Timothy Zercher 0:00

Arman, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you taking time. Thanks for having me, Tim. Absolutely. So I always like to start off with hearing a little bit about how you got into this space. I know that you got into this space by kind of transitioning from scaling tech companies, actually.

Armon Aghaie 0:14

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I always wanted to be the when I say always, I mean literally I was saying this when I was 12. I always wanted to be a CEO of my own company. So it just took me a while to figure out what that meant. And somewhere along the way, I would have leaders or teammates, employees, oh, where are you gonna do it? Where are you gonna go create your own thing? It's like, oh, when I have enough time, when I have enough money, just kind of like, and then one day I wrote a question on a board in my office. I said, What's one problem you'd be happy living under a bridge trying to solve for the rest of your life? And I just let it sit there and it sat there for weeks. Like I didn't, this wasn't like some, oh, how do I I become the best, blah, blah, blah. It was one of more one of those things like, okay, you've learned money doesn't do it, you've learned this type of stuff doesn't do it. Like, what would keep your brain active and interested? And then I realized at some point helping kids find their passion earlier in life was probably a good answer for that. Like if every kid could have the same, I say it was lucky that I knew what I wanted to do when I was a young kid because everything was contextualized in terms of that North Star, right? And that story, uh I'll save that for a different day, but it's it's actually from one of my employees. One of them asked me a question that was very interesting, and that kind of prompted that thought. And so one day I realized it would be helping kids find that, helping them find their Iki guy. And that launched a very long journey and toward towards kind of like studying different educational methodologies, developmental methodologies. I ended up meeting my co-founder, who she spent 15 years in ABA by the time we met. And so she was actually joining me to help build out what had been years of development into a custom methodology. And we started working on that for about three years together. And then I left. So I was leaving the tech scene to do this and pursue this full time. I was kind of funding it at that time. And then we decided before we deploy our tech, so we actually have a tech package that's sitting on ice right now that that deploys our methodology at scale, but at a much lower rate to all the families we work with. And we just decided there weren't enough providers in the industry that were doing it like with their hearts, I guess is the best way to say it. Usually you hear like ethically, or I feel like these terms are too, you know what I mean? They're too sterile. People weren't operating with their hearts. And so we were like, I don't know if we want to give our tech to a bunch of different people that are going to get bigger, badder, better, more profitable, but their core spirit of what they're doing isn't right. And so that was the day we decided to ice it. Crazy hard decision for me. I'd poured God knows how much money, time, and energy into that. And I'm a tech guy, you know what I mean? And so we decided to build the services company. Fortunately, she knew the services. ABA is like her background, and then I know how to run services companies. I was running tech services companies, and so it worked out, and here we are, and it's amazing. And it's the greatest thing I've ever done in my entire life, besides asking my wife to marry me because Yeah, yeah, you gotta have that one in there.

Timothy Zercher 3:13

No matter what. That's awesome. That's awesome. So you talk a lot about building perfect teams, right? With big quote marks around it. Where do you think most ABA organizations fall short when it comes to developing and supporting their people?

Armon Aghaie 3:27

Ah, I think we could spend an hour on that. Like I'm sure I had a rule in tech. If it wasn't an entry-level job and the candidate didn't have at least one two-year stint on their resume. One. I'm not trying to be super aggressive here. Just show me one genuine sense of effort and loyalty, then don't hand me the resume. I don't care. Like I'm not, it's just blanket. Don't even bring them to me. Obviously, entry-level jobs that that need not apply. And so I tried to bring that headspace over here, right? That was a really important lesson that I learned after making many, many mistakes and seeing many patterns. And Yanni, our co-founder, she was like, dude, we'll never hire anybody. And I was like, What do you mean? And then I started looking, like I started going through the at the time, hundreds and hundreds of resumes, and there wasn't one, not one. And so then you have to realize, okay, well, wait a second, what's going on? You know, that that leads into a whole bunch of different research. And at the time, the industry's turnover rate was 103.3%, right? So children who have massive struggles with consistency and just don't do well when there's constant change in the environment are experiencing a change in the arguably the second most important relationship in their life once every six months. Like it's crazy. At least once every six months, right? It could be more. At least, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And that was kind of out of preface. But to answer your question specifically, I think there's fundamentally two or three things that that matter most. First of all, the ping pong table and lunch and all the like superlatives are total bullshit. Nobody cares about. No one cares, right? What people care about is doing hard work with people that they trust, love, and respect, feeling like there's meaning in that work and that they're supported. What I hear from the teammates we hire and just the industry at large, the parents, and you can look at a lot of the big box ABA providers and see this as well. The individuals aren't supported. The excellent individuals in the industry, the top RBTs, top BCBAs, the people who are doing this with their hearts, is uh maybe that'll be our theme for today. They look to their left and they look to their right and they see like a body with a pulse. Like this person got hired, but they don't care. They're just, you know, given the iPad. Here you go, kid. And so that's defeating, right? Then when you realize that the administrative layer doesn't have the skill, doesn't have your back, doesn't have this, that's defeating, right? So the leadership structure isn't there. And now you've entered into the kind of like mercenary dog eat dog kind of mindset where you have to fight for every dollar you get, you have to fight for all these different things. And so the leadership principles that need to be applied are actually very basic level one principles. Like these are not complex. We're not winning because of our absolute top-tier mastery over leadership principles. Precisely the opposite, actually. If we're winning because we're doing the basics so well when it comes to culture and people development and collaboration, and everyone here has a voice, and then we're very picky about who we hire, right? We have a three-interview process. I interview every single candidate we've ever had ever, period. I'm not gonna send you into somebody else's home with their child if I don't know who you are. And so we're just doing that. And then on the back end, all the extra skill and lessons and leadership principles that we apply, that's the icing on the cake, if you will. But it's not the meat of what's attracting the candidates we have.

Timothy Zercher 6:54

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that. I think it's a different approach than a lot of groups follow, right? Because I think a lot of people in this space are all focused on speed. I've even heard the approach of we know that only, I can't remember the number that this guy mentioned, only 40% of our RBTs will last throughout the year. So we make sure we always hire two times as much as we're gonna need for the year because we just expect that that's gonna happen. And that's such a, in my mind, such a wrong way to look at it.

Armon Aghaie 7:18

I think it's a very, very immature and frankly ignorant mindset. And first of all, I said this early on when we first started. I haven't said this in a long time, but I said it's sad to me that being good is a competitive advantage in this space. And I said that to an RBT who I was interviewing with, and they were like, you know, that's really true. And I was like, I just figured it out. Like, you know what I mean? I didn't, I'm sad that that's the case because you really should define yourself, especially with something as important as what we're doing, you should define yourself on other things. Like, I spend very little time talking about our methodology, which is actually the meat, like it's the core of why we're having so much success with the the children we have, because what parents care about is am I gonna have the same RBT? I'm like, our turnover rate was zero last year. Does that help you? And they're like, wait, what? Zero. And I'm like, zero. Well, involuntary turnover rate, right? And so we had zero employees left us. It's the most proud stat I have. It is the number one stat I am most proud of, right? Guess what it is this year so far? Zero.

Timothy Zercher 8:25

Right? Zero. That's pretty incredible. And I think it must speak to you must have incredible, incredible processes for supporting your people. Incredible processes for engaging and keeping them engaged and happy long term.

Armon Aghaie 8:41

You know, it's interesting. I think actually, and this might sound really bad to say now that I'm thinking about it, I think our processes for supporting our people are probably crap because they don't exist. My approach towards my people, and I hope this trickles through the entire organization, I would argue is a very human approach. And that's a very anti-process approach, the human approach, right? And so most of what I focus on is mindset. Like if I'm doing some type of conversation, if I'm leadership, if it's a positive, negative, whatever it might be, usually what I'm targeting is mindset. What's the mindset that resulted in the good action? What's the mindset that resulted in the bad action? I see that as the underlying problem, right? So like you can consider that the ABA approach towards leadership and development. And then we build a lot of process around the organization itself. But in terms of supporting the people, and I'm not trying to be too combative with what you're saying, I think that it's ironic in a past life, I would have had a very structured, like, hey, leader, this is how you go through the mechanics, step one, step two, step three. You worked your way from just relational leadership to mentor leaderships. One of the individuals who trained me taught me that, right? Now it's just like talk to people, have a good time, hang out, teach them, build the relationship so that they trust you. I have the benefit of a title. So a lot of times people look up to me whether or not they should. Do you know what I mean? But it gives me the opportunity to build that trust more easily. But I think like our approach is very human, and that might sound too cliche, but it really is just that simple.

Timothy Zercher 10:07

No, it makes sense. It makes sense. I mean, at the end of the day, the processes and the systems that we put in place for employees should allow them and allow you as leadership to be more human. And if they're doing anything but that, then they're actually not helping, right? So if you can maintain that human connection without a bunch of processes and systems, then that makes perfect sense and more power to you, right? It's the goal anyway, so it makes sense. What have you found is the hardest part about growing your organization? Because I know you guys have grown pretty significantly.

Armon Aghaie 10:38

I guess that's a that's a phases thing, right? The hardest thing is different each chapter, credentialing is one thing, right? I feel like Texas Medicaid, I feel like everybody at that office knows me at this point because of how hard it is to get credentialed with Texas Medicaid. And then even though we are credentialed, we're still not, because we're now going through the second process with all of our clinicians, and that's a two and a half year journey we've been on, right? So there's those elements. A lot of people will say claims and collections. I actually think it's precisely the opposite of that because that's such a rigid process that if you're process-oriented, you can figure that out quickly. Like our average time from a person on site to claims collections is about 15 days, which from what I hear is pretty impressive. And so the benefit of that is it allows me to not defer cash too much to where I can hire the next person pretty quickly, right? And so I thought we were gonna have a wait list issue, which a lot of providers have, because either they don't even have the cash flow or they they don't have the staff, right? Well, we're starting to get word of mouth around the staff, and so we're we get a lot of applicants and we have the cash flow that we can go ahead and hire the next person to support the next client. We don't have to wait until claims start coming in. And so a lot of that's been well, I think for the most part, finding clients initially was really hard. I think we're starting to tip that as word of mouth is really the best marketing tool. And so you need 10 people that you can perform excellently with so that the next 10 people want to come find you. That's been a bit of a hard one. We are pretty exclusively in home and in school. We don't have any centers, and that's an intentional choice. Our model for opening centers is very different than the traditional model, and we'll be looking to open the first one later this year. Subtle plug. But the normal business aspects, right? It's running a good business and going through each of these levels. At first, you got to find people, we figure we cracked that code. Then you got to figure out your claims process. We cracked that code. You got to make sure you have enough clients coming in the door. We were finding people faster than we were finding clients. That was its own problem, right? Then we started finding clients faster. We started finding people, that was its own problem, right?

Timothy Zercher 12:46

Yep. It's only ever switched. It's only too many clients to make snaff. There's never enough. Yeah.

Armon Aghaie 12:51

Which side? I think the number one that will forever be our number one is that we're very selective about hiring. And so finding the right people will always be a difficult one. We probably hire one out of every hundred applicants, and maybe about one out of every 10 to 20 that go through the interview process. So our hire rates are actually pretty low for the level of candidates that we get.

Timothy Zercher 13:17

Might be a little higher on those numbers, but if you're being more selective, then that makes sense while your retention is also much better, right? Because you're being careful to pick people that fit with what you're building. Makes a lot of sense. So because we are a marketing agency that specializes in this space, we always have to ask some marketing type questions. First one is what works best right now outside of word of mouth for gaming clients? What's the best client acquisition channel for you all?

Armon Aghaie 13:40

Currently it's advertising, but advertising with the continued investment in organic social to kind of take the crown over time. Right? Advertising on which platforms? Facebook and Google. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. We've done a lot of the boots on the ground stuff. We go to all the events, we pick up clients from these types of things. It's just not consistent channel, right?

Timothy Zercher 14:02

Yeah, yeah. Which makes sense. Yeah, because those in-person things can be effective, but they're very hard to predict and they're very hard to scale, which of course is problematic. And then uh last marketing type question is what is one marketing channel or strategy or tactic that you all are watching in the marketplace or actually considering for yourselves? That's a good question.

Armon Aghaie 14:27

I'd say we're probably about to start pushing the word of mouth concept a little more, right? Rather than it just being an organic thing. And I don't know if we'll do this or not, but it's the thing, at least I'm watching, is what is it gonna take for the word of mouth to tip, right? If you look at the client case studies we have, they're incredible. Everybody says this, everybody's so biased, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. But the stories that are coming from our families and these types of things. I mean, I was breaking down last week. I was like, I can't believe that that it's you think you're it's your dream, you want it to be this successful, and you're looking forward to, oh, I have this grand vision and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, bull crap. Like, you know what I mean? You see every stat out there. And then you sit down, you're like, okay, well, our first client's only been with us for this period of time. We've graduated multiple clients and none of them have hit the three-year mark, right? Average time in therapy is three to five years. One of one of our clients that's been with us for a year and a half was verbal, but would barely talk if you spoke to him. Like, hey, how you doing? The most you'd get is a head nod. And now his parents are sending him shopping lists for him to go to the grocery store that's across the street and they'll basically chaperone, but they're not doing anything. He's going and getting all the groceries, he's interacting with the cashier, he's doing all of these things. And I'm not talking about in a sterile environment. I mean, like we're talking about life skills in a real life skill environment. And that's a year and a half, right? The first time his aunt came over and said hello, and he responded with a full sentence and a how are you, full shock and started crying, right? And so that being said, I want parents to hear these stories in a way that's organic and doesn't feel forced. And it feels a little awkward to go say, hey, can you bring your three closest friends who also have kids that need it? Just doesn't feel right. And so I'm interested to see how that channel evolves, but it's a weird one to try and force, which is why I like have that inorganic versus organic formation in my head. We'll probably just wait and see, but I'm curious what the tipping point on that actually taking over as our mass market method is. Up until then, we'll just have to continue to try and tell our story and hope we attract some like minded individuals who can use our services.

Timothy Zercher 16:42

I love that. I love that. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for sharing some of your insights. You're clearly building a powerful organization, and I know that you're having a large impact in the communities you're working in. I hope so. I hope so. I really appreciate it, Tim. Absolutely. Thank you.