more about that because it's uh it's a big, it's a big thing happening in the world, especially when it comes to partners. And we know that people that are more educated, that are more white-collar, use AI even more than the general population. And that is almost all of your referral sources are white-collar, college-educated professionals, doctors.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Yeah, exactly. And when you think about how that has changed the landscape, you have to know how to be able to write your prompts for your cold outreach messages to organizations in a way where if they have a virtual agent screening and filtering all of those calls, you need to ensure that your email doesn't sound salesy, as I like to say, non-salesy, embracing, warm, and respectful. So there's a lot of different elements that I could chat about all day, but I know we only have a few minutes.

Timothy Zercher 11:32

So exactly, exactly. Well, thank you so much. I do appreciate you taking time. Like you said, we only have a couple minutes, so we'll wrap up. But thank you so much for the time that you spent with us, with our listeners, and for the work that you're doing. I think you're helping a lot of lives improve and recover.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Thank you so much for having me, Tim, and would love to join again.

Timothy Zercher 11:52

Absolutely.