We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ray Estefania and Ana Moreno a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Ray and Ana thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you get your first job in the field that you practice in today?
I always knew I wanted to study psychology and do something in a related field so when I graduated from the University of Florida, I went to work in a hospital based addiction treatment program in Bethesda, Maryland called Suburban Hospital. There I was introduced to the addiction treatment field and I received excellent training at Suburban and I learned about ethics and how to put the patient first. This is where I gained a passion for helping individuals and families who were dealing with substance use and mental health issues. I was there for about 5 years and I started there as a volunteer and eventually worked my way up to running the adolescent program under the supervision of my boss and mentor, Beth Kane Davidson. Those years were amazing and I learned so much that I really developed a strong work ethic and a desire to learn as much as I could so I could help as many people that were suffering as possible.
In 1999, I had moved to Miami from the Washington, DC area and I began working at another addiction treatment center at South Miami Hospital. This program also had a long history of helping those suffering with addiction so I began working there as a counselor and eventually I was promoted to the Director of the Adolescent and Young Adult Program. It was there where I met an intern that was working in our family program. Her name was Ana Moreno and I ended up hiring her as a counselor to work alongside me. That was over 20 years ago and we have been working together ever since. We ended owning an outpatient addiction program together that we ran for 8 years. It was called Family Recovery Specialists and we sold that program in July of 2018. We than started R&A Therapeutic Partners where we both continue to work tirelessly helping families in a different capacity.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Therapeutic/Educational Consultant and Interventionist at R&A Therapeutic Partners in South Florida. My previous role was Co-Founder and Executive Director of Family Recovery Specialists, an outpatient treatment program and therapeutic consulting practice that worked with both adolescents and adults. I have been treating addiction and mental health issues for nearly 30 years and was formerly Director of South Miami Hospital’s Adolescent Addiction Treatment Program. I have worked extensively with adolescents, adults and the family members who have been impacted by substance use disorders and mental illness.
I earned my undergraduate degree in Psychology from the University of Florida and my graduate degree in Mental Health Counseling from Nova Southeastern University. I am a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC), Certified Addiction Professional (CAP) in the state of Florida, a Certified Intervention Professional (CIP) and an Internationally Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor (ICADC). In addition, I have received extensive training and supervision at the University of Miami’s Center for Treatment Research on Adolescent Drug Abuse (CTRADA) in Multi-Dimensional Family Therapy (MDFT).
Over the span of my career, I have also been very involved in the prevention of substance use in children and teens. I have organized and implemented numerous substance use prevention programs in both public and private schools in the Washington D.C. and South Florida regions. I have also been a consultant to numerous independent schools to address the issue of student alcohol and substance misuse and I have coached thousands of parents on ways to prevent substance use in children.
I am a frequent speaker to schools, parent groups and community organizations and I have been a guest on both radio and television programs on various topics including prevention, parenting, addiction, mental health and recovery. In addition, I served previously on the Board of Directors for Informed Families, The Florida Family Partnership and on the board of the Therapeutic Consulting Association (TCA).
Ana Moreno and I have more than 45 years of combined experience in working with individuals and families suffering from complex substance misuse disorders and mental illness. R&A Therapeutic Partners serves families throughout the South Florida area, as well as nationally and internationally.
Our mission is to provide honest, ethical, compassionate, concierge-level support to families who are struggling with these issues and need help to address their challenges. What I am most proud of is the longevity I have had in this field and the thousands of individuals ad families we have helped over so many years. We have developed an excellent reputation in a field that is not always known for its ethics and we have stayed true to our mission and values to always put the client first and do our best to help people find recovery from addiction ad other metal heath issues.
R&A Therapeutic Partners provides evaluations, customized outpatient treatment, individual and family therapy, interventions and therapeutic/educational consulting services to adolescents and adults suffering from substance use as well as other mental health disorders. In addition, we offer educational seminars, parent effectiveness training, substance prevention services, recovery coaching, concierge crisis and case management as well as expert witness testimony in cases involving substance misuse or mental health.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
Ana Moreno and I met in the early 2000’s at South Miami Hospital where In was working as the Adolescent Program Director. Ana was working in our family program as an intern and was recommended to me by the family therapist that ran that program. Ana was special from the moment IO met her and after interviewing her and getting to know her a little bit, I hired her to work as a therapist. Ana was very new in our field and had come to us after a career in banking. She needed a lot of training but she was very sharp, she earned quickly and she wasn’t afraid to try things I suggested and take risks with clients. She was warm and very compassionate and caring and immediately the teens and their parents took to Ana. We worked together for several years and then one day I decided it was time to leave the hospital, start working for myself and build my one program. I learned many things at South Miami Hospital but I knew there were things I could do better if I was given the opportunity to create a program that was truly individualized and not constrained by corporate rules and policies. I wanted to take my experience and all I had learned over the years and develop a program of my own. I decided to leave the hospital and I took Ana with me and we became partners, which we have been for almost the last 14 years.
We’d appreciate any insights you can share with us about selling a business.
Ana Moreno and I sold our program, Family Recovery Specialists, back in 2018. It was bittersweet because we had been in business for 8 years and we had been through a lot by that time. We had a lot of successes but we had some failures too. Our outpatient treatment model for teens and adults was very successful for us, even though it was small and very concierge. We started to explore taking more insurances rather than being solely a self-pay program and this allowed us to expand and help more people but along with that came more stress and more infrastructure that we had to develop. We then decided to open a residential program, which ended up being a huge mistake for us. The biggest mistake we made was trying to do this all on our own and with our own money. The advice I would offer anyone trying to open a program like this is do not use your own money and leverage yourself in this way. The financial strain on us was huge and ultimately the program did not make it. We decided to close the program after about 2 years because we were tapped out financially. This period was incredibly stressful for both of us and we struggled to meet payroll and pay our bills but both of us were committed to making sure our employees were taken care of and our debts were paid. Ana and I both sacrificed our individual financial security to make sure we never missed payroll and all our debts were paid off from the program we had created and unfortunately, had to close.
This whole experience was really hard on both of us but we persevered and we became closer as partners as a result. We still had a successful outpatient program but the climate at that time had made it much more difficult to be successful in a small, independent program. The insurance reimbursement was less than ever before and we were both struggling to pay off the debt we had incurred from our residential program so we decided to sell our outpatient program. This was a difficult decision, once again, because we had our clients and employees to consider but this was the best decision for us. We started talking to some larger behavioral health organizations and we ended up accepting an offer from one and we let go of our business that we had created and run for almost a decade.
Another lesson that we both learned fro this process is that when you sell a company, the buyer will make all kinds of promises that they may not keep. Unfortunately, once an organization purchases your business, it is no longer in your control and they are going to do what is best for them. This was hard to accept and ultimately, I left about 6 months after the purchase and Ana left shortly after that. Make sure if you ever sell something you careered that you do your best to investigate and research the company or organization that isn acquiring your business and make sure they share your same values, level of integrity and vision for the company you created. The organization that acquired us was not well run, had really poor leadership and eventually they had to close the program because it was not sustainable under their ownership. It was sad to see our program close recently but we were not surprised. The sale of FRS was bittersweet as I said but it allowed us to pivot and create R&A Therapeutic Partners, which was a complete blessing. It is true what is said about often when one door closes, another one opens and usually it is the best possible outcome even though it may not feel like it in that moment.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://therapeutic-partners.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ra.therapeutic.partners/
- Facebook: R&A Therapeutic Partners
- Linkedin: R&A Therapeutic Partners
Image Credits
Ray Estefania and Ana Moreno