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The Power of ABA and Speech Therapy with Rose Griffin · ABA Business Leaders

• speaker-0: The speech therapist is maybe like, I'm not gonna collaborate with the BCBA. I see that a lot in Facebook groups. I just read this yesterday where the speech therapist is like, well, the BCBA has all these goals and I don't agree with them. And they have this philosophical difference on getting to the same goal of helping the child communicate. I'm not being mean when I comment and say, have you reached out to the BCBA? Because usually the answer is no. I get it. They're wanting to vent, but have you reached out? Because that's we're ethically called to reach out. speaker-1: Welcome to ABA Business Leaders brought to you by 3 Pi Square, where we discuss topics on how to create and grow an ethical and sustainable ABA practice. speaker-2: Whether you're starting, scaling, or thinking about selling your business, we're here to share insights, stories, and strategies to help you on the journey. speaker-1: We owned a successful ABA practice for over ten years. speaker-2: And now we help other ABA business owners do the same, without all the chaos. speaker-1: Stick around, you're in the right place. speaker-2: Hello, everyone. Welcome to ABA Business Leaders Podcast brought to you by 3Pi Squared. I'm April. Well, and today with us, we have Rose Griffin. Rose is a speech and language pathologist and a BCBA. Welcome, Rose. I want to promote your podcast and let our listeners know that prior to Rose coming onto our podcast, we actually was a guest on speaker-1: I'm Steven. speaker-0: Thank you so much for having me. speaker-2: She was like so thank ⁓ we're so thankful for her having us on her podcast. ⁓ it would you tell us the name of your your podcast? speaker-0: Absolutely. It's called the ABA speech podcast and it was great to have a conversation and meet with both of you and that episode will air sometime this summer. We try to batch pretty far in advance, but it was great to learn more about your work and all the great things that you're doing in the field. And we have almost three hundred episodes. So we have a new episode that airs every single Tuesday, all about communication and anything that would be interesting for speech therapist or B C B A to hear, we cover. speaker-2: Excellent. Thank you for sharing about that. Our conversation today is ⁓ about what it well really, what is it like to be ⁓ an SLP and a B C B A. And you know, we were talking ⁓ before we started, before we pressed record today about how we've been having conversations recently around the systems and within our field, right? And really talking about collaborating with others, understanding that just each one of us as a professional, as a B C B A or you know, whatever professional you are within the field that you're listening to, ⁓ does it you don't you you're you're not getting all the things. And and so even as one B C B A to another B C B A, we each have different strengths and weaknesses. And so ⁓ just really looking at ⁓ supporting each other and collaborating and and so I thought having the conversation about speech and B C B A together and what that looks like for you and what brought you into the field and and and for both fields really kind of your story of what got you here. speaker-0: Absolutely. I actually became a speech therapist because my mom gave me a career test and it said speech therapist. And I was like, what's that? I fa I shadowed a family friend and I was like, ⁓ my gosh, this is amazing. You get to work with people every day. You get to help. There's not a lot of math because math was not my strong suit. And that was it. I declared my major, freshman year, never look back. I got my master's degree and I loved it. My second year I worked at the Cleveland Clinic. And they had an autism program and it was an ABA program in essence. And this was many years ago, over 20 years ago. And so we were working with students who had very unsafe behavior. And these students could not be educated appropriately and or safely in a public school. And so they would come to us in this more restrictive environment. And so that was the first time I ever learned about ABA. And I thought, wow, this is amazing because we had a school. Full of kids who were the hard-to-reach kids, kids who were younger, kids who were 18 and had no way to communicate besides using very unsafe problem behavior. And I will just never forget helping so many of those learners for the very first time communicate and use a device for the first time, have their first words for the first time. And what was so frustrating about that is that a lot of these kids were in special education services. For years and years and years and nobody could reach them. And I thought, wow, amazing speech therapy and ABA. This is literally transforming lives. And that was it. I was like, I need to learn everything that I can about ABA. And I it's funny because I used to share an office with two other colleagues that were speech therapists. And I would say, I want to go places and tell people about ABA because this is A long time ago. This is over 20 years ago before ABA was covered by insurance. And we know that's totally changed the landscape of the field and has been more accessible for others, but also has caused some other problems. And so I'm really kind of living my dream at ABA speech and being able to talk to people and say, hey, speech therapy and ABA together, this is the dream team. May not seem like it at first, but it really is. When we collaborate and we work together, we can literally transform lives and help a student on their communication journey. And I just don't know what is more exciting than that. speaker-1: So are you a speech therapist first or a B C B A? speaker-2: ⁓ huh. speaker-0: Yes, I was a speech therapist first, and there has been so many changes in from the BACB about how you become both. Sometimes you just had to take the 15 hours, do your supervision, take the test, still a lot of things. Then at some points you had to get your whole other masters. And so everybody has ebbed and flowed. But I have been, I feel like I'm one of the OGs because I have been a speech therapist for over 20 years and I've been duly certified for about 15 of those. So most of my career and You know, April asked, How is it? I love it. In real life, as a in a clinical setting, it's amazing. I also have an online business called ABA speech. So I'm talking about ABA in spaces where maybe people don't want to hear about ABA. Yeah. And so that has been more difficult. But I always say I'm really dead inside and callous. So I believe in the message. I believe in the power of the science. So if you like ABA or you're curious or you wanna be collaborative because we're ethically called to collaborate, then you should follow me. But you know what? If you're anti ABA and there's no turning back and you're gonna do everything to not collaborate, I'm probably not your cup of tea. So please don't follow me. speaker-2: Ha ha ha ha. speaker-1: And like how do you like do you find it difficult? Because like I've you know, we've had other podcasts and we've talked to some B C B A's and and they're like, ⁓ speech therapy, they you know, they won't ⁓ work with me or they think this or that, right? Like how i is it difficult to kind of pair these together? Are you fine are you having success? Is it or is that just all hype and Facebook and it it really on the ground, everybody's trying to do their best? speaker-0: Real life, clinically, I've never met somebody who was nasty or who was not willing to collaborate. Right. But in Instagram land where I spent a lot of my time, that's my main social media platform. And it's funny because PhDs, RBTs, speech therapists, B C B A's, I'll meet them at conferences and I say, How'd you find out about me? And it's Instagram. So we're all on there spending too much time on social, but I don't know. It's just in my brain, and I know the brain of other people that are duly certified. It's a no brainer. It makes sense. How could we not do these things together? But with information that we're taking in on social media, there's a lot of misinformation out there. And so we can see things online and say, like, ⁓ well, that's just terrible. I would never, you know, sign my kid up for AVA, or I would never do that. And there's unfortunate things that happen and there's providers that are not doing their best, but that's in both fields. And so It's just hard. That narrative is out there. And so I never want to not listen to somebody's lived experience. Asking open ended questions like, Well, what is your experience with ABA? I think is good and to practice active listening because I am one person, I am one SLP B C B A. But if I can make somebody be more open minded about collaboration, then I feel like that's ⁓ doing my part. speaker-2: We were talking about knowing not knowing what you don't know. We talk about this often in various ⁓ with various topics, but it so for those who are B BAs and they are looking at you know, providing teaching a new skill. how do you how would you go about knowing if if there is if this is a skill that you would need to reach out to a Yeah. ⁓ how do you know? How do you know that this isn't just just a a behavioral thing that you can work on within your scope? How do you know that you need to reach out to us? speaker-0: Well, you know what's sad is when I first started my online business, I just thought everybody worked in settings like I did, which always had speech therapists, BCBAs, OTs, PTs, school psychs, et cetera. Because I've worked clinically, that I also worked in the schools. And so my brain was always programmed for this is just how everybody's work setting is. And what I've learned that it's just not. There are ABA companies that are larger companies that It just is not in the business plan to have a speech language pathologist on the team. And I I think that's unfortunate. And I think that it at a minimum, they should either be in the ABA speech connection or they should be utilizing somebody as a consultant. Because there are so many things that we as speech language pathologists do learn. And BCBAs just don't have access to that in pre service training. And I'll tell you the one that's huge is augmentative communication, AAC. Speech therapists may take one course on AAC. But BCBAs usually, I would say 99% of the time, do not get a course on augmentative communication, which is so sad because we are tasked with helping to support students who are either a good candidate for AAC or in a worst case scenario, are coming in with an AAC device and the speech therapist is maybe like, I'm not going to collaborate with the BCBA. And I see that a lot in Facebook groups. I just read this yesterday where the speech therapist is like, well, the BCBA. Is it has all these goals and I don't agree with them. And they have this philosophical difference on getting to the same goal of helping the child communicate. And I'm not being mean when I comment and say, have you reached out to the BCBA? Because usually the answer is no. I get it. They're wanting to vent, right? I get it. Like I vent in real life. Okay, not online. It's not the place to vent. But have you reached out? Because that's we're ethically called to reach out. It doesn't mean that we're gonna think the same thing. I've heard BCBA is just completely, you know, murdering my goals and and not working on them the right way and thinking, ⁓ do I have time for that conversation? You know? But we are ethically called to collaborate. This is what we signed up to do. Is it always easy? Absolutely not. But it is what we said that we would do when we became a speech therapist for BCBA. So I think we at least owe it to the child, to the client, a conversation, because that's what we're meant to do. We both have the same why of helping the child become an independent communicator. The way that we get there, sometimes our ideas are different and that's just based a lot on what our training looks like. speaker-2: That brings me to my my next question of, you know, our audience is business leaders, ⁓ business owners, people who are thinking about starting, people who are growing their business, quite a variety. And we've had conversations in here about inter interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary teams and ⁓ having, you know, other individuals, other professionals within your team other than just BCBAs. And ⁓ I think This is just anecdote anecdotally, like I I don't have data to back this up, but I do hear, it seems more often, speech and ABA together more so than I hear other disciplines like O T and P T within ⁓ within an ABA setting. And so for those out there who are owners who already have a company or they're thinking about starting a company or they're wanting to grow their company, ⁓ And they're thinking about, well, maybe speech would be my next area that I bring in. ⁓ what's some advice that you could give them ⁓ for that process? speaker-0: Absolutely. I think really looking at the billing and the funding, how is that going to be funded? I know that's a huge issue for a lot of people. And we have a couple free resources at abaspeech.org. People could always contact me, Rose at abaspeech.org. We have one that is an SLP interview guide, and it's really for ABA clinic owners, thinking that, you know, you don't want to hire somebody who is anti ABA. You just don't. That's not going to work with the flow of what you're trying to accomplish at your business. So I think somebody that's open to learning and open to collaborating is very, very important. And then we also have another free resource that is all about adding in these speech therapy to an existing ABA practice. And we've done some coursework to ⁓ With Carrie Hennant, she is a speech therapist who started a speech therapy practice and then she added in other services, ABA and OT, I believe, as well, because it is a process. So it is something that we talk about. And it isn't something that you want to just say, like, ⁓ these kids need speech. You want to really write it down as part of your business plan and how are you going to support that person? What is that time differential going to look like as far as how much ABA versus when will they do speech? Is the speech therapist gonna have any access to parents during parent training? Is the interven what does that intake process look like? So we kind of in some of these free resources we have, we look at that because a lot of people come to us and ask that. It's not something that is super easy, but it's something that can be really wonderful. And once you start offering those cohesive services, I always say, People are going to just be, you're gonna have a wait list. You know, people are going to be beating down your door. We had one speech therapist that just joined the ABA speech connection last year. And she's not too far from me here in Ohio. She's in an ABA clinic. She's the first full-time speech therapist, and they already have a wait list for services because that's what parents want. Parents want to be able to come into a clinic and they want to get ABA and they want to get speech if needed. And A lot of times kids also need occupational therapy services. So to make it easier for the child, to make it easier for the clinicians and for the client, having it under one roof is really ideal when it makes sense as part of the business plan. speaker-1: Like a lot when when I'm talking to someone about maybe adding speech, that is a question that comes up like, is this speech therapist only going to work with my clients or are they going to have maybe some clients that don't have an ASD diagnosis and they're kind of doing their own thing? Does that make sense? speaker-0: Absolutely. And I think starting out and having an independent contractor can be a great idea. And I think that could be something that's really positive. And the funding is always the issue, right? How is this going to be funded? Is it gonna be through the parents' insurance? Are they gonna be private paying? That is really gonna be up to the business owner. But I think just with anything I even try to do in my business, let's just start small, see if people like it, and then they will. And then it just kind of grows from there and you listen to your customers and you make those decisions based on what is needed. So speaker-2: When you're at the point where you do have speech in house, or maybe you're planning for having speech in house, ⁓ if you're already existing AVA company, since that's most of our audience. ⁓ how how do you determine who makes what decision? ⁓ so w with let let's say commute a kid like a broad topics such as communication goals, right? ⁓ i i are there are there fights over who gets the say on on the those main goals and who's the supporting, you know? Like what what does that look like? speaker-0: I think what's been helpful in my lived experience as a clinician is after that intake process that maybe the speech therapist is giving more speech therapy type tests and the BCBA is giving maybe the VB Map or the MODIS or something like that, then we're coming together and there's some type of way for the clinicians to be paid to have a meeting so that they can talk about the goals and talk about I used to do a lot of training on shared goals because I was a school based clinician for a very long time and so We would have a goal that maybe the pair professional was taking data on or the teacher was taking data on, but I as a speech therapist was also taking data. I also live in a world now in the ABA speech connection. We have about 600 members where a lot of my connection members are owners of businesses. And so then their funding source is insurance. And so then that gets kind of sticky as who's gonna work on what? You can't always have a shared goal. That doesn't necessarily make sense. But what we could do is something like for an example for verbal imitation. I would give maybe the Goldman Fristo, which is a speech sound test. And maybe the BCBA gives the ESA, which is the early Echoic assessment from the VB map. We come together after that intake and I say, okay, developmentally and for what the kid is stimulable for, we're going to work on these as first words. So maybe I in the speech therapy session am working on those. new words or new sounds and once they reach mastery maybe they're being run in maintenance by an RBT. Maybe that's a small section of the day. That's just one very specific example. You could also think about it with AAC. You know, with an AAC assessment, that's something that a lot of BCBAs don't know, but you have to have, you have to have a speech language pathologist as part of the team to do the AAC assessment for funding. And so that's going to be really, really important. And I get a lot of questions from BCBAs. How long should the AAC assessment take? This has been taking six months in the schools. Shouldn't take that long. But you do have to have a speech language pathologist to spearhead that for funding if you want it to be funded through insurance. And so those types of things get kind of tricky. And I think just having that ability to talk, and that is the thing that people say over and over again: is we don't have time. We don't have time for that collaboration piece. I know when I worked in the schools, it was a little easier. We actually had A late start every single Wednesday. So sometimes we met as a district, sometimes we met met as grade level teams, sometimes an outside consultant came in and that was really, really nice. You have to really look into your clinic and say, what works? Where is the wiggle room? And what can we do to antecedently make sure that even if it's a minimum amount of time, that we do have time to communicate. speaker-2: I think that's a big piece. Just like training, right? 'Cause we talk about, you know, there's all these services, all of the functions within your com in the your company that that you're going to need that aren't necessarily directly related to billable hours, right? They're not like it's not it's not black and white. It's not kind of dry like that. And so, ⁓ you know, when you're when you're planning and you're building, you need to figure out what your plan is. How are you going to train your staff, right? And so I think the collaboration piece is important too. Even if you don't have ABA in-house, being able to maybe even reaching out to an ABA provider and saying hi, like we would love to, you know, seek your, you know, consultant. We would love for a consultant to come in and help guide us on some things. Or being able to collaborate with that ⁓ learner's ⁓ individual speech ⁓ therapist or OT or whatever too to be able to collaborate that. speaker-1: And is this something that you help ⁓ ABA providers add speech? Is that something that you do or speaker-0: Not from a financial standpoint, from more of a clinical operation standpoint. Okay you know, I definitely do consulting with different companies who are at that point of thinking like, Okay, either are we have speech therapists and we have B C BAs, but people are not getting along, or we're thinking about adding speech therapy and how should we systematically think about that from the clinical side. So those things I do, but not the financial side. I don't handle that. Gotcha. speaker-1: like I would assume and this is just me ⁓ but ⁓ just like I shouldn't be interviewing a B C B A 'cause like I don't know what I'm talking right. Like I assume that that piece of it too, right? Like a B C B A like would they even know the right answer to make an educated decision to hire this person? speaker-0: Right, yeah. And that's why one of the reasons in the fall past the last fall we came up with this SLP interview guide. And it was really for people who were thinking about bringing on speech therapists. Because you know, the beginning of the my brain works since school years, even though I'm not in the schools anymore, people were starting to think like, you know, we should have somebody here. You know, we should we should have a speech therapist and you wanna make sure you have that right choice because you know, when you make the wrong choice, it does cost you a lot of emotional turmoil in letting somebody go. And it and financially it's a burden to train somebody and then to not have them work out. So you want to make sure you have the right people in the right seats to make your organization strong. speaker-1: And and can you tell us a little bit about ABA speech connection? Like how does that work? What it what d what do you offer them? speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. So we're one of the only memberships where the whole team can get all their needed CEUs. So we offer s CEUs for speech therapists, BCBAs, and we have PDU courses for RBTs. And so a lot of groups will join the connection just because it's a one-stop shop to make sure everybody is learning and and we really focus on those areas that maybe BCBAs don't get a lot of training in. So ⁓ we talk about apraxia and we talk about selective mutism and we talk about AAC. We just launched actually this week. A 10 hour ACE course all about AAC called AAC Mastery for SLPs and BCBAs. Because one of our connection members said, you know, I went through all the courses I go through for AAC. I come out of the course and then I think, okay, now what? And like, how do I actually apply this? And that's what's cool about the connection is that we have touch points. Every month we meet as a group for a new live CEU, but then we also do connection chats where It's just me. Sometimes we have a topic. Sometimes it's a QA. I have found in my career that the way that I really learn things and transform my practice is to learn something, just like behavioral skills training. I'm learning it, I'm applying it, I'm getting feedback on that application. And so that's what we try to use kind of that BST framework ⁓ within the ABA speech connection. And people seem to really love that. And yeah, we have over six hundred members. So it's been really fun to ⁓ meet everybody. I do an onboarding call with everybody, and that really helps me I was actually on one right before with an international member and it's just important for me to know what is hard about therapy, what is still difficult, and how can our resources help to support you? speaker-2: really curious what I mean I have a good idea of the ABA field, but what's hard in speech therapy? What what are some of the the barriers on the speech side of things? speaker-0: Absolutely. A lot of speech therapists don't now this is old me talking now. It might be different now and it is a little different, but old me never took a course on autism. I never had to take a course on autism. When I came out of the field, it was one in two hundred and fifty. That was the incidence rate. They said it was four to one boys. There's all these like old antiquated numbers out there. And so speech therapists don't really ever get coursework and they may now, but in how to help students Who engage in unsafe problem behavior or just behavior that's a barrier to learning. We don't learn how to help and how to reach the student that's hard to reach. And that's really my life's work at ABA speech. So I try to really help speech therapists. And we have courses at ABA speech, you know, when behavior is a barrier. And I talk about ABC data and I talk about What BCBAs can help with, what a FBA is, just we don't learn these things as speech therapists. Not every kid's gonna come and sit down for therapy. So, how do we still reach that student? And I think that's something that's really hard. And also, just when you're a public school speech therapist, you are tasked with helping everybody. Kids who have selective mutism, kids who stutter, kids who use AAC devices, kids who have ADHD and autism. You help everybody. And so is it really hard to know how do you help everybody? And so those are some things that are really tough. And data. How do we take data? We talk about that in school kind of as like the the big idea. But as a BCBA, my data was so tight. I worked in a really affluent district for 10 years and it was a great experience, but we had a lot of advocates and lawyers. And one time we had a family who really wanted to leverage moving the student to a non-public program and have the district pay for it. And they subpoenaed our data binders. And I was like, take them. This is a model of how you should take data. We were grappling data. We were doing things that nobody does. I was look look at that visual analysis and running maintenance data. Yay for us. Because I just really always come from a place of helping my students, taking data every session and analyzing that data to make decisions. But that's really hard. For people to understand how to do that for every single session, it's tough. speaker-1: What about developmental, like d is that something that you as a speech therapist were taught about? Like, you know, like what is age appropriate for for children? 'Cause I think that's something with like a B C B A sometimes they set goals that like they're not you know, a child is not ready for them. Like is that something that speech therapy you you understand coming out of school? speaker-0: A hundred percent. We take courses and I remember I took a course in developmental psychology. We take courses in speech sounds. That's the thing too, is we take a three hour course in how do you make every single speech sound. We take courses on the anatomy and physiology of the speech and hearing mechanism. We take courses on every single disorder and communication disorders. And I think then once you get into the field, then you're kind of realize I was like, Autism. This is what I love to do. And this is what I, you know, want to do and I'm passionate about. But you do get so much information on typical development. And that I know has helped me, Steven, yeah. In goal setting. And I know that that's why people come to ABA speech. One person had mentioned recently, like, okay, I finally get it. Because when you don't have all these pieces and parts, it's hard for us to understand. Okay, this kid is aggressive. They're not. ⁓ able, they're not potty trained, they can't drink from a cup or use utensils. And now I have to help this kid find a way to communicate with the world. Go. How, how do we get started? It's tough to know how we get started. And that's why I think those of us that are duly certified have this special brain power to think like, ⁓ this is the path forward. And there's fewer than about 500 of us in the world right now, I believe. And so it's really just such a night way to be able to help people understand that speech therapy and ABA together is really a science but it's also an art form and how to how they complement each other. speaker-2: Well and and too I you know, the the the treatment hours, there seems to be a really big discrepancy between how many hours or even minutes ⁓ of therapy that y one would get for our speech therapy versus ABA. ⁓ at least in my limited understanding, right, the the children that we would work with, right, they would get maybe, you know, thirty minutes a week. Sometimes we had some kiddos that would get like thirty minutes a month of speech and we were We were you know, we were begging the parents to like we wanted to collaborate with the outside with the speech and they're like, I'm sorry, it's not possible. They only have like thirty minutes a month or ⁓ i i I don't know, what what is what is the science behind that and what's the discrepancy between the amount of hours? I know this speech is a more, you know, concentrated area, but there's so much that's involved in speech too, right? speaker-0: I think it has a lot to do with the funding source. If you think okay, there's a student and maybe they get four hours a month of a B C B A, but then they get forty hours a week of RBT, that's sure the funding structure is very different. So that's a big part of it. And there's a huge part of the field of speech therapy that actually I just checked my LinkedIn messages and it was in a speech therapist and she said that their team really feels like ABA is encroaching on the field, which that's like a whole there's Facebook groups dedicated to that and courses at conferences, unfortunately. And I just say, you know, it's hard. There's enough out there. There's enough students who need our support that we don't have to fight about those hours. We really just don't. What I do think is unfortunate is that sometimes parents from a financial standpoint or just their bandwidth will say, like, ⁓ well, we're gonna get 20 hours of ABA, but only one hour of speech. Well, we can't afford both. So we're gonna do the 20 hours of ABA. As a business owner, I can see where that would leave a bad taste in your mouth about the feel. But I really think if you're a speech therapist and you are somebody who can collaborate With BCBAs and go in maybe to ABA centers and do speech therapy. It will be great for you, for your clients, and for your business as well. So that is really tough. And what I try to tell speech therapists, you know, Lori Unam, I had her on the podcast. She's just a dynamo in the field. She's heading up CASP now, but I had her on during season one. And she her and her husband really helped. And I know she worked at Autism Speaks, I believe, is how I remember the story. And she visited every single state, every single state. State to help with insurance reform. And she was part of a parent panel. I went to CAST for the first time and presented a couple months ago. And it was because I've never knew her story. When I had her on the podcast, we didn't talk about her being a mom to three kids two or that are on that are autistic, but hearing her parent journey was just very poignant and like, okay, she is very, very passionate about making the science accessible. And I think speech therapists, they obviously don't know. You know, some BCBAs may not know ⁓ how. insurance reform helped and and things like that to make ABA accessible. They just know that all of a sudden now there are a lot of ABA centers popping up in their community. And so that can be jarring for people too. They don't understand the backstory of everything. Well speaker-2: am really excited too that this summer you you have a book coming out. Say it with me. speaker-0: Thank you. I'm very excited about that. Yes, it comes out July first and I never thought that I would write a book, but Wiley contacted me about a year ago and I was hyperventilating. It was in December and I was like, worst month to ever contact me about any kind of new project. So I had a freak out. I talked to a lot of my friends who are authors and decided I was gonna do it. So I it has been a journey. I'm learning all about it. I do think it will be wonderful to have a a permanent product of my life's work. And really, this is the book that I needed over 20 years ago. The first time I worked at the Cleveland Clinic, and I was working with students who were not engaging in therapy and students who, despite being in special education services, did not have a way to communicate with the world and I did not have a guidebook. So over the past 20 years. I have been putting that together. And so it felt really good to to put it all out. And it's been so fun to ⁓ we have this if you pre-order, I don't know when this podcast will air, but you get all these different bonus items. And it's been cool because you have to email me to get the bonus item. So it's been neat to see all the different people that have been ordering the book. And I'm just excited because it is based on research and I talk about research a lot, but it is a guidebook on if your student is not yet speaking, how do we get started? In therapy to really help every single student find a way to communicate with the world. speaker-2: coordinate and regardless if it's pre-order or order once the book has launched ⁓ though that link will be in the show notes so that you can you can reach out and you can you can get that book. I think that that would be a great I think that would be a great read ⁓ just to gain more information, right? What it even if you're like I don't know speeches for me to add into our ABA organization, it sounds like a book that would be a great read just to kind of get some understanding. speaker-0: Yeah. I mean it's super actionable. Some of my favorite chapters are I have a chapter on joint attention. So the foundation for all communication, which I think is missed a lot of the times because we don't necessarily assess for it ⁓ specifically on the BB map, which I know a lot of us use, but Dr. Sundberg's amazing. I love the BB map. And I think that when you learn more about that, you feel more comfortable saying, you know what? I think we need to have specific goals to work on some of these foundational skills that are gonna help our student engage. And when our students are able to engage with us, we know that that is the foundation for all further communication. And then obviously, I have a chapter on AAC and getting started with AAC because that is a question I get probably every day when I'm talking to different people. AAC always comes up. And then we have a chapter on collaboration as well. And just really some real life printable materials. Our goal bank is in there, our autism IEP Gold Bank, which has been downloaded by over 50,000 people that people really love. and our informal screeners that look at those highlighted communication areas that maybe we're not assessing or a lot of times our students it's just hard to assess their skills to see where they're at at baseline. So I think people will really like the book because it's something that you can read and use in your next therapy session. speaker-2: Rose, do you have any any ⁓ anything else that you want to add that we didn't cover today? speaker-0: Make sure that you visit me at abaspeech.org. If you're curious about the ABA speech connection, you can take a free course. We have a free foundational skills course that counts as a CEU for BCBA. So we would love to have you join us for that. speaker-2: Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Rose. I'm so excited and good luck with your book. I can't wait to order it myself. And ⁓ to those of you listening, ⁓ please ⁓ check out the show notes and ⁓ reach out to Rose if you're you're interested in learning more and definitely get her book. ⁓ and ⁓ we will see you next week. ⁓ have a great week. Thanks for joining us on ABA Business Leaders. speaker-1: Yeah. We provide mentorship, courses, handbooks, billing support, credentialing, HIPAA support, web design, and more. Everything you need to build an ethical and sustainable ABA practice. speaker-2: You can find all of our resources at threepiesquare dot com. speaker-1: Don't forget to subscribe and share this podcast with other ABA business owners. speaker-2: We'll see you next time, and remember, you don't have to build your practice alone.