You might say there are three elements that undergird the launch of any successful small business – profit motive, an unfilled (or insufficiently met) need, and personal passion for the company’s goals.
Where those rank in importance depends on the entrepreneur and the start up, but it’s hard to imagine any new business lasting long without those three fundamentals in place.
In SpeechTails’ case, you could add one more: heartbreak.
The innovative Milwaukee start up, which was recently certified for Qualified New Business Venture tax credits by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., is an online speech learning service for children that’s designed to either supplement traditional speech therapy or allow parents to work on their own to help their children speak more clearly.
| “We all know how it is to turn families away and say, ‘Sorry, I just don’t have room on my caseload to see your child.’” – Amy Reno, founder, SpeechTails |
Its president and founder, Amy Reno, is a speech and language pathologist with 20 years of experience working with children, and so she has seen up close the current shortfall in speech therapy services available to both children and adults and the heart-wrenching realities that confront most speech pathologists these days.
“We all know how it is to turn families away and say, ‘Sorry, I just don’t have room on my caseload to see your child,’” said Reno. “It’s a horrible feeling to do that, when you know that you have the skills to help this child but you just don’t have the time to do it. And the feedback I have gotten from professional peers has been wonderful. It’s been amazing.”
According to Reno, even though speech pathology is one of the nation’s fastest-growing careers, it’s not growing nearly fast enough. Because many baby boomers who are entering their golden years rely on speech therapy to help them recover from strokes or simply to help them deal with declining faculties – and because of a large increase in autism diagnoses among children – the profession has not come close to keeping up with demand.
“There are 110,000 speech pathologists in our country, and there’s millions and millions and millions of people who need speech therapy services,” said Reno. “So approximately 60% of the speech pathologists work with kids and the other 40% work with adults, and there’s simply not enough people.”
Accelerated learning curve
While many workers – blue collar and white collar alike – fear mechanization and new technologies because of their potential to displace trained professionals, Reno stresses that her online service is not a substitute for professional speech therapy, but a supplement. It can be used on its own to help children, and it can also be used to help make existing speech therapy programs more effective.
“There is an opportunity here to increase the number of kids that therapists can take,” said Patrick Walters, the company’s CEO. “Number one, the accelerated learning curve when the kids are practicing more frequently and are engaged with their lesson plan. But it also gives the therapist a little bit more efficiency in their practice, so that the therapist can, at the end of the day, see more kids.”
Currently, the service includes a free assessment, which is used to determine in which areas kids have speech problems. Parents and kids can go to SpeechTails.com and complete the 26-question assessment, which takes 10 to 15 minutes. The parents then receive a report, which details which sounds the child needs to work on and also gives a treatment recommendation. Treatment can include traditional speech therapy or online therapy.
The site’s online learning system, which can be accessed for $25 per month, includes a series of lessons that focus on the sounds the child has difficulty with. They include mouth exercises, mouth placement goals, and target words to practice.
But while the system is computer-driven, parents need not worry that their kids will be lacking for human contact. In fact, it allows for some meaningful parent-child interaction.
“The technology really mimics what the pathologist already does, so it’s not changing the method of therapy,” said Walters. “You can think of it more as a tool for a therapist and for the parents. It’s not the technology that’s teaching the child to speak correctly. We’re still using the human as the content provider to provide that instruction. So unlike speech recognition systems where the software has to have an algorithm that figures out what you say, we’re still using a human interface at the end of the day to make that judgment call. But what the system does do is it tracks, it manages, and it promotes the learning.”
The WEDC’s role
SpeechTails’ designation as a Qualified New Business Venture is just the latest in a long line of milestones the company has achieved. QNBV status makes investors in the company eligible for a 25% tax credit on their investment. The WEDC program is designed to help promising companies grow and spur job creation.
Before receiving QNBV designation, SpeechTails received a Wisconsin Entrepreneur Network grant, came in second in the information technology category in the 2011 Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan competition, received a technology development grant from WiSys to develop a more advanced evaluation program, and garnered significant support from angel investors. Currently, the company is seeking $750,000 more in funding, which will be geared toward marketing and further building the company.
Reno credits the WEDC for helping create a climate in which her company could begin to thrive.
“The last year has been kind of an insane year for SpeechTails,” said Reno. “In fact, I have put my private practice on hold for the last year to focus on the company.”
A vital service
While being at the helm of a promising young start up is no doubt invigorating enough, Reno stresses the human side of the equation. Since the typical speech pathologist charges around $100 an hour for a visit – and a speech pathologist at a hospital charges even more – her service is far more accessible. The $25 subscription fee is good for the entire month, with no limits.
The cost of not getting help, however, can be steep.
“If a child just has articulation errors, oftentimes that will interfere with his reading, because they say the sounds one way but they read them in a different way,” said Reno. “If the child has speech and language issues – so maybe they don’t understand the language or they don’t speak the language appropriately – those would obviously have a huge impact on how they read and learn and hear what’s going on in the classroom. So yeah, it’s a huge impact.”
It goes without saying, then, that Reno feels a sense of satisfaction in offering a vital service to an underserved population – both as an experienced speech pathologist and a newly minted entrepreneur.
“It’s overwhelming; I love what I do,” said Reno. “The realization when you’re teaching a child to say a sound and he finally says it correctly, I mean, you’re overwhelmed. When a child finally says something and the mother is in tears, it’s an overwhelming feeling. When you get phone calls from people or you hear over and over and over that someone did not qualify for speech services, or we cannot afford to pay this, or my insurance declined it, it’s heart-wrenching. You’ve got to figure out something to do for those kids who are otherwise not going to get the therapy.
“I get emails from families – and I don’t even know the families – I have a visual of their child in my own imagination, and they tell me how much [SpeechTails has] helped them make progress over the summer, or it’s really helped the parents understand how to teach them a sound. It’s great.”
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