Amber Nelms 0:00

I am so excited today to have on James on Accelerate with Amber's podcast. You are the co-founder and CEO of Loctaton Behavioral Health. You're an Army veteran. Thank you for your service. And you are an innovative mental health solutions that expand across access to care. After scaling and exiting your first therapy practice, you're now on a mission to redefine behavioral health through technology, creativity, and a deeply human approach to healing. That's awesome.

James Garofalo 0:34

Thank you so much for the intro. And it's a pleasure to be on with you and I appreciate your time.

Amber Nelms 0:39

Yeah. Well, I'm excited to have you. Tell me more how you got into the industry. What made you passionate about it? And how long have you been in the industry?

James Garofalo 0:46

Yeah, it's hard to believe. I've been in the space now for like 15 years, a little bit of work 15 years. And I kind of found my footing in the mental health space through my own journey transitioning out of the military. I served active duty from 2006 to 2010. I deployed to Iraq from 08 to 09 during that time period. And when I came back from deployment, there were quite a few peers who were getting picked up for substance use and kind of getting picked up by the justice system. And unfortunately, I lost a few friends to suicide.

Amber Nelms 1:18

And so Oh, I'm sorry.

James Garofalo 1:20

Oh no, no worries at all. I mean, that was an unfortunate reality to what was going on at that time. And and so my unit knew I only had about six months left on my contract. They knew I was getting out. I always tell people they kind of all and told me to serve as what they called the unit's adverse behavioral specialist for just a few months. And at first I was really resistant. You know, I was 22 years old at the time, 21 or 22.

Amber Nelms 1:44

And whoa, you were so young.

James Garofalo 1:46

People were like, yeah, I was like macho infantry guy in the military. And so I wanted nothing to do with it, but ended up kind of serving as this case manager for troops who were needing to be connected to resources and just fell in love with it. And I got out in 2010. I've been in the mental health space in some capacity or another at presents.

Amber Nelms 2:04

Fantastic. You've gone from serving in the army to building and exiting a therapy practice. Now you lead a mental health startup. What moment or experience most shaped your vision for what mental health care should be looking like today?

James Garofalo 2:18

Yeah, that's a great question. So I think it wasn't like a pivotal moment per se. I think it was a more of a series of moments. And I think it was probably right around the time that I started the first company. I think anytime somebody starts a first company, you really don't know what you're getting yourself into. I spent most of my 20s working in this space, practicing at community mental health centers and inpatient facilities. And so right around my 30th birthday, I started the first practice and no real idea of what you're doing. But I think it ultimately comes down to the traction that you start to sustain during that journey that cre helps mold and create and fuel that vision. Right. Even in the early days of just getting like a Google review or a testimony from a patient that saw a difference in their work, those are the moments that kind of avalanched for me into something that's faster and bigger and wider and ultimately leads to, I think, where we landed in today's vision for what we're building at Lockiton.

Amber Nelms 3:20

What are you building? What's the long-term vision? What do you want it to be?

James Garofalo 3:24

Yeah, I mean, ideally, I'd like Lockitin to become a multi-state operation that essentially functions at the intersection of good, human, compassionate healthcare, but with a lot of the advances and tools and resources that come along with technology.

Amber Nelms 3:42

What are some of those tools you're looking into? And how do you differentiate yourself compared to other behavioral health companies?

James Garofalo 3:49

Yeah, I think this is a really exciting time because obviously AI is like the buzzword. And, you know, we're seeing so much of that integrate. And it's really, really interesting because they're two very different industries. You have this very human-driven space where it's so reliant on compassion and sitting down in a room and interactions or even virtually, but really needing and expecting to be heard. And then within the last few years, we see this boom of technology, and whether that's AI or just other tools, I think we're starting to see that integration a little bit. And it's exciting. It's very, very exciting. I think the thing that we're specifically doing at Locketeen is we weren't a tech company that's penetrating the mental health space. We were clinicians first that started integrating tech. And so we do have a proprietary AI platform that our intensive outpatient congratulations.

Amber Nelms 4:47

That is so cool.

James Garofalo 4:48

Thank you. Yeah. And that's a very great resource that our intensive outpatient program patients get access to and very early stage. But it's been great. It's been great to kind of operate in both of those realms.

Amber Nelms 5:00

How long did it take you to build that out?

James Garofalo 5:02

Yeah. So we brought on a fractional CTO who's been an extraordinary asset to our team, phenomenal team player, and very willing to listen to feedback that our clinicians were giving him. And so it's never done, right? We're still working on it. We started it not long after we opened our doors just over two years ago, and it's a constant work in progress.

Amber Nelms 5:23

Oh, so you did it at the same time. So when you sold the other, and when you open the other, you're like, that's going to be the plan. Like right away, that was part of the vision.

James Garofalo 5:32

Yeah. So yeah, just to provide a little history. So I sold the last company in 2020 to what's now a national and publicly traded company that's doing very well. And then for a few years, I kind of hung around and traveled with the family and you do what you do when you sell a company. And then I started Lock Itin with two other co-founders, and we opened our doors in fall of 2023. So there was a couple of years there of doing live and life and doing all the great things.

Amber Nelms 6:00

Okay. That's awesome. I'm going off script, as you can tell. Because I'm so very interested. This is uh what the path I'm currently on myself. I'm actually working on uh building something specifically for our field. And you're gonna use it in-house first. Um so I'm just uh really interested because I'm right in the beginning steps of it and learn a little bit more on that.

James Garofalo 6:23

I don't know if this is okay or space, but I'd love to learn more.

Amber Nelms 6:26

So oh yes, I would love to talk about that separately more in depth. Well, where do you think in your industry there's an under-leverage in technology, particularly when it comes to like referral management, insurance workflows, data visibility?

James Garofalo 6:42

That's a great question. And I think my response might irritate some listeners, but I'll tell you what I've noticed over the last 15 years or so. And it's particularly important right now because of this rise of technology in the space. There seems to be like a strange disconnect between graduates who are coming out of school to practice and other really useful things that I think should be part of that curriculum, right? So many clinicians go through, say, an MSW program or an LPC program, depending on the state, these might be different licensures, or some sort of social work program. And they come out really great with really a sound and phenomenal clinical experience or understanding of diagnoses and how to get in a room and work with patients. But I feel like schools sometimes drop the ball on education that they're educating those clinicians or future clinicians on like how to start a business, how to operate and own and operate a practice, how to integrate technology. And so we live in this space now where it's there is it's so siloed. It's so siloed. And I don't know if it's anybody's fault per se. I think it's just how the two fields have evolved, but there's like a clinical side that tends not to be too familiar with the tech side. And then there's a tech side that's hey, let me in and let us see what we can do with what you're doing. And the two often don't communicate, I think, in an optimized fashion. And so I don't know if that answered your question per se, but I mean, it's an interesting thing, what you said.

Amber Nelms 8:16

I think you're absolutely right. I do agree. And I've heard from multiple different people healthcare is one of the industries that is slowest to adopt changes in technology. I mean, something as simple for us is even I don't even know how to answer this from a tech perspective. Most doctors' offices still use fax. Yeah. So we have to have service letters before we can get authorization. And I haven't figured out a tech workaround to that, but they don't want to be open to a different way. I don't know how to fix that from a technology standpoint. I always tell my team, I'm like, wait a minute. Yeah, just because we're doing it this way doesn't mean we can't change the way things are being done. What's the answer? For sure. I haven't figured it out yet.

James Garofalo 8:55

It's interesting. And when you have, you say a doctor who's running his own practice, has been practicing for 40 or 50 years, and now somebody who's developed maybe a really cool tech product or a very exciting platform that they're confident can help in improve workflows and streamline services, come along and try to like pitch that to say that doctor, it's it can be challenging, right? And so I think a lot of the there's some great products and platforms being developed out there. And I think it's often challenging for those companies, especially if they're in the startup stage, to kind of approach spaces like healthcare and say, hey, this is what we're building. Would you be willing to implement it? Or this is how we can help? And so it's just like the two are just, I think they're starting to synergize a little bit, but there's been a little bit of a disconnect, I think, there.

Amber Nelms 9:45

It's true. What about for you with a CRM? What do you currently use for that for your company?

James Garofalo 9:50

So our CRM, we use HubSpot. It's very basic. And you know, we just use it for referral management.

Amber Nelms 9:57

And you don't use it for clients when you first get them and then put them in an intake pipeline after that that's HIPAA compliant?

James Garofalo 10:04

So that's our EHR, right? Our CRM. So when I hear you say CRM, I think of like partners in the community and vendors and things like that, where it's not it's our relationship is very different. If you're referring specifically to our clientele, our patient caseload, then that's all managed through our electronic health record system, which of course is HIPAA compliant.

Amber Nelms 10:26

Proprietary? That one's the one you created.

James Garofalo 10:28

Yeah, that's not ours. That's not ours. We have a vendor that we use for our EHR.

Amber Nelms 10:32

Who do you use for that?

James Garofalo 10:33

Uh well, it's funny you ask. We're just transitioning to a company called Written. Uh, and we're pretty excited. Yeah, they're a VC-backed company, I think maybe based out of the valley. I don't know, honestly, but they've been great. The platform offers a lot of wonderful tools. And I guess I'm given a free plug to written, so they'll have to send me some. But that's what we're switching to, and we're excited to be on that on that platform.

Amber Nelms 10:55

See, that is a very interesting. This is why I'm talking to a lot of founders about this and even how they categorize in their brain what you use certain tech stacks for. Yeah. So that's how you use that tech stack. That's not how everybody does it. I mean, some people put some clients through HubSpot, and then of course, eventually when you get to HIPAA compliant information, move them and phase them into like an EHR. So that's the way you choose to do it and how you in your brain think about it. So that's very interesting to know that's how. So from your workflow, you keep that all separate. And then if you do get a client, so your current EHR has a link that you can add to your website that gives you data for like SEO and how well you're doing, or does it allow you to add the link to ads?

James Garofalo 11:41

As far as its ability to embed on our website and provide any sort of service, it's mostly patients having access to their portal. As far as tracking, it almost sounds like you're speaking more to tracking the data in terms of referrals and things like that. That is more oriented around some of our organic relationships that we have in the community. And I maybe we have bit you know strategic uh arrangements with different offices and things like that. I mean, the first thing more that came in my head was like antiquated, but I wouldn't refer to those relationships as antiquated. I mean, they're an essential part of acquiring business, but they're very traditional. And I think a lot of tech startups can sometimes underestimate the value of those organic relationships. Does that make sense?

Amber Nelms 12:26

No, I mean, our industry relies on them. That's a huge percentage of how you get clients. I think that's a really hard thing when you meet with an SEO team or they just don't like if you work with product-based business, like a lot of these other SEO companies or different marketing companies are used to working with service-based businesses like a lawn mowing company or selling shoes. They have a very different way they would go about things and where you even track the analytics. I think that's something that if you've never started a company, you don't even realize how hard it is to talk to a fractional marketing team about your needs and how we have to track things. I think that is one very unique factor. I mean, we could probably talk separately about this. And honestly, I don't really know how much I want to share proprietary-wise what I'm building because I might give away myself too much, all the good ideas I'm thinking with building what I'm doing. But yeah, we can talk separately about this. It's very interesting. Um Do you have any other things you wanted to share with the rest of our audience?

James Garofalo 13:26

Um, I mean, of course, I just want to say I don't know. If you need help, if somebody you know needs help, feel free to reach out to us. We provide services all throughout the state of Colorado, both virtually and in person. Check us out on lockitinbh.com. That's l-o k I t e n b h dot com. And I think that's great.

Amber Nelms 13:46

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.