Getting a Start in ABA—From Hawaii to Colorado
While living in Hawaii, Carrie Myers completed a bachelor’s degree in social work and started a master’s degree in social work in 2010. At the same, she decided to become a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA).
“It seemed like a natural progression,” Myers notes, who also is a Qualified Behavior Analyst (QBA). “I immediately fell in love with the kids and knew I had discovered my career path.”
After completing her masters’ degree, Myers moved to Colorado in 2013, where she spent five years working for several agencies using Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA). The chance to have a tangible impact on children and adults with developmental delays and maladaptive behaviors was invigorating, and Myers assumed roles of expanded scope and responsibility. And though there was much to applaud in the companies where she served, there was room for improvement.
Launching OGBC
Specifically, Myers wanted to create an ABA company that fostered closer ties with its technicians and clients.
“Too many ABA providers struggle with staff attrition,” Myers notes. “We spent a lot of time onboarding and training technicians. This, along with a resulting lack of continuity, was to the detriment of our clients. Having a consistent relationship with a clinician is really important for some of our clients.”
Myers launched Optimum Guidance Behavior Consulting (OGBC) in 2019 with operations in Boulder County and Fremont County. Out of the gate, Myers focused not only on recruiting top talent but retaining that same talent.
“As a starting point, we pay our technicians more than other ABA providers,” she says. “We also offer medical and dental insurance and allow our staff to accumulate PTO [personal time off] and sick time. Just recently, we began matching 401(k) contributions.”
What makes OGBC more unique is that these benefits are available to full- and part-time staff.
“As a result, we recruit the best talent and sustain much higher retention rates,” Myers adds.
OGBC also instituted onboarding and training processes to help its clinicians foster more collaborative and professional relationships with clients and their families.
“Part of the process includes empowering our clinicians to become more autonomous in managing their client relationships,” Myers describes.
This is particularly important since much of the clinical interaction takes place one on one. Depending on the magnitude of the disabilities of the client, we work with them on any number skills—from learning how to ask questions of someone to going to the bathroom by themselves.
The Decision to Open a Location in Fremont County
The decision to open a clinic in Fremont County was driven by Theresa Benavidez, who worked for Myers as a clinician prior to the founding of OGBC. Benavidez and her husband were based in Fort Carson outside of Colorado Springs when Myers and she first met. Benavidez had completed her bachelor’s degree in psychology and was applying to PhD programs.
“I wanted to go into clinical psychology and decided to take a part-time job as a behavior technician,” she recounts.
Myers was her first supervisor and Benavidez found the work with clients stimulating. Benavidez changed her academic path—initiating and completing a master’s degree in applied behavior analytics instead of going the route of a PhD.
A few years before Myers launched OGBC, Benavidez’s husband completed his military service, and the two of them were qualified for a home loan. They started looking at homes on Zillow. On a whim, Benavidez drove out to Fremont County to see a 100-year-old Victorian in Florence.
“We put an offer down on the house the second I walked in the door,” she recalls. “I didn’t have any knowledge of Fremont County or Florence.”
It turned out to be a fortuitous decision. When Myers decided to launch her own business, Benavidez was her first employee and Fremont County was pinpointed as one of the company’s two operating locations.
“One aspect of putting one of our clinics in Florence is the fact that there aren’t any other ABA agencies operating in Fremont County,” Benavidez says. “There was a great opportunity to offer services to a community without previous access to applied behavior analysis. Bigger ABA companies where we had worked before simply didn’t want to take the risk of offering services in a market where they didn’t think a profitable client base existed.”
FEDC WellSTART Helps Make a Connection in Florence
But Myers and Benavidez saw it as a business opportunity—and a chance to serve a community—versus a risk. As the clinical director for the Florence location, Benavidez attended a meetup of the Fremont Economic Development Corporation’s (FEDC) WellSTART, a not-for-profit community group in Fremont County focused on leveraging person-to-person digital contact, new technology tools, and telehealth systems throughout the rural county.
For a potential location, they recommended she look at the Emergent Campus in Florence.
“We have a cost-effective and flexible option with the Emergent Campus,” Benavidez says. “We started out with one classroom, and now we’ve grown to four,” she says. “Since the Emergent Campus is a former school, we even have a gymnasium, which is also a big plus for some of our clients.”
Being close to downtown is also an advantage.
“We will take our clients on tours of businesses downtown so they can work on their communication skills,” Benavidez says.
Building a Business in Florence
Building a business in Fremont County was not easy. The lease for office space in Florence was signed in March 2020.
“We literally shut down our office when it opened,” Benavidez jokes. “But because we provide critical health services, we were meeting with clients again in just a couple months. We instituted all of the appropriate COVID-19 safeguards.”
Clients came from different routes to OGBC—insurance companies, counselors at local schools, and word of mouth.
“Now that we’ve been in operation for several years, we’re finding that it is much easier to build and sustain a client base,” Benavidez adds.
Seeking ways to build closer and deeper ties with its clients and the local community, OGBC is working with Florence High School’s HS Pathways Program that assigns students to complete a Professional and Internship Community Experience (PaICE) with a local business.
“Just as other high school students in Fremont County have a chance to gain experience working for a local business, we also wanted to give our clients a chance to do so,” Benavidez says. “We launched a pilot program in concert with the high school last year. Our first client in the program was matched with another business in the Emergent Campus. The HS Pathways Program is a great way to help our clients with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities gain a purpose in society and make a connection with the local community.”
Rapidly Scaling the ABA Vision
Though OGBC was launched just a few years ago, Myers has rapidly scaled the company to over 50 staff today.
“The most important thing is that we’ve been able to sustain this growth without sacrificing the quality of services to our clients,” she says. “Helping our clients, many who have serious disabilities, to learn skills to survive and even thrive in the communities we serve is huge. It’s especially exciting to offer services in rural communities like Fremont County where the same level of access doesn’t exist in metropolitan areas like Denver-Boulder.”
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