You stared at a spreadsheet. You thought, "I have no idea where we actually are financially." Then you closed the tab and got back to the work that helps kids.

That does not make you bad at business. It makes you an ABA owner running without the one role every other healthcare business takes for granted. Someone who speaks the language of healthcare finance.

In this episode I sit down with Ethan Schwarzbach, founder of Flychain and a proud sponsor of ABA C.A.R.E.S. Flychain calls itself the financial operating system for ABA. Think of it as a version of QuickBooks built specifically for this field, run by bookkeepers who only work in ABA. Ethan's story starts close to home. His dad was a dentist who kept his books in a shoebox for forty years and took a discount on his practice sale because of it. That problem is the one Ethan set out to solve for owners like you.

We get into the numbers that actually run your business:

• The two figures that tell you almost everything. Gross profit (aim north of 40%) and net profit (aim north of 10%), and what each one is really pointing you toward.
• Why no single payer should carry more than about 40% of your revenue, and how to think about it when most of your families are Medicaid.
• What healthy tech spend looks like (2.5% to 4% of revenue) and how to spot the vendors quietly overcharging you.
• The three-payroll rule. Keep three payrolls in the bank, and multiply your startup costs by 1.25, because you will use the cushion.
• How to scale without scaling yourself into a cash crunch. The 45-day payback math on every new BCBA.
• When taking on an investor helps, and when a merchant cash advance becomes a nail in the coffin.
• The one delegation exercise every owner should run this week.

Ethan's whole philosophy fits on a bumper sticker. "We're here to help the people who are helping people." And his advice for finding him in Boston is even simpler. You've got problems, he's got answers.

Find Flychain at https://flychain.us They'll also be with us at ABA C.A.R.E.S. in Boston this August, so you can bring your real numbers and ask in person. We'll see you there, or live streaming from the other side of the screen.