Unlocking the Secrets of Launching a Successful Behavioral Health Business

Ever wondered the secret behind successfully launching a behavioral health business or treatment center? Glenn Hadley and Jordan Young have the answers! As a Senior VP of Strategy at Dreamscape Marketing and CEO of Jordan Associates Consulting respectively, these two industry titans share pearls of wisdom garnered from their extensive experience.

From unpacking the quintessential elements of effective planning to pinpointing the importance of a well-defined business identity, Glenn Hadley elucidates the maze of starting up a venture. He underlines the necessity of not just abundant time and funding, but also a clear understanding of your business's unique identity. Continuing this enriching conversation, Jordan Young takes us through the intricacies of setting up a treatment center. He emphasizes the value of understanding your target market and examining potential partnerships, competition, and local payers. All this, laced with the importance of partnerships and an honest discussion about the challenges and rewards of starting a new venture in behavioral health. Tune in for a dose of insightful advice, practical tips, and some truly seminal business lessons.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to Hatching Creativity . This isn't just another behavioral health podcast . This is the place where thought leaders converge to talk about real life challenges , breakthroughs and pivotal aha moments . Thanks for tuning in . Today I speak with Glenn Hadley , a senior VP of strategy at Dreamscape Marketing , and Jordan Young from Jordan Associates Consulting , and we talk about the best pieces of business advice they've ever received and how they used it . Don't forget if you like what you hear , please like , subscribe and tell all your friends about Hatching Creativity .

Speaker 2 0:36

So , glenn , would you mind doing a brief introduction of yourself , Glenn Hadley .

Speaker 3 0:39

I'm the senior vice president of strategy at Dreamscape Marketing and SBM Group . Dreamscape has been in the business for about 17 years . The SBM Group has been around we're celebrating our 40th year and so I've had the opportunity to put these , all this marketing campaigns together for health fair organizations , not just in behavioral but also in traditional health care and senior living , and so just really excited to bring what we do really well here in behavioral health care to those areas and vice-versa .

Speaker 2 1:09

Awesome . I always look forward to catching you at the conferences , either as a running partner or whatever you know . So , right on , and interesting fact , we just found out that Glenn doesn't need sugar , so that's pretty awesome . And Jordan , how about you ? Everyone want to do a brief introduction of yourself , jordan Young . I'm CEO of Jordan and associate's peace salting . I worked in behavioral health care for 13 years . For the last five years I have been on my own consulting . The primary focus of my business is I have treatment centers and companies that service treatment center hire each staff Awesome . I have a ton of questions for both of you guys , but I think first question I want to ask is for somebody who is new to the industry , or maybe for somebody who is just looking to see how they can improve . What is the best piece of business advice that you feel you've ever given or that you would like to give to somebody in that position ?

Speaker 3 2:06

I think , from doing this a number of times , both from a marketing standpoint but also as an operator like standing up a treatment center operations is always give yourself double the time and double the money that you think you're going to need and just started like that's a big deal . I can't tell you how many people have come to me and have said , look , I have a . You know , I've got this , this funding . They've given me a million dollars to get this thing started off the ground and then I listened to their ambitions and what they want to do with that . Like you're going to need way more . Or , on the flip side of that , they come to me and they say , all right , we got all this funding , we're good to go here , we're looking to get licensed and offending and we should be open in a couple months and we need a website .

Speaker 3 2:54

You're like that's not enough time . Like you have to do so much more in that time leading out to opening and so well , how would you ? That is that is it Now . If you have the time and you have the money , the next thing is really deciding like who are you as a business ? Like you can get the time , the funding and you have a clear definition of who you want to be Like . That's how you say yourself .

Speaker 2 3:21

That makes sense . You know , one of the things that we see often is people will say I want to open up a treatment center , this is where I want to go , this is what I want to do . And you'll say we'll say , let me see your performance , I go , what do you mean ? And you go . Well , how are you planning this out , Right ? How are you going to make this happen ? How far is that money going to take you ?

Speaker 2 3:44

And another thing that we always ask is how did you come up with the city and state and level of care you want to open ? Because sometimes people just do it because they have a building in that area or they like that area . But really , it's really important then this is one of the things that we do on our consulting team is you evaluate the payers in the area , what Medicaid is paying in the area , If you want to be in Medicaid facility , what the competition looks like . Maybe you can partner with other facilities , right ? So really , I think what you're saying is really getting so . We are a picture understanding of everything before .

Speaker 3 4:23

Before you start , because here's the thing if you have a 15-barried out-of-network residential or detox res , that is a very , very different market than if you're in a 150-bed Medicaid facility in New England . So it's completely different areas that you need to look at it and you're going to have to approach those in different ways . There's a different accreditation for that . Different skill sets needed , different staff you're going to have to hire for that . There's so much that goes into those two things . If you're just like , oh , I have a building , let's do that .

Speaker 2 5:03

First you have to find out if the building is even zoned appropriately for it too .

Speaker 3 5:08

There's so much to do more , too , and think about this going back to the time thing like give yourself much more time . How many horror stories have you heard about fire marshals and sprinkler systems ?

Speaker 2 5:19

Neighborhood neighborhoods , townships , things like that .

Speaker 3 5:23

So you have to not only know who you are , who you want to be , who you're going to be , what markets you're going to be and what air mix you're going to have , but then you're all set to get down to the nitty-gritty of opening up business .

Speaker 2 5:34

So that's always something . That's fun , it's funny . One of the things that makes this industry really unique is that you don't really need any special skills to decide you want to open a treatment center . You have some money in the bank . Usually it's a mission to help people . We hope that's the reason we're here and that's it . You don't get out of the successful episode of a brain surgery and go I'm going to open up a brain surgery clinic . It doesn't happen that way . So having a true professional that can guide you to best practices in terms of everything or can connect you with the right people when somebody says to me about marketing , that's not my area , we send them to you guys . Staffing-wise , we would send to you . So it's that kind of thing really . If you don't know , don't guess . I think so that's also a problem .

Speaker 3 6:33

You see that right . How many times have you been brought into a project to staff it and seeing like , oh wow , there's a lot more that needs to happen . I can bring I'm not freaking workers here , but there's more that needs to be done first .

Speaker 2 6:49

Yeah , yes , sure , and so until you take so much more than their efforts , you're scrambling then . So , jordan , let me ask you the same question what would you say is the best business advice you've been given or the best business advice that you can give to somebody else ? Honestly , I'm going to double down on what Ben had to say in knowing what you do and embrace you what you do , because oftentimes we see , with treatment centers , they want to be everything to everything . And you know what is your audience . Audience is everything . My audience is adolescence . My audience is people with substance use disorders . My audience is professionals at LGBTQ community Everumen , and it's difficult and it's kind of it's almost clutter . You don't have right . So you know we're established partnerships . It's hard to distinguish your voice , you know , from a marketing perspective , when you're trying to capture all in these different routes . Yeah , from my personal perspective .

Speaker 2 7:55

And consulting when I first started consulting , I wanted to do everything . What do you do ? Well , I do this and this and this and this and this , and I had to call people who I trust , some kind of mentors , a month and say , okay , I know you and I would have a conversation with you because I know you and I like you . But I don't understand what you do For a niche . Is that I do and when I hold in the focus that , okay , this is what I claim I want to do , but really what the market needs me to do and what my skills are going to be best served doing is helping people hire key staff , and I don't do all staff .

Speaker 2 8:33

You know you need all these different staff . You need your frontline tech . That's not where I'm best suited . I'm best suited in these city areas , in this market . I heard an expression once which is if your pool is really wide but not deep , you don't even get your fee wet and it's kind of like that where you go . Yeah , there's only so much I can do if I'm spread that fit . So it's great to have a bit deeper in any specific area .

Speaker 3 9:07

Something else here along the business advice right now that I'm seeing that kind of plays into both of our wheelhouses here , what we do . Starting July 1st , google will switching to . They're switching off Google Analytics as their analytics platform . They're going to do Google Analytics 4 . And so to be able to use that platform to analyze your data and your marketing channels the original Google Analytics setting off you're not going to be able to use that . You'll have to go to GA4 . But GA4 is not HIPAA compliant because Google will allow a side of BAA business association agreement with anyone with an operator , and HIPAA , as Kamauan said , will not be compliant . And so I see a number of operators right now having to make that shift . We're doing it a lot for all our customers right now , making that shift over not only from Google Analytics to Google Analytics 4 , but then also using other tools to make it HIPAA compliant , because you have to get another vendor who will side of BAA with you to do that so it can become HIPAA compliant . And you see that starts .

Speaker 2 10:16

July 1st . So look , if you guys are in a position where you're not aware of these things , reach out to Glenn . I'll have his contact information in the description somewhere . Or look up Dreamscape Marketing . That is really important to be aware of .

Speaker 3 10:34

And for all of us that are in the Kamauan area , this is a big deal . This is something that everyone across all of healthcare is having to look at , and we're seeing it so much in traditional healthcare because they have a lot of private information right . They get moved around and so they're scrambling over there . I'm seeing in this area of behavioral that many operators that are aware of it right are making this shift . There are some that are aware of it that are they're rolling the dice .

Speaker 2 11:10

There's probably some big fines . I mean the last I saw was about $1,000 a day . Her occurrence . I mean that is huge .

Speaker 3 11:21

It's a big deal . The ones that I really want to reach are the people that don't know about it at all , right , that are like unaware . They didn't get the ball . It's in his face . Hipaa sent an email about it , right , and that's what he told people Google Analytics was . Yeah , that was a big announcement , but sure , these implications are pretty serious for us . So I just hope that the word gets out about that and that your customers and our customers are on board and making that shift .

Speaker 2 11:49

That makes sense . That makes a lot of sense . You can't claim you didn't know when it comes to a HIPAA violation . It doesn't work that way . Hey , don't just slap you on the wrist , you'll end up with some big issues . I think that's some really good advice .

Speaker 1 12:05

Thanks for tuning in to Hatchin' Creativity . We appreciate your support . Please don't forget to like and subscribe and tell all your friends about the show . No-transcript you .