My name is Jonathan Mueller, I'm the host of Building Better Businesses in ABA, and my guest today is Sasha Stern. Sasha's, the CEO of Goally, a tech company serving families with neurodiverse individuals. He's been an entrepreneur his whole life, literally his whole life, going back to high school and has been building products for the ABA field for nearly a decade. Sasha, welcome to the pod. This has been a long time in the coming.
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Been good to learn from you and hope I can share a little bit of my knowledge here too.
Heck yes. So let's start off as, you're the CEO of Goally, right? I've been fortunate to, see the product, but it's helping to build visual schedules, right? For, for kiddos with special needs, neurodiverse individuals for their families. What was the pain point you saw in the ABA field that you wanted to solve with Goally?
Yeah, sure. So Goally makes stuff not only for the ABA field, but also for the speech therapy field. On the ABA side, the main pain point has been, um, generalization and caregiver training. How do you enable a parent to successfully implement the strategies that clinicians use? It really started with one guy in Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, who took his son to therapy, saw how visual schedules totally transformed his son, and they went home they tried all the stuff.
They tried the sticker charts, the Velcro charts, and you know, it all sort of worked for like a day a week, but it never really lasted. And, and he said, Technology could probably help us, help us get there. So we started with an app and then, uh, fast forward to today, we have a dedicated device. So there's no YouTube, there's no app store, there's no distractions. We make a bunch of apps on that device.
And then, um, we have an app for parents and the whole care team, so clinicians use it, parents use it where they control everything that's on the device, and, and they configure things like visual schedules, add graphics, all that kind of stuff. On the speech therapy side, you'd say they, they can model, um, their kids talker app. They can configure their kids talker app. They can do all sorts of stuff on the, on the app for parents.
Yeah, so it's like these things that clinicians do really well, that there's a whole lot of evidence behind how do we lower the bar so that a family could successfully implement those same strategies? That's what we're all about.
Hmm. So I a lot of reflections, but you are the new wave of Steve Jobs, right? I think about the Apple ecosystem versus Google. Tell me if I'm totally getting this wrong, Sasha, but you know, apple is like, they build it very controlled ecosystem. They build it all out versus Google, like anyone can build and it's like open architecture. I didn't even appreciate that you're actually building apps to put onto this dedicated device, which I totally get, like no distractions. Um, but that's cool.
What, what are the kinds of apps that, uh, uh, that you're building?
Yeah. So, uh, right now we make all the apps, uh, on there, but we're about to partner with one other company to, to see what that would look like, where we have a third party also developing. we have talker, app, visual schedules, checklists, uh, reminders, so all all these different things that help, uh, kids with executive functioning. And then, um, we've been working on a lot more behavior trainings. So we have a, a BST app that's gonna come out soon.
On the language side, we have a talker app, but then we quickly learned, okay, if, uh, if a kid needs to learn how to use a talker, they also need to have suitable finger dexterity. We have some games that help them just work on finger dexterity. Again, games that families can control from the phone. We have an app called Word Lab that teaches kids the meanings behind the symbols and the words that they use in their talker app.
We have a token economy system, so we have a whole reward system and everything kind of integrates with that. We, uh, learned that most families for rewards are using screen time. That's the number one reward. Then we started asking them well, Any challenges around that? Yeah. Taking away screen time is always a disaster, right? That's where we have the worst meltdowns, is taking away the iPad after we rewarded it.
So we talked to a bunch of therapists and we said, well, How do you, how do you reduce meltdowns? What do you do in the field? They said, well, we teach them to be more aware of their feelings and, and their body and, uh, we do some distractions. And so we released an app, uh, really at the first quarter of this year called Game Garage, where there's a certain amount of game time that can be played. But then popular Penguin says, Hey, maybe we should go get a glass of water.
Maybe we should, uh, use the bathroom real quick, see how we feel. Uh, and so we're trying to have this like smooth landing as game time's about to run out. We can ramble on, but we have got a lot of functionality in the device.
That it's super cool. I, I really appreciate how you've been leaning in over these last years of really getting feedback from BCBAs, from the field, from ABA providers. And, uh, if I understand correctly, uh, Dr. Ronit Molko, um, is on your, your advisory board, um, whom I think the world of.
Yeah. Our philosophy here has been the, there's so much science and evidence around what works. We really don't need to invent anything new. need to create digital implementations of what there's already so much research around. So in a lot of ways, I think of our company as this implementation sciences business. Uh, we don't come up with any new interventions. We're just creating implementations of things that work.
Powerful. Yeah, a hundred percent. Like the science is all there.
Science is all there. Even on the visual scheduler side, you'd say, okay, well science for the visual schedulers is like 30 years old at this point. But there's more research that shows personalization and video content works better than stick figures basically, and so we've been thinking about how do we make it easier for families to personalize and add their, their own video content. And we've been able to let them do more and more of that in the care team app.
Um, so, so what their kids see is just like custom for them.
What's been most rewarding and most challenging about your Goally journey?
Um, most challenging has been, well, I'll say like, like everything. Um, it just takes twice as long, three times as expensive to build it. So we had these ideas early on. We're like, okay, this is clear. We know how to do this. And then we got halfway and we're like, oh wait, this is a little bit more complicated than we originally thought. And I think anybody that's tried to build any technology has probably experienced that. And I've experienced that like a hundred times in the tech field.
Um, so I don't know that it's like new to this, it's just, just things are more complicated when you try to unravel them a little bit. Uh, most rewarding just talking to our customers. we have families that have told us that they thought their kids wouldn't see more progress in. And they have seen progress that their kids are more independent. I've had, I've had a mom tell me that she was so stressed out.
Um, she, she was considering ending her own life and she just kind of like bought Goally on a whim. And her daughter responded so well to some of our tools that their whole life has kind of transformed that her relationship with her daughters transformed. So, I've had, I've had enough of those customer conversations to be like, this is better than anything. This is way better than anything I've worked on.
Oh my gosh, more. It's way more meaningful, right? I mean you get like, like me, like you get to wake up every day and be like, I serve families with autism in like really meaningful ways. Improving their quality of life. And what are the other things that's impressed me about Goally which y'all are doing is a lot of times it's not necessarily the BCBA that, you know, wants to go use it.
It's like the family has felt so much, um, um, has gotten so much from it that they're bringing the BCBA and saying, Hey, how do we like incorporate this? I think that's really neat.
Yeah, we, we, we did a little bit of outreach to clinics in, in the Denver area, and that's how you and I met, but, um, we now have ABA providers using Goally just across the country. And, um, we didn't, we never talked to them. It was families who were like, Hey, this is working at home. I need you to start doing this in session.
Powerful. Super powerful. Well, one of the things Saha, you know, when we met first, I don't know, a couple, few years ago, um, that I appreciate is you brought this like really healthy like perspective, um, on, um, I mean life in general and a lot of different neat things, but certainly on the autism services field and it's, it's been one of my mantras that, look, we don't have to reinvent. To your point about not reinventing the wheel, we don't have to reinvent the wheel as we think.
What the future holds for our field, right? Because we can see it in other aspects of healthcare and what those, um, you know, home health or, um, addiction treatment. And as those fields evolved and matured, what regulations came with it. So we can see the future that way. But, uh, tell me what, what are some of the bold predictions that you have for the ABA field and, or, and, or challenges, um, and opportunities that you've seen for our field?
Yeah, I guess the benefit of being in my shoes, probably similar to your shoes, um, is that you see lots of different providers and so you can see more patterns, whereas most providers, they're in their place of work for years at a time and they don't necessarily see lots of other clinics and what they're doing, at least on the inside. I think that in short, I think the field's gonna be financially challenged for some time. I think that hours are gonna gradually decrease.
I'm not an insurance expert, but that seems to be already happening, so I don't know how futuristic that prediction is. Um, I think more and more people are gonna question efficacy. I I see that, um, from a lot of people that I interface in the industry. And then, I think the industry's made it maybe a little too hard to get credential. And, I think labor is just gonna get harder and harder to fill. So what are you gonna do? I've got my ideas. I'd love to hear yours.
Well, I, I'll add on to that. You already have payers questioning efficacy, right? There was that study from TRICARE a few years ago that said something like 70% of ABA, programs or families didn't realize the benefit of ABA. and you know, I mean, there was sort of some hand waving that I think they do with the data and like there's a chunk of truth to it, right? When you don't have a really clear way of evaluating outcomes and quality across different providers, That's a scary place to be.
It's most scary because families don't know how to make the right decision. Right, for which provider's best for the family and why that provider's best. and it's certainly scary for payers who have to pay for what are end up being expensive services. So I think all of that issue, and we are gonna be faced, to your point with this, like supply demand amounts, we just, we can't produce enough BCBAs, right?
And, and RBTs to catch up with the increasing diagnosis rates and just all the need that, that at least I see from families. And so what does that mean? I don't know. Here's my bold prediction. Heretofore, so up to this point, you're gonna get ABA this way. And that's the only way to do it. And clearly ABA is a gold standard. Like I, you know, how passionate I am about our science and what we do, and it's a, it's a hard service.
the level of commitment needed from, from parents and doing, you know, caregiver training, um, and having if for in-home programs, having your house turned into a, into a therapy center, right? Or sorry, into a, into like a therapy clinic or I mean, parents having to drop their 2, 3, 4 year olds off for like 30, 40 hours a week. These are hard, hard things and I don't know, as a field that we've grappled with that and fully understood how hard it is for families to be successful.
one metric I would love to see Sasha is client turnover rates and that that doesn't get published. And most ABA providers don't track that number. At Ascend, we track it religiously,
Well, let me ask you. Client retention seems to be like a people. People don't wanna have client retention. They feel like that that's a shameful number that I've had a client stay with me for a certain period of time. Have you, have you experienced that?
it's so, it's so, it's a good point. And payers would say the exact same thing. You don't wanna have these never ending like 10 years of 40 hour a week programs, yes there's actually a different metric we use called "success to intended graduation." And that is, when we get a kiddo, we serve early intervention.
So there's generally, you know, it's one to maybe three years and we're getting ready for kindergarten, but we can sort of, we can see what that trajectory should be and how close were we to helping the family get to that point. So that's how we'd measure it.
Yeah, that, that makes sense to me.
The, the important point, sorry, what I should say then, like, what does this mean? My, one of my bold predictions is there are gonna be different models for how ABA is used with families to increase the chance that a family is successful in treatment. And so what could this look like? Um, number one, I think like this whole idea of center versus home based, like that discussion has already been had. That's the wrong question.
The right question is what service environment is, going to most make a family successful? Pick that environment, whichever provided, pick that environment. But another example is I think there will be more parent training, sort of caregiver training led models, um, where, um, things like Goally or or other technologies, help parents do more of that.
Now I understand there's, there's challenges in that cuz elsewhere the medical field, like where do we ask parents, for example, to be the pediatrician or something else. But I think there are other ways to, um, you know, that, that can be addressed. But my point is there's gonna be different models of ABA informed science, evidence based practice, but that are gonna help families be more successful.
And it's not just gonna be a, Hey, come here and like you see what you get and you're gonna do 40 hours and you're gonna do this level of parent training. I think we're gonna move away from that
Yeah, I agree with that. Um, I talk to a lot of families. And, my favorite question to ask is, does your ABA provider do training for you? And the answer is usually, yeah. Yeah. They try to get us to come to that stuff. And do you go, well, you know, we go once in a while, but, and you kind of hear these trailing off answers, but the real, what they're maybe not wanting to say candidly is that they just don't see value from those trainings.
And I think that's reflected in the, in that 70% number that you said earlier, they didn't see value from any of it. so I think that the success of a provider may be measured in the future by, are there training successful? Are the caregiver training successful? And you could say, Yeah, there's nowhere else where you ask a parent to be a doctor or something like that. But there's also nowhere else where, there's 30 to 40 hours or 20 to 40 hours of prescribed treatment time.
This is a total anomaly in healthcare. so the question then becomes like, if, if you agree that caregiver training becomes a more important part of every future model, then it becomes, well, how do providers do that? And I think the skill set needed to be a great teacher, trainer coach is quite different than to be a great researcher. Uh, and, and, uh, maybe the way BCBAs are trained may need to change over time. Um, yeah, so I don't know.
Since you and I are in agreement, I don't know how bold that is. Well, do you agree?
Right. I think there's a lot of agreement. Here's what's important to me about this is, is, is less around specific predictions and more the intellectual curiosity to ask ourselves questions like, why isn't parent training as successful as we would hope it would be?
And get out of the like, oh, well, payers require it and we've gotta do a certain percentage otherwise, you know, or like, get out of all the, like, what, what do we need to do because payers ask for it or because this is what we're trained to do, um, and focus more on like, if we keep asking the questions, what's in the best interest of families and the kiddos, that's where I think we can't go wrong. Right.
I, and, and think about like, um, and that tends to take off this veneer of, ooh, self-serving. I just, I just want to hear like, this is the kind of thing that we're gonna have to do to you. let's get, let's get rid of that, um, sort of that tact and keep coming back to what do they need most?
So I think like multidisciplinary services, look, ABA is ama, it's extraordinary in the life changing outcomes it achieves and there's other medical and um, uh, and all kinds of things that come with getting a diagnosis. And we can see that. And what's the rates like 50%, um, of kids with autism have a second diagnosis. ABA does wonders for a, a lot of kiddos and parents needs, but it doesn't solve all of them.
And so if we are not able to integrate with other aspects of the healthcare system and, you know, coordinate care well, um, and I don't know that we're. That's where I think the future's going. In addition to a future where we're gonna pay for outcomes and value
I don't think so. People have been saying that ever since I met the first ABA person I've met. I just, I don't, I, I don't think it's gonna go there. Uh, and I, I know everyone says we're going there, we're already there. I just don't see wholesale change. I think that the business models are just too ingrained in what they are, and everybody wants to do that, and they say they wanna do that. I'm just not seeing it.
And I, and I've been asking, and I ask a lot of providers, I talk to a lot of providers. I'm just not seeing, maybe it's further out in the horizon.
mm What do you think's getting in the way?
There's just too much inertia behind the hourly model, and a lot of these businesses were built and bought and invested in based on the hourly model. I also think that the hourly model isn't painful enough for the payers at the end of the day, like ABA is still a rounding error for the payers compared to heart disease and all the other things that they have to pay out for is just too small. If it becomes a bigger issue for them, I think they may reevaluate.
I know that that's not a, a positive outlook, but I think this is the case in a lot of industries. You kind of need a crisis or something bad to happen to, to be a forcing function for reform and improvement. We, we could say, you know, COVID did that for a lot of industries.
Mm-hmm.
Um, we took a crisis to say, Hey, maybe we're gonna try telemedicine, it turns out for a lot of stuff it works. Okay.
It works okay. Especially for mental health. Right. That's another great example. It took a crisis to know that, hey, digital therapeutics can work using evidence-based practice, but through a different medium. It's a good point. So what is absolutely true is it's really hard moving to a value-based world. Number one. Number two, um, because our science ABA has relied on single subject design, right?
Outcomes of an an individual kiddo, because everyone's outcomes are different, every kiddos different and, and every, um, uh, you know, every diagnosis of, of ASD looks different. It's harder to do population health measures. I don't think it's impossible. Why can't we compare things like parenting stress index or, um, you know, violent or, or a variety of other? Sort of norm referenced assessment.
There's nothing that's perfect, but that should not get in the way of, what I've seen that's happened is it means like perfect is gonna be the enemy of great. But let me, I'll give you a stat. I was just talking to a payer who, um, said in the medical field, so not behavioral health, not mental health, in the medical field, 60% of dollars come under a value based contract. So what that says in my mind is that's coming for behavioral mental health.
The question is just how long will it take and what is that crisis event or that sort of acute um, budget need a payer has right when they're seeing the pain of, of cost of services.
Yeah, it's like who's gonna do it first? Nobody wants to be first.
Hmm.
That, that may be why it takes a lot longer. none of the payers wanna say, this is our, this is our new model. We're doing it this way. The old model goes out and I, and so maybe there's a bit of a chicken or egg problem here because, none of the clinics really wanna say, Hey, this is, this is our model payers, we wanna renegotiate our deals based on this new model. There's an issue there, but I think you're right.
maybe a flaw of the industry is thinking that it's unique relative to other healthcare, and the truth is it's not, That these same challenges are happening across all of healthcare or across the, the whole other 40% of healthcare that's not value-based. Uh, and then, um, I'm biased because my field, but everybody's adapting technology.
Uh, so if you're, if you're a clinic owner and you're thinking, or you're a BCBA a or clinic director, and you're thinking, I wanna improve caregiver training, I want to improve caregiver engagement, I want to improve care in general. and you're not thinking, how do I use tech to extend my services? you're not looking into the future.
Hmm.
Uh, every other professional services industry uses technology to lower costs and improve access, and this is the direction healthcare is going. So like that's, that's the place we want to be as a business is to be enablers of that. And I think it's only a matter of time until more and more providers become savvy to that idea.
Absolutely. But you use a really important term here. there is value to be had in introducing technology to accelerate the shift toward, thinking about outcomes, right? And thinking about, service delivered in ways that, families will most appreciate and value it. Just think about how sad it is that like, the feedback that you're describing, you hear about, uh, parent training, it's kinda like, uh, If we haven't fundamentally addressed how we fix that, that, that's hard.
and I honestly, I think like words have power and, and some of it starts with like what parent wants to hear that need to be trained, that su suggests a deficiency when parents of kids with autism, they're trying the best they can do every single day with a playbook that they weren't handed. And so I don't know that we're doing parents' favors instead of calling it things like how do we collaborate well and like teach as opposed to, we're gonna train you
I don't know. I don't have a strong view on the vernacular here. I, I'm sure there's a better way to communicate some of these ideas. I'm not known for my communicating skills. We, you know, we, we, we build software stuff, but, uh, you can only tiptoe around this stuff so much, right? Like at the end of the day, it's, your provider's not gonna pay me to do as much of this as I would like. Therefore, I gotta show you how to.
Mm-hmm.
I'm sorry, your payer's not gonna pay me to do as much of this as I would like. Therefore, I gotta, I gotta teach you how to do my job and, um, like, I don't know. I, I, you have a driver's license. I'm sure you know how to drive a car, but, uh, this is a semi truck, right? Like, you gotta, you gotta get a little special license. You gotta go through some extra classes for this one.
Yeah.
CDLs a little harder here.
Right. Yeah. that's an opportune analogy. Well, let's say, an ABA provider wanted to try out Goally. What, um, what would they do next?
It's super easy. Most just get started with a couple of families. We charge 15 bucks a month for, um, everything basically like our whole software suite per family. There's no contract. They just go to getgoally.com and everywhere we've had success, it's usually one or two tech savvy BCBAs that adopt our tools and then it kind of like spreads among their client base and among their, their peers.
and then eventually someone from the clinic contacts us and we'll go and do like a, a workshop for their, as a, maybe a team building or any kind of continued education that they do, which is kind of give them some ideas of how they can use these tools to engage families. I appreciate you asking that. we, we try to make it super easy. This is, this is kind of a healthcare technology problem. It's really hard to acquire tech in healthcare..
There's just like even finding out how much something costs is, is a problem, right? So I think a lot of people are technology. Oh, it's a big implementation. No, it's like we try to make it a consumer friendly process. Most of our customers are just moms and dads. Right. Like we don't, we don't give them any special training. So if there's a critique of the, of the tech space is oh my goodness you guys have made implementation so painful, so expensive.
So many business owners have these rotten experiences where someone sold them a software and they bought a two year package, this and that, and they said never again. Right? Took them the first 18 months, that two year package just to figure out how to use it.
Yep.
Uh, like that's the worst. So we try not to be that, like really go out of our way to not be that.
That's important because most apps that are successful these days, I mean totally independent of you know, healthcare are ones that you get into and it's got a couple like, like texts that pop up, but then you know how to use it intuitively from the get go. So it's almost like the threshold of tolerance that we have as consumers of technology has come way down.
We expect things to be much easier, which means that when we're faced with legacy software systems that are just like funky and require reading a hundred page manuals, guess what? No one's going to use it
No one's gonna use it. I told my team, the analogy that I've been using, when we talk about a new feature, I said, is this gonna be easier or harder than to make a playlist on Spotify? It's harder. I don't want to, like, this isn't the right path. And, and this is really important cause it's also like, we can't just design for 35 year olds, right? We can't just design for 25 year olds. A lot of the people using our tech are grandparents of kids.
That's why we call it the care team app instead of the parent. And a lot of the best, most experienced providers in the field didn't start using tech, right? Like we shouldn't assume that they're just gonna like open this up and be great at all this stuff. It has to be, we have to use that design language that they see elsewhere in consumer applications. So we really hit on that a lot and we, it's super difficult for us cause we're in it all day and so we think, oh, this is intuitive.
It's not, for most people, it's not intuitive at all.
I, I, ooh, I'd love to come back to the design process cuz that's been a really powerful shaping force for me in the last couple years. And, and think about services, not at all technology, right? You don't want to hire me to, to run a, a technology company. But something else you said really, rung a bell, Sasha, and that is that you've got your observation and working with ABA providers, there's usually one or two BCBAs who really like lean into technology.
And I think that that explains a broader, um, idea around, early adopters and that you've read the book, I'm sure Crossing the Chasm, right, with the idea that like for technology to be successful, you need those first couple folks who just are absolute champions of it. And then they tend to bring along. Others, right? Just sort of by nature of who they are. And I think the same goes, tell me if like this is what you see too.
But the same goes for change management organizations, technology or not technology.
You generally have a couple early adopters and like focus most of your resources as an ABA provider, like getting those people totally empowered, understanding the value and then let them take and run with it cuz they're gonna then through a facilitated process, bring the rest of the organization along as opposed to trying to just force fit it to everyone and answer and address everyone's concern, um, or hopes about a, a, a new technology. But I don't know.
Is that, is that your sense for how change management and software implementation, tech implementation can work well?
A hundred percent. So the S-curve of adoption is real. If you're in the audience, you have a Google S Curve adoption, you'll see the applies to everything. There's a really low slope line that occurs for a long time, and then suddenly it shoots up and then it plateaus again. the number one thing that I think about is user experience, which will lead to the S curve of adoption.
the steep part of the s. So when, when I think about how to achieve this, I think about how do I give someone results for as little work as possible? In the beginning of this podcast, I, I rambled on about the different features cause I didn't even know which ones to interest your audience. There's a lot and a lot of tech people tend to do that, right? It's like, oh, here's the 400 things I can do for you.
When we talk to a provider, it's gotta be like, I just need to do one thing for you for like two months. If all you wanna do is visual schedules, I don't want, I don't even want you to look at this, I don't want you to open up the token system. I don't want nothing. I just want you to make visual schedules. I wanna save you like five minutes a day for for two months. And if I can do that, then we can do anything else after that.
Yeah. Well this is what they describe as like the killer feature, right? There's, there's usually someone doesn't go to an app or technology to solve 95 problems. There's one thing that they're trying to solve. And if you can do that well early on, that's what creates a sticky, longer term relationship. Right?
I don't know if I agree with that. Usually customers also have like their 200 list of things that want solved and like we, we have to be like, ah, but like 198 of those like, probably don't matter so much. I'm not sure which ones don't matter so much. Uh, so I think it, it, it's two sides. People are like, automate everything. They're like, nah, maybe we could just like automate this like one little piece for you, right.
Uh, but like this challenge of us teaching providers how to use software is really no different than providers having the challenge of teaching caregivers how to do their program. It's really the same thing. As technologists, we're like, there's a, there's kind of mainstream like, go figure out the one thing that's gonna save your client five minutes. That's kind of become a mainstream thought. That's not Sasha being innovative.
In BCBA world I don't think that's become a mainstream thing, which is like just do training on the one thing that might make a difference in their life. Just like show them a little bit of value. Not a lot. Don't, don't try to teach them everything you learned in grad school. We don't need that whole theory. We don't need to know everything you're working on in session. Like let's just, uh, that one little thing.
And if we could just do that one thing at home, if I can just get you to do that one thing at home, you'll be successful. this is what I think a lot of providers struggle.
Well, so let me give you a for instance on that cuz and, and audience knows I am not a BCBA and I'm not really smart enough to be, but at Ascend, you know, five years ago when we started and we had our first parent training curriculum. So we like dutifully put together great like slides and and we were trying to be good teachers. And in the process, like the first chunk of parent training early on was about the science of ABA. Guess what? Parents don't care.
Parents care about their kiddo making meaningful progress on skills and behaviors that will improve their quality of life. Full stop. And so we had to, we had to more closely listen, number one to what those, you know, those challenges were and what a parent was hoping to accomplish through treatment. And then number two, deliver parent training that was gonna help get them there most quickly.
A hundred percent. I hear that feedback from parents a lot, which is they tried to teach me the science and like I, I'm not interested in hearing what this 29 year old learned in college. I just got off work, I gotta deal with bedtime and dinner tonight. Like, tell me how to help that. So when we have families that are getting started with Goally, we're asking them to just do two things. We want one functional routine, like a bedtime routine.
We want one fun routine going to the park, baking cookies with mom, something like that. And that's it. We don't want you to do anything else for, for an extended period of time until both you and your child are comfortable using the technology. This is so key. When I look at our customers who fail, I look at returns, just canceled orders, returns canceled, subscription. And I'll look at what they did in their profile.
And I'll see, we have super moms that'll make 20 routines, like they spent hours and hours and hours configuring Goally, and we asked them for feedback. They just said, um, my kid wasn't into it,
Oh no.
But the, but the real answer is like they created a lot of complexity for themselves and their kid. They made it impossible for their spouse to implement the same. So there's like, the consistency wasn't there. Uh, these guys start super small. Just give people a little morsels of value and, and they'll respect you for that.
Uh, you know, that's so gutting, knowing like, I mean, like how much time, like parents want everything for their kiddos. I'm, I've got three kids and like, I get the ideas like, you're gonna do everything you can to make sure your kiddo is safe, and happy and, and successful, whatever that definition is like, and it feels like it's on us as a field and on, you know, technology providers who are serving the field like you, Sasha.
It's on us to help make it as easy as possible for parents to be superheroes and to help get that for their kids. Right.
is the way I hope I've convinced everyone on the podcast
let me pivot a little bit here because Sasha, like, one of the things I've loved about, um, having gotten to know you these last few years, you're a community builder at heart. Specifically, like whether it's meetup groups and bringing people together around interesting topics. I mean, I've been to like panels where there's like former astronauts that like gave a talk on their latest book and I was just like, like in awe the entire time.
But you do these like all over the place, at least all over Denver. And um, what, like what's that drive in you that's made you want to be a bringer together of people and knowledge?
I have had a lot of positive reinforcement. Some of my best friends have come from these little community building events. Some of my biggest ahas and just my personal life and my business life have come from people that I've interacted with here. I get really inspired by other people. Uh, that's what fills up my bucket. So I'm trying to, uh, refuel by, by listening to smart people talk as much as I can, smart people, good ideas. How do we get them to.
And, uh, that's been a little bit of a hack. As I say, Hey, if I just said, Hey, come talk to Sasha about your smart ideas, they don't wanna come. But if I say, uh, if I get like 40 people to listen to your smart ideas, will you come then?
I love that you're curious, man. I mean, I think that's what our world needs right now, right? Instead of one way megaphones
Look at you. You're, you're the one who's probing me with all the tough stuff, making me think about this. You're inspiring people with your podcast.
Thank you, Sasha. Well, hey, let's, let's keep talking about interesting and inspiring stuff. Uh, is it true you wanted to be a race car driver when you were in high school and that led to vocational auto classes?
Yeah. I had this really weird education. Uh, I signed up for vocational auto school when I was in high school thinking that, that's what you gotta do if you're a race car driver. But I didn't realize that that's kind of where the school district sends the, uh, delinquent kids, the kids that are causing a lot of trouble. So there I was wrenching on cars, uh, and then trying to get good grades.
And, um, the truth is, it was the, it was the best educational experience of my whole life is by far, I learned more in that two year program than anywhere else. And it's, it's a shame. The district really thought it was for, for kids that couldn't deal with ordinary school.
what was it about that, that two year educational experience, if you were to pinpoint why it was so important and powerful?
Um, it was confidence building, so I was fixing stuff that was broken and stuff that I never, if you tell a 17 year old, this engine's broken and you're gonna rebuild it from nothing and it's gonna work when you're done or, or you're gonna replace the brakes on this car and it's unsafe right now and it's gonna be really safe to drive when you're done. Super confident building.
I was like, wow, I can, I can dismantle really complicated things and put them back together and it'll, everything will be okay. So that was part of it, is also a practical skill that people valued in the community is, oh, I can change my parents' oil now. Right? Do do things of value in my community. Uh, so there's that. I was also a good student though, so I was in these honors and AP classes and I was seeing the overlap of theory with application.
And so I thought I was learning the theory a lot better. And I remember taking a, a chemistry. And we were learning about, how molecules get weighed and, um, which is kinda like a really abstract concept that no high schooler should really need to know anything about. But I remember there was, a keyword there in the textbook. It was stoichiometry and then the next week I was in an auto.
And I saw, um, on a turbocharged car, there was a, there was a little readout that says stoichimeter, and it was measuring air, fuel ratios. And suddenly I understood what the air, what the stoichimeter was doing, because I just learned how it's measuring these, these molecules against the air molecules. And there was, there were hundreds of these connections that I could make.
And so while all the kids were just kind of cramming, filling their head with stuff that truly was meaningless to them, to me, I was able to attach some meaning to it, and a lot of it stuck. So I think I, I learned the traditional schooling better than the kids that were focused on it 100%.
Okay, so you know what? there's a whole separate podcast you and I are gonna have to do on like education because there's so much that's right in our education system and there's a lot where we don't help students make those connections and it means things, ideas, and concepts just don't stick. When you were talking about that, Sasha, you know what it brought me back to?
Like, I had this flashback to 15 years ago when I was a NOLS instructor leading like 14 and 15 year olds and backpacking and climbing programs up in Wyoming and Montana. When you teach a kiddo, um, what the lightning position is because there's lightning crashing within, within a half a mile, and you've gotta go crouch down for 45 minutes and spread out, you're never gonna forget the lightning position.
That is clearly a very, a much less complex skill sets and then uh, changing, you know, carburetor changing out a whole engine. But I'm just thinking, like, putting into immediate practice the things that we're learning and having it be in consequential environments. I'm not saying you to learn, you gotta be near your lightning strikes, right, and up on the top of a mountain. But like, I don't know that that's what it feels like.
If we can help our kiddos, um, better tie to day to day life, the things that we're teaching them, we're doing good stuff.
It also creates an intrinsic motivation because suddenly, I'm more interested in chemistry class cuz I can see like it'll actually make me more successful in real life. Whereas if all I need to get good at chemistry to get a good grade, which maybe one day might help me get into college, or maybe not, I don't even know. Kind of hard to be motivated by it, right? You have to at best you're very extrinsically motivated by grades, but that's like at best if you, if you're unable to make
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean in, in behavior analytic terms, abc, right: Antecedent, behavior, consequence. Is the consequence a good grade or bad rate? And is that consequence strong enough to affect the behavior and or is like this consequence around, want just being excited to learn and wanting to learn more and or seeing that there's an application, for that, that will help you out in life feels like a more powerful consequence reinforcer.
Totally. I mean, I don't, I think most kids aren't, the consequence of getting bad grades just isn't even good grades. It's not, it's not enough of a stimuli.
That, yeah. So look, I'm no expert in like our educational system. Um, I, I will say this, I have three kids in seventh grade, fourth grade, and second grade. And the most important thing to me and Kim, is that we promote a love of learning. Full stop. A love of learning has to be like part of their education now and through the rest of their life. And if we're doing that, awesome. That's our, that's our goal. It's not grades, map tests or five hours of homework or five minutes of homework.
It's the love of learning.
E, everything else will solve itself. If you love to learn,
I know. Which I know you love to do. You read a lot of good books and I know we text back and forth the kinds of books we're reading and things we see. All right. Let me ask you one more question before we, before we come to wrap up, because, I have learned a lot from you also about, crypto assets, cryptocurrencies. Um, what's a bold prediction on how crypto assets could potentially change the healthcare system in the.
Healthcare. Ooh, that's tough. I don't think it will if that's bold, I don't think crypto assets will make much impact. I don't think blockchain tech will make much impact on healthcare. I think in the near term, blockchain tech is making an impact on, uh, finance
Mm-hmm.
and, um, it's not, it's not sexy work. The building blocks of finance and insurance that a lot of people don't see, it's like how banks do settlements every night. it's how money supply gets counted. I think this is where blockchain tech will come into, well, it is. It's already being used, um, in a big way. Um, so blockchain tech enthusiasts don't, don't like to hear that, but that's, that's how I believe, uh, with crypto assets specifically they're making a big dent in the art market. I think.
I think art is permanently changed with crypto. I think every valuable piece of art will also have a correlating nft. It, it's already happening at Sotheby's and Christie's. Um, there's already a chain of record that's being recorded on chain for them. it's incremental progress and that's how I believe tech exists and flourishes in general. I. I can apply this to my business as well. Goally's not gonna overnight transform parent engagement. Um, but I think we represent incremental progress.
Hm.
And our tools will incrementally get better and our clients who use our tools will also get incrementally better. And five years from now, we're gonna look back to today and, and think, my gosh, how different we are than we used to be. but it's a slow burn. if we can improve caregiver engagement 10% this year, but then also do it the following year and the following. Five years from now, this is a big difference.
The whole idea of, little improvements day to day, the 1% better every day. Um, that's how the, the British Olympic cycling team went from like worst in the world, like some of the best in the world.
Yeah.
on little things, 1% better every day. I'll drop a link in the show notes to
I try to dehy our product. Cause we have a lot of customers who just like really love our stuff. So we have, we have certain proportion of our clients that are power users and they are hype machines. They're like, Hey you, you gotta need Goally and it's gonna transform your life. And when I get there I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
We're gonna make small incremental improvements and there's gonna be small setbacks of periods, but overall things are gonna be moving in the right direction if you start using our tools.
Uh, you know what? one of my roommates in San Francisco like 20 years ago actually, and I'll never forget because another roommate was like, had a Blackberry for the first time and was like emailing from the couch on a weekend. I was like, What in the hell are you doing? I will never, ever have something like that in my house. I'm not gonna check work emails. The rest is history, but, but anyway, my roommate said, technology doesn't make our lives any better. It only changes our expectations.
Hmm. No, I think technology makes people's lives better. Maybe what he meant in that setting. And this is me kind of like interpreting, in that case, technology, put a spotlight on who he is, which is someone who likes to work from home and hours of the day or something like that. Didn't really like change him as a person. And likewise, you might have not changed that much, right? Even though you, you email from your couch, you still value not doing that and you try to prioritize other things.
I think technology. Is, the single most driver of, of health outcomes I have a relative who had leukemia and, and survived. And, um, when he had leukemia, survival rate was something like 50%. And, um, today for his type of leukemia, it's, it's north of 90%.
Wow.
Um, why? A handful of drugs became better and the software to analyze whether or not those drugs will work on his type of blood improved tremendously as well. It was really, it was, uh, a chemical improvement in technology and a software improvement together increase the survival rate from 50 to 90%.
Uh, that's powerful man. That feels like a mic drop kind of moment, so, gotcha. where can people find you online? Dude.
www.getgoally.com G O A L L Y getgoally.com
nice. I will, um, uh, I'll make sure to drop that in the show notes too. Are you, are you ready for our hot take questions, my man?
Let's do it.
All right. You're on your death bed. What's the one thing you wanna be remembered for?
I want to be remembered for improving the lives of thousands of people.
What's your most important self care practice?
Long showers where long, wasteful hot showers.
Now let me, yeah. Do you listen to podcasts, music, or you're just in the shower to be in the shower?
I'm just showering sometimes I'm stretching. I'm taking an excessive amount of time in the shower.
Great, great thinking time. What's your favorite song,
I'll tell you who my favorite group is right now. I don't have a favorite song. It's Rufus Dusol, r u f u s, dusol, d u s o l.
I've not heard of them. I'm gonna find out who they are. Sounds like they're a soul kind of funk outfit.
they're more like electronic. Um, I do have a favorite soul funk band that's called the Motet. Colorado band.
Yes. They're amazing. I didn't realize you were an EDM fan, dude.
I don't know. You should listen and tell me if it's edm. I don't know if it's edm. It's, it's probably edm, but it's on the verge of not being edm.
All right, I done. If you give your 18 year old self one piece of advice, what would it be?
Keep doing what you're doing. I think I was insecure about whether or I was doing the right stuff. So, so, so I would just go back and say, Hey, you're doing all right.
Huh, that's amazing. This from the guy who started an e-commerce, um, business in high school, which I don't know how you had time for now hearing about your, you know, auto experience and then really successfully sold it like after some number of years, which we didn't even get to talk about today. So we're just gonna have to do it next time. Uh, you can wear one style of footwear, which would it be?
I only wear one style today and it's, um, sneakers,
Nice. Uh, I can attest to that. Hey, brother, high fives. Thanks for coming on the pod. Thanks for sharing your wisdom. Super fun to catch up.
Great interview. Appreciate your time. Thank you.