He Built a Marketing Team Inside a Nonprofit That Banned the Word "Marketing" | Christopher Lloyd

[0:00]  It's an ongoing conundrum of, as you say, navigating an infrastructure that was not built for the people you serve. Um, and unfortunately, like a lot of, you know, the marketplace, it's built for well-to-do people with lots of disposable income. And the folks who are struggling, the folks who are on Medicaid, or public assistance, or, you know, struggling with keeping a stable job or even a place to live, it's hard to reach those people. So, I'm still figuring it out as those folks still need their health care. Um, but if they're not on Medicaid, then you have to find other ways for them to get it at a place that they can afford it. And, unfortunately, the brutal truth is a lot of the mainstream medical providers, not just in Indiana, but throughout the country, they don't really want to take on new Medicaid and Medicare patients.

[0:47]  Welcome back to another episode here on the Horn Hustle podcast. Christopher Lloyd is in the building, and today I have to start with just more of a, um, I would say kind of cold opening. Uh, Christopher, man, you said something that really stuck with me. Almost every modern marketing tool was built to reach wealthy consumers, not people on Medicaid or experiencing homelessness. What happens when the people you're trying to reach were never the audience the system was designed for? I mean, we're in a time right now where it is so true, and we're trying to get these resources out there. How do we get to them? Christopher Lloyd, what are you doing nowadays?

[1:46]  Still trying to figure out the answer to that question. Uh, yeah, it's an ongoing conundrum of, as you say, navigating an infrastructure that was not built for the people you serve. Um, and unfortunately, like a lot of, you know, the marketplace, it's built for well-to-do people with lots of disposable income. And the folks who are struggling, the folks who are on Medicaid, uh, or public assistance, or, you know, struggling with keeping a stable job, it's hard to reach those people. So, I'm still figuring it out.

[2:21]  And how long have you been in this space? What's the organization you're representing? What is the title?

[2:25]  So, I am vice president of marketing for Aspire Indiana Health. We are a nonprofit health system, uh, dating back 60 years, if you can believe it. Um, and we have basically usually operated in the central Indiana portions of Indianapolis and the surrounding counties. Um, really as a safety net provider. So, we have historically worked with government agencies, state, local, and federal to help those folks who are on Medicaid, Medicare, starting out in particular with their behavioral health. Um, we're what's known in Indiana as a community mental health center or CHC. And so, the state picks CHC providers for each county as like the official provider of mental health services. And so, we've been doing that for, as I said, 60 years. Um, but over the last 10 years, we've expanded into a lot more services, mainly primary medical care, um, recovery support systems for people with addiction. Um, and it's just kept growing. We're now doing work directly interfacing with the homeless populations in Indianapolis and surrounding areas. Uh, so we have kind of just kept building the model as we've discovered the needs that people really have out there.

[3:45]  And you have a very storytelling background. The nonprofit world is very storytelling. So you kind of have this background of storytelling, but you started your career actually in traditional journalism, newspaper, uh, broadcast, digital media. What originally drew you into that storytelling business to begin with?

Um, well, I was always fascinated with, um, in particular the arts and movies and things like that. So I had this idea that I wanted to go and be an arts reporter and movie critic. Um, and so as I was going through my educational journey, I've kind of followed the path as I could find it to prepare me for that level. And so then if you're anybody starting out in newspapers as long ago now as I did, it was a pretty traditional path as you tend to start out at a very, very small newspaper and then hopefully, you know, if you grow, you move up to a medium newspaper. A lot of people will end up just staying there their whole career if they find a community and a place and a role that really suits them. And I was there at that place, and then I kind of went to I guess the larger level of the Indianapolis Star. I was recruited for a job for that. So, I lived in Florida. I was working for a paper in the New York Times company back when they had like satellite newspapers. Uh, and so I was recruited to come be the entertainment editor for the Indianapolis Star. Uh, and that's what brought me up to Indiana from Florida. Um, and so, uh, enjoyed that role. Uh, but you know, I think everyone knows what's been happening in the journalism industry at large and the newspaper industry.

[5:16]  So, as you know, that industry has shrunk and shrunk, um, a lot of us out there had to find other things that where we could still pursue our passions and feel like we were making a difference and still telling those stories that we felt were really important. Um, and so with my skill set and other people's skill set, it kind of ended up, you know, you kind of end up in communications, marketing, something to do with writing or, you know, photography, production like that. Um, and I also began to branch out into first I'd done a bunch of radio, then I started doing television. Um, and then post-newspaper life, uh, you know, I remember I was one of those people like in 2006, literally in 2006, I went to the top editors at the Indianapolis Star and said, "We need to start some podcasts." And they said, "What are podcasts?"

[6:11]  Oh, you were early on, huh?

[6:11]  Yeah, early on. And I wish I'd kind of just done it on my own because who knows? I could have been one of the like founding fathers or mothers of podcasts. But, uh, yeah, so, uh, but you know then I got into obviously web-based journalism and podcasting and things like that, and I still do that stuff kind of on the side, but um then I went into marketing really full-time around 2010 through 2011. Um, and for the first eight years or so I did agency work, and you know if anyone has ever done marketing agency work, it can be very fulfilling or not depending really on not just your company but the clients you work for. Um, and so I really found an affinity as I was doing that work of telling the stories of nonprofits, of healthcare companies, um, and people kind of in that space. Uh, and so when the opportunity arose to come to Aspire Indiana Health and kind of take the parts of the marketing world that I really had a passion and pull for and do that full-time, it was kind of a no-brainer. So that's been almost seven and a half years now.

[7:20]  Love it. And the organization that you actually joined, Aspire, I think was founded in 1956 if I'm not mistaken.

[7:29]  Yeah.

[7:30]  And they never done marketing before. What was going through your mind the first day when you said, "Hey, I'm going to do this, but you guys never done this before"?

[7:35]  Yeah, it was really an interesting time. Uh, so when I met with them, I had never heard of Aspire at the time they were known as Aspire Indiana, Inc. Um, one of the first things I had to tell them was that nobody uses "Inc." in their branding anymore. Uh, but because they had kind of operated below the level of public consciousness, it was kind of a unique situation in that most organizations as they grow out their marketing function would be very small, probably, you know, they're doing just a person on the staff is maybe doing some social media or doing some news releases or something like that. Um, and maybe as they get bigger, they would like bring in a marketing agency to help them out. And then maybe as they get bigger, they would have a full-time marketing person, but no staff, still relying on those outside agencies. And then maybe as they got bigger and bigger, they would build up an actual staff. And Aspire kind of had it completely in reverse. They had already built themselves up to a fairly large company. So when I joined them in 2019, they were about we had about 480 employees and probably about like 30 to 34 million in revenue per year. So not a small company, but not huge by, you know, certainly national standards or even by Indiana standards. Um, and I remember meeting with the CEO at the time, and she told me that for all of those decades, really for many, many years, Aspire's goal was not to be in the public eye, not to market, not to have publicity, not to have a public profile.

[9:12]  Okay? And that may sound weird, but because they worked so closely with, um, for the behavioral health with all these government agencies, they essentially had their funding locked in and their patient base also locked in. Like all these different agencies from, you know, local government, local hospitals, the judicial system, you know, that's where they send when someone is determined to have a mental health issue, they're sent to a provider, in our case, us in the counties that we serve. Um, so we didn't really need to market for new patients, and because we are dealing with very challenged populations. We're talking people with serious mental illness. Um, people who a lot of time, you know, they also have serious health problems. Um, they often have addiction problems. The correlation between mental health challenges and addiction is very high. Um, and a lot of people, you know, end up not having a stable place to live or able to keep a stable job. They get in trouble with the law and end up in the judicial system. They go to drug court and often find their way to us that way. Um, and so it was this interesting case where a company had grown to this size without needing to do marketing. But now, as they were entering this new era where they realized we need to expand our services and become a comprehensive health system. So the idea is that we can be a medical home for these people and for anyone. We can be not just your therapist. We can be your addiction provider. We can be your family physician. We can be your pharmacist. We can be your crisis service. Um, for those that are homeless, we're doing direct work with the homeless. Um, and suddenly there was this need to do marketing and get our name out there. Um, and so, of course, we're going to do this with almost no staff and almost no budget. Uh, which is often the case in the nonprofit world, at least to begin with.

[11:32]  Uh, and so it's been an interesting journey. So, you know, we kind of like took baby steps and then more baby steps and then kind of went a little further. Like one of the very first things we did was at the end of our first year. So I joined towards the latter portion of 2019. So at about a year later we did a rebrand. Um, uh, stopped calling ourselves Aspire Indiana, Inc. and started calling ourselves Aspire Indiana Health. Um, and that was really just to let people know we're a healthcare company because people called us Aspire Indiana, Inc., what is that? Um, and I'll tell you, uh, so at the time I was just a, uh, director. Um, they wouldn't even let me use the word "marketing" in my job title for my first two and a half years here.

[11:56]  Oh my god.

[11:57]  Because marketing, that's icky. Um, I think I was director of branding or something like that. Uh, but one of my first wins that I had was, uh, they were trying to decide what the name of the new company was going to be. And of course, at the time all of our leadership were clinicians, you know, former doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists. So they really did not have a marketing framework in their mind.

[12:24]  Yeah. So that's, you know, why we had so many different ideas for the company, and some of them were so horrible. Uh, and of course the one that was almost the favorite was Litty one was the most horrible one. Um, they were going to call the company Aspire Indiana. No, this would be Aspire Health Systems, Inc.

[12:48]  Oh my god. Thank god you showed up.

[12:50]  Yeah. So I was able to have a little influence and say, "No, no, no. Aspire Indiana Health is the name of their company." I had to explain to folks that, okay, there's the "Inc." thing, you know, it's not 1984. We're not Hewlett Packard. No one has "Inc." in their branding anymore. Uh, but also saying that no one wants to get their health care from a system, let alone a systems.

[13:11]  I don't know where plural systems came from, boy. But, uh, yeah, so that was my first year or two on the job.

[13:19]  That is funny. I believe like the "Inc." and the "LLC" people still add that to this day. I still see it all the time, and I'm like why are you adding that to the branding of the name? Like we don't need to know that. Like that is more just behind the scenes type things. Um, but what you've done, man, like you guys now have, you went from, and I mean probably not taking all the credit, but you guys now have 480 employees to now 900 and serving 40,000 people annually.

[13:47]  Yeah. 900, 930, something like that. We probably will hit a thousand by the end of this year.

[13:54]  When you hear those numbers, man, what does it represent to you? Beyond this just statistics. I mean, you guys have grown not just employees, but also the people that you serve.

[14:02]  Yeah. I mean, it's nice to be able to say employee headcount because that's kind of where the business world tends to think. Um, but you know, to us, it's not the most important thing to add to our headcount. The most important thing is to expand the services that we provide and to get them to more people who really, really need them because there's so many healthcare deserts not just in Indiana but all around the country. And people think a healthcare desert means, uh, that you know, you live in a tiny little cow town and you have to drive 50 minutes to get to a hospital. I mean, you can have like right here our Indianapolis health center sits on kind of like the northeastern part of Indianapolis and it's in a healthcare desert. There's really no hospitals or other major providers anywhere within about an 8 or 10 mile radius. And for people who lack transport or stuff, uh, you know, that can be a big thing. So, you know, like I said, our headcount went from about 480 to 900 plus. Um, our revenues went from, I think, about 34 million to I think we're probably going to hit about 80 million when this fiscal year closes. But more important is who we serve. Um, so we were serving with those that $480 people and $34 million in revenues, we were serving about 10,000 distinct individuals a year, and we're past 40,000 now. So like that's the real number is that we're having the impact, um, that we're getting the health care to the people who really, really need it. Um, and we've expanded our programs as I mentioned. We've expanded our geographical footprint. So, we were, as I said, the CMHC, the community mental health center provider in four counties. Um, Marion, which is Indianapolis, Hamilton, Boone, and Madison. And just within the last six months, we've added two more counties, Shelby County, uh, and Hancock County. Um, and we continue to find the need for these services. It's like we just recently are working with a bunch of school systems to provide the mental health to the students and staff in those schools. Um, and we just literally had a fairly major school system that their provider dropped them because they couldn't afford to provide those services anymore. Um, and so they've asked us to come in and fill that gap. So, you know, even though we are a fairly big company now, like we actually ran the numbers, at least according to the Indianapolis Business Journal, which does a survey every year, we are now the 10th largest healthcare nonprofit in the state. And of course, all the other ones are hospital systems. Um, so we're basically the largest non-hospital-based healthcare provider, nonprofit in the state.

[16:50]  And you guys have taken on so much. You're talking about where you guys started behavioral health, but now you're also taking on major homelessness service projects in Indianapolis. Why is that work such a critical piece of the health care puzzle, you think?

[17:04]  Just because when we're talking with our leadership, our partners, one thing we like to say is that at Aspire, we serve with compassion and we serve with humility. Um, and a lot of part of that is that we understand we do not do this work alone. There are other healthcare providers that we partner with, obviously the local state and city and county governments, um, and other organizations and community groups. Um, so when we're trying to have these impacts, we rely on this all of this family of people who are really compassionate about those we serve.

[17:41]  Got it. Listen, I've been speaking to so many leaders, and right now what's happening at the government level is, I mean, kind of sad, right? People are in fear. I just spoke to a leader this morning, and he's like, you know, everything's kind of on hold because we don't know what's going to happen within the next year. Um, there's a phrase often used in nonprofit leadership as well, "no money, no mission." What does that really look like inside a safety net healthcare organization like yours?

[18:03]  Yeah, that could be the challenge. I mean, like the situation with Medicaid is that people are often framing, you know, what's going on with the legislation as Medicaid cuts. Technically, what they're not doing is they're not saying we're cutting a trillion dollars from Medicaid over the next 10 years. What they're doing is they're increasing the requirements for people to be eligible for Medicaid, and as a result, they think there's going to be so many people who are no longer eligible, and that's where the money comes off from. So it kind of works backwards. Like in Indiana right now, we're the best estimate we have is about 300,000 people who were on Medicaid previously are not going to be on Medicaid now. Um, and so you might think that that means the need goes away, and it doesn't. Those folks still need their health care, um, but if they're not on Medicaid, then you have to find other ways for them to get it at a place that they can afford it. And, unfortunately, the brutal truth is a lot of the mainstream medical providers, not just in Indiana but throughout the country, they don't really want to take on new Medicaid and Medicare patients because, you know, the way it works is traditional insurance, like someone comes in for a wellness check and a blood test, they bill their, you know, United Healthcare or whatever, and let's say they get $400 back from the insurance company to pay for that. Um, they might get half of that from Medicaid or Medicare for the same service. Um, and so as a result, you know, we've got to be structured in such a way that we can provide the same robust health care service for less money coming in. Now, being nonprofit helps because we don't worry about making a profit, but we have to break even. If we don't break even, then we can't, you know, pay for what we're doing. Um, Aspire has traditionally been financially well situated. We've been kind of, you know, not jumped into spaces where we didn't feel like we could not only serve but also be able to have the compensation to be able to pay for that service because it makes no sense to jump in a new community, start providing services, and then two years later you have to pull out because you're losing tons of money there.

[20:19]  Um, so it's an ongoing thing. And so we have all these large programs, you know, service lines, if you would, they would call it in the for-profit world, which would be like mental health is probably our largest service line. Primary care is another service line. That in pharmacy, another service line. That in pharmacy, um, recovery. Um, we also run recovery residences, so like a recovery treatment center. Um, and then we get into things like housing and job assistance. That's kind of a big service line, and the homeless portion has kind of become a part of that. So, we've really kind of had four major service lines. Um, Crisis is another one that's really grown over the last couple of years and probably is almost on the threshold of becoming a fifth major service line. Um, just a few months ago, we opened a crisis center, a psychological crisis center. So it's sort of like urgent care for the brain. Um, where people who are having a mental health crisis or an addiction crisis can come get the proper health care, uh, and then be connected to services to support them as they go forward. But then we have all these smaller programs like we have a fitness program for people with mental health where we pair them with physical trainers and coaches.

[21:39]  That's cool. Um, we have a child advocacy program in one of our counties where they work with children who have been abused and neglected. Um, and we have programs that work with people who are on social security disability and want to either return to work or increase their level of workload, and we provide benefits counseling to that. And there's probably like three or four other programs like that. So, we're always, you always have to look at the mix of not only are we doing okay and breaking even across all of our services, but is each individual program supporting itself. Um, and so, you know, another thing is, you know, a lot of nonprofits do really rely on fundraising. And again, because we always operated beneath that sort of line of public consciousness, we didn't do fundraising. I mean, hardly at all. Um, and that's another area that we've really started to build out as our fundraising team within the last couple of years to support some of those programs that maybe can't support themselves because that funding situation is just always in flux.

[22:47]  If the Heart and Hustle podcast has ever sparked any idea or made you think differently, do us a favor. Make sure to share this, post it on LinkedIn, or even text that nonprofit friend that you just have. Whatever works. This is what keeps the conversation going and allows us to just grow this community together. Seriously, we appreciate you. At least you guys are pivoting and you're mentioning we're trying for the fundraising to go raise our own funds. I think that's where a lot of organizations probably were not fundraising, right? They were waiting on these grants, and there's a pivot that's happening. However, now everyone's trying to tap into the same market. Um, trying to get the word out and you've tested, kind of going back to the beginning of it all, you've tested all these channels on how to get the word out there, how to get people more involved, how to get people donating, billboards, bus ads. You mentioned direct mail, even door hangers. Um, I actually mentioned you Roku TV, connecting to TV. Which lessons surprised you the most out of all these ways to get to people?

[24:08]  Well, when I first came in, um, I really was had my mind on social media and digital marketing. Um, so this is 2019, so it's seven years ago, but, you know, it was probably at that point just kind of starting to reach its maturation level. And I, you know, really felt that was the place to be. So like within about six months of me coming on board, we launched digital advertising first like Google search, which we've then expanded into display ads and, you know, video, YouTube, and that kind of thing. Um, and that still is the kind of the base of our marketing efforts just because it does kind of cut across those socioeconomic lines. Um, in that you know, everybody, uh, no matter even the poorest people tend to have a cell phone either that they can get cheap or it's even provided for them. We've even done that during COVID; we provided some cell phones to some of our patients as we could. Um, and so that's been still the best way because it's like, uh, you find out what people are searching for with those channels like Google and so forth. It's great. You can literally sit there and say, "People who are looking for health care, what are they typing into their browser when they do that?" And then you can formulate your campaigns around that. Um, but then, you know, I did expand into, you know, what I would call like legacy media or traditional old school, if you will, forms of marketing, newspaper ads, um, we even got into some direct mail, um, billboards, bus ads on buses, um, videos inside buses, um, display ads on at bus shelters. Um, and then, um, even like door hangers. Um, we have an outreach team that goes to events and churches and community centers and things like that and just tells people about what we do, and we would literally print up some door hangers and go hang them on people's doors to drum up interest because we're trying to find them. Probably the biggest surprise I had was, you know, um, trying to get into broadcast. That's the absolute number one question I ever get from people is why aren't we on television? Um, and you know, having some familiarity with that world, people don't realize that even your local television news, how expensive that is. Um, I mean, like first you've got to produce the video. And you know, if you don't have your own in-house video people, to produce a quality professional, you know, 30-second ad nowadays, I mean, you're probably looking at 25 to $30,000 for production cost. And then to do like one station for a month, not even like a super high prime time TV campaign, you're probably looking at about another $30,000 for one month. And then of course you don't have any idea way of measuring, I mean how many people saw that picked up the phone and called you to make an appointment. Um, all they can do is provide viewership numbers like hey 40,000 people watched your commercial over the life of its thing.

[27:24]  Um, so I looked at what was then still a fairly early thing which was connected TV. Um, and for people who don't know, that is like on your Roku or your Amazon Fire or your Apple TV, tabletop thing when that was a thing. Um, so you have your device and you're watching your television through that. So we were able to get into that really early. That was probably 2021, I think we launched those campaigns, and we were able to. What's great about those is with a normal TV campaign you say okay you're paying let's say it's $30,000 a month for one month for everybody that watches channel 6 to see your ad. Well, I don't need everybody in channel 6. Like someone on the southwest side of Indianapolis, we don't have any health centers down there. People aren't going to drive 30 miles to a health center. So, what's great about connected TV is I can literally sit there and pick like, okay, I want to do TV around tiny little Elwood, Indiana, which is our smallest and probably most rural health center location or Lebanon, another one of our smaller, although very much growing community that we serve. So, you can literally pay for just those people there and have them see your ads, and then it works pretty much just like a regular commercial. You know, when people say they're dinking around and I have a Roku, hey, I want to watch Game of Thrones, and then you get a pre-roll ad before that your show starts, that would be our ad. So, it was a great place to be able to get in there and be on broadcast or at least broadcast adjacent. Um, but, um, I actually just ended those campaigns for this year. They ran for about four years, 2021 through 2025. Um, just because it did kind of come back to are we reaching the people that we are meant to serve. Um, the people who have a Roku probably also have a big screen TV and they probably also have cable services and they're probably well-to-do. I mean, if you look at the demographics of who uses that versus regular broadcast television, it's more affluent people.

[29:25]  That's not really who we're trying to serve. Um, I'm really trying to get to the lower income people, the people on Medicaid, the people who maybe have a job but don't have insurance, which is another big segment we serve. So, that was one of my surprises. I was so happy and excited to be on Connected TV when I first did. And I'm still glad we did it. It was a great place to explore, but eventually I reached the point where I realized it just wasn't serving our needs and the needs of people that we're trying to reach.

[29:54]  And there, to be quite frank, I feel like there's so many ways of communication and there's so many ways to get in front of people, especially with social media and how that's like, you know, I feel like social media is the new TV, right? We went from radio to TV and now people just look at short form content. Like how many people are really watching long form content?

[30:03]  Yeah.

[30:05]  So it is, I mean, you're in a, I almost say an exciting space because I can imagine you're being challenged every day. Like every day is a new day. It's like how do I get in front of the next group of people? But I think the most important thing about this is that at one point someone wasn't allowing you to even get deep like you are today. How do you think you've gained the trust to people like for the leaders that say, "Yeah, go ahead, do what you got to do, Christopher, we believe in you"?

[30:39]  That was a process. Uh again, you know, at this point now, probably most of the executive leadership of the company that was the executives when I started is gone now. I think probably all of them at this point are different. Like we still have a CFO, we still have a COO, but it's a different person now. Um, and so, uh, and I'm not, you know, speaking ill of the previous leaders who were fantastic clinicians and, you know, built the company out to an amazing degree during that, you know, 55 years. Um, but, uh, you know, they were limited by the vision of where they had been and maybe struggled to see where we needed to go. Uh, so for the longest time, you know, my staff was just two people. They already had a graphic designer slash website person slash social media person who'd been here for a long, long time. Um, and then they kind of added me. So, we were a team of two for really about four years. Um, and we reached a point where I was reporting to the COO and she and I mapped out like really like here the next five years of the marketing team like here's where we need to be now here's when we need to add staff and a timeline and we even mapped out like my career journey of like okay you know it is very unusual for a company of this size to not have someone in senior leadership who's not marketing communications involved. Um, and so we kind of mapped out like where I would be and honestly, you know, to be completely not mercenary about it but you know in looking at my own career path, it's a really great thing to be able to look forward to the future of your company and see a future for yourself. Um, because everybody wants to grow in their role. Um, not just to grow because they want a new title and more money and all that kind of stuff, but seeing a need within the company of saying, "Okay, I saw where they're like, okay, probably about three or four years from now, you're going to need to have a VP of marketing." Um, whether it's me or somebody else, that's where things need to go. And we're going to need to have a digital marketing expert and we're going to need to start doing our own photography and videography in-house because it's so expensive to hire out.

[34:52]  Um, and as the team changed at the upper level, um, that's kind of when the change really happened. Um, about three years ago, we brought in a new head of human resources. Um, and I was assigned under her. Uh, one of the great ways to tell that you know your department, they're not really quite sure how to feel about you is who you report to. And during my first four years, I reported to four different people. Uh, so I think I started out with the COO, then I went to the CFO, and I think then I reported to a vice president of business development and then I reported to the HR head. Um, but she really, you know, supported not just me but the mission of marketing, and it was at that point under her with her support that I was really able to start adding people to my team. Um, and then two and a half years ago, we brought in a new CEO, and he had been used to really working closely with his head of marketing and having a really robust marketing team. Um, so again we were able to grow things out, and then we did a reorganization of the company's leadership about two years ago now. Yeah, it was right about two years ago now. And that's when I was elevated to vice president. Um, and I also have an interesting role, one that I had not even thought about previously, which was that I'm actually now one of the executives of the company within our company structure.

[35:25]  It's probably a little boring for people, but we have what an executive leadership team and then a senior leadership team, so the executive leadership team is basically where strategy is determined and then the senior leadership team is where is executed. So I'm part of the executive leadership team. So I actually sit there, you know, being part of the decision-making at the highest level of the company of like do we do this? Do we acquire this company? Do we expand into these two new counties? Um, and I know at first probably some of my fellow executives were like, "What is a marketing guy doing sitting here next to us?" But, um, we've really worked to build those relationships with each other. Uh, and I think hopefully they see the value of me sitting at that table now. Um, it's an incredible responsibility. Um, that like I say, I mean, if you'd asked me five years ago, would you see yourself sitting at that table? I would have said absolutely not. Um, but now that I've been there a couple years, I have enough not just trust in my colleagues, but I guess enough trust in myself that I feel like I belong there. And honestly now when I talk to other people at other companies, I've said, "Why don't you have a marketing communications person at the highest level of your company? You really should."

[36:32]  I mean, because you're an expert now, man. And I think you'd even know you were so good at this, but that media training and everything that you did there really allowed you to spread your wings, especially in the nonprofit world. That's why I love nonprofit. I feel like they allow us to just play so many different roles and just allow us to get creative. And you've done that. You're a creative person, so you've gotten that far. But I ask you, man, like in a space where you mentioned leadership, like it took so many different people for someone to say, "Hey, I see you, I believe in you, this is where we need to go with that." Um, how important is good leadership as well?

[37:26]  It's, I think, number one. Uh, I mean when people talk about like the number one reason that people leave a company is their manager, we tend to think of that as middle management. Like, you know, you've got like say like a manager, maybe a director that probably has, you know, x number of people reporting to them and if the people under them really aren't connecting with them, if they feel like they're not being supported, um they're going to leave. But it also really translates to the highest level of the company, too. If people don't feel like they have faith in the highest levels of leadership to have the strategy, have the execution to be able to be good stewards of the company, not just financially but also from our mission standpoint, that's when they tend to wander away as well or they start listening to job offers that maybe they wouldn't have listened to before.

[38:23]  Yeah. Um, our company, you know, like so we work in healthcare which tends to have high turnover. For the longest time we were, you know, mainly a behavioral healthcare company which has even higher turnover, and we're a nonprofit. Even higher turnover, and then we largely, you know, work with very, very challenged people, um, mental illness, substance use issues, even more so. You know, within our space, it's not unusual. It's extraordinary, and we are not higher than our, you know, colleague organizations, but you know, I think we were at like about a 42 to 44% turnover rate annually. Very, very high. And we started doing things not just to build up programs like a wellness program and a career pathing program and other things like that to try and keep those people within the company, but also management training programs um to get our managers to understand here's how you need to treat your people, you know, support them in the way they want to be supported. Um, one thing that I learned from like the old days of, you know, what a manager was when I was like, you know, working in a movie theater when I was in high school versus now is the gold standard used to be the manager is the boss and everybody who works on them needs to adapt to the boss.

[39:47]  Yep.

[39:50]  And I very much believe in what I think is the polar opposite of that is the servant leader model, which is I think a good manager adapts their management style individually to each person that reports to them. Um, it really is like a player-coach kind of position. Uh, you're there to kind of coach them. You're to help them give them the tools and the support they need to be successful in their role. And if they're not being successful in that role, maybe there's a different role within the company where they can be successful. Um, you know, I hate to ever give up on a person um because things aren't working out. Um, my former boss, now colleague, the head of HR, um, she has a great phrase for that is if someone's really, really underperforming, your duty as a manager is to coach them up or coach them out. And that is to say, coach them up where they are meeting the needs of the role or you're helping find another role for them either within your organization or helping them onto the next part of their career path where they can have success.

[41:00]  Um, so being a good manager is, I think, just the most important thing of any company. If your management at every level, from that supervisor who has one person who reports to them to the CEO who, you know, has 929 people who report to him, um, if you're not being that effective leader who inspires others, who communicates well, who comes up with a vision and a strategy and executes it in a way that has success for everyone you serve as well as your team, you're just not going to be successful.

[41:51]  Like at our company, we refer to our audience as the three Ps. Our patients, obviously, the people we serve, our partners, which is all those other government entities and organizations, and then it's people, and the people are the part of our team. Um, the biggest support that the people part of the three Ps needs is to have good people above them.

[42:38]  Yeah, I believe it trickles down, man. Um, it all starts to me from the beginning. A good leader, and you mentioned a lot of people leave because the leadership's just not good. And a lot of times it is that mid-tier management level because I've worked for companies where the company's great and a lot of the people above are great. It's just the direct person or maybe not the direct but the person right above that that is causing all the chaos coming down. Um, you definitely hit it right on, man.

[43:06]  Listen, as we start to wrap things up, man, you really were able to, I don't know that we had another marketing whiz like you on here that was really able to speak on a whole bunch of different things um that you've tried. I don't know that people are trying, and I can imagine you're still trying. You're still trying to figure it out, right?

[43:47]  Figuring it out, reinventing. And you know, when we talked about when they first approached me about being on the podcast, I was really kind of shy about it and I was like or even using the term "marketing whiz" right now. You probably saw me involuntarily because I realized that you know at the very highest levels of the marketing profession they would look at what we're doing in Aspire Indiana and they would probably consider it to be pretty mid. Um, it's, you know, we're really not inventing the wheel or doing anything that's crazy, but we're looking through all that tool box to see what tools work. And sometimes the most popular tools out there aren't the best tools for us. And sometimes you got to look to see like, well, can I take this tool and this tool and cram them together and make a new tool to see what we can do. I mean, like I think about one of the biggest successes of an individual campaign I had was so back to basics that people would probably almost laugh at it, but it really, really worked for that tiny, tiny health center up in Elwood, a very, very rural community. We have one medical provider there. Um, so we made a video of her just talking about, "I'm a small town girl. I grew up in a small town. I love working in a small town." Um, and we had like a two and a half minute version that we used for various, you know, newsletter and other purposes. And then we like cut down a one-minute version that we put on YouTube. And then we created a Facebook campaign with some money behind it. Not a lot. I mean, a few three figures. Uh, and that thing got, I should have meant to look it up right before we hopped on here, but you know, is it over a 100,000 views so far, which again, I know for a big company, a high-level company, a 100,000 interactions with something to them is not that big. For us, it's a big deal and it's led to dozens of new patients at that center. So, even though that's kind of really like a back to basics kind of marketing campaign, it's that continual search of looking at the tools available to us, finding out that a lot of the ones that are really valued in the marketplace really aren't that effective and trying to find that next tool that is going to be the big thing that really helps us connect.

[45:04]  So, what I'm hearing is people that are afraid to use a little bit of meta ads, they should probably look into it. It's not as expensive now. I mean, it could I think it has gone up and it will continue to go up, right, in the space that we're in. But yeah, meta ads, man. People don't utilize it enough.

[45:21]  Yeah. And we're looking for the next thing like you mentioned, you know, like video. I've dithered about whether we should be on TikTok for the longest time. Um, you know, there were some governmental issues there for a while like is there going to be a TikTok? Um, and I'm still dithering with it just because, you know, in order to be a good storyteller, you have to have good stories. And to do TikTok really, really well, you need somebody who really knows how to shoot that stuff and edit it and make it short and impactful.

[45:50]  And um, maybe that's, you know, the next thing we're going to experiment with.

[46:00]  You're having too much fun. It seems like you're getting more fun and more fun as you're growing in this organization. You're thinking of different things and all those really the TikTok, the social medias, the meta ads. I love that you're in there. I'm telling you, I've had over 300 conversations with different executive leaders from across schools, healthcare, nonprofit, and all that, and no one is really talking about how different you can go and market right now. Everyone is doing the same thing and have been hammering the same thing for years, but for you, it seems like you're an innovator. You're thinking of different things. How can we get here? How can we do this? This didn't work. So, I love that for you, Christopher. I definitely appreciate it.

[46:42]  For you guys that are still watching, make sure you guys do like, subscribe, and comment because these are conversations we're having with leaders every single week, almost twice a week. Christopher, we'll see you on the next one. Latus.