Timothy Zercher 0:01

Well, Avi, Rochelle, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you guys taking time out of your day.

Rachelle Wisotsky 0:05

Thank you so much for having us.

Timothy Zercher 0:06

Same here. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I first I always want to start off with how you guys got into this space. And I guess the question is really for both of you how you got into ABA, how you got into actually owning a center.

Rachelle Wisotsky 0:19

It's a it's a good question. I am a BCBA, I'm a board certified behavior analyst. So, you know, that's what I kind of went for when my degree. And I've been working in the field for a long time. And Avi has a corporate background. He's an actuary by trade. And um, he had wanted to do this for a while. I think it's also a personal venture for both of us. We have family on the autism spectrum. And it was also personal. And he'd been kind of pressuring me for a long time to do this, but I had my uh hesitations. I am not a business lady. I like to do the actual clinical aspect of the therapy. I liked connecting with the families. And I felt like if I were to venture into the more administration piece, it would take away from my clinical and my relationships with the families. So that was a that was like a big fear of mine. And then finally Avi was like, let's do it together.

Avi Wisotsky 1:08

And yeah, so just jumping in there. So I have a close family member who has autism, and growing up with him, seeing just some of the challenges that he has has had throughout different parts of his life. I used to volunteer also for a nonprofit organization called Friendship Circle, which helps with kids with autism. I did that for about eight years. So I had some experience just, you know, with autism community. And then I saw, I mean, Rochelle's incredibly talented BCB. And she was working for a big organization. And I felt like this with my corporate experience helping Fortune 500 companies modernize and do different things, and with her clinical experience, I felt like we can really build the right ABA agency with the heart and the clinical expertise that is needed, that's needed, but also with the operational backbone to be able to scale.

Timothy Zercher 2:04

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and that is a rare combo, right? Because I think most ABA clinics are either led by a clinician or by a business person, and therefore the other side tends to suffer. So it makes a lot of sense. Well, you often ask what families see as that great day and like what that looks like for their child. How has that question shaped the way that you design care and measure success long term?

Rachelle Wisotsky 2:29

So the way that I completely design care is based off of what the parents expect a great day to look like. I want to know in your home, in each individual home, and it looks so different for each home and each child and each family, but what does that look like? Because that's how I will go about and design the goals and design the treatment plan. And it matters a lot because what matters to me might not matter to the family. And under the principles of AVA is designing socially significant goals. And that social significance is different for each family. And in order to design the right treatment plan for the right family, we have to know what the best possible day looks like for that child in that family. And when we get that feedback from the parents and we understand what it looks like, then we can go about really tailor-making each treatment plan for each family and each child.

Timothy Zercher 3:22

I love that. I love that. I know you also emphasize like real life application and caregiver involvement in actual work. What have you learned about making therapy actually work outside of those sessions so that that ideal day becomes a regular occurrence?

Rachelle Wisotsky 3:37

So, first and foremost, it is a partnership between parents and ABA team. That is like the more investment you have on both sides, the better the outcome will be for the child and the family as a whole. That's number one. So we really do try to emphasize that parent training with the BCBA at Right Way ABA, where BCBA sit down with parents once a week and they really go over different goals that parents are implementing. Because I know that autism gives no off days. Parents are with the child 24-7, seven days a week with all of the behaviors that those parents and those families are navigating and all of the challenges and all of the wonderful aspects of it too. There's no off days. So, you know, something that we heard from a parent with a child with autism when we were, you know, going into these partnerships with We Rock the Spectrum was this is a place where you never have to say, I'm sorry. And that was really resonated with me. Like I want to be able to create a space for parents in their own home where they're empowered to, with the services that we give and the programs that we're writing, to be able to implement that at home independently without the therapist. Because therapist does get to go home and therapist does get to leave. And there are off days, but I want to be able to empower the parents to be able to say, I got this, even when the team is not here.

Timothy Zercher 4:56

Love that. I love that. What have you found is the hardest part about owning a clinic and doing this work?

Rachelle Wisotsky 5:03

So for me, I would say that there's no control over how big the company gets. We take the clients in as it comes and trying to maintain that level of care and clinical excellence as the company grows, sometimes quickly, is tough. We want to be able to balance, but we don't always get that option. So that's where our amazing, amazing staff comes in. And our team is so phenomenal. But we are that is like I think the hardest piece for me that I would love to do. I would love to be able to really speak to each and every single family every day if I could. And that that's not so realistic. But being able to have a team that makes that possible and be able to maintain that level of care and clinical excellence, even as we do scale, is I would say that's the hardest piece for me. It's something that we try to navigate every day.

Avi Wisotsky 5:53

Just for me, we started marketing really in March of 2025. Okay, so it took some time to set up the business and get contracted. And we are now in June of 2026, right? So about 15 months later or so, we have over 100 kids in our practice active 9153. So we grew relatively quickly.

Rachelle Wisotsky 6:14

No control.

Avi Wisotsky 6:16

And the you know, really the challenging part is main maintaining that clinical excellence as you scale. And the end of the day it just comes down to your team. So everyone on our admin team has either experience with over 15, 20 years of experience as an RBT, as a BCBA, family with autism, experience both clinically and personally. And we frankly pay more for our staff than others do. We pay our RBTs on average 10 to 15% more than our competitors do in New Jersey. And it's already a very competitive space in New Jersey and not, but we do that to be able to provide you know the highest quality care. And then just the second thing I would add is parents, obviously they want the services, right? And they they need the services. Maintaining cash flow, right? Like the operations, getting the kid from the verification of benefits all the way to starting services, that in itself, you have to really be able to build the structure and be on top of every single process, the ins and outs, the level of detail that you need. You have to be on top of everything to be able to have things run smoothly. And it's certainly it's like the we see like the tip of the iceberg, and then you see the full iceberg underneath. All you see is the tip of the iceberg, but behind the scenes, there are so many people working tirelessly day in, day out to make sure the kids are getting power services.

Timothy Zercher 7:48

Absolutely. Well, it always comes down to good, good staff, right? I mean, any any kind of excellence, whether clinical or even if you're in a totally different business, if you're mechanical or you're working on cars, right? It always comes down to the quality of your staff, makes the quality of service actually being delivered. Yeah.

Rachelle Wisotsky 8:04

What was important to us was that the staff that is specifically, you know, face to face with parents and answering the phones have personal connections to either family members or a career with children with autism. And so it's personal. When you're speaking to someone in our team, you're speaking to someone who really gets it.

Timothy Zercher 8:23

That makes sense. That's nice and police sense. So what really works best for you right now outside of word of mouth when it comes to client acquisition?

Avi Wisotsky 8:31

So for us, we really have the philosophy of clinical first, provide value. And then the actual marketing channel is is important, right? But it's to us, it's really about the quality care. So our team believes in emissions so much that they literally go around, if they're in public and they see some, they're at the doctor, they literally will try to bring in kids to our practice. Why? Because they believe in it, because they see what we're doing, they see that we have the values to provide quality APA therapy. They see that we back up our talk with the walk. We do not hire anyone without experience. And in New Jersey, you don't need RBT, and there are a lot of people that they will train people kind of as they go or things like that. We don't do that. So I think just that piece of it is a very, very big piece. We believe in providing value first and foremost. So we do a lot of the things in the community. We do a lot of the light work that now in the days of AI automation and things like that, everyone's trying to find a torque. How do we automate the marketing? How do we automate the email marketing campaigns? And again, a lot of that is good to start, but in the end of the day, it's getting in front of people, providing value where you can, providing educational content, providing covettes for kids, providing resources for doctors and things like that. And the more you provide up front and you to build genuine relationships, not only do providers feel that, but also parents feel that. And parents feel like you are invested in my kids.

Rachelle Wisotsky 10:08

So I'm gonna invest with you as a team, we do the events ourselves. So when you come to an event, you're meeting us, you're speaking to us on the phone, you're following up with the same people. So it's not like a big like you're calling up and you get a robot or you get someone else. You're speaking to us directly. So it's a personal process through, you know, beginning sound.

Timothy Zercher 10:30

That makes a lot of sense. And and I think that's I think that's probably the right way to continue, right? Because as AI continues, as marketing shifts, those those in-person legwork kind of things are still going to continue to generate results. They might not be as fast, right? They might not be, they might not be as efficient, but they will continue. So if you don't mind me asking, then a follow-up question to that is what is one marketing tactic or strategy that you guys are either watching really carefully in the marketplace right now or that you guys are actually considering for yourselves.

Avi Wisotsky 11:02

So we are doing a lot of the typical things, right, in terms of meta-has and the SEO email marketing campaign. Like the thing that we're really focused on right now is continuing to provide value to providers, right? And to keep on building out our relationship with providers, whether it's through the medium, is is the thing that we're working on, which is email campaigns and things like that. But it's really about how do we provide true value to them, which is not like, hey, we do ABA therapy, right? It's hey, here is our podcast with Tim, right, about ABA therapy, right? Or whatever it is, or here is a blog that we wrote about five ways that pediatricians can identify a child who is on the autism spectrum and then make that referral, right? Educational content, things that they would appreciate. Yeah, it's really the most for us the most important. And it's really just tracking the amount of traction we're able to get. And really, it's not about us, it's about them. It's about you're a pediatrician. What do you appreciate? Right. And it's just thinking about that piece and then building the relationships around that.

Timothy Zercher 12:18

I love that. I love that. That makes a lot of sense. The more value you give, the more you receive, right? That's just kind of a universal rule in marketing and just business relationships, right?

Rachelle Wisotsky 12:28

So much of what guides our like decision making and everything is kind of like, you know, not to sound a little too corny or whatever, but we we try to do things the right way. And like we named our company Right Way ABA because we wanted to, every step that we take, what is the right way to do this? What are barriers that other companies that I've either worked at or, you know, spoken to have experienced? And how can we navigate that in the right way? And I believe we go through it in the marketing aspect too. Like, how can we navigate this the right way? What is gonna be the way that's gonna get people and providing them value without being annoying, but without bothering them? And there are some campaigns where it could be that providers are like delete, delete, delete, you know, unsubscribe or, you know, different things. And we have a monthly email that goes out, and in in every single one of the emails, we find an autism-friendly event that's going on in the community, and we try to promote that, whether it's our event or not. We want parents to be able to find different events, to be able to bring their children to, again, without having to say sorry for different behaviors that might come up or different experiences that they might have. We want to be able to provide that value, like, hey, this is a great thing that's happening in your community. Hey, if you're looking for a behavior intervention plan for sleep, let us know. We can help. You know, you don't have to be a member. And those emails come directly to me. So, you know, I respond. We try to navigate things really the right way.

Avi Wisotsky 13:53

The last thing I just add to that is I think sometimes what people think about relationships and business is that you're trying to provide value so that you get something back. We don't want to take that approach. We've been at many, many, I've met with many parents at events or different things, and they say, and I and I'll ask them, hey, have you ever tried ABA therapy before? And they said, Yes. I said, How's it going? And they said, We're actually really happy with our current provider. And I said, Great, stay there. You're happy. And it's just like I do come from a my grandfather's a retired pediatrician, my great uncle's a pediatrician, my mom's an OT, my wife is a BCBA. We have a lot of people in the healthcare space. And you know, the things that I've learned from my family is just seeing my grandfather who had he had a little uh small town doctor, pediatrician practice attached to his house, like the good old days, and he would just you know do whatever his patients needed. He would walk, you know, two miles to the hospital if he needed or whatever. Yeah, and he would go in any time. And it's just that level of like bedside manners and level of care, really. Because if you really care, then you're just gonna comes across. Yeah, it comes across. So you're gonna do things the right way.

Timothy Zercher 15:10

Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. If you really care, then you're gonna do what it takes to serve people, and if you serve people, then eventually that'll work well for your business anyway, right? And that it doesn't need to be the intent, which I a hundred percent agree with. Perfect. Well, thank you guys so much for coming on. Thank you for sharing, and thank you for doing the work that you're doing. I think you are making an impact. It is recognized if it's not just recognized by your staff, but I I think it is recognized by your community too. So thank you.

Rachelle Wisotsky 15:33

Thank you so much, Iggy Sonaj.

Timothy Zercher 15:35

Absolutely.