Small Business Showcase: Coastal Connecticut Counseling

Each month, we profile a Connecticut small business, showcasing the ingenuity and innovation driving the state’s economy. For September, we spoke with Alyssa Kolesar, owner of Coastal Connecticut Counseling, located in Southport and Milford.

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When was your company founded?

2016

How many employees work for your company?

55

Who are your customers?

Our customers are anyone looking for mental health support!

What makes your company unique?

The first thing I believe makes us unique is our Coastal family. Over the past couple of years our company culture has evolved into this beautiful support system for each other.

Working as a therapist (or as admin working alongside therapists) can be overwhelming at times and having the support of each other is crucial.

We truly care about each other, support each other and have fun with each other!

I have tried to run Coastal many different ways and the thing that I always come back to is always treating others the way I would want to be treated.

Another thing I believe makes Coastal unique is that I really try to model perseverance, resilience, and growth to my staff. I always want my staff to know that we can work through something and learn from it.

This is important for my staff to experience from me, as humility, empathy, and trust are the foundations for a relationship of learning and growing.

I believe Coastal is also unique because I run it from Charleston, South Carolina. In 2020, during a time when Coastal was fully remote, my family decided to take the leap and move to a warmer area where our two boys could be outside more often.

Being removed from the day to day, has allowed me to grow Coastal in ways I would have never been able to. I also know I would have never been able to do this without a supportive and dedicated staff.

What is a fun fact about your business or its history?

Coastal accepts insurance and offers financial assistance because of how my own therapist helped me when I needed support.

In 2005, my mother was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and I had a tough time helping care for her and managing her mood swings. I decided I needed a therapist to help me process this new reality.

I had health insurance, but it had a high deductible which meant that sessions would cost me between $175 and $250 per hour (depending on the therapist), which I could not afford.

Coastal accepts insurance and offers financial assistance because of how my own therapist helped me when I needed support.

It took me three years to find an amazing therapist who let me pay what I could afford, because she knew it was more important for me to get support than none at all.

Her kindness, compassion and empathy is the reason why Coastal accepts insurance and offers financial assistance.

I would not be where I am today without her support and it is important for me to keep paying it forward to help our community. 

Why did you choose Connecticut?

I was living in Connecticut so I wanted to start my practice in Connecticut. Now I live in Charleston, South Carolina so I run the business from down here.

It does take a village however, and I would not be able to do any of this without the support from my staff!

What is the greatest advantage to operating in Connecticut?

Connecticut is all I know.

How do you try to give back to your community? 

In addition to offering access to affordable mental health services, I also do a lot of advocacy work within Connecticut and on a federal level.

I have been advocating for mental health providers to be excluded from CONNIE (Connecticut Health Information Exchange), as there are a lot of personal and private things discussed between therapists and clients that another medical professional would not need to be privy to.

No one should even know your are in therapy unless you want them to, and CONNIE breaks that privilege. People with concerns about your private mental health information being shared without your consent to providers can opt out.

I also am a big advocate for college students to be able to continue to see their therapists across state lines for continuity of care. I spoke with News 12 to help educate people on this topic.

I am a big advocate for college students to be able to continue to see their therapists across state lines for continuity of care.

I also advocate for Medicaid and Medicare to increase accessibility for their members because there is a huge gap between who can access and afford therapy and who cannot.

We work with various school systems and provide professional development to educators. We also provide individual and group therapy during the school day to students who need support.

We participate in many local mental health events, such as the AFSP out of the darkness walk, and other community events such as the Milford Oyster Festival.

I also love to give back to the therapist community and we offer clinical trainings in various topics at reduced rates. We donate money to the Champions for Colorectal Cancer, local schools towards their music or art programs, and many others.

We are very active in the communities we serve locally and beyond! 

Where do you see your company in five years? Ten years?

All of the smaller mental health practices are struggling to keep up with the bigger private equity practices or clinics.

Owners are selling their private practices because it is becoming tougher and tougher as a small business to fight insurance companies for adequate reimbursement, claim denials, audits, and clawbacks. I cannot blame them to be honest.

However, once these smaller practices are taken over by bigger companies, the human aspect of helping others can get lost.

Once these smaller practices are taken over by bigger companies, the human aspect of helping others can get lost.

If you call Coastal, our administration staff are warm, friendly, and eager to help.

You do not have an ID number with us, you have a name, and it is vitally important that we stay this way.

So my plan over the next five to 10 years is to continue to expand Coastal in Connecticut, while making sure we preserve everything that makes Coastal unique.

What is the main thing policymakers could implement to make your company more competitive?

I believe that if policymakers could help improve mental health reimbursement for clinicians or reduce its cost to consumers, this would greatly help reduce the mental health crisis plaguing our communities.

Children are committing suicide at great rates, the death toll from drugs laced with fentanyl is out of control, and people cannot get the help they need especially if they have to decide between paying rent or getting therapy.

There are not enough providers accepting insurance in relation to the vast number of people seeking help.

If I was able to get increased reimbursement rates from insurance companies, I could pay my employees more money and retain my clinicians longer.

Our clinicians leave Coastal either to go to a clinic that pays more money or to go on their own and not accept insurance.