The Cognitive Emporium - Hendersonville, TN, USA

HappyNeuron Pro Case Study: The Cognitive Emporium

Type: Online Neuro-Educational Services

Location: Hendersonville, TN, USA

Size: 2 therapists

HappyNeuron Pro user since: 2019

Clinic's challenge:

Clinic was seeking a solution for providing online and group therapy for smart but struggling students.

About The Cognitive Emporium

The Cognitive Emporium is an online therapeutic service that provides cognitive remediation therapy for people of all ages struggling with ADHD, learning disabilities, and undiagnosed cognitive deficits that prevent them from academic or work success. The Cognitive Emporium is operated and founded by Kyra Minichan.

Being a woman owned business, Kyra and her team encourage women from diverse backgrounds to be involved in healthcare and use their expertise without conforming to a standard work schedule. As a therapist and a mother of 2, Kyra built the Cognitive Emporium 8 years ago. She serves as the CEO and as a speech-language pathologist at The Cognitive Emporium.

The Cognitive Emporium was created out of the need to service the smart but struggling learner by educating, equipping, and empowering them to optimal academic success. Many parents come to Kyra not knowing how to help their child who is smart but struggling academically.

Kyra Minichan, M.A., CCC-SLP

CEO and SLP

Kyra comes from a small town in West Virginia, where therapy services are not accessible by many people. Now located in Hendersonville, TN, she made the decision to provide services online so that people can access her services beyond the Hendersonville zipcode.

“I have always had that thing in the back of my head and heart that makes me want to help and not forget where I came from. I had people 45 min away who were traveling so much to work with me. Doing this is not feasible for today’s family.” – Kyra Minichan

How HappyNeuron Helps

Kyra works with clients of all ages, many of whom who are intelligent but are struggling academically. Even though people may have high IQ’s, they may have cognitive deficits that have not been diagnosed. This is particularly frustrating for college students who are taking gradual steps to becoming independent and are responsible for their own academic success.

“With kids, I don’t put ceilings on them. I knew a student in college with an IQ of 136 who didn’t have executive functioning skills and was at risk of flunking out of school. I worked with him and he finished the semester with a 4.0, and received scholarships. This kind of outcome brings me joy.” – Kyra Minichan

Another aspect of her practice is assisting high school students with standardized test preparation. Kyra acknowledges that students can spend hours doing test preparation with books that do not lead to significant improvement in scores.

“For a lot of kids, ACT scores are so important these days. Kids will spend hours doing ACT prep and their scores won’t move. My clients will move 6-8 points by doing my program because of the cognitive rehabilitation.” – Kyra Minichan

Studying for hours is exhausting and ineffective for many students. Without guidance, students could be employing poor studying skills that do not help them retain an learn information.

“I do intensity duration and frequency. We really load the brain to make the impact go further. We do a minimum of 25 hours consistently, 4-5 hours a week for a minimum of 25 sessions. Sometimes I go longer. That’s where I make the greatest impact. It’s like a gym.” – Kyra Minichan

Kyra found HappyNeuron Pro at a speech-language pathology conference in Los Angeles, CA in 2017. She first brought HappyNeuron Pro into her practice by using the free worksheets. She enjoyed the variety of materials and complexity of the exercises available. Kyra has then found that HappyNeuron Pro is able to replace hard materials, as workbooks can build up into stacks and go untouched in an office.

“I’m amazed! Back 25 years ago, I was working my tail off. I have a gazillion workbooks, but had to go through all of them even though they are collecting dust. I’m grateful to have HappyNeuron Pro because I know what therapy looked like before. I am shocked that people don’t use it!” – Kyra Minichan

HappyNeuron Pro has provided other benefits, such as providing a product specialist to assist with using the software and serving as a contact point for any and all questions.

How HappyNeuron Has Helped Kyra Grow Her Business

“I do group therapy. You know what is crazy? Speech-language pathology is the most underpaid because SLP’s don’t usually do group therapy. Before HappyNeuron Pro, we didn’t have tools to do group therapy.” – Kyra Minichan

In her practice, Kyra runs group sessions consisting of 5-6 clients per session. She uses HappyNeuron Pro’s exercises in her sessions while monitoring each participant’s performance. With provided guidance, her clients complete exercises while practicing and learning new strategies to overcome obstacles. Doing this in a group session allows participants to share their own strategies and encourage creative problem-solving among group members.

HappyNeuron Pro has provided Kyra a mechanism to provide group therapy, thus allowing her to work with multiple clients at a time.

“I scaled back my practice and reduced it to two therapists. HappyNeuron Pro has allowed me to see more clients with less therapists. I’m a small business, I have grown my business organically by doing the work that I love and by not settling for products that don’t work.” – Kyra Minichan

Solution:

By incorporating HappyNeuron Pro into the practice, Kyra was able to provide group therapy and work with more clients.

Outcomes:

Using HappyNeuron Pro allowed Kyra to scale her business by enabling her to work with more clients at once.

For more information...

To learn more about Kyra and The Cognitive Emporium, you can visit their website at thecognitiveemporium.com, or by calling 615-757-3643.

To learn how HappyNeuron Pro can help you reach more clients and see the array of features HappyNeuron Pro has to practice cognitive skills, contact us or begin a Free Trial today.

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