Taking Root

To take root and grow, a company must first find a space to grow in, and Marra & Glick Applied Behavior Analysts discovered its potential in the underserviced special needs community. Lauren Marra and Patricia Glick founded MGABA with the goal of quality, evidence-based behavioral services for individuals of all ages with autism spectrum disorder. Finding initial success as a company owned and operated by Licensed Behavior Analysts, the founders endeavored to grow MGABA and spread their success and aid to greater populations.

Unfortunately, the nature of the practice constrained the company’s growth, as support requirements grew linearly with each new client. MGABA circumvented this obstacle by enhancing their back office support system with Troy Glick’s proposed Support the Service model. By observing the company’s operations, he organically developed and implemented processes that would enable MGABA to succeed on a larger scale. This model notably minimized the disruption of operations and services during a period of vital growth.

The Support the Service model granted MGABA the stability to quickly and exponentially increase the scale of its operations, growing after just four years from a capacity of one school district and two service providers to an astounding thirty school districts and over fifty providers. MGABA also expanded its school-based services to include in-home and center-based services to better meet the needs of clients. By the end of year four, thanks to its streamlined operations, rapid growth, and acquisition by a private equity firm, MGABA’s share value exceeded $10 million.