Ellie Mental Health Locations Spreading Like Wildfire

by Elizabeth Denham

Over the last 15 years, Erin Pash’s work experience in local government and nonprofits led her to co-found Ellie Mental Health to bring more creativity and fill gaps in the mental health community. With the state of the world as it is with a global pandemic, political polarization, school shootings and multitudes of other stressors, it is almost unsurprising that the Ellie Mental Health franchise is experiencing growth.

What is surprising, is just how quickly the business is growing. Over the last six years, Ellie grew to 18 locations throughout Minnesota and provided services for more than 20,000 families. But here is the kicker -- in the last six months, the business has expanded nationally through franchising and in six months has sold more than 250 locations in 27 states. Why is this growth happening? A combination of a new take on an old system and good timing.

A New Take on an Old System

“While there was no way we could have foreseen how great the need would be right now, I was excited to start my practice back in 2015 because I could see the way people were experiencing mental health,” Pash said. “There has always been a stigma around psychotherapy, and it has been plagued with the stigma that you can’t talk about your feelings, you can’t share your weaknesses. I felt like we could really do some cool things to shake up the industry to help destigmatize this thing that I love so much and so near and dear to my heart.”

Pash noted that Ellie Mental Health has a new approach to therapy. They try to bring humor and creativity and authenticity to the practice. They embrace compassion and put these qualities together to make mental health feel more relatable.

“Out of the gate in 2015, we were blown away by our success,” she said. “I was prepared that growth would be slow, and we would fall on our faces a lot. We did fall on our faces a lot, but we had no time to wallow! We just had to get up and keep running in this race as mental health became more popular and we saw tremendous growth with our new approach in an age-old industry. We had people actually getting excited about mental health and therapy!”

Before the pandemic, it could be a struggle to get people into the office for appointments until they had learned about their different approaches, Pash mentioned. And with the pandemic, they were worried about getting people to participate in telehealth because people are less trustful of online security. But their team was able to get patients online within four days of the shutdown, and they were surprised at how well it went.

“The pandemic forced us all online, and that helped destigmatize telehealth and it actually reduced our no-show rates significantly and eliminated several barriers to attendance – having to leave work, sick kids, etc.,” Pash said. “So, now we have these two ways of doing therapy.”

Pash noted that the pandemic also reinforced some conclusions drawn in a study about human connection and how badly we need it.

“Human beings care more about belonging to other human beings than we care about survival,” Pash said. “What the pandemic did was isolate us and made us lose that connection or sense of belonging. Many of us realized that we didn’t necessarily need to be mentally ill to realize that we needed help. We have all been navigating this thing that we have never had to deal with before and we have become lonelier.”

Pash marveled at the increase in Elle’s waitlist over the pandemic. They went from 20 or 30 on the list to now more than 1,000. Seventy percent of those are children between the ages of 5 and 17.

Strategic Scaling During Rapid Growth

Pash believes that one of the things that make Ellie unique is that they look for the right personalities in their franchisee but also that they have created a desirable employee experience.

“While there is a shortage of therapists in general,” Pash said. “We capture a majority of them – we don’t really have a problem hiring. We do have to calculate the number of offices we open in areas based on the market and on therapist pools. We are working hard to be smart and strategic.”

She also noted that she and her partner and co-founder, Kyle Keller tend to be fiscally riskaverse. When they started off, they didn’t take money from an investment company. They didn’t want to be a nonprofit. They grew and scaled by working hard and paying for it as they went. They started off seeing 40 clients per week, and half of every paycheck went back into the business.

We are changing the culture of mental health treatment.

Pash noted that they add locations at the rate they can support them, and they hire and train so that they are prepared well ahead of the need.

“We are only as good as the support we can give our brand and as we can fulfill our promises and support our values and mission.”

Pash is excited about the growth of her business and looks forward to everything to come. “I love getting to make a difference not only in the lives of our clients but also in the lives of our franchisees.”

To learn more about Ellie Mental Health, visit https://elliementalhealth.com/.

Ellie Mental Health’s Philosophy

Ellie Mental Health strives to give mental health care a much-needed facelift. The reality is that life can be really hard, and the last thing anyone needs is to feel weak or less than when you’re struggling. It’s okay to not be okay.

Their goal is to make getting mental health care the norm. And while they know that going to therapy and being vulnerable with someone you just met can seem scary, they do everything they can to make each session as comfortable and fun as possible. As your professional secret keepers, they aim to walk along this journey with their patients and provide them with a safe place to talk, decompress, and heal.