[laughs]

It's been a, a long time, but some of the sacrifices are definitely the balance of devoting yourself as a parent or a friend or- ... child to your parents.

And of course, in time and place, if God forbid there is something, you can shut it off and, and go be with who you need to be with.

But in the day-to-day of your life, especially when you're establishing a business, which was and sometimes still is now, like I'm in the plans of opening a new center.

I'm gonna be all in there.

My kids still need to get to baseball, soccer, cheerleading, wherever they're going.

So almost having to give those things up sometimes to give them a better leader and show them, hey, Mom is such a dedicated person to her job and to the people that, that she's helping.

So how is it that you go about and see further opportunity for growth?

And just in general terms, describe what Kidology does.

It's not the only thing that inspired me because when I was first starting, I was a contractor on wheels.

Like I would go school to school, home to home.

At the time it was before COVID, we were still going to houses.

It was very free.

Right.

So families actually would inquire with me like, oh, well, we can see you the way you work at early intervention one time a week.

You know, what tips do you have for all to make the most of the advice that they're getting from professionals, whether it's Kidology or somebody else?

Mm-hmm.

I had to cut it somewhere.

Either I wasn't gonna see the kids or I wasn't gonna be in the administration, so, like, which one was it gonna be? Well, this week I'm needed over here, so here I go.

And this week... [laughs] It, it was, it was challenging until I was able to really...

This targeted ad helped me take a business course that really put things into perspective in terms of what I was missing, fine-tuning, um, policies and procedures, handbooks, things that really allowed me to excel further in the administrative part, which allowed me to do what I loved, which is work with the families.

And then over time, what I once thought, "Well, how could I ever possibly teach this to somebody and train them to do these things when it's all in my head?" I had it on paper, and it became a repeatable process, and that is where you can actually train and teach people to help you because, "Hey, this is a job.

Here's what you have to do, and let's, let's get moving." Um, I didn't always have that or even an understanding of that it could be successful.

Hmm

Um, but, uh [laughs] in the pa- so why don't you tell us, first of all, like, how you ended up who you are, how you ended up where you are, and then we have 10 kabillion questions we're gonna dive into.

Awesome.

You guys are a hoot.

My cheeks are already hurting, and we haven't even gotten started, so thank you for this lovely, uh, mood you've given me.

Uh, my name is Luba Patlak, and I am a speech language pathologist, a bilingual one, so I speak Russian and English, and I've incorporated that into my business and, and field work.

And I'm a mom of three, and I'm the founder and director at Kidology Inc., and I'll tell you what that is.

Um, but the way I ended up here, and now I'm a child and family advocate for developmental needs, growth, and anything that has to do with speech therapy, of course.

Mm-hmm.