We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tametra Johnson, LCSW a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Tametra, thanks for joining us today. Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?

In the beginning the business was my side hustle. It brought in extra cash but I was working 40 hours at my 9-5 and then an additional 15-20. I was burnt out and it stopped being fun. I decided to hire contractors for moral support and to start to scale. I recruited 2 people who were co-workers. I specifically chose them because they were excellent therapists, would be brutally honest with me and I’d enjoy being around them. I enticed them by offering a fair rate as well as a monthly bonus to stay with me for 1 year. After the year, one decided to start her own practice which I fully supported and the other came on full time with me. We now have a team of 12. I have tried to recruit using online sites but everyone I have now is someone I use to work with or they found me and asked for a job. I have found that hiring pre-licensed clinicians gives me the ability to observe their work for 6-18 months and help shape them into the type of clinician I would want to hire. And their fresh eyes helps keep the team current and ever evolving. Initially I had a pretty informal way of training and enforcing rules. Once we grew to a team of 6 I realized we needed an employee manual and a an actual training process. I ended up hiring a clinician to do clinical work and be our operations manager and she developed the processes we have now. We now have a 3-day training curriculum and a growing employee manual

If I was starting today, I would have consulted a tax specialist sooner. I also may not have been so generous with my employee benefits. At the time I was competing with a big corporation for the best employee, and I didn’t value the inherent perks of working for a small start up.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Jacob’s Ladder Therapies is a group mental health practice specialized in providing individual, family, and group therapy to tweens, teens, young adults and parents suffering with mood and personality disorders. We are also uniquely qualified and provide mental health support to teachers on campus during school hours. We are a one-of-a-kind group practice in that we are diverse in ethnicity, religion, language, gender identity, sexual orientation, and age which helps us to provide services to the multicultural community we serve.

As a teenager I struggled with severe mental health challenges with no professional support. My parents were unaware of mental health, were skeptical of the medical field, and had no access to clinicians of color. I struggled through high school, college and grad school and survived 3 suicide attempts. My dream was to be the President of the United States (or a Broadway star). Through my work in politics and the NAACP, I was introduced to social work and started building a life worth living. I worked in group homes, child protective services and in hospital settings but was never satisfied with my impact. I was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder at age 35 and received my first professional help. Being in therapy myself, I realized how much pain could have been alleviated in my teenage years if I would have had access to a therapist. And twenty years later, my community was still uneducated on mental health with almost no therapists of color. This realization was the birth of Jacobs Ladder Therapies. While I thought I wanted a career to affect change on a macro level, my calling was to work on a micro level. I knew there was another teenage girl like me who needed to be listened to, validated, and whose parents needed education. With the support of my husband I opened a small private practice with just myself and grew to a team of 12. I started this practice because I wanted to help the teens in my community feel comfortable reaching out. I wanted them to have access to a clinician who looks like them and is able to help them in ways their parents, teachers, peers, and other clinicians may not have understood in the past.

We are located in the heart of Silicon Valley where diversity is abundant but mental health resources are scarce within communities of color. I have strategically hired a team that can service all of our community. We represent and have clinical competence and experience with Women, Black, LatinX, Asian, European, Mixed Race, LGBTQIA+, Immigrant, ESL, Parents with children with mental illness, Women and couples with fertility issues, Sexual assault victims, Early Psychosis, and Adoption communities. We also provide support people of color in tech with imposture syndrome and dealing with micro-aggressions. We offer free Parent workshops on Generation Z and utilize our group therapy programs to provide free community service to the local elementary schools.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

One of the best advice I received was to stop trying to get better at what you’re not good at and focus on perfecting what you do well. Social media is not my thing. It takes me 4 times as long to make a simple post as it does a Gen Z’er. So instead of spending hours trying to figure out hashtags and algorithms. I consulted a media group to learn the basics and hired a Gen Z’er to craft and track all the posts. Very little of our current revenue comes from social media however it gives us credibility and visibility in the community. It also helps keep us up to date on all the new trends which is important in working with teens.

So how did I pick a media group to consult? My sister owns Prestige Social which is the top media group. I couldn’t afford to hire her full time so I bought their branding package. How did I find my social media manager? I told my team about it and I hired one of the clinicians daughters. It wasn’t complicated.

Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?

We do individual, family and couples therapy however there is a cap on the amount of money you can make without continuously hiring more people. I’ve found that group therapy is much more lucrative. In a group setting we can see up to 20 people in the same amount of time we’d see 2. Groups require a lot more marketing and strategic planning initially but it is worth it. We also developed a game that parents can plat with their teen. We allow them to take it home and play it and if they like it they pay for it at the next session. We recently filmed a Masterclass that we will sell and we hosted a Parent retreat. These are all things we use to diversify our revenue stream.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.Jacobsladdertherapies.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacobsladdertherapies/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Jacobsladdertherapies
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobs-ladder-therapies-49bb42240/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/J__L__T
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@jacobsladdertherapies2204