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ABA Business Leaders and Work-Life Balance · ABA Business Leaders

• Stephen Smith: seems though a lot of business owners feel trapped. It's not about balance, right? What if balance isn't something that you achieve, but something you were never meant to chase in the first place? What if the real work is learning to notice, or you still have choice? Welcome to ABA Business Leaders, brought to you by 3PiSquared, where we discuss topics on how to create and grow an ethical and sustainable ABA practice. 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. We owned a successful ABA practice for over 10 years. And now we help other ABA business owners do the same without all the chaos. Stick around. You're in the right place. Hello everybody, welcome to ABA Business Leaders podcast brought to you by 3Pi Squared. I'm April and if you're watching on YouTube, you will notice that I'm alone today. Steven is not here. This is just a special little solo podcast that I pitched to the team and they were on board and so here I am. ⁓ It feels a little odd to be here without my best friend, my co-host, my partner in crime. So don't worry, he'll be back next episode. And in true fashion of me running this solo podcast, ⁓ the first go-round recorded it, 45 minute podcast. Bravo, amazing. I was so pleased with it. And then I realized, no, I did press record. I've made that mistake before. I did press record, no worries. What I didn't click was the mute button. So our mics were muted. My mic was muted. And so I recorded this 45 minute podcast that, like I said, I was so pleased with to find out that ⁓ Indeed, I did not record my voice. And that's the most important part about a podcast. So I'm tired. I'm frustrated. I gave myself the space to like feel the frustration and blah. And then I took a break and my son and I made some cookies. And then I came back in here to the podcast studio and I'm like, I'm going to do this. And then I started recording and I was overthinking everything that I was saying. I don't know if anyone else, I don't know if you've felt this before, if you've created something and then something happened to it and like you were pleased with it, right? And then something happened to you. and you needed to recreate it. And so you are constantly comparing it to that original that you created. Now, sometimes the re-record or the re-creation is better, right? So no one will ever know because in my mind, I'm like, the first one was best. And so it took me a minute to get out of my, an hour. of trying to record this podcast and recreate the first one. So I've let that go, or I think I've let that go. But I feel like this podcast and what I have to say is important to me and I really want to share it. And my schedule slam packed book right now. let's just do this. Are you here? Like, is this good for you guys? Are you along for the ride? I would love for you to join. So this podcast is I don't know if you guys have ⁓ communicated with others through voice note, I guess it's like a thing everyone does now. ⁓ But my good friends and I, who they are moms and they're entrepreneurs and we're all busy, right? ⁓ That has become our new favorite way of communicating on the daily is by leaving each other these little... you know, two, three, five, 10 minute ⁓ voice notes to each other. And ⁓ I don't think we're the only ones because I've seen some reels recently on social media where people are talking about them and like how, you know, they're like little mini podcasts or that. Yeah, it's really funny, right? And that's exactly what my friends and I, we say, we're like, ⁓ this is our mini podcast. And sometimes we're just rambling about nonsense. Sometimes we're like spilling our like sharing our heart or sometimes we're, you know, like a couple weeks ago, I had this existential crisis and I was like on this edge of this whole like thing and blah, you know, and so my poor sweet friends got to be part of that. Oh, they they say they're excited about that too. And they also have their own existential crises from time to time that I get to listen to anyway. So point being, It's something that I feel like I may have gotten wrong. And of course, I've gotten many things wrong. But this one in particular, it's feeling different ⁓ as I'm growing and changing and ⁓ listening to what you have to say. ⁓ So yeah, this little conversation between us is going to start with... Kind of an apology. Over the years, I've talked about work-life balance and burnout prevention, like in the podcast and in conversations with you. I mean these things. I've meant what I've said and I feel very passionately about it. And it's important to me. I've been sitting with so many business owners lately. my favorite parts of my job is getting to connect with you and listen to your stories and hear more about how like what support you need and just honestly helps to validate a lot of feelings that I felt when we had our own ABA company and even still like some of the feelings I feel now working here, you know, with three pi squared and But anyways, I see so many of you. ⁓ I see how much you care and see how hard that you are working to build something ethical and safe and good, right? And I also see how tired you are. And I keep hearing this idea of, well, I just need to figure out balance. So here's all this like long winded weird apologies coming in. Well, the more I've been hearing that, it's like kind of like, ⁓ like so, I'm like, ⁓ it's not about balance, right? It seems though a lot of business owners feel trapped. And just hear me out here. It's not because you don't love. what you do, it's because payroll depends on you, right? ⁓ Families are counting on you. These individuals you're providing services for, these learners are counting on you. ⁓ And you feel like if you step back, something might drop and it very well might, right? ⁓ You are so hard to build something. so good, or you're working hard to build that thing, you're really, you know, if you're in those beginning planning stages, you have this good thing in mind that you're wanting to build. And it's turning into this not knowing, like you don't know how to make it sustainable without carrying all of it. this isn't about delegating and this isn't about asking for help, though we will get into that in future podcasts. But it's like what's underneath that? What's behind it? What am I seeing? What am I hearing? Right. And I just thought that you could benefit or you may be curious to know what other people are saying to one, help you not to feel so alone, to know that there are people here that are in very similar circumstances ⁓ We have to, we have to be able to make it sustainable for the humans who are inside of this company as well, right? For yourself, for you, for your clinical team, for your admin team, for your techs, for your, all the people's, you know? So I, I don't know if you are in any of these situations, but these are things that I hear a lot, right? And these are things I lived myself. this trapped and you know, maybe trapped isn't the right word. Stuck sometimes I hear. Sometimes I'm not hearing the words trapped or stuck, but I'm getting that feeling or that's perspective of what they're saying. This is what I'm taking from it. You know, by insurance, you're, you're trapped or stuck with insurance contracts and reimbursement rates. one that I've had several conversations lately about owners sharing how they really care for their staff and they want to help grow their staff and they want to be the leader within their company who is compassionate and kind and understanding, but they can't carry everyone, right? They can't carry it at all. And they are having to learn how to make though, like put boundaries in place and all that stuff too, right? But feeling trapped or there again, put your own kind of word there, but like the growth that they've asked for and they've been working so hard for. ⁓ but now they can't sustain it, right? They're really struggling. And so to sustain it, to try to sustain this, they're having to let go of other things, right? So here enters the work-life balance that we all talk about. ⁓ well, if we could just figure out how to balance all of these things. Then it'll be good. It'll be great. Life will be great. I'm just not good enough at balancing. I just gotta figure out how to balance. And speaking of balance, as I'm recording this podcast, way into bedtime routine because of life that happened and the mistakes I made and how important it is for me to follow through to get this done on a certain schedule, right? It falls on my responsibility. It falls on me. I'm hearing bath time happening out in my home. And there's some unhappy ⁓ transitioning happening right now. So if you hear some children, some child yelling in the background, no worries. It's just my child not wanting to get in the bath. Everything's okay. Steven's got it under control. He is an excellent father. But the work life balance, if once in part of this too is okay, so like if you're you're feeling trapped or stuck or you're just in the depths or overcome by parts of this or all of this right insurance contracts and reimbursement rates, you know or carrying, know, like hand like supporting your staff or you know, just this growth that's just you're like, ⁓ it's here now and I'm having a hard time sustaining it. I think You're also feeling perhaps trapped within your own standards of excellence and the identity of being the one who holds it all, right? As the owner of this company. Those are huge. am, please, by no means am I saying that these are all like lighthearted little things that everybody can handle and this is silly to feel these as big things because they are big things. And I think it's very normal to feel them as big things. ⁓ When we talk about asking for help and delegating to do that, I don't have time to train someone to do this, or I don't have time to ⁓ teach someone and follow through, ⁓ if I give it to someone else, it's not gonna be right. ⁓ and ultimately the responsibility falls back on me as the owner. So I still, like, I, I want to make sure everything's out, like do being done the way I needed to be done. All of these things are real and all of these things are here. And like I said, I'm not trying not to go too deep into like the delegation and asking for help bucket, but I just wanted us to be able to, I wanted to share in and sit with this and like get curious about it and looking at it maybe in a different way, maybe not in such a stuck way or a trapped way or a, you know, I'm not doing work-life balance right kind of way. One day I'll figure out work-life balance and then I won't be burned out anymore. And then I'll be able to do all the things. So I remember one leader saying to me, wow, many, let's be real. I've heard this many times. I can't even imagine taking a week off. It would take me three weeks to prepare for it. ⁓ As the person laughs, right, ⁓ and explains how exhausted she is. But once she finishes X or once they get through Y, things will get better. And these are things that I hear from new business owners. a lot and you hear them on into growth and at some point it just becomes the motto, the mantra, you know, what keeps you running perhaps and that's okay if that's what helps keeps you running. ⁓ But, you know, once we get through this audit, things will slow down and be better and then we can work on these other things or I can take some time off or. you know, and insert whatever it is that you're looking forward to doing for your company or for yourself there. I remember what it felt like to believe that balance was the answer. I'm still learning on a good day sometimes. I feel like I haven't figured out and then it turned around and forget to press, like forget to have the mics on during a podcast, right? We're all trying the best that we can. And that's, I think that was my hiccup as I was trying to re-record this the second time and I was getting all stuck. I was getting stuck because I do, I, my intention here is not to come across like I know everything and that I've got this all figured out because I don't. I'm figuring parts of it out that work best for me and I value having these conversations. There are so many positives about running a business. And so I'm like wanting to find this like happy medium between toxic positivity and doom and gloom, right? With what I know and who I've talked to and hearing your stories. I don't think people are struggling because they don't know how to balance best. I don't think I was struggling because I didn't know how to balance better or still struggle on days because I don't know how to balance better. ⁓ And I feel that ⁓ leaders sometimes in that ⁓ balancing act maybe don't feel like they have options and that leads to the stuck. And when you're in those stuff, feelings, it's really hard to see a way out. ⁓ And you can sometimes get stuck in the stuck feelings. Now, aren't those some wise words? We talk about burnout a lot in our field, right? Sometimes I'm concerned or worried that we wear burnout as a badge. And by that, mean that we ⁓ That's how we connect with each other, which is okay. It's okay to connect to each other through those feelings of burnout and sharing those with each other and being vulnerable. And I think that's really important. ⁓ But I feel like if we only focus on the burnout, then that keeps us focused on the symptoms, right? And maybe, ⁓ it kind of brings along with it that culture of ⁓ normalizing exhaustion. As we are, know, AI is becoming, you know, well, it's a thing, not even becoming a thing, guess. I mean, most everybody I think is using AI in some way, whether they know it or not. One of the big advantages that people talk about with ⁓ AI and a lot of the tech things are that we can do more, we can get more done. I've had that conversation too with a lot of you recently and on some of our podcasts as well. And I think that's also what has come to this, like as all of this has been kind of like marinating in my brain and like, as I've been trying to make like figure out, okay, what can we do with this information? How can we? support each other and all of that, right? It's the whole, the ⁓ hustle culture, right? And we have to do more, but what's our reasoning behind it, right? Doing better, like learning and growing and pushing ourselves, I feel are all excellent things and we need that in our field. But what I'm wondering, I wonder if, There are some small shifts that we can make with each other in our even in our small communities within business owners, right? And it's something that I'm super excited about our support group. We it's like a month old now. We've had our second meeting and ⁓ the vulnerability and business owners of, hey, this is what I'm doing that's working. Here's what I've tried that's not working. I think sharing these things with each other. think it's beautiful and it's wonderful and it's happening on all levels of interpersonal stuff as well as business stuff. And so super excited about this. It's been my passion project and I'm so happy that it's up and going. thankful for everyone who's helping with that. Just had to say that because I think if coming out of this, I hadn't planned on mentioning this in this podcast, but ⁓ I do think it's ⁓ if you're if you're like, as we have this conversation as we're talking about this today and you're like, where I don't have anyone to talk to about these things. Come join us. link will be in the show notes of how to register for this free support group. Anyways, back to this deeper pattern of burnout. It's important for us to be able to be vulnerable and share burnout and talk about burnout and talk about like how prevalent it is and how we can help. it's not just the ABA field, it's in a lot of fields. It's in the healthcare field for sure. ⁓ I just wonder, like I said, I wonder if focusing on the burnout keeps us focused on the symptoms and we normalize the exhaustion and we normalize the grind and the, you know, it's like, it's, it kind of goes with that identity thing, right? Like, are we saying that, ⁓ like, it's almost like proof that we care, that we're good, that we're good. Like, yeah, I work 80 hours a week or I'm wearing five different hats for my company or, you know, I don't know, what do you think? What do you think, friend? I don't know. I would love to hear your feelings about this. Call the hotline, show up to the support group, comment here wherever you're watching or listening to or watching the podcast or socials. I really want to know what you what you guys think about this and how you feel about it and it's like this chronic urgency and I wonder if we can meet that with some slowing down. Now you guys are probably like, if you haven't already turned this podcast off, you might be getting mad and turning it off now. Like, excuse me, how am I supposed to slow things down? Right? I get that. Like reacting versus responding. ⁓ The constant fire pitting outing, pitting outing, constant firefighting. everything feels urgent. And I think that also leads into the, it's a stuckness. You start to feel that there's no choice, right? And you're running on adrenaline and in that space, balance can feel impossible. And then that brings me back to the question was balance ever the task? You know, I've heard people say, I've read books, I've heard. experts talk about how balance isn't real. There's no such thing as balance. And if we're striving for balance, then we're gonna be disappointed. I hear experts and talk about how balance can happen and how different ways of looking at balance. Balance may not mean that you have the exact same thing, the exact same weight on the scale, but that maybe you have you know, something a little heavier on one side and it, you know, you're going back and forth and you're adjusting as you go and you're prioritizing and you're making choices and the idea is just so that you don't tip the scales and everything falls off. It balances this give and this take and this up and this down and I like to, that's kind of closer to how I picture it now, but there were many years where I saw it more black and white. ⁓ I don't, I think that's just my, the way I, the way I see the world anyways. ⁓ And it's ⁓ very binary, very one or the other, very, it's like, goes in this basket or this basket, right? Me. And as I said earlier, I tend to go into fix it mode. I don't know if it's probably a mixture of ⁓ personality and just, you know, learned experiences and ⁓ And then sometimes I wonder, you know, being in the field of behavior analysis ⁓ and having some clinical background working with learners and whatnot, like, right? Like how much of that is like a work hazard? But I see patterns and I see trends. And most of all, I see leaders. I see you. I see you who cares so deeply about building an ethical, a safe, a high quality ABA agency. And I want to help. And over the next few episodes, what I would love to do here is to explore what's underneath burnout. Various schools of thought, various... ideas behind this, but ⁓ not to fix anyone, not to optimize anyone, and definitely not to tell you how your business or your life should look, ⁓ but really to help you find agency. Maybe that's really what it is, help you find that ⁓ the agency still exists, right? Because even inside of that urgency ⁓ and all of the leadership demands, we could spend several hours talking about that, right? There still is some choice. A lot of times it has to start small, right? But it's there. If you feel like you're failing a balance, you're not. You're human. Not to be condescending. ⁓ I like to say this a lot, that we're all human. And we're humans working with humans in a human field, right? ⁓ And I think there's a place for grace and boundaries and just. doing the best that we can to work in this complicated field with complicated people, because we're all human, we're all complicated. And maybe the strive here isn't for work-life balance. And I think in some of the conversations about work balance, in previous conversations, I did get a little preachy about, you need to make sure you turn work off at a certain time. I still believe that. I still believe that you need to know your own boundaries and you need to know what you want, what is in accordance to your own vision, to your own values, to what you want your life to look like. But it's not on me to say what your life should look like. If you're a person who gets their best work done from midnight to 3 a.m., you go for it. If you get your best work done during the, whatever, you know what I mean. Like it's not about, it's not a one size fits all, it's not a... We all have to follow the same thing. It's more about us exploring and looking within and getting curious and slowing it down a little bit to say, hmm, is this working for me? Is this something that is sustainable for me? Not necessarily, ⁓ you know, yes, like I said earlier, financially sustainability, financially within your company and policies and procedures and all of that. But looking at your own role as CEO, as owner, as director, whatever decision-making leadership role that you have in your company is a sustainable, especially for those of you who are small companies and you're like a solo, preneurally solo ⁓ owner, like you're the BCBA, you're the owner. You know, you're slowly building your team, but right now it is all on you. Just really ⁓ helping you to keep that sustainable so you can continue to grow your business without losing yourself and going through ⁓ those phases of transition so that you're not stuck in ⁓ startup mode for years, right? And so... I thank you so much for your time. I thank you so much ⁓ for showing up, for being you. You're amazing. Look at you. Look at your ABA company that you're building, that you're growing. It's just so special. And you have an important job. And ⁓ I just, want us to remember that or I just want to remind you that even inside leadership and urgency and responsibility and all of the heaviness on your shoulders, you are still a human being with values and feelings. so I think that if we slow down enough, I don't mean slow down and like literally slow down. I mean, just taking little pauses, little moments of acknowledging, of noticing, ⁓ then we might find that there is more agency, more choice, more options. And I'd love to explore them further with you. Anyways, if this conversation resonates and if you feel like you've been failing at balance or you're feeling stuck, then I just wanna remind you that maybe the problem isn't you. Maybe it's not about your worth and how hard you're trying. Maybe we've just been looking at the wrong thing and asking the wrong questions. ⁓ So just a little thought for you to sit with as we end today. What if balance isn't something that you achieve, but something you were never meant to chase in the first place? I don't know, journal on that one for a minute. yeah. And what if the real work is learning to notice where you still have choice? Anyways, we'll continue to explore this slowly and intentionally. I know you guys are like, okay, April, enough, April. We hear you. Anyways, for now, just notice and thank you. Truly, thank you for letting me show up here and thank you for letting me share and have this conversation and share my heart and my thoughts and my feelings and You know, maybe it resonates with somebody. I hope it resonates with at least one person. ⁓ If it does, if this resonates with you, share it with a friend. ⁓ And come join us in the support group and in the show notes, you'll find all the links to all the things. And again, thank you for being here and thank you for being you. Have a great week. See you next time. Stephen will be back and you won't have to hear me drone on for an hour. All right. Take care. Bye. Thanks for joining us on ABA Business Leaders. 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. You can find all of our resources at 3piSquared.com. Don't forget to subscribe and share this podcast with other ABA business owners. We'll see you next time and remember you don't have to build your practice alone.