The CEO Playbook Behind Avery Lane's 10-Year Growth | Camille Hildebrand

Camille Hildebrand, Founder & CEO of Avery Lane for Women, didn't set out to build a treatment center — she started as a 19-year-old office manager, sober herself at 17. Ten years later, she's grown Avery Lane into a trauma-informed program known for a culture other founders in the space actively study.

In this episode, Camille shares the playbook behind that growth:
• How she scaled Avery Lane without losing the personal touch
• Why she treats staff retention as a clinical outcome, not just an HR metric
• Her approach to accessible, in-network care without compromising quality
• Leading through COVID-era staffing crises
• Brain spotting and other modalities she built the program around
• Her advice to founders: reconnect to your "why" before you scale further

For fellow founders and leaders in behavioral health — this is a real look at what building and scaling a treatment center actually takes.

0:00 — "Just Go For It": Early Advice From Doubters
0:57 — Introducing Avery Lane for Women
2:24 — Camille's Story: Sober at 17
7:03 — Finding Mentors in the Industry
8:03 — Growing Up an Entrepreneur, Learning on the Fly
11:00 — Making Treatment Accessible & In-Network
13:33 — What Makes Avery Lane Different: Culture & Innovative Therapy
17:39 — Culture, Low Turnover & Mentoring Women Into Leadership
20:03 — Surviving COVID and Growing Pains
23:21 — Why Leaders Need Support Too
26:54 — Her Awakening in Wilderness Treatment
33:03 — What's Underrated in Behavioral Health: Human Connection
35:24 — Proving the Doubters Wrong
38:21 — Advice for Behavioral Health Leaders: Reconnect to Your Why

#TreatmentCenterCEO #BehavioralHealthLeadership #TraumaInformedCare

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

When I started, I was 23, 24, young woman, very naive. And there wasn't a lot of women in leadership positions. So I got a lot of unsolicited advice for men that had been in the industry for like 30 plus years. And we were surrounded by big corporations. We were one of the only privately owned facilities. I got treated like the cute little girl with the cute little program.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Hey kid.

SPEAKER_05 0:25

Yeah. Oh, we won't see you in six months.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Right.

SPEAKER_05 0:27

I wish that someone were to tell me back then, don't listen to those fuckers. You know, just keep going. If you have a dream, if you, you know, are sitting in that seat and you just know you're supposed to be doing what you're doing, just fucking go for it.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Camille is with Avery Lane for Women. I guess let's start off with maybe an overview of your program and where you are today, maybe physically, who you treat, how you treat. So that'd be a great place to start.

SPEAKER_05 1:12

Avery Lane is coming up on our 10-year anniversary, which is so wild to me. At Avery Lane, we treat women struggling with both substance abuse and mental health issues with this overarching trauma focused, trauma-specialized umbrella. So that's basically what makes up the fabric of our program is that, you know, deep rich clinical programming. We have a few different facilities in just north of San Francisco in Northern California. We have one primary mental health facility, which just treats women with psychiatric issues. And then we have a few primary substance abuse programs that treat substance abuse primary, co-occurring mental health issues in both detox and residential level of care. We also have a step-down PHP and IOP, but they're all, you know, small groups, a lot of individualized care. You know, we have women staying anywhere from a seven-day detox all the way through like a six to nine months doing the full continuum, working with the same therapist through all levels of care.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Wow. You're serving a wide range on the continuum of care, and you're helping a lot of women. And that's impressive for being only 10 years old. So were you involved from the onset?

SPEAKER_05 2:28

I was. So I'm the I'm the sole founder. I have a couple financial partners, but I'm the sole founder.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Oh, cool. That's awesome. So, so how did this come about? Had you been an entrepreneur before? Where did the idea come from? Would love to hear kind of the founder story.

SPEAKER_05 2:44

Yeah. So honestly, it was kind of a god shot, if I'm gonna be honest. This was never planned, opening up my own facility. I had been working in treatment. I got sober when I was 17 years old. Wow. And I got my first job working in treatment, which was also unplanned, about a year into recovery. And I was at an all-men's facility. And I remember walking into that facility, not knowing if I wanted to work in treatment. It was just kind of like I was just putting one foot in front of the other and doing the next right thing, all the things that were taught, you know, being in the 12-step program, and got the job on the spot. And I remember like a month later, being in that first clinical medical team meeting, I was invited in to take notes. I was their office manager receptionist at the time, at eight, 19 years old. And I remember sitting in that meeting, and it was like that the clouds had separated, the light came in, and I was hearing the physicians, the therapists, the case managers, the techs kind of all talking about each person that was in treatment at the time and realizing like a bolt of lightning. This is what I'm supposed to do with my life.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

At 19. At 19. You had a moment of clarity. Wow, that's impressive.

SPEAKER_05 4:10

Yeah. So that next semester, I ended up going back to community college or going to community college and to take my first psychology class, which started six years of night classes to get my bachelor's. But I just loved working in treatment. I love that every day when you walk in, you don't know what to expect. It's always a new day. There's always something different that's happening. It was always exciting. And I just wanted to learn like a I was a sponge. So I basically did every job you can do working in treatment without having a license. So I did, I learned how to bring insurance billing in-house. I did admissions. I was the executive assistant to our CEO at the time. I helped our clinical director build a family program. I revised Ps with our operations director. I did everything. And it was, it was so exciting and so cool. But without realizing it, I was learning how to run a facility.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Of course. You were doing the perfect internship to start a provider.

SPEAKER_05 5:14

Yeah. And the facility, when I first started working there, I'd only been around for six months. I was the second woman that they had hired at this men's facility, which was the perfect lesson in knowing boundaries, being 19 at a men's facility. But yeah, just being able to like be on the ground floor and all the like, you know, the excitement, the, you know, that startup energy of like, what else is possible? What can we like bring in to really like make a difference in these men's lives? And simultaneously, I was always also seeing, you know, how how special it was in a gender-separate and specific environment, watching a group of men come together and be vulnerable with each other. And that was truly special to just witness, especially being a woman witnessing that. But I remember hearing conversations over the years of people who had much more experience than I saying, you know, we really need a women's program in Marin County. There was a county women's program that had closed a few years prior. And since then, there was a lack of women-only treatment. And being a woman in recovery, I was like, that would be really cool to be a part of one day. Never in my mind did I think I'd be at the home.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Maybe I'm the one that creates that.

SPEAKER_05 6:30

No, never. But five years into working at that men's facility, the old owner got together with me and he was like, I want to be, I want to build this women's program that's that's needed in our community, and I want you to run it. And it was again one of those moments of like, this is what you're supposed to do. Come hell or high water, this is what you're supposed to do.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

That is so cool. So he was he the owner of the place where you he was. Okay. Would you identify him as a mentor?

SPEAKER_05 7:03

Yeah, in a lot of ways. I think that, you know, I've I've definitely learned a lot from a lot of leaders in the industry over my years. I think one lesson that I would tell anyone starting out in this business or opening up a new program is to come in with open eyes and almost naive and ask questions and just learn, have conversations. And I learned a lot from him. I learned a lot of like, you know, how it felt to be that person on the ground and having like that direct patient contact of like what I wanted from my own leader, what I wanted to be brought into, what I didn't want to be brought into. And that I have taken that with me ever since.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Is he still involved with your business, Avery Lane for Women?

SPEAKER_05 7:55

He is not. So him and his father started as my financial partners. And I mostly work with his father now.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Okay, got it. That's great. Had you been able to, like anyone in your family been an entrepreneur? Did had you been exposed to that? So and I'll share with you, I had a middle class, working class upbringing, was blessed with some academic and professional opportunities early in my career. And I left kind of the corporate world in 2004 and I became an entrepreneur. And I started a few different businesses. No one in my family ever even had like a white-collar professional job. So uh being an entrepreneur was something that was completely different. And I learned so much on the fly as you did too. But but did you have some sort of like comfort level with doing something like that?

SPEAKER_05 8:48

Yes, and no. So my father owned a construction company and he managed a small construction company in our county. And my mom had a couple different marketing agencies. She would work for companies and then would be an individual consultant. So I would see them, you know, acting pretty independently. But I don't know if I like brought that into my experience. I think truly, like my experience from the first day working in treatment until up until the current day has just been like showing up and putting one foot in the front of the other and asking, like, where am I supposed to be right now? But I was 23 at the time where I was given the opportunity to open up my own program. And I think honestly, being young and being naive to the larger world.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

You don't know what you don't know.

SPEAKER_05 9:36

Yeah, and this insane industry was really helpful because I I got put through the ringer in my first couple of years. And I hope that, you know, I would still make the same decision. But if I, you know, knew what I knew then, but it sure helped being young and like, you know.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

Yeah, and I think there's an advantage too of like what I hear is that you saw a void and you wanted to help women.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

And that there's a lot of provider owners that have this tremendous passion, calling, and low business acumen. And somehow they figured out how to build a provider and it's kind of all heart, right? And uh they learn business over time. Uh and I think that facilitates being bold when you just feel a calling of sorts, right? That's what I hear. Is that is that accurate?

SPEAKER_05 10:32

Yeah, absolutely. I think I remember when we when we first started, I hired an executive assistant who almost 10 years later is our director of operations. And I remember right before she started, I was like, oh crap, I need workers' comp insurance. And it was all these little things that I just didn't think of. And I love being able to like learn on the fly, but there's obviously it's it's come at, you know, some challenges at some time. So I'm like, I wish I just had the knowledge, you know, the wisdom or the mentorship. But a lot of that has just been like asking questions. I think that, you know, from day one, I just remember like, if I could just help one woman, I would have set out my goal and completed the task that I wanted to complete here. But again, never in a million years did I think I'd be sitting here 10 years later, seeing walking to my office on a daily basis, seeing Camille Hildebrand, CEO founder on my on my nameplate on my door, and realizing that's not my office. And no one's like, Ashton Kutcher is not gonna pop out from a book saying, Just kidding.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Yeah, that that that's awesome. Well, I I love when I hear these stories of people that really follow their heart and they trust it. And that's amazing. So I know a little bit about this area. Marin County, beautiful, right across the bridge from the Bay, right? And fairly wealthy, right? So on the continuum of care, you've got residential, POP, IOP, outpatient. There's also a payer continuum, right? So are you private pay, commercial insurance? How does that work for Avery Lane for women?

SPEAKER_05 12:09

So again, when we set out, I wanted to help, you know, just one woman. But that one woman became like a broad spectrum of, you know, what type of women on our demographic do we want to treat? And I really just wanted to create accessibility. So, you know, providing that high-end luxury living in beautiful Morin County with beautiful homes. I pick out all of our furniture, all of our sheets, I feel it all. I want them to have that, you know, that high-end experience with the best of the best clinical care, the best of the best medical care and psychiatric care, but still be accessible to the people that need their $100 copay waived to be able to come in and access treatment. So we're primarily an in-network program. We're constantly looking at other contracts to add into our web repertoire to be able to continue to be accessible. And then, you know, since COVID, I've really been traveling around the country more and more, going to different conferences, getting our name out there, and creating a lot of more like partnerships with other groups that don't have their, don't have a women's program in their portfolio of being able to offer to their members or their employees. So we have women from all over the country, not just Marin County, but how we've built our program, it meets the needs of the person that can pay privately and also meets the needs of the people that, you know, need a little bit more financial assistance to be able to come in.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

I love that care access is challenging in this country. And historically, the level of care has been correlated with the level of wealth or income. So it sounds like you're kind of democratizing access to the highest level of care. Is that accurate?

SPEAKER_02 13:52

Absolutely. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

That's awesome. Well, thank you for doing that. You hit on specialization, and we we see that we don't have great outcomes data, yet we do know that length of time leads to good outcomes. Specialization also does. So obviously, you specialize in women's care. Is there anything else unique? So marketers talk about a unique differentiator. There are several women's programs. Anything that you would like to share that you think is unique about Avery Lane for women that might not be found at other women's programs?

SPEAKER_05 14:30

I've definitely connected with a lot of programs over the years and a lot of women's programs. I think specifically, women's programs are few and far between, and we all have to stick together and support each other. And I think there's a lot of unique things that we all do. And I don't think, you know, one program does it right or wrong. I think there's a program for everyone. And that's the, you know, the best part of having such a vast industry is having all these options, which could be daunting for people that are searching for treatment, gift of recovery.com. But I think, I think a couple of my favorite parts of our program are first and foremost is our culture. I I built and have grown Avery Lane in a way where selfishly and not selfishly, I wanted a place where I would love coming to work every day, love the people that I work with, treat them as family, closest friends. And everyone kind of treats each other that way. It's kind of just trickled down, which is beautiful. I have these conversations with my managers and directors throughout the week where they're, you know, having the same conversations that I have with them, I hear them having with their, with their teams. And it's created an environment where there's where there's support, there's respect and trust. And when something happens, when when a crisis ensues, there's like a you see a flock of people coming together to help that situation. You don't see anyone on the sidelines saying, I'm not doing that. That's not my job.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

I love it.

SPEAKER_05 16:00

And then I think our our trauma program, I'm always proud of. I'm not a clinician. I knew pretty, pretty early into my education that I didn't want to become a therapist. I really like supporting the people that support our people. And I think that, you know, from the beginning, I wanted to bring in modalities that we don't usually see in treatment. You know, people are still relapsing after treatment. I really wanted to make a difference in that. And our chief clinical officer today was actually our founding clinical director 10 years ago. And part of why I partnered with her to bring her into Avery Lane was because her mind is brilliant and she constantly thinks that question of what else is possible? What else is what else can I not thinking of right now that can dramatically change, you know, the next step that I take here. So she had this incredible repertoire of all these different modalities, energy psychology, conscious recovery, and a lot of those modalities that spoke to me personally in my own recovery. So it's, you know, it's been fun over the years, kind of being a guinea pig in those different modalities. Brain spotting is a huge one. And being able to track our outcomes to see when we make those small tweaks, like train our entire team, clinical team, on brain spotting, and then watch what happens in our outcomes and see how it has benefited so many women and led to their recovery becoming much more stronger when they leave our program. That's been very cool. So, but I can brag about Avery Lane all day long.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Yeah, no, it's not bragging at all. I I I love the sound of your program. You're very open-minded and innovative. And I love studying psychology. I was a psych undergrad and I did a graduate program in positive psychology. I also have an MBA. I love where business meets psychology, organizational behavior. And my favorite business strategy management guy is Peter Drucker. And he has a quote, culture eats strategy for breakfast, right? So he's saying it's all about the people that you have on your team. You talked about culture first. Does that correlate with low turnover on your staff?

SPEAKER_05 18:20

I mean, I think so. I also really think as a young woman entering a CEO position, I've loved just kind of supporting these other women into leadership positions. So most of our leadership team are people that, you know, like my executive director is a great example. She started as a recovery counselor, a tech position, and she worked her way up into that ED role. Our director of operations, my first employee, has, you know, worked her way up. But so being able to mentor these young women and kind of breaking that ceiling of like, you know, when I entered this space, there wasn't a lot of women in leadership positions. Now when I look around into a conference room, I see female CEOs everywhere. And it's so cool. So being able to kind of, you know, share that with my team is really great. But at the end of the day, it's an invitation. So we're not for everyone on the client side, we're not for everyone on the staff side. Working in treatment is really hard. And we go above and beyond for our clients. And if someone feels like, you know, maybe this isn't the right fit for me, that's okay. Sure. Okay. But I think we invite people to bring in their creativity, bring in their their yearn to grow personally and while also professionally too.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

It warms my heart to hear that you have a team of people that grew and learned together.

SPEAKER_05 19:49

Just like I did.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

100%. And acknowledging that what we're doing is hard. And a reminder that what we're signing up for is very difficult, and it's not for everyone. So that said, entrepreneurship is really, really challenging. The every organization goes through real challenges. I like to look at them as like chapters or seasons. Could you talk about a hard chapter or a difficult season that you've had to go through?

SPEAKER_05 20:22

Yeah, absolutely. I think the the biggest one that comes to mind is the most recent, which was COVID. When COVID hit, I think no one was prepared. No one had the playbook of how do we do this? I remember like talking to other programs locally. I'm like, what are you guys doing? And some were a little bit more cautious. Some were a little bit like, oh, we're not going to shut down. We're fine. We were probably one of the last like outpatient programs that went virtually just because we were trying to hold on for that human connection as long as humanly possible. But I remember like working at residential, it was like, it was, you know, everyone struggled during that time, in and out of the treatment industry. It was very apocalyptic. We were striving for a human connection that we weren't allowed to have. I am very grateful that I still had the opportunity to go to a place to work every day because just being cooped up at home, I would have had a really hard time. But I, you know, I remember being like holed up in the house, one of our residential houses at the time. I was doing overnight shifts. It was kind of like an all hands-on-deck type of experience because not only our clients were needing the support, but our staff were too. Everyone was needing that support. A lot of our staff were either immunocompromised or lived in a home where they couldn't risk working in healthcare. So yeah, it was, it was it was really tough. I'm not cut out for overnight shifts. I'm not nocturnal. But I think it was like in those types of moments, it really brings a team together. And basically, Able to remind us, like, if we could get through this, we can get through anything. But throughout all of our like, we've had, you know, peaks and valleys throughout the years. And as being like the sole founder, and I have never done doing done this before, I think a challenge that I've had over the years is just how do we how do we grow while, you know, still keeping the essence of Avery Lane and little things. Like, I remember when we went in 2023, we went from two residential houses of 12 beds total, 14 beds total, to adding a third substance abuse house to go to 20 beds, and then adding our first primary mental health residential, which started at six beds. So going from a small program to a larger organization, I had never done that before. And just trying to figure out what our org chart should look like was so complicated. And I'm, you know, extremely lucky to have so many other friends that work in the industry where I could pick up the phone and be like, I am really struggling and I don't know what to do. What would you recommend? And having that ability to just like be vulnerable and say, like, I'm flailing.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Next question was gonna be who can you lean on in those scenarios, in those situations? I think we people in long-term recovery who work a 12-step program have an advantage because we were taught when you're struggling, pick up the phone. Right. So you've got some industry colleagues that you can lean that you can lean on.

SPEAKER_05 23:40

I think, you know, being being in recovery, I just celebrated 15 years last year. I think it we definitely have that in our back pocket. But I've seen so many times just working in the industry, a lot of friends that have, you know, I've met in the rooms, get jobs, work their way up in treatment. But when they start having a hard time, they're not calling and asking for help.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

They're not practicing these principles in all their affairs.

SPEAKER_05 24:07

They're not, but it's also it's hard because we, when you need help, all of a sudden you're breaking that boundary of I'm a professional having this conversation. And now I'm a human being. When I'm supposed to show our my community that I have everything together.

SPEAKER_02 24:25

Right.

SPEAKER_05 24:26

And I'm not a perfect human, but I'm also the sole founder. And I am the captain of this giant ship now. And when anything happens in our in our world, in our organization, however big or small, I have to show up and be like, we have, we have this, guys. We got this. And it's not easy to hold that weight alone. And I've seen a lot of leaders, including in my in my past treatment experience, where I saw them crumble, I saw them relapse. And that was one of the first lessons when I opened was I cannot put Avery Lane, I cannot put my position before my recovery. My recovery has to be first and foremost. But a lot of times, like we lose sight of that. We get busy, we work 60 hour plus weeks. The job that we have, it, you know, takes a lot of energy. So, but from the beginning, I was like, I need to have like five to 10 people on my, you know, speed dial list that if anything happens, if or if I need support, I can call them. And I also have people in my life that will like tell me, hey, you need to call those people because I might be missing those yellow flags or red flags and just like, you know, white knuckling my way through. But I think it's like, I think it's hard to ask for help. And I think it's easy for us to say to our clients, just ask for help. And I think it's harder for people that work in treatment to say, hey, I need help.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

Yeah, it, it, it's uh part of my uh disease was the uh lack of awareness of how to ask for help. Vulnerability was something that just didn't exist, and it's a superpower of being able to acknowledge I need help. Uh I'm we're blessed here at recovery.com. We have a board of directors, which includes our co-founders, our investors. I'm an observer, so I get to sit in on that, and then we have a separate advisory council, which is nine people. I built that out. Uh, we meet quarterly, and these people I can reach out to anytime. One of the recurring themes we have on uh recovery reach is a feeling of loneliness at the top. And it's something that it's it's not a good place. Uh and I get to talk to a lot of these people. It sounds like you use your tool set quite well. I want to go back personally a little bit. Congrats on 15 years, amazing, getting sober at 17. So did you run with the wrong crowd? Like junior high. Tell me a little bit about how you got there.

SPEAKER_05 27:09

Yeah, I feel like I'm like the quintessential alcoholic where I was born. And like the minute I took my first breath, it was like game over. So I I definitely had that addictive personality. I have, you know, addiction and mental health through both sides of my family. But and I was a normal kid. I, you know, born in San Francisco, grew up in Marin County, grew up in a nice area, two loving family, two loving parents. And I think that I always had that sense of loneliness. Like I had like, I was running around with an umbilical cord, just trying to plug it in somewhere. And when I was 12, 13, I was introduced to alcohol and drugs. And I finally put my umbilical core, plugged it, plugged myself in somewhere where I was like, oh, this is the thing. I finally feel like I can fit in. I finally feel a sense of belonging. But my my reason for existing drugs and alcohol quickly became the thing that was slowly killing me. So I don't think it was a crowd thing. I think it was truly just like me, my biology, genetics, you know.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Um you believe you you you think you were born with this?

SPEAKER_05 28:22

I think so.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 28:23

I think so.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

Yeah. I do too. Some of us I think are predisposed, and and there are some people that I think have it and also work their way into it. Did you have uh uh do you recall a moment of clarity? This has to stop. It's amazing. 17 years old, right?

SPEAKER_05 28:40

Like it wasn't by choice.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Yeah. So did your parents chip you off one time, several times? How did that go?

SPEAKER_05 28:49

Yeah. So I was living at with my dad at the time, and I remember one of my last drunks. I came, I came home from a party where I had completely embarrassed myself. And I remember like waking my dad up in the middle of the night and saying, I gotta get out of here. Like that something's something's wrong. I can't, I can't be here anymore. My one of my cousins had just completed suicide. My grandmother passed away a week later. And I just, I just wanted out. I was not, I was not okay. And the night that I graduated high school, go to sleep at my dad's house. And in the middle of the night, I'm woken up by both my parents and two random strangers. And they said, You're gonna go away for a while. And then everything went white. Like, I don't remember anything that was said after that. I just remember, like, there was like a buzzing in my ear, people were shuffling, my parents all of a sudden were gone, and I was left alone with these two random women that were going to take me somewhere. I have no idea. I had no idea where. So, being a rebel teenage kid, I was basically dragged, kicking and screaming through the Oakland airport, got on the plane. They basically said anything and everything just to get me on that plane. One of which was, well, when you get to where you're going, you're gonna be able to talk to a therapist and they'll determine if you actually need it. And I'm like, I got this. I know what to say to get me out of this. But I knew there was a part of me that was like, something's wrong and I need help. But anytime someone tried to threaten my reason for existence, which was the drugs and alcohol, I blew up. I was pissed. I became territorial protective. I didn't want anyone to touch it. I ended up getting dropped in a in an adolescent wilderness program. And I was, you know, city girl dropped in the dirt with no, no understanding, no concept of what time of day it was, no knowledge of how long we were gonna be there for. You basically had no distractions apart from you just had to sit and deal with your shit. And then the therapist would determine when you got to leave. And I didn't find out that I was supposed to leave until the day I left.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

Wow. And you you've been sober since graduation, senior year in high school.

SPEAKER_05 31:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 31:26

So June 8th of 2011 was the day I graduated high school.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

Wow. That's amazing. I did do you obviously a tremendous transformational experience there. And and do you remember having an aware, like, I wanna I want that to be done. I'm gonna live a different life.

SPEAKER_05 31:46

Not when I was in treatment. I was not like the star student in treatment. I was probably like, if if my therapist were to like group who had the worst prognosis, I'd be at the front of the line. They wanted me to stay longer, but because I was turning 18 and I would have had to move to an adult group, and that would have been disruptive to my disruptive to my treatment episode. But I remember at one point I was on during during wilderness, you do like a like an independent uh camp at one point. So they put me, you know, a little bit off site of camp, out of eye, eye shot and earshot, and for a few days. And it was just me in the middle of wilderness. And I remember sitting there at one point and watching the sunset on like beautiful desert in Utah, and I could feel my eyes and my sight come from behind my head where someone else was steering my body to like the forefront. And I could like all of a sudden I was like looking at my legs, looking at my hands and my fingers, and almost meeting my body for the first time since like I first picked up. But it wasn't until it wasn't until I left wilderness and moved directly into sober living that I was introduced to the 12 steps and this idea where you know sobriety was a thing. But my therapist did give me a book called Addictive Thinking in Wilderness. He's like, I think you should check this book out, which was great because no one was going to tell me that I was an alcoholic or an addict when I was there. But when I read about what your brain does as an addict, it all made sense.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

Yeah, that's amazing. Wow. I got like chills when you shared that story about uh, I think an awakening or an and I feel like you are so blessed that you found, I think, God's will for you so early is to do exactly the kind of work that you're doing. I'm gonna bring it back to our field. I like to call behavioral health a field rather than an industry uh because we're dealing with humans. So kind of an odd question here. Anything that you think is overrated in our field, and anything that you think is underrated.

SPEAKER_05 34:14

I think, you know, I've seen a lot of changes over the you know 14 years that I've worked in this field. And I think one thing that has become underrated is just human connection. I think it's when I first started having to market Avery Lane, I hated it. I hated like going up to people and be like, hi, how are you? I'm great. How are you? Do you like the weather? How long are you staying for? You know, having those routine conversations that of questions that you pull out of your back pocket that are like, you know, what you what you say at conferences, that kind of stuff, I hated it. I loved like getting to the meat of and the potatoes. Like when I connect with someone that's in recovery, you know, I find my brother, I find my sister. When I find someone that is in recovery but also works in treatment.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

I I I could not agree with you more. And I'm think back to uh Johan Hari's TED Talk. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it's connection. And and that's what we're designed for is doing this together. And uh you're doing that. Thank you. Uh any advice that you received that turned out to be wrong.

SPEAKER_05 35:34

I think when I when I started, I was 23, 24, young woman, very naive. And there wasn't a lot of women in leadership positions. So I got a lot of unsolicited advice for men that had been in the industry for like 30 plus years. And we were surrounded by big corporations. We were one of the only privately owned facilities. So I got I got treated like the cute little girl with the cute little program.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

Hey kid.

SPEAKER_05 36:03

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Uh oh, we won't see you in six months.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

Right.

SPEAKER_05 36:07

So a lot of it was like, I just wanted to prove them wrong.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

Yeah, I love it. I really did. Yeah. It probably uh yeah, great inspiration. Thank you for doubting me. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 36:18

Exactly. I think I wish that someone were to tell me back then, don't listen to those fuckers. You know, just just keep going. If you have a dream, if you, you know, are sitting in that seat and you just know you're supposed to be doing what you're doing, just fucking go for it.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Well, I think you, I don't know if you identify it as this, but it's totally what I'm hearing is like you trusted a higher power. Is that is that accurate? Right? Like you just knew this is what I'm doing. Yeah. And earlier you shared that, you know, when you're young, right? Like, like that, that is a gift. Like, I don't care what I don't know. I'm doing this because there's people that I have to serve.

SPEAKER_05 37:04

There is this un unknowing, undeniable like truth of like, this is what I'm meant to do.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

Totally. I love it. Yeah, it's why you were put here.

SPEAKER_02 37:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:16

Uh and not like I think most people never realize God's will for them. Unfortunately, some of us, I would put myself in that category. I think I got it late, right? 48 years old. I got sober, realized, okay, I haven't been doing the work that was intended for me. When I see young people get it, it's just so amazing. And I think there's a courage. I have three sons. My oldest son is on a path that was just like he figured it out. He's an assistant college basketball coach, and he's 23 years old. He just kind of said a number of years ago, this is what I'm doing. And people are like, What? And he did it. And it was a very, very odd path that he took. And I got to be a witness of him being true. I love when you get a coin to thine own self be true. Right. And and I think you've done that as much as I've heard. You you are so inspiring. I'm really glad we got this time together. One more question. What do you think more behavioral health care leaders should be thinking about for the future?

SPEAKER_05 38:28

I think one thing that's helped me show up on those days that are harder or those like seasons that feel unbearable is reconnecting to my why and remembering that 23-year-old girl that said, I just want to help one person. And I think that it's common to lose that original why working in this space. We get distracted by a lot of things, a lot of shiny things, a lot of like, you know, futures that could be promised. But I think one thing that I've seen a lot is people just becoming disconnected to we're treating humans, we are helping humans, we're helping people. And please don't forget that.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

So I think that is a perfect way for us to wrap up today. Thank you. So that this has been wonderful. I wish we had more time together. Thank you so much for being here today.

SPEAKER_05 39:30

Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.