Your Next Move - Building a Pediatric Therapy Business Around Trust and Play

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

In this episode of Your Next Move: Audio Edition, former Inc. staff reporter Ben Sherry sits down with Luba Kaplan, founder of pediatric therapy provider Kidology, ranked No. 3,726 on the 2025 Inc. 5000. Based in the Philadelphia area, Kidology provides speech, occupational, physical, and behavioral therapy to children and young adults from birth through age 21. Luba explains how her background as a Russian-speaking speech-language pathologist helped her recognize an unmet need, challenge cultural stigmas surrounding disabilities and developmental delays, and build a community-centered practice. She also shares how Kidology grew from a contractor-based operation without an office into two 5,500-square-foot clinics featuring sensory play gyms—and how embracing teletherapy helped the business adapt during the pandemic. Plus, Luba discusses the risks and rewards of accepting insurance, the importance of building trust with pediatricians and families, and her plans to expand through pop-up locations in Philadelphia. She also explores how virtual reality, AI-assisted documentation, and other emerging tools could make pediatric therapy more measurable, engaging, and accessible—without losing the human connection at the heart of the work.

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Hi, I'm Mike Hoffman, editor-in chief of Inc., and you're listening to Your Next Move audio edition, produced by Inc. and Capital One business. In this season's audio edition, we're bringing you conversations from the Your Next Move pop-up studio at the Inc. 5,000 conference this past October in Phoenix, Arizona.

You'll hear Inc. writers and editors interviewing the founders of some of the fastest-growing private companies in the country. Now, in this episode, staff reporter Ben Sherry sat down with the founder of Kidology, Inc. Lubba, Patlock, Kaplan. Kidology ranked number 3,726 on the 2025 Inc. 5,000 list. Now, the company provides speech pathology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and behavioral services for kids and young adults from birth through age 21. Their conversation begins with how Lubas' background and her ability to serve Russian and English-speaking families helped her spot in unmet need, breakthrough cultural stigma around disabilities, and build a community first practice. Along the way, Lubas shares what she's watching next, from pop-up locations in Philadelphia to new tools that are making therapy more measurable, more playful, and more accessible for the families who need it most. My business is called Kidology Inc., and I'm a

speech-language pathologist who had a dream and a vision, and we service the birth to 21-year-old population for services and therapies like speech pathology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and behavior services. Wow. And so how did you get into the space originally? I am a licensed speech language pathologist, so I got my master's in the profession. I worked with a couple other companies like a contractor, and I learned what it means to have a business like this. But nothing that I worked in was brick and mortar. They were all contractor based. And I was really interested in the field because I speak Russian and I knew that I could help my community, the Russian-English-speaking community and advocate for their kiddos in our culture. If somebody has a disability or a delay,

it's not common to entertain that for help. It's more like we're going to hide it away. But I was able to come out, speak to families and be like, hey, this isn't 1950. It's okay. We'll find a way to help your child join me at Kidology. And I kind of became an advocate for people with. with disabilities or special needs or that need help in therapeutic methods. Was there something in your past or childhood that kind of, you know, inspired you to pursue this? I don't have any connection directly in terms of myself going through speech or something like that. But I've always really been in touch with people and I'm a big communicator all around. I'm a natural-born mom.

Like, love people and nurturing people. When I was a little kid, my aunt took me to a McDonald's playplace. And I ran into a little girl who wanted to play with. me, but she was nonverbal and on the spectrum, and she pulled me by the hair. And I feel like that experience as a child stuck with me. And later in life, when I had seen people on classrooms behaving certain ways and knowing they had a disability and understanding that, I just had a place for it. So how did you go about founding and growing the business? And one, what's your number on the Inc. 5,000 this year? I actually did not beat my number from last year because I'm a second

time winner. But that just motivates me to keep going and trying again. But in the three thousands, I think both years. Yeah, well, congratulations. Thank you. When did you found the company? About 10 years ago. Wow. And so take me through, you know, where you started to where you are now and just that process of growth and transformation. It's been a journey. I initially, when I founded the business, it was all contractor as well. I interviewed people at Starbucks. I didn't have an office. I was like a young grad. I was getting married. And I wanted to start, but feared all that came with having a business. like rent, utilities, paychecks. And then my girlfriend who had a really successful home care,

she was like, you need to just like rip this band-aid off because you have a really great opportunity and you need to go for it. And I'm so grateful to her because that's when I got my first office. I rented a space. It was a tiny two-room in an industrial complex. And one room was my office and play area and a couch for parents. And the other room was just like an entrance with two desks for like the front desk and a biller. From there, within a year, we had grown to seven contractors, including myself. I was still doing the billing, the market. I did everything, literally, like mop the floor, everything. Most of us just spent time in our car. Everybody was a contractor going out, but I had this little space. And parents started to say to me, hey, why can't we come

to see you in your office there? And I'm like, oh, okay, that works. And that's when I took a turn and started to apply to be credentialed with insurances. And that's where my business really catapulted. And I was able to accept 15 insurances, including medical assistance. So we work with a variety of state programs in early intervention, so birth to three, three to five in various counties, and also all the insurances and a very little part of my business is cash. Having that set up, I saw that, okay, I need to restructure what I'm doing in these clinic spaces because providers wanted to come in and families were like, we want more care on insurance because we see you on the program. So I saw this calling for it just before COVID. I expanded in that same facility to a

hallway. I had a hallway. So we had multiple rooms. One was the administrative room and across the hall was a very large space that I divided in half. And it was some individual therapy rooms, my office, and then a big play area. Two weeks later, COVID. Oh, geez. So I was like, oh my God. So I close it down. I ended up shutting the administrative room off and then just moving all of the administrators. At the time, there were six of them into the other side because no kids were coming. And we were closed for some time, but we also leveled up in that time because we could do teletherapy. So that was interesting, reaching people because it was online.

It was amazing. I've been able to ramp up in times of difficulty. And then now today we have two equal five and a half thousand square foot clinic, facilities. Both of them have within them a sensory play gym called the Kidology PlaySpace. So that became a place for our families to do open play, have OTPT, occupational physical therapy, birthday parties. So it's a separate business from Kidology, but they work together. You get to birthday parties? We do. Oh, that's so cute. Describe the space for me. So we have two of them, and they're not the same. One is a jungle gym theme. So when you come in, there's like leaves and browns and

yellows, it literally looks like a jungle gym. And there's monkeys and different animals you'd find in the jungle, soft mat play with a ball pit. And you like climb up and there's this like massive mega slide that children and their parents can go down, like a jumbo big one. And then we have a turbo, the spinny, like the round slide. And it's just like a jungle gym fun spot. And then there's a trampoline. Wow, amazing. And the other one is all rock wall style with zip lines, teabone Zipline and foam ball pit. So they're a little bit different. Like one for the active kids, one for the more imaginative kids.

That's a great way to put it, yes. Tell me about getting linked up with all these insurance providers. That couldn't have been easy. No. Initially, I had started to work with a company who was adult-based and specialized in, like, one therapy. Somebody recommended them to me. I reached out to them, and they promised me, yes, we're going to credential you with

everybody, you're going to be getting paid in 30 days. So I start to work and accept these insurances because I know that like you'll get the pay out after if you keep working. And we were like 90, 120 days in and I hadn't gotten paid at all. And I'm like, okay, I'm in trouble. Like these people are not credentialing me. Something's wrong. So I had to go back and apply for non-participating agreement so that I could get paid for the kids that I had to service to that point. Thank God it was only one insurance. So it was an easier situation. And then I'm, moved forward and actually hired an administrative assistant to help me, but we ourselves reached out to all of the insurances we wanted and the state level program and applied, like for a college

application. We filled out apps to become credentialed, sent in all our information, and that was the start. But it was like two insurances, three insurances, and then more and more and more. And now we have the 15. So it's really great. But insurance comes with, like, I know providers, who are cash businesses. I don't know how they survive. You have to have the right, you know, social economic location. Insurance is amazing, but it's a difficult program because three years later, somebody can come back and be like, I want 30 grand.

And you're going to be like, why? I worked that. I have all the notes. Well, we didn't like how you wrote this. And you're just like, are you serious? And you have to appeal and it gets like, there's like, you know, legal. And so it gets messy. But because we're able to service so many people, you know, do you have insurance?

Do I have insurance? Yeah. So you're more likely to go to a provider that accepts your insurance, right? Yeah, of course. And that's where we win. Yeah. So I'm willing to take the risk for the reward of helping the people. And how have you gone about expanding your, you know, customer base?

So do you guys do advertising as a kind of word of mouth? How do you kind of get the word out? So I want to say initially, people were just seeing me like in daycares and stuff when I was going out. And then when we got centers, they would see our signage. Today, I have a marketing director recently promoted somebody who worked with in the company for a long time. She just has the understanding, my vision and understanding, and I'm very lucky to have her. And we meet to talk about, you know, we have a monthly events that we attend. So family picnics and barbecues and back to school stuff and like festivals.

And now, right now, like, trunk or treat is everywhere. So kids love free candy and trick-or-treating. Trunk Retreat is like a safe way for little kids to do it. So we decorate everything for kidology. We're even hosting one by our plaza where we're located. We also have a mobile therapy bus that I converted. So I bought a bus and I wrapped it in our logo with like beautiful kids' faces and they all look like superheroes. When we drive the bus, it gets a lot of attention.

I sponsored the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team last season. So we had a really great partnership and we did their like quiz uncertain. nights and our logo was up. So we do a lot of... And you're based in Philly? Yeah. We do a lot of things for marketing and branding. I want people to recognize the brand. But because I'm into clinics right now, I'm not doing any like big advertising, but people know us. And our biggest marketing is obviously pediatricians. Sure. Just people saying going to them. How do you kind of, you know, break into that audience and, you know, convince them that, you know, you are a good person for them to recommend? Tell them that we're the best.

Yeah, basically. When the marketing director goes out, she builds a relationship with that office. But the ideal situation is that I get some sort of conversation with the doctors there. And once they meet me, I can offer new expertise about things I've read or studied. Like last year, I got a certification as a myofunction therapist. So that's an add-on as a speech pathologist that not every speech clinic will have. We have innovative technology and neurobrainwave functions. functionality, things that we're doing now, special laser light goggles that we put on kids so that during the session, if it's a child that's super hyperactive, they can calm down and just brain engaging new science that's out. We present them. We present them with things that we're doing, initiatives we're taking. We love to connect. So if it's a doctor that we don't work with and a kiddo comes in for an eval, I always let that doctor know so that we have a relationship. Hey, your client is here too. Here's their eval.

let's keep in touch. And I think they really enjoy that relationship, and they tend to send us more people after that. Right, just being proactive about reaching out to these people and kind of helping them to say, like, I am already helping these kids, you know, and like, let's help them together. Absolutely. When we come back, Lubas shares how building trust with doctors

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fast, 100,000 in year one, one million in year two, quickly outgrowing the garage and pushing them to sign their first warehouse lease. Through that rapid growth, they relied on their Capital One business credit card and cashback rewards on ads spent to help fund the move and keep momentum strong. Learn more at Capital One.com slash business cards. What's sort of the next couple of years look like for you guys? Are you thinking about, you know, opening up another facility or, you know, kind of expanding into more telehealth stuff? So for a decade, I've been, you know, this is the first time the last two years that my, my, my, two locations are equal.

They're both the same size. They both have a sensory gym. Like there was a time when I had a small office and a big office and there was all these changeover. Now is really this first experience that we're same same. And I definitely think that I'm not done in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia area. I have one location in the suburbs by me. I have one in northeast Philadelphia, which is like just a little past the suburbs.

And now my intention is to go into Center City, Philadelphia, which is like the city. and I do want to start with a pop-up. Taking the bus out really shows me like where there's a need. People see the bus, that call. We're researching different areas where we're not currently located to pop-up. So maybe two more locations in PA. I'd love to do a national deal. If anyone's out there and wants to do a national deal, I'm your lady.

I think that there's definitely a lot of things ahead for me, especially because ABA behavior is very big right now in the pediatric space. and with behavior comes delays in speech, occupational physical therapy. So it's an interesting fusion. I'm also working on building my personal brand. And I've launched a product. It's called the Confident IEP Parent. And a lot of kids that work with us, they have an IFSP,

individualized family service plan. And then once they turn three, it's an IEP individualized education plan. And that plan will stay with them if needed until they graduate high school. and this is this controversial IEP versus 504 plan. It's a deep topic. But I do have a new page on Instagram for that. And my personal branding is finally finding my voice as a speech expert, a developmental expert, and this IEP advocate as the voice of the families.

I know a lot here and I want to help people. And I think that if they learn how to communicate with their schools and setting the right goals for their kiddos, they'll be so successful. What are the big innovations been in speech therapy over the last decade? Oh, my God. I think, well, I don't know so much on speech therapy in terms of, aside from maybe audiology, like hearing supplies for kiddos who have those types of issues. But right now in the OTPT space, the technology beyond AI, like search engine, but like virtual reality is very big.

And I'll tell you why there's programs that you can use on your phone, your computer, laptop and you like set up for the kiddo, it does a digital reading of the body. The child is like immersed into a video game as an avatar and they're like running, jumping, doing whatever they're told as the command. And then at the end, it does like a grading sheet. And it's like the left arm is you know, weaker than the right arm, the left leg has all this data 20 minutes and all this data. And then the PTOT can work on strengthening those areas. And I'm really waiting and maybe all get to be part of something where they do it for like oral functionality because I'd love a virtual rendering of like where people are where the misarticulation is coming from in Maya

where somebody's placing their tongue if they're supposed to be putting it in the roof of their mouth why apnea's are coming like there's a deeper technology that needs to be formed it just hasn't been formed yet I mean it's really interesting to think about giving kids something that's in that language of video games because obviously kids love video games right and by and these are safe Right, and meeting them where they are, right? And when stuff that they're already doing going on to, you know, your fortnights or your robots or whatever, yes. It's just, I'm sure it's very natural for them.

No, and like, that's the win, exactly, because we can work in the center and teach those skills. And then they can take it home and the parent just logs in and they're playing that same game. But it's a safe game. Yeah. There's no predators on there calling them somewhere. God knows, that's terrible right now. Absolutely. And they're actually getting measurable results because we're still just.

doing therapy, it just looks like a playful thing. And that's the whole trick of play-based therapy. That's how we win. Right. You don't want them to feel like they're doing work. You want it to feel like they're having fun. And I imagine that you guys do a lot of like evaluations in these play places. Yes. It's one of my favorite things. When we do events, we can do screenings during that time. And we just like look around and see if there's anything that stands out. And then you go up and you start to converse with the parent and say, oh, you know, I noticed so-and-so, are you already getting therapy? And often they're so relieved because they think that it's uncomfortable. Nobody wants to call out their child for something that they're not doing. And it's hard to face

that, especially if it's a first-time parent, they're like, oh, my child, everyone's child is perfect. Of course. It's really about creating a way for them to be able to feel safe enough to communicate to you, hey, you know what, I do recognize my kid has something and I want to get a fixed. Like, can we work on this versus feeling attacked? But people will come to us. They want the eval. They want the goals. And then like, they don't commit to going. And you're like, well, why didn't you come? And they have a variety of reasons. But it's hard when it's the reason of they can't face it. So now they're holding the kid back. Yeah. That's a different topic. Right. But I imagine it's a lot of what you have to think about. We counsel parents all the time. Yeah. That's the truth. So we're not just

pediatric therapists. We're counseling families. Yeah. I mean, it's really great work that you're doing. And yeah, that's amazing. Thank you. I'm curious as I'm an AI reporter. So, like, I do a lot of this stuff.

And I've seen, I've gotten many, many pitches from companies that are doing these things. Is there stuff in that world that you're excited about? Are you kind of more like, let's wait and see what happens? I definitely, so right now with photo biomodulation, low level light lasers in beauty, It's really popular to wear those red legs. Like the masks and in physical health, they're doing it post-surgery on the body. So for the kids to de-inflame the brain, so if a child is on the spectrum or has ADD, ADHD, and they have a delay, getting regular therapeutic progression is great. But to enhance it, people are applying these low-level light lasers.

And there's four colors, green, blue, violet, and red. to enhance the therapy over a shorter period of time. So it's like an intensive and there are results. So this is a very interesting technology. It falls back into the goggles that I was mentioning. It's neuroadaptive technology. We're not doing too much of that yet. Again, it's difficult because people get worried.

Yeah, I'm sure parents have questions. They're like, what is that? What are you putting on my child's face? But then the people that are parents that are willing to do whatever, they're so in, and then they'll tell everyone. there's this software called Tomadis, and it's actually a headphones with special beats and music and beeping brainwave. That has been a big hit. It's really popular in Europe, not so much in the States.

I've thought about getting that. Sometimes I really feel like going back to the basics and like what we do, the traditional therapy, it takes its time, but it's very reliable. Yeah. And it works. It sticks. Yeah, there's a reason that we've been doing it for. Yes. Hundreds.

And we're just reinduced. reinventing it. You have to be creative, especially when working with kids, but we go up to 21 years old. So you start to utilize the skills for a young adult where like, hey, we're going to pretend that you're going to have friends over and you're going to make a shopping list to go to the grocery store and you need to ask the cashier where to find blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So now they're building like that social skills. They're utilizing their expressive language skills, things that they, when you're in the clinic, it's just you and the provider. the therapist. But utilizing that and now taking it as a carryover into the real world,

that's next level too. It's not AI, but it's real. Have you heard about any? Like, what do you think is relevant to us that I should look at? Well, the thing that I always hear about is people using AI tools in the initial interview or in the talk just so that you have something that's able to take notes. To record it. That's been a game changer for me, actually. Because when I do the myo function evaluation, I'm so busy, like looking at their oral. features and talking to the mom and I have to engage the child because if they're small, they don't want me to look in their mouth. There's so much going on.

So I do keep the recorder and it helps me with my notes so that if I didn't have that, like I didn't before, it would take me longer to complete the assessment. Now, I have all the data. I just like program it and then I put my voice, my information, and it's done. Yeah, you just review it, tweak it a bit and I'm sure that saves you a lot of time. In that respect, I use that, yes. You know, 10 years, you must have seen some of these kids really grow up. So can I talk about that?

So interesting. So I have three kids. My oldest child is going to be 10 this April. And a lot of the people that are in sports around him, I see them in the community. And they're kids that grew up in my clinics. And I'm like, oh, my God, I can't believe it. You know, when I go up to the parents' parents, always remember me, the kids are smaller, so they don't. Yeah, sure.

They don't all stay this whole time. but generally, like, between six months to two years is our time frame, depending on the need. It's really beautiful to be in my area and because I'm so involved in it and getting to see the kiddos succeeding so much. And knowing that I was part of that, that's huge. Yeah, I'm sure that's extremely gratifying. It's amazing. Yeah. All right.

Well, Louva, I think that's basically all the questions that, you know, I had for you. This was great. Awesome. Thank you so much. That's all for this episode of your next move. Our producer is Blake Godem. editorial editing and sound design by Nick Torres. Additional editing from Sam Gibower and Tad Wadams,

and our executive producer is Josh Christensen. If you haven't already, subscribe to Your Next Move on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And Your Next Move is a production of Inc and Capital One business.