In the Field: The ABA Podcast

Creating a Strong ABA Business: Marketing, Mindset, and Mission with Tim Zercher

• Allyson Wharam

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Podcast Episode: Creating a Strong ABA Business: Marketing, Mindset, and Mission with Tim Zercher

In this episode of In the Field: The ABA Podcast, I sit down with Timothy Zercher, entrepreneur and CEO of A-Train Marketing, to talk about how ABA businesses can strengthen their marketing, clarify their message, and build in ways that align with their mission. Tim shares how his journey as a three-time founder and his personal ties to behavioral health led him to focus on the ABA space, and what he has learned working with organizations across the country.

Key Topics:

  • The ABA Marketing Gap: Why so many ABA companies struggle with differentiation and how clearer messaging can actually improve client fit and outcomes.
  • The Website Factor: Why your website is often the number one barrier to growth, recruitment, and client acquisition, and what to prioritize if you invest in an update.
  • Ethical and Effective Marketing: Strategies to market within compliance and confidentiality constraints without sacrificing authenticity or impact.
  • Mindset Shifts for Owners: Why marketing should be viewed like accounting, a necessary function that supports growth, recruitment, and sustainability.
  • Letting Go of the Bottleneck: How ABA leaders can overcome the challenge of wearing all the hats and when to invest in outside expertise.
  • Leadership Lessons: What Tim has learned about trust, accountability, and clarity as a business owner, and how those lessons apply directly to ABA practice owners.
  • Quick Wins: Practical steps ABA leaders can take today to strengthen their brand, attract the right families and staff, and reduce wasted time.

Key Takeaways:

  • Marketing is not “dirty” or optional, it is a service that connects families and staff to the care and culture you have built.
  • Clear differentiation benefits everyone: it brings in the right clients, sets accurate expectations, and reduces frustration for families and staff alike.
  • A strong website is not just a nice-to-have, it directly impacts your ability to recruit staff and attract the right families.
  • As an owner, your time is worth more than you think. Outsourcing strategically can free you to grow your business and improve services.
  • Strong leadership balances trust with accountability. Your team needs to know you believe in them and that their work truly matters.

Keywords: ABA Business, ABA Marketing, Behavior Analysis, Business Leadership, Differentiation, Recruitment, Client Acquisition, ABA Entrepreneurship, Timothy Zercher, A-Train Marketing

Connect with Tim Zercher and A-Train Marketing:

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Creating a Strong ABA Business: Marketing, Mindset, and Mission with Tim Zercher

Allyson Wharam: [00:00:00] Welcome to In the Field, the ABA Podcast. I'm your host, Allyson Wharam, creator of Sidekick, an online interactive curriculum and learning portal for behavior analysts. We specialize in providing a field work supervision curriculum and continuing education for ABA professionals. In this podcast, we're going to deep dive into the world of ABA, focusing on quality supervision as the foundation of our field.

We're here for behavior analysts, business leaders and trainees who are passionate about maximizing outcomes for their clients and improving the quality of their services with new and innovative practices. We're going to explore effective strategies and practices that not only enhance the quality of supervision, but also save time all while investing in the people who make up our field, our clients, our trainees, and your everyday behavior analysts.

So whether you're driving to your next in-home session or taking a break from your busy schedule, let's dive right [00:01:00] in.

All right. Welcome everyone. This is Allyson Wharam here with another episode of In the Field. I'm joined here today by Tim Zercher of A-Train Marketing, and he's gonna share a little bit about his story as he's branched into really marketing withIn the Field of behavioral health, but more specifically now into the ABAs.

Base and the insights that he has as an entrepreneur himself, a marketer, and someone bringing those perspectives to the work that we do. So thank you so much for being here, Tim.

Timothy Zercher: Absolutely. Thank you for having me on. I'm excited.

Allyson Wharam: I wanna start with a little bit about your story. You are, again, an entrepreneur. You've started and run three companies now, and I'm curious about what drew you into entrepreneurship and then more specifically now marketing and niching down into ABA as well.

Timothy Zercher: Yeah. Yeah. It's a long and winding story, which I'll simplify down to: no one wanted to hire me to do the things that I wanted to do, so I just made my own [00:02:00] thing. Coming outta college, no one would hire me for marketing and advertising, but I knew that's what I wanted.

That's what was fun to me. Maybe ironically what was fun to me about it was the psychology of it, of communicating and engaging with people. I started my own thing straight out of college, built that business for a couple of years merged that in with another business that I started.

Then grew that for a couple more years and then merged that one in with A-Train, which I actually purchased. And ever since then, we've been in process of drilling down into the behavioral health niche. We have had clients in behavioral health for upwards of 20 years. We have one client in behavioral health, for instance, that we've been with for 15 years.

So we've always had a kind, a deep partnership, a deep understanding of this space. But when I purchased the company and merged in mine, I realized the secret advantage we had as a team because we really understood the differences. A lot of people approach behavioral health, like it's just medical like it's just another healthcare industry, which it is not at all. You can't talk about anxiety, depression, autism, [00:03:00] addiction, any of those things. Like you could talk about a broken. And so we had that understanding. And for the last five years now, we've been really drilling hard into just specializing into the ABA space, specializing into the larger behavioral health space, and retooling and restructuring every service that we have so that it is perfectly refined for that space.

Allyson Wharam: What drew you in terms of interest to ABA, or behavioral health more generally? What piqued your interest there?

Timothy Zercher: Yeah, absolutely. So there's a couple of different sides. I could break it down to three big pieces. One is that our team was already very well built for the space. We already understood we had a kind of a natural built in understanding of the space. Probably the larger reason is that I have a lot of very personal attachments to the behavioral health space. I have a number of family members that deal with addiction. I have four, yeah, four nephews and nieces that have autism diagnosis. Several of them with other co-occurring diagnoses that, that [00:04:00] require regular therapy and treatment.

And so the space has always been, I guess a bit of a mystery to me as I watched my family go through it. And also it's always been a space that I've seen the impact and how important it's to be done. And along with that, I've seen how badly that this whole industry has been served by marketing and advertising, if that makes sense.

I hate it when I see marketing done badly. There's nothing worse than a bad commercial on TV for me. There's nothing worse than a trash website that doesn't actually communicate to the user what is different and why we should engage. I don't know that frustration motivated to us just like this needs to be, this needs to be better.

We can do better.

Allyson Wharam: It's important and we're not meeting consumers because of those gaps. Yeah, that was gonna be my next question really, is what are those gaps that you see in how ABA companies are approaching marketing? So as you started to enter this space, what did you see or notice that was maybe different?

Timothy Zercher: Yeah. I mean there's a number of different gaps. I think the biggest one that my clients, if they're listening, will be annoyed 'cause they I [00:05:00] harp on it all the time. But is that ABA groups especially really seem to struggle to differentiate themselves. I think a lot of people use the words like differentiation as like a buzzword that business people use.

It's not, right. What it really is communicating to your audience, to your potential clients, to your potential patients. What is different about you and why they should choose you instead of somebody else. And, why they should choose somebody else instead of you. When that is not done well, it hurts everybody.

And I, I don't think a lot of people understand that competitive differentiation is not about gaining more clients, it's also about serving your clients better. If they think that you are hyperflexible, don't have wait lists and are in-home treatment, and then when you actually get them in, you're like, oh no, for your case, there's a two month wait list and we only do in clinic, and we actually only can be here nine to five. So too bad if you don't have a job. If you have a job, you're gonna have to just find a [00:06:00] way to be out early afternoons, because that's the only time we can offer, right? When you don't communicate appropriately what you, how you operate, you actually misserve clients.

And that disconnect hurts everybody. It hurts the company 'cause it hurts the reputation 'cause now I'm, before I never really thought about this company. Now I can't stand them 'cause they wasted four hours on the insurance and the calls and everything before I finally found out they couldn't actually help me.

And it also really hurts the patients because they're not getting service. Your clients are not getting therapy, they're not progressing. We as an industry are badly communicating. And so parents are bouncing around from website to website and from company to company trying to find the people that can actually serve what they need.

That's a long-winded explanation, but it's really comes down to people are not differentiating themselves and it's a really important piece.

Allyson Wharam: I'm wondering too if some of it is, I hear some of the like operational aspects, but also even what types of clients do we serve best? What are our staff uniquely skilled in or [00:07:00] focused? ABA is a huge science, a huge field, even if you're in autism services specifically, there are niches and things that you're gonna do uniquely well, or orientations that you're gonna have that other providers might not have.

And one thing I wonder sometimes is not just and I'm curious, your perspective, do you think it's always a failure to communicate those things? Or is it possible that some of these organizations just aren't actually aware or haven't taken time to define them in the first place?

Timothy Zercher: I think it depends on the organization. I don't think I've met a client that has both not defined it and also not communicated it well. Most of the time we do a thing called strategic first steps with all of our new clients where we dive deep into their services and their audience and all of these pieces.

And that one conversation I will generally unearth three or four things that are like, oh, that's not what your website... not necessarily what it says, but that's not what it leads people to believe. And not that they're being dishonest, right? [00:08:00] But the guy who built their website actually builds websites for general healthcare and doesn't really understand what ABA even is.

And so it doesn't know that saying, serving all ages is not true at all, and no, it's really very specific. And that needs to be a question we ask. That marketing guy didn't understand it, so he didn't ask it. So it was left vague. I think it's generally one or the other. I'm sure that there are cases that it's both.

It's a lack of the different sides of the company talking to each other. Because I think a lot of the time clinical is in one silo and operations is in another, and marketing is way over here with whatever the finance guys 'cause it's all about bringing the dollars in. None of them communicate. And again, I mean that, that costs the company a lot 'cause us over here in marketing are doing our thing, being like, hey, we generated 400 leads this month and only a hundred of them were actually the right leads because I didn't understand that clinical was full in this category and we can't serve this type of person and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah. So it's often, I think it's often a mix of both, but it's a painful miss.

Allyson Wharam: [00:09:00] Yeah. Yeah. Or I wonder it's, 'cause that's one extreme of the company. The other extreme we see is the BCBA business owner who's wearing all the hats and trying to be the marketer and design the website and do all those things. And so the website itself might not really have any information, not just incorrect information.

I know I've been guilty of that as I'm building, things out as a, young entrepreneur. But yeah, so I, I think one other thing that's unique to ABA businesses or behavioral health, like you said it's not just a broken leg. There is a lot more nuanced to the services we provide and then it can also feel more, maybe sensitive. We have our ethics codes, we have compliance aspects that can make marketing feel tricky. I know the common example that we talk about is, we're really limited in what we can do in terms of testimonials and things like that, and confidentiality which makes sense.

And those things are in place for a reason, but then it can lead, I think, sometimes to the pendulum swinging too far in one direction where we feel like we [00:10:00] can't do any marketing at all. And so talk to me a little bit about that and what you've encountered there, what you've seen.

Timothy Zercher: Yeah. Absolutely. I think the challenge is understandable, right? Because you do want to be, you wanna be ethical in your marketing, and you want to be engaging with your audience at the same time. And sometimes they feel like those are two totally different directions. In our experience, they really aren't.

It's really just about knowing... it's about having kinda a set bag of tricks ready to go. For instance, often we run into this issue of testimonials. They're like we've done such great work. Like I'd love to, I can tell you these stories, but we can't put it on the website.

And it's actually. We can put the story on the website. We can't say that it was little Jimmy. Jimmy Sanchez in this community. We can't say that, but that's actually not required. In order to share the story, I can share the story. I can share the details. I can share a lot of the impact that we had [00:11:00] while stripping out confidential client information.

I would still ask permission, even still, right? Just in case. There are ways to tell stories. There are ways to engage your audience with real life examples and real life impact of your work without violating those standards. You just have to have those tricks ready to go, right?

My favorite trick is just change the name. Be like, wait a second, tell me the story. The only identifiable things are that it's in a small town and that his full name is here. Change his full name stays in a different town. Add a disclaimer to the bottom that this is, not, that this is a true story, but names and details have been changed.

Done. There we go. Now we can tell the full story. Isn't that awesome? And there's a million little tricks to that. 'cause for instance, often testimonials aren't actually that needed. They're helpful, but you don't have to have a testimonial for your website. You can very well market and advertise without any testimonials. Yeah, you just have to have kind of a set of tricks is what I call 'em. They're not tricks, that sounds the most manipulative, right? It's just knowing how you can avoid certain [00:12:00] delicate areas you can't go, if that makes sense.

Allyson Wharam: Do you ever see or experience blockers or kind of misunderstandings from ABA business owners in terms of marketing? It can feel heavy, right? We wanna provide the service and we just wanna do the work that the good work. And so marketing, use the word manipulative in a way, could even feel that even if you are doing things by the book.

So what have you encountered in that realm?

Timothy Zercher: Oh yeah. Roadblock are numerous when it comes to marketing and advertising in ABA space. I think there is a big mentality that marketing and advertising is something that the big boys do, right? Like that, that the huge, they're in 25 state groups, do. There's also this perception that marketing is somehow dirty.

You said manipulative, but it's icky, right? I wanna do the work with the real people really in front of me. I don't want this crap about websites and spending thousands of dollars on Google. I don't wanna do that. I [00:13:00] wanna do the actual work. What I tell a lot of my clients to think about is look, you need to be thinking about your marketing, not like this annoying, dirty, horrible expense.

You need to think about it just like you're thinking about your accounting team. You have an accountant, right? That keeps your books, that keeps you organized, that keeps you running, that makes sure you have all your information. So when you file your taxes, you don't get audited, right? Like you have that. It's needed.

It might not be your thing, it might not be your favorite thing, but you don't think it's evil or sketchy or anything else. It needs to be done. Marketing is the same way it needs to be done, right? If even if you have a full client caseload and you can't get clients, you still need to be marketing because new RBT's or BCBAs, when they look you up, if they look you up and your website looks like trash or your social doesn't exist, you look less legitimate and you might lose out on really good talent, really good growth opportunity before you ever even hear from them because you don't represent yourself well. And it's the same thing. Maybe it's not your favorite thing. A lot of [00:14:00] BCBA's that are now owners, they hate marketing. I totally get it. It doesn't have to be your thing. I couldn't do therapy all day long either. I would hate that. So that's fine. Find a professional that you can trust and let them work. The biggest, I think, challenge is for those smaller businesses, for them to let go of complete control, because when you're bootstrapping, you have to bootstrap, right? It's just you and maybe one RBT and maybe one office receptionist or something, and you have to do it all yourself. I get that. There comes a point where that's actually holding you back and it actually costs you a lot more actual money and time and energy than it would if you just hired somebody.

That step of actually letting go is very hard. I encourage to be careful about when you let go, make sure you trust the person, make sure you know that they know what they're doing and all of that. But that step is almost always needed. I don't have a client or a friend or a partner of any of my businesses or any of my projects that has not had to come to that point [00:15:00] and make the step. 'Cause if they don't, they're still stuck there. They're still stuck at five BCBA's 'cause they can't possibly expand larger.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah, talk to me more about that because I know it is something I've experienced, like you said. It is something we all come to where you're wearing all the hats and then you reach sort of a point where you realize you're the bottleneck. For some of us longer than I've been the bottleneck for longer than I needed to be. Which I think is pretty common.

Timothy Zercher: I have too, for the record. I've done it too.

Allyson Wharam: But, I know one thing that comes up for me and a lot of my colleagues too is that difficult point of I need more help and I can grow better once I have that help. But, maybe margins are really thin. So how do you think about that or frame that for someone in terms of, like you said, it's holding you back, but also it might feel like an impossible sort of task when you're thinking about revenue and things like that as well.

Timothy Zercher: Absolutely. I think there's two or three kind of situations where that happens. One is, is this point that a lot of business owners get to, and this is not unique to ABA [00:16:00] either, right? This is in all businesses where I perceive my margins as thin and that I can't afford that thing well after I actually can afford that thing.

I have a friend and he would laugh if I told this story, so it's okay for me to share. We were going to an event together and he pulled up in this really rusty beat up old truck, right? And that's fine, he likes building on cars, whatever. And I asked him about it.

I said, oh, this is a project car. He goes, no, this is my daily, this is my thing. He makes, I dunno, like his personal take home is almost a million a year. And I said, why are you driving that when you could drive other things? And he didn't have this like there, there's reasons that you could choose that.

I think it's, it's not Brad Pitt. It's one of those actors that still drives an old beat up truck. And he just likes that that's what he likes. Okay, great. But it wasn't the case. This guy hated this old truck. He hated that it broke down half the time and he was late to meetings.

And I pointed up to him, I said, why are you doing that when you make this kind of money? You could afford to buy a new car. And it was just the time that you spent. Tinkering would make 18 times what the whole new car would cost. [00:17:00] And it's just that there's a blind spot, right? That you just, you have this mentality that times are tough and I gotta be careful and I gotta be careful and I gotta be careful and well after sometimes you actually could take a step back, right?

So I think that's sometimes what happens. I think the other thing that happens is people have this mentality that it's all or nothing. Either I hire a marketing team internally or I can't give it up at all. That's not the case. You don't have to have an internal marketing director. You don't have to have an internal marketing manager.

You can hire one team to do one piece of marketing virtually and it be 1400 a month, and that's all they do is this one thing, and that'll take it off your plate. And then in six more months you can expand and you can hire that team to do more things. Or you can hire a larger agency like us to do five or six things at once.

All or nothing mentality is, I find almost never right in almost any way of life, right? In general, there's always variables of like steps between. But in marketing especially, there's always one or two things that you could pass off that are not [00:18:00] super cost restrictive or that can't go too wrong and hurt your reputation if it's done wrong, right?

Those are those the two areas I would kind caution people. Can you actually afford it? Because you might be able to, you might have not noticedthat you got there. You don't have to have the budget for a full team. You don't have to have budget for a big agency.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah. Yeah, that makes total sense. And I think a blocker for a lot of ABA providers in particular, as they're starting to grow is the billable hour mentality of like when you said a BCBA, RBT, and an admin staff... even the ad that would be like, great if people started like that. But often like the BCBA is doing all of the admin stuff well having multiple RBT's.

And so I think it's almost the mentality sometimes of, is this person revenue generating? And I know for myself too, when you hire someone I didn't realize how much capacity it would free up for me to that, even if that person was not directly revenue generating, I am able to bring more business in and support [00:19:00] more people, more clients, what have you, because my time is freed up to do that stuff.

And so I think some owners maybe get stuck there as well.

Timothy Zercher: So there's a trick that I encourage. I mentor a couple of other entrepreneurs and I tell them this again probably more than I'd like to hear 'cause I think it's really important. It's what is your marginal income, not your personal, like billable hour if you're a BCBA, for instance, but as an owner per hour,

how much money are you responsible for bringing in? Right? If whether that's as in, in the sales role, if you're bringing on big partners, or whether that's as an actual BCBA or whatever. What's your total income divided by the hours that you have in a year, right? That's the simplest way to look at it.

If this task could be outsourced for less than that dollar amount, then you should, because you're buying yourself that two or three hours back that you can spend making more money at that much, much higher rate. I think a lot of people get stuck in the billable hours that my billable hour is X [00:20:00] because that's what insurance pays for a BCBA.

But when you're an owner, it's not that. It's what you can earn as a BCBA plus what you're earning from all your RBT's and your other BCBAs that you're also managing. Does that make sense? Like I, I think a lot of people are like, billable hours, $75 an hour. Why would I pay you 250?

Because Jim, your billable hour is actually five, $600 an hour because you're managing eight people. And that's just something that people just don't grasp.

Allyson Wharam: yeah. It's not something we're taught which kind of segues in a lot of BCBA business owners are not trained in business. And so we're learning a lot of this as we go. And so if an an ABA business owner wants to improve their marketing today, what is the very first thing that they should focus on?

Timothy Zercher: It's hard to pick just one thing.

Allyson Wharam: Just one thing.

Timothy Zercher: Yeah, I know. Just one of... impossible things.

Allyson Wharam: Feel free to throw... yeah.

Timothy Zercher: There's a lot of things that I would recommend that they work on if they have resources, right? So if you have the money to invest most [00:21:00] ABA groups could be making a lot more clients, a lot more staff if they improve their website.

Websites hold back most ABA companies. Probably 60% of them that I've met, that I've met a lot now have a website that's holding them back. Either in terms of recruitment or in terms of client acquisition or partnership acquisition. So that's somewhere I would go if you have the resources, don't do it yourself. Hire someone because websites are way too complex and if you don't have resources, then I would focus on your differentiation. I would say, what are the things that make me different than the other alternatives in town? And I'm not gonna say competitors, 'cause often they're not actually competitors.

We're looking at them like competitors, but they do something totally different in reality. What actually makes me completely different than them? And then change all your marketing to focus on just that. Generally, in reality, key differentiators are less than three. 

Allyson Wharam: Interesting.

Timothy Zercher: Of all the ABA groups I've ever worked with, I've met three that have three true [00:22:00] key differentiators. Most have one or two. And those can be almost anything that you can possibly think of. I've met a guy one time that his key differentiator was that they trained the families, not just in one-on-one therapy with the kid. And he had a whole program built out around how to train the families to reinforce the same activities that are happening in therapy. That's an awesome differentiator.

Just do that 'cause no one else in town was doing that and that's not revolutionary. There's other ABA groups that do that, but no one in his community was. Cool. Stop talking about everything else. Yeah. You have cool degrees and cool people and you take care of your, everyone does too.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah. And I think that's a great example because it illustrates what you were saying before too, about your differentiator that is going to bring people to you will also show or indicate to certain people that you might not be a good fit. So for some families that don't have a lot of capacity or resources to engage in that training or that high [00:23:00] intensity parent interaction, that may not be a model that they're interested in and can sustain.

So yeah, I think that's a great one. The same thing that is gonna bring certain people in is gonna not work for others. 

Timothy Zercher: That's a good thing too. If you're bringing in people that don't actually fit your model, they're gonna be unhappy and you are not gonna be happy with them. And then you're gonna have turnover, and then you're gonna have to relearn a new patient and it's just not worth it.

Allyson Wharam: Exactly. In terms of outbound marketing channels or strategies, what have you seen really bring in results for ABA practices?

Timothy Zercher: Define to me what you probably mean by outbound.

Allyson Wharam: You mentioned the website piece and then really the differentiator and so I guess as I'm thinking about channels or strategies, I'm thinking more, your options like your Google ads or your know, local outreach, those sorts of things.

Timothy Zercher: Again, it is different based on if you have resources to hire or you don't have any resources and you're still bootstrapping. If you are still in the bootstrap phase, and by that [00:24:00] I mean less than five employees, if you get past that five or six employee mark, you shouldn't be bootstrapping, you probably should be hiring professionals. If you're still in that phase, I would focus on that local outreach.

I would focus on going out to local pediatricians, other ABA groups local like school counselors, school resource officers, all of those kind of people and saying, Hey, here's what we do. Here's why we're different. Do you have patients, clients, students, friends, et cetera, that might be a good fit for us? If you do, please send them our way. It takes zero money and it really actually helps you understand the market that you're in better. I've done this before when I originally started my business, that was all I could afford was just one by one, going through my phone contacts and calling people and saying, Hey, here's the thing I'm doing. Do you know anybody I could talk to?

I learned a lot and I changed my key differentiator in that process. That process of like two months of just calling people, I realized the thing that I thought was different. No one cared about. So that doesn't [00:25:00] matter anymore. I should focus on the other thing that's different that people do care about.

And it also, it gets you a groundswell of people that might send you stuff. It might not work, it might be a waste of time, but the very very least, you're gonna learn a lot through those conversations.

Allyson Wharam: I think that's really important, especially as a founder, small company, to stay really close to those clients. And the referral sources and things like that. I, so much of business is pivoting and adapting to what the market is actually telling you they need. And so that's really the key thing there, I think that you're sharing.

And I know we've talked generally about some of these things. I'm wondering, do you have any stories about either like a campaign or a project that put some of these things into action that made a difference for a client?

Timothy Zercher: Several. One that I'll highlight in particular is a behavioral health group that we work with that has autism services as well. They had us do two big things for them, which are the categories I would recommend if you have resources [00:26:00] also to grow.

If you could only do one thing, it'd be these two. They hired us to define a better structure for their website to be more conversion focused, to actually generate leads and not just general information. 'cause it's a different focus of the website. And then two, to actually do what we call SEO, which is search engine optimization at bringing people in from Google, Bing, whatever they're typing for - local ABA center near me, for instance .

That client, we did exactly what I'm recommending that everyone does, which is we said, what do people actually care about? There's a million things that make you different and there's a million things that you do well. What do parents care about when they're searching for this service though?

For them it was their flexibility. They have before hours starting at 6:00 AM and after hours go until I think 7:30 AM for most of their services. It was the option to be home or clinic, either one because. We all know kids are different on different days [00:27:00] and sometimes they're gonna be better in home and some therapies work better at home versus what they might be able to do in clinic and they might apply better.

And that was an option for them 'cause they had a clinic everywhere that they also had in-home services. And the last piece was that they had a much higher RBT retention rate than anybody else in the state. Perfect. And especially in that state, there was tons of turnover 'cause there had been tons of large investment groups that come in and then left.

Parents were frustrated with training a new RBT effectively on their child every single month almost. And it wasn't actually every month, but it felt like that to parents. And so those three are what actually mattered. They had a bunch of other things. They were educated and they paid their people well and all sorts of other stuff.

We shifted their website to focus on those three points. We redesigned it so that it represented so that they looked professional and like a leader in the industry like they were. And then we did organic SEO to bring people to them so that when people searched the right terms, they actually found [00:28:00] them.

Their previous agency was doing things like was optimizing for things like potty training, which cool, if that's something that you provide, do that. This group never did potty training. That is never something that they ever focused on. They're like, we don't wanna talk about that.

That's not something we do, and it doesn't work for blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we stopped doing that and we focus on the things that does matter to them. Again those three key differentiators, but also the other pieces that they might, that parents might care about, they might care about the most educated BCBAs in the community, or they might care about play therapy specifically.

How is that incorporated? So we optimize for those terms. I think the website update itself improved the number of conversions, the number of actual leads that came in the door by 22% within the first couple of months. And then as our SEO started kicking in, which takes a couple of months to really move, right?

By the end of the year, their total traffic to their site, which is the measure of SEO, is just how many people we brought in, was up 182%. So more than double, and their actual leads were [00:29:00] up by 79%. So a little bit less than the total traffic because you're still attracting people that genuinely only care about what is play therapy. Not even, I want play therapy services. If you stick with that specific keyword example. That's one really good example. They went from having no wait list and struggling with their locations to needing to start new wait lists, which of course, is a double-edged sword. It sucks, but they've shifted back into full recruitment mode and full growth mode and acquiring new locations and all of that because they got focused on their audience effectively.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah, and this reminds me, I don't one of my most helpful reframes personally, as I was thinking, have learned about marketing and sales and all of that has, is an adjustment and feels icky when you're trained and you wanna serve the people. But the reframe is like sales as a service.

And thinking about that now. Those things, it, it seemed dis disconnected, right? It seems oh, we're marketing or doing sales or whatever. But what I'm hearing that this led to is more people being [00:30:00] served and not only more clients being served, but being served by an organization that had these other differentiators, like RBT retention, like that is unfortunately an anomaly in our field right now.

And things like that, where it is, if you're providing a quality service. Part of that is getting people to you. And I know that was hard for me 'cause I just, like I said, I just wanna do good work. Like we just I wanna spend all my time doing the work, but you can't reach people at the work if you don't, if they don't know about it, they don't know you exist.

Timothy Zercher: Exactly. It would be a better world if we all knew all the services that were potentially around us and what was better and ...

Allyson Wharam: I would love that. Yeah.

Timothy Zercher: But that's just not the reality.

Allyson Wharam: No.

Timothy Zercher: And like the reality is you need that. And we would all love if we didn't need lawyers and accountants...

Allyson Wharam: Yeah.

Timothy Zercher: But we do. And therefore we better just accept it and do it well.

Allyson Wharam: I wanna talk a little generally for a few minutes just in terms of your perspectives from leadership and business, because you have led multiple [00:31:00] companies and like we've talked about, BCBA's are not really trained in business and we're learning a lot of these things as we go.

So what leadership lesson for you was maybe something difficult to learn but has been most valuable for you?

Timothy Zercher: There have been a lot, I've done a lot of learning which if you're not familiar, that means I've messed up a lot.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah.

Timothy Zercher: Because that is how you learn. There's been several different principles. I think that the biggest one that I encourage everyone to listen to my mistakes and not do what I did is to trust your teams and verify that they're doing what you think that they're doing.

Most businesses either fail or fail to grow and they get stagnated. Because they don't trust their employees. That's generally the problem, right? They don't trust that they will in fact, do a good job creating the presentation, running the [00:32:00] shop for the weekend, whatever the thing is.

They don't trust it. And so that it holds the entire company back. It also stifles your teams enthusiasm and people don't want to work with you because they don't trust them and they can tell you don't trust them. And there's a lot of issues, right? But that's the biggest mistake most people have.

I didn't make that mistake, I went way farther and made a whole different mistake at different points where I trusted too much which is the other extreme. And there's a balance, right? And I just said, Hey, here's this thing. I need it to be done like this.

It's really important. I trust you to do it. And then I would just leave, right? And I would never check in on it again. And I would just say, Allison's great. She's got it, and I'd be done. The reality is people need to know that you're checking for them to know that it actually matters.

And that's the piece I'm saying. I'm not saying don't trust them. I'm saying trust your employees, trust your teammates and verify that it's working, not so that they know you're checking up on them, but so that they know that it actually matters. Because if I just give you something and I say, Hey, this [00:33:00] really matters, trust me.

And I just leave and I never ask you about it again. Think about it again. Mention it again. You are gonna assume that actually didn't really matter. He thought it matter in the moment, but it really didn't matter. It might not be the case. I might just be trusting you. I might be thinking about it every day and be, "man, I really hope Allyson's doing that thing well."

People need to hear that. And then of course sometimes I give you the instructions, I give it to you and I move on. And it actually wasn't clear. And so you've been doing the wrong thing, doing your best, for four weeks because you never checked in, so you never really know if it worked right.

And so that's a big thing, is (A) just actually trust your team and give, empower them and then do a circle back after, after it's been done two or three times and check in and say, Hey, how do you feel? All that's working. Is that great? Awesome. I looked at it. It is awesome. You did a great job. Here's two things I might do better next time.

Great. People want that kind of feedback. It might be hard to give feedback, but people want that kind of feedback. It's how they know that the work they're [00:34:00] doing actually matters.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah, it's funny that is actually your example, because that's my exact example, or my exact situation or learning, was I erred to far on the side of trust, which like you said, that is, you have to have trust. That's the foundation. But I did not add in the element of the accountability and the external sort of checks.

It was a really important thing. And so it wasn't until it was like a really big deal when it became time for like deliverables that things become more apparent. In retrospect, yes, you have the trust that the person is gonna be accountable and do those things, but actually the more kind thing to do is to hold them accountable along the way. I value my autonomy and flexibility. And so in my head what I was giving them ownership. And that was like the. The better thing to do is just to give them ownership of it. Really actually, I set myself and them up for failure by not checking in more consistently and holding them accountable, when [00:35:00] something wasn't delivered on some of those intermediate timelines as well. 

Timothy Zercher: And tell people too, right? Like, I think I end up doing this to my team occasionally, so I'm sorry, anybody if you're listening, because I forget the stage, but tell them that you're gonna be checking in, right? Tell them, Hey, this is, here's the thing I need you to do. It's really important. I'm gonna check in with you Monday. I'm gonna check in with you next week. I'm gonna, I'm gonna run through, once you've done it a few times, I'll go through and look at 'em and tell you if there's ways we can do better right?

Then they're ready for it. And it's not like a big, oh shoot, bosses on me 'cause I'm in trouble. Don't. It matters because it matters. He's gonna double check and then I'm gonna hear about how great I did, or I'm gonna hear about ways I can do better. And it builds that trust in right off the bat.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah, deadlines are a big one for that too, that I had to learn. Where again, I was like I wanna be accommodating to you and your schedule and all of that. And then, so I'm not gonna give you a deadline, which then actually puts more stress on you 'cause you're not quite sure what to prioritize.

Yeah, some of these things I have thought, this is the kinder, nicer way to do [00:36:00] this. And it's really, actually, it's not. 

Timothy Zercher: It's not. And it's different with different people, right? Some people do better if you don't give them deadlines. 'cause they will get it done and they'll get it done pretty quick. But the deadline scares them. You have to have that. You have to have that conversation, really. But if you don't have a conversation of, Hey, here's this thing.

How long do you think it'll take a week? Great. I'll check in and we can one day. Perfect. Then they don't feel rushed because they told gonna take a week. But then everyone still has clear expectations.

Allyson Wharam: Many ABA business owners, like we said, don't come from a business background. So any other advice you'd like to give them? For someone who's finding themselves running a company and maybe didn't even plan to go down this path. Where would you have them start? What advice do you have?

Timothy Zercher: Oh man. So much. When you're an employee, generally there is a path laid out for you of some kind of progression, right? I'm gonna go from an RBT to a BCBA. Once I have that, I'm gonna be a whatever, a program director, I'm gonna be a regional director, then I'll be the [00:37:00] clinical director, then I'll be the whatever, right?

There's a path. If you can hit these metrics, if you can prove yourself, if the company grows, et cetera, it might not all be under your control, but there's a pretty clear path of where my life is gonna go. And as an owner, no one is telling you that unless you have a really controlling coach or something, no one's gonna tell you what your plan is.

I find it really important, especially for people that have found themselves in ownership, which happens a lot. It's what I did also- is set up your plan for yourself. I recommend starting with one, what I call a priority pyramid. It's something I learned in like my philosophy 101 class when I was like 18, 17 in college.

Prioritize everything in your life, your family, your religion, your friends, your pets, your house, your lifestyle, your hobbies, all the things. Prioritize them. No one thing can be equal. You can't say my marriage and my kids, it's gotta be one first. So that your [00:38:00] priority is clearly demonstrated.

Build that first. From there, build what I call a life vision, which is clearly paint the picture to yourself. I'm a big fan of writing out with physical notes 'cause it just feels more real. But write out, I want my life to be like this. I want to be done with work at X time. I want to be this kind of amount of fit. I wanna have x amount of hours per week for my hobby. I wanna do these... write all these things out and then change it from I want to, I will have, I will be able to be this for my wife, for my family, for my friends, whatever. Paint that picture really clearly, and now you have a goal.

Right Now I need to hit this picture. What do I do from where I'm at to get to this picture? All of a sudden things become really clear and things just start locking in place. Because you're like, oh, okay. I need a lot of flexibility of time because I have all these things I wanna do with, and they all require time.

Okay. I need to have a really good BCBA on staff soon so that I can be step outta the clinical space for the next [00:39:00] six months. I need this now so that I can do this, right? All of a sudden, things start lining up. And the reality is, most of us like our work, we wouldn't be In the Field if we didn't like working.

I'm not saying that you should stop work, but work isn't always what feeds you. And you need things that are not just work, right? A lot of people, when I say build a vision thing, they come back with a business plan. It's no.

I want your life, not the business. The business then supports your life and if your life is, I wanna work 80 hours a week 'cause I love it. Awesome. Cool. That is fine. Build a company that won't implode by you spending too much time on it, because maybe that'll happen, right? So that, that's really what I'd recommend is start out with those pieces because it's gonna make everything so much easier and also it reduces a ton of stress.

There's a weird back of the head anxiety when you get out of survival mode. When you're in survival, it doesn't matter. You just gotta get the things done. But once you're out of survival and you don't know where you're going, it's a very strange anxiety [00:40:00] that hits. And I've hit it 5 or 6 times. Because I've accomplished my goals and I'm like, now what?

Oh no. I'm on top of the mountain. Where do I go? I can't. I can't down. You have to invent your next mountain to climb.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah, no I relate to that and not even acknowledging when some of these things happen, there is no final destination. And so I'm also guilty of not acknowledging things when they happen. Okay, that happened. Great. What's the next thing? Like you said, you, it's this ever growing mountain.

Timothy Zercher: And celebrate. Celebrate those. You have to focus on the celebration.

Allyson Wharam: What you were saying I think will resonate with a lot of BCBAs also in terms of there's a lot of talk about values and identifying your values. And and then with that part of acceptance and commitment training, or acceptance and commitment therapy is, identifying some committed actions that you will take towards those values. And so I, I think the point that you're making here too, is about the clarity that brings. And I've also, like you said, very much felt you almost feel, don't feel anchored because there, there aren't a lot of constraints and so [00:41:00] it creates some structure that you can anchor yourself with which I think is really powerful.

So the last thing that I want to leave people with is just like a quick tactical, quick win. So if you were to give someone just like a quick win, something that you would have them do next to either attract families or strengthen their brand or what have you, what would that one thing that they should do next be?

Timothy Zercher: Look at your company as a perspective, person that you want because you might be there, you might be in the recruiting phase, you might be in the client gaining phase, right? But look at your company from their perspective sounds a lot easier than it is. I would genuinely recommend getting someone else's phone, someone else's laptop and searching.

'cause your thing is gonna filter it based like you're gonna filter. Your Google search is gonna filter, your Facebook is gonna filter, et cetera. And put yourself in as many ways as you can in the state of mind that your client or [00:42:00] that your potential employee is in. I find it really helpful to do what I call a persona.

Even if it's very really small and just invent an exact person. Be like, this is Allison and she's 43 and she has two kids, and she... and paint the life perfectly of like your ideal client or your ideal employee, whatever it is. I'm not saying I think you're 43 by the way.

Allyson Wharam: I was wondering. No, it's okay.

Timothy Zercher: I just I picked a random name and I was like... 

Allyson Wharam: No, I'm just kidding.

Timothy Zercher: But whatever that is right, like kind of line that out really clearly. And then, what's the most important piece is, line out the pains and like the things that they're suffering through right now. Because we're all suffering. There's hard, life is hard, right?

And then list out like the things that they actually want. Like what you want them to be wanting when they come to you. Write those out first. And then look at yourself. Look at your website. Look at your social, look at your business card. Look at your pamphlet that you gave out to the pediatrician, right?

Look at those pieces from that perspective. Generally you will be shocked [00:43:00] by how disconnected what you are presenting is from what they actually care about when you really think about it. I'll give you a short example. Often when we do a persona for ABA families, the first thing on that list of pains is anxiety because this is the first time they've been diagnosed or the, or their child has been diagnosed and, or this is the first time that their therapist is gone and they need to find a new location, or their insurance has changed because my husband lost his job and they got a new job, but the new job doesn't cover the insurance and I have to find a new therapist.

Or whatever those pieces are. The anxiety is, a hundred percent it is always a hundred percent for ABA. It's different for other services. But for ABA, it's always really high because we as people, and we as parents especially, have a ton of anxiety and guilt around taking care of our kids.

They have to have the best. And it's hard when I know when I feel like I'm failing because the insurance changed or because the therapist left or because whatever. I feel like I'm failing. And so my anxiety and my fear and my stress are just [00:44:00] massively high, right? And then I go to a website and I can't freaking find the contact form because the color's the wrong thing or because the page won't load, or because whatever, or when I call because I finally get a phone number to call, they don't answer after it takes 10 rings and a voicemail like, I'm freaking out.

I can't handle that. And so look at it from that perspective, and you're like, oh shoot. My pamphlet has way too many words. I'm never gonna sit down and read five pages of why it's so great here. I need to know, do they serve kids between zero and three? 'cause that's my kid and I need this right now.

Maybe your situations there, maybe have a specialized service, for instance, and your therapist's " Hey, they'd benefit from speech therapy". Cool. Okay, great. So maybe the anxiety is not as high. The confusion is a lot higher because why is that different and how is that different? So put yourself in the space and then run through, and you'll find that the changes that are needed will be obvious. How you get there might not be obvious, but at least you see really clearly the problem.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah, I imagine [00:45:00] there's almost always some really low hanging fruit in terms of... I can't say how many times I've been to a website. I'm like, I'm interested in this. I don't even know how to get in touch with you. Or even worse, sometimes I don't actually know what you're offering. I don't know what this service is? Yeah, I think that's really valuable to take their perspective and interesting thought too of like really looking at going on someone else's laptop or phone or what, like really orient yourself to what they're gonna...

Timothy Zercher: Exactly. And we're all in, in the realm of psychology. It breaks a psychological mold when you're not at your desk on your laptop and whatever. All of a sudden it's oh, everything's different. And so it's easier to latch into someone else's like perspective.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah, for sure. If listeners wanna connect with you and learn more about your work and A-Train Marketing, where can they find you? What are the best ways to connect?

Timothy Zercher: Best way to get ahold of us if you're interested in any kind of services is our website. It is simple and there are very direct ways to get a get in contact with us. It's A-Train Marketing, so it's [00:46:00] atrainmarketing.com. Super simple. You can contact us there, you can actually schedule directly with me on my calendar if that's what you wanna do.

If you want a date first, and you wanna check us out before you do that, you can always go take a look at my LinkedIn as well. My name is Timothy Zercher. Zercher is spelled Z-E-R-C-H-E-R. I'm the only one 'cause it's a weird name. So if you look me up on LinkedIn, you can find me.

And if you Google us, if you google my name or the company name, either one, my LinkedIn will come up along with the company website. And you can also take a look at like past client case studies and that kind of stuff if you're interested and that kind of information.

Allyson Wharam: Awesome. And I'll shout out your podcast as well at Tim Talks Podcast. So if you're interested, you've had some really fantastic guests on there.

Timothy Zercher: Including you, which I think is the best one.

Allyson Wharam: I don't know about that, but I appreciate the connection and collaboration. So thank you so much for being here.

It was great talking to you. I learned a lot and thought about new things, so I imagine that business owners are gonna take a lot from this as well.

Timothy Zercher: Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it, and I hope got some valuable [00:47:00] insights out there for all of listeners.

Allyson Wharam: Absolutely.

Thank you so much for listening to In the Field, the ABA Podcast. Don't forget to visit our website at www.Sidekicklearning.net for more resources, our comprehensive fieldwork supervision curriculum, and continuing education opportunities. If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider subscribing to our podcast and sharing it with your colleagues and friends in the ABA community. Your support helps us to reach and empower more professionals in our field. Join me next week to continue to explore innovative practices and foster quality supervision in ABA.