“I’m the luckiest person. I get to do what I love. It’s been a lot of hard work, but it is so worth it when you see a family that has benefitted from either CBD oil or ABA therapy.”
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Why Listen:
In 380 episodes, my guest today - Jess Swanson - is the strongest person I've met. I say that amidst a backdrop of Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, NFL players, UFC Champions and more. At 6 months old, Jess’ oldest daughter experienced epileptic seizures - usually 8 a day - and shortly after was diagnosed with autism. Rather than letting this derail her life, Jess used it to pave a new path that has helped not only her family, but countless others as well.
She pursued a graduate degree to better understand how to help others like her daughter, became an activist who influenced legislation in congress that helped others like her daughter, and started a company to help other families in her situation.
Jess' story of (1) lessons versus losses, (2) her advice about finding something to appreciate even in areas you might initially deem them a tragedy, and (3) her perspective on controlling what you can and letting go of the rest, these are all incredible lessons borne from enduring unbelievable hardships but choosing to press on for those she loves and to benefit the world around her.
About Jess:
Jessica Swanson is the Executive Director and Owner of Summit Health Services, an Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) company serving the Monterey Bay and San Diego areas in California. They are an in-network Tricare-West provider proudly serving active duty families. She is a military spouse, her husband having served in the Army for nearly 17 years. Jess holds the following certifications: BCBA (Board Certified Behavior Analyst), QBA (Qualified Behavior Analyst), and CAS (Certified Autism Specialist).
Our Sponsor:
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Learn more at Pass-Life.com.
Selected Resources:
Jessica’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-swanson-373a8935/
Summit Health Services: https://summithealthservices.org/
CBD Legislation Article: https://www.waff.com/story/31064175/medical-marijuana-bill-to-go-to-alabama-state-house/
Podcast: How I Built This with Guy Raz
Transcript & Time Stamps:
05:07
How many kids? And what are the ages there?
Sure. Yeah, I have two kids - an eight year old daughter who has autism, and a six year old son.
05:18
I have a two year old and we're trying to muster the energy for the number two kid. You guys were close on that.
Yeah, you know, I did it before I knew what was happening. If I had known how hard it would be to have two kids so close in age, I might have thought twice. So you know, before I knew it, they were four and six, and we had made it through the the hardest part. But it was a fun run.
05:47
And I did want to bring up just, you know, it seems like your daughter suffered from epileptic seizures since she was six months old. Me having a two year old has been so challenging, and he's relatively healthy. So I'm just curious how you and your husband navigated that. But also, I'm just guessing, given what your company does, that this plays a role in your own life? And what's important to you?
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, as you said, so, you know, we had a typically healthy daughter, up until she was six months old. And we literally woke up and our life changed. We found ourselves in the ER, with a daughter that was having seizures, and it was terrifying. Quickly, she had this catastrophic diagnosis of infantile spasms, which is a very rare, but very detrimental form of pediatric epilepsy. And the prognosis was not good. And so that was just the trauma of waking up and finding out your daughter's not well, and they didn't really know exactly how to treat it. It was really scary. And then navigating through TRICARE and trying to make sure we get her all the therapies that she needed, all the medical interventions that she needed, the referral specialists. We're managing a very acute situation, which later and now is a chronic condition. Luckily, she's well controlled with seizures. But yeah, during those first couple of years dealing with the epilepsy and trying to get that under control, and within that same time, she was diagnosed with autism. So not only do we have this huge medical diagnosis of epilepsy, then we were given this lifelong diagnosis of autism. And I didn't really know what to do with that at that time. So yeah, it was a really, really tough couple of years. And it's kind of brought me to where I am now. I wouldn't be where I am without her. So it's kind of weird how things work out, and how you can make the best out of even a really horrible situation.
08:03
I just, I love your perspective on that. Because I can only imagine the wisdom and tenacity and strength that came out of a very long period of an unbelievable amount of stress.
Yeah, it was definitely life changing. And, you really understand when you have a child, what your love is and what you would do to for that child. But, when they're given this diagnosis, and you know their life is so fragile, and you just don't know what's going to happen. It really pushes it to that next level. So yeah, stress was at an all time high. It was just a parent's worst nightmare. It really is. I work with parents now that, they have these lifelong diagnoses of autism usually. But a lot of my patients also have co-morbid conditions - that means they have another diagnosis to go along with that, and some of them do have epilepsy. Some of them do have some chronic conditions that have to be addressed and considered when we're providing treatment for them. And I love and I hate that I can relate to them. I can be in their shoes because I've been there. But I think being there helps me and it helps them, and ultimately helps our kids.
09:45
One of my favorite books is ‘Self-Compassion’ by Kristin Neff. The author, her son, I believe, has autism as well. And one of the things I took away from that was sometimes the greatest trials and tribulations and suffering in our life, it really builds up a tremendous amount of empathy and understanding for others. And it makes me comforted to know that these families that you work with, they're benefiting from the wisdom born out of just all of this hardship, and that you're able to understand them more and help them more. And it's just beautiful to see the impact of that, even though it doesn't minimize what you went through.
I feel fortunate that I can do that. I leaned on a lot of parents, at that time, when my daughter was just being diagnosed with all these things, and reaching out to other people and how much that helped me. And so I get a lot of calls from families that have just gotten the autism diagnosis, and they're in shock. They're dealing with grief, for a life that they thought they would have for their child. And now it's different, and what does that look like? And I'm always so thankful that I'm one of the first people that they get to talk to, because I can say, listen, I've been in this journey for a while now. And I know it's hard - I've been there, it changes everything. But your child is still perfect. And we're going to help you the best that we can. So they can live the most wonderful life that you had in mind for them. It’s just going to look a little bit different. So I'm very honored, and I feel privileged to do what I do.
11:28
I'm just curious. Any thoughts or comments on that endeavor?
Yeah, absolutely. My daughter was diagnosed with epilepsy at six months old. And it was a very difficult case. She has what's considered cryptogenic, which means they don't know why she has epilepsy. They've done every test that you can think of, and they just have no idea why she has seizures. So that makes it very difficult to treat. So from the time she was six months old, six months old to three years old, we exhausted every pharmaceutical medication available. At that time, we had tried a special diet. The Ketogenic diet was actually first designed to treat epilepsy. We tried that, and that didn't work. We tried surgery, by implanting a small device called a vagal nerve stimulator, which the idea is it send a shock to the brain to kind of dissipate seizures. Some people have great success with that, but it didn't work for her. So we had exhausted every thing except for brain surgery, which is called a corpus callosum, where they split the hemispheres of the brain in hopes that maybe that'll help reduce seizures. So that's what we were up against. And that was really hard for my husband and I to say we were out of all options, except for brain surgery. But, we had this very fragile baby, she was not even three at the time, having eight grand mal seizures a day.
So her life was just seizing. She'd have a seizure, she'd be in a recovery period called post-ictal where she's coming out of the seizure, and just kind of groggy. And then she'd fall asleep. And then She'd wake up and it would happen again. So that was her life. And so we were really struggling. Do we let her have this surgery in the hopes that it might work? But again, we didn't have a diagnosis of why she was having seizures, so there's no guarantee. We had just moved to Alabama. And we had talked about, well, maybe I would take the kids and move to Colorado or California somewhere where we could access what we had heard was CBD oil or something from the cannabis or marijuana extract. Because we'd heard a lot of anecdotal things. And when you're a parent and you've exhausted everything, really anything is on the table. So anyway, we were under the care of our doctors in Alabama. Then we were doing the workup for this brain surgery. We hadn't decided yet but we were still doing the workup in case we needed to, when we found out about this clinical trial that was happening at the University of Alabama - Birmingham. And so I got her into this trial. And she started CBD oil called Epidiolex. It is now FDA approved, but at the time it was not. And it was just a trial for safety, to see if this medicine would be safe for kids to take as well as adults. So there was an adult study and kids study, and she was in the kids study. And within two months of starting CBD oil, she stopped having grand mal seizures. And, she has not had a grand mal seizure in five and a half years. The other amazing thing is that she was on five pharmaceuticals at the time before she started the trial to control the seizures, and that was still with eight seizures a day. And she's not on any other anti-epileptic medication. It's just CBD oil that has controlled her seizures.
And I will say, it's not typical that people have that much success with CBD oil. But, it's definitely something that we believe in because it saved her life. It literally saved her life. So, like I said, it's been FDA approved. Now, it was just FDA approved two years ago. So in 2015-2016, we had seen the long term effects of how awesome this medicine had worked for her. And so we were worried, though, because the medicine had not been approved by the FDA, it was still in trial. And back in that time, even only five years ago, CBD oil was very hard to get. It was very much restricted. Now it's kind of, I just have to laugh, I see that gas stations now. But back then absolutely not. In Alabama people were going to jail for having CBD oil. So that was a really big problem. So I got involved with the campaign to legalize CBD oil for medical use for people like my daughter. I needed to try something. And so we went to the capitol, and we walked the halls and we talked to who we needed to talk to, and did interviews and worked our butts off trying to make sure that my daughter and her friends, as I say, could have access to this medication. And it was passed. And that was amazing. And we have that as an option. We had that as an option in Alabama in case it didn't get FDA approved. And it did, though, so we're fortunate that we have a backup just in case.
17:05
So two things stand out to me from that. First of all, for listeners, I'll put in the show notes. I did an episode a year or two ago with a company called Warfighter HEMP. And it is a veteran owned company that produces CBD products. And I think that was the biggest education for me and learning from a 25-year Marine vet who had seen so much substance abuse going on in the Marine community and in the veteran community. And then realizing, wow, here is a substance that is non-addictive. It's non-psychoactive, it's not like it's affecting your judgment or your ability to drive or anything like that. You don't build up an immunity to it. It is as close as I've seen to like a quote unquote, miracle cure. And it's amazing to hear that not only did that prevent your daughter from having to take a tremendous amount of medication, which would have been a victory, but that it actually, in your case prevented her having to have that brain surgery, which would have been so so massive to do. So I'll point that out for listeners in the show notes, if you want to look more into this, for medical use for your personal use, there's a lot of stress benefits, things like that. But the second thing is I'm just really just appreciating your generosity, given everything that you and your family have had to deal with, I wouldn't fault you if you're just saying, look, I'm focusing on my family right now and I'm taking care of them. But, then have you answering people's questions and being a resource for them and actually going to the capitol and speaking on behalf of your daughter and her friends. I really don't know where you get your energy from. But I love that generosity of not settling to just take care of your family, but both in your work and your activism, really looking out for others. So they hopefully have an easier time than you did navigating this on your own.
19:04
Well, thanks. Yeah, when I do things I always try and think - what would I do if I didn't have the resources? Or, I think of the families that didn't know about the study or didn't know that they could try something. And this goes with the military too, we have a lot of programs that some people just don't know about - i.e., there's the Exceptional Family Member Program for people that have special needs and things like that. I didn't really know about any of these things. I don't want that to happen to anyone else. I want everyone to know that there are options out there. And so I just kind of go on that principle like, if I didn’t know but I would want to know, so let me tell people so that they know.
19:44
Well, if family and activism are not enough to keep you busy, you somehow found the time, strength and energy to to start a company as well. So I'd love to start with the genesis of Summit Health Services and where that idea came from?
During all of these medical things, my daughter was diagnosed with autism at two. And what the Psychologist told me was, she needs to get into Applied Behavior Analysis or ABA. And I said, I've never heard of that. I don't know what that is. And they said, it's the gold standard to help kids with autism. So when I heard that I said, okay I’ve got to get her in. So I got her into a program with a ABA. And within six months I saw such a huge difference in her life. I like to say that CBD oil saved her life, and ABA gave her a quality of life. She just was very much in her own world. And she still is, and she's very happy there. But before she wasn't happy, she wasn't able to communicate to us in any way. Her communication was just crying and screaming. And that was really, really difficult, of course, but ABA gave her some communication, some tools for us as a family for her. And I just saw an amazing improvement in her. Now, does she have autism still? Yes, absolutely. In fact, she is what we would consider severely autistic or has a severe level of autism. She doesn't talk. But even with that, she has a happy life. She's a very happy person. And so, you know, I saw the amazing progress that she made. And I thought, you know what, I want to get into this field because I want to be able to help her, I never want to be in a position where I can't help her. So I went back to graduate school, and got my degree in applied behavior analysis with an emphasis in autism. I wanted to know, autism too. And now I'm a board certified behavior analyst. And that was great. And I graduated, and I was just expecting to work for a company, when we got orders to come to Monterey Naval Postgraduate School, because my husband's active duty. And we were so excited, because if you're in the army, and you get Monterey, California, that's like winning the lottery. And so we were so excited. And then we talked to the Exceptional Family Member Coordinator to approve us to come to Monterey. And they said, oh you know, what, we might not be able to let you go because we don't have a (Behavior Analyst) there. And there's a really long waitlist. Or we can have you go to San Jose, which is like an hour and a half away. So I said, You know what, no worries. I'm going to start a company. I'm going to start my company. Now. I thought I was going to wait until my husband retired. But I thought, you know what, if my daughter needs it, she's not the only one. There's other kids that need a (Behavior Analyst) there. So I started the process. I started my business. In North Carolina, for California. I learned a lot along the way of how to start a business, getting all the documents and certification, everything I needed. So I did all that. So when we got to California, we hit the ground running, I had already hired a Behavior Analyst to work with my daughter. And from there, I let everyone know hey, we have a (Behavior Analyst) in Monterey. Let me help you guys. And so most of our clients are military. So we have a practice here. And we have a great team of people. And now we have ABA here. So people can come to Monterey if their kid has autism and needs ABA. So that's how it started.
23:46
Yeah. I just love your your strength and in pursuing grad school to better understand your daughter and help others and then you know that rather than seeing that as a door closed on Monterrey, you, you literally found a way to just to break through the wall there and help others. And and, you know, my own background in entrepreneur entrepreneurship, I'm always thinking of like market size and things like that. And initially, I would have thought like, oh, there can't be enough of this going on in California or in Monterey, specifically, or San Diego, that you would be able to be working doing this, but this I don't think I realized how widespread This is.
yeah, absolutely. So right now is 2020. The rates of autism is one and 54. The rates go up almost every year. And there's some debate like why does that number go up? And then a combination of things. It's mostly better diagnosis of what some folks have. And so, yeah, I was kind of, you know, I started thinking, Okay, well, maybe just I'll just help my daughter and then that'll be good. And then it you know, I started talking to people and realized, Oh, they need ABA therapy too. And they're not getting it or they're on a waitlist or they're got a letter from their, you know, TRICARE saying, sorry, we don't have any providers. And I knew, I knew that there were kids that needed us. So I reached out to who I needed to reach out to, you know, through the military and local community and networking groups, and, you know, found these parents that were waiting for a VA, but they were just told no, they wasn't available. And then, you know, what were they going to do? If you know, everyone at the top says, Oh, no, there's not a VA. So I came in and said, Oh, no, we do have it. And so we grew into a space that was really needed. And the timing just worked out. Perfect. So I mean, we get calls all the time. And, you know, I hate having to put kids on waitlist, because I don't have the space. But we are in that position right now, because we have more kids than I can service. And that kind of goes with why I expanded to San Diego. So we're at the Naval Postgraduate School. So obviously, we have a lot of friends in the Navy now. And San Diego is the biggest Navy, I'm pretty sure it's the biggest Navy station in the country. And again, I was hearing from parents or moving down there, but there's no ABA or there's long waitlist. And I thought, you know what, I can get good people down there and start running a place down there to help those kids and my other military families that are down there. And so we did. I'm very specific of who I hire. The bar that I set is what I trust this person with my nonverbal daughter. Okay, so the bar is so high. And that's, that's the, that's the rule. So I'm very specific of who I take. And I, what I always let parents know, like this, this is a good therapist, I wouldn't hire someone, I don't just do quality over quantity over quality, I'm always gonna have the best people, even during this growth, because I'm a mom, I'm running the show I hire and fire. I'm not having, you know, mostly just hired. But um, yeah, they people know that it's a mom at the top that cares about these kids as if they're their own?
27:20
How do you do it all? How do you maintain a family and maintain a high growth company? Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm still learning. You know, what one of my business coaches taught me it's not a balance, like just forget that word balance, because it's never going to be equal. Think of it as a blend. You know, if your company needs a little bit more from you, now, maybe that's what gets the focus. And then when your family needs you, then you pull away a little bit. It's really hard. It's I'm constantly learning how to balance and putting parameters on my time and utilizing my time, the best way I can, I will say, I'm lucky enough that my parents helped me very much with my kids. With the child care issue, which has been, I couldn't do it without them because especially during COVID, where everything is closed, but they have allowed me to be able to keep working and you know, I have a very supportive husband. So just not just one thing, it's kind of like a few things that work together to allow me to do what I do.
28:26
I don't think I've met many people as aligned in their career is, as you are aware, everything that you're doing professionally benefits your family. And you know, which you obviously care so much about it's it's, it's really remarkable to see that where everything that you invest into the business is directly helping you and your family I wish that I and most people could find something like that because it's so and I I'm just guessing that your personal connection to this makes you so much more powerful. As a businesswoman. It's it's, you know, like you said, your hiring filter is literally through the lens of what I let this person interact with my daughter, and the empathy and care and understanding you bring to the space. You know, just even as an entrepreneur, I'm just in awe of that. It's like it's such a competitive advantage in the work that you're doing because it's so authentic to who you are and what's important to you.
Yeah, well, thanks. I I feel I am the luckiest person that I get to wake up every day and do what I absolutely love. I mean, there's nothing else I could possibly do. I just everything that I touch in the business I love I love working with the kids. I love working with my staff. I love working the business side, the networking side, I just love everything about it. And I feel so fortunate that I get to do it every day. And I'm just, you know, it's so an unusual way to get where I am. I mean, I had some you know, some just if I hadn't had those terrible things happened with my daughter, I would not be where I am. I know that for sure. And so it's kind of, you know, bittersweet in a way, I kind of almost wish like, Man, I wish I knew nothing about this, that, you know, we were living a life without epilepsy. And, you know, autism is she's a fantastic I just know her life would be easier without autism, but she has it and, gosh, it just makes her who she is. And so I'm just so lucky. And just, just, that's all I can really say is, I'm just so lucky to be able to do what I do.
30:29
That's wonderful. What about, um, you have an upcoming PCs coming? And I'm just, you know, you and I talked about this briefly before we started recording, but how do you think about what happens to the business as as your husband will be stationed elsewhere? And you'll move somewhere else?
Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. So we're moving to the east coast this summer. And obviously, in California is pretty far away. So actually, COVID, again, another terrible thing has been advantage, it has an advantage to me, because I did have to do a lot of work remotely, I couldn't physically be in my office all the time. And so it showed me that I can work from home and still have a very high quality service to my clients. And that's a testament to my staff, I have amazing staff, and, you know, hiring the right people to help me run my office, here in Monterey, and then in San Diego has been, you know, in a trial run, with me still being here, but pretending that I'm not here, like, okay, here's the systems that we do for this situation, handle it as if I wasn't here, and then going back and saying, Wow, great job, you guys were doing it, it's happening, or, hey, we need to tweak that. So I'm trying to, because the COVID, we are in kind of made me step up a little bit sooner than I thought that I would have to kind of act as if I was running the business remotely. And so I have every, every confidence that this business, this office in Monterey and San Diego will remain strong without me physically being here. And then I have the opportunity to expand to the east coast to help some more families. So I'm really excited about that part.
32:13
I'm so I'm so envious of your your mindset that keeps coming up. And, you know, like, you're you're seeing the positive impact of COVID, you're seeing how, although it's a horrible thing, it's it's been a gift in helping you grow your business and, and you know, your perspective on your family and your own journey. I just think it's really incredible. I've been thinking a lot lately about how much myself and I think most of us, we want to control everything. And we want we have a picture of what everything should look like. And we fight tooth and nail to get there. And I love that you just have this repeated example of letting go of the way that you think things should be, and just embracing the way they are and embracing the gift in that. And I think it's even more powerful. Because it's I think it's easy for me to say that. But I know, I know. I can only imagine that the years of heartache and struggle and pain that that led to that it's not like it's not like a Nike slogan, like you have earned this insight through going through the crucible. And I just really, I really respect that.
Well, thanks. Yeah. And it was I mean, it couldn't have happened to like a worse person. All of this, I was a planner, you know, plans everything my entire life. I'm always like, lived and died by my schedule. And and then when I have my daughter and all these special needs that came up, I don't throw that out the window. And that was very unnerving for me. And that was something I really struggled with. But this I have control over. And so I kind of used like, Okay, well, you know, she has epilepsy. Okay. CBD seems to help. Okay, well, let me start to see if I can help her with that. I can control that. And then with behavior, and ABA, okay, well, she's always going to have autism, I can't control that, but I can help her with her therapy. So let me try to do that. And so that's just kind of how I rolled I kind of took like someone that really was focused on living a certain life I had everything planned out to Okay, scratch that, throw that away new plan. Let's take what obstacles I have now and turn it into something and make it the best case scenario.
34:36
I just love that. I think that's such a great takeaway for everyone listening is that the focus on things that you can control? And I realize all of the amount of energy I spend spinning around the things that are out of my control, rather than just saying, Okay, this is realistically what's in my sphere of influence. Let me really focus there. And I even love that as an outlet. I'm a planner and controller as well. I love that example. With the where it's like, Okay, let me let my control go crazy in this little sandbox, because that's, that's where I can operate. Another thing that I appreciate about your business is not only are you doing something great in the world, you're also building your company supporting a lot of other military spouses. And I'm curious one just kind of how that's played into your strategy. But to, for people listening who are military spouses, do they need to have a medical background to work with summit? Or, you know what that looks like?
Yeah, so that was another big focus that I wanted to have with my business was to provide great careers for military spouses. And I use the word career and not job. Because, you know, I was a spouse for, gosh, almost 17 years. And I always felt like I just had to find a job, every place that we went. And, you know, I had a bachelor's and degrees. And I felt like pretty qualified, but I felt like I was always starting over. And so I wanted to have part of the company, professional development. And so people that want to get into ABA, I can train someone that just has a high school degree, to a graduate level degree. And there's a space for you within that within this industry. So I train people to be therapists, they work one on one in the field with our clients. We have assistant supervisors, and supervisors. And I have a bunch of military spouses that work for me now. And one of the great things is, I couldn't help you guys help my people get credentialed. So they can take that certification to any state. So it's a national certification, actually, some of them are international. So you can go all over the country and world with these certifications and get a job. ABA is a field which is always hiring, it is a very much needed work. And so I try to give, you know, my staff here, the tools that if they did have to leave, luckily, no one's had to leave yet everyone's been here. But some of them are military, they're gonna have to leave. They'll have a career that they can move with. They don't have to start over again. And oh, gosh, what am I going to do with this, this assignment now, they can work in this field. And so I have those with bachelor's degrees that I've trained, those are just high school degrees, even had a doctor. woman come and I trained her and now she's a, an assistant in the field. So I just want to always keep that in mind. Because I am a military spouse, I know what it's like to, you know, get orders when you're rocking in your career. And you're like, Ah, great, okay, well, how am I going to transfer this or I guess we'll have to do this for now and then go back. But this is a career that you can, it's very portable. And you can grow within that, hopefully with summit working with us as we continue to become a national company. But there's other places that they can take that with them.
37:59
I want to ask a few other questions on entrepreneurship and other things. But I do want to just maybe use that as a segue to as listeners, like myself are hearing all of this and cheering you on? How can we support you?
Sure. So we have on our website is a great place to kind of find all of our information and contact us button goes right to my desk. And so we have a training program to certify people, we are credentialed to do that. And so our website is summit health services.org just how it sounds, no spaces, no underscores, just submit health services.org. And that'll bring you to our website, and we have a tab on careers and military spouse information there. And again, that contact us button goes right to me so and I work with people one on one.
38:53
That's awesome. That's awesome. I'll put all that information in the show notes at beyond uniform.org. I'm also just curious, this is a little bit selfish as a fellow entrepreneur, just any scar tissue lessons learned along the way or even things that you thought it would be one way and it was it was very different than you expected. And I have, you know have in mind a good chunk of our audience that is entrepreneurs or aspired to be entrepreneurs or no an entrepreneur and just having them in mind for this.
Yeah, absolutely. So tons of scars. So, you know, I I, like I said earlier, I wanted to start this business when I thought my husband would retire we were in one space, then that would be my time. But I was pushed into a position where I had to start it right because like my kid needed something and I had to give it to her. And so it just pushed me out of my comfort zone. I don't have a business background. So you know, besides like babysitting, I don't know if that was a business. I had flyers I guess back in my teen days, but anyway, I didn't really have an experience. So I Just Just researched my tail off, I talked to who I needed to talk to. If I got into a roadblock, I figure out how to go around it. You know, I wish there was a step by step how to start an ABA company, but there's not. And so I thought, okay, it's going to be step one through 10. Get this, get that? No, no, it's like step one, step one, a go over to the next step. Now you can go to Step three, note back to two note back to one. And so it was definitely just a learning curve for me. But it was awesome to be able, it felt good, like, oh, man, I got the answer to that. I got that, you know, answer to that question I had two months ago, finally got that, right. And, you know, some of it, you know, was just like, I have to make it work, I gotta just do it and see if it's gonna work. And if it doesn't work, go back and fix it. But I got to get this up and running. And then the other part was just kind of faking it, like, Oh, yeah, I got it all together, everything's great. I'm good to go. And then it kind of actually was okay. And everything was good. And then it was real. And then once it was real, I thought, Man, I did it. That's cool. Now, next step growth, right? Like, I want to help more kids, I want to be there for the military families, I want to be there for my military spouses to provide jobs. So what do I need to do next. And so just constantly learning every day, or at least every week, but I try to do it every day, I look at my wins, what went awesome. And lessons, I don't call them losses, call them lessons, because nobody's gonna learn something from it, either. Okay, don't do that, again, that didn't work. Don't do that. Or, okay, that kind of works. But let me do this instead, next time. And so just constantly putting myself I'm, like supervising myself, almost like checking and balancing, making sure that I'm holding myself to a high standard. And just kind of just making it happen the best I can.
42:11
I, you know, when I view your story, as an outsider, I see the thread of entrepreneurship through all of that, like you had to route find and find a way with your daughter's epilepsy. And then with her autism, and then not having an ABA in the area, you're moving to, like, I just see this thread of you're having to, without direction with a immense amount of ambiguity, find a way. And it's just, it's something where, you know, if I were betting on a business, I bet on I would bet on you, as a founder, it's just incredible to see the ability to navigate amidst so much uncertainty. And I love your point on lessons versus losses. Like I think that's one of that, that trends that I'm seeing in your your attitude, I think a lot of that, quote, entrepreneurship is 90% mindset and 10% skills. And I love I think for listeners it regardless of your career path that might be the best lesson to take away from here is just as example of always, you know, finding the silver lining in any challenge, always finding the lesson in in the last and straight to that in your personal life. And in your professional life. And it's, it's powerful to see.
Well, thank you. Yeah, I mean, you have a choice. Every decision, every life event that comes to you, you have a choice. And I have seen people take the man, my daughter has this or, and, and you know, everyone's entitled to deal with how ever they want to there's no right or wrong. But for me, it just felt good focus on what I could do. And so I just kind of ran with that.
44:00
Are there are there any resources you would recommend to listeners that could be books, podcasts, blogs, movies, anything that's helped you personally or professionally that we can add to our show notes for listeners?
Yeah, sure. So one of the books that I would recommend if you want to find out more about the history of autism, where we've been and where we're going, is the book called neuro tribes by Steve Silberman. It just goes into great depths of where Autism is now based on our history, going back to like the early 20th century, and where it's projected to go. And it's just a great insight of it doesn't really focus on ABA much at all, but it just talks about, you know, the all the all the great things about autism, I just love it. And then a podcast that I always listen to is how I built this with guy Roz and NPR. I learned a lot just listening to people's companies and how they started and It's funny because a lot of them are like, Yeah, I just kind of just started it or I had no business plan or I had, you know, or I had a business plan. And that didn't work. And I did this. So it's just been really great as an entrepreneur to find out other people's stories, anything you learn a lot from learning and listening to other people's trials.
45:21
Great. And for listeners, I'll add those in that in the show notes at beyond uniform.org. Well, I always like to leave the last question open ended. And you can take that either, as is what have we not covered that you'd like to share with listeners or just any final words of wisdom you'd like to leave with people?
I mean, overall, I just, like I said, I'm the luckiest person, I get to do what I love. It has been a lot of hard work. But it is so worth it. You know, when you see a family that has benefited from either CBD oil or ABA therapy, it just it feels so good to see that. You know, like we talked about earlier, the prevalence of autism is one in 54. So chances are you've met someone with autism before. And if you haven't, you probably will. You know, there's a big movement for autism, you know, first it was Autism Awareness. Okay, that is usually in April, and then kind of focused on autism acceptance, all right. And my next thing would say autism appreciation, because every kid that I have met has taught me something, whether they are you know, quote, unquote, higher functioning, and, you know, talk to me on ends about space and things I never even knew about, to my kiddos that has never have never said a word. There's so much you can learn from all ends of the spectrum. And showing that appreciation for this awesome. Community is something that will change your life. for the better. I guarantee it.