Voices in Health and Wellness

Reinventing Autism Care: The Adaptive Path Approach

• Dr Andrew Greenland • Season 1 • Episode 10

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What happens when speech therapists decide the standard approach to autism therapy isn't serving children properly? In this eye-opening conversation, Hayley and Jenna share how they created Adaptive Path, a revolutionary early childhood intervention program in Austin that's challenging the status quo.

The founders reveal how the explosion of Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) therapy—often prescribed at an exhausting 40 hours weekly for preschoolers—has created a system where parents must choose between intensive therapy or education for their autistic children. Their solution? A multidisciplinary approach that brings speech therapy, occupational therapy, and early childhood education together under one roof.

"Non-speaking doesn't mean non-learning," Hayley emphasizes, articulating their core philosophy that autistic children shouldn't have to "earn" their education by demonstrating neurotypical behaviors first. Their program maintains developmentally appropriate hours (8:30-2:30) with one-to-one support during typical preschool activities—combining the benefits of therapy with the essential social and educational experiences all children need.

The conversation explores how millennial parents are demanding more thoughtful, holistic approaches for their children, and how insurance-driven healthcare creates unexpected challenges for innovative practitioners. From navigating fire suppression system requirements to managing Gen Z employees, Hayley and Jenna offer a candid look at the entrepreneurial journey of building a mission-driven healthcare business.

Whether you're a parent exploring options for an autistic child, a healthcare professional seeking better models, or simply interested in how determined entrepreneurs can create positive change, this discussion provides valuable insights into the evolving landscape of neurodevelopmental support. Subscribe to hear more conversations with founders reshaping healthcare delivery for the better.

📇 Guest Contact & Social Info 

Guests: 

  • Haley Broocks, Co-Founder, Speech-Language Pathologist
  • Jenna Kellog, Co-Founder, Clinical Operations Lead
    Organization: Adaptive Path
    Location: Austin, Texas
    Website: https://adaptive-path.com
    Email: haley@adaptive-path.com
     
Dr Andrew Greenland:

Welcome back to Voices in Health and Wellness. This is the podcast where we spotlight the founders, the clinicians and change makers, reshaping how care is delivered, experienced and understood. I'm your host, dr Andrew Greenland, and today I'm thrilled to welcome two incredibly thoughtful guests. We have Hayley and Jenna, co-founders of Adaptive Path in Austin, texas. Adaptive Path is a growing force in early childhood intervention, offering a fresh and deeply human alternative to traditional therapeutic models for autistic preschoolers, with a focus on parent-centered collaboration, developmental respect and the evolving needs of today's families, hayley and Jenna are meeting a new generation of caregivers right where they are. So, hayley and Jenna, thank you very much for joining me on this podcast today. You're calling from Austin, texas, I believe.

Hayley Broocks:

We are.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

So why don't we start with adaptive? Sorry, Karen.

Hayley Broocks:

Thank you for having us.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

No, you're very welcome. So let's start with adaptive path. Could you perhaps tell us a little bit about what gap you saw in traditional therapy options that made you want to create something a bit different and perhaps talk a little bit about what adaptive path does and your respective roles within it?

Hayley Broocks:

sure? Um, we're both speech and language pathologists. We met in grad school many years ago I won't number them and for the past decade or so I in particular have worked in a variety of clinics in the Austin area that focused on providing services for children with autism, and in the last few years there's been an explosion of a particular kind of therapy called ABA, because it is mandated to be covered by commercial insurance here in the States and when that happens, venture capital and big money tend to get involved, especially here. I know our health systems are different and I just saw a push towards ABA kind of taking over the space and not leaving any room for every other therapeutic discipline. That's really important to children and also often at the expense of education. So we are trying to create something where every therapeutic discipline, plus early childhood education, have a seat at the table.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Brilliant. And what do you individually do, or do you have a sort of a joint approach to this business?

Jenna Kellog:

It's a joint approach. We're learning as we go. Since we are both speech therapists, though we're both qualified to provide speech therapy to all of our students who are enrolled. Hayley does most of the speech therapy. I do more of the admin side of things. My career up until we started Adaptive Path was in geriatrics, so totally different world than this pediatric world. But yeah, we're learning as we go, but Haley does more therapy. I'm usually behind the computer. I'll step in when needed, though.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

I understand, and so I mean you mentioned ABA and obviously it's a term I hadn't quite heard of. Can you perhaps talk about what that is and what the issues are with it as you see it?

Hayley Broocks:

yeah. So ABA stands for applied behavioral analysis. It is a strictly behavioral approach to supporting kids with autism, which I do think is it's a necessary piece of the puzzle, but it's not the whole thing. What ABA leaves out is that there often are physiological reasons for things that are happening with the child and the behavior is a symptom of that, not like a cognitive choice that that child might be making, if that makes sense. But they treat everything like it's a decision and when you have sort of just that framework it's based on reinforcement of positive things, so like positive reinforcement for positive things and then sort of like ignoring anything negative.

Hayley Broocks:

Unfortunately, toddlers can't be ignored ever. That's not good for them. Often the only way that they have to communicate, especially non-speaking toddlers, is crying, something you might call a tantrum. And if you haven't studied childhood development, which these therapists aren't required to, you might end up pathologizing just typical child behavior and then ignoring that communication isn't necessarily a great outcome. So what I was seeing when I was a speech therapist who would go into these centers that didn't employ any other kind of professional who knew a lot about child development, I would see this pathologizing of typical toddler behavior outside of diagnosis and outside of kind of typical things you would normally expect a two or three year old to do Right.

Hayley Broocks:

Yeah, and that made me kind of uncomfortable and I decided that I think that it's better for our kids, and for any child, really to have an occupational therapist on site, a speech pathologist on site, a preschool educator on site. We all can't know everything. I don't expect any professional to know everything about a child and their development, but I think we need to make room for everyone to be a participant, because you can't just prescribe this child 40 hours of behavior therapy and expect a great outcome, which is what is happening here.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

I understand. So basically, by what you do, you have a sort of multidisciplinary team approach that you can offer more because you've got more people with a better understanding of the various things that contribute. Is that a fair thing to say in the way that you do things?

Jenna Kellog:

Yes, definitely. And then? We add education. So a lot of these big ABA clinics in this area add education. So a lot of these big ABA clinics in this area it's strictly ABA. There's no preschool education, there's no K through five education. These parents are having to choose Either they go to ABA and skip school, or they miss out on the ABA services because they try to go to public school, which doesn't always work out for those children either.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Really interesting. What do you think is getting missed in that approach, then that you're able to offer something a bit different? What are the kind of things that you're picking up on that this approach is just too rigid and standardized.

Hayley Broocks:

I think that there's so many differences in our countries and how things happen and I don't necessarily like I'm not saying universal health care is the only way to go. I honestly don't know what the answer is, but I think some of our issues come from us not having that. For example, like these big ABA clinics that we're talking about, they are only, like, incredibly abundant in states where you can choose to opt out of public school for this therapy. Like, if you look at a map of where all these clinics are, they're only in states that don't have strict public education laws, because they know they can keep these kids till they're eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, and bill their insurance for 40 hours a week from age two to age 12.

Hayley Broocks:

So I think I don't want to like, I don't want to be too negative about it, because we use it. I think it's a great tool. It just has to be used appropriately.

Jenna Kellog:

Yeah, and ABA has a bad reputation, at least here, for I mean a lot of the reasons Haley mentioned. But if you're a three-year-old who's prescribed 40 hours of behavior therapy a week, when are you going to learn You're not.

Hayley Broocks:

Yeah, you're not. Yeah, basically, and all the professionals I want to say the professionals I've met in this industry have great intentions. They're incredible. People usually care so much about their patients. It's the overarching system that creates this kind of pipeline that I don't think has great outcomes pipeline that I don't think has great outcomes. So we basically try to make it like a natural environment to childhood, where you're in a classroom with eight other kids your age. You're not locked in a tiny room with one therapist who's asking you memorization questions 10 times an hour. We have almost two acres of outside space. We're outside all the time.

Jenna Kellog:

we're just it's childhood, but supported by therapists, if that makes sense we want to be the bridge between you know, if if a child needs aba, then they need aba, but at some point they're going to age out and they need to be able to go to school, whether that's public school or private school, whatever the family chooses. But there has to be some kind of bridge between, I mean, can they participate in a classroom environment, can they manage sharing the classroom toys with their peers, and those are things that we can work on naturally in our environment and then have them ready to go to school once parents are ready, and that have them ready to go to school once you know parents are ready and that child is ready too.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

So how long is the program? Because you meant this is for preschoolers by what you're saying. So how long is? How long would you need with a child to kind of get them to a point where they could perhaps go into mainstream education?

Hayley Broocks:

Well, we hope to get them early. Our ages are two to six. We won't kick you out when you're six. We'll keep you until your seventh birthday, because in Texas you don't have to start public school until you're seven. If that's what you're going to do is to, instead of kids ending up in these 40-hour clinics when they're two, we really hope they come to us and get this early intervention from a multidisciplinary team in a more natural environment so that if, hopefully, when they do go on to public school, it's not like a shock that you know they've been in this room with one therapist for four years, whereas with us they've been in a group of students with a curriculum, learning with a teacher, following teacher guidelines and following the structure of a classroom.

Hayley Broocks:

And I think too, there's this. It's kind of an odd juxtaposition because I don't know if you've noticed, our country is very political Really. No, you picked up on that. We kind of choose sides here and we're either on like one extreme or the other. We're not at all. We're here for the entire spectrum, but a lot it's everything is very much like neurodiversity.

Hayley Broocks:

Affirming right now is like kind of the I would say the key, like the key term, the hip term, which we are too. That's incredible. We all should be more supportive, accommodating and just compassionate people. However, it's a spectrum. There's a variety of needs, of needs, and sometimes there's like discord within the community itself about sort of the best practice. Like some people who have maybe lower support needs children think there should be no intervention at all, whereas parents of children with high support needs are kind of desperate for as much support as they can get, and it's sort of our goal to provide all of that, even like beyond the services that we offer every day in our classrooms.

Hayley Broocks:

But you know, we have a contact who her whole job is like financial planning for families who may end up with a child that needs to be supported for a lifetime, versus just till 18 years old. Um, things that are hard to think about when your child is preschool age, but sometimes necessary. Um, we support families if they want to seek out any kind of biomedical intervention, which is a big divide here. Some people think that that's like searching for a cure and so it's not, as accepted, appropriate. But I mean the truth of the matter is there's physiological dysfunction in children who are diagnosed with autism, gut health issues, motor deficits, sleep issues, seizure activity, brain inflammation. Those are all things that can be addressed and if it's not necessarily looking for a cure, it's trying to support your child so they can be their best self.

Jenna Kellog:

We're very supportive of that and big proponents of the parents of these kiddos are the parents. They get to choose what other therapies they choose for their child and we're just here to support that where they may not find that support in other places.

Hayley Broocks:

Yeah, you get a lot of rolling eyes in other places.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Really Okay. Is there a sense of conflict in doing this alternative approach, which is not the mainstream, which is not the mandated thing that everybody else gets? Is there a conflict in doing that kind of thing or are you able to happily get on and offer your multidisciplinary, holistic approach without too many problems? Pretty much to happily get on and, you know, offer your multidisciplinary, holistic approach without too many problems pretty much we the.

Jenna Kellog:

I would say like maybe the only pushback we've had actually might come from parents who have taken their child to a neurologist and the neurologist says you need ABA, you need 40 hours of ABA a week. And they come to us and we say we don't do 40 hours a week, that's not age appropriate for ages two to six. You know we have a typical preschool day with typical preschool hours and there are parents who have heard what that doctor said and think that well, the doctor said my child needs 40 hours, why are you not providing 40 hours? So that's probably that's all I can think of as maybe some, some questions or some pushback. Can you think of anything else?

Hayley Broocks:

Um, I think. Um, we use enough of like our philosophies buzzwords on our website to attract the kind of families who would seek us out anyway. I think we're well aware that there are some therapists in mainstream therapy who disagree and wouldn't encourage families to seek out other types of therapy or, you know, change a diet or anything like that. But what are you going to do?

Jenna Kellog:

I think that the parents who are coming to us are parents who are also like-minded. You know they're. They're searching for the same type of treatment that we provide and insurance should be happy that we're only requesting 30 hours versus 40.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

So what does um, what does a typical day look like, if there is such a thing in your world?

Jenna Kellog:

well, guess it's a silly question well, we do have just like a typical preschool schedule. So kids are dropped off in the morning and we try to spend about 30 minutes outside, weather permitting. You know, we want as much vitamin D as we can get and then we transition inside the classroom where the teacher starts with some circle time. So, just like any other typical preschool, you're going to sit around, sing some songs, talk about the weather and the months, the days of the year, things like that, and then we kind of just work in like a 15 minute increment of a schedule for those kiddos who can participate. It is not required that everyone be participating doing the same thing at every you know, every minute of the day. Obviously, some behaviors just don't allow for that, and we're very aware of when a kid needs a break, when they need to go outside, when they you know they can't be sitting at the table. It's you know, it's too much, it's too overwhelming. They need a break from the classroom.

Jenna Kellog:

But we do try to just follow a loose school schedule. So there are, you know, there's arts and crafts through the day. There's story time in the afternoon. There's your you know your snack break, your lunch break, your you know, we're outside playing as much as we can, and then we're. You know we try to get the kiddos back inside for the next. You know maybe some math, maybe we're doing a math activity at the table, or you know a science experiment with paint and bubbles and water and what sinks and what floats and just things that any child who's attending any preschool our kiddos are getting the same type of education.

Hayley Broocks:

Yeah, just because you know I'm not saying most, but a large portion of our children are non-speaking. But non-speaking doesn't mean non-learning, and I think that's the problem with other facilities that you know. They claim to be so neuroaffirming and ascent-based, but they're not providing the same education that any three-year-old in preschool would get. So to me it's like how is that neuroaffirming If you're saying that you have to earn your education by graduating from your type of therapy?

Hayley Broocks:

That doesn't sound very neuroaffirming to me. Just because you might learn differently or it might look different from the outside doesn't mean it's not happening, and so that's our whole thing. We don't care if you're not sitting at circle time. If you're in the room, you're hearing what your friends are saying, you're hearing the story, you are exposed to it, and that's really what is so important to us. We don't care what it looks like. We want to give you the opportunity to receive the same like early childhood education that any child would receive that my kid in preschool is getting right now. It doesn't matter to us if you're sitting on the floor.

Hayley Broocks:

If you're laying on the floor, if you're across the room, if you have headphones on, if you're looking like you're not participating, it doesn't matter. We want you to have the opportunity.

Jenna Kellog:

And each of our kiddos has a one-to-one therapist who's with them through the day, so they have that adult support to. You know, at least try to encourage a kid to hey, look, you know, it's time for circle time, let's go sit on our yellow dot. And if they can do it, great, and if they can't, that's okay. But they do have that one-to-one therapist with them through the day for that support. And then Hayley and I, you know, can push in for speech therapy through the day as well great, so you're clearly creating something new.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Um I already have, I guess. How do you see um the therapy and wellness space evolving for preschool aged autistic learners?

Jenna Kellog:

oh, gosh, we hope this model takes off yeah, that other that I mean, at some point in time other clinics are gonna have to start and you know, including education in their model. I mean that would. That's the goal. I don't know how we accomplish that, but no aba.

Hayley Broocks:

The explosion of it here in the states is it's really been the last like five to ten years, where I mean there are, there are I couldn't even guess. I know of like one specific brand of this huge clinic. There's like 37 of them in Austin alone, um. So I think it's going to take a minute because there's a lot of big money in it right now, um, but I also think that the success rate is not great and it's really sad to say, but it's like the, the generation right now, the cohort of these kids, they're the ones who are gonna grow up in this and we're gonna see what happens. We, I didn't want to wait to see what happened because I I hope I'm wrong, I hope I wrong, but I don't necessarily think it's going to be the best possible outcome.

Hayley Broocks:

We are deep in the early days of the new business right now. But, like you know, we're like five years from now and we have time. We're going to, you know, lobby the Texas legislation about. You shouldn't be able to take a kid for 40 hours and not provide them education. Like we don't understand how that's legal. It seems sort of like a no brainer to us, but everything is so new that there's really not that much regulation around it. Like, as practitioners, we're very regulated and the therapists who provide the therapy are regulated, but like, the industry is not regulated, if that makes sense, I understand. So you know that's our five-year plan go to the capital, but we're pretty busy right now. One day, one day we'll get there.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

What about millennial parents, in terms of what they might be asking? Yeah, absolutely.

Hayley Broocks:

I just wondered whether that's their demands or their requests perhaps different to what they would have been asking for a few years ago.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Be asking yeah, absolutely. I just wondered whether that's, um, their demands or their requests. Uh, perhaps different to what they would have been asking for a few years ago I think so I think millennial parents ask a lot more questions right.

Jenna Kellog:

I also think they're just maybe open to more answers too. You know that it's besides the few families who have been told you need 40 hours a week and that's what you need, and they don't think twice about it. I do think there's a large group of our population who is told this is what you need, and then they don't second guess it, but they look at all options and I think that's a lot of those kind of families who are finding us. You know, maybe they have been told they need ABA, but they're not comfortable with the lack of education. So, and it seems like the parents that we have, at least now, they are all millennials actually. So I think we're I think we're pretty like-minded at least the ones we have now like-minded at least the ones we have now.

Hayley Broocks:

Yeah, I mean, I think parents these days are much more I don't want to say involved, because my parents were involved, but maybe informed about, like my parents had no idea what I was doing at school. But these parents want to know, and they should, and I think they spend a lot of time sort of like doing their own research, which I feel like even saying that phrase is freaking controversial. But, you know, looking into, you know they'll take their advice from their pediatrician or their neurologist to whoever handed them their diagnosis, and then they'll go to the internet.

Hayley Broocks:

Yeah, they'll go to the internet and they'll look and see what they find and if they don't like the mainstream either, they like. We've met families who have kept kids entirely out of therapy until they found us, um, because they weren't comfortable with what was, I mean the options that were given. I talked to a mom last week which I thought this was so incredible and I had to Google it because I didn't. I hadn't heard of it. But there's some company that will train parents in these ABA concepts and like help them become basically a paraprofessional in the field so that they can help their child at home. And she was telling me she had done that because she had toured some of these facilities and she's got icky vibes and didn't want to send her child there, and so she did it herself and now her child's older and so she's looking for more support. But I just thought that was so amazing and that's a very millennial thing. Yeah.

Jenna Kellog:

I think yeah, I agree.

Hayley Broocks:

I don't think that company would have existed 25 years ago.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Yeah so from what you're talking so far, I still haven't got a sense of how big what you do is in terms of, I mean, how many children do you have and how many staff do you have? What's the kind of operation look like for somebody who hasn't come across adaptive path before?

Jenna Kellog:

We're teeny tiny so and we and we really hope to we don't want to stay teeny tiny, but we don't want to. We don't want to explode schoolhouse on two acres where we have three classrooms and each classroom will have about eight kids per room. Now, because they have a one-to-one, that is also eight therapists per classroom, plus Haley and I. Plus for each group of eight individual therapists is one master level clinician over those eight, so 30 staff total with around, you know, 24 to 30 kids.

Hayley Broocks:

We have slightly more staff than we do children.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Does he mean that you need that kind of ratio with the work that you're doing? I guess?

Hayley Broocks:

Yeah, honestly, it's, it's safer.

Hayley Broocks:

That is something I've obviously.

Hayley Broocks:

Admitted that there have been times I've been judgmental of ABA, even though we're using it because we do think it is an important tool, but especially because insurance ends up paying for that one to one aid, which is a huge safety issue, because, even you know, we only offer 830 to 230, because we want to be developmentally appropriate.

Hayley Broocks:

But there are some families who end up going with these 40 hour a week clinics, not because they think it's the best choice, because they need child care. And so we had discussed you know, before opening there's lots of ideas before you actually try to put these things in practice but we had discussed just having like an aftercare program that was not built through insurance, there were no like therapeutic demands, place like a child could just hang out, chill, just be a kid. And then, once we saw it happening, we were like, oh, that's not safe though, because we need more that. We, these children, need a higher ratio of adults to kids, and the easiest way to provide that is if insurance is paying for your one-to-one. So you know there are some things we've been eating our words about.

Jenna Kellog:

We're going to make it work one way or another. We're going to work on some sort of group therapy option as like an afterschool program. That way we're not you know, parents aren't having to choose between our age appropriate preschool versus a 40 hour clinic. And if we can get a group therapy program working for like after school, that'll alleviate some stress from parents who are having to make that choice and still keep the kids safe and have that one to one or you know, one to two or one to three ratio that they need one to two or one to three ratio that they need amazing.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

So what's working well for adaptive path at the moment in terms of all the things that you do? What? What are you proud of, what's kind of what's going well?

Hayley Broocks:

are we proud? I think our kids are happy and our parents are happy, and that is happy ultimate goal.

Jenna Kellog:

yeah, and our, we we've had we haven't really done a ton of marketing, um but just some positive word of mouth has gotten around and gotten back to us and that's nice. Yeah, the feedback that we've gotten is that people are saying really great things and they're really excited and they just, you know, know that we, that we're going to succeed, so that feels pretty good Everyone seems to think we're just going to like take off and explode, but we're really happy with the pace that we've been growing.

Hayley Broocks:

Yeah, because we, honestly we. I sorry I won't speak for both of us, but I never intended to be an entrepreneur. This was not in my life plan. Raising, raising kids, is hard enough, and then you put a business on top of it.

Hayley Broocks:

But I genuinely couldn't continue doing my job, happily, just from what I was seeing, and Jenna graciously agreed to go on this journey with me, but I think it's the parents that you know will have meetings you know I might have a meeting to go over a speech, eval or something, and a mom might tell me that and I feel this parents about their day and she had said she was just telling me how this like huge weight was lifted off her because they had been at just a typical childcare facility and she felt like the caregivers were always acting like her child was such a burden and making her feel so awful, whereas like to us burden, and making her feel so awful, whereas like to us, that child is a joy and we're so grateful to have them. Um, so I think helping these parents who are going to have a different journey than us already, that might be more difficult for various reasons. If we can like provide some peace, at least in this area, I think that's important to us too.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Yeah, that's the best and then the flip side. What's been frustrating, or harder than you expected, or challenging?

Hayley Broocks:

well, where probably?

Jenna Kellog:

insurance. Insurance is its own beast. Just trying to please them. You know they rule the world around here. Yeah, just trying to manage the claims and the payments. And are they paying what they're supposed to be paying? And oh no, they're not, because they decided. One person in the building was like no, I don't like this claim, I'm not going to pay you for it, and I mean just dealing nonsensical with that side of things has been a nonsensical with that side of things has been a it's.

Hayley Broocks:

It's been a lot to learn, yes, but, and I would say, like um, county and city, regulation yeah, just dealing things that we never thought of speech therapist.

Jenna Kellog:

I didn't know how much a fire suppression system would cost or that it was required yes, and all the regulations that we have to go through just to have our building, you know, up and running legally. That has been gosh. A year, yeah, of work, but to see it coming together.

Hayley Broocks:

Yeah, and we always. It's funny, it's like we've learned so much but we're I mean, this is our only business. I feel like. I feel like if we started a new business today, it would be so much better at it, but we're not gonna we're just gonna keep this one.

Jenna Kellog:

But, like in graduate school, there's no. At least in speed pathology graduate school, there's no class on private practice or running a business, or billing I mean even just like your generic speech therapy billing. There's no class on that, yeah, which is crazy. Which is crazy. So it's just a lot of learning as we go, yeah.

Hayley Broocks:

Another thing we're doing is we're partnering with a university here to accept students who are studying to become master's level speech pathologists and they can come get clinical hours with us, and I plan on filling their little brains with all of this stuff that we weren't taught, just so, like they've heard it before, they're a little bit more prepared than we were. Um, otherwise you just jump in blind, which is what we did, and it you can do it. It's just harder that way it's funny.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Every um us business owner I've talked to doing these calls. The insurance thing has come up literally universally it seems to be a universal point on running these businesses. So, apart from, that seems to be one of the bugbears, which is kind of like an external force. Is there anything sort of within the business that you have control over? That has been a challenge, or is it just these external things that kind of make things difficult with the regulation and the fire alarms and all that sort of stuff?

Jenna Kellog:

yeah, um, I mean, just being the boss, yeah, is something that we were learning to do. I mean, when you have these one-to-one therapists, if you have a high you know a high caseload just of employees and just trying to manage that line of we're there for you, we support you, like we're your friend in this, but also we're your boss, that's. That's a little challenging, just trying to make sure we want everyone to be happy, we want everyone to love where they work, but it's also a business and we have to run it and we have to profit. And so I feel like that fine line of we're your friend but we're your boss too is something that we're learning.

Hayley Broocks:

Yeah, that's another thing I never planned to be was a boss, but I think it's a good life skill. It forces us out of our comfort zones for sure. I think we again sorry, speaking for both of us, but like we're very self-sufficient, like we've had, we went straight through undergrad and grad school and then had jobs our entire lives. We kind of take care of things, and managing people who have a different personality type is is difficult.

Jenna Kellog:

Who are not millennials, that is like to be the boss of a group of Gen Z's. That's a. That's a beast. That's different. I mean just the way our brains are wired is just different. They grew up with the internet the whole time and just yeah, just a different type of work ethic, so that's a challenge.

Hayley Broocks:

But we're learning and we're getting better.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Brilliant. Are there any particular metrics or signals you use to measure that you're making the impact that you want to in your business?

Hayley Broocks:

to measure that you're making the impact that you want to in your business. Um well, I think the repayment of our small business loan from the federal government will be a great one at least from a financial standpoint, from the business side of things, I we've I mean we've.

Jenna Kellog:

we've all not been open long, but at least we've had months.

Jenna Kellog:

I mean the bank told us originally, like you're not going to be in the green for years, like maybe year two or year three you're going to start profiting, you'll actually be in the green. But we've at least had like singular months where we're in the green already and it's like okay, we're doing something right. So hopefully financially that'll be a big positive is that by the end of our you know, maybe by the end of this calendar year, we've proved the bank wrong and that we're financially able to support ourselves. And then from the like educational therapy perspective, I think when we have kids kind of reach that age six to seven age range, that'll be a really good, I guess, a show of how are they doing. Are they ready for school? I mean, did we bridge the gap, like are they ready to go to public school or private school, whatever the parents choose? But we're not there yet. We don't have any who are old enough to really test to see where were they when they started with us and then where are they now?

Hayley Broocks:

Yeah, for sure. I mean. Most important to us is the kids and their families and their progress. Just on the other side of that, we'll be proving the SBA wrong and becoming independent and no longer tethered to our federal government.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

In terms of looking ahead. So we go through fast forward six, 12 months. Where would you like Adaptive Path to be? What's your kind of plans for the business?

Hayley Broocks:

Operating at capacity.

Jenna Kellog:

Yeah, operating at full capacity, and then eventually, like we would like to be able to maybe take a step back on and maybe this is not six months to a year, maybe two years. But to be able to step back and maybe, you know, hire another couple of speech therapists who take our place in the therapy aspect of things, to be able to have you know, because right now we're, we're everything, we're the speech therapist, we're HR, we're it, we are poor, you're insurance we're all the things, and so to be able to successfully run the business and to hire others who can take the place of some of these jobs that we're doing, that will be.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

That would be a long-term goal, for sure nice, and if you could wave a magic wand and remove one big bottleneck right now, um, I expect insurance will be it, but is there anything else that you would be able to like to solve?

Hayley Broocks:

it's got to be it's got to be. Yeah, insurance has got to be, and I don't know the answer because I've had family like a family during the pandemic that fled canada and their universal health care to come seek services here and ended up being my patient. So I don't know what the answer is, but it's somewhere between our two countries um, there's.

Jenna Kellog:

There needs to be a better way for at least least on our side of things, on the admin side, of dealing with insurance. There just needs to be a smoother, like a central website database, something where all insurance works together. You submit everything on one page.

Hayley Broocks:

That kind of sounds like universal health care.

Jenna Kellog:

Yeah maybe Something like that. There's got to be a way to make it smoother and easier to deal with.

Hayley Broocks:

Even just again. This is one of our like five-year things, but realizing how much consumers don't know about their own health plans, like we'd love to help families learn how to better navigate that, because I mean, people truly have no idea of what their coverage means. Or, and you know, the United States is just so large. We live in Austin, but then families will come to us with blue cross, blue shield of Florida.

Jenna Kellog:

Illinois like Michigan everywhere.

Hayley Broocks:

It's a mess. Um. So, even if we can't fix that system, maybe helping families learn how to navigate the system a little better is also. You know, when we're not having to do the speech therapy, maybe we can't fix that system. Maybe helping families learn how to navigate the system a little better is also.

Jenna Kellog:

You know, when we're not having to do the speech therapy, maybe we can figure out some education, even things like learning how to read your policy and some key words to look for, especially if you have a kiddo with autism and you know they're going to need ABA, speech therapy, occupational therapy, maybe physical therapy. When you're shopping for a policy, these are some things that you should look for and these are some things to avoid. And you know, this is what a copay versus a coinsurance is, and this is what a deductible is versus your out-of-pocket and this is how much you're actually going to spend this year. I mean, just understanding those kinds of things on an insurance policy for a parent would be so beneficial.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

I think you mentioned that you like to get capacity. What, um, what is capacity for you?

Jenna Kellog:

Capacity is 25 to 30. Yeah, kids.

Hayley Broocks:

Yeah.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

And where are you at? Where are you at at the moment?

Jenna Kellog:

We're at eight.

Jenna Kellog:

Yep, so we're at eight right now, which is our first full classroom, and once the fire marshal stamps off on all these other things, we can open classroom number two, which we do have a I won't say a wait list, but we have a list of kiddos who are coming to us this summer, so hopefully fire marshal stamps us off in the next two weeks and we're good to go with we have a little separate building that's like a tiny, cute standalone classroom that we're operating out of now, and then we have a larger schoolhouse that has two classrooms, which is having a fire suppression system installed this week.

Hayley Broocks:

That's been fun.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Yeah, so some of this is regulatory. Is there anything else that you need to get to your capacity? I mean, if all the fire stuff was sorted and everything was signed off, what would it take to get to 25?

Jenna Kellog:

We need some great marketing, some more word of mouth and we need a really great another BCBA to join us, which we just posted a link to hire a new BCBA. Yesterday we posted it, so we know we're going to need and she's the master's level clinician who's over the one-to-one therapist. So that'll be our next hurdle is getting a BCBA hired to get this next classroom going, and then we'll be good.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Amazing to get this next classroom going and then then we'll be good, yeah, amazing. Look, jenna, I'm really really grateful for your time and listening to your story, I'm really impressed with what you've created with adaptive path. Such a thoughtful conversation and really good having the both of you here, because it's interesting having the dynamics of two people running the business. So I think makes a really interesting conversation. So, really grateful for your time. Thank you so much thank you so much.

Hayley Broocks:

This was fun, yeah thank you.