Timothy Zercher 0:00

Ty, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you taking the time this morning. Hey, man. So glad to be here, Tim. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I love to start with just telling us how you got into this field, into the new business that you're in.

Tyler Krueger 0:12

Yeah. So it definitely was a path. I started as a clinician for about 15 years, went to that working directly with kids, to the clinical director role, took a few years off and got into some of the database architecture space with a design team. And then got back into the clinic and realized that there was still just a gigantic gap in the software space. So after figuring all that out, I was like, okay, well, I know a lot about how to make these things now. And so being the clinician myself, there was really no gap between how do I find out the product requirements? That is my job as an architect on my software team. So use myself as a use case. And we started building. Yeah.

Timothy Zercher 0:49

Love that. Would you mind for our audience really quickly kind of saying what your software does?

Tyler Krueger 0:53

Yeah, most definitely. So Session ABA is an all-in-one practice management solution for primarily independent clinics and practitioners, where we, you know, our motto is less admin, more impact. So given the everyone from our front desk staff to our back end staff to our clinicians, and most importantly, our BTs working on the floor, the most streamlined and easy to use software so they can spend more time focusing on the kids in the treatment.

Timothy Zercher 1:18

Love that. Love that. It's a nice elevator pitch. You have it ready to go. That's the that's the goal. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. So you built Session ABA after seeing those operation challenges firsthand in clinics. What was the moment when you realized the industry needed a different approach to practice management software?

Tyler Krueger 1:38

Yeah, I think more than anything, as a clinical director, as a leader of people, culture is everything. And especially when we're operating in an industry such as this, where the day-to-day is hard. These BTs put their heart and their soul on the floor working with these kids every single day. And after working a three, four, five, six hour shift, the ability for them to accurately remember everything that happened, to write the note, to match it to the code, to match it to the billing time, it was just a real struggle for them. And instead of me as a clinic, as a clinician or as a clinical director being able to spend my time developing their skill sets and working with the kids, we were spending more than half the time just chasing them down to get their note in on time so we could submit it to billing or reviewing the note and having to submit corrections. So it really affected our ability as a leadership team to establish like a positive and forward-facing clinical culture. And so I would say that was definitely the main catalyst for me starting to hit the books and designing the software. But the second piece, too, living here in Minnesota, for anyone that's been watching the news, we've been the target of a lot of inquiry and investigation around fraud. And just like every industry, there's definitely some fraud going on, but maybe about five to 10% of what's actually being reported. I think more often we are having clinics that are being spotlighted for just simply not having a good streamlined clinical practice, connecting their sessions to billing, connecting it to the right codes, writing what's actually happening in the session. So we wanted to design the software to just eliminate a lot of those over-billing gaps that are unintentional, maybe session notes that are missed or not documented correctly, and then matching codes to actual services. So first we saw the culture piece, then we saw the actual business impact, and we're like, we got to build something better.

Timothy Zercher 3:25

Yeah, I love that. I think that's a good reason to start a company, right? Is both to help people and help companies. 100%. Yeah. So you've been vocal about supporting independent ABA providers specifically. What do you think smaller clinics need most right now to remain competitive and continue delivering that high-quality care?

Tyler Krueger 3:46

Yeah, that's a great question. I first started in this industry about 10, 15 years ago working for a smaller independent company. And we grew to two locations and over 150 kids across six years, and then ended up selling to private equity, which, you know, I know that there's a need in the space for services, and I fully understand the why behind it. However, I just get really, I get really hurt because at the end of the day, ABA and autism is such an individualized treatment approach. And I feel when we try to put it in a box and only serve maybe three to five year olds who are nonverbal and don't have a ton of challenging behaviors, we tend to really miss the mark for why our field started this service in the beginning. And I think when we look at the softwares who have teamed up with some of these private practices, the costs are astronomical. They're super cumbersome to onboard, and you almost need two to three people to run the software itself. So when we wanted to design our stuff, we wanted it to be pretty much ready to go out of the box with very minimal training, easy cutover, and a ton of support to whether they're a solo practitioner or they have three to five BCBAs in their clinic. We wanted something that was approachable and was easy to run and just reduced their ability to switch over to something that maybe was more financially feasible and allows their practice to run a ton smoother. So I love independent clinics. I still practice and consult with some independent clinics, and it's these guys who have tend to really get left behind as private equity has moved into the space.

Timothy Zercher 5:18

Absolutely. What have you found? Because you've had a lot of hats in your career, you've done a lot of different jobs. What have you found is the hardest part of growing an organization or even just a team?

Tyler Krueger 5:26

Yeah, I think it really comes back down to that culture piece and being able to hire the right people at the right times. We all know that ABA is a people business. We need our staff to be able to run our service industry, unlike maybe some of other behavioral health operations where you can have maybe one or two clinicians operating across 30 to 60 clients, we're one-to-one. And so when you run a one-to-one business, you really have to take that into account. You have to make sure that everybody's on board, everybody's rowing in the right direction. And if you start to see drift in your procedures or in culture and dynamics and drama, all of those things are truly part of the job. And so I would say that's probably the number one piece that we always put first whenever we're consulting, whenever we're building our own personal team, is is the right person there? And if they're not there yet, we need to find them. So, you know, finding those people and being able to establish those relationships with them and get to know everything about them, that that really is how I drive my teams because if my people aren't taken care of, then how can they how can I expect them to take care of our kids?

Timothy Zercher 6:30

That makes makes complete sense. And I think that's it anyone who has experienced building teams knows that the hardest part, and sometimes it makes the rest of it so easy, is having the right people, right? If you have the right people, you also don't have to worry about managing culture or anything else. It forms naturally.

Tyler Krueger 6:45

Yeah, and sometimes the hardest part of that is no one when to say good, you know, goodbye because it's it's not for everyone. And I tell I've told my teams that I've told my people that I'm like, this is a very challenging field. It's probably one of the most rewarding fields you can get into as well, but it's not for everyone, and that's totally okay. And if you're not in it for the right reasons, and if you're not in it to be a part of this team, that's cool. There's a lot of other jobs out there for you, I promise you. So I would say maybe that's opportunities. That's the hardest part, is when you have to have that conversation. But we do our best to train our people. We give them extensive onboarding and just making sure that they're the right fit from the beginning, but sometimes we miss.

Timothy Zercher 7:21

Yeah, of course. So since we are a marketing agency, we always ask some questions around marketing and advertising. What have you found works best right now, especially outside of word of mouth when it comes to gaining new clients, new partners for you?

Tyler Krueger 7:34

Yeah, that's a great question. And we're a bootstrapped software company, so our marketing budget is not big, but we've done a combination of things. We've done your typical Facebook ads. We really tried hard within our first 30 to 60 days to go hard on our organic content as well, providing educational stuff, providing entertaining stuff. I'm not a dancer, so I'm not sitting here doing trending TikTok dances. Maybe I should, but we try to focus on providing value for not only our potential clients, but then also just for the community as a large. Also, I've been in a variety of large BCBA and clinic owner Facebook groups for over 10 to 15 years. So I really try to provide value in those groups. And then if people do have honest questions about, hey, what software is working best right now or who has the best integration between billing and scheduling, to just go in there and then just offer a phone call to just say, hey, let's see if we can help solve some of these issues that you're having. And then also just this past year, we were over at ABAI in San Francisco, which was a fantastic experience for our software and for our clinic. But yeah, it was just great to get to meet people, to talk with other, obviously, practitioners in the field, other software companies, seeing the hurdles and the challenges that they're dealing with, and how can we best find our place in this market? Because personally, as a founder, it's not my goal to become a million billion dollar company, take over the world. Really, we just want to be able to find our people, the right people to be able to support and and line up with them. So it's really just kind of put yourself out there in a lot of different ways, talk about those relationships, just getting to talk to cool people like yourself and figuring out who are your people.

Timothy Zercher 9:06

Yeah, I love that. I love that. And what is one marketing strategy or tactic that you are either just watching really closely in the marketplace or that you're actually considering implementing for yourselves?

Tyler Krueger 9:17

When my business partner, he owns a marketing company as well. And so he's definitely our marketing expert, and he really wants to be consistent with providing value. And I think anytime that you try to hard sell people, it feels gross in a way. And so it's more of it's more of how can you provide value to your company, to your community, to anyone that's listening. So, in any way that we can do that, whether it's one project actually that we're working on right now, is called Session ABA Educate. And so, in that platform, myself, I'm creating that 40-hour RBT course. And then eventually I would really love to have a collaboration and a mastermind community of all the clinics that are using our software, just have a space where they can provide CEUs, where they can provide sharing resources, they can do that, just being able to establish and form that community. I think those community pieces and those relationships providing actual value for clinics and for people in the field, that's really where I'm looking to go in the next six months to a year. But yeah, we're super busy right now. So that's it tends to be a little bit of a less of a priority. Our sales calls are coming in at a pretty high rate. So so yeah, but that for me, when you say the trends to look at, that's where I'm gonna continue to go because no matter how Facebook it goes, no matter how Instagram goes, no matter how TikTok is going, at the end of the day, it's the community and the value that you can provide that will forever outlast all these trends.

Timothy Zercher 10:37

Absolutely. And that is a universal rule, right? Is if you're providing real value, then you will gain clients, you'll gain friends, partners, all of those things. 100%.

Tyler Krueger 10:46

Yeah, and I think one other piece on that too is just the clinics that we are working with. So we're in six states currently, including California, Nevada, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Florida. And I think each each one of these states has their own individual struggles and challenges as far as billing codes, as far as authorizations, note templates. And so while we're working with these individual independent clinics, we're setting up all of our systems to have these things pre-built, ready to go for them. So California, for example, runs a very different model than Minnesota. And so once you establish these champions in these individual markets, then you have a lot better chance of getting those word of mouth referrals and then people just start talking, be like, hey, this is the way to go. Yeah.

Timothy Zercher 11:24

Yeah. Yeah. Now that makes complete sense. Makes complete sense. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Ty. We appreciate you taking time, appreciate you spending your energy and your experience helping all these other groups that you are. Awesome, Tim. Yeah, it was a pleasure to talk with you and I hope we get to do it again sometime. Absolutely. Thank you. Perfect.