Timothy Zercher 0:00

Well, Jeff, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Yeah, I'm I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Absolutely. So we'll start off with what inspired you to go from clinical social work to building answers now? And what what gap in autism care were you trying to solve originally?

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Yeah, for me, it started with being a clinician working directly with kiddos and their families. And what I saw was because a family got a diagnosis, didn't necessarily mean that they were going to get the help that they needed or deserved. And so families were dealing with long wait lists, inconsistent access to experts, right? Sometimes you kind of got the clinician who happened to be in your area, and very little practical support, specifically for the parents and caregivers. On average, a parent or of a kid with autism is getting less than an hour of parent training a month across the country, which raised a pretty basic question for me as a clinician. Why are we asking these families to organize their lives around the care that their kid needs instead of designing the care in a way that makes more sense for them in their lives? And so that became the starting point for answers now, right? How we connect these families directly with a qualified, licensed expert that makes this real quality care accessible across the country. I love that.

Timothy Zercher 1:15

I love that. And you built answers now around that virtual-led BCB, BCBA-led therapy. I think many probably doubted that it could work. I think there's always skepticism around virtual BCBA services or virtual autism services. And what helped you gain the trust of families and prove the model out, especially to payers?

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Yeah, I mean, I think there are a couple of things that really jump out. One is the goal wasn't just to put traditional care on a screen, it was to rethink the way that families get help for their child. And so, you know, oftentimes when we would hear objections like, oh, Zoom school didn't work. We're like, well, this isn't Zoom School, right? We've created a platform with games and activities and affinities, right? If your kid loves minions, the minions are going to be involved in session. I often get the question, like, how do you get a kid with autism to sit at a screen, sit at the screen for an hour and get care of like we don't. That's not what we do, right? The kids should be moving around. There should be materials and activities where the parent is mediating the care and really involved, and the clinician is playing a little bit of maestro. And so what we've seen is having a parent who's confident and educated and involved with the support of a licensed expert with a master's degree that has specific expertise around what their kiddo might be struggling with, whether it's a 12-year-old learning how to make friends for the first time, or a four-year-old with toileting and sleep and everything in between, having an expert who has that expertise specific to that kiddo's need really does wonders. And so that's kind of the heart of what we do, which is pairing that expert with that parent in an environment where they can work together is where the magic happens.

Timothy Zercher 2:52

Yeah. Yeah. With answers now scaling rapidly and I believe integrating AI into kind of care delivery now, how do you balance that business growth with maintaining the clinical quality of outcomes? Because I know that's always a it's always a challenge in every every organization that scales quickly.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Yeah. What we come back to is the the relationship between that family and that clinician is the point of what we do and how we do it. And so whether it's technology or AI or something else that helps us scale that ability to put those two groups together is where I get really excited, right? When everything kind of clicks into place, healthcare is remarkably complex from licensing and credentialing and matching. It is state by state, Medicaid is different. And only 30 of the states actually have a license. It's just very complex. And so, how do we use technology to streamline some of those complexities that make it really hard to scale these types of companies while putting all of our focus as a leadership team on clinical quality? And ultimately, at the end of the day, how do we put our money where our mouth is there? Right. So we recently published in JMIR, we partnered with Clemson University. The research has over 500 learners involved. And, you know, what total open kimono on those outcomes for those kids? Most of them are incredible. Some of them are not. And I think it's really important for providers to hold themselves accountable to quality. We're held to a different standard. I mean, you said it earlier, uh Tim, who are skeptical about virtual. And so we think that makes it even more important that we're able to share the outcomes that we're seeing and spend as much time, energy, and effort around enhancing that for our kiddos and for our company.

Timothy Zercher 4:29

Absolutely. Absolutely. No, that makes complete sense. Since HRAIN is a marketing agency that specializes in behavioral health and often a lot of ABA as well, we always have to ask some marketing questions. First one is outside of word of mouth, what's working best for you right now when it comes to client acquisition?

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Yeah, I think trust has been something that's been really important for us. We've got two really, if not three, really important audiences when you think about trust, right? It's the families themselves, it's the insurance companies that we are working with, and then it's the providers, the external providers. So whether that's an OT or speech or primary care, p tradition, et cetera. And so I'd say we've placed a lot of emphasis on trust and closing loops and doing the things that seem very obvious to us that don't always happen in ABA, unfortunately. And so I think the two places that we've seen the biggest growth, one is traditional marketing, and the other is building relationships with providers on the ground in states. We've got eight people on the team who live in some of our states and go out and host breakfasts and lunch and learns with groups of families and physicians in large hospital systems and kind of everything in between, because getting somebody's attention is only the beginning, right? And you know that it's helping them actually get into care that works is what matters. And the more we're able to do that, that flywheel really starts to spin.

Timothy Zercher 5:48

Yeah, that makes complete sense. And gaining their trust is very hard, especially before the phone even rings, right before they even engage with you, right? That's always the hard part. Last question then for you is what is one marketing tactic or marketing strategy that your team is considering or even just watching really carefully in the marketplace?

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Yeah, I mean, I'm a big proponent of AI. I just got back from a trip in Europe and worked very closely with my rock bot on that whole trip. The whole time I was there. So I've seen the videos as many folks have on the you know Anthropic has one marketing person on their team who doesn't even have a marketing background. And who knows how true or false some of that rhetoric is? Not true. I looked at that, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so I think just assuming that it's not entirely true, how can we stay ahead of the game as these tools emerge from a marketing perspective? How do we not only, if we're gonna try and replicate something like instinct, right, for what we do for kind of as a marketing tool, right? Make it easier for them to get into care and be more responsive and make it a better experience, et cetera. How do you make sure that that data is stored securely? How do you make sure that it's accurate and what you're giving back to them is meaningful and it's easy for them to use and understand that and then coming back to that they can trust? So I think the approach that I'm really interested in is not creating a one-man band that gains an algorithm in some form or fashion. It's being able to make clear answers that are informed by real clinicians accessible as a way to drive awareness. And I think that AI can be a tool there to enhance that and be a bit of a megaphone. So I think the opportunities to be, I think in my mind, genuinely useful for these families at the specific moment in which they might be looking for help, not to just be the loudest company or voice in a in the proverbial room.

Timothy Zercher 7:47

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, and that is hard, right? And providing real value before you even talk with them is a challenge for sure. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. We really appreciate you coming on, appreciate you sharing some of your insights. I think your team is doing incredible work for a lot of families in a lot of different communities. So thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me. Really enjoyed it.