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Kerry Kozuki of Open Mind Health On the Book that Changed His Life


Kerry Kozuki - COO of Open Mind Health

Written by Authority Magazine Editorial Staff

January 12, 2025


Books have the power to shape, influence, and change our lives. Why is that so? What goes into a book that can shape lives? To address this we are interviewing people who can share a story about a book that changed their life, and why. As a part of our series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kerry Kozuki.


Kerry is the chief operating officer at Open Mind Health, a virtual mental health provider that offers traditional care including psychiatry and psychotherapy, as well as integrative complementary approaches.


Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory” and how you grew up?

Thanks for asking! I was born and raised in the small, western town of Williams Lake, BC in Canada. For most of my career, I worked in the hospitality business, mostly in Seattle. It was a great career where I had the opportunity to meet a lot of super people and have some peak experiences. However, the challenge was that working as a general manager in the luxury hotel field became monotonous for me. Although there are a lot of moving parts, and running hotels takes far more skillsets than most people realize, at the end of the day the approach is formulaic and once you get all the elements right, with the emphasis on assembling a great team, the business can for the most part run on autopilot.


Next, after trying my hand at running my own hotel business for a few years, I left the industry and went into nonprofit consulting for several years. I enjoyed working to advance the common good through my work and leading the program managers in their various disciplines. Eventually I branched out on my own where I worked with some larger NGOs and got a taste of how larger agencies work in developing countries. Ultimately, working in the nonprofit sector led me to the realization that whatever I do must have an element of making a difference in the world in order for the work to be rewarding to me.


Let’s talk about what you are doing now, and how you achieved the success that you currently enjoy. Can you tell our readers a bit about the work you are doing?

I am the chief operating officer at Open Mind Health, which is a startup virtual behavioral health company. I joined the company about a year after it was founded by Dr. Craig Beach and have been with the company for almost three years now, and in that time, we have grown the business remarkably. It was touch and go for about the first year and then the business really took off. Although we started by offering services only in California, we now operate in over 40 states and are still growing.


Perhaps some of the secrets to my success have been mostly about grit, determination, and hard work. My workdays are regularly 10–12 hours long. What really keeps me going is our mission to advance the personal evolution of individuals — without that extra fuel of alignment with mission I might run out of steam! I also think that my combination of education, training, and background have been very helpful for me and the business. Knowing how to run a business, aided by the consultant’s approach of diagnosing areas for optimization in the organization, and applying knowledge of accounting, finance, HR, technology, Six Sigma, etc. helps to make my job easier and allows me to apply best practices. Yet, with all of this, we are still a startup, and I tell people that I still mop the (virtual) floors and clean the (virtual) bathrooms! Humility is also a necessity to attain success in this environment.


You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Ability to pivot — I think that my ability to pivot, learn new things, yet still apply the tried-and-true works to my advantage. I have worked in hospitality, nonprofit consulting, and now healthcare, and I observe that various sectors are not in their essence really that different from one another. The ability to recognize characteristics and business structures from one sector and apply that learning, understanding, and wisdom to another has been very helpful to me.


Lifting others up — When I have observed promise in others, I invest my time and energy in developing them. This doesn’t always work out, but in my experience, most of the time it does. The individual has to be equally committed to their success and professional development. For example, when I see either intelligence, spark, hard work, critical thinking ability, inventiveness, sociability, etc., I think that is worth cultivating in another. There are many examples where I have done this and have been successful. I know I was demanding in my expectations at times, but these successful people have become friends and have expressed gratitude. I believe this ethos also needs to extend to peers, helping them to be their best selves regardless of how they show up.


Leaning into what I avoid — Not every task we perform in our day-to-day work is that inspiring or necessarily fun. I have found it is important to be in a state of acceptance of some of these more mundane activities and recognize that they are part of what helps to deliver outcomes. I have a couple of examples here. When I was in my twenties, I tried my hand at sales for several years. As an introvert, outside sales was hard for me, yet I persisted. This was one of the best life lessons for me, because it made me reach outside of my comfort zone and because I was young and needed to make a living, I made a success out of it. I learned how to be a rainmaker.


In my role now, I still must perform some more tactical duties, such as monitoring cash, bank reconciliations, reviewing contracts, business development, staying on top of various payer portals such as Medicare, etc. Some of this is mundane, and some of it is grueling. However, the organization needs these things taken care of and needs to understand cash requirements, be contracted with insurance companies, and have enough providers credentialed with each to sustain itself. So, it is important to understand why performing these duties are essential in order to self-motivate away from avoiding them.


Read the full article here.

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