Amber Nelms 0:00

Well, awesome. It's so exciting to have Dr. Carly Lapin on Accelerate with Amber podcasts. I know we're gonna go into a lot of things in the ABA industry and talk through how you got started in the field and also talk about what you are evaluating right now from a tech stack. So it should be a fun time today. So how did you get started in the industry?

Carly Lapin 0:25

Yeah, I have been in the field about 15 years now. It feels like a long time. I'm feeling old these days. But it really started with an intrinsic desire to help people. But I was at the University of Kansas. I had no idea that I was sitting at one of the greatest institutions for ABA that exists, I think. One of them. And I was sitting in a class with a pioneer being my teacher. And I didn't even know it at this time. It was Jim Sherman. But he showed a video in my freshman year of a child before ABA therapy and then a child after ABA therapy. And that video changed everything. I just needed to be part of the process. How can I get involved? How can I be a part of this? And that's where kind of it all started. But that led to me developing my skills as a clinician and then a researcher, a professor, and then ultimately on executive leadership teams in Illinois, kind of more on the business and operations side. And forming my own company right now, Choice Point Autism Therapy is the culmination of all of it.

Amber Nelms 1:25

Congratulations. I love your website, by the way. I went on it. It's very well done. Which platform did you build your website on? Is it on Webflow, WordPress? Do you know? So it's Webflow. It looks like a Webflow website. That's what I thought. Yeah, it looks good.

Carly Lapin 1:42

I hired a team. They're new. They're called Mind Permission, and they're very AI forward. And to be honest, I don't think they use that much AI in my website, but they really used AI to develop my voice and my branding and how I want my passions to come across. They're just starting off, but props to them. They did a great job on the website. It's unique, it doesn't look like an ABA standard website, and that's what I was going for.

Amber Nelms 2:08

Yeah. See, obviously that's my side hop, like my other side hobby. I love I've been in into you know running a company for six years now, so I can't help it. I've met so many different marketing companies. I've I used to have a webflow website, so I guess I just notice all the things. So I can't believe you noticed that. Kudos to you for that. Well, I mean, I guess I think that there's a lot of ABA podcasts out there nowadays, and that's great and all, but I do want to differentiate what my focus is. And I don't think a lot of people talk about those kinds of things. They don't talk about, okay, well, what type of website should you build your ABA website on, or what type of CRM should you use? Like, no one's talking about that. We're talking about considerations and maybe ethical things or CEUs are talked about. Those are great. I am not, I mean, I love that.

Carly Lapin 3:00

Clients, billing, it's important. Yeah. But it's 2026. AI is taking over. It's just going to get better and better. And we need to be really mindful, yes, from an ethical standpoint. But really, now there's so many options. I am demoing Amber everything right now because we're not open yet. It's been a lot of fun, but I am realizing there is so much. And you have to just be really mindful on what you select and why.

Amber Nelms 3:23

You know, maybe I'll add that to our question sometime about, you know, how do you, as the owner of the company, decipher when you do a demo? Also, how to not to help people be better consumers, maybe. What do you do to take a pause and be like, all right, enough is enough with your whole pitch thing? I need to hear three, the main three key things right now and how much it's gonna cost because my time is very valuable. And I wanna, because I don't know. Okay, so I guess I'm giving you a preview on how I typically do things. That is something that I do because I've have to get on those calls as a CEO. That's one of the things you have to do all the time. Evaluate different tech stacks and ask yourself is there gonna be enough ROI on this? What does it really look like? And then also not just let somebody go on and on, because you should value your time and you should be able to say, hey, I know what I'm looking for, I know what I want, and let's just talk what the main details are. And I think that has helped me. And I'd love to hear what other people are using as a strategy when they go into those calls. Because once you own an ABA company, that is just gonna constantly happen. Yeah, if you want to share what you've been using because you're really in the fray of it right now, figuring it out.

Carly Lapin 4:41

Well, I was gonna tell you a secret and for all of our listeners on what I tend to do. Yes, exactly what you said. I want to know the cost. Something big for me too is I want to know what onboarding and implementation looks like. I want to know how much support I have there. But what I always do, I'm very active, maybe not even active, more passive, but in the Facebook groups. There's ABA business owners, there's so many Facebook groups out, and everybody is using all of these new technology. And I have been asking, and boy, do people want to share? Right. And like people are messaging me, people are posting it publicly and being like, this has been a mess, or this has been really great. And that has been key for me in selecting platforms is what are people actually using? Have been on it for a year, and what is their experience with it? I want to talk to them.

Amber Nelms 5:27

Yeah, that's smart. I love that. That's a good strategy. All right. Well, thank you for being able to go off of other rifting on other questions because that's gonna make it more fun. And also a lot of people can hopefully learn. I mean, that's the point of podcasts to learn and to engage with people. So thank you. Back to the questions we do have here is you've led growth inside organizations and now founded your own company. What lessons from scaling somebody else's vision most has shaped you now in building your own? Okay.

Carly Lapin 6:00

I think one of the biggest lessons is we're not always ready to scale in that moment. So, like I have been brought into companies that I'm like, perfect, let's scale, let's do this. You have a lot of great policies, procedures in place. Quality of ABA is great, let's do this, let's look at marketing, let's look at how we're our outreach, our onboarding, all of that. But there has been times too where I'm like, I'm not building this right now because the infrastructure is not in place and I don't want to grow too fast, lose clinical quality, have an operational nightmare. So, like my biggest thing is backing up. We're not growing until the foundations are at place and really having the right systems and processes in place before growing.

Amber Nelms 6:39

Yeah, that's absolutely true.

Carly Lapin 6:41

I can give like a really silly example, but like I had just started at my at a clinic that I worked for a while back, and it was new. I was on their business development team. So I was building those policies while also supporting growth. And I just remember I live in Chicago. We get really bad snowstorms. And it was six in the morning. I'm trying to get my own two kids to school. My phone is blowing up. It's like, are we closing down the clinic today? And my first answer is, well, what does the policy say? Oh, well, we don't have an inclement weather policy. And it's oh. And then so we were responding really reactively, right? Okay, where's everybody's email and phone? And why isn't there a central system that houses all of these things? No. And it didn't exist. And it's so now I'm telling you, like, we we had to respond not from an antecedent base, which I love so much. I want to prevent these crises from happening with good policies. Now we're being reactive. It's not as organized as I would have liked. Families probably showed up at the clinic, saw their phone, and had to turn around. It was awful. Now I'm five months out of opening my own clinic. We already have that policy in place. We already have not just the weather policy, but like a system that's going to house all of our new staff, all of our new clients, really needing everything in place before we open. So my biggest lesson is don't scale till you're ready.

Amber Nelms 7:59

Which platform are you going to use to send out messages? I'm just curious.

Carly Lapin 8:03

Oh, I love it. Yeah. So my favorite thing that I demoed a lot of different phone systems. So I just want to start with phone systems. And in the last 15 years, I have not found one I've liked. I've done like Next Tiva and all of that. I just purchased Spruce Health and I am loving it. It is so good. The calls don't drop. I can put in notes. I could put in like internal notes. All of my clinicians can see every communication that's ever happened with the family. So for scheduling, right? This family called out. If I'm out of town and it's only going to me, that's a whole big thing to have to message a family. You know what? I'm out of town. No, we need one central place that families can message that all of my clinicians and admin staff have access to and can look and respond on behalf of the company and not just like as a sole person. So Spruce has been great.

Amber Nelms 8:50

And you can send out mass messages in that too if you had to do a closure. You can.

Carly Lapin 8:55

And it's HIPAA compliant. You know, everybody that reaches out to us, I'm not asking them to download the app, right? Some of these people I'm just talking to, I don't know if they're clients yet. But for our actual clients that will be attending the clinic, they can download the app, which adds a layer of HIPAA protection to it. And then I can go and send pictures and videos, and it's pretty strong. I like it. That's awesome. I love it. You know what I haven't been able to find, Amber? Have you? Um, a system like Brightwheel, which is not HIPAA compliant, so we should not be using Brightwheel. Have you heard of Brightwheel before? Yeah. Yeah. Is there a system like that to send that is one thing I have not found yet. Something like Brightwheel, but that is HIPAA compliant in the ABS.

Amber Nelms 9:33

That's a really great question. I like that you're asking that. I think that maybe that needs to exist. Right? Agreed. I think that's why I'm doing it.

Carly Lapin 9:45

Maybe I can turn spruce into that. I keep thinking about it, but I don't know yet because I'm not open and I haven't seen it play out yet.

Amber Nelms 9:51

But didn't you say it allows you to send videos and pictures and doing all those things?

Carly Lapin 9:55

Why couldn't you? But Brightwheel has this like great infrastructure where like you can click and see like what food the child has eaten. And there's like all these beautiful templates in there that is just different than my clinician sending whatever video they want at any time, any text. Like I want it more, I guess I'm type A lately. I like it organized and structured.

Amber Nelms 10:16

Well, that's good. Those are the questions you should ask. Well, you're really going to end up having a lot of success, in my opinion, because you're thinking about, I mean, or who knows? I think about these kinds of things all the time. I think it's helpful to have a brain like that. And that's why I ask these questions over and over again to different people at different stages, because you can always learn something else. And the people that are constantly innovating, I think I will be forever asking myself, is this the right product for where I am at in the stage of the company? That worked for now, but now I need something else. That was the right thing then, and now I need this. And it will always innovate every year. I'll innovate and ask myself, like, that was great for then. Now we need this other thing.

Carly Lapin 11:06

Yeah.

Amber Nelms 11:06

Yeah.

Carly Lapin 11:07

Exactly. And it's been this weird balance. And I'm sorry I keep going off script.

Amber Nelms 11:11

No, I mean, we're staying on topic matter, which is very exciting in my opinion, because I think we're going to bring a bat a lot of value to people listening to this. You know, if we were going off on, I don't know, something random on our dogs, then no, but we are on topic.

Carly Lapin 11:25

Okay, great. Okay, so yes, it's like this works for me right now. This works for my budget. Like I'm pre-revenue right now. Like I really have to be mindful of the systems I'm spending money on. But one thing I am trying to do is say, you know what though, as I scale, I don't want to change massive systems. So let me give you an example. I went with Salesforce already. For your CRM? For my lead CRM. I think I will I will use something different for sure for like my practice management and scheduling and billing and all of that. That is where like families come in and are interested in services. And that is something that typically like the larger PE companies have a Salesforce. That's how I became familiar with it. But I thought to myself, I don't want to have to switch later. I already know I want about three clinics. Why not? And the price worked, right? And I'm like, I don't need to go with something less intensive. I love data. I love reporting. I want that now. So Salesforce does that for me.

Amber Nelms 12:20

Well, that that's why I'm saying I can just tell right now that you're gonna be able to scale very fast because you are doing it intentional and with that kind of stuff in mind. You are a million times ahead of what I hate to say this, but I've noticed in general, oftentimes a lot of founders, I sometimes talk to them and they don't know what a CRM is. That is very common too. And so I think it's very exciting for you because you are asking yourself the right questions. And the truth is for myself, when I started my company, I didn't know what that was. So it took me a lot longer to, I was not in a position within the company that allowed me to in the old ABA companies that I worked for to be able to see that kind of stuff. So I had to just keep going through bumpy roads of being like, wait a minute, I need to trial and error. And I did a lot of, I feel like I've gotten my second master's in business. I've just really invested in my knowledge. So I just keep saying, okay, so I don't know that. So now I need to know that. And now I need to know that. And so with, and I think those are the two things that if I could ever tell all founders to really ask themselves, can you constantly ask yourself, is this the tech that I'm going to use forever? You know, like what you said, am I going to use that forever? Is this the right one for the stage that I'm at? And am I willing to invest in myself and not be afraid of, oh, I don't know that. Oh, I don't understand that yet. That's great. That should be something you should be excited about because that means that you're gonna have a whole newer skill set. And that's my favorite part of being an entrepreneur. Self-development, learning, growing. That's the best part of being an entrepreneur. And it's you get paid to do that. That's how I look at it.

Carly Lapin 14:03

Yeah. Well, thank you for that. That makes me feel a lot more confident going into this. I am excited to scale, and I'm also not wanting to scale too. The reason I'm excited about opening up Choice Point is I don't want an empire. I want three clinics doing incredible work. I want to live a comfortable, happy life. I want to change. There's so much going on right now with ABA, and that could be a whole nother podcast. So I won't go into it about what's online and all the this and that. It's like I just want happy stuff and happy families and a chill life and do good work. And so Yeah, I want to scale a little bit, but I've not, you know, I'm not trying to become one of these massive places.

Amber Nelms 14:44

So well, it's good to know what you want. That's one of the biggest factors is having the vision and being clear about what it is. And so you are very clear. You have clearly what you want and you know. And then when you're also selecting the things that are gonna help support that, you're thinking, what could be the infrastructure I would need to have three clinics?

Carly Lapin 15:04

Exactly. What's gonna support three clinics? That's kind of what I'm thinking right now. And hey, if it changes later and I change my mind, it could happen. And we're gonna be fine anyways, because we're picking great technology and great ops and systems, and we'll be fine if we need a pivot. But for now, that's the vision. That's amazing.

Amber Nelms 15:18

That's amazing. Well, is there anything else that you would like to share? Because I have already been inspired by your just clear vision, clear thought process. It's great. I'm so glad I got to meet you. You better stay in contact after this podcast.

Carly Lapin 15:35

I would love to, Amber. There are so many things about opening up an ABA. It's exactly what you just said. There are parts I was nervous about, like outreach, growth, scalability, clinical. I felt really good about medical billing, HR. I've always had teams doing that. I've worked for very large PE companies. I've always had a billing team. I've always had an HR team. I don't have that this time around. So jumping into that has been very important to me. I'm doing a billing boot camp right now with comprehensive billing consultants. And I'm, you know, I cannot be an expert at medical billing. That's why you bring people on that are experts, but I need to know enough to be dangerous. I need to know enough to talk about it. And so doing these boot camps, but also there's so much AI and tech right now that's going to help with medical billing, I believe, in ABA. So we could talk about that a little bit. But some of the CRMs or the EMRs, whatever you want to call it, that I'm looking into for the billing part, you know, they're reviewing session notes. There's AI session notes, and that comes with lots of things, but we need to be looking into this. I mean, with the fraud, waste, and abuse that's going on in the media today, a lot of times it's not because people are purposefully trying to bill in correctly. This is my opinion, but that the training has been lacking and the therapist level might not know how to write a session note that truly articulates all of the AVA that they did in a session. So this AI should help us with that. It should help us avoid these fraud, waste, and abuse. Absolutely.

Amber Nelms 17:00

Have you selected to your EHR yet?

Carly Lapin 17:03

I think so, but I don't know. So I just hired my VP of clinical services last week. She's coming on to do some policies and procedures before she starts full-time when the clinic is open. I'm very big on let's establish things now and not be reactive if you can't tell. So I thought I had picked it. I thought it was 100% gonna be passage help.

Amber Nelms 17:21

I've had a good experience with passage. Yeah, I use passage and it was good. You're are you using it right now? No, I did switch just because of where what'd you switch to? Oh I switched to High Rasmus and Lumerie, yeah. But I mean, passage was really great. It just wasn't what I felt like I needed for where I wanted to do things and how I wanted to do things. I have heard very good things. I mean, and I've found that with my clinical team does love high rasmus. There's some other things I haven't loved about the connection between the two.

Carly Lapin 17:56

That's what the only question I had was do they talk to each other? If you change like a session, do you have to do it in two places? Like, I I don't know how well the systems talk.

Amber Nelms 18:06

You know, I think passage is very user-friendly for the RBTs, which I think is great. And what did your VP of sales or clinical something?

Carly Lapin 18:16

Or clinical? She hasn't yet. So, like, I thought I was gonna go with passage. I brought her on. I'm like, you know what? You really need to have a massive say in this. Like, this is your team's gonna be on this more than anyone. So I'm gonna have her demo passage, hierasmus, motivity. That's it. I don't want to talk negatively about anything. There's a couple I've been told to stay away from. People can message me privately.

Amber Nelms 18:41

I don't want to be negative either. So, because there's no point, right? I would like this podcast to allow us to just think deeply and talk about what's important to us when we're selecting stuff. Yeah, and I've I've had good experiences working with Bill White, the founder of Tossage. So I would definitely say there's a lot of things that are positive about that system. But yeah, you have to decide at the different stages that you're in of a company what's gonna be best. What is gonna help you? It's really funny.

Carly Lapin 19:10

I'm like I used to go into these companies as a consultant, as a chief growth officer, whatever, and I would make these decisions and fairly quickly too. I'd be like, I what you're using isn't working, let's do this. And now that it's my own, I feel like I have choice fatigue. Like the other day, I'm like, I can't make any choices about I'm done. I made a really I signed my lease. That was the biggest choice I made. Now don't ask me anything for a week because I really have slowed down quite a bit and trying to find that balance of I gotta make a decision.

Amber Nelms 19:40

Wow, I feel like you brought up something that could I keep thinking of all the new questions I want to add to this. That is something that no one ever trains you on as an entrepreneur, and no one ever warns you that is something that is almost like a skill set, right? And the also how emotionally draining that can be. How many times you have to make very, very big decisions that can impact the whole company for the next three years if you make the wrong decision. So, yes, for me, I have over 77 staff now. So I have a lot of people and I have a lot of people that I can delegate to and I can have stuff. But when it really comes down to it, and that's why I also try to continue to invest myself and come up with the right support systems, because I make decisions that impact 77 people. It feels very heavy. So, yes, I don't have to do everything now, but I do have to make decisions that could steer us in the completely wrong direction. And there is something to be said. A lot of the people I look up to, they're not necessarily in the ABA field, but they do say that is a huge importance, is that most successful entrepreneurs move fast. Did you know that? They just move fast. They move at lightning speed. And oftentimes I see people, they just like him, ha, I don't know, all the things. No, you got to be able to say, no, I've made up my mind, I'm not playing around anymore. This is the decision. There are times if you hesitate too long, you've lost your opportunity. But that ability to mentally get into the right focus to evaluate all the information and then make an executive decision that takes a ton of energy.

Carly Lapin 21:22

Yeah.

Amber Nelms 21:23

Oh, it definitely does. For sure.

Carly Lapin 21:24

And I'm very ADHD. I move very quickly. To be honest, I'm a big fan of therapy. Like I have always been in therapy once a week. But a skill that I was working on was to slow down because I do tend to move so fast and it served me really well. But now I'm trying to find that middle ground because it's exactly what you said. I don't want to miss. And when I'm demoing all these places, they're like, if you sign up by the end of the month, you're gonna get this massive discount, right? And then it's like, oh man, like really thought I had another month. But so it is, it's just analyzing everything at the same time. And I love using data. If anything is going to affect the kiddos that I work with, I need the data in front of me before making a decision. But with these operational pieces, it's not always like that. You're not gonna have the clearest picture. And you really have to use your gut and your clinical judgment. But yeah, this has been really fun.

Amber Nelms 22:10

I agree. I'm so glad. You better stay in contact, lady. I will, you too. So it has been a pleasure spending time with you. You have a great rest of your day and reach out anytime. Thank you for having me on here. This has been great. Thank you, Amber. Absolutely. All right, thank you.