Episode 45: What's Your Organization's Strategy? With Juvo Founder Tanya Scott

And I think that was really one of the biggest, challenges, was really learning how to become a different industry, you know, or join a different industry. and it was super exciting, but it was really, really, hard, so I think that was primarily on the business side. I think the second thing for me was learning to not take things personally.

You know, it's such an intimate thing to be a business owner and, when you have partners, key team members, you know, that your paths aren't really on the same course anymore, and those things change really learning that is a beautiful thing, right? That these kind of intersections happen, but then also need to not happen for grow as people.

I think that was the other part that was hard was really being able to fully not learn that, but embrace that like, welcome people to, to go on that next path, even if it wasn't my path or our path as a team.

Some of 'em, were moving to Reno live in our house for, you know, a year plus. And over time, sometimes hard decisions had to be made that, that put that idea of friend and the organization's mission in conflict, and it was so hard to square those in my head and I had to just keep coming back to what is our mission, what we're trying to do, and that's what I, that was my responsibility to have to live up to. But that's a super freaking hard thing.

As we grew and got to kind of that next level, and as we got closer to multi-state, um, we had brought on kind of a secondary round of investors, um, in, in our 2016 to 2021 window and that round of investors decided that they wanted their money back. And so that actually is what had, um, was the catalyst to us doing this last big acquisition where we were fully acquired. Um, and I think that was, that in itself was hard to, to not be the ones fully making the decision.

You know, that was a, you know, just being in this scenario or relationship that kind of, uh, uh, catapulted that was, was challenging. But through that process, this was just at the beginning of pandemic, all of a sudden what we were looking at with regards to the types of folks that were acquiring us would've been, in my opinion, really not great for our team. We probably are, you know, a lot of our team would've probably gotten cut.

I think that was one of the hardest ones when as a leadership team we had to come together and say, what is so critical to us that we, in this basically shitty situation, how do we make the best of it? And, for me, the best is how do we take care of our team? And we were luckily able to find something that best fit that.

And, and figure out a scenario where the majority of our team walking into this situation, um, were wanted, were valued and so that, I think that was the biggest part was really, having had some hard conversations with our other owners around, no, this, this, not this deal this is not acceptable. This is not us doing our best. Even though we feel super defeated and wanna just be done, we can do better. And I think that, that probably was the hardest one for me.

I think the rest, I always had a team that we could have healthy debate and get through them. That one was oof, gut punch.

We had a lot of folks on our team that came from big healthcare, specifically hospital systems, and really took the approach that it is the family's decision if we're essential, because every family has a different scenario. We had families that have four kids on the spectrum that are now home all day. We're essential. And we had families that were like, no, this is, we can do okay we can do, you know, okay, without this for a couple months.

So that really allowed us to, again, put the needs of our clients first and, and communicate that through our team. I think having to weather that during this time where we did something really amazing, we had our best month ever the month before we were acquired is just really just a jagged pill to swallow.

.But our goal was that we were not laying anyone off and no one else was gonna financially feel this burden cuz we were all going through something really hard and we're talking about our team that, you know, lives check to check. It was like these two things were happening simultaneously where we're like doing this amazing, amazing work to really, um, serve the community in this hard time and take care of our team in this hard time.

And yet behind the scenes we're going through these conversations, but we're also, about to get bought somebody, um, and trying to figure out how to, you know, how to feel decent about that at the end of the day.

It was something we were really trying to work through, and then all of a sudden our, you know, we were cut off from that after like a session and we're like, no, wait, but we need this. So, and, and we need it even more now. Right In this and like, and it wasn't our choice and that was really hard for us. And I love that, like you put that choice out there for your families.

And he was, he's a part of a private equity group in San Francisco. Um, and they had just completed a big deal and there was a group of gentlemen that wanted to invest in a small, local company here in the Bay Area. now I didn't know this at the time. We were just having this conversation and she's like, oh, he's into home care and there's lots of parallels.

So we start talking and at this point, you know, we're a year into now being a healthcare company and pretty much didn't know our ass from our elbow when it comes like really understanding the nuances of healthcare. We did an amazing job of figuring it out, but lots of re wheel creating that didn't really probably need to be done.

And so we start meeting with this gentleman kind of as a consultant, over the course of a couple months and at probably the third or four months, he's like, we, we wanna invest in your company and we weren't even looking for investors at the time, but we were definitely looking for support and resources and a little relief. I mean, we had hit the six year mark. We, you know, still had those occasional times where we're helping to fund payroll because cash flow is delayed.

These the same things that I think every one of us has gone through at some point in time, and if you haven't yet, you probably will. So listen up. And really had just, we, we were just tired. We were kind of exhausted. Both my partner and I then were both moms. we both had, had our chil I had two kids before, one during Juvo. She had both of hers during Juvo. So, um, so we were like, well, this is super interesting. What does this mean?

So, so I'm kind of giving a long story, but I'll get to the, the meat of, you know, what to know about fundraising. That was so organic that it was a beautiful partnership and they brought a CEO to our team who had come from home care. Everyone lived within 15 miles of each other. You know, really, they truly believed in our mission and our values. It was very aligned and it was a beautiful ride, and we went all the way to 2016.

They just kind of hit a point where they felt like they had done what they wanted to do, which is why we went to market again. I learned later that they wished they hadn't and recently we're like, do you guys, you wanna start a new ABA company? That was not insurance funded, I don't, that was great, but I've been But I think part of it is, what I learned was a long dating period.

Like it, it's a marriage, like you are marrying someone and you might not know all the good or bad, just like they might not know all the good or bad of what's going on within your company, but the longer that you can actually date and you need to get to know them just as much as they need to get to know you. Everything in that, that kind of courting process and the due diligence process is gotta be feel 50 50. I think as owners we sometimes.

either have this imposter syndrome or we, you know, we, we feel like the little, the little girl in the room, it's very much a male dominated scene on the kind of investor, private equity side. So, really being clear on why you're doing it, what you want out of it, and if you're gonna stay, you gotta make sure that they're aligned with your values and that there's like clear conversations up front about when something is a disagreement, how are you gonna work it out?

And then my other piece of advice I learned over the year was in contracts, these are folks that are very well versed, have lots of experience in these very extensive legal contracts. And my theory was always, I want what you want. So if you have it for you, I want it for me. And and that really helped me in the moments and clauses where we didn't have that.

I could then have a conversation, tell me why, do you get something that I don't get when it comes to like a protection or a, a clause and a contract or so that, that kind of is became my like negotiation strategy around everything. If you have it, then I want it because otherwise maybe it's not that great. Maybe you don't really need it anymore then. That helped me in the sense of I'm not gonna go learn and, you know, become a contract lawyer overnight.

But that kind of gave me this place of like, again, a value to come from, to give me a bit of confidence in those meetings where I was like, I don't know a single word people just said in this contract.

So it like, it was a, like, I love learning about new, the way that new kind of things work. So I was fascinated. I mean, it was super interesting. We worked with the BRAF group, which was fantastic. the amount that we had to learn about the nuances across nine LOIs was, like, I'm like, I need a spreadsheet, And I needed to like, have things in buckets. There aren't apples to apples. It's like apples to zebras, to Ford trucks.

I mean we had a great team, especially the fact the current investors then were critical as, as part, as like my learning process through that. I would just say, if you want investors, if you could go into it when you're not desperate and you time to take it slow and really just make sure it feels good because they, they, they're gonna use the word partnership a lot and to the table, is this really a partnership? When is it not gonna be a partnership?

What are those things where you're gonna make a call? I think the biggest thing. there comes a point where people will buy a majority of your company and you are no longer the primary owner. So there is gonna come a time where there may be calls that they override you and you've gotta find a place that you can live with that or not live with that and know that, know that maybe you wanna do something different.

and that's gonna be the future going forward, but was this like literally like your night job in addition, I mean, you're still running an organization?

so I would say that the, as a team we were able to really work well and do it without, um, cuz it is, I mean, if you are a single owner operator trying to go down this path, it is a full-time job. You've got to make sure you have some space in whatever you're going you've got going on. If you're saying, I don't have room to take a two hour meeting once a week for your team, you don't have the space to to start, start down the M&A process.

But I don't really accept, no, I accept I need to find another way to do it. Like, that's always kind of been who, who I am. That's kind of my nature. But for me, strategy was this overlaying of our values with our culture, with sustainability. And when I say sustainability, I, I mean financially, like no money, no mission.

and that took a while for me as a leader to get to that place of understanding how critical the overlap of those things are, the, the synchronicity of those things, Our initial company was very, educational, social worky and so there was a little bit of this, oh, you just brought the man in, you know, when we had investors, when we were growing. And so really getting the team to understand, no money, no mission. That is why we're focused on some of these metrics and here's how it's gonna result.

And so the strategy piece for me was how do you keep all three of those things healthy? Your values, your culture and your sustainability of your company. And it changes constantly. So you have to keep, you know, it's like a dashboard. You have to keep looking at all three of your, your meters and go, okay, this one's getting a little hot. I gotta, you know, what am I gonna do to, to, to help that?

if I'm working on the sustainability one, how am I communicating that to my team so that, so that it doesn't impact my culture? And am I making sure that the decision I made is aligned with our values. it's literally like you're juggling these three balls, but it's super fun. I mean, it's fun when it works. It's not fun when it doesn't work.

And it's sort of the old model I, I always saw of strategy was like, hey, come up with a five year strategic plan and then let's go execute against that come heck or high water. And it's like, no, like there's, to your point, strategy has to be adaptable. I mean, you're not trying to change your mission, right, or what you do like every single, every month, but you have to react to your environment. Oh, by the way, that's our field, right?

You have to react to your environment and things that change. In order to continually refine your strategy and as you described, like optimize for your team, for your mission for sustainability.

looking at scorecards for our team that had metrics in them that was maybe about billable hours, but also about parent satisfaction surveys and number of kids graduating and these other measurements that, that would speak to our values of quality service. Yeah, I, I think a strategy kind of like sailing and I, I'm not a sailor, I don't know you wanna say this, but I just came to me where there's like, you, you have, you have the values of why do you sail?

Like are you doing it to because you enjoy it, you wanna be on the water, or because you want to race? Right. Those are two very different reasons to sail. The culture part is like, how fast do we wanna go and how risky do we wanna be? Like is everyone on the boat comfortable with this boat being fully sideways? And I'm sure there's a sailing term for that, but I don't know what it is. Um, and then sustainability for me is like for how long, right? Do we want, is this just a two hour trip?

You know, is this the Gilligans Island, are we just going around or, or like, we're doing a trip around the world. Cuz again, those are two very different feels and all three of those things need to pivot based off of the answers to those three questions.

Uh, gotten a job offer from a management consulting firm AT Karney in, in, uh, Chicago, and this was like, I don't know, February of 1998 and I thought I was hot shit. And especially cuz there was this dude that came, I dunno if he's a partner or what he was, but he came and he visited me and he was like, and we sat down, this is after the offer. And, and like he was answering all my questions and um, trying to recruit me. So anyway, so I thought I was like the greatest thing since slice spread.

So here's what. The group that I was gonna join was called the Strategy and Economic Practice, and I did economic consulting, litigation and a lot of strategy work. I was telling him how like, yeah, I love strategy cuz it's like, you know, this sexy stuff and you know, and, and, and I somehow made a comment like, oh yeah, data isn't really, you know, data's different.

And he's like, oh, whoa, hold on, Jonathan, strategy only happens through data, and that's why the economics practice at Karney was the one who like also specializes strategy. You cannot separate the two, just as you were describing, right. This idea of like having KPIs and dashboards and you're looking at data all the time is critical to influencing your strategy, right?

I'd be curious What was an intractable problem maybe that you had at Juvo that, uh, that, that you were able to solve using your business in operations and strategy

And we did, you know, in like October of 2020 or November, we laid off three people, three administrative people. We actually ended up retaining two of them that moved into clinical positions. And then we were able to bring them back. But like that was probably the hardest. But I do think that this perspective of strategy of it couldn't be just a financial decision and it couldn't be just a values decision. we had to equally weigh all three.

And, and then, I mean, we did town hall, after town hall, after town hall with our team to just make sure that we were accessible to them to talk through and hear their questions. during the same times, the whole murder of George Floyd happened, and Black Lives Matter, and there was a curfew put in place in Oakland because there were riots happening, and we had staff saying, I'm scheduled to work past curfew and I'm not comfortable.

And so we had to really look at our values and go, all right, we're changing, like, like we care more about the safety of our team than these additional two hours a day, and we're gonna change it for now and, and sit down and really have those honest conversations and continue to balanace those three things, but it was, you know, one would push the front and then we'd have to adjust the other two, and then one would put, you know, so it was, it's again, it's like this it's like you're on a

seesaw, but yet there's three legs which makes it a little harder to seesaw on.

And you can't still always make bread so that E-Myth is like the one that I, I go to regularly. I reread sometimes and I've definitely recommended that to other business owners. And the ones that read it are like, oh, I get it

Oh, it's powerful.

It's not, you know, the programs are great, their assessments are great, the families love them, but then you, you know, you give them 12 RBTs to manage and some different things come up.

we went through that a little bit and had to learn you know how to find that balance between where do we need a high level expert in a certain area, and where do we wanna invest in our people and give them the skills they need so that they can, you know, move, move up as, as they want to, as as it feeds them.

but whenever possible, give your teams an opportunity as long as you are investing in them and coaching and mentoring and training them to be successful in that next role, not set them up to fail. Right,

And then that outcome simulates what's in the real world. And I know this only cuz in my fourth year at uva, I would stay after I get paid like 10 bucks for like three hours of being a research like lab rat in my game theory class I was like, 10 bucks oh, it's a large pizza, I'll, yeah, I'll do whatever. But like these games are like, It's super powerful as a way to illustrate the rest of life. How did you like get to know about game theory?

So I, I don't even remember how I came across just hearing that game theory was a thing, so we started researching it together. So I actually didn't go into it knowing much. I just went into it knowing maybe I could pivot him a little bit from watching blackjack games to learn. Cuz you know, he's, he's really sharp on that stuff.

And so figuring out a way to you know, we always, he loved playing video games and I'm like, learning how to make a game is more powerful to you than only knowing how to play a game. Right. So, I mean, he, he, the summer of the pandemic, he actually built his own pc cuz I was like, if you're gonna play X number of hours a day, then you need to have some investment in how things work. And I think that's, um, and, and once he gets into it, he really does enjoy that.

Start to create different opportunities for my family and for my children, and, and that's what I want for my kids, you know, and we have these conversations where, you know, my son now, I'm not going to college if I make a million dollars playing video games. Well, I mean, let's have that conversation. But how do you keep setting yourself up to have as many doors open to you as you can? And that's what entrepreneurship does. It, it does allow you freedom. However, once you're in it it is a lot.

I mean, you're carrying the livelihood of 500 plus people, like your decisions impact them. There's a lot of doors in front of you, but what you're carrying to each door is really heavy sometimes. So I think like you can't be risk averse and be an entrepreneur and grow to some substantial size. I think you can, but you've gotta, you've gotta know that about yourself and be like, cool, I'm gonna stay.

Our initial plan when we started Juvo, which was called Ed Supports, was to have five clinicians and one admin that could unjam our printer that kept jamming. That was like our goal. One admin and five clinicians. And we would just like, and that would've been a sweet place to just hang out for a long time, but

I don't know if you're familiar with this, but the idea of like two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned and each prisoners in solitary confinement. Right. And the police, um, don't have enough evidence to convict them both, but they plan to sentence them both to one year in prison, but then they approach each of them in solitary confinement with like this, this, this faustian and this bargain, and it, I think it goes something like there's four different possible outcomes.

If like a prisoner A and prisoner B betray each other they each serve two years in prison and if prisoner A betrays B, but B is silent, A is set free. Woo, cool, but B serves three years in prison and vice versa, um, and then if they both remain silent, they'll both serve one year in prison.

And so, like as you put people through that game, it is extraordinary To see how to, uh, I mean betray is the, i, I think what they call it, dominant strategy but that's an example of like how to play this game and play out, and that game tends to mimic then what happens in the real world. It's really powerful.

And so, um, I had the opportunity to actually open a school in spring of, well the facility started in spring of 2021, we opened in September of 2021 and our school's for kids with special needs attend here in Pleasanton, California. And we serve kids that the districts have tried to serve but are just unable to meet their needs usually because of significant behaviors um, and just multiple kind of complex needs going on. And. It, I'm right back where I started that.

I started working in a school like this. They're called Nonpublic Schools. I literally started in 1999 at Spectrum in Oakland. And that was my introduction to special ed and ABA and I'm like right back there. being able to have an environment like that, to have these new folks come as a team and serve these phenomenal kids. So that's Summa Academy. And we also work with the school districts.

They contract us to bring our trained staff into the schools, um, to again, serve the students that they have a little more challenge meeting their needs. that's Summa. And then, um, in the spring I launched NESTT Solutions. NESTT is NESTT and it's, I'm, I'm gonna be transparency here of being cheesy. It's the acronym for my family. So my kids are Nella, Isai, Suhela, and then my husband's Torrance and I'm Tanya. So that is our, that is where NESTT came from. It's, it's been in the family.

My husband is a studio, it's called NESTT Studio. So like, it's, it's always been kind of a thing for us. I'm getting to consult with other, ABA owner operators, um, just on kind of where they are in their journey and where they're headed. Um, I also work with some companies that are not in ABA I've worked with a company of, um, two, uh, owners who are midwives which is phenomenal cuz their product is, they always say my product is catching babies.

so just to be able to translate and generalize some of this outside of, of ABA, engaging with a juice company here. And anyway, so that's, that's what NESTT does and it's, it's a blast. I'm like really loving it.

We joined a company, um, or an organization in Oakland called Inner City Advisors, that basically if you hit a certain revenue mark, you could apply to be a portfolio company. They gave you all this pro bono support. That's how we initially got our first banking situation. Um, so find resources for small businesses in your community. You will create a, a community of other entrepreneurs outside of ABA that you will learn an insane amount from.

Um, so I think that's the first thing is like, go bigger, go, go out. Like, like open the door, go outside of ABA, um, and you will, you will learn a lot.

value what you provide and stand up for that. When it comes to negotiating rates or again, getting pushback on what you know, if you know a kid really needs something and this insurance company's pushing back and saying, no, use the practice guidelines. There are these tools out there to help us use them. You know, reach out. There's so many resources to help with denials, but we've gotta start really standing, um, in confidence when we're having these conversations.

Otherwise, it will be dictated to us and not by our field. And we're, we're approaching some of that. So this is the time to, you know, and, and there's a nice way to do it. I mean, we always were in partnership with our insurance companies that funded us. But, um, there's also a time to say, I'm sorry, that's not right. that does not work for what this child needs. This family needs my business, my, my team. And that's okay.

There's so much out there that, that being able to say no is one of the best tools that you can use. So I guess it stops saying yes. So that's everything.