Business Innovators Radio - Jim Mortensen - President of R3 Continuum

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

Jim Mortensen is the President of R3 Continuum and received the prestigious EY 2023 Entrepreneur of the Year award. A global leader in behavioral health and security solutions, R3C aids in your workplace well-being by providing crisis prevention, specialized consulting, evaluations, leadership support, employee outreach, and more. Jim shares about his experience as a corporate leader and R3C national impact when crises arise.Learn more:https://r3c.com/There’s an old adage that says you should pay your fair share of taxes but not a penny more. We believe that to be true.We help business owners and high-income earners realize their savings by deploying time-tested tax strategies with decades of case law to back it up.Each strategy must pass through our sift of being legal, moral, and ethical.Get your complementary analysis to see how much you overpay on an annual basis. Click the link below to schedule your complimentary analysis.Learn More: https://www.stratnavinc.com/Schedule Call: https://www.navigatesni.com/NAVIGATEhttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/navigateSource: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/jim-mortensen-w-r3-continuum

They are getting people to these sites to help them in times of need. And I thought, that's why people are so loyal. It's the most mission-driven company I've ever seen. And he ran into one of the clinicians, and the clinician lives in the Lahaina area. And after like three days, mentioned that her house had been completely wiped out by the fires. And he said, you never even told us that. And she said, that's because I'm not a victim and I'm here to help. And I didn't want you guys to think I couldn't be helping.

Welcome to the Navigate podcast with strategic navigators where we save entrepreneurs 40 to 60% on their income taxes. We're your host, Mitch Salanti. And I'm Adam Durson. Today's episode will highlight an industry leader in Midwest. From the great Midwest state of Minnesota, we have president of R3 continuum, Jim Mortison. Jim, welcome on. Thanks, Adam. Glad to be here. Thank you. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you, Jim? Yeah, I'm the president, as you mentioned, of R3 Continuum. We're a specialized behavioral health company focusing on helping the behavioral health of employees.

So as we all hear now, it's become much more well-known how challenged people are, mental health and how important it is for workplaces to support mental health of their employees. And that's really the area we play in, if you will. Now, when I hear R3C, is that three R's, three C's, what is the continuum part? Tell us a little bit about the company name. There's an idea. The history of the name, it used to be we were three different companies that were owned by the same owner. and our tagline was ready, respond, recover.

And it was all around kind of the human piece of crisis response and disaster recovery. So when you hear disaster recovery, it's typically about recovering your facilities, recovery in your IT. We focused on helping your people recover. So it was being ready for a crisis, responding to a crisis and recovery. When we pulled the three groups together and made one name out of it, we just said, well, how about our three continuum? It's a continuum of services across behavioral health.

Yeah. And protect, like you said, protecting your most valuable asset, you know, the people, right? And it's the one most people in their disaster recovery plans don't think about. Very nice. So give us an idea. What did R3C look like when you got started? And how did you get started? Well, that's interesting because I actually interviewed for a job at one of the three divisions here in Minneapolis, about three years before I started at the company.

So I didn't get the first job I applied for. But I was really interested in what it was this company did because I remember in one of the interviews, One of the clinicians told me, and they were doing a work on disability insurance and determining whether somebody's really disabled or not and feeding that information to the insurer, right? And her comment was that they believe in the healthy aspects of work. And their job was when somebody was injured or was having mental health problems to determine whether they could go back. to work or not. And if they were capable of returning to work, our job was to help them return. And if they weren't, our job was to help them get the benefits to compensate them for not being able to work anymore. And I just really believed in that whole concept. So I kept paying

attention to the company. And off and on, I connect with the then president of that division. and we never quite found the right time for me to move over. And then one day the company I was working for was being sold, and I connected up with her. And, you know, I knew she needed that same position filled again. And she walked in for the coffee and announced she had just put her two-week notice in. Oh, no. About a week later, she called me up and asked if I wanted to be introduced to her boss

as a potential replacement for her. So I ended up actually replacing her three years after she didn't hire me. Okay. Full circle. Yeah. So quite the process of getting involved with R3C. Longer story than you were expecting there. No, that's great.

Everyone's got a different beginning. Yeah. That's a great. So I was curious, did R3C, you know, like you hear a lot of great businesses start out of somebody's basement or, you know, a garage or something like that. Is this, do you know the history? how it very first started. Well, and each facet of it started a different way.

The company I started in was called Behavioral Medical Interventions, and they were really in the disability insurance space doing reviews of complex cases. And that started up as a lot of those companies did. A clinician founded the company because these disability reviews had just come into into play, and insurance companies needed an unbiased outside review of the claim. And in particular, behavioral health is a difficult disability to diagnose and confirm. I mean, if you've got a broken leg, I can look at an x-ray and verify whether you have a broken leg.

It's very tough to determine whether you have major depressive disorder. So that requires a great deal of specialty, and he built this company where we would have independent clinicians who could review cases and provide input into the insurance company. So that's how that company started. The company we have in Michigan was called Crisis Care International, and they do response at the workplace when something disruptive. has happened. It used to be called crisis intervention. Now it's called disruptive event management. So something happens in the workplace that throws people off and it challenges them. So it could be a death of a co-worker. It could be a mass layoff. It could be a robbery. It could be the wildfires in Maui. It could be a school shooting, all of those things. They send counselors in

to help people through it. It used to be viewed as a way to prevent PTSD. Now it's really viewed as when something like traumatic happens, you typically get better. So the job of our clinician is to go in and help you tap into your natural resilience and get better, faster, and return to your new normal. We do about 2,500 responses a month somewhere in the States. So I'm assuming you did respond to the wildfires in Lahaina then, right? Yes, absolutely. I want to ask another question kind of relating back to all that. I was looking at all the things that R3s responded to, all these past events. And there's some huge ones here.

There's Deepwater Horizon. There's Sandy Hook, Hurricane Katrina 9-11, like some of the worst things that have happened in recent history in the United States. And one that I particularly want to ask about is the Boston bombing because you started working at R3, what, two months before that? So what was that like to come on board? And that's an all-hands-on-deck situation. you know, a horrible event.

So I'm wondering what that was like for you to be the president when something like that happened. Well, yeah, at the Boston bombing, I was still more focused on the insurance side of the business. We haven't pulled all three of them together yet. So instead, I'll just talk about one of the plethora of other ones we've had like that. Yeah. Okay.

And what happens a lot of times, we call those large-scale events. And we largely view those as once the event is so large that the clinician community within the immediate area isn't big enough for the response. And we start pulling people in from other parts of the country. So maybe the best example I can think of is the Las Vegas shooting, right? Las Vegas is an area that is very short on clinicians. And for fairly obvious reasons, most of the clinicians in the Vegas area are trained in addiction, gambling addiction, alcohol addiction, etc. That's not the training that makes you capable of responding after a shooting. We had 80 clinicians on site giving the first responses by 8 o'clock in the morning of the shootings.

Wow. And another big example was the Houston Hurricane, which wiped out such a broad area. We had to bring people in from other parts of the country. Well, first of all, we had to find where we could land them, you know, what airports were open. Try to find hotels because in any of those big events, as you can imagine, the media grabs a lot of hotel rooms. FEMA grabs a lot of hotel rooms. it's tough to find hotel rooms. On top of it, you've got a lot of the hotels were wiped out. Then you've got to figure out how do you get cars? How do you get cars refit gas filled up?

How do you get people to the locations they need to be at? So there's just a ton of things that go on behind the scenes before you can even get a clinician on site to get there. So a lot of what we spend time on is we'll meet two, three times a day to find. out the demand's always shifting, we have to guess at how many clinicians will need on site, get them there, and start figuring out where we're going to have them respond. So we're just constantly looking at both the logistical issues and the clinical issues going on. The other thing with a large-scale event like that is the clinicians start becoming impacted by it, right? their scene of lots of things.

They need to kind of re-energize themselves. So in those large-scale events, we frequently send one of our own clinicians. And we have the clinician who I think justifiably say is the world's expert on these because he's been at all these events. We'll send him on site. And he's not necessarily giving support to the people directly impacted. Instead, he's gathering the clinicians together every night and helping them with what they're dealing with. Wow.

Leader of the leaders. Yeah, it really is. I mean, he was on site in Japan after the tsunami, you know, and nuclear power plant meltdown, etc. That whole thing. He was on site during that. And an earthquake happened while he was standing there as they were addressing. goodness. So, I mean, it's, it's, what I really feel good about is, while I, I'm not a clinician at all, I'm working for a company who at the end of the day is helping people after an event like that. You know, we all send our thoughts and prayers to people when something like that happens. And I think everybody in the country wants to, how can I help? I've, I've heard blood donations go up.

all over the country whenever something happens because people want to help. Well, we get to help. Our business is to help during that. And that I get to feel good about that. I feel horrible that these things happen so often. And I have to kind of remind myself that, yeah, they would happen whether we were in business or not. It's just fortunate we're around to help out and help people recover. That's a powerful statement. I think a lot of of people, I'll be appreciative to hear that. Jim, I do have a question that's a little close to the heart for you. Was there a specific case or situation that was kind of like an aha moment or just made you realize this is why I do what I do?

They happen quite often. I'll tell you, I don't know if this actually answers your question or not, but what I've always felt in my career, is it's important to me what the company does, not just what I do. You can do a lot of great work in companies that don't do anything of real value to the world, but it means so much more no matter what I do in this company when I know what the end result of what we're doing is. Actually, here's the one I'll tell you about. I mentioned that crisis response is anchored in Michigan.

The first time I ever visited our Michigan office, the then-president of that division was giving us a tour of the building. And on the main hallway that every employee walks by on their way into work and on their way out of work is pictures from 9-11, Hurricane Katrina, Sandy Hook, California wildfires, all of these different events that have happened are all pictures of them on the wall. And I immediately thought, this is why these people come to work each day. It isn't about the answer the phone or they do the accounting or they recruit clinicians.

They are getting people to these sites to help them in times of need. And I thought, that's why people are so loyal. It's the most mission-driven company I've ever seen. And we have incredibly loyal employees, not because of any pay system we have, but because of what we do, how we help people in times of great need. And I think that's what really resonated for me. That's when I knew this was the company I was going to stay with until I retired. Wow. I'm so encouraged to hear that.

I think it's really helpful for anyone who's probably engaging with, you know, your clinicians and anyone with R3. I'm sure they already know, okay, this person's here because they care. But for that to go all the way to the top, that's just not necessarily super common amongst, you know, big corporations. So I, for one, and I know Adam agrees with this. You know, I'm encouraged to hear about that. I want to hear about some challenges that you face in your role and you're starting to, I smile when I say that I'm sure you experience a lot and you were just going into the logistics earlier about all the people you have by 8 a.m. the next morning after a disaster. I can't even

imagine how you get 80 people to, you know, Maui, for example, after these fires. Like, what do you, what does it look like to these challenges that you face and how do you overcome them? Well, you overcome them by having, first of all, our network is incredibly loyal. And I will tell you that after some of these big events, while we're reaching out to clinicians to find out if they're available, they're actually reaching out to us to say they're available. We had a counselor in Maui who talked to Jeff. We sent Jeff from Michigan to Maui to help out. And he ran in one of the clinicians and the clinician lives in the Lahaina area and after like three days mentioned that her house had been completely wiped out by the fires and he said you never even

told us that and she said that's because I'm not a victim and I'm here to help and I didn't want you guys to think I couldn't be helping so when you start with clinicians like that who who are so dedicated to what it is we do. And this is just, this is a side gate for them. They're on contract with us. So they drop their normal work to go do this work. And I get it. This is probably the highest level thing you can do as a clinician.

So it's very valuable to them. And we actually tell them to let their, if they're in private practice, let their clients know that they're signed up for this. So if they have to cancel something at the last minute, it's not because, you know, they need a day off. It's because they're helping people in need. So when you start with that and then our internal people who just are wholly committed to fill every case that ever comes in, you can get a lot done when you've got those two things working for you. And we just come together.

And part of it, too, the one thing I try to add to it is, There are things that we have to take risks on. So we send clinicians in when we don't have demand yet. And we're guessing at how many. And what we always do is guess a little high because I don't want to end up without clinicians there. And what I have to make people comfortable with is I know we may end up spending more money than we need to. And that's okay. We're going to guess at this.

We're going to be wrong because there's no way we can guess the correct number. We take our best shot and we adjust as we go. And I think that's what I have to do is take risk off of the people who know what they're doing so that they can do their best work without fear. Wow. The first word that comes to mind is dedication. I think that's an understatement of your clinicians and just your overall workforce. That's fantastic.

Well, we all know this. You've got a group of people who are dedicated to some goal. It's amazing what you can accomplish. Because you stop looking at barriers as ways to stop you. And you instead look at that as, okay, how do we figure this out? Was that ever hard for you as the president to know that, especially when you started to know that you're sending more people than, you know, there might be demand for? Or was that just instantly for you in your head, this is how I'm going to do things? We're making sure that we meet every need at these situations.

Well, I'll tell you, I'm not going to take credit for that on my own. I'll take credit for continuing that, but that was core to the culture the moment I walked in the door, and I could tell. So my challenge was to keep the core of what they do and figure out how to do more of it. And I sometimes talk about when I started, it was a huge clinical practice with a thin veneer of business. and my job was to maintain the clinical efficacy while adding a lot more business acumen on top of it. And what I had to make sure people understood is we're not abandoning the core of who we are.

We're figuring out ways to do it better. And one of the core things in our on-site response has always been that we feel absolutely every case. and I would have some people ask me about that. Well, sometimes we fill a case where we're paying the clinician more than what we're getting in revenue. Why would we do that? And I said, well, you know, from a cultural standpoint, it's because we fill every case. And if you want to talk about it from a business standpoint, our clients know we fill every case.

And the money we lose on one case is more than overcome by the brand image of we never let a case go on. felt. And the idea of having too many resources for a short period of time in a disaster, that fits perfectly in the culture of we've got to make sure we don't leave people unserved. So I guess what I will take credit for is I didn't violate the culture that existed when I walked in the door. No, you did not. That's well said. Yeah. I have a question for you, Jim. Yeah. Just kind of switching gears, getting a little Dusty in here, my eyes are watering a little bit. A client's process from tip to tail.

Do you guys, for listeners that may be interested or want to learn more, does somebody reach out to you or are you guys first response to when a disaster hits or is it a little bit of both? What's a client's process? So in the response arena, our primary vehicle for this happening is through what's called employee assistance programs or EAPs. Nearly every large employer in the United States has an EAP. And EAPs exist to provide counseling support, finance support, law support,

lots of ranges of supports through an 800 number for employees. One of the biggest services that an EAP offers is on-site response after something disruptive happens. most of the EAPs in the United States outsource that to R3. And we do it largely as a white label solution. So people don't know that we're R3 when we're on site. They think we're this EAP or that EAP or the other EAP, but it's all. So the typical response, what happens is something happens in the workplace. Probably their HR department calls their EAP, says,

here's what happened. The EAP talks them through what kind of response they should have. The EAP calls us. And in some cases, within two hours, we will be on site. So our service level for bank robberies is within two hours. We will have a clinician on site dressed to the dress code of that bank, helping the tellers and the people who just had a robbery get through what just happen. And that's because banks don't want to close after a robbery. They don't want the impression that, wow, they're out of money, you know. So that's how it works on that. And some of our other services, we have counseling and performance coaching for senior executives. So there, it's more of a classic clinical practice, but we've created an elite group of people who

are used to dealing with executives and executives' mental health issues. And the executive will call us within four to eight hours, we will have assigned a clinician that meets exactly what they're asking for in terms of gender, racial profile, experience, therapeutic approach, etc. And within 24 hours, they'll hear from a clinician. And within a week, we will follow up to make sure it's a good fit. So a very high-end, high-touch experience to make sure we're dealing with the mental health aspects of their lives. I'm glad you touched on the executive leadership, because that was a question I really wanted to ask you. I saw one of your interviews with CBS News and when you were awarded the EY Entrepreneur of the Year. We want to talk about that a little bit later.

a question or a quote from that that you had, if I remember right, you were talking about a study or a poll that was done where upwards of 70% of executive leadership was considering walking away because of mental health and stress. Can you talk a little more about that and how you help a lot of those intervals overcome? That's a crazy number. So a few of my thoughts are executives and their families have the same mental health challenges and issues that the rest of us in the world have. The difference is they don't interact with services the same way that everybody else does. So they need high flexibility, they need immediate turnaround, they need a complete anonymity because one of the fears that executives have is that they will appear weak. And if they're in a highly competitive arena, they're worried that they will become, fall behind their peers, right?

So they tend not to access mental health capabilities. What surprised me is the numbers show that not only do they have the same amount, they actually have more mental health issues than the general public. And they're more likely to not seek help. and to the point you made Adam, the thing I quoted from, that 70% of them are considering quitting their jobs. Now, when you think of the type A person that's your stereotypical executive, the last thing in the world they want to do is walk away from their job. That tells you just how much they're hurting. So I think a lot of times we don't have a lot of empathy for people who are at that level and appear that successful and are, driving really nice cars and stuff. But there's a lot of suffering going on there too. And

we're just trying to create a service that helps them in a way that they feel comfortable accessing the service. Jim, I want to have you close us out with this. You know, you talked about, you want to be with R3 for the rest of your career, that you knew that from the very start, your first day there. Can you share with us what you want this to look like when you're, you're retired and when you're done, how do you want the culture to carry on? Because it sounds like that was a big deal for you. It was carrying on what was already in place. What do you want R3 to look like?

How do you see it scaling? I'm just curious what your vision is for it overall, you know, in the next 5, 10, 20 plus years. Yeah. The way I'd frame it, Mitch, is that, and I talk about this a lot, that I'm, I'm thrilled and proud of the people. We actually are our primary metric we track is the number of lives impacted. And when we impact a life, it's a big impact. So I think, I think in, after the Vegas shooting, we impacted two or three thousand lives within the next 48 hours or so. And I feel very proud of that. And there's, there's amazing things we did there. At the same time, I'm almost

haunted by the fact that there were 12,000 people who attended that concert, most of whom hopped on a plane and flew home and didn't get any service. And we impact something around 250,000 lives a year. There's a lot more lives than that that need our help. And my legacy and what I want to pass on is our continued drive to find ways to help more of the people that are impacted every day. So that's been my goal all along is how do we take what's really working and help more people and help more people and help more people. Well, that's amazing. Thank you so much for coming on, for sharing your story, for sharing your heart,

for sharing the hearts of everyone affiliated with R3C. it's, I mean, I know Adam can agree with me on this. I'm super inspired. The thing that keeps going off in my head that I keep thinking about is the clinician you talked about in Maui who said, I'm not a victim. I'm here to help. How can I help? That's amazing. And keep up the great work. You're impacting. You set a quarter of million lives a year. And I can only imagine that, you know, your impact is even beyond what you realize. with each of those people because that impacts their family, their spouses, their friends so much. So thank you so much again for coming on. And thank you for sharing all that. Thank you, Mitch and Adam. Thanks for listening to Navigate.

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