Timothy Zercher 0:00

Thank you so much for joining us, Francis. We're really excited to have you on, excited to learn a little bit about the more unique work you're doing.

Frances Pereira 0:05

Thank you, Tim. I'm very excited to talk about what we're going to get into today. So thank you for having me.

Timothy Zercher 0:10

Absolutely. Absolutely. So to start off, I always like to ask our guests, what brought you into the behavioral health space?

Frances Pereira 0:15

Well, like a lot of people in getting a degree in psychology nowadays, my initial need was what do I do with a bachelor's degree in psychology? This was 20 years ago or so. And I happened upon a job opportunity for a behavior technician in the ABA field for a well-known at the time company. And as soon as I got into the training, it all made sense to me. I was starting to see the A's and the B's and the C's everywhere and everybody's behavior. When I would work with clients as a behavior technician, I would really get a sense of, you know, functions of behavior and the interventions just kind of clicked for me. And the rest is sort of history, I started to see how effective ABA could be and how effective behavior supports could be traditionally in a clinical sense, but also in other senses, you know, as I often say, behavior is behavior is behavior. And it really just became something that I just couldn't turn away from, couldn't unsee.

Timothy Zercher 1:19

Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. That's I think how a lot of people they end up in the field in random ways and then they find out that they love it, that they love the work, they love the people.

Frances Pereira 1:27

Yeah, absolutely. I hear it kind of swapping stories for sure. It just found me somehow.

Timothy Zercher 1:33

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. I want to probe deeper on applying ABA beyond the autism space, because I know that that is something that you really work on hard. What is one area outside of traditional kind of clinical care where you think ABA could be making a huge impact, but it's just not?

Frances Pereira 1:48

Yeah, I'll give two answers. One is, you know, outside of the traditional space, but not outside of where ABA is already, which is in, you know, organizational behavior management, so that OBM space definitely, you know, has been a part of the field for multiple decades. A lot of people out there already working on that. But I really think that behavior analysis could go so much further in supporting just regular workplaces. I have, you know, friends that are not in the behavioral health space and they struggle so much in their workplaces. And I think really behavior analysis as it applies to supporting leadership really has a long way to go in practice to really help improve the environments that regular everyday people are working in outside of education, outside of, like you said, traditional clinical care. And then sort of further outside, I really think public health, public policy, and health and wellness spaces could really benefit from an influx of behavior analysts, really looking at how we can change behavior on a societal scale, honestly.

Timothy Zercher 2:55

Absolutely. Tweaking small things that have huge impacts on how people behave when it multiplies times thousands and thousands of people in your community, et cetera.

Frances Pereira 3:02

Yeah. And really thinking again, just like the basics of ABA, what reinforces and punishes behavior? You know, what factors are at play here more than just what we think we should be doing or what we think people should do? What actually changes what people do?

Timothy Zercher 3:16

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So through your work uh and quantum outcomes and obviously your your supervision work as well, you're helping student analysts build leadership and real world skills. What is something that you wish more BCBAs were trained before entering that real world, before entering the field?

Frances Pereira 3:34

Yeah. So not so much a clinical skill or a hard skill, but more so of a concept. I think it's super important for student analysts or new behavior analysts to really understand the difference between practical or like funding-based requirements and the actual science of behavior analysis. I think a lot of students, a lot of people coming into the field really get stuck in this is what assessment has to look like. This is what reinforcement interventions have to look like because you know they've seen these things in medically or insurance funded environment or in school district funded environment and not realizing that your assessment process doesn't need to look like this if you are working in supporting an organization and their performance management or if you are working one-to-one with a client working on their wellness schools. The assessment process isn't going to look the same. You're not going to use the same assessments. An intervention package won't look the same, a treatment plan won't look the same. And so there's a big difference between what you do as a behavior analyst on a day-to-day basis, depending on the environment that you're working in, maybe who the payer or the funding sources, and how to actually apply the science. And I think that's something that can be really challenging for people only working in one environment and getting kind of stuck in that.

Timothy Zercher 4:55

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because it's completely different. I mean, it's also different for every single patient you work with, right? You just can't follow the same set of five activities every single session all the time.

Frances Pereira 5:05

Absolutely, absolutely. And even the same target, right? The same skill will look different. The protocols may look different, the goal may look different, and really try to kind of avoid the idea of sort of monkey see, monkey do. This is how I've seen this program run, or this is how I've seen this intervention applied or created. And so that's what I'm going to do. And not taking the variables that are in front of you in that environment with that person and applying the science that way.

Timothy Zercher 5:33

Yeah. That makes complete sense. Makes complete sense. So I think you're still a fairly small organization. Um what have you found is the hardest part about building your organization, whether that is actually recruiting people or really it's more so recruiting the proper type of clients, the proper type of partners.

Frances Pereira 5:48

Yeah, absolutely. We are still small. It's myself and another BCBA doing um individual supervision of students as well as group supervision and uh consulting with ABA companies, looking to create their own in-house supervision or internship program. So it's just two of us. It's still very small. And I think you alluded to it there that the hardest part, I think, is finding the right fit, both in growing the organization internally and finding other people to be on our team and finding clients. The board has published numbers. There's quite a few BCBAs, BC ABAs, and aspiring analysts as well across the country. There's not necessarily a shortage of student analysts, but not everybody wants to follow the same approach. Not everybody should follow the same approach. And I think our focus on leadership, professionalism, and being able to apply the science in different environments can make it challenging to find students or companies that want to, you know, kind of follow that approach and also put a priority on those things. So finding the right fit, I think is definitely the challenging part.

Timothy Zercher 6:55

Absolutely. Absolutely. So obviously, we are a marketing agency that specializes in behavioral health. So we always have to ask some marketing type questions. So I've got I've got two for you. First up, what is working best right now outside of word of mouth when it comes to acquiring those good fit clients, those good ABA clinics or potential partnerships?

Frances Pereira 7:13

Yeah. I will say word of mouth has been our biggest, our biggest it is like it should be.

Timothy Zercher 7:19

It always should be.

Frances Pereira 7:20

Yep, definitely people, you know, students talking to peers in their in their programs and different companies and things like that. I think that another thing that has worked for us is with any marketing that we do, which is limited at this point, we're still small, but just being very transparent and honest and descriptive about what our approach is to supervision, about what our priorities are, about our sort of mission and vision for the future of behavior analysis really helps people identify whether this is something that they can get behind and want to be involved in and participate in, or if they're, you know, looking for a maybe a more traditional environment or things like that. I think, again, being very clear in our approach and how we support our our students and how we consult and guide organizations to support their students has been our best help in people identifying if you know it's something that they want to pursue.

Timothy Zercher 8:15

Absolutely. Absolutely. So last question then. What is one marketing tactic that you're seeing out there in in the wild in the market uh that you're watching really carefully?

Frances Pereira 8:25

I say this very neutrally, but I'm always watching just, you know, the idea of posting on social media and sort of being a thought leader and those types of things. I I find it challenging because there is often little space for nuance in social media. And especially in the ABA kind of space, there's a lot of headlines or articles or posts that are meant to wrap your attention. And again, it's a complicated, complex field. And it can be difficult, I think, to find a place in social media where you're being nuanced, you're being transparent, and still getting, you know, interest from other people.

Timothy Zercher 9:07

Absolutely. It's always a challenge to balance communicating the full thought with communicating enough that it's still interesting.

Frances Pereira 9:13

Exactly. Yep.

Timothy Zercher 9:14

Yeah. Always a challenge. Well, thank you so much for joining. Thank you for the the work you're doing. I think you're impacting a lot of a lot of young professionals' lives, and uh, I'm I'm sure you're making a significant impact for them.

Frances Pereira 9:23

I hope so. I appreciate you having me on, Tim, and and asking these questions. Great.

Timothy Zercher 9:27

Absolutely. Absolutely.