Small Business Success Awards 2005

· Stockton SBDC
Jacki Zipes
Association for Life Enhancement
Northfield
609-569-1144
www.eapale.com

Associates for Life Enhancement (ALE) contracts with employers to provide direct services to promote their employees’ mental and emotional health and deal with problems that affect their lives and work. The company works with casinos and municipalities as well as business of all sizes on a range of issues from dealing with divorce to loss or substance abuse problems.

Owner Jacki Zipes, LCSW, CEAP, MAC, met with SBDC Regional Director Joseph Molineaux in December 2004 at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Jacki’s main interest was to discuss marketing strategies for her 20-year-old company. Working closely with Joe, the company engaged in a two-tiered marketing approach, which targeted the general public as well as employers. Strategies developed resulted in a combination of low-cost and no-cost marketing options, along with targeted well-placed traditional marketing methods (advertising) to help grow ALE’s existing market share. These included speaking engagements at potential clients and industry associations on topics such as drug abuse and sexual harassment in industry; participation in articles in local newspapers about Employee Assistance Programs; and, outreach programs at churches and synagogues, to make individuals aware of ALE’s family therapy and reconstituted (step) family programs.

Despite Ms. Zipes’ success in building clientele over the last 20 years, she felt she needed individual mentoring on a number of other business issues.

Due to growth, ALE needed to add another counselor and they received guidance from Joe on structuring the position and developing recruitment strategies. There are currently five employees, including Ms. Zipes.

As a business retention strategy, Joe recommended that the company educate both the employer and the employees on the scope of the work and the comparison between their services and other options being considered. The desired result was to create advocates to preserve a municipal contract that was up for renewal. These employees became spokespeople for the service, going to City Council meetings, and encouraging the City to maintain the contract with ALE.

Joe also worked with Ms. Zipes on public relations strategies, recommending she write articles about the importance of mental health for local media. The visibility gained through her articles led to her being quoted in a newspaper story about a patient’s diagnosis on the reality television show, Intervention. Ms. Zipes, being the renowned and resident expert she is, offered her clinical diagnosis recommending hospitalization for a patient, who had mental health problems, rather than the type of intervention attempted on the show, which she described as “superficial.”