“The most important opportunity is the one right in front of you. Maximize your effort and results in your current situation to springboard to future success,” Barry said.
Scott Barry, founder of Centria Health Care and Broad College of Business alum, spoke to the Residential Business Community and left the 220 students feeling inspired by his passion. Barry launched Centria to provide home health solutions to patients in Michigan. Among the services provided by Centria are catastrophic injury care, senior care services, and applied behavior analysis (ABA Therapy). Today, Centria is the largest provider of ABA Therapy in the country.
Barry launched Centria Health Care and today, it is the largest ABA Therapy provider in the country.
ABA Therapy is a specialized form of therapy for children with autism. The goal of this therapy is to help children with autism interact with the world around them in a meaningful and beneficial manner. One-third of the kids who get ABA therapy before the age of three have the ability to enter regular classrooms without specialized help at school. Centria Healthcare currently serves 1,700 kids in ABA therapy, and Barry set the goal of serving 20,000 kids in the next five years for this form of specialized therapy.
“Take a focused and thoughtful approach to everything you do. Be a positive leader, focus on execution, increase your capacity, and always ask for more,” Barry said. Practicing what he preaches, Barry sets his own goal for always doing more. Centria is recruiting investors to help bring the company to the next level by expanding into new states, hire more professionals, and help people build their lives from homes versus a hospital room.
One thing Barry accredits his success is simply saying, “yes.”
“If it’s legal, ethical, and good for our patient the answer is yes. Saying yes is important because if a customer hears no, they will simply look for the yes somewhere else,” he said.
To help students better understand how they can succeed in their future endeavors Barry shared four things that he personally looks for in his employees, a mentality he believes all students should adapt:
- Execution. Always making sure you understand in expert detail what is expected of you and how you can do it. “Leaders set expectations for themselves and deliver results.”
- Attitude. “Always be forward thinking and take the time to appreciate the people working for and with you.”
- Ambition. As more stacks up on your plate, the capacity to deal with those things should increase. “Cultivate the ability to increase your capacity and do more with less.”
- Building relationships. This is the most important thing you can do. “Reach out to the people above and below you. Those relationships are like putting deposits in the bank that you can call on when needed.”
“I really loved the way Scott Barry inspired us to go into everything with such a positive attitude. I found it important how he said that even when you carry a positive attitude and it doesn’t lead to success, it is still beneficial to you and the way you present yourself for future opportunities,” said Ryan Andrews, RBC freshman.
