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NWA Founders is a voice for Founders, Owners, and Builders driving growth in Northwest Arkansas, and is hosted by Cameron Clark and Nick Beyer.
'NWA Founders' is a voice for Founders, Owners, and Builders driving growth in Northwest Arkansas, and is hosted by Cameron Clark and Nick Beyer.
To recommend a guest or ask questions, reach out at nwafounders@gmail.com and follow us on YouTube and LinkedIn for video content.
Cindy Watson: [00:00:00] Culture is important to us. I want there to be that good experience for that family coming in. That doesn't mean they stay here. It's finding that right fit. Culture is so hard and you want to keep that culture and you got to find those people that have that same passion. It truly is challenging. It's the hardest part.
Yeah. Gosh, you get the right people in place. And you can do it.
Cameron Clark: Good morning, y'all. Um, thanks for coming on here to the NWA founders podcast.
Kym Hannah: Thanks for having us.
Cameron Clark: Yeah, absolutely. Nick and I are real excited and this is the first time we've had two guests at one time, so I'm gonna try to like bounce back and forth, but, um, yeah, well, one of y'all give us kind of the overview of the whole organization.
Kym Hannah: Uh, yeah, so we are a pediatric. Therapy company. We started out as a pediatric speech and physical therapy company, and we've [00:01:00] expanded into occupational therapy, applied behavioral analysis, and also have a the only school in Northwest Arkansas for Kids, um, with disabilities, an accredited school, and we also operate a typical preschool.
Cameron Clark: And tell us each of your backgrounds, where you grew up, like where you went to school, and kind of when did the world of therapy come into your lens? I know each of you do something different, kind of different background in therapy, but.
Cindy Watson: Well, I came to the University of Arkansas to become a speech language pathologist.
Um, and so I did not know that was what I was going to come to the university to do. I started out as a communications major and I would often go home and my dad would say, what are you going to do with that? And I was like, I'm just, I'm going to talk and make money. And he was like, okay. Um, but I actually had a Sunday school teacher in high [00:02:00] school who was a speech pathologist.
At the public schools and you at Union and Tulsa and I can remember her talking about it And I was like, well, she taught she helps people talk and I went and observed her My sophomore year during spring break and I just fell in love with it And I also went to a hospital in Tulsa and observed the adult side Interestingly enough when I started school, I thought I'm gonna be an adult speech language pathologist Um, went, once I got into my practicum hours at the University of Arkansas and then in grad school at Northeastern state, I was like, nope, kids are where it's at and I've been kids 100 percent since then.
Um. But that's just a little quick background of why I landed in speech language pathology, but um, I have a husband, two girls that have grown up with TEAM as a part of their life, which I love because they've been around [00:03:00] all kids. I think that's important for everyone. Um, they're accepting of Whomever, it's just been their life since they were little.
Um, grew up in Tulsa, um, and came over here and got stuck. Fell in love with Northwest Arkansas and all it has to offer. So, um, started out doing speech language pathology for Springdale. schools, straight out of school. And I loved it, but I was so confined, um, on who I could help and how much I could help.
And I was like, wait, this isn't why I went to school. This isn't my calling. My calling is to help them whatever they need, not to be bound by. Certain rules and regulations. They have to follow those. I understand in the education realm But my heart was like, oh and I would constantly get in trouble for putting someone on my caseload that wasn't severe enough, you know for a public school therapy and I'm like, but they you know, but they [00:04:00] need help with that and and like I said not to Not to say anything at school.
So that's just not what my calling was. My calling was to help whomever, wherever you fall on that spectrum of needing help with communication. Um, so interestingly enough, our pastor put on our heart to do some prayer and fasting and 2000 and. The early 2000s, I honestly don't remember the exact year, but my husband and I agreed to do that.
And through that period of fasting, the Lord called us to start my practice, which was a speech therapy practice. And I remember being so scared thinking, what if we don't have any patients? Because that's how you get paid in this world. And my husband was like, I don't think the Lord would call us to it if we.
We weren't going to have patients, and that was all she wrote. Um, here we are today, and I'm, you know, all the time thinking, like, pinching myself, like, is this really my life? Like, I figured I would just be me doing speech therapy. [00:05:00] Like, when I took that leap, I didn't think it would be, I would meet someone as amazing as Kim, who we share a lot of the same, um, Philosophies and passion and faith and all that.
I would have never in a hundred years dreamed that, but the Lord crossed our paths, gosh, I was pregnant with my first, so like 1999, the summer of 1999. And I can remember. Seeing her and see, I was in a motor home doing speech therapy. We were working for a company doing summer therapy with kids. And, um, I was in a motor home.
Kim was in a hotel pool and the motor home was parked outside the hotel pool. And I remember seeing her and how she interacted with kids. And I was like. She's awesome. You know, like if I, if I had a child that needed therapy, that's, I would want them to see her, you know, and that was kind of my thing. And then we would just talk, pass some patients back and forth.
There was never a deep conversation. It was just like what you see. And I [00:06:00] was like, Oh, she's cool. And so then, you know, went on a few years later and our paths crossed again. And that gave us the opportunity to come together and serve kids.
Cameron Clark: Wow.
Cindy Watson: Yeah.
Cameron Clark: And talk about kind of, You know, it seemed like you knew from the very beginning, like passion, your calling, how did you know?
Cause you, you found it early. Like you found it from the beginning. Uh, it seems like,
Cindy Watson: yeah, well, I mean, I just. You know, it was just something in my gut that I was wired to do. I mean, I see it in my own, my, my oldest child is also in health care. And, you know, I think sometimes you're wired that way and then it's bad over the years.
But I just. I don't know. I, it was just something that, and it was so rewarding, like, I can't imagine doing something else. I see other people that do things and I'm grateful, but I'm like, but you don't get to do what I do. You know, I, you don't get to experience those gains, um, that I do, but I think it was just like.
[00:07:00] I, I love to talk. I can't imagine not being able to communicate and wanting to give other people some means to communicate. It, it may not be the way I communicate and that's okay, but everybody has that, um, need. Yeah.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. Kim, give us your, your background here too.
Kym Hannah: Sure. Yeah. Um, I was born in Washington regional.
Like I've been here for a long time. Uh, grew up in Fayetteville and I was. I was, uh, I was a competitive gymnast, taught gymnastics at the Williams Center on Crossover. You may have taught me back in the day. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Um, had a knee injury, you know, and had a great physical therapist. Uh, and I was like, that's kind of a cool profession and I am a huge sports fan.
I love, you know, anything athletics. And so, Decided to go to PT school and wanted to go as far away as possible, really, like I've been paying for my whole life. So that wasn't [00:08:00] possible. I needed to go where I got a scholarship. So I went to Arkansas state. Um, I was fortunate enough to kind of get out and do my internships at different places.
Um, and. Florida and some great spots and thought that I would eventually, you know, maybe take a job somewhere like that and get out for a little bit. But then realized during that time that man, Northwest Arkansas is pretty great. There's a lot of things and it's beautiful and family and all that. So came back and looked for a job in you know, athletics or orthopedic sports medicine kind of thing and didn't land anything.
It was bizarre. So I went to work for a company that was pediatrics, actually doing aquatic therapy in a hotel pool that was freezing. And then we also did therapy in a motor home that had. Steps. And we have kids with wheelchairs. So anyway, I worked there for about a year and, and just was like, we can do better [00:09:00] than this.
This is not great for kids in our community and kind of went to the owners and asked for things to change. And no, I know it wasn't going to change. And then there were some things happening that were just not. So, I just felt like if this doesn't change, my husband's like, you, you, you have to make a stand.
You have to just say, I can't stay any longer. So I quit the job, been there about a year, which, you know, you get out of school and you have all these like hopes and you're like ready to change the world. And then you like. We're in this job that is like not great and you quit. My husband just got in anesthesia school in Kansas City, uh, and someone said, Hey, I have a couple of patients that need services like Lincoln in their homes, um, and if you want to see him, I'll teach you how to do the billing.
Well, I didn't have a job. And so I said, okay, I'll go out there, I'll go see him. So I started doing that. My husband was at [00:10:00] school and it just kind of grew to seeing more and more kids in their homes. Until I was working, you know, 12, 15 hour days driving to kids homes, seeing them, doing the documentation on paper, figuring out how to build different insurance companies.
All that until I could get a space and then start hiring people. And so I did that for a couple years, uh, and then, uh, able to hire and grow from there.
Cameron Clark: And how old were you at the time?
Kym Hannah: Um, I was 24. Yeah.
Yeah.
Kym Hannah: Yeah. So never anticipated owning my own business or starting it or anything. Uh, but I just was open.
To doing better for our community. And I saw a need. And when someone presented like, Hey, you can go see him on your own. Okay. Like I felt like, again, my kind of my background and faith. I'm like, if the Lord opens a door and you feel right, you should walk through it. You know, I kind of have [00:11:00] always been that way and, uh, it worked out.
Yeah. And so she kind of told the story of how we met and combined our companies. Uh, also just treating those. So, going into the homes was so important in the beginning. It's not just like kind of what you see here where you see a kid and not their, their family easily isn't with them, but going to their home and seeing their needs kind of established how we built the practice and that like, we're not just going to go in and do physical therapy and work on, um, you know, goals listed.
I'm going to go above and beyond. These people, they need a lot of help. The families I saw in their homes needed help getting out of a car, helping their kids get bathed or like things in school, speech therapy, like all the things that they needed. And so we've kind of built the practice around, listen, we want [00:12:00] you to bring them in and see them for their required minutes and bill for it, but it doesn't stop there.
Like what else do they need? How can we help them with family support? Do they need other services? And so going into those homes initially kind of set the foundation. And then what we talked about before about going to another country and me ending up adopting a daughter with special needs has kind of.
Continue that, uh, that mission of meeting all of their needs.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Kym Hannah: Yeah.
Cameron Clark: Was anyone else doing anything similar at the time?
Kym Hannah: No, not, not really. Um, not really at all. It was like everyone went. To school to be a physical therapist for the, honestly, the sexy part of a physical therapist is like getting F people in athletics, like back to their,
Cameron Clark: yeah, their peak physical, which
Kym Hannah: is amazing.
And I love that, uh, but there just wasn't [00:13:00] a lot. And if your kid, if a child had a need, they would get that in the public school system, which is great, but also takes away from your academic time. And some of the things, you know, can happen outside of school, so it doesn't interfere and. And can make them do better, help them better in school.
Nick Beyer: So, early on, we'll call it around 2000 ish, that's when y'all, your paths collided. You were doing speech, you were doing physical therapy, and y'all just decided, hey, let's do this together. It wasn't named Children's Therapy Team then, was it? Y'all were, y'all were just kind of And how many patients who Need physical therapy, need speech therapy, or vice versa.
Is that a, is that overlap pretty great?
Cindy Watson: On the little ones, when there's a developmental delay, it's usually global, meaning across the board. But you can definitely need speech and not need OT or PT, or vice versa, any combination. So, we just, we like to look at the whole child and, and meet their need. Like, I [00:14:00] don't want to bring in a child and go, oh my goodness.
Um, you know, they're so far behind in speech, and that's all I care about. You know, it's like all those things can go together. Um, and so addressing this is only going to help the speech part. Um, it actually happened last week in an evaluation, where it was like I met with a child, and the parents were bringing him in for speech.
Um, and it was like, oh, they mentioned some OT concerns and PT concerns. I feel Let's tackle it all, you know, and it's my job as a speech language pathologist to educate the parent as much as I can of what I'm seeing That OT can help and PT can help like she said it's a global thing. I'm not just gonna help him start talking I believe that's an injustice to that child, you know, or to that parent.
It's just like when I go to the doctor Excuse me. I want them to tell me all the things that I need to work on. It may not be fun, [00:15:00] but you know, hopefully they'll come alongside me and, and help me with that. And that's what we want to do here. You know, whatever that is.
Nick Beyer: But y'all were doing that from inception, right?
Like that was, I'd say that's a differentiator in your business, your company, the way you're serving patients.
Cindy Watson: And that's kind of where the name team came from is because we work together to meet the needs of the family. It's not one of us. There's a whole team and the parents are the leader of that team.
And we follow their lead. What are your hopes and aspirations for your child? What do you want to see them? And then also that education piece for us, empowering them on how to help their child.
Cameron Clark: So when y'all were joining forces at the beginning, was there that vision? I mean, did you sit down and lay out, hey, here's, because the organization is massive today.
The amount of like kids, and we'll get there, but the amount of kids that you were telling me earlier, how many you see a week, I could not believe it. Was that, was there a big vision from the beginning? Or was it [00:16:00] kind of like what you did when you first started? Hey, we're going to. Here's a door. We're going to say yes.
Yes, yes, yes.
Cindy Watson: I don't know if we ever sat down and said, this is what we're going to do. It's just what
Kym Hannah: I, yeah, we didn't. It's what she said in the, you know, a beginning, like she said, that's someone I would want to work with my child. And I felt the same way about her. It's just that very, we're just like minded in that the people we try to hire and the leadership team that we hire, like, it doesn't matter how much really skill you have, but if you have that like mindedness of.
Uh, uh, what our mission is about then bring you on board and give you the skills you need. It was like, Hey, we, we know what we need to do in the community. We know what our community needs. We know what our families and patients are telling us that they're missing and the lack of services. And it is up to us, like I literally felt the weight of my shoulder, it is up to us to help these families and children succeed because nobody else is doing it.
So that's when we, we [00:17:00] opened our first clinic together in 2005 and it's the location on Joyce. Uh, we had maybe 1200 square feet. There and just started hiring.
Cameron Clark: What did that feel like? The first, the first location?
Kym Hannah: Overwhelming. Oh my goodness. I thought my very first location was on my own. I had 600 square feet and of course I had to, my parents had to sign the lease and give me money and I didn't get paid for probably, I don't know, maybe two years.
It was a long time. I was like back in college living off my parents. You know, my husband was in school. I was living with them. It's like
Cameron Clark: crazy. Well, no, and just like from the real estate background, but like seeing when someone brand, a brand new startup comes in looking to sign a lease, it's like, you know, landlords like, okay, is this, there's a big risk here.
Like even, even 1200 square feet. It's like, it's sure. Yeah. Like that one on Joyce
Kym Hannah: was a big, cause it was kind of like, we kind of built it out a little bit. Uh, but even, but the 600 [00:18:00] square feet I think was like 400 maybe a month. It was like hardly anything that I could not, but signing that one was, I had someone sign it with me.
So I felt a little bit better. It wasn't just on me, but yeah, we, and we're still there from 2005 we just gradually kept taking more.
Cindy Watson: I just remember meeting with like the designers and the architects and I'm like, what are we talking about? Like, it was just like, we're therapists. We say that all the time.
She is very much. Uh, business minded. I'm just like the warm, fuzzy person, but I'm like, Oh, what are they talking about? Like, uh, yeah, for five years we
Kym Hannah: 000 a month for five years, you know what? Yeah, but, um,
Cameron Clark: scary. Out other staff that y'all had at the time, was it just y'all two or did you have
Kym Hannah: other employees?
Gosh, there weren't many maybe 10 total. Yeah,
Nick Beyer: and that's in 2005 ish. Yeah. Okay, so you sign the lease you're starting We'll [00:19:00] call that like the real inception like you you both had other practices and we're operating those and growing But then you really like team up. Mm hmm. That's we'll call it. That's probably when the name comes about and yeah some company vision That's 2005.
So how do you go about hiring people?
Kym Hannah: Um, during that time, most of them were older than me, I would say. Um, we didn't really, I didn't, I wasn't comfortable hiring new grads. I felt like a new grad myself. I'd only been out of business, you know, out of school three or four years at that time, so I I really wanted to hire people that knew more than me about therapy, and so it was pretty intimidating.
Um, I kind of focused on hiring the PTs and she the speech, and then together we would hire the OTs. Uh, but it was pretty, intimidating, and there was such a need, and hiring, we kind of, kind of ran away with ourselves, I would say, for a little bit. You know, the hardest part of business I think is managing growth and quality.
And, uh, [00:20:00] that started quickly to get away from us and we're not, we're not business people, so, uh, we quickly were able to get as a really strong CFO that had been in this business around here and, and quickly got us back on the right path. Like, let's have, let's have some. Strategic planning that we had never done and let's have some controlled growth and, and that was super helpful.
I mean, I think everything happens for the reason and we got some of the best people that are still here that we hired in that 2005 to 2010 era. But everybody wanted to bring their kids there because you could come to one place, get all that you need and even get resources. I mean, we created the lobby so that it was an environment for parents to sit and talk to each other and feel like they were kind of having like a support group.
Cause that really didn't exist at the time. Uh, so we had a [00:21:00] waiting list and we felt like, gosh, we can't leave people sitting on a waiting list. We've got to hire everybody who can get her hands on. I'm going to find out that was not the best move because then you don't get all the best people and we want the best people.
Uh, so having someone come in, like I said, and help us manage that was super helpful.
Cameron Clark: What would you say to someone who maybe like, isn't, you said, Hey, we're not business people, but like, but they've got this big passion and they feel a big why behind what they're doing and, but like what would you, what advice would you give someone, someone at that, at that place?
Kym Hannah: I would, I would say. You know, seek out some external support or people, you know, with the expertise in that, but only if they have that same like mindedness because we have over the several years hired people that were man, excellent in their fields with whatever, with real estate, with accounting and finance.
But it didn't work because they didn't [00:22:00] share the same vision that we did. And so it, they just got so frustrated with us, you know, because sometimes we do things that don't make sense. Like that on paper and on the books don't make sense. And so, uh, that just doesn't work well with a lot of people. So, but I wish that the, the CFO that we hired that really like minded, but knew the business, wish we would've got him a little sooner.
We would've saved ourselves a Quite a bit of hardships.
Yeah.
Cindy Watson: Yeah. That's what I was going to say is that Ed has been so amazing. Like I know he came when he was supposed to come, but having him, I was thinking about that this morning. Like any advice I would give would be the business side of the advice, like for a therapist, because we don't learn that in school.
And, um, Just so you can do all the things that you want to do so you have that structure He has set that up so that we can and I know when he first came on He was kind of [00:23:00] frustrated at us because in it and he would look at the books and he was like I don't even know how things work. You know that because the way we do Things and, um, but then he, he saw all the good too.
And so he put us on a right path so that we can continue to do that. That's, I mean, I still share that in orientation with our new hires is like, you know, Ed has got us in a place where if we need to help a family with something, we can, you know, it's not like. You know, if they need groceries, okay, you know, where, you know, some, like she said, some people who may give you advice in that area or watch your books are like, why are we doing that?
Like, they're not paying for their services and they want groceries. No, no. Yeah. But that's just, you know, what we, what we want to do and what we feel called to do. And it works, you know, but Ed has got us in that, that space where we can do [00:24:00] that.
Nick Beyer: So early on, you signed the lease, your practices, your practice collectively now is growing and, you know, at that point you have money coming in, was there capital needed on the upfront to like go sign the lease or that was, you kind of had that working capital from your, each of your businesses merging?
Kym Hannah: I don't know about you. I didn't have any money.
Cindy Watson: No, and speech therapy is notorious for not reimbursing as, you know, as much as some of the other disciplines. And so, yeah. With insurance? Yeah. So, I was definitely, I was the, uh, the, the needy one, I think, on the end. So.
Kym Hannah: No, I think just me working, I mean, I was billing so much personally, I was just saving everything I had to put.
Toward a lease and hiring people, you know, so that's how we got going with the help of, you know, loans and my parents and we never took out, we never had a lot of debt because that's [00:25:00] just not a place we like to live. But, uh, We did have to, we didn't take checks, paychecks for a while, you know, so it's hard but super worth it.
I mean the payoff is so great, you know, uh, but I don't, I don't think that's a thing that a lot of people like to hear. Yeah,
Cindy Watson: people think having your business, there's, you know, it's just butterflies and rainbows, but like she said, we were early on trying to build as much as we can to help the bottom line and then, um, whatever that look like.
I mean, I think about sometimes. Like, especially my oldest child, I felt terrible because she was always the last one picked up at daycare, you know, or even my, my youngest that way. It was like, Oh, I don't want to be that mom. How many times I call and it's like six o'clock. I'm like, I'm three minutes away, you know, but it's like, you have to do what you have to do because you feel this call in your heart to provide these [00:26:00] services, but you are.
Mom and, um, juggling all the balls as my husband used to say.
Kym Hannah: Well, and we're in this business because we want to take care of people and help people. And so when you have a therapist too that, or an employee that asks for more money or asks for a raise because of this or that, like before. more of a plan.
Okay, here's a race. And then you have a lot of therapists working. You have no margin on, you know, so having some advisors and people help us with that and get more of a plan for hiring and raises was a game changer because everyone needs more money, right? So, and, and we were suckers for them. You know?
Uh, so getting that,
Cindy Watson: that established. I don't even think we knew about margins until Ed came along. Like, what's a margin? What's a margin? Is that like on the typewriter? Is that, is that like on the typewriter? Yeah.
Kym Hannah: He's like, well, [00:27:00] you don't have one. You're in the negative. Yeah.
Nick Beyer: So when did, when did Ed come on?
And he's your CFO, to be clear, for anyone listening. It
Cindy Watson: was like 2010. I feel bad not knowing exactly. Yeah, it was 2010. So he's been
Nick Beyer: here for all of the, like, the massive growth that y'all have experienced. That's amazing. Yeah.
Kym Hannah: Yeah, and it helped. I think the biggest thing is that, so we, we wanted to do things that weren't, you can't do with the kind of business model we had.
We, we don't want to turn a kid away if they don't have funding. It's not the kid's fault. You know, they have a disability or they have a delay, they still need services. So, we don't want to turn them away. Like she said, we want to help them with groceries, we want to help them with transportation. If they need an accessible van or whatever that's not covered, we want to help them with that.
But our business model, like, billable speech and PT does not, I mean, doesn't fund that. Right? So, thinking [00:28:00] outside the box a little bit. Okay. What can we do in Northwest Arkansas or wherever so that we can continue to fulfill our mission that we feel like, like, why we're here, why we're doing this? And so just.
Getting a preschool, a typical preschool, buying that, which is crazy, huh?
Cindy Watson: That was a whole nother God situation because I was working at church on a Friday night for a parent sign out event and my friend that had owned it, that owned it at the time, in passing, we're working together. We weren't even working in the same room.
She's like, we're thinking about. You know, selling, we feel it on our heart, we want to go a different direction. I'm like, la, la, I can't hear you because Ed had said, you guys should get like a preschool. And we were like, no, all the regulations that go with preschool, it's crazy. Like we can't learn that. We can't learn that too.
And so I remember getting in my car in the church parking lot, like 9 40 on Friday night and I call Ed and he's like, [00:29:00] Let's meet with her Monday, find out what time she can meet Monday. But it was like, again, God's hand in that because it was just like, he knew we needed that cushion to keep this ministry going, you know, and as Ed says, to diversify our, our funds and, um, our business.
And so, yeah, it was just, it's been crazy again, another thing that you think I would have never,
Cameron Clark: how do you communicate? Your why, like, to each other internally, to other people outside of, um, children's therapy team. And you said like, hey, that this is what's been driving, driving you. How do you keep reminding yourself of that?
And like, what do you tell each other that that is?
Kym Hannah: That's a good question. Yeah. I mean, I think for me personally, it's just my, it's my life because I have my 20 year old now is going to be full care her whole life. So it's a constant. Reminder of [00:30:00] why we're doing this and the services that she's been able to get through team and the resources It's just made my life so much easier and her life so much better So I have that constant reminder But honestly like if you came here At like 2 30 on and saw the transition in the middle out here in the breezeway that we were at with the parents and their kids with multiple disabilities with cerebral palsy or cancer or whatever they have going on, like it is just at the forefront of your brain.
It's not, we're blessed in the fact that it's right there in front of you. So to keep like pounding in our mission and culture to employees, we don't really have to do that because it's there. And if you don't feel that or get it when you see all the kids and families coming in and out. Probably shouldn't be here, you know, and we try to figure that out on the front end.
But you don't always, you know, people can say [00:31:00] anything. People do the best interviews now. I don't know, like all the YouTube stuff and everything and the resumes with like AI. I'm like, man, it is like. Game changer, right? But until you see them in action and you see if it carries out while they're here, um, it's, it's a blessing that it's right in our face.
Nick Beyer: And so what did that look like early on? We'll go back to that 2005, 2010, then we'll move to kind of the mid life cycle of your business, talking about the school and some of the other amazing things y'all have done. You're just starting to hire people. You probably don't have experience hiring people, so you're, you're kind of learning through mistakes, right?
Which is the best way to learn, the hardest way to learn, but the best way to learn. What were some of those mistakes y'all made early on? Could be hiring related, it could be just like managing margin and stuff like that. I mean, those are probably. Just some things y'all learned early on.
Cindy Watson: I think what Kim said, by just hiring people so that we could get kids in the door, [00:32:00] um, so getting a warm body in there that may have those credentials behind their name may have been a mistake, um, in some aspects.
And then for me personally, like that business structure. Um, like I was saying, I was thinking about this morning when I started out, I didn't have a great accountant to explain all the things. I can remember my husband, I would go to the meetings and we'd walk out and we're like, did you know what he said?
No. Did you know, that should have been our, you know, dead giveaway that we need to find someone else when he didn't know what he was saying. Um, but we were like. Both educated people and we're like, it's probably just us, you know, um, and so just humility to know, like, get someone you can talk to who you can understand, um, and then someone who can be like, uh, you need to do that differently.
Um, so. I don't know if that answers your question, but those were some of the bigger mistakes and then just [00:33:00] like Um managing people is hard I know i'm a pleaser. I like everybody to like me. I don't like to cause any um, you know any kind of Waves or anything like that. And it's like, sometimes you have to have those hard conversations and that's okay.
Um, and so learning how to do those, and I think I'm still learning. Um, but definitely early on, it was like, we probably took way more than we should have from employees and just knowing when, like, it's okay to sit down and have that conversation because it's. It's for the organization, it's, and the organization are these amazing kids and their families who walk through the door.
Um, so I think those are things that I could have done better. Yeah,
Nick Beyer: that's really good. I feel like
Kym Hannah: you're going to ask this. So I actually made a couple of notes about it. Oh, nice.
Cameron Clark: This is the first time someone's done this. Well, I
Kym Hannah: did my homework. You're like [00:34:00] listen to some of our podcasts. So I was like, this is a question.
Uh, she hit the nail on the head with It's if I could go back to the pre, the 2005 can't like time and know what I know now, it would be like, like, wait for the talent, wait for the right people to come in your door. Don't just hire because there's a need. Um, it's okay to, to hire. People and train them, but they need to be the right fit.
You're only as good as, you know, that, that therapist that they're at 630 at night treating a kid. So wait for the right person and ensure that they're the right fit. Um, also, we like, we just like to start doing things. Not knowing if it's a covered thing or if it's aligns with legislation or whatever.
Check those things before you start doing them. Not that we did anything wrong or illegal, but like [00:35:00] started a lot of programs and services not even funded. And so they're funded now. We did the legwork after and got it funded, but maybe we could combine the legwork and starting the services, you know, so it wasn't such a hard thing.
Because I think a lot of maybe entrepreneurs are like kind of like a visionary. Like I'm want to do this so bad. I just do it. And I don't even worry about am I ever going to get paid for it or, and that that's been hard. Cause then you have to play catch up, you know? Uh, so figuring that out, uh, I think, you know, like a work life balance is always so hard.
I mean, in the beginning, In those early years, pouring so much time and energy into it, I have some regrets. I have some regrets with my husband. I have some regrets with my kids, you know, and I could have done it and been at the same spot without making that much sacrifice. There's [00:36:00] always going to be sacrifices.
It's always going to be something my whole family's involved in. I feel like, but I, I didn't have to take it to that extreme.
Cindy Watson: We would text and call each other till three in the morning in the early years. And I look back and I'm like, Why did we do that? We felt like it had to be done right then. And my husband would be the one to be like, It'll be there in the morning.
But like you said, just some of those, that balance. Yeah. And I think, I feel like the next generation is better with the work life balance. Yeah. But I also know too, as As their employer, so to speak, it's good to help them with that. That, that's what fills their tank, too, is when, when we're considerate of their work life balance.
So, maybe learning from our mistakes and encouraging them and that they're better at that than we are. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing that
Kym Hannah: I feel like was so hard in the beginning is when someone would leave. Like, this is our baby, like, this is [00:37:00] everything. You're going to go to another, you're leaving us.
It was like a divorce, you know, and changing, changing that mindset. And I know it takes time and experience, but being able to like now handle that differently is. Great. But I wish I would have done that better. I don't feel like I treated people right when they left, you know, it's a part of their life and they did great things while they're a team should be happy.
They're going on and whatever they experienced here, taking it on to the next place, but I didn't necessarily do that with them.
Nick Beyer: It's hard. I'm just trying to imagine 2005 through 2010. Y'all are working there. I mean, are y'all still doing, are you still going into. People's houses. Okay. So you're literally on the road all day.
You're seeing patients. Then you have to catch up on billing. You're trying to hire people. You're trying to be a mom, a wife. Like, what were some of the [00:38:00] emotions early on starting? Like, do you remember just how you felt? I know we talked a little bit about maybe some of the mistakes, but like, but we're, how are you feeling?
You
Kym Hannah: know what? There's so much joy in like your business growing. You're like, this is working. We are high excitement and it's fun. And like, let's go, you know? And then you're like, I'm so tired. Yeah, I was getting tired. Yelled at my husband and I haven't seen the girl. I just adopted in a couple of days.
Like it. It's just a range of emotions,
Cindy Watson: you know, yeah, I was going to my, my word was going to be tired to, um, just, we were busy and I was going to say, we both had babies, you were right after 2010, I had one in 2009, so you include that, that's not an easy task, and, um, I remember we expanded while I was pregnant with that child, but I can remember even, that was my second one, I was still getting in the floor with a [00:39:00] girl.
I can go drive to her house right now, right over here. Um, but yes, it was so busy and, um, scary. Um, and then just always, like I said, I already confessed. I'm a pleaser, but wanting to do things right and, you know, just like. Is this what, you know, is this what we should be doing? Yes, we should. Because we're doing it for, you know, these kids who need it, but was it supposed to be right then?
I don't know, you know, but just, um, making big decisions and maybe need to slow down a little bit. Moving at a fast pace. Yeah.
Nick Beyer: And when were you finding time to hire people? When were you interviewing them? If you were. I mean, were you just like, I've got 15 minutes in between this house and this house.
Let's meet somewhere. What did that look like?
Cindy Watson: What's funny is we just gave a card to one of our OTs that was hired 15 years ago and she goes, [00:40:00] and she responded back and she was like, I remember you guys interviewing me on a Saturday, yeah, a lot of Saturdays, evenings, like she said, missing, you know, being at home with her daughter and husband and, um, yeah, crazy
Kym Hannah: times.
Our own patients had been with us for so long, our own patients that we could easily, you know, okay, reschedule or cancel or something to make that work. We had to start doing that and then eventually we got. We work smart, work smarter, not harder and block times for all of that. Yeah. I
Cameron Clark: mean, even walking through here today, I was just, one of the things that was going through my head was the scheduling for all this.
Yeah. Like, this is crazy. Yeah. It's crazy. Out of like different types of needs and like, I. Yeah, I
Nick Beyer: know we'll get there, but
Cameron Clark: like,
yeah,
Nick Beyer: crazy.
Kym Hannah: That's crazy.
Nick Beyer: So early on the segments of the business were PT, OT, and speech, right? And then kind of getting into the middle of the life cycle. So we'll call it [00:41:00] 2010 to 2020.
That's probably when some growths may be really starting to compound. The school was 2017, Kids Studio, is that what I read? Okay. And then, Gray School was probably the next thing, I think that was 2010 is when it first opened. So, let's talk a little bit about Gray School, because I don't, I don't think we've even talked about it.
Kym Hannah: Yeah, for sure. So, I adopted, you know, I had one of my patients, um, I had two patients, they were both adopted from Ukraine. They were siblings. And so I kind of shared the story about how her, her mom was sending pictures back and over to Ukraine and like of her kids out in the public and the orphanage was saying, I can't believe you're taking out in public.
How are you transporting them in the car? They're going to school. Like, what in the world? And so. She asked me if I could go, if I could send some materials to Ukraine on how to work with children with special needs. And we just decided to go there and show [00:42:00] them. Well, on that trip in 2006, I met Mira Shlava, who is now my Mira.
Um, I adopted her in 2007 and she, she was four when I brought her home. She had never left her orphanage when I met her. Her leg was actually tied to the crib. She looked up at me with his big brown eyes and she was trying to pull the stand and then tied her leg to her crib so she wouldn't pull up and flip out.
It was to protect her. But, um. I was just, I saw her and I was like, Oh, I'm supposed to bring her home. You want to bring all those kids home. There's 15 of them in there with two workers, two workers around the clock. You want to bring all of them home and put it in your backpack. But this one was just like, I knew.
So I'm happy to elaborate on that. But after I got her home, she was four. I looked, she needed to start [00:43:00] kindergarten a couple of years later. Uh, there was just not any options for her at all. Um, not of anyone's fault, but the public school has what they have, you know? Uh, so another parent and I, she was an occupational therapist that worked at TEAM.
Her kid had cerebral palsy, same age, and was like, why don't we just hire a teacher to teach them? Okay, so let's do that. So we hire a teacher to use a room at TEAM on Joyce to just teach our two kids, and then there was a lot of need. There are a lot of parents that are like, I want that. And so we. Became a nonprofit and, uh, had some different kind of people apply people that had experience in behavior modification, which is actually what the school needed.
Um, and so in 2010, I guess, when we started that, uh, we kind of turned it [00:44:00] over to a nonprofit board. It's struggled for a lot of years. It's hard. Those kids need. One on one if not two on one and funding that it just was kind of impossible and it's hard to ask people for money when there's six kids there, you know, so The board struggled team eventually took that back over and it's now under teams umbrella.
It's not a nonprofit anymore Uh, it has 25 kids and the wait list has, I mean, 30, 40 kids on it. We just signed our sec second, uh, school district contract. So Bentonville School District and Rogers School District are paying for kids to come there.
Cameron Clark: Wow.
Kym Hannah: The goal is to get them back in the public school system.
So they come there, get their behaviors under control. These are kids that really aren't functioning, or aren't doing well in the classroom at all. Not doing good, like not able to really go to school. Or being sent home for different reasons. Behaviors, [00:45:00] throwing computers, injuring themselves, injuring others, that kind of thing.
Cameron Clark: And what age range are these kids?
Kym Hannah: Um, they are 5 to 21. So, It's rare that we get five year olds unless the parents are like, okay, they have autism. They have a diagnosis. We know that the school is not a good fit right now. Otherwise, they're older. A lot of older boys, 12 and up, who have hit puberty or whatever, and now they are really struggling.
Like, they're not even able to go into the classroom, go into the school. So, The idea is that they come in, get their behaviors under control, get them to be able to either function in a classroom setting with a group of people or get them more on a stable academic track or both, and then send them back to a lesser restrictive environment, public school or another private school or something like that.
Cameron Clark: Is there a hopeful or typical time length with how long that takes for, uh, or is every, every child different? Yeah,
Kym Hannah: every child is just [00:46:00] so different. And honestly, Some of the kids with some more, more severe autism or more severe behaviors, the gray school is just a better place for them. And it is until they're out of school and the public schools realize that and the parents realize that and they end up staying.
And then if, if they can get, if we can help them get their GED or whatever we do, or we help them transition into an adult program in the community.
Nick Beyer: So it was just birthed out of need when it started though, it was more for just. Disabilities and then it's kind of say progressed and do kids with severe behavioral issues that couldn't be in Yeah,
Kym Hannah: yeah, it was more for kids, I would say, with physical limitations, kind of wheelchairs or communication limitations, that kind of thing that, and, and it morphed into more of this, uh, kids on the spectrum, autism and behavior.
Kids that have behavior needs because the schools, I mean, physical limitations, it's [00:47:00] actually doing pretty well. I mean, we've come a long way.
Nick Beyer: And you're talking about the public school system. Yeah.
Kym Hannah: Uh, but like this whole explosion of autism in our world, uh, and. The aggressive behaviors and things are hard and, uh, there's just so much research coming down about how to intervene and how to prevent this from happening or how to stop them from happening that we're trying to stay on top of that.
So one, they don't ever start and, but once they're there, reduce them.
Cameron Clark: When you say like explosive, uh, autism, are you saying like awareness for it now or is that
Kym Hannah: there's, I mean, what is the statistic now? It's one in
Cindy Watson: 34.
Kym Hannah: It's really high. It's even, I think it's 1 in 20 for males. Is it 20?
Nick Beyer: For males. Males.
Kym Hannah: Yeah. And, you know, the life expectancy of people with autism, it isn't any less. And so, that's why I [00:48:00] meant by explosiveness, just of how many
Cindy Watson: there are. And to answer your question, I oftentimes wonder is it because we're better at diagnosing? Because I can think of Kids when I was growing up that probably have that diagnosis But it was more of just like a cognitive impairment or a behavior impairment So I think that's kind of where we're at now is like maybe we're better at diagnosing it But there are a lot more.
Yeah, there's lots of theories but yeah, so I love that, you know, the Gray School has come along to help.
Kym Hannah: But you don't have to have an autism diagnosis to go there. I mean, my daughter's a traumatic brain injury diagnosis. Uh, you know, a lot of kids with disabilities have some, a behavior component. And so that's kind of our focus is utilizing utilizing applied behavior analysis to facilitate academic [00:49:00] success.
And hopefully, that can just be transitioned into a normal special needs program in public schools. Just be part of their program. It's just not there yet.
Nick Beyer: And for someone who doesn't know what applied behavioral analysis is, will you just give the
Kym Hannah: Yeah. Well, yeah.
Nick Beyer: I know it's not a 10 second topic. It's not.
Kym Hannah: It's really, um, decreasing interfering behaviors, non typical interfering behaviors that, and replacing them with typical behaviors that you can learn. So there are. You know, you've seen kids with autism that are, you know, maybe doing things they can't make eye contact or they can't learn different things.
So you've got to like, get rid of those behaviors so that they can learn. And it doesn't matter what they look like, as long as they're not interfering with learning.
If
Kym Hannah: that makes sense. And it's a very much. [00:50:00] There's no kind of has a bad rap. Sometimes there's no punishment. It's all reinforcing. You only reinforce the good.
There's no punishment for the bad. It's just ignoring. So it's all about positive reinforcement. Yeah.
Yeah.
Cindy Watson: Yeah.
Kym Hannah: Now finding what those reinforcers are tricky. Yeah. It may be a vacuum cleaner. It may be. A piece of candy. It may be their favorite
Cindy Watson: song. I mean, who knows what it is. Yeah. And I think that's what's hard is there's so much negative out about ABA, but it is research and evidence based.
People think it's like
Kym Hannah: shock therapy or something, you know, like
Cindy Watson: some really negative thing. But it's like, it's, it's like, You take out the negative component. It's all positive. I mean, who wouldn't like, I always think like high fives and you're doing a great job or, you know, whatever, um, we say a paycheck, you know, that's a positive reinforcer getting your paycheck, but that's what it's [00:51:00] about.
There's not the negative, um, when you look online and stuff, people feel like it's, you know, something terrible.
Nick Beyer: So a lot of gross happening. P. T. O. T. Speech. Now you've got the great school that's opening. Sounds like there was some kind of back and forth between nonprofit and then team as a whole. As you're kind of working through that, the practice is just growing through word of mouth through kids needing services.
Is that like the primary driver of growth? Yeah,
Cindy Watson: really it is. I mean one mom telling another mom. I don't know when Facebook came about but you know there's Northwest Arkansas moms or moms of the know You know, they'll say my kid needs speech therapy and then you know, people will put lots of different providers in there Dean will be one of them, um, but we don't really have like one referral source, one doctor, one [00:52:00] anything.
Um, it's just word, good old word of mouth.
Nick Beyer: Yeah.
Cindy Watson: Um, so yeah.
Nick Beyer: And I guess the speech, PT and OT. Those are needs for kids just in general. And then now with the Gray School, you're starting to kind of integrate maybe something different. Maybe something more specific to kids with special needs. And I think you can hear it clearly through your family and adoption.
That's starting to become a bigger passion. Do you have any education or background in, in the special needs, or that's just like you're learning because it's part of your family now and you're trying to figure out how to
Kym Hannah: yeah, yeah, just, just learning and hiring the right people that again, that are like minded, but also like understand what's needed, what's needed in our community, uh, and, and not just my family, but all the patients that we saw through team that the parents are like, well, we can [00:53:00] come to therapy anytime because we're home from school today.
Okay. Why are you home from school today? Well, they couldn't go because he threw an iPad. Or he can't, they don't let him come today because he's constipated. I mean, like all these crazy things. So parents are stuck not being able to work or not being able to do what they need to do because they can't go to school.
So knowing that that was a need, not just my daughter. I mean, that's what started it. But it would have been a lot easier just to Hire a teacher to teach my daughter,
you
Kym Hannah: know, and I mean, this has been, it was 2010. This is 15 years that we're finally, like literally this year is the year that we have a clear path and have good communication with the school districts and they're buying in because we don't, it's expensive to private pay and we don't want it to be the school for only people that can afford it.
We want it to be a school for everybody in our community and the way to [00:54:00] do that is to Um, either through the school districts or some sort of grants or something. But right now, the school districts need help and we are ready to come alongside them. Not tell them what to do or how to do it, but come alongside them and give them what they need.
And so, having those great communications with Ben, Bill, and Rogers, like, were there ready to sit down and have conversations about how can we help you? We're not judging you. Like, we have a whole school dedicated to this and we only have 25 kids right now. We want to help. So it's been so good. And I think that they're, they're ready.
Cindy Watson: Again, it's that team atmosphere that I think about is because. It's not, we're better than the public school. We're here, we're like, you know, a service. We want to come in and help with all work. Let's all work together to help these kids and their families at where, wherever they're at. Um, and so that's, I know, um.
What we [00:55:00] hope to do, whether it's just with a speech issue, working with the school speech pathologist or a child that may have mobility issues in the PT, but just that whole team aspect of we all work together, you know, we've all got all of us have the same training wherever you work. And so we're, we're on the same level.
So what do we do to help each other?
Cameron Clark: And, and between both of y'all, or maybe someone else on the team, who kind of really owns the, all the different ways that we get funding for the, the kids? So, like, you're talking about through the school districts, insurance, and then there's, I'm sure, you know, maybe you raise money for part of, part of this.
I don't like, how do you manage all, all that?
Kym Hannah: Yeah, it's kind of a team. I mean, it's for sure a team. I'm looking at things in, in depth. Now here's the thing is that we still, we're still kind of visionaries at heart, so it's still kind of just start stuff. I said, I wish I would do better at that and I have done a lot [00:56:00] better, but, um, it's kind of like, I know what the need is, how are we going to get it funded?
Don't ever want to get, it's so easy to go, Oh, this is funded really well. Let's do this. And I've caught myself a couple of times going, let's do that. It never works out like we really have to determine what the need is and then figure out how to fund it and we're doing that right now with adult services, obviously having the school and helping these.
Students who don't go back to the public school or who need transitions into the adult world. Now we're like, oh, now this is lacking in our area. So we've done a little bit better in that we've partnered with somebody that's doing this well in another state. And we also hired somebody full time that is very passionate about adult services.
To get [00:57:00] this model off the ground. So instead of the old days of we're going to start working with adults and not getting paid for it. Now we're like, this is what we want to do. Here's the model. How do we get it funded? And so this person is lots of trips to Little Rock, lots of trips with legislators, lots of trips trying to, because it is kind of funded.
But it's not really on the ups. And so we want it to be out there and available for everybody. So we have regular meetings with her and figuring out how to get that funded back to your question. It's kind of like. We don't turn away anybody, and so we do have quite a few people that we take a really low rate for, or we do hardships for, or we just do pro bono, but we do try
Cindy Watson: to
Kym Hannah: manage
Cindy Watson: that a little better.
I was going to say, I think our billing department is part of the unsung heroes. For sure. You know, they're behind the scenes, and they're the ones.[00:58:00]
Fighting with the insurance company, not fighting, talking with the insurance company, problem solving, um, but working those claims because they do all, you know, ABA, PT, they do them all. And, um. You know, making sure we're getting paid for everything, you know, sending out statements. And then obviously we have Ashley who's over our operations.
I mean, she's amazing and trying to keep all of those things going in the right direction. We're having to revamp our billing. Um, because of growth and, um, you know, making sure we are getting paid for services, just being better at that. And, um, so they're kind of the, they're those people behind the scenes that you forget about, but if it weren't for them.
We wouldn't be sitting [00:59:00] right here today because they're like, they're working on that and they, they don't always get the warm fuzzies of seeing the kids and that's hard, but they still, they keep plugging away. And um, so gosh, I appreciate them because we wouldn't be, like I said, we wouldn't be sitting here today if it weren't for them.
So,
Nick Beyer: so I read Democratic Gazette 2014 company was named large business of the year by Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce. So some growth has been there. Really started to happen. Are y'all still just in your Fayetteville kind of area at that point or have you expanded, I know you've got a place in silo, got a place up here, up north.
So like where were y'all at in, in kind of that in 14? Yeah.
Cindy Watson: I think the only place that wasn't really around was silo at that time. Yeah, we were in Bentonville. Okay. The location silo didn't, hap didn't happen till after that.
Kym Hannah: Right. We didn't have the aquatic. We didn't have the. The pool, we just had fake location and then a small bit and build.
[01:00:00] Okay.
Nick Beyer: And then 2017, you talked to, you shared the story about church and the school. This is called the Kids Studio for those who aren't familiar. We all talk a little bit about the Kids Studio, the business model, what, who you're really trying to serve. How it, you know, you already talked about how it came about.
Cindy Watson: Well, they already, the great thing about it is I, I, my child had gone through there, so I knew it was great. And they still had a lot of the same teachers, which is. Um, not the norm for a daycare preschool, um, and they had a wait list, so it was like an opportunity that you couldn't pass up because it was like, it had a good reputation.
We didn't want to change its name. People knew it by name, but we also, we wanted to be able to take children who may not, kind of like the gray school, kids that may not do well in a typical environment, bring in other kids. Who may have struggle on another daycare or maybe another [01:01:00] daycare wouldn't feel comfortable because this little one that's three or four isn't mobile or we've had, um, a little one previously who had cochlear implants and so, um, hearing loss, um, with the implants, no loss, but then having to monitor that.
Um, so just different needs. We wanted to, yeah. Uh, preschool daycare facility that was accepting to all children and so, um, I think it was easier for the staff there. We have amazing staff there, but it was like, we're going to help you. If you have one, you know, a child come through the door and you're like, Oh my goodness.
We're a phone call away, you know, and we'll be there to support you. Um, and they truly have been amazing. One of the little ones that's at the Gray School started at, um, Kid's Studio and he was not thriving at his daycare in Huntsville. And his parents drove him all the way from Huntsville to [01:02:00] Kid's Studio and his twin, um, every day.
And then, um, one was able actually to transition to regular kindergarten and one went to, or is going to the Grace School. But it was because of the work that the staff there did, you know, getting him used to that, you know, school environment and just being around other kids. And, um, so that's really the goal there is that.
We can make it a very inclusive community. Um, so, um, the business model, gosh, there's a lot of DHS regulations. Um, Shauna, who is the director there, enjoy. As co director, I guess, is her title. They actually have my oldest child in a class. I mean, my youngest in a classroom, but they know the ins and outs of all that.
We don't have to do [01:03:00] anything there really. No. They have it under control. You know, the people come in and do the checks and they're, they always pass a fine color. So as far as like a business model and such. Yeah. I mean, can't really speak to
Kym Hannah: that. I mean, taking over someone else's business is tricky.
Nick Beyer: And that was your first acquisition?
Kym Hannah: First
Nick Beyer: acquisition. Okay.
Kym Hannah: Yeah, I don't, I don't know which is harder, starting your own or acquiring another one. Because they were, they were, they were so loyal to the person that owned it. They, they went to work there, I think, for her. She's a great person. And then when we come in. This corporate, corporate spot us out, like, what does that mean?
I'm right here. I live down the street. Yeah. It was strange. I think, I mean, there's 205 kids there, [01:04:00] 48 staff, and um, Only five of the original stuff, which is not something that we, like, we keep people forever, you know, and so it was tricky acquisition was tricky. Uh, and I was ready not to keep it and then COVID hit and I was really ready not to keep it, but
Nick Beyer: just because all the regulations were, well,
Kym Hannah: we were still like, I mean, it was really 2018 when I think we took it over.
Um, and so we're. We were in the process of finding staff that wanted to be there, and It was a hard time already and then the pandemic, um, so we moved, she mentioned Ashley Stewart, our COO, she just went there full time. She can do anything. I kind of, she's like the fixer. She can fix any, anything. And, and.
figured out [01:05:00] who needed to stay and so Like she said the directors out there are amazing and it's just runs by itself, which is so great Yeah,
Nick Beyer: yeah, it sounds like it took a lot of work to get there and I mean what percent of the Students have disabilities that couldn't go to a normal day. Is it it's pretty integrated.
It sounds like with yeah
Kym Hannah: It's not very high, but we do have I don't think we know for sure. We do have a full staff of Therapist there. We do have PT, OT and a few speech therapists that stay there and kind of work with children all day, but I don't know that those kids couldn't go somewhere else. Okay.
So there's, I don't know, there's probably three or four that really couldn't go to another daycare that are there.
Cindy Watson: Out of the 205. Yeah, five. So, okay.
Kym Hannah: It's so funny enough this
Cindy Watson: small percentage. Uh, my two
Kym Hannah: year old is there now, my surprise two year old. Yeah.
Nick Beyer: Yeah. Tell us about the building we're sitting in [01:06:00] now and that maybe, I don't know if that's the last five years, is it kind of bringing us up to speed or tell us about why y'all did this, when y'all did this, kind of the heartbeat behind it.
Kym Hannah: Yeah, sure. So, uh, kind of one of the things we had, uh, you know, my very first job, like I said, was aquatic therapy. And although that pool was freezing. It stuck with me. The kids were so eager to come to therapy. These are kids that sometimes are in therapy their whole life. So, to do part of their therapy session in the pool and get the same benefits is amazing.
Who doesn't look forward to that? And the benefits of pool are just huge. And so, it kind of always stuck with me. Back from, you know, 1999 at that first job. And so, 2017 I think it was this The pool area, this space is like three separate buildings, but the pool area, um, became available for rent Northwest Medical, it was their rehab and they weren't going to use it anymore.
So, uh, we, [01:07:00] we rented it and we didn't, we lost a lot of money and it was not. We never made money here at the, at the aquatic location to keep that pool like you guys went out there that air temperature and the pool and everything going is a lot, even though we leased it, we still
Cameron Clark: talk about that, the, the air temperature reason and pull them to region like, so we keep the air temperature
Kym Hannah: one degree, one to two degrees warmer than the water and the water's already, you know, anywhere from 92 to 95 degrees and so we keep the air temperature.
Okay. One, two degrees warmer so that the benefits of the water for kids with spasticity or any kind of muscle tone issues, um, when they get out of the water, they can maintain the benefits of the warm water pool and they can take what they practiced in the pool. And immediately begin practicing it on land so that we have that carryover.
If you get out and you're shivering and freezing, you lost all those benefits. [01:08:00] So we keep it, keep it therapeutic. And it's, it's like the, I don't know of any other place that there, that is available. Uh, well, because it's just, it's a lot of maintenance.
Yeah.
Kym Hannah: You know, so, um, but it's so beneficial. So we, we leased that space with the pool, two pools.
It's great to have two pools that are on two separate systems because you have kids in the pool. So a lot of times you have to shut them down.
Yeah.
Kym Hannah: Yeah. Code browns quite often. Yes.
Cindy Watson: You have the pool guys on speed dial. Yeah.
Kym Hannah: Yeah. Uh, but we also had our other location in Bentonville, um, we had, we had two locations in Bentonville and we had the pool and so we wanted to all be in one place because a lot of our kids do go back and forth between therapies.
And it's hard to bring them from another, you know, we want it to be easy for parents and not have to drive them to separate places. So we, the, we wanted to buy this place, but it wasn't for [01:09:00] sale. So we, um, ended up buying something on Walton and literally a. Before we could do anything with that space, the owner of the agility center was like, I'm ready to sell.
Great. I
Cindy Watson: don't know
Kym Hannah: what we're going to do.
Cindy Watson: I remember Kim saying, I wasn't going to be a property manager, property owner. Yeah.
Kym Hannah: Yes. Yeah. Um, but it all worked out and we were able to lease all Walton and the one on Walton and purchase this place. And so we're all together and, uh, The therapists have their own space and treatment rooms and it's the ideal, it was already built out.
It's the ideal place for speech therapy specifically. All the rooms have sinks and they're small. It's just great.
Cameron Clark: It's a great Bentonville. 28th Street. Yeah. Very central. Yeah.
Kym Hannah: Oh, it's just, I'm so proud of it. Yeah. I'm so happy for the kids and families that come here.
Cindy Watson: Even down to the. Covered drive [01:10:00] through, you know, thinking about parents who are trying to unload children who may have mobility issues and chairs or all that, but I mean, it's just like those little things that, you know, some of us who haven't experienced that don't think about and it's like, That makes me happy that we can do that.
Yeah, it's a dream. Every time
Kym Hannah: I take me or anywhere, if it's raining and it's covered, it's amazing.
Nick Beyer: So I guess kind of bring us up to speed. Now, the current state of the business, you'll have five locations.
Kym Hannah: We have asylum clinic, and then we have our Fayetteville location. That's in three separate buildings.
One of those is for the grade school. And then we have our Bentonville location here. And then we have. The ADA clinic that's on 22nd street. That's just a clinic for, um, applied behavior analysis. And then we have, um, the kid's studio. Yeah. [01:11:00] So we're looking Fayetteville needs more space. We need more parking.
It is, uh, administrative staff has to park down the road and we pay, uh, some of our staff to. Carpool. We don't have parking. Uh, so it's a tricky situation and we're out of space. So if anybody out there knows,
If you're, if you're listening.
Cindy Watson: You're in, are you in real estate? Who's in real estate? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cindy Watson: We're, yeah, we're moving our billing and admin offices to give more space. Yeah. Because
Kym Hannah: the waiting list for the, we should kind of share space with the gray school. And so they need our space. And so if we can't find anything, we'll work from home for a bit. Um, but after you buy a building, it's so hard to rent,
Cameron Clark: you
Kym Hannah: know?
Uh, it's, uh,
Cameron Clark: well, especially because you're, I mean, you're a long term invested here, like, you know, emotionally, blood, sweat, tears, everything, it's like, it's, uh,
Kym Hannah: yeah,
Cameron Clark: different outlook.
Kym Hannah: [01:12:00] I'm trying to convince our admin staff to drive to the, we have a little spot on Pinnacle, but you would ask that, I think I asked them to.
Drive to Siloam? Yes! Or somewhere else! Like, no way! Yeah.
Cindy Watson: And then there's me. I was like, I'll take the whole place!
Kym Hannah: Yeah. It's
free!
Nick Beyer: Yeah. So, anyway. So five locations and just the scale of the business for someone who hasn't, doesn't, maybe doesn't have kids in y'all's realm, whether it's employees or revenue, I mean, I think we've captured a lot of it through the locations and, um, how many families you serve, just what would be some size scale of the business that you'd share?
Cindy Watson: We see about 1, 500 kids a week for therapy. Um, so, that's a lot. I wouldn't know how to give you a family number. I mean, most, most families have one child, but there are lots of families that have multiple children that come in. So, um, as Kim said, Anywhere [01:13:00] from birth to 21 years of age. We can and now with a different funding source We can go a little higher than 21, which makes it nice because we get super attached And we want to keep going with them so we can go up into the mid to late 20s with some of our kids too So yeah, I could Kim knows better probably number on employees, employees and such.
We have like 233
Kym Hannah: employees. Yeah, between all the locations and things. We are on the, just things just happened yesterday with the adult service model that I'm super excited about. So I think, I think that's probably gonna, if I had to guess, it's gonna get, it grow quite a bit in the next couple of years.
Uh, the model that we're working on with, [01:14:00] uh, the partner in Kansas is just, we just got two funding sources to approve the model, big funding sources in Arkansas and people with adults with disabilities use a hybrid model of managed care and there's four and two out of the four have approved the model.
So, uh, it's going to be so great. Wow. Uh, I'm not really sure where they're going to go or how it's going to happen, but. It is going to happen, so, uh, that's really
Cindy Watson: exciting. We have so many, um, families that are excited about that, just because, um, you know, for so many years we work to help our kids become independent, to be, to do most of.
What they can themselves and so this will give them that ability. There's different tiers, so to speak, of how they can live, but they can live independently with some help all the way down to, I mean, like 24 [01:15:00] seven and a situation with a, with another, with a family who, you know, um, would take care of their.
Needs and help them. And so it's not that the fam, the families, their own families don't wanna keep them, but these kids want some independence or these young adults want some independence. And so this program will help that. And I know we have one young lady who's just chomping at the fit to kind of have that independence.
Mm-hmm . And live with other peers who are like her.
Yeah.
Cindy Watson: You know? And you've kind of, another thing you forget is like, they have that desire too. They may not want to live with mom and dad forever, um, but have some, um, peer groups and, um, social, a social life, so to speak. So yeah.
Kym Hannah: You didn't really ask about this, but the best thing about this adult program is that I said that we, you know, kind of hired somebody to be in charge of it, but she has an [01:16:00] advisory group that is made up of individual adults with disabilities that really is driving the whole thing.
Like they're the people speaking to the legislators. They're the people out in the community trying to make a difference because they can speak to it firsthand and it, they're just so excited. It's so fun. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be great.
Cameron Clark: It feels like. You know, I've never lost sight of the ground floor, what's going on in a day to day with as big as the organization is now.
It's like just not, it hasn't changed and, and how much you both of you care about the experience from the parking lot. And uh, yeah, that's what's really, really.
Cindy Watson: Yeah, the culture is important to us and I think, um, whenever we were working on a title for me, it was like I was going to be the culture club or the culture leader.
You know, we were being funny about it, but it's like. [01:17:00] Um, Becky who does a lot of work for us, again, another person, I mean, we, I know we've probably forgotten people, but it's not just us. There's so many people behind the scenes. Um, but she came up with that experience, chief experience officer and I was like, Oh, that's cool.
CXO, you know, but that's like, I want there to be that. I want there to be that good experience for that family coming in. That doesn't mean they stay here. We, the providers in this area, for the most part, um, we communicate on a regular basis. We're a part of a group where we work together and sometimes we are not the right fit for that family and it's finding that right fit and that's an experience.
Like I want them to trust me and I want to build that rapport with them and if I can get them in here, great. If they need to go to another provider because of their skill set. Let's do it, you know, [01:18:00] um, but yes, the experience and the culture that's hard. I think Kim was getting to that when you were talking about the growth and the size and the beginning, it was like, we felt like the culture piece, we were losing that because we were out.
As we say in the trenches, more treating and the gyms and stuff. And so we could see the things happening and, um, help where needed or, um, whatever, whatever is needed, you know, take out the trash or whatever. But, um, um. Culture is so hard and you want to keep that culture and you got to find those people, which she touched on more than once, but you got to find those people that have that same culture and want to have that same culture, that same passion.
And so, um, yeah, that's it. It truly is challenging. It's the hardest part. Yeah. Um, like you said, starting at the, from the very beginning and keeping it going. But gosh, you get the right people in place and you can do it. We [01:19:00] have just a tremendous leadership team. And, um, I couldn't be more grateful for them really.
Cameron Clark: Talk about them. What was the, how many people are on the leadership team?
Cindy Watson: Well, we have our clinic managers in each location. Um, and we also have, of course, Ashley Stewart. Um, we have, she kind of leads up everything. We talked about our directors at the daycare. Um, we've mentioned Ed. Um, Becky, because she, she's even out of state, but she helps us with, All the things.
I can't even tell you. She's a communications officer, I believe is her official title. Um, Whitney, starting off the, or starting up the adult program. Those are all of our leaders. There's about ten, ten of us. And have been with us, like. Nobody's new, you know, they've kind of, um, been here along the way and, [01:20:00] um, I think that's great too.
Because I want, I mean, I see what I see in them is they also feel like they have as much skin in the game, so to speak, as Kim and I, you know, like they love this place just as much as we do. Um, and I think one thing that really struck me years ago, this might be when the tears start, um, Becky was working on our Um, you know, our chart that shows leadership and, um, I was thinking about this this morning, but Kim, you know, a lot of times they start with the CEO when they go down, when you make that chart and Kim was the one, she was like, I want to be at the bottom and it goes up from there, you know, it's all the people, you know, that the therapist, the billing department, anything comes down to the CEO.
She's like, I'm not at the top. And then it's like, when you hear one of your leaders say that, you're like, I'm in the right place, you know, and so Becky was kind of like, well, the CEO is always at the top of the organizational chart. Kim's like, [01:21:00] I'm not, they get into it, they get into it and it's fun because they're, they've been friends forever and she's like, I'm at the bottom, you know, but that just goes to show you like her heart and what this is.
This isn't about us, this is about team and how we take care of our community. And so, and our employees, you know, so, man,
Kym Hannah: Becky, the lady she was talking about, she's director of communications, lives in Omaha, and, uh, we cheered at Fayetteville High School together, captain and co captain, that's amazing, from ninety 91 to 94.
Is that crazy? Yeah. We're best friends. And then, um, she's got a teacher by trade and that just someone that's like, you get it, you get what we need to do. And so just. Came back in 2012. Yeah, came to work for us. And yeah, [01:22:00] it's really cool.
Cameron Clark: Well, it's, it's really cool that you've been able to figure out passion and then business came together.
I guess one of the things popped in my head. It was like, what would you tell people that you're extremely passionate people? What would you say? Like, is there a world where you should not combine that with starting a business? You know or hey, yes, definitely definitely combine that with starting a business and here's here's why
Kym Hannah: Yeah, I mean, I think starting a business is just, it's hard and if you, if you're not passionate about it, I don't know how you could do it really.
I wouldn't want to do it if I wasn't passionate about it.
Cameron Clark: Because there's some people that's their mantra is like, Hey, just go figure out what's going to make money. Go start it. And you're 100 percent right.
Kym Hannah: No, that's a very good point. Yeah. And I would say my husband is probably more like that.
Yeah.
Kym Hannah: You know, for me.
That's just not my, [01:23:00] I wouldn't want to make all the sacrifices that I've made. If it's not something that I was so passionate about, I would probably just. Go work somewhere that my time could be more managed or probably I just wouldn't work.
Let's go into the stay at stay at home mom face. Um, so that's real, that's really good. I mean, I don't know if that's like two separate different kinds of people, you know? I mean, obviously we did not go to business school or finance or anything like that. So it's not in our forefront. It probably should be, but it's.
For my personality, it's not something I could do if I wasn't so passionate about it.
Cindy Watson: I know. I'm a firm believer in doing what you love, you know, and usually what you love, you're passionate about. And I can't imagine doing anything else, but like you're right, some people do it. Um,
Kym Hannah: but,
Cindy Watson: but I mean, the people
Kym Hannah: that make the biggest difference in our community Probably [01:24:00] are the people that are really passionate about what they're doing.
Not just there to make money. Yeah. You know? Because we do, I mean, we really, really do, I know you said that you get it, but we really do want the trajectory of people with disabilities in Northwest Arkansas to look different. It's not a good trajectory. It's kind of grim. As they go into adulthood and so we want them to, if we can help them be as successful as possible by working with them as their children and then when they become adults, continue that progress.
It doesn't just end, but continuing it and then find the best environment for them. I mean, I don't know anybody in our community that doesn't want that. And it's something people can get behind. And we feel like it's up to us. I do. I feel like it's up to me.
Nick Beyer: Yeah.
Kym Hannah: Because we've, we talked about that last time.
It's not great.
Nick Beyer: No, no one's doing it.
Kym Hannah: Especially for my daughter. Like, [01:25:00] kids like my daughter, if, if she doesn't live with one of my, her siblings. Like, she's not, she's in a bad spot. It's almost like an institutionalized place for her. So, we just can do better. We have a lot of resources. This is the best place to live.
I, I tried to go somewhere else. Northwest Arkansas is the best place. We have great resources. Yeah. You guys have met a lot of those people probably, you know.
Nick Beyer: Yeah.
Kym Hannah: They, we can, we can make this happen.
Cindy Watson: Yeah.
Kym Hannah: So.
Nick Beyer: It's amazing. I, we'll talk about this at the end. But, um, you shared this already, but my brother, he's, 30, and he's, you know, getting diagnosed with special needs 30 years ago was a lot different than it is now, which you've, you already addressed.
And so I think, I think what's really inspiring for me is to see that y'all are just looking at needs. And then you're just plowing through the door. [01:26:00] I think it's a little bit of the Lord. It's a little bit of brute force. A little bit of amazing team that you have around you. It's all the above. You're absolutely right.
Did
Cindy Watson: you say stubbornness?
Nick Beyer: Yeah. But, uh, that sure is encouraging to just watch founders see needs and meet needs. Well, thank you. Yeah. Great. Thanks
Cameron Clark: for saying that. Yeah. We want to talk about maybe more of what's next, like you were alluding to. Um, and then a couple of things kind of to wrap up here, but anything else we may have missed right now that, about the organization, because there's so much different things going on.
I
Cindy Watson: guess the only thing we really didn't touch on was the ABA clinic. where kids can go, you know, we talked about all the separate, like the kids studio and the gray school, but we do have the separate ABA clinic here in Bentonville. So kids can get ABA there. They may not, you know, they, the gray school is founded on ABA principles, but there may be kids that go to school and [01:27:00] come to ABA after school, or little ones that are doing PTOT speech and ABA, or sometimes they need to start with ABA first.
Um, and deal with some of the behaviors and then add in the speech OT and PT. So, um, yeah, so it's kind of in a separate building from here. So definitely don't want to forget about them because they're doing great things. And the wait list there is. even longer than the one at the grace school, I think. So there's just so many needs.
You know, sometimes that's what's hard is that night you're like, you know, you want, and when you have that fire in your belly to provide those services, it's hard, um, to not find those services. Um, but we want those to be the best that they can be. And so sometimes. You just have to wait, um, but we do send them on to other providers, but the other providers are in the same boat, you know, wait lists and such.
So [01:28:00] there's still lots of need out there. Yeah, it's true. I think
Kym Hannah: like right now it's just, it's a, it's a good time. We have, we did all the hard work up front to have this group of employees that are. I've been here 10, 15, 20 years, right? And they get, they get what we're trying to do and they can help kind of raise up the new hires and new grads and determine if they're a good fit and keep that, that mission going.
You know, it's hard when you don't have that solid group, even though maybe they not be on the leadership team or they're not. Don't have a leadership role, but they're just in the building or their mentors or whatever. It's just such a, it's a good time because we have so many of them. It's like, I want to capture this, like it's a good time right now, maybe a few years ago when it was a lot of people were leaving, you know, there's always these generational things that happen [01:29:00] and figuring those out, Oh, super tricky.
Yeah.
Kym Hannah: Uh, but just staying focused on why we're here and having that solid group that can, that have been here so long, that can carry it out, just. Great. And it allows you to do other things. It allows us to say like, someone wants to, we have a, we have a program where we get help people get a communication device if they can't speak, but they need a device to communicate on.
Usually they have to go to Easterseals and Little Rock. Or is U of A still doing it? No.
Cindy Watson: Not right now.
Kym Hannah: Only option to figure out what device you're going to learn to talk on, like, that's really hard.
Cindy Watson: Yeah.
Kym Hannah: So we, we have, it's just an example of someone wanting to bring something into the community that we don't have, that we're really not going to get paid for, but because we put the work in up front and we've got some other established programs.
She can just run with it.
And
Kym Hannah: I think we got like
Cindy Watson: 28 devices last year or
Kym Hannah: something.
Cindy Watson: Yeah, that was one of the things that was so [01:30:00] hard because when you do those, when you're trialing devices, um, when they go to Easterseals, they're not with people they know, they're with strangers. And it was like talking to Kim and it was like this, and she knew it, but I was like, they're not going to do their best.
They're going to be scared. They're with new people. Let's do it here, you know, and um, I mean it was a group effort, but it just makes sense You know because you're picking a device sometimes that they only buy one a lifetime So you want to make the best choice and so you want to have the best environment
Yeah.
Cindy Watson: Yeah. But you want to make the best choice for that child, so you do the trials for three months with someone that knows them, not someone in Little Rock, who's probably wonderful, but you know, the kids that are needing those oftentimes are in situations where new people can be hard. And so just like little things like that, that [01:31:00] have come up and it's like, okay, we can do that better.
Kym Hannah: Yeah. And it's a good time because we have those people here that are established that are Staying and we trust them to start those new programs.
Yep.
Kym Hannah: Because before it's like, it's just on us to start it. It's nice. I like this, I like the spot we're in.
Nick Beyer: Yeah. Yeah. No, that, that is amazing. Before we go to your part, is there just one, I know y'all probably have a million stories.
But
Nick Beyer: is there one, if there's a parent out there who is just struggling. They have a kid who's, has some disabilities and they're just in a tough spot. Is there a story you could share of like, obviously I can't share names and stuff like that, but like this kid came in and like, here's what was happening, and we got to see him or her leave doing X, and they weren't doing that before they came in, or just
Kym Hannah: Hmm.
There's lots of those. I'm trying to think of one. I mean, there's lots of, [01:32:00] lots of stories about kids who've been given a diagnosis. That the physician or whoever has laid a pretty grim, you know, outcome or life, right? And so, kids, like, almost always exceed our expectations, 100%. My very, very Probably my third patient out of my own that I went to their house to see.
Um, the, I got a call from a therapist. She's like, I'm seeing this kid at home and parents are demanding we come five times a week. It's a really impossible family. And it's like, I'll go. Like, I don't have two patients, you know, send me. And so I went out there and it's like a, a tiny, I mean, really, literally like a couple weeks old and he has arthrogryposis.
Which is where your joints don't bend. Well, not [01:33:00] only was he usually they're stuck kind of bent. His were stuck in extension, so stuck straight. So it's, it's actually like the more rare for him. And I'm still a new grad. I'm gonna have school a year, right? And I'm gonna go start seeing this kid three times a week.
And this therapist that's really experienced is gonna see twice a week. Well, I was in my head, this kid is gonna be in a wheelchair and. Really have a really hard life, um, just based on what was going on then. So many things happened with this kid, from learning how to navigate communicating with parents, to learning from an experienced therapist.
Now this kid, he's getting ready to graduate from the U of A. He worked at Chick fil A. at the drive in, walking his entire college career. He's getting ready to graduate from the U of A. And he knows exactly what he wants to do. He [01:34:00] lives independently. Never in a million years thought that. Like, and it, like, not only, like, just me being in that situation, I saw, he's probably seen 20 therapists at TEEN.
Like, he still comes to TEEN because he still needs intervention, even though he's graduated from college. Um, he was one of the reasons we needed a pool. You have all these surgeries, you get your, you know, arms and legs bending and you need to keep that range of motion. Uh, but he's kind of like, I feel like the poster, you know, um, he needed all things.
It wasn't just PT. I mean, it affects all parts of your body. So it's really cool. And then my, my other. The story would be just a mom from, from Bentonville who is like, she, her and her husband have businesses in the area. They have a younger son and their older son was being sent home from school every single day.
She's like, we can't continue to live the life that [01:35:00] we've, you know, dreamed of or whatever. I'm picking him up every day from school. His behaviors were out of control. He was hurting himself. He's hurting other people. It's not like the parents didn't have resources or funding to pay for what he needs, but they were stuck.
Um, because they would, they hired somebody to pick him up when the school called and said, you got to pick him up, we can't control him. Um, and they were just out, just out of luck. So we took him on in the gray school, we hired two full time people to be with him. Um, and now like we never call the parents, like if there's no reason we would ever call the parents unless they're running a fever or throwing up, like you can't do anything.
You can't hurt yourself, hurt others, throw a computer, whatever, like that's what we're trained to do at the gray school. And so mom's world has like changed, you know, and he gets out of the car, walks in. [01:36:00] Goes to his classroom, gets his stuff out. He's on a reward system. Yesterday, he's so excited because he just got a new phone case.
They weren't earned bucks, and so he ordered a new phone case off Amazon because he had so many consecutive things in a row that were good. Like, it has changed her life, her husband's life, their son's life. It's amazing.
Cindy Watson: I think the biggest thing, too, to encourage a parent is that we treat the child, we don't treat the diagnosis.
Yep. It's perfect. The only reason why I need a diagnosis is if I need to help you get funding. And so that's what I try to push. I love to mentor. I love. To teach and it's like I don't care anything about your diagnosis, honestly, because I'm going to treat your deficits and your deficits look different than this child's deficits and all that.
The only time you need a diagnosis is for funding and that's it. That doesn't say what your [01:37:00] child's life is going to be like, what it's going to look like, prognosis and all that. I mean, like she said, we've had kids come in here and they've been told this and it's like, Okay. Well, where are we going to start, you know, and, and I think to encourage parents because I know they may not even be in our community or wherever they may be in our community, but make sure your provider that I'm passionate about that.
Like, um, just. Start, start at the beginning and, um, so, you know, I, one situation that I go back to is I had a child who the, and this was when I first started and I was going to his daycare to see him and the physicians had said he had seen the developmental. Uh, pediatrician at Arkansas Children's. He's never going to talk.
Um, he has apraxia. He's never going to talk. And [01:38:00] being, I wasn't exposed to apraxia when I worked in public schools. But I'm like, I'm private practice. I might get these. I did some training. Got some, talked to some experienced therapists and worked with that child. And he talks, you know, and it's not because of me his parents did every like we we game plan and it's like okay We did this they did it all the other days of the week I was only with him 45 minutes, you know once a week or whatever but um I think that is like take that information Do with it whatever you need to do with it, but no You know, there are plenty of providers out there that want to help you and help your child help you to help your child empower you help advocate for you.
And that's what we want to do here. You know, so,
Cameron Clark: um, kind of getting towards we're wrapping up here. Now that you talked. You know, a little bit about what's next on, uh, more of the adult side. Is there anything [01:39:00] else maybe coming up next for team here that you want to share today? Or anything else you're dreaming?
Cindy Watson: We've always teased about having a 30 a clinic. Maybe it won't be a tease anymore.
Kym Hannah: I know. I saw Kevin need a therapy in St. Thomas.
Cindy Watson: Yeah. I'm only joking.
Kym Hannah: I'm only joking. That's great.
Yeah.
Kym Hannah: It's a great question. I honestly have never been able to answer that question. I feel like I've been asked that a lot.
And I can say that we are going down the road of adult. We want to, we want to keep providing the quality. We're continuing to grow. Quality is top thing. If we stop growing and have the quality, great. Unlike 2005, we have so many competitors now.
Yeah.
Kym Hannah: We don't really have any competition then. It was, it was a lot [01:40:00] easier as far as there's no marketing or anything like that, but I mean, I think it's once a month, someone's sending us a picture of a new clinic or speech clinic or something popping up.
Arkansas improved the funding. We had, it was really great to help with that. We hadn't had like a, a raise so to say in, was it 14 years? And so they increased the rate that they pay. And then all of a sudden everybody's opening up therapy clinics. And so we have a lot of competition in Bentonville, especially with the growth and everything.
And, um, so whether we grow or not, like quality is number one. So looking ahead to the future, we're going to maintain that quality at really whatever costs. Um, that's the most important thing. And then just meeting the needs. So right now the need presented at our front door is our kids that have grown up a team needing adult services.
And so that's where we're going to go. But if there's another need that arises and opportunity presents, [01:41:00] we'll, we'll jump through that hoop too. Whether we do it or someone else does it will help. Get it off the ground.
Cindy Watson: I think that's, what's been fun about our journey is just wherever the Lord leads us, because we would have never, as we've said before, we would have never thought we would have been sitting here today.
And so it's kind of hard to project what that need will be. Um, but I love that we've learned to keep the quality, keep the culture, what we want it to be. Um, but yes, but we'll help with that need, but. Not at the expense of the ones that are already here.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. Well, uh, Cindy and Kim, I want both of y'all to answer this question.
How do you define success?
Cindy Watson: I think loving what you do, um, it's important for me. Loving what I do. Giving back. Um, I [01:42:00] know a lot of people that I look at and I think, oh gosh, they're so successful, you know, but it's not, that's not me. What they do is not me. Um, so, I think as long as I. Can keep doing and I have the, the health and the strength and the wisdom to keep doing this.
I'm, I'm successful. I'm happy where I am. I mean, I, I feel like I said, I'm still pinching myself. Um, this is way more than I ever thought I would do. And, um, however, I need to be used. I'm, I'm here and that's success. So.
Kym Hannah: Yeah. Um, I have a 17 year old. My mother's just 17. And so she's looking at what she wants to do.
Rich wants to go to college. What?
Yeah.
Kym Hannah: And so we, we, we kind of have this conversation and, um, I was like, do we say that, or are we talking about business? You know, [01:43:00] but it's, um, like keep, obviously we're Christians and faith is such a big part of our journey personally and, and in business, but keeping that, uh, uh, motivation in check, like we're here for a What I do with my family and in business to be what God has called me to do.
And so ensuring that I'm walking in his calling is when I feel the most successful. Whether that's again with my family, my aging parents, my business, like, am I doing what he's intended me to do? And am I hearing the right voice? Because it is so tricky as you have a lot of. [01:44:00] Um,
Cameron Clark: and then say, you know, we're Northwest Arkansas focused on the podcast, um, what is your vision for Northwest Arkansas moving forward in the next five years, 10 years? What would you like to see the area?
Kym Hannah: Right. I mean, on a serious note, it is a great place. Yeah. We have great people here. Yeah. It's still, you know, a little bit like Southern ish, you know, and opportunities.
I think, again, I'm telling my 17 year old, you can do anything you want to do in Northwest Arkansas. The opportunity, I feel like it's limitless. With the resources. And still the way of cost of living is and, um, it, it can do anything you want to do. But I, it just is the same thing for our future in Northwest Arkansas is to meet the needs of the community, [01:45:00] uh, for children in need and now adults.
with needs, to meet the needs the best we can. And again, it doesn't have to be through us, it may be facilitating someone else doing it, but making those needs aware, and then doing what we can to meet them.
Cindy Watson: I think just to, I think sometimes our families have to travel outside of this area to get certain services, and I would like to be able to have services here.
Can I do those? No, probably not. But, I see that coming with all the growth. I mean, you can go down the street and see the new home office. It's insane. You know, you think, am I in New York City or am I in Bentonville, Arkansas? So I think it's coming, but, um, it's kind of like we were in the beginning trying to catch up, you know, to.
The need and the growth. I think that's where we're at because we have families that still have to leave our [01:46:00] area for specialists or, you know, certain kinds of evaluations or things. I would love to, if that's the question you're asking, that's what I would love to see for Northwest Arkansas. And I'm always willing to talk to somebody about it who might be, um, in a position to make that happen.
Um, but I know, I know it'll happen probably organically with the growth and the people that come through here, but that's what I would love to see for our community.
Nick Beyer: Yeah. It's
Cindy Watson: amazing.
Nick Beyer: Well, one thing we like to do at the end of every episode is we like to just kind of capture what we learned from y'all.
And uh, I think the first thing that was really clear and Cameron asked some amazing questions, really illuminating. I think how y'all are gifted is you're just very purpose driven and different founders have different purposes and y'all's purpose is really clear and it's to serve kids in our community.
And that's whether they're six weeks old or they're. [01:47:00] 22 or 30 and they need some something that we don't have. And so I just, we're so thankful for that and it's really fun to watch. And I think a lot of people can learn from that. Um, the next thing was team and it's in your name. And I think that makes it even more special as y'all have committed exactly what you set out to do when you made the name of your company.
And it's. You talked about, I thought one thing that was really interesting, you even talked about the parents of the families that you're serving and how they're part of the team, and I think it speaks a lot to, and I can't speak to other practices, but probably a differentiator and, and how y'all are serving kids relative to other people in the community.
And so. Just really, really fun, um, to hear that. I think the quality piece, um, is really admirable. Like growth is not a bunch of buildings, a bunch of employees. It's kids growing through and learning and developing. Through and maybe overcoming things that they never thought they could overcome when [01:48:00] they had a diagnosis.
And I think that's super inspiring. Um, and then the last thing, and I said it before, but I think it's the most, the most powerful thing we learned being here is just founders who see a need and meet the need. And y'all represent that so well. And I don't think that that's like, that's not table stakes.
That's not common. It's just, so it's really inspiring. And I think that people listening will be really inspired to just see how you guys. Keep seeing a need and just keep going through the door and just being faithful step by step. So, we really, uh, we're thankful for the time and learned a ton from y'all.
Cindy Watson: It's always fun to sit down. I think I mentioned to Kim, after we met with you the first time, we need to do that more often. Because you kind of forget, you know, like, It's been, it's been a few years. I slept a few times, but all the many blessings and the fun stuff. I mean, we get to do fun stuff a lot, a lot more than the icky stuff.
So [01:49:00] meaning insurance, dealing with insurance companies and different stuff like parking lights and clogged toilets. But, um, but yes, it's. It's amazing.
Nick Beyer: Well, Cindy Watson, Kim Hanna, how can people find out more about y'all or more about Children's Therapy Team?
Kym Hannah: Yeah, um, website, uh, social media. You can message any of those, direct message, or all the contact information is on our website.
Um, we also get out our personal cell phones. Yeah.
Nick Beyer: Awesome. Thanks for the time. Thank you guys so much. It was a pleasure. Thank
Kym Hannah: you.
Cameron Clark: for listening to this episode of NWA Founders where we sit down with founders, owners, and builders driving growth here in Northwest Arkansas. For recommendations or to connect with us, reach out at nwafounders.
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