Building America’s First Autism Therapy Franchise (80+ Locations) feat. Nichole Daher

There's this common misconception that to do good in the world, you have to be a nonprofit, you have to be a charity that you have to volunteer to do these things. But there is a balance where it can be both profitable and be purposeful. And that's our slogan, "profit with a purpose." It's something that does good in the world, but you can make money at the same time, and not at the expense of the clients themselves, because health insurance pays for it. Hello, everyone. Welcome to "Colors of Work 3 and Entrepreneurship." This is episode 85. My name is Lumb, your host today. For those of you who are new to the show, "Colors of Work 3 and Entrepreneurship" is a show highlighting the journeys of beauty and innovators in "Work 3 and Entrepreneurship." Today we just enter World War of Entrepreneurship. Here I'm joined by Niko Dahe. She is the founder of Success on Spectrum. Niko, could you give a quick introduction by yourself? Thank you so much for the introduction. I'm Nicole Dahe. I'm the founder of Success on Spectrum. And SOS is the very first autism treatment franchise in the United States. Awesome. And well, we will suddenly go deep dive a lot more into your company. But I think many of you will be curious to know about what you did before, like your story. Maybe if you free to pick a part of time when you think it's appropriate, leading up to the current day, current day of running business. Maybe you can pick a time from New City or whenever you think it's appropriate. Yeah. It was a little while, right? I was actually, my degree is in nuclear medicine, which has nothing to do with autism at all. But there I met my husband, who had a child with autism. So in 2014, I became stepmom to this beautiful little girl with autism. And I had no idea how hard it would be. I didn't know how to take care of her. I wanted to learn as much as I could about autism so that I could support her. And we enrolled her in ABA therapy. The ABA stands for Applied Behavior Analysis, and that's supposed to be the gold standard treatment for autism. And it teaches them new skills that they may not have. Help some catch up with their same age peers. And it also helps to reduce problem behaviors like tantrums or over-sensitivities to certain stimulus. And she really blossomed. She wasn't speaking before in ABA therapy taught her how to speak. She wasn't potty trained. They taught her how to use the restroom by herself. And everything was going so, so well. But when she turned seven, she aged out of the program and they kicked her out. And I was so upset. I think a lot of ABA therapy places in the United States prefer to work with the younger ones because they're easier to manage. And seven, they just push them off into the school system, make it the school districts problem, right? And so she wasn't ready for school. And she, I didn't want her to lose all the progress that she had made. And so I started success on the spectrum to be an ABA therapy company that would not age kids out. That would treat all the way up to age 18. And it was supposed to be a very small little side hustle for me. That would just take care of my daughter and be done. But I didn't realize how big the demand for this industry is. And it kind of exploded out of control. And my clinic became full. And I felt guilty turning kids away. So I opened a second one. And that one became full. And it was just so many people calling parents desperate mothers. Just like I was looking for a place for their kid. Oh, God, it was horrible turning them away. And so I knew I couldn't handle this problem by myself. And franchising seemed like the right answer. And so I franchise the business. And present day, we have over 80 locations spread across 20 different states. And we have helped thousands and thousands of kids. Well, that's why touching story. I'm sure we will dive a bit more into that as well. But like, you said you were learning about nuclear medicine, right? Which I don't even know what that means. It's a is it remotely relevant to what you're doing now or no? Not even close. It was the modality of radiology. So I was doing metabolic diagnostic imaging. A lot of people are familiar with stress tests where they inject the radioactive dye. You run on a treadmill and the dye sticks and you take an image of the heart. So that's what I was doing before completely irrelevant. And I never if you would have told me 10 years ago that I would be doing this. I probably wouldn't have believed you. I see. But you must have worked somewhere before you begin this. You said you became a stepmom and then discover this. But what do you do before that? Nuclear medicine. Nuclear medicine. Okay. Then you went straight into it. Okay. Interesting. Was it like what was a discovery process? I mean, I'm sure you had to learn about the condition and then how tough it was, right? And then like how how did you even discover it? Yeah. It was really hard, especially since I had no experience in the field. I had no prior knowledge. I wasn't a medical professional for behavior analysis myself. I had to learn everything from scratch. I had to study. I had to read. I had to beg people for answers. And the best thing I ever did was hire the right people. Because if you don't know the answers yourself, if you have team members that can fill in the gaps that know things that you don't. And that have the same goals in mind. It really creates a full circle. I mean, honestly, that's the secret to all good businesses having a strong team around you. Not just people who want a job, but people that actually care about what you're doing and want to reach the same goals as you. They really helped me create SOS into what it is today. Kendra was my behavior analyst and what was interesting about her was she her experience was working with autistic adults. And that's not very common. And it's funny that when you are a parent, you have these pre pre conceptions of what a child is supposed to do. And what things they're supposed to learn. They have to learn to tie their shoes. We spent months and months trying to teach my daughter how to tie her shoes. She could not understand it. It was so frustrating to her. I don't know if she didn't have the motor function to be able to tie a bow. Or if her brain just didn't understand the complexities of a knot she couldn't think in 3D. I don't know what it was. But her old ABA therapist spent months and months and months trying to teach her this. And it would cause problems because to hand terms because she was so frustrated she couldn't do it. She hated it. And when Kendra came around, she said, you know, I know adults that can't tie their shoes. It's not important for you to learn that. She can wear a slip on shoes or a whole life and be fine. Let's focus on the things that are going to matter that are going to make a difference to her and her adult life. And that light bulb moment for us was just huge. Taking away the stuff that doesn't matter and focusing on the things that will help them live. Independent and fulfill lives as an adult to be able to get a job to be able to live independently. Those are the things that we go after at SOS and it makes a difference. Certainly. We would love to give you a bit more into some of your methods as well that you create. I'm sure you have your own formula. I think I've talked to many entrepreneurs and usually each of the business have some sort of a secret formula. You said one of yours is hiring the right people. But I think many people would be well, before we deep down into your company, and I think that if you do share of this one fun fact, one fun, one fun hobby that you do in your free time before we deep dive into your company. I have a very odd hobby for a woman. I think so people find it really funny. So when I can I work, I multitask a lot. And it's very, very hard. Like once you get into that multitasking, always working, never taking a break. Once you get into that mode, it's very hard to turn the work brain off. It's hard for me to put the phone down. It's hard for me to get away from the screen. When I'm just sitting down, I lose my mind. I've got to be doing something. So the one thing that calms me down, the one thing that forces me to focus and stop worrying about 10 different things that wants to focus on one thing at a time is racing cars. I love high course. Real cars. Real cars. I have a BMW that I tricked out and I put big wheels on huge tires. A big wing in the back. I have all the arrow in the front. I've had all the cooling systems replaced and beefed it up a bit. I love high performance driving. You don't see relax. When is the last time you raced your car? Interesting. I think that's the first that I've heard. I've had people who have very interesting hobbies as well. I think one guy was like flying. I was able to call. Paragliding. lighting and then some other people. But like, yeah, first of all, I like performance car racing. Yeah, are you doing it for fun? Or are you doing it like professionally? I'm not professionally. It gets really expensive and really dangerous. When you're racing competitively, wheel to wheel, I just do it for fun. I have a device inside of my car that works on satellite and it tracks in real time. How fast I'm going around the track each time. And I just try to beat my own time and get faster and faster. I race myself instead of other people. I see. And then the track is like a circle, right? Like a loop. It's a circuit track. So just like a circuit track. Okay. It's got like curves and sometimes hills and obstacles. And it's, it's a blast. Now I'm a full blown adrenaline junkie. Well, that's how it's fun. I mean, I, I love roller coasters. Well, I don't think I've actually rolled in a performance car racing. How fast do these cars go at like the top speed? Well, depending on what car you have, you can go faster. But on these circuit tracks, there are not too many straight pieces. And so, you know, the, the longest you'll go is half a mile in a straight line on a very large track, most of it is curves and turns. So I think I've gotten up to like 120 and might be MW. Yeah, 120 miles, right? One is a mile. Yeah, miles per hour. Yeah. So we're really okay. I mean, yeah, I think the fastest I've gone on highway in US is probably like 90 or 100, depending somewhere around that range. But yeah, 120 is quite fast. For sure. Okay. Fast and I think hobby. Yeah. So like cool. So yeah, what's up for the dual, let's go and deep down into your company. I think just to make it easier for people, you know, who may not have a lot of knowledge understand, you could share some sort of a plantation or maybe a website about your company. And then talk, talk to us over it would be great because I feel like it's autism is somewhat understood, right? But it's probably not widely understood. Yes, you're right about that a lot. If it doesn't affect you directly, you may not know about it. So our website even has about autism page, which is probably the thing that helps people understand the most. And in order to be diagnosed with autism, you have to meet three different criteria. You have to have a deficit in social skills, a deficit in communication skills and restrict and repetitive patterns of behavior. Okay. Can you clarify? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you only had a deficit in social skills, like you weren't able to maintain relationships and you weren't able to make friends and you were just kind of awkward, you would just be an awkward kid. If you only had a deficit in communication skills, you would probably be diagnosed with just speech delay. Some kids with autism don't speak at all. Some of them do speak, but they didn't start speaking until they were five years old, instead of a normal two years old. And sometimes children can speak, but they don't really comprehend what the words mean. And so their communication in general is just in a deficit. And the restricted repetitive patterns of behavior is more what people think about when you say the word autism, the very severe kids will rock back and forth and flap their hands. And that's like a very stereotypical version of autism, but it could also be not a physical repetitive behavior, but it could be a restricted, preference, like a kid that is so obsessed with trains that you try to talk to them about the weather and they go back to trains and you try to say, do you want to hang out with me and play Legos and they go back to trains? And so that restrictive pattern of behavior prevents them from having a normal conversation or relationship with other kids their age. And so these three things together equal in autism diagnosis. Now one in 31 kids, but is that I'm curious? Yeah, I'm curious. Is that do you need like a doctor to certify some of the deficit or how do you? Yeah, there is a test for autism, but it's not a physical test. It's not blood work. They have a questionnaire and you do observations and a doctor observes the child, asks the parent questions about what skills they have at home. And if they meet these three criteria, they're given the diagnosis of autism. And it could be level one, level two or a severe level three. And so each kid is a little bit different. Every kid is different. And if symptoms may look different, but the three core symptoms are the same. I see. And then the psychiatry is right. I assume. And then the nutrition psychiatrists, psychologists, lots of different doctors are qualified to do the autism assessments. Okay. And what? Start looking for symptoms that like two, three years old is usually the earliest. You'll be diagnosed. Okay. And what are the different levels you were saying? One, two, three. The other one is considered mild or the kids that need the least amount of support. And the level three on the opposite side is the severe side where the kids need a lot of support to maintain their lives. I see. Yeah. So obviously it would be diagnosed by the pediatrician or psychiatrists on a case by case basis. And then they would, yeah. Okay. And when you were saying the typical treatment is ABA correct, it's stand for apply. Therapy is the golden standard of treatment. And these kids work one on one with the behavior technician to teach them the skills that they lack. And a lot of times for a young child, they need to learn to talk. They need to learn to play and interact with their peers. They need to potty train. They need fine motor function help. They need to try to learn how to hold different things or perform different tasks that a normal child would have but autistic children don't have those skills. And so we create a different curriculum for every single kid. They may, you may have 30 kids in your clinic and they're all working on different goals. And they work one on one. It's not like a classroom where there's one teacher and 30 kids, one on one instruction. And they get the most amount of attention and they can really target the things that this particular kid needs because they're not working in a group. They're able to really dig into what each child needs individually. And I think that's what makes it so effective. I see the individual treatment. And then I guess this would be occurring on a, is it weekly basis, like a couple of sessions a week? The kids come to us usually full time. So just like school mom drops you off in the morning, you stay a full eight hours and then picks you up. And then the afternoon, the kids come to us 40 hours a week. I see. So basically full time school like curriculum, yeah. For special needs kid. Okay. And then they would go through what, what, what is the, the age range of the kids? We can do 18 months all the way up to 18 years. And of course, every child has a different curriculum, but we customize it. And a normal school would only teach academics. They would teach, you know, math and science and stuff like. We teach a little bit of that. Of course, the core subjects we teach, but the things that we do that schools don't are emotional development. Cognitive functioning. We teach them play skills, empathy, imagination, how to share. We do a little bit of physical things to like find motor skills or gross motor skills. As the kids get older, not the two and three kids, but the kids that are five and six and seven, we start working in self care skills. That's where we're going into brushing your own teeth and getting dressed by yourself and making your own food or making a sandwich for yourself. And these life skills continue the older they get, we focus on that more and more. And of course, every child gets social skills. Kids with autism normally do not know how to make eye contact. A lot of times kids are tested for hearing problems because you'll call their name and a normal child would turn and look at the person who's calling your name in an autistic child would not. Sometimes they fear that they physically can't hear, but it's just not a natural thing for them and they have to be taught how to make eye contact. And it's difficult to teach that, but we have special ways that we work with the kids and we reward them every time they do make positive eye contact. And anytime that they interact with the peer their age or initiates some sort of social reciprocity with another peer. They are it's a reward based program. And so you build up that natural desire to want to interact and be social and make eye contact and have verbal conversations with others. So you teaching them, like trying to supplement teach them the skills that they need to be able to function as a, I guess, normal able. - We're keeping right in our society. - We want them to be able to do everything that a normal kid can. So we're not trying to force them to change or be a different person than who they are, of course, but they need to be able to function. If you can't communicate, you can't have a jaw up, you can't have relationships. And as a society, that's the things that we hold in our value, how we're proud of ourselves. And we want them to be happy. - Yeah, I think that certainly everyone wishing life, be happy, yeah, happy person. What do you say be some of the common misconception about autism treatment services that you wish that more people would understand? - I think that in the early stages of ABA therapy, parents used to not parents, but the ABA therapist used to be a little bit traumatic. When you're trying to accomplish a goal in black and white, I want this kid to eat broccoli. If I force him to eat broccoli, you accomplish the goal, right? You got him to eat broccoli, but it also traumatized the kid. Now he's gonna hate broccoli. And so back in the early days of ABA 40, 50 years ago, ABA was a bit abusive. And parents today are scared that ABA retains that abusive reputation. But a lot of things have changed. The science of behavior has changed. And if it's done correctly, what ABA should do is convince the child that they want to try broccoli, not force them to try it and physically put it in their mouths and hold their mouths shut and make them swallow it. But what we would do is first, we play with broccoli and we make broccoli cool. And broccoli's so awesome because we put googly eyes on broccoli. And we play around with broccoli and we paint with broccoli. Broccoli's just cool to touch and it's cool to be around. It wouldn't be so funny if you just bit his head off. And we convinced the child to try it of their own accord. And yes, this takes a long time. But if you're forcing a kid to eat broccoli, they accomplish their goal in day one. But to convince them that they like broccoli, it's a lot more difficult. But this is what good ABA does. And if a child is willing to try new things because they had good experiences in the past, that skill can now generalize to celery and spinach and all of the other good nutritional foods that we try so hard to make our kids eat. So ABA is a reward-based program that gets the child to volunteer or desire to want to learn those new skills, not to force them. - I see. Yeah, one thing that I've actually learned about in psychology and also human in general is that this, we like, well, there's either an extrinsic motivation or intrinsic motivation, right? For whatever we do, right? I mean, we go to, we work at a job, usually people go to a job because they get paid, so that's an extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation, I would describe it as something that you just come from yourself, right? It's like, for example, exercise to keep, to maintain feet, to be healthy, right? And then you develop a habit, turn into a lifestyle and it becomes, it's like intrinsic, it just comes from your body. There's no, nobody's getting, nobody's paying you to go to the gym, right? To get healthy to exercise. So, yeah, I'm curious. I mean, you did mention there's a lot of rewards, right? Connection, so, I feel like, is this, yeah? Exactly, right? You're exactly right. And that's what we're doing. So it's kind of like a Pavlov stag situation where you start with extrinsic rewards. You, they do something that you want. That's a desirable behavior and they, you give them a skittle or you give them a high five or you give them praise. And these things start to create a situation where every time they do the right thing or the desirable thing, not only are you giving them external rewards, but it starts to create a dopamine response in their brain. And so eventually you fade out the extrinsic rewards slowly over long periods of time. And that intrinsic remains. So even when they're not in your presence, even when you don't have a skittle in your hand, they still enjoy trying to broccoli or making eye contact or playing with their friends. It's a positive association that we create in this controlled environment within the ABA clinic and slowly we generalize that to different environments. And it lasts a lifetime. And that's why ABA therapy works so well. Once you have established that intrinsic reward system, after they leave ABA therapy, it persists. And throughout their entire life, you have established that enjoyment associated with social activities or healthy activities. And that's what we want. And that's why ABA therapy is so effective, long term, whereas if they would invent a medication, which there's no medication that exists for autism. But if they did, it wouldn't cure. It would treat a symptom while you were taking it, it would not last. But the therapy does. It's a beautiful thing to watch the kids change and progress and become their own people. - Yeah, I bet that must be very exciting to see them growing and having the development, right? Yeah, I'm curious. So how long does a typical treatment for autism? I guess it's more obviously probably very individual by the kid, right? But how long would it last? How long does a kid undergo? - It is different. It's different for every kid, but on average, children stay in ABA therapy three to five years. And it really depends on how severe their autism symptoms are. And also how early you started ABA therapy. Early intervention is while you're young, your brain is still very malleable. There's like a little sponge that uptakes this information. And it's the same with normal kids and normal adults. If you teach a three-year-old a second language, they usually pick it up very quickly, but learning a new language as an adult is very difficult. And so the earlier you start ABA therapy in a child's life, the younger they are when they begin, the more successful the treatment is and the more progress happens in the short amount of time that they're there. And so our goal is to get kids diagnosed as early as possible, treat them as early as possible, and then eventually transition them into a mainstream school as early as you can without them being left behind by their peers. - I see. Yeah, that's a beautiful plan. Because eventually I think all kids probably want to go to normal school, right? They want to, yeah, they want to feel like they're normal, right? It's a three to five years, yeah, I can imagine. And is this a cover by some sort of the health insurance plan that the parents pay you? - Great question. So before ABA therapy existed, before Obama did the healthcare reform, ABA therapy is very expensive. ABA therapy costs $10,000 a month. And if you can imagine most fans-- - That is expensive. - Yeah. - Very expensive. Because you have with one teacher with each kid, they're specially trained. We have backups in case aggressive behaviors happen. So it is very expensive. It's very payroll heavy. So nobody could afford $10,000 a month into what, that's more expensive than Harvard. And so it was hard to get in the past, but since the healthcare reform has happened, health insurance actually pays for ABA therapy as an essential medical service. And so parents who don't make a lot of money can access it just as easily as the rich parents. And it's really great. Because autism doesn't care if you're rich or poor. It doesn't care about your economic status. The kids will be diagnosed no matter where you are, whether you're black, whether you're white, whether you're tall, whether you're short, whether you're rich or poor. A doesn't care. It's out there pretty evenly. And so having health insurance pay for ABA therapy not only is good for the parents who can now afford to take their kids to treatment. It's cheaper than day care. It's free health insurance pay for it. But as a society, if these children, if more children have access to this, then our society as a whole will be better. These kids can now be productive members of society as adults. They can have jobs. They can live on their own. They don't need to live in assisted living or nursing home their whole lives. They're able to be a part of our society. And so it's very beneficial. And I think that's part of the reason why the health care reform so eagerly is willing to pay for such an expensive medical procedure. But it works. And it's scientifically proven to work. And it really benefits everybody. Certainly. I think that's a good system for treatment of autism, my opinion. So and then I believe earlier you were mentioning that there's a lot of demand, obviously. I think up to here is what's how many kids or children diagnose or affected by autism? A lot more than you think. So the current statistics released by the CDC is that one in 31 kids gets diagnosed with autism. before they turn eight years old. So that's about two and a half percent of the population. And so if you imagine if you have a child that's in school in their classroom there's going to be about 20 kids, 30 kids, statistically one of those kids is going to have autism. And sometimes they're diagnosed early, sometimes they're diagnosed late, but there are so many kids that have autism, they far outnumber the number of providers that actually do ABA therapy. And that was part of the problem that I experienced as a parent with my daughter is they only took up to age five because there were so many of them they wanted to focus on the younger kids, their early intervention. There were very very few clinics in existence that took kids over seven years old and those centers had waiting lists six months one year two years long. It's wild even to be diagnosed kids are experiencing weightless because only so many doctors run these assessments. So you wait six months to a year to be diagnosed you wait six months to a year to get the treatment you've wasted three years that you potentially could have been getting the therapy and missing all the progress that you would have made. So the demand is very very high. Currently there are only enough ABA clinics to support 33% of the demand in the US. And so more than half of the population that need the therapy don't have access to it. This is why when I franchise the company it really made me excited because having this model allows more clinics to open faster than just one person could afford either money or time wise to open themselves. Having a franchise I can open 30 clinics a year in different areas of the country and help more kids because I don't have a million dollars to start new clinics every single year myself. This is it's going to have to be a group effort to make a difference in the population and the demand that needs it. Well that's a really big number. I mean even with some simple math here let's say US population 300 million I think it's probably more than that but it's just for the sake of simple math 2.5% you said that 7.5 million kids or individuals right that's a lot yeah and he said only enough to support 33% so I guess like 2 for something million 5 million in support. Wow that's certainly that's a big demand. I mean it's much bigger than I thought to be I had no idea how big was this but you know that I know well yeah and then he was what I guess what made you decide to franchise is because like to try to meet the demand right. When people were calling me and I was telling them you know sorry I have a wait list I've been on the other side of that phone I remember how it felt to me desperately need to put your child in this therapy and you can't find it it feels like an injustice in the world that needs to be fixed and so I franchise because it is easier for me to teach other people how to open an ABA clinic than to do it myself and other people joining in in the cause really help things move a lot faster. I will say 25% of my franchisees are autism parents like me they are people who saw the demand they saw that they needed it other people needed it and they're like oh no we got to do something about this and just a secure treatment for their own child they will open this business but the other 75% of people were also no experience in ABA I think we've only had like two or three franchisees that have come to us that are actually experienced in the industry people from IT people from finance people from corporate jobs in HR all of these people who work in these different industries that are tired of making their boss rich they're tired of being a hamster in a wheel doing work that really doesn't mean anything to them they want to invest their time in their money in something that makes a difference that you know you want to own your own business but you want it to be something meaningful you can't they don't want just a pizza place they want something that they're going to be proud of and that is the majority of our franchisees no experience at all and as a franchise or I can teach you everything from the ground up I can teach you what autism is I can help you hire the autism experts you're not going to be working with the kids yourself you're gonna hire the autism experts you're going to staff all of these people and as a CEO you're gonna do the hiring and the firing the payroll the paperwork paying the taxes keeping the lights on paying the rent all the things and all the things that need to happen for a business but you hire those experts and we have training programs internal training programs for people who start working for us so everybody is doing things the same way whether you're in New York or in Texas or in California we all operate all our clinics operate the same way and it's it's such a repeatable process and such a uniform process that it's for you just you just makes everything so easy I think I see yeah I think that makes sense so it sounds like you already have like a very well scripted like playbook right like the blueprint for how to open a franchise I'm curious what what's usually necessary I mean obviously you need a location right first of all location you said you need some experts how many experts are we talking about and then what are the rows and what else do they need to or we have a big checklist right like here are all the things you have to do before you open and the first thing on the checklist is form an LLC we help people do that you're gonna hire the expert staff we have all the job descriptions we help you post it on indeed we help you interview these people we have the questionnaire forms already built with the questions and the answers and we help decide if this person is competent if you should hire them or not after you hire them we train all the keys to F so the CEO the analysts and the office managers they actually come to Houston and learn hands-on job experience in my clinic for a week and then after that is done we help you find that office space we help you decorate we help you set up the rooms get all the equipment that you need for the kids we travel to the location we help you start it we make everybody a grand opening video so they can use it for advertisements and then we give unlimited support as people are running the clinics so we offer additional training for the staff we offer support for the CEOs that may come across scenarios that they didn't expect to come across or don't know how to handle we have very close relationships with our franchise these we talked to everybody almost every day we have instant chat we have video chat and so even if someone in New York calls me I can see them face to face and help them with their problems and not every analyst has come across every problem that an autistic kid may have and so being in a big group and having good communication everybody gets ideas from other people and it makes it a very effective tool not just for running the business but for getting the best treatment for the kids because two heads are always better than one you have access to all these different brains that can put their different experiences together to come up with the best treatment plan for each child and so a franchise is not only good business-wise but for quality it's delivering the same great results I see that's you have the whole list of things that need to be done but they're very detailed it's a repeatable process like proven formula already to the point yeah I believe you also talk about like you often talk about the profit with purpose so how do you I guess balance a clinical quality mission and financial sustainability in an industry I guess like with very like deep emotional stakes for families love it you said like these are the families that have kids that diagnose with autism it means a lot and you're doing it for a reason and the mission has to be your number one priority you have to I'm not going to make profit in lieu of giving the kids what they need and so there is a proper balance you write about that there has to be a proper caseload right now there are no regulations in the industry there's no governmental regulations the insurance puts very little regulations on us I think the demand is too high for them to do that and so there are clinics that I know that will put a caseload of 40 kids on one analyst we won't do that one analyst has to give the kids attention they have to know if the programs that they created are working they have to sit and visually lay eyes and observe each kid working with the technicians working with their therapists to make sure that the kids are responding properly otherwise the program needs to be changed and so we limit our analyst caseloads to 12 kids each which really helps with quality but it's still profitable We know that a clinic has to be a certain size to fit so many children in order to make money because it is a business you have to make money doing it. But there is a balance. There is a way for you to make money and give quality services at the same time. I think there is this common misconception that to do good in the world you have to be a non-profit. You have to be a charity that you have to volunteer to do these things. And that's our slogan, profit with the purpose. It's something that does good in the world. But you can make money at the same time and not at the expense of the clients themselves because health insurance pays for it which is great. So you don't feel guilty about accepting payment for a child that just needs to learn how to speak. Their insurance pays for it and it's easy. It's not a financial burden on the parents. It does wonders for their families, the whole family because a child that is very severe can be burdensome financially, burdensome time wise. Parents aren't able to work because they're taking care of their child. You can't just put them in daycare. They're not cared for there. And so profit with the purpose is an amazing combination that you don't find very often in business. Yeah, yeah. What you said is true. Yeah, I think that it's good to, you know, I mean, I learned one of this concept back in school is like the triple bottom line where you generating profit but also making an impact at the same time, right? Making an impact, like the positive impact on society, which is always a good thing. And yeah, and I think there's no shame in making profit. Obviously, the business needs a profit to sustain itself. I think it's very reasonable. And yeah, just like you said, commonly have the misconception, you need to work for a nonprofit to make an impact. No, we can work for a for profit business and still make a very significant impact in someone's life. Yeah, cool. Yeah, looking forward. I'm kind of curious. Like, so what's the like in the future, right? How was this? I mean, so it sounds like there's a lot of pent up demand in the nation in the USA. But what's the future of autism services? And how do you see the, you know, franchise as a success on spectrum? How do you see it? Influencing that that future landscape? I know that there's so much more work to be done. We could open 100 clinics a year and the demand for autism services is still skyrocketing. And year after year, the rate of autism diagnosis is getting higher and higher. So it's nearly impossible to keep up. So our short term goal is to open as many clinics as possible that offer high quality services with oversight from our quality assurance team. And that's a short term goal and that's great. But as of right now, we only serve kids up to age 18. So I think my long term plan would to become up with a business model that will support the adult population as well. I would love and I'm playing around with with a business right now where we are doing career transition skills to young adults for teenagers and young adults, not just on the spectrum, but with any other kind of mental disability to help them enter the workforce. To be proud of themselves to earn money on their own to be able to take care of themselves as a mother your biggest fear is who's going to take care of this kid when I'm gone. Because surely she's going to live longer than me. I need to make sure that she's able to take care of herself so she's not dependent on others or vulnerable to the abuse of others or to the neglect of others. I need her need her to be able to care for herself. And that is what I bring every day to the kids in my clinic. I need you to learn the skills that's going to help you the most as an adult. And I know that we are doing that now in our clinic, but we can do more for job skills. And so my next big adventure is going to be creating a business model that finds some sort of funding so it's not a financial burden on the families themselves that will help people with special needs enter the workforce. I see. Yeah, that'll be a very meaningful thing to do for sure. How does a treatment for a adult differ from kids? Again, a child's malleable brain makes it a little bit easier for them to absorb new information with adults. They can learn, but it takes a lot longer and a lot more effort with the kids were teaching them more social skills, more communication skills with the adults were really focusing on the life skills and the self care skills. But for someone that is because autism can present with aggression. If a child takes a swing at you, you're just like, ah, settle down. You know, it's no big deal. But when a fully grown man who is physically 25 years old, but mentally seven years old takes a swing at you, it hurts a little bit more. It's more difficult and it's it's harder to work with an adult population, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve it as much as the young ones do. And so they do need attention and they do need specialty care and they do need to learn and continue learning as we all do as they age and not just be put in a chair and put on medicine. That's what I want to avoid. I want to let them live a proud full lives. I want them to be happy. I want them to find value in themselves. And that takes work and somebody's got to do it. I see. I'm two more questions before closing out the show here. What are the biggest business lessons that you learn as you move from running one clinic to building a national franchise system? We'll say it and preach it from the rooftops. This is a people business and you're doing something that matters. And having the right team around you will make a huge difference. If you hire people that are just there for the money, but they don't care about the kids, the quality of therapy is not going to be good. And it's a difficult job to be with these kids sometimes. And if if you're not there for them, it's going to drive you crazy. Like the money is just not enough. And so having people surrounding you hiring people that are going to care about the kids more than the money that are in it for a career, not just a quick job. That makes a huge difference. Being around people that share the same goals as you makes a difference. And so from the very beginning, especially in leadership positions, as I was growing the franchise, I promoted all of my like-minded professionals from my clinic into the franchise company. Because I want to take that with me. I want to spread that mission. I want people to have the same goals. And that's how your business will thrive even through the downturns. And I think that's the most important thing that any business could do really. Yeah, that makes sense perfectly sense in your situation. Because with the employees, the staff, I think they do have to have some sort of affection for the kids. So I guess like people who are good with kids in general, whether they have education in whatever they have training in education or not, that need to be good with kids and care about the kids. Yeah, and then just like you said, when you care about the kids, it can be very, very rewarding. Because you work with this one child who maybe a doctor said, hey, you're never going to be able to speak. And when you are the one that teaches this kid how to say their first word. And they say that loud for the first time. The feeling of elation. Like you feel like you are flying. You're like, I did this. I actually made this kid say a word. And he knew what he was saying. And then one child that had never spoken a word in his life, he started speaking with us. We taught him how to ask for food and how to ask for the bathroom because those, you know, get what you need, right. But the next thing that we taught him was how to say, I love you mom. And when I tell you for a mother that has been pouring her heart and soul and not sleeping for like the first seven years of this kids life. And who has never heard I love you mom. There was not a dry eye of the building. The mom was crying. The staff was crying. I was crying. Everybody was crying. And that makes the job worth it. If I would go broke doing this business, I would probably still want to do it just because it's so rewarding even without the money. You need to find people that chase that to work for you and to work with the kids because they care about what's important. Yeah, that's a beautiful way to put it. I don't think I can put it any better than what you have already said. So maybe just one more question here. And then for aspiring parents or entrepreneurial, you know, or entrepreneurs considering a franchise in a mission focused industry like yours. What common mistakes should they avoid? I think I made so many mistakes when I started the business. because I didn't have experience. I bought expensive things that I didn't need. I hired the type of people that I wasn't supposed to hire. I rented a building that was way too small and I was stuck in a lease for too long. I didn't know how to send insurance claims to Blue Cross Blue Shield or Etna. I didn't know how to do any of that. And so I had to learn by trial and error. And I lost a lot of sleep and I lost a lot of sanity. And I lost a lot of money by making those mistakes. So if you don't have to do it alone, don't a franchise didn't exist when I was starting out. But I would have paid anything to have somebody teach me how to do these things. Instead of me having to figure it out by myself and make mistakes along the way, franchising in any industry, not just mine, but even in a food industry, even in the medical industry or the boutiques that the retail store industries, having a franchise helps you skip all of that trial and error. You get the answers. You get the playbook like you said earlier, the guideline, the checklist, the know how, you get all of everyone else's experience plugged into your brain so you don't have to make those mistakes. I really love the idea of franchising. The branding, of course, is always going to help the business. And more familiar brand, recognizable brand is going to help you be successful without even doing your job well. But having the playbook means everything. So if you can find help for whatever you want to do, get it, take other people's advice, learn from other people's mistakes so you don't have to make your own. Yeah, certainly. I mean, just like in any other entrepreneurship, I think the rates of failure is actually really high for whether it's small, big, small medium, or even big businesses as well. So anything that people are, people are the successful founders have done before, which certainly helped to just reduce that failure rate from 90% for a rate, maybe down to low-digit, or up low-double digit, that would certainly help as well. Yeah, so well, thank you for sharing. And then you have a final question. Where can people follow you? Or where do you like you to follow you? If you have any public handles or use the name or website, do share. If you are interested in opening your own success on the spectrum franchise, you can visit our website, sosfranchising.com. We also have a full YouTube channel at SOS Franchising that has tons of videos for you to learn what ABA therapy is, what it's like owning your own ABA business, how we help you do that and learning along the way. If you visit our website, and you hit that contact us button, we have a very special gift for all of the guests that are listening today. If you mention that you heard about SOS Franchising from this podcast, we will offer you one domestic round trip flight on Southwest Airlines to fly to our corporate office for a Discovery Day. Well, you will spend the day with me, tour several of our franchises, and learn more about success on this spectrum. Awesome. Yeah, I will make sure to put all the links you said in the show notes here so that people can follow along and then contact you as well. So once again, you could, it's been great having you on the show today to talk about your business. I think it's a business or with a purpose, right? This is with a purpose, franchise with a purpose. It's a very beautiful story. And I hope that more, well, just hope that the world and the US and also the world will have fewer autism kids and adults in the future. Thanks to a lot of service, like, your company and your franchise are doing. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And for our listeners for all of the hard work that Lam has done today, please leave him a five star review on any platform you're listening on. He really does good work in spreading the good news. He deserves the recognition. Thank you so much. That's how it's my pleasure here. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] And we're back to my studio. What do you think about the franchising model that Nico and her team are building at Success on Spectrum? If you're based in the US and are interested in running a franchise, treat autism. Feel free to reach out to Nico with her offer. The next episode will be a surprise guest. I'm sure everyone will be looking forward to this guest. So I will not review any details for now. If you enjoyed the episode about Web 3 and Entrepreneurship, please give a like and subscribe. I mean a lot to us. Thank you for watching and see you next time.