Tier A Client Psychographic Profile — Review Breakdown

Tier A definition — who marketing chases FIRST

The launch plan and the survey appear to conflict. They don’t — they describe two different jobs. Tier A is the overlap where launch story and P&L are the same person.

The tension to reconcile

• Launch plan says: go military / first-responder first (30-vet engine + field offensive).
• Survey says: veteran / first-responder is a niche, not a mass message.
  • ~9.5% rank “specializes in veterans or first responders” as a top-2 factor
  • ~14% of the sample are veterans or first responders
• 7/20 business model says: economic core = 40s–50s professionals who are also care-deciders for aging parents.

So Tier A = the OVERLAP

• 40s–50s man with military and/or first-responder identity
• Treatment-resistant and quietly out of options
• Household income to pay for and stay in treatment
• Surrounded by the influencers who close:
  • Spouse (often the booker)
  • Battle-buddy / shift-mate who already did it
  • His own doctor (the closer)
• Not “any veteran.” Not “any professional.”
• He is the operator who made it into a stable, providing, middle-class-to-affluent adult life — and is now privately losing to something the pills did not fix.

Persona snapshot — “Ray, the Squared-Away Operator”

Geo footprint

• Core: St. Charles County corridor — O’Fallon, St. Peters, Cottleville, Wentzville, Lake St. Louis
• Also core: St. Louis South County — Oakville, Mehlville, Affton
• Spillover: affluent belt — Town & Country, Chesterfield

Clinical / commercial fit (marketing scope only)

• Treatment-resistant depression (2–4 failed antidepressants over years)
• Frequently PTSD
• Frequently chronic pain (back, knees, shoulders from service or the job)
• Fits all BRC lines: in-office, $175/mo home tier, $15K concierge, maintenance every 4–6 weeks
• Best concierge candidate: will pay to get his life back fast and discreetly
• Insurance: employer commercial PPO (retired-military variant on TRICARE); insurance matters, but self-pay-capable when it means results

Media diet

• Phone-first
• YouTube & podcasts (Shawn Ryan, BRCC orbit)
• Local radio (brand memory)
• Facebook for family and local

Why Ray — not the alternatives

• Reachable by the 30-vet authority engine (tribe vouches; peer proof beats ads)
• Highest lifetime value across every BRC service line
• Care-decider who opens the home-health cross-sell
• Highest-conviction “I have tried everything” buyer in the market
• Where launch narrative and P&L overlap

Psychographics — what Ray believes about himself

Core values

• Duty · provision · self-reliance · competence · control · loyalty · privacy
• Being the rock · not being a burden
• Fix-it, mission-first mindset
• Respects results and data over feelings-talk
• Respects other operators

Identity & private script

• Self-concept: “I handle it.”
• Depression is not only painful — it is an identity threat
• Private lines: “I should be able to power through this” · “this isn’t who I am”
• Low burn of shame that he cannot just fix it himself
• Outside: still high-functioning — shows up, provides, stays squared away
• Inside: flat, numb, short-fused, not-himself for years
• The gap between the two is exhausting

Stigma (load-bearing)

• Will not call this “mental health treatment”
• Does not see himself as “a psychiatric patient”
• Fears are concrete and career-shaped: confidentiality, record/clearance, how his crew sees him
• ~60% of military personnel with mental-health problems do not seek help; stigma is among top reasons
• ~1 in 3 first responders reports mental-health stigma (“can’t show weakness” / “not up to the job”)
• Anonymity and discretion measurably lower the barrier

What “trying this treatment” means emotionally

• Considered only after pills failed and he is quietly scared he is running out of road
• Hope + threat at the same time
  • Hope: feel like himself again
  • Threat: become “someone who needs THIS”
• Anything that reads as loss of control (trip / psychedelic / k-hole / woo-woo) makes him bolt

• Snowstorm frame is the right frame for Ray — terrain reset, not personality change
• Hands agency back: he still has to ski
• “You still do your part” is not a nicety — it is what lets a self-reliant man say yes without surrendering

Fears & objections (say these back before he says them)

• Will I lose control / am I going to trip? (control is his whole thing)
• Will it change my personality or who I am?
• Is it addictive?
• Will my employer, command, or crew find out?
• Is this a scam, or hippie nonsense?
• Will insurance actually cover it, or am I about to get nickel-and-dimed?
• Do I have to re-live my trauma out loud?
• Will it even work when nothing else did?
• How much time off work does this cost me?

Journey & trigger moments

The “I’m out of options” moment

• Ray does not book on a good day
• Books after 2nd/3rd medication fails (~2/3 of MDD patients do not remit after first adequate antidepressant trial)
• Or after a rock-bottom / relational trigger:
  • Blow-up at home
  • Scare of a dark thought
  • Milestone birthday
  • Buddy’s suicide
  • Health scare
  • Wife’s quiet ultimatum
• Trigger is usually relational or peer — not an ad

Where / how he searches

• Late night on phone after the house is asleep — or Dana searches during her workday
• Does not search drug names (73% of survey had never heard of Spravato)
• Real query language is symptom-and-help:
  • “depression medicine that actually works”
  • “why don’t antidepressants work for me”
  • “ptsd treatment near me”
  • “help for depression st charles county”
  • “am I depressed or just tired”
• Only after buddy/doctor names it: “spravato covered by insurance near me”
• Implication: symptom-first SEO/GEO engine — not drug-name ads

Who influences the decision (the part that pays)

• Wife “Dana” — decisive influencer and often the literal booker
  • Primary accountability driver into care
  • Often sandwich-generation caregiver herself (~60% of sandwich caregivers are women; ~77% report being taxed to the max)
  • She Googles, pushes, books, fills out the form
• Battle-buddy / shift-mate who already did it — peer proof beats every paid channel; 30-vet ambassador cohort is engineered for this
• His own doctor is the closer — printable doctor-letter tool exists for exactly this path

Conversion path (in order)

• Symptom search
• Talk to spouse or buddy
• Bring it to his doctor (doctor letter)
• Book — he rarely cold self-refers

The booking act

• Often Dana makes the call or completes the form
• Paid, refundable evaluation reduces no-shows in this segment
• Wants fast, discreet, competent intake that tells him the plan
• Winning close language: “Here is what happens, here is the timeline, here is what we handle for you”
• Beats emotional appeals at the finish line

Message angles that land

Tuned to Ray, snowstorm analogy, and “you still do your part.” Tier A is heavily med-failed — “you have tried everything” lands hardest here even as broader market messaging later migrates toward depression-first / get-help-early.

Hard “never say” rules

Targeting spec — what the ad engine can act on

Channel order is set by the data, not habit. Ads do not close (2%). The doctor closes (74%). Paid ketamine-category ads are gated by LegitScript. Paid = awareness + retargeting, never the cold first-touch closer.

Primary acquisition engine (budget here first)

• Symptom-first SEO / GEO
• Provider-referral field program
• 30-vet ambassador content
• Google review blitz (competitors sit at 2–13 reviews)
• Marketing budget ~8–10% of $3.2M target, front-loaded

Geo

• Core radius: St. Charles County (O’Fallon 63366/63368, St. Peters 63376, Cottleville 63304, Wentzville, Lake St. Louis) + South County (Oakville, Mehlville, Affton 63123/63125/63129), 15–20 miles around clinic pin(s)
• Affluent spillover: Town & Country, Chesterfield 63005, Creve Coeur
• Statewide: telemedicine + $175/mo home tier extend across Missouri

Search / SEO / GEO (primary)

• Symptom-first long-tail on brand site + farm/newsroom network + AI-answer layer
• Example queries: “depression treatment that works St Charles,” “help when antidepressants don’t work,” “PTSD treatment near me O’Fallon,” “TMS St Charles County”
• Brand-defense + buddy/doctor-primed: “spravato covered by insurance near me”
• GBP fully built out with 25–40 review blitz

Meta / Instagram (awareness + retargeting — NOT cold ketamine)

• Until LegitScript clears paid med-category ads: brand, testimonial, “feel like yourself again” creative
• Do not name the drug; do not target the condition as an audience
• Interest / behavior stack: USMC/Army/veteran affinity, VFW, American Legion, IAFF/FOP/firefighter/police/EMS, Black Rifle Coffee, Shawn Ryan Show, Team RWB, Grunt Style, GORUCK, hunting/fishing/2A, F-150/RAM/diesel, home improvement
• Demo filters: manager/owner/superintendent titles; age 38–58; married; parents; upper HHI; in-geo
• Respect Meta special-ad-category + health limits: target identity/interest; message condition in creative; never target “people with depression”

Spouse-decider audience (separate ad set — she books)

• Women 38–58 in-geo
• Interests: caregiving, eldercare, family health/wellness, sandwich generation, AARP caregiving, home care / assisted-living research
• Creative: “get your husband back” / “you have been carrying everyone”

Veteran & first-responder field (referral + authority)

• American Legion Post 388 St. Charles, local VFW, Team RWB STL, Scott AFB Command Post
• TMF 9/11 Heroes Run, Wreaths Across America (Jefferson Barracks), Wings of Hope
• Fire/police union halls, IAFF & FOP locals, peer-support coordinators
• Value = brand exposure, local citations, word-of-mouth — not dofollow SEO
• Booth language: “insurance-covered depression care, Spravato and TMS” — never “ketamine”

Provider-referral program (the real closer)

• Treat as a targeting channel, not a side project
• Kevin & Dave field-visit ~60 primary-care, psychiatry, and pain offices
• Pitch: “you refer, we handle benefits, prior-auth, REMS scheduling, and we report back”
• 74% close through their own doctor — this is the channel

Lookalikes & custom audiences

• Seed 1% lookalike from:
  • (a) survey respondents who are veteran/first-responder AND medication-failed — needs Pollfish respondent-level export (ask Jacob)
  • (b) 30-vet ambassador cohort + networks
  • (c) GBP / lead-form / doctor-letter-download converters
• Retarget site visitors, quiz-starters, doctor-letter downloaders with testimonial + insurance-help creative
• Pixel-based retargeting only — no sensitive-condition PII targeting

Measurement

• Server-side CAPI + per-farm-site UTM (already built) → entry source through BRC CTA
• Monthly 25-query GEO answer-ownership panel

Compliance guardrails on targeting

• Meta special-ad-category + health rules
• LegitScript gate on paid med ads
• No VA · no drug names in creative · no founder-as-veteran

Adjacent tiers — so Tier A stays sharp

Sources & review checklist

Evidence anchors (from source doc)

• Ketamine/Spravato demographics & TRD pathway — NCBI PMC12061366; Lumin Health age guidance
• Veteran help-seeking, spouse role, stigma — PMC11298457, PMC12768002, PMC4999788
• TRD journey/severity — PMC6982454, PMC12798643, Mental Health America TRD resource
• First-responder PTSD/stigma — Texas A&M Stories, PowerDMS, Stateline, FireRescue1
• Sandwich-generation caregivers — SeniorLiving.org, Michigan Medicine, PMC8679719
• Internal: BRC 443-respondent Pollfish survey (June 2026); 7/20 Kevin session; Jul 7 ketamine strategy calls; Jul 15 Field Offensive

Suggested review questions for Kevin / Dave

• Does the Tier A overlap (vet/first-responder × 40s–50s professional) match how you want launch dollars spent in the first 90 days?
• Is “Ray” age/income/geo tight enough — or too tight — for St. Charles/South County reality?
• Confirm hard directives still stand: no VA language, no founder-as-veteran, no “ketamine” in field booths.
• Approve snowstorm + “you still ski” as the primary Tier A creative frame?
• Provider-referral (~60 offices) vs. Meta awareness: are we budget-weighted to the doctor-close path?
• Do we want Jacob to pull the Pollfish respondent-level export for the 1% lookalike seed?