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New Mexico Business Weekly, Small Business Strategies Speech therapist uses unique technology to drive more clients to her business by Megan Kamerick, NMBW Staff Karen Templeton had grown used to adapting. Templeton, an interior decorator, had a 70 percent hearing loss in her right ear and a 30 percent loss in her left. When meeting with a client, she positioned herself in front of them to read their lips. She also had trouble pinpointing the direction of sound. An ambulance noise while driving had her scanning nervously all over the place trying to find it. When doing an installation, if an assistant called her from another room, she had to ask her to keep talking until she could find her. Then she tried the Auditory Integration Training (AIT) that her son was doing at Laurie Ross-Brennan and Associates. Half-way through the two-week daily treatments, she achieved 100 percent hearing in each ear. For her son, Andy, the change was even more dramatic. He was tested as gifted, but couldn't engage in school or listen. When Laurie Ross-Brennan tested him, he was 50 decibels above normal range. "He literally had super hearing," Templeton says. When he saw his teacher's mouth moving, he heard maintenance workers on the roof or a pencil sharpener or paper shuffling. "He knew she was up there saying something he should listen to and he was listening with all his might, but he wasn't able to discern." The change in him after AIT has been huge, she says. He is exceeding his teachers' expectations almost daily. He is much more calm and "dialed in," she says. It's stories like this that Ross-Brennan to hear. She is the only New Mexico provider of AIT, a technique created by Dr. Guy Berard, a French ear, nose and throat surgeon, and available in the United States since 1990. "When you have a hearing problem, it really disrupts and disorients you," Ross-Brennan says. One client was so disturbed by the buzz of fluorescent lights that she decided against medical school. A young boy told her he wanted to be a truck driver so he could be alone in the cab and not have to deal with multiple noises. One patient had been an airport screener. He got sensory overload, walked off his job and was fired. These events didn't have to happen, Ross-Brennan says. "I want the kids I work with, and adults, to follow their passion in life," she says. She has followed her own passion to build a successful speech and language pathology practice over 22 years. After working as a speech and language pathologist for a large corporation out of college, where she says she was a revenue-generating cog in the machine, she deliberately set out to create a very different place and hire the best speech therapists she could find. In 1993, she added AIT to her practice. With about $1 million in revenues, the firm's bread and butter remains the speech therapy component, she says, but Ross-Brennan is using AIT to create an additional -- and unique -- niche that is helping the firm grow. AIT creator Berard theorized that if you could exercise other parts of the body, you could do the same with ears. He found it was helpful for conductive hearing loss (although not hearing loss due to nerve damage). But he also found it could help things like dyslexia and certain mood and emotional disturbances. AIT is designed to normalize the auditory system and change how the brain processes and organizes sounds. The treatment consists of 10 hours done in two daily half-hour sessions over two weeks. Patients listen to music and sounds that stimulate the brain by modulating the auditory system. Ross-Brennan compares it to doing push-ups with your ears. The sounds expose the auditory system to the modulation, removal and re-introduction of every sound frequency, gradually increasing the range of frequencies that a patient can tolerate. The treatment generally costs about $1300 and usually only one treatment is required, however sometimes patients need to repeat it at a later date. Not all insurance companies cover it, but she has found a steady stream of people in New Mexico and nationally who want to be screened. So far, she is way ahead of other AIT providers nationally in terms of how many people she treats with AIT each year (about 200), according to the AIT Institute for Berard Auditory Integration Training, a professional association of providers. The majority of Ross-Brennan's clients come from recommendations and word of mouth. They are almost always concerned mothers, but she also has had judges and lawyers who want to see if the technique can improve their concentration and comprehension. As well, she has done aggressive marketing with radio advertising, targeting both children and adults who might have problems such as attention deficit issues. After working in Santa Fe for 10 years from her Albuquerque office, she opened an office there to serve a growing client base in the northern part of the state. Several private schools in the City Different work with Ross-Brennan to test their students. Cheryl Harbaugh was so sensitive to sound it sometimes physically hurt. If she was near a restaurant kitchen, she couldn't concentrate on discussions with friends because she could hear kitchen staff talking. Crying babies in airports were torture. She taught night school at Albuquerque High School and when she heard the low bass from students' cars, it felt like her heart was to trying to synch to that beat. "I thought I was having a heart attack," she says. "The doctor asked me if I wanted Prozac." She and her husband own the Irlen Center in Albuquerque and were familiar with the idea of the brain misinterpreting sensory information. (People with Irlen Syndrome are over-sensitive to light.) Her son and daughter had similar auditory problems and they all did the AIT treatment with Ross-Brennan. Parents, and adults who have undergone AIT themselves, compare the change to flipping a switch. Suddenly the person can focus, is more calm and less agitated. Ross-Brennan says she has had some remarkable success with children diagnosed as autistic, although it depends if their autism has a strong audio component. John Wagner's daughter Molly, 11, gets speech and language therapy and does AIT as well. Molly has a rare affliction called Angelman Syndrome, which is like autism. She doesn't speak, but is adept at sign language. She has had AIT therapy twice. "She was in a special ed class and her teacher noticed right off that she was concentrating better, that she was listening more," Wagner says. Despite these successes, AIT remains a small part of the business compared to the core speech and language therapy. AIT brought in about $175,000 last year, Ross-Brennan says. She is trying to figure out how to market AIT more strategically, but responsibly. One marketing firm pitched her an idea that involved Roswell and aliens. She shot that one out of the sky. "Dr. Guy says 'It cures depression.' Well, I'm not going to say that!" she says. "You have to maintain credibility." Yet she adds she is torn because she feels it's an effective therapy that could help many more people. "She really is a highly ethical person," says Roby Wallace, owner of EntreBusiness, a consulting firm that works with small business owners. He worked with Ross-Brennan to help her plan for more growth. It's not uncommon for someone like her to face this kind of problem, he adds. "It's hard for them [highly ethical people] to figure out sales and marketing because they don't want to sound cheesy," he says. Her ethics extend to her employees, he adds. "She does work hard to take of her people," he says. This includes health and retirement benefits and making a financial planner available to them once a month. It's all part of building a stable business, Ross-Brennan says. "I want them to be secure in the knowledge that their retirement is there for them," she says. "It alleviates the stress on them and they can do a better job with our patients." Most of the speech and language therapy is through referral. Her firm is on most major health plans and its sheer longevity helps it obtain a steady stream of those. She pays her therapists by the hour with incentive bonuses quarterly. In the past, she had tried a salary framework, but found she lost money and people got complacent. She also did some contracting with the Albuquerque Public Schools and a psychiatric institution, but says getting paid in a timely fashion in those situations was too difficult. She encourages her staff to innovate and create therapy tools they can patent. Her company would take a small percentage of the profits, but the staff person would own the rights. This kind of incentive gives people ownership, she says. "I strive to make people feel like they're not a gerbil on the wheel," she says. |
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Ear To The Ground: Laurie Ross-Brennan, 
