The Behavior Influencer--Special Guest Kendall Ryndak Sameul

ABA on Tap is proud to host a very special guest brewer, The Behavior Influencer herself, Kendall Ryndak Samuel. Kendall shares her incredible story and her clear objective to make ABA accessible and ever relevant. She discusses her use of ABA in sports training, as well as her daily contact with a mass of followers on social media. Kendall also takes time to elaborate on her idea behind writing and publishing 'Talk Behavior to Me: The Routledge Dictionary of the Top 150 Behavior Analytic Terms and Translations,' her highly anticipated, soon to be released book. This book will bring ABA technology in its robust form, but make it palatable for anyone interested. Find Kendall, 'the.behavior.influencer', on Tik-Tok and pre-order her book at the following links:

Book link on Amazon
The Behavior Influencer TikTok
The Behavior Influencer Instagram
My Amazon Storefront

A crisp, light, incredibly refreshing libation for you today, as concocted along with guest brewer Kendall Ryndak Samuel, for your enjoyment on ABA on Tap. This one will quench your thirst yet inspire you for more. Keep it flowing, and always analyze responsibly.

All ABA on Tap brews pair well with cerebration. SO--if you are ready to enjoy the benefits of Magic Mind and boost your brain performance, please use the following link and use the discount code AOT to receive 20% off your purchase, and 56% off a subscription.
https://www.magicmind.com/aot  

Transcript

SPEAKER_05: 0:00

Welcome to ABA on Tap, where our goal is to find the best recipe to brew the smoothest, coldest, and best tasting ABA around. I'm Dan Lowry with Mike Rubio, and join us on our journey as we look back into the ingredients to form the best concoction of ABA on tap. In this podcast, we will talk about the history of the ABA brew, how much to consume to achieve the optimum buzz while not getting too drunk, and the recommended pairings to bring to the table. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and always analyze responsibly. All

SPEAKER_04: 0:55

right, all right, all right. And welcome back to yet another installment of ABA on Tap. I am your co-host, Mike Rubio, along with Mr. Daniel Lowry. Mr. Dan, how are you, sir?

SPEAKER_05: 1:07

Doing great. Very excited about today's podcast.

SPEAKER_04: 1:09

Tell me about that. Where are you excited, Dan?

SPEAKER_05: 1:11

We have a very special guest. It's been a little while since we've had a guest on, so very excited to have Kendall on to join us.

SPEAKER_04: 1:19

Kendall. Kendall Rindex Samuel. I got that right? Yep, it's an author and continuing to be an aspiring author, putting out some good stuff out there. We're very excited to make this connection and have you on the podcast. While we're talking about promoting and making connections, we do want to thank some people out there like the ABA Resource Facebook page. We have been getting more people reaching out to us saying that we are well publicized there. So thank you all out there for listening and please do reach out. We do like to make contact and learn about what you're doing and certainly have you on the podcast if you've got something good to promote. So without further ado, Kendall, tell us a little bit about your origin story. Tell us what got you started, your education, your background, what makes you tick, and we'll go from there.

SPEAKER_00: 2:07

Got it. All right. So yeah. So I am a BCBA from the Chicagoland area. I got my master's degree from Lindenwood University. I Did my undergrad there as well, and I played softball. So had the sports thing going on. Thought I was gonna be a school counselor, and I feel like everybody kind of falls into ABA the same but different of a way. We

SPEAKER_02: 2:31

all

SPEAKER_00: 2:32

fall, yeah, we fall into it. But back in high school and in my undergrad, I was like, oh, this operant conditioning stuff and classical conditioning stuff, this is really cool. I'm super good at this. there is no job for this though i remember the specific days where i was telling myself that in my head like there's nothing anybody can do with this besides become some kind of weird scientist who does this in a lab i don't even

SPEAKER_02: 3:00

know if you can

SPEAKER_00: 3:01

get paid for that

SPEAKER_02: 3:02

so

SPEAKER_00: 3:03

uh i was finishing my undergrad and my one of my professors who was teaching a special education class that i was in she came in one day and said you know i want to talk about this new program It's applied behavior analysis, explains everything about it, and I think one of the first things she said is, if you guys are familiar with Pavlov's dogs, and I was like, oh my God, this isn't happening right now. She talked about all the details about what it entails to be a BCBA, and that was it. I changed, I'm pretty sure I changed my educational route that day. Then I started in their master's program, and I thought I was just going to work in a school and still kind of do the, you know, I'll be in high school, I'll maybe coach softball, and we'll see where that takes me. But as I was sitting in all my classes, I was looking at everybody and was like, man, everyone has prior work experience with individuals who have autism or intellectual disabilities or just like kids in general, and I don't. I have done summer camps for... kids for like softball everyone's really good at understanding all of these like special education examples and everything and like I get it but the only thing I feel like I'm really good at is making like funny relatable examples about the stuff that we learn and that's it and you know what I don't where is that going to take me?

SPEAKER_02: 4:37

Sure.

SPEAKER_00: 4:37

And here we are. Um, but yeah, so I, I have found a deep passion in dissemination of our science because I mean, I feel like everybody should know at least the basics of our science because it's the science of understanding and changing behavior. And you have to do that as a human. You do that on a daily basis. You do that probably every, Every minute of your life, you're analyzing, you know, what should I do next? How should I help this person? How do I help my kid do this? How do I not make Christmas stressful this year? You're going through that all the time. You don't talk

SPEAKER_05: 5:19

politics. That's how you do it.

SPEAKER_00: 5:21

Yeah, don't talk politics and you just nod your head. And

SPEAKER_05: 5:26

don't talk Cubs White Sox, right?

SPEAKER_00: 5:29

No, don't do that. So, yeah, so, I mean, it's... It's one of the best sciences ever. And I want everybody to know about it. And then I also found a really awesome way to mesh sports and behavior analysis together. I've been doing private softball lessons and group lessons for almost like 15 years. And I have been able to put both of those things together and use all the ABA knowledge that I got from school and all my continuing education And I help all of my students with that now. And it's changed the way I coach. It's changed the way I interact with all my girls and the families. And it's awesome. That's the best way I can describe it. It's one of the best things that ever happened to me.

SPEAKER_04: 6:18

Cool, cool blend, right? Sometimes we get a little pigeonholed in ABA into the autism treatment realm. And so it's really neat to hear that you're doing something a little bit different. Give us a couple of coaching pointers, if you don't mind. What's something that you think you see coaches doing out there very commonly that you would say, please reconsider that and try doing it this way instead?

SPEAKER_00: 6:40

Yeah. So one of the biggest things I see is when a coach sees that their athlete is doing something incorrect, they will immediately tell them what is going on that's incorrect and And a lot of the time they don't go any farther than that. They're just using verbal instruction. Where what I see is a lot of advanced athletes are able to respond to that pretty well. But we're still human and a lot of us love visual prompting. Something that's going to show us, oh, okay, that's what you meant by that. Or even if it's not the coach specifically showing their athlete that, maybe taking a video and doing some video modeling or video feedback. They do that in the pros all the time, no matter what sport it is. In major collegiate sports, they're doing that too. A lot of coaches will get, I can see, because sometimes I will coach at a public batting cage. I'll see these coaches and they have the absolute best interest of these athletes, but I could see them getting frustrated because they're like, I told you to do that. I already told you don't move your, I told you not to step out when you swing. And I'm just glancing, because I'm like, ah, God, we, like some, like, visual prompts would be great, something that they can, like, hear that they step on that would be super helpful, or, like, even a vocal cue, something when they're swinging to help that process occur would be better, so... I see that. Generally, I also see this is probably the biggest thing that I see with teams is a lot of coaches are still totally relying on punishment strategies in order to get their athletes to comply with, you know, whatever they're wanting them to do, whether that is, you know, making sure the team listens to them or, you know, you want to decrease the amount of strikeouts that your team is having or, you know, how many walks your pitchers are giving up, which, okay, like punishment strategies, they can't help. But if you're only using that, obviously we know as BCBAs, it's unethical to just use a punishment strategy. You have to have a plan for replacing that undesired behavior um and it's tough because most coaches are not bcbas and that's okay they shouldn't be um but i see this huge opportunity for bcbas to help and spread our knowledge so that even if you're you're not going to study behavior analysis at least just general youth coaches I don't care if they're just picking up a t-ball team for you know the spring season at least they have some general knowledge of like oh maybe maybe using rewards starting there would be better sure we could increase our motivation so that you know we're not lying relying on I'm gonna make you guys sprint if you don't listen or if you give up five blocks because not only are you You're making these athletes scared of you. You're the rapport is going to be horrible with you. And it just, everything goes downhill from there. So I'd say those are like the two biggest issues that I see, um, in, in the coaching world that I wish that would change. But ultimately I, I hope. I'm able to have a big impact on something.

SPEAKER_04: 10:21

Running sprints as punishment for your batting may not do a lot for your swing either, right? No, absolutely not. We're taking time away from practicing your swing to punish you for not batting well.

SPEAKER_00: 10:34

Right, and then we're also teaching people, because I've had a ton of coaches ask me, like, oh, well, how many sprints should we have them do? And I'm like, hold on. I don't rely on that stuff because also... not only like does that not relate to the swing just like you said but you're making them hate exercising then too and that there's already a huge issue with people not exercising in our country um so now we're dipping into that and like and when you're dealing with especially young girls who are just starting to learn about their bodies and how life works That's not something we should be doing. It's frustrating, but I'm happy I've had the experiences I've had because I've had some pretty tough coaches. And I look back on some of my experiences and I'm like, I mean, some of those punishment things. They did help in some situations and others. I'm like, yeah, that was stupid.

SPEAKER_05: 11:32

That's tricky because in a lot of ways, that's what the like prototypical coach you see. I don't know, maybe Nick Saban, who just retired, you know, college football coach or the Bill Belichick or things like that, like these coaches that are kind of berating their players and like yelling at them and losing it on the sidelines. And that is one way that has been successful. And that's how a lot of people think that coaching should be done. So sometimes it's probably very difficult to break that stereotype of one way that coaching should be done because you do see some coaches being successful with that. But there's a lot of multivariate there, right? It's not necessarily because of that that that's why they were successful, right? So I think those things certainly can be overgeneralized. No, for sure, for

SPEAKER_04: 12:19

sure. For sure. Yep, that is the stereotype. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00: 12:22

Yeah, and another thing I was going to say is most of the time when the general public is, they see coaches interacting with coaches their athletes is during games. And when you have a game going on, there isn't a whole lot of training that's happening. So they might be seeing the parading and the yelling. Maybe that athlete, I mean, does react well to that. And that's kind of how you get them back on track during the game. But there could be other incentive systems that the coaches have in place for practice, but you don't see that.

SPEAKER_02: 13:03

Nobody

SPEAKER_00: 13:04

sees that unless you're watching Hard Knocks. I love the show. They

SPEAKER_05: 13:10

always pick terrible teams for some reason.

SPEAKER_00: 13:14

Hey, watch it. The Bears are on their next.

SPEAKER_05: 13:17

Point

SPEAKER_00: 13:21

proven. We don't get contact with these pro teams when they're in practice. They could have They could have these good things that they're doing and systems that they have with their teams, but we don't see that.

SPEAKER_01: 13:32

So

SPEAKER_00: 13:33

a lot of the behavior that is modeled for us publicly is the yelling. It's those more intensive moments. Absolutely. How else would I come in contact with being like, oh, yeah, what else are these coaches doing? Yeah. One

SPEAKER_05: 13:51

thing we know about behavior is when we start to escalate and we get into a little fight or flight that our cognition starts to deteriorate. So I think that would provide a lot of credence to what you're saying is getting someone in an escalated state is going to cause them to get in a little bit of fight or flight which is going to send their blood away from their prefrontal cortex and now they can't think or process like you're saying. So I think probably being in a game number one is going to cause somebody to be some level of escalated But then, yeah, I think that lends a lot of credence to what you're talking about, Kendall, about trying to not bring somebody up to that level of escalation because that's then going to deter their cognition.

SPEAKER_04: 14:31

That's really tough, right? That's really tough in the sense that if you're a competent player, you've made an error on the field, for example, you're already feeling a certain amount of autonomic arousal, I would expect. Oh, man, I can't believe I just did that. And now you've got your coach yelling at you and berating you, right? So now the idea that you might... We talk about this with younger kids. I like to talk about it with younger children, the idea that you're going to actually soothe during that time. You might be really upset at your player or your child about what they're doing and the way they're acting, but if you escalate them further, then to Dan's point, that's probably not going to help you. What are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00: 15:08

I 100% agree. One strategy I love to do when my athletes get escalated, because you're talking about softball pitching that's like one of the hardest skills ever in sports I mean I know so many baseball guys oh it's trying to throw a ball hard and straight and spin really fast underhand

SPEAKER_05: 15:31

what they say hitting a baseball is the hardest thing but it's actually hitting a softball is apparently the hardest thing

SPEAKER_00: 15:37

It's crazy. And it requires so much practice and the failure rate. I don't even have data on that, but I would love to know what that is, because when you're first starting out, I remember I was throwing the ball. 40 feet into the air like just completely demolishing whatever walls were behind my uncle my dad who were catching me all my holes everywhere throwing it like above where the screen would be over the backstop and a lot of my students will do that at first when they're learning because they don't their body has never moved like that and for a lot of girls it's super frustrating um because you're not throwing a strike uh even though the pitcher is You don't want to throw a strike every time, but they don't know that when they're first starting. So something I like to do when I start to see those precursor signs of like, all right, our eyes might get a little watery. We're breathing a little bit harder. I'm starting to see the furrowed brows right away. I'm like, hey, let's get some water. I need some too. I don't even tell them like, hey, you need water. But taking that second and just completely changing our focus like I will bring up any other topic that they like or I'll point something out like especially if they're younger girls they're a little easier to redirect so I'll point something out like funny in the environment just because if you're so escalated That's not a teaching moment anymore. You're not in the mindset to take in information. You need to get back down to at least some level of baseline, and then we can talk about the last pitch that you just threw. But until we get there, we're just going to drink water and talk about, I don't know, sour punch straws or something. Anything, your date from last Friday night, anything. That usually helps. a lot with my girls.

SPEAKER_04: 17:37

It reminds me of a good old-fashioned error correction procedure, right? The idea that you kind of have to reset then before you go back to the next trial or whatever. A little bit of an old-school description there, but that's exactly what you're describing is the idea that we've had all these trials. You've thrown pitch after pitch after pitch, and yep, we're going to consider that one an error based on your form or your technique, and now we're just going to correct it. But Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00: 18:24

I think that's a great question. Yeah,

SPEAKER_05: 18:27

it is.

SPEAKER_00: 18:27

Being a BCBA has helped me be a better coach because I understand when to put in certain strategies. I know when to assess. It doesn't matter who I'm working with. I'm sure I have neurodivergent students that come to me, but I don't really know much about that side of their background. I look at them as an athlete and say, okay... I'm just going to do skill training with you. I'm not even doing really like functional analyses or anything unless there is some issue with them like practicing or then I'll kind of dip into, all right, why aren't we going there? But overall, understanding and studying ABA has helped me help my athletes and do more strategies and training with them than just typical coaching. Because typical coaching, I mean, it, It works. Some athletes do great with it. It just depends on the coach and what strategies that they're using. But the way that we analyze and know when to fade out our prompts and fade out our incentives to make somebody more independent and then maybe go to, you know, like let's generalize this skill. Typical coaches don't have that education. And that I feel like is a superpower that we have. We understand people and animals on a completely So

SPEAKER_05: 19:54

the people that you're working with may or may not be neurodivergent. They're not necessarily coming to you because they're neurodivergent. Like, oh, this coach is a BCBA. That's why we're on her team. So they're just across the smorgasbord of what anyone, any coach would get. No different than yourself. They're not coming to you specifically because of your BCBA roots. Correct? Am I understanding that right?

SPEAKER_00: 20:19

Correct, yeah. They just know that I am a private softball instructor. I have education in, I don't even refer to it as applied behavior analysis, and we'll get into that later. Sure, sure. But I'll say that I do behavioral sports performance coaching, and I specialize in that, and I use behavior science to help my athletes develop the skills that they need to.

SPEAKER_05: 20:46

That makes sense. And then I'll pass it back to you, Mike. That brings me to kind of the point that I think you were alluding to, Mike, is that in ABA, we've kind of pigeoned ourselves so we've got these individuals with autism who maybe struggle with communication or whatever. And that's what we do with ABA. And that's how it's utilized, where you're talking about utilizing it for individuals that may or may not even have a diagnosis. Think about how useful ABA would be just in coaching in general. But for some reason, ABA hasn't marketed itself. But we're talking about behavior. I mean, that's absolute behavior. Well, you've talked about behavior. pediatrics or parenting in general. It's so cool and refreshing to hear ABA being utilized outside of, not that it's not relevant for people on the spectrum, but just like in general and how often we utilize it and how if we can market it. to these other industries, maybe we can un-pigeonhole ourselves, if that's a word.

SPEAKER_04: 21:34

I like talking about that. We've been now mandated, at least here in California, you know, by insurance, right? Insurance has been mandated to provide reimbursement for behavioral health treatment or us for ASD for the past 12 years. And we've been utilized for one condition and one condition only. Autism. That's it. So yeah, to your point there, Dan, it's time to expand. So yes, very refreshing to be, you know, So... 20 minutes into our discussion here and we've talked about autism very little. So let me continue that trend for a little bit. You talked about sort of skills training and I could see where you're working on mechanics and different things with athletes. Something that's pretty popular in our field of treatment is the idea of sportsmanship. Can you talk about that a little bit? Can you talk about some of the functions of bad sportsmanship and any experiences you've had in relating to that and helping athletes embrace a better field attitude. And I mean, at the end of the day, none of us like to lose. So some of us express that in a way that maybe isn't so socially or too socially significant for the rest of us. Give us your better insights on that.

SPEAKER_00: 22:46

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I think one of the biggest things that has a very strong effect on athletes is the way that their coaches and their parents model their own behavior after a loss or a letdown or after an error is made when momentum is low. So we always, I mean, it's one of our human instincts is when we don't, when we're not familiar with the situation or some stimuli, we look to a person who looks like they might know what what might be going on. Um, and for a lot of youth athletes who are just getting into sports, when they see that, Oh shoot, we just gave up a grand slam or somebody missed the bag and we got tagged out. We'll look to the coach to see how did they react. And if that coach is cracking their clipboard over their knee and swearing and getting in the umpire's face, I'm, I would guess that maybe some of the athletes might not respond exactly like that later on in life or maybe in the next game, but it could be similar. So the way we model ourselves as coaches and all of our behavior, it's super important. It's not just about teaching those physical skills. We also have to model and tell and teach our athletes, we also want you to do this too. We also want you to... behave a certain way on the field, in the dugout, on the bench, after the game. And I really condone all my coaches that I've had. They did a really good job with that in the past because, I mean, when you play at a super high level and you're getting recruited by colleges, college coaches sometimes, I heard a coach the other day, She said she purposely went to go recruit one of the athletes that she thought she went on her team at a game where she knew this athlete was going to lose. Their team was going to get slaughtered because she wanted to see how this athlete responded to her teammates, to her coaches and to her parents. And she ended up calling her assistant coach after that and said, write her off the list right now. She was one of the most disrespectful athletes I've ever seen in my life. I've never seen someone treat their family like that before after a loss. Like, that's terrible. So a lot of it has to do with how we model ourselves. And we have to be at least telling our athletes, this is how we want you to conduct yourself in this environment. Because a lot of people don't know. And then another thing I'd love to do, which was so I have not worked in dissemination and behavioral sports psychology, you know, my entire time of being a BCBA. I worked in autism and intellectual disabilities for almost seven years. So I understand it from so many different perspectives. And I remember working with. a few of my older clients, and they were working on, we were working on replacing some swearing behaviors to make sure they were only happening in certain environments, like happening in their bedroom, somewhere more you know, closed off to the general public because it was, they were, it could have been intense at times. Um, and it worked really, really well for them. So I do the same thing with my students is I will tell them, Hey, instead of getting super upset on the mound, when you're, you, you gave up a grand slam or you walked five girls in a row, you can feel like that. Absolutely. But let's wait to, um, let it rip and cry and punch the pillow and yell and all that stuff until you either get in the car or until you get like in the shower at home. I'm not saying don't do it because I don't want you to you know suppress your feelings and all that because yeah it's really freaking frustrating um you don't you don't want to be benched or you know whatever happened but there is a better place to let those emotions out in a healthy way and to also you got to conduct yourself as a as a functional athlete when you're on the field you can't it's not going to help your team If you're the one who's controlling the game and you're just completely losing your mind, you've got to keep it together.

SPEAKER_04: 27:39

Super important point there. Again, I love the way you said that. You're not saying you can't have these emotions. It's about the time and the place and how you express them. I don't know that we talk about that enough when we're doing our corrections for certain behaviors that we're working with a client. They might bother us. And then the idea that we're going, wait, just because it bothers me doesn't mean it's wrong. What's the point here? A really important point you're making that I appreciate. I

SPEAKER_05: 28:03

appreciate that very much. And I feel like you said, you went on to elaborate that that professor was correct in that assumption. So can you talk about what you mean by that? What do you mean by after that class, you've never thought about life the same way again?

SPEAKER_00: 28:43

Yeah, because it was the first time that I studied heavily what behavior science was. I had had behavior modification courses. I had taken just general psychology one and two in high school. But after his course, Professor Randy, he's awesome. Shout out to

SPEAKER_05: 29:04

Professor Randy.

SPEAKER_00: 29:05

Yeah, shout out to Professor Randy. He had such great rapport with us and made it so easy for us to understand all of these very complex concepts. But we went into talking about just the general principles and concepts of ABA, which is How we see how humans interact with each other, it's really like the formula to life. We are understanding how antecedents affect humans. people, how consequences, they're not always bad. Sometimes it's an incentive, sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's just discontinuing what you were getting before. Precursor behaviors, motivating operations, like how cravings can have an effect on our behavior. And I was like, whoa, this exists? I thought we were just going to be you know, taking the operants and going, all right, I'm going to be pairing this with this to get this to happen. And this is going to be the outcome. This is, yeah, we're going to do that. But like, there's way more to that. And it just opened my eyes to everything that I didn't know I loved. And it just, it got me so excited to learn more and to want to do good in this field. And yeah, it's just time went on. I fell more and more in love with everything. But what was interesting was the more I fell in love with the field, I was starting to intertwine myself with new professionals and people who have been in the field for a while. And every single person I talked to, I asked them, oh, so what do you do? And they say, oh, I work in autism. I work in a school. I work in a therapy clinic. I work in at home. And that was it. It was like this weird thing. cycle. And I was like, what? Isn't on the ABAI website with special interest groups, aren't there over 20 different areas of practice that it says that we are able to go into, just like in medicine? Where are those people? And I was interested in, maybe autism is not going to be my thing. Maybe I want to do behavioral sports psychology. Maybe I want to do whatever this dissemination thing is or gerontology, but I couldn't because nobody had fieldwork placements for that. It really frustrated me. I was like, what's happening? Why is this website even a thing? If if people don't practice in these areas. So even working at my previous job when I was working with all my clients who had autism, I was like, man, someone's got to do something about this. I know that there are researchers and unbelievable scientists that are doing work in these areas, but where are the applied people? They're hiding in the trenches somewhere.

SPEAKER_05: 32:19

They're trying to bill out hours. They're worried about their billable hours. That's where

SPEAKER_00: 32:24

they're

SPEAKER_02: 32:25

at.

SPEAKER_00: 32:26

Yes. God, I just... I wanted to change that. So... um one day my uh i i used to post a bunch um on my social media pages about the bachelor uh and i would make fun of the show so much and people would laugh about it and my dad told me one time he's like you should do like social media stuff and maybe teach people about behavior analysis if you say like nobody really knows what it is yeah

SPEAKER_02: 32:56

that sounds

SPEAKER_00: 32:57

great um So yeah, and that led me to then, I won an award with one of the ABAI special interest groups and I had to go speak at the Boston conference that was in 2021. And while I was there, I went to, it was a random talk. It was the last CEU on a Saturday night. And I was like, I'm just gonna go to it just because. I didn't even read the title of it. And then I did when I walked in and I was like, oh, This is on like jargon and how to make it easier to understand. Cause that was like the entire reason for my social media pages was to make ABA easier to understand for just people. So I got in there. And again, it was just like, it was the same exact feeling I got on my first day of my master's degree. Like sparks were flying, the angels were like, like it was unreal. So at the end, Dr. Kimberly Marshall was one of the presenters. She's an amazing professor out at University of Oregon. And she said, you know, one of the things that we should do from all the research that I found is we need to make more resources for behavior professionals to teach them how to disseminate all of our information appropriately and make behavior plans easy to understand in language that parents understand. And again, I became infuriated and was like, why hasn't anyone done anything? Why doesn't someone just write a book on how to talk? And I was like, oh,

SPEAKER_05: 34:42

We were waiting for you. We were all waiting for you. That's right. Yeah, ABA is not easy to digest for sure.

SPEAKER_00: 34:49

Yeah. So I, uh, yep. Called my mom, I think about 30 seconds after that. And I said, mom, I'm going to write a book. And that was it.

SPEAKER_05: 34:57

Okay. So shout out to professor Randy. It's always cool when you can meet like an educator that really inspires you. And cause that's what education should be, right? Is that inspiration? So that's awesome. He was able to do that

SPEAKER_04: 35:09

once and then twice over, right? You mentioned somebody else from Oregon there.

SPEAKER_00: 35:13

Yeah. Dr. Kimberly Marshall. Oh my God. Wonderful. Wonderful. And then I, I had, um, um, Melissa Weber, she's a BCBA that is out of Missouri. I have another colleague, Dr. Maggie Pavone, who is also out of the Missouri area. She teaches at Lindenwood University, like just so many incredible mentors I've had. I work very closely with Dr. John Bailey, like an insane mentor. guy, I wouldn't be where I am right now.

SPEAKER_04: 35:43

He's a cornerstone for our field.

SPEAKER_00: 35:46

He's such a

SPEAKER_04: 35:47

cornerstone. Unbelievable. So having delved into the autism treatment realm and now doing things that are a little bit different, tell us a little bit about that experience. Tell us a little bit about your views on the current state of the ABA union. We certainly take a lot of flack these days. I can look back at my near 28 year career and think about the first 10 years of it and go yeah we used to do a lot of that and I yeah it's not like people are making these things up but the idea that maybe like we'd like to say here a lot about the baby and the bath water I feel like a lot of the criticisms sort of grab ABA and throw it completely out with the bath water and that's not necessarily a good thing but I believe I think we all believe we can agree the science is solid and then there's the idea of misapplication of the science. So what are your, having been in the field, now being a little bit privy to some of this hardship or criticism that ABA is facing, give us your rundown. I know I threw a lot at you there, so take your time. No,

SPEAKER_00: 36:52

I love it, yeah. I think, I mean, the bad experiences that people have had, if they themselves have had services in behavior analysis or it has been their children or family members, If they're saying they had a bad experience, it was a bad experience and we need to say, yeah, that wasn't good that that happened and learn from it. But I'm really happy with all of our scientists and all of our pioneers in the field who are really trying to make it a safer, and more functional spots for all of our practitioners. People are working really hard to ensure that these things aren't going to happen again. We're doing a lot of research to ensure that our strategies are stronger. We know how to supervise our students better, how to train them better, because a lot of that happens in training. And One of the bigger areas is misapplication occurs sometimes because some of the people who are implementing our strategies don't know what we're saying. They don't understand the plans that we're putting out there. If we're saying, oh yeah, to a parent or a first-year RBT or a sports coach, Yeah, so when this behavior happens, I want you to use a fixed ratio schedule of one reinforcement. Are you kidding me? What? Why are we talking like that? A doctor would never say like, oh, you have, you know what, you have rhinosinusitis. You'd be like, I'm dead. I'm going to die. I should probably call my lawyer. I should make my will. No, it's a sinus infection, and you're going to be okay. You're going to go to the pharmacy. You're going to get some pills. You're going to be good. So when we speak very, very heavily with our jargon, it also turns people off to our science. And there's been so much research that I've read that has said, you know, BCBAs and what we do are great, but we're not great at promoting what we do. That is so true. We make it seem very scary and just using huge words that nobody understands and some words that have double meanings from like extinction. Why did we... Why did we choose that?

SPEAKER_05: 39:31

Or punishment, right? I would deal with that with a lot of the parents because I do a lot of parent trainings. And they look at punishment as something that somebody doesn't want. And now I have to take that idea and reframe it as, no, punishment means the behavior is going to decrease. Oh, so when I spank my kid, that's punishment. Well, it depends on... It can be. We take these terms and we try to re... purpose them for other things in ABA like you're saying, and that creates a lot of cognitive dissonance for people.

SPEAKER_04: 39:55

Go ahead. The connotation of punishment and negative. I know you talk about negative reinforcement in your book. Well, continue, continue. You were on a thread. Go for it. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 40:05

yeah. We can't be turning people off to the science before they even get into it, before they even have a meeting or a first session with

SPEAKER_02: 40:18

their

SPEAKER_00: 40:19

BCBA. We need to be making this so accessible and building so much rapport with our clients. And if we're working in OBM, all the executives, all the stakeholders that we work with, we need to make this very easy for them and make it a very comfortable environment situation for everybody involved because if you don't we're never going to be able to grow the field we're going to be making people feel some type of way if we're using words like oh yeah let's manipulate the environment let's manipulate all the stimuli around us around your child if somebody told I'm not even a mom but if somebody told me that I'd be like I'm sorry

SPEAKER_02: 41:06

what are you going

SPEAKER_00: 41:07

to do so we we There are many, many things that I feel like need to change and are changing about ABA, but this is one of them. We need to be talking a lot different about what we're doing, and it's with any stakeholder. It's not just with the parents or with your clients. If they are able to communicate with you, it's everybody. It's just as important that we speak basically about it when you're at a bar and somebody asks you, what do you do? You need to be able to say... Here's my elevator speech. This is what I do. But if you're using words like, oh, yeah, I manipulate the environment, and then we use consequence strategies, and sometimes it's a change behavior like punishment, negative reinforcement. Someone's going to be like, okay, I got to go. And they're going to tell their friends and family, like, I just met the craziest

SPEAKER_01: 42:01

person ever.

SPEAKER_00: 42:02

And they said they're a BCBA watch out. Watch out for those people. I think our language has a big impact. thing to do with it.

SPEAKER_05: 42:11

I think one thing, like you said, the language piece is challenging, especially with the newer professionals, because I did new hire training for my companies for the last 15 years, and a lot of that recently since the RBT credential has been mandated with passing the RBT task list, which has all of the terminology that you said. So we're taking people that have zero experience, and now they have to pass a test on what a FR1 schedule is or what the difference between DRI and DRA is. I understand there has to be some system to make sure that we're putting people out that are comfortable and competent Right. Right. can make it so the restrict the not restrict the regulate would be the better word regulate the science which comes from a good place in some ways it might be counterintuitive and actually make it so that people don't know really what they're saying and aren't comfortable with it

SPEAKER_04: 43:17

yeah since we're talking about jargon i'm going to request two minutes from both of you to present some jargon i'm going to say abracadabra and then talk to you about some magic all right And of course, when I say abracadabra, I'm referring to magic. And when I talk about magic here on ABA on Tap, Dan, I'm talking about magic mind. Your flow state awaits you. It's certainly what I lean on to make sure that I'm in my flow state when we record ABA on Tap. And it comes with some other magical words like abracadabra. So instead of abracadabra, I think a magician should say magic. Ashwagandha. What kind of magic would they get with

SPEAKER_05: 44:00

ashwagandha, Mr. Dan? Well, their stress and anxiety would drop. They would have reduced sleepiness and fatigue. Maybe I need to give my girlfriend some of that. And reduced stress hormones as well. Reduced

SPEAKER_04: 44:14

stress hormones. So ashwagandha and all that magic happens. Now, let's say that I go abracadabra cordyceps mushroom. We had to pause there for a little bit of a laughing break. So we were at cordyceps mushroom, Mr. Dan, the magical cordyceps mushroom.

SPEAKER_05: 44:35

Which is used to treat coughs, chronic bronchitis, respiratory disorders, kidney issues, nighttime routine issues, anemia, male sexual problems. Kind of runs the gamut there.

SPEAKER_04: 44:46

Wow. That's a lot of good stuff. Now, one final magical word here, and I hope I can get this right. Bacopa monieri.

SPEAKER_05: 44:55

Which shows improvements in verbal learning, delayed word recall, memory acquisition, and anxiety reduction.

SPEAKER_04: 45:02

All right. So, magic mind. I keep it in my refrigerator. Nice little two-ounce green magical shot of beautifully tasting bright elixir. I pair it with my coffee. Again, I recommend it nice and cold. So... To boost your brain performance, your memory, your mental acuity, alertness, and awareness, add Magic Mind to your day today. Simply use the link in our episode description or go to www.magicmind.com slash capital A, capital O, capital T. That stands for ABA on tap. Again, www.magicmind.com slash capital A, capital O, capital T. Use discount code. AOT, all in caps. And say abracadabra. And say abracadabra. To receive 20% off your purchase and 56% off a subscription. Rediscover your mental power and endurance. Shake, breathe, drink Magic Mind. Okay, well thank you for that time and sharing about some magic. Now let's get right back into it here with regard to jargon. There are some purists in the field who... don't want us to abandon the said technology. They think it sort of preserves the science. It gives the real technical terms the pure meaning. What are your thoughts on that? I

SPEAKER_00: 46:19

agree that we shouldn't abandon our jargon because those are our roots. That's how we are able to communicate with each other. That would just be going into... another country and saying, you know what, you need to change the language that you're using. We're going to talk like this now. That would not work because people have been talking like that for forever and that brings them back to their roots and it's the same with us. I believe that we need to have specific boundaries or SDs to train our BCBAs and all of our other behavior professionals and say, all right, when you are talking with this audience, this is the language that you use. When you are talking with this audience, this is the language that we use. Because if we are using terms like condition motivating operation and negative reinforcement and partial interval recording with youth coaches, and doctors and lawyers they're not going to understand what we're saying and then we're it's going to take more time even if they're patient it's gonna take more time to explain what we're talking about. It's almost like Kevin Malone from The Office where he tries to talk in really shortened sentences and everyone tells him, Kevin, it's taking us longer to try to translate what you're saying. You should just talk normal. So when you're talking to behavior professionals, Absolutely. Yeah. Let's use the jargon because that allows us to ensure that we are being consistent with all of our practices and that we are all on the same page. And then if another practitioner has to take over one of our cases if we're stepping out for a while or if they're just going to take over your caseload or some kind of similar situation like that, yes, they need to know exactly what's going on so that there could be a seamless transition. 100%. Same thing in research. We need to make sure we're using our jargon when we are producing research, again, for BCBAs because that allows us to replicate and make sure we're doing it correctly. Awesome. But as soon as you flip the script and you're starting to talk to non-behavior professionals or behavior professionals like very, very new RBTs, we need to test to see where your level of understanding is with this. And if you're going to be talking to somebody at the checkout line at the grocery store, we're not using the jargon. But we do need to have a set of synonyms that we use consistently so that everybody's on the same page. Because you're right, I'm sure when you start to use similar words that might not be transitive condition motivating operations. Okay, yeah. We need to make sure we're talking about the same thing, but that's where I wrote the book, is so that we can be more consistent and effective when we're talking to anybody, no matter what our SDs are, no matter who the audience is, we need to have consistent language for everyone. But we need to make sure it's not gonna fall on deaf ears.

SPEAKER_02: 49:57

If

SPEAKER_00: 49:58

somebody doesn't understand us, It's not going to go down well. Rapport is going to go down. They might not even listen to us or want to be around us ever again. And that's not what we want when we are in a stage of our science of trying to build it and trying to grow. We need to be able to speak the language of other people, not just about us all the time.

SPEAKER_04: 50:19

Agreed. We certainly have some doozies. I mean,

SPEAKER_05: 50:22

that makes sense, right? Language is just communicating an idea, so we have to be able to communicate that idea in a way that hits whatever the audience is that we're trying to communicate

SPEAKER_04: 50:29

with. Well, even the notion that amongst professionals sometimes we're... I know that I lean on Dan quite a bit because, given my developmental background, I tend to be more thesaurus-oriented with developmental theory, right? So people talk about stimulus control. I like talking about joint attention. But they're not necessarily two different things if you start Right. I'll give them the example and I'll say, oh, you actually were talking about this. And I'll go, oh, you're actually right. Thanks for correcting me. So I think it actually even helps us in the field to remember sometimes these are highly technical terms. And even in autism treatment, if you're not in a lab, practicing these things constantly and continuously, you're also gonna lose a little bit of your fluency, right? We don't necessarily talk in this jargon all the time, even professionally. So the idea that you're giving practical examples, I think, is incredible and tremendously helpful all around. Now, you mentioned you think there's some good examples of that out there aside from your work people that are using aba in a way that doesn't necessarily integrate the technology and doesn't confuse people talk to us a little bit about that

SPEAKER_00: 51:55

yes so i talk about this in my book a bunch um in uh towards the end of my book one of the chapters talks about others who are selling behavior science and this was another thing that just like made me cringe like just all the way to my core that oh my god BCBAs didn't create these resources. And there are millions of copies being sold of these books. There are millions of people who are following these influencers who are doing a pretty good job. They're not BCBAs. And sure, I'm sure they have some inconsistencies with what they're talking about and our science exactly how it works. But generally, they do a pretty good job. One of them, which... Most of us know James Clear, he wrote Atomic Habits. I don't even remember the first time I heard of Atomic Habits. I think it was maybe one of the influencers that I mentioned in my book. Her name is Shelby Seiko. She got really famous on TikTok. One of the reasons was because she was able to change her diet, like, completely and maintain it and lose all of this weight because she read the book Atomic Habits. And everyone was like, what? What's this book? So I bought it and was like, oh, my God, this is ABA. He calls the, like, operant in, like, ABC and He calls that a habit loop. He has completely rebranded our science to make it more understandable. Some of the different descriptions he uses, they're cuter, way, way nicer sounding than what we say. He calls a motivating operation a craving operation. that makes so much sense. Um, and, and he, he talks very, very in depth, um, about how, how to change your behavior using behavior science and psychology, which he doesn't even really, I think he mentions applied behavior analysis a couple of times, but the one thing that like kind of upset me was, um, I don't blame him, but, um, not one time was a BCBA mentioned in the book. Um, and that's like, I feel like, That's our science. This is what we do. And obviously. So he's doing insane work. He's been hired by NFL teams, Major League Baseball teams, the NBA. He's worked with Fortune 500 companies. He's doing all the dream work that many BCBAs would kill for and has sold over 20 million copies of his book. So If that's not a very obvious sign that we can do this, we can have a gigantic impact if we just talk basically, like, I don't know. Um, but yeah, then, um, there are, uh, the, the other, the influencer that I was talking about, Shelby Seiko, again, just uses all the language that James Clear uses in his book. And, um, she does everything obviously in video form cause she's on social media, but, um, she's made habit trackers for people and people love it, but like they're obsessed with it because it's, She's rebranded it to be cute. It's not like some weird Excel sheet like, unfortunately, most of us BCBAs probably make. Some of us try to make our stuff in Canva to make it look better. But, yeah, I mean, like, there are just so many other resources that are out there that people are doing incredible work. And they're successful resources. talking about behavior science and having a great impact and being very profitable with what they're doing because they're not talking in jargon. They're talking the language of lay people. And I see that as a huge opportunity for us.

SPEAKER_04: 56:03

And again, an influence beyond the scope of autism treatment, for example, which is, I know, something we're all very happy about in this discussion today, for sure. You mentioned social media and influencers. You're talking about yourself in a way there. Tell us a little bit about your social media presence, how that started, where you hope to go from here in terms of your social media presence, how that's been helpful to your career. Give us the lowdown.

SPEAKER_00: 56:28

Yeah. Absolutely. So yeah, so right around the pandemic starts, that's when my parents watched, there was an HBO special, and I can't think of the name of it right now, but, oh, Fake Famous, that's the name of it. And it was, this group that wanted to see if they could make regular people famous as influencers and try to make them seem like influencers, even though they weren't flying on these jets or going to these really trendy places. They were kind of just faking it, and they did it. They made it work. But it was very interesting. So that's when my dad was like, hey, these people said they can make like a lot of money and like be really successful you should try that i was like okay so i was just at a point in my career where i knew i had to make a shift but i didn't know what to do or where to go i just knew that this felt good and i love making people laugh and sharing my life on social media so i said what the hell let's go for it so um yeah so it just it took me to some really incredible places, and it partially inspired me to write my book because I was like, well, if I'm able to have an impact like this on social media and have over 80,000 followers, why not? why can't I do that in a book form? Why can't I do that with developing other resources? So I've met some really incredible people through it and I've learned a ton. I feel like I've become a better BCBA because of it. Because again, it's taught me how to talk and also how incentives work on social media platforms and how to get people to watch your stuff. So that's if that's not a, that should be a big theme for today is the more, if you're wanting to better your practice and become a stronger practitioner, one of the things to do is to try to practice ABA from a different perspective,

SPEAKER_02: 58:40

try to

SPEAKER_00: 58:41

practice it in a special, in a specialty area that you're interested in. And obviously, obviously doing that under a mentor who knows what they're doing. But that's, that's how I, learned all of our concepts and principles the best is I my professors would tell me all right here here is the example for this concept or here here is this principle and the first thing I would do is translate that into sports and how I would see that happen like stimulus control how that would happen in on a softball field and then I would go look at the examples that was in the book, the white book or whatever we were reading. So, yeah, it's been a great ride. I obviously hope to get more followers and have a greater impact on whatever platforms I choose to go on next. If I just stay on TikTok and Instagram, I just want to continue spreading the great, great word of ABA and help as many people as possible because I get people all the time saying I had no idea this even existed. This has helped me. You know, it's helping me with my kids. Oh my God. It's helped me understand myself. It's helped my relationship with my partner, like become better or my favorite one ever, which is so simple. You made me laugh today. I'm like, Oh yes. Some kind of reinforcement. Automatic

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:08

reinforcement. Automatic reinforcement. Love it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:12

The best.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:14

Um, the last thing I hope, I'm able to do is also be a model for presenters inside of ABA and outside as well, but to show that direct instruction doesn't have to be so dry all of the time. Throwing in some comedy, making people laugh, or just being more relatable can have a way more lasting effect on your audience than just ending it and saying, okay, any questions? And having there be crickets. Like, yeah, put music in there, make, make people laugh, make people cry. Like if we're talking about behavior analysis, it doesn't have to be like you're talking to, you know, a 300 person lecture hall about, I don't know what functional communication training or something like that. Like, okay, like, yeah, let's make it fun though. Let's, let's, let's, let's do this and, and make it a little bit more enjoyable.

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:11

Yeah. Sure. Sure. So I know, um, I think we, We've got about the same tenure so far, at least of ABA on tap. We got started during the pandemic as well. And it took us a little while to gain traction. And oddly enough, we realized we were reaching an audience first when we started getting trolled. Right. So we were getting trolls like, wait, oh, wait, this is horrible. But wait, that means that people are listening. Right. Tell us a little bit about your experience with that. Or not even listening, just reading the title. Oh, just reading the title and coming at us, right? With 80,000 followers on TikTok, you probably have to sort through a lot of that stuff. What's your best advice out there to people who have to deal with

SPEAKER_05: 1:01:53

that? She has ABA in the title. That means it must be crap because we got so much of

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:57

that. That means you're hurting kids.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:59

Oh, for sure. I've been called a murderer before. Oh, man. How dare you? I've been told you need to go to prison. I've had people say, Let's look up her location on the certification website. Let's go find her. I was like, holy crap. But yeah, I mean, it comes with the territory. Being an influencer, that word kind of makes me cringe sometimes. But if you're wanting to have a public presence on a social media platform, you have to be ready for that. And I never thought I would ever say this, but I'm very grateful to all of the terrible girls that I had in all of my elementary school classes and all throughout middle school. I ended up leaving in elementary school because I was bullied so hard. So thank you to all of them

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:54

because it

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:55

desensitized me

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:56

to

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:57

all of the trolling that I got. Granted, it didn't feel good, but you do have to expect it. But there's a positive in every situation and it increases your engagement. If you're wanting to troll me, go for it. I'm not gonna respond to you, but yeah, keep going. Because the algorithm doesn't know the difference between bad engagement and positive engagement and mean or nice. They just see, oh, there were 10,000 people that just told this girl you know, go screw yourself. Wait, let's bump it up more. Okay, awesome. Interesting. Yeah, so I mean, it stinks, but it does increase your engagement. So as long as you expect that when you're going into, you know, posting on social media, great, like you know that it's going to happen, but also having a great support system helps with it. But yeah, I've had some pretty nasty things uh said to me before and not just because it's social media but because aba has a bad rap with some people um and uh it's it doesn't feel good but my friends and family have validated all my feelings saying like yeah that sucks but like they're not don't don't

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:21

listen any press is good press right any press is good attention is attention attention is attention for sure

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:27

always. My mom has told me that from the first day I had someone say something mean to me. You know what? The day it's not good is when your name is not in somebody's mouth. Just keep going with

SPEAKER_05: 1:04:41

it. That's a Cat Williams line, right? People hating on me. I want to gain 10 haters by the time I end this conversation today. If people aren't hating on me, I'm not doing my job right. That's a Cat Williams

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:51

line. He certainly knows how to provoke or evoke attention for sure. Mr. Dan, anything else you wanted to do here as we near our ending time? This is clearly just an introduction to Kendall. Any be on tap we will have you back at some point that much I can guarantee so we're not gonna lament having to end at our hour too much but mr. Dan go ahead sir

SPEAKER_05: 1:05:12

yeah a couple of things one is so you mentioned that the books obviously led you down a different path than maybe you you thought what what do you feel like you learned about yourself and the field as a whole and I know you've talked about a few things but kind of in general, how would you answer that question? What did you learn? What did it teach you about yourself and the field coming up with that book? That's kind of different than, you know, what a BCBA would do just working in general, working with kids with autism. Like we've talked about, what did you learn about yourself in the field?

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:44

Yeah. So I learned about the field. I learned that there are so many different things that we can do and we have a lot of growing to do still. Before I wrote the book, I saw like, okay, maybe there's this cap. There might be only so much that we're able to do with humans and animals maybe there are only so many areas we can go into but the more that I talk to people and the more podcasts I go on the more research that I do I realize like oh my god like we we're just scraping the surface like I don't even know if I could say that because there's just going to be more research that's coming out and more strategies and different ways to implement some of these things that we do, and it's so exciting. We just need to keep going. We can't stop. We need to keep speaking basically, or if you're not already, start speaking basically to people about what it is that we do. But the more we do that, we are going to open up more doors, and people are going to see that we are We are their CMOT. We are their Transitive Conditioning Motivating Apparition. People need us.

SPEAKER_04: 1:07:04

I'm going to get a shirt that says that. I am your CMOT that you need to market

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:10

that. Yes. Go ahead. Sorry. We are. I hear so many, so many times, you know, oh, you're um you're just gonna you're just bribing your kid oh you um hi yeah you're you're gonna you're gonna give your dog treats every single time they do this but you can't just give him treats every time he does that and that yeah absolutely but that's coming from a background of that person they don't they don't understand aba that's why the world needs us is because we understand you're right we're not going to give treats every time because we fade out We fade out reinforcement so that it's intermittent. It's way more strong when we do use intermittent reinforcement. It's not bribery if you are planning it before the situation actually comes up. So the world needs us, and we need to keep going. And to anybody who's interested in ABA who's listening to this or who is currently in ABA working, if you're interested in an area, even though you don't practice in that area, start looking into it. Start talking to random people. Go out to dinner with people. Have a phone call with somebody because you have no idea what connections can lead you down a path to your dream life. If I didn't take some leaps of faith, I would not be in the situation I am right now. I've never been happier in my life than this exact moment. We need to keep going with that. I guess what it's what the book has taught me about myself, I never thought I could write a book.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:53

I

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:54

knew I was kind of good at English. I loved my English and language teachers and professors my whole life. I loved all science and psychology. I really hated my research methods classes that I took. And I said to myself, I am never, after I graduate, going to read another research article ever again. Well, plot twist, it's in the ethics

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:19

code

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:20

that you need to do that. So I never thought that I'd be able to make a manuscript or you know possibly think about doing research i've thought about doing that um i i never even thought that it would be possible um i dropped it but to to practice in another area as a bcba other than autism um and here

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:47

we are

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:47

uh so anything's possible um if you are super motivated to do something no one's stopping you even if they are trying to stop you Just keep going. Just do it. Because, again, you don't know where that can lead you. And nothing is too big for you. You can write a book. You can start a podcast. You can write a movie script. You can change somebody's life. You can do it. You just need to be just like we love in ADA. Whatever you do, you got to treat yourself for doing it. And you got to be consistent with it. And have a plan for fading out. I'm

SPEAKER_04: 1:10:29

going to take a snippet of that last minute of your speech there and wake up with it every morning. Absolutely. Or at least when I need it. That was really inspiring.

SPEAKER_02: 1:10:38

The

SPEAKER_05: 1:10:40

whole thing is really inspiring. So thank you. I guess there's three things I want to specifically thank you for. Number one is your book is amazing. I've been doing specifically new hire trainings and parent groups for 10 or 15 years now. and um it's just been so hard to communicate with especially parents um non-professionals in a way that they would understand and this is something that i wish i would have had 10 or 15 years ago to pull it up and be like hey let's look at this together and try to make it understandable because at the end of the day you're the one that's implementing it with your kids so thank you for that uh again wish you would have done it 10 or 15 years ago but better late than never Sorry.

SPEAKER_04: 1:11:19

You're saying she was late to this, Dan? Yes. Come on now. Yes, I am. We treat our guests better on the tap. Come on.

SPEAKER_05: 1:11:27

Second thank you is kind of what Mike alluded to. But just your energy bringing it. It's so refreshing. I feel like the ABA has had... it's there's a lot of negativity around it both from people outside the field and people inside the field it's a lot of hours it's a lot of terrible insurance rates it's a lot of how do i just get to this client or that client and the the clinical like the the energy that your it was uh in professor ray was that randy randy professor randy

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:55

professor randy like

SPEAKER_05: 1:11:56

the energy that he was able to instill from you like in you excuse me is is so awesome and it just resonates so much and i think it radiates from you and that's what i feel like a lot of people get into the field and then they're hit with ours and they're hit with this and they're hit with that and then it's just, there's a lot of negativity and dreariness I feel like in the field now. So it's just so refreshing to speak with somebody like yourself and have that energy and bring it back and it's reinvigorating. So thank you for that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:25

Thanks

SPEAKER_05: 1:12:26

you guys. And number three, thank you for finding our podcast. We really appreciate you reaching out. Hopefully we can continue to Connect. Promote your... If you come out with a second book, we'd love to promote that. Come back on the tap. Again, we've got some... We try to keep it around an hour. We could probably talk for... much, much longer. Hopefully there will be a part two. We really, really appreciate you finding us, coming, explaining your work. Because ABA does really have a marketing problem. It absolutely does. You've talked about, Mike, you've mentioned rebranding. Sometimes companies or even influencers have to rebrand. It's getting close to seeming like ABA might need to look at that. For you being able to make it make sense to more people, even if, like you said, you lose 10% of the 10% of the understanding from the science, but you can communicate it to 80% more people, then that's pretty effective. So thank you for finding us. Your work is amazing. Please keep doing what you're doing, bringing your energy, but also your explanations to the field because it's something that's very needed. That's my soapbox.

SPEAKER_04: 1:13:35

Kendall, tell us one more time all the places that people can find you, your books, your social media presence. Tell us about that quickly.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:43

Yep. You got it. So my social media pages, I am on TikTok and Instagram. It is at the.behavior.influencer. My book title is Talk Behavior to Me, the Routledge Dictionary of the Top 150 Behavior Analytic Terms and Translations. I am so proud of myself that I spit all that out.

SPEAKER_05: 1:14:08

That's amazing. Hopefully they can Google that.

UNKNOWN: 1:14:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:11

Yeah, it is. The book is out for pre-order right now. It is on Instagram. It is on Amazon. It is on my link tree on my Instagram and TikTok. It will be on Routledge's, the publisher's website, I believe, when it is released. It's supposed to release October 22nd of this year. So keep looking back on my page. I'll probably have some giveaways going on and coupons for the book as well. It is going to be in hardcover, paperback and e-read form. And yeah. I'm not stopping here with this one manuscript. We're going to keep going with a lot of cool things.

SPEAKER_05: 1:14:58

We'll put a link for that in our description

SPEAKER_04: 1:15:00

as well, for sure. Yeah, we'll make sure it connects. Make sure that everything's on that description. So we like to end with some recommendations here at the end of ABA on Tap. So the first one is, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, go find Kendall Rindak-Samuel somewhere online. Go get one of her books. Please continue to speak clearly. Try not to use jargon. And Mr. Dan... Always analyze. Responsibly. Cheers, Kendall. Thank you so much. Cheers, Dan. Thanks,

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:27

guys. Cheers, you guys.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:29

ABA on Tap is recorded live and unfiltered. We're done for today. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. See you next time.