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You have to build culture with intention. If you have the right people focused on the right jobs, you can win.
Explore Motivity's journey transforming ABA care with data-driven solutions and all-in-one platforms to enhance clinician workflows and outcomes.
Key Takeaways
- Motivity was founded to solve clinician challenges in ABA with customizable, data-driven tools.
- The platform’s growth from data collection to all-in-one management was driven by customer demand and strategic partnerships.
- Maintaining culture and quality is central to Motivity’s scaling strategy in the ABA tech market.
- Motivity’s approach respects diverse clinical methods rather than enforcing uniform protocols.
- Future innovation includes AI integration and expansion into related therapy disciplines.
Summary
- Motivity began as a clinical data collection platform in ABA, funded by NIH grants and developed over 10 years.
- Emily McCulla joined in 2019 to commercialize Motivity, focusing on customizable clinical tools for behavior analysts.
- The platform evolved from data collection to an all-in-one solution by partnering with practice management systems like Calmanac.
- Motivity emphasizes clinician-driven customization, allowing diverse teaching protocols rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all approach.
- The company prioritizes culture, customer support, and quality while scaling operations and expanding features.
- Motivity integrates telehealth, automated graphing, documentation, and video capture to support clinical outcomes.
- The partnership with Calmanac enabled Motivity to offer a unified platform with strong engineering and customer experience.
- Motivity aims to maintain high-quality care delivery while scaling efficiently in the growing ABA technology space.
- The company is focused on innovation, including potential AI applications and expanding into adjacent therapy fields.
- Motivity fosters an underdog mentality and culture of intentional hiring to drive ongoing transformation in ABA care.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Motivity’s Mission
- 02:58Motivity’s Origin and Early Development
- 05:46Commercialization and Market Entry
- 08:33Expansion to All-in-One Platform
- 11:38Partnership with Calmanac and Growth Strategy
- 17:06Maintaining Quality and Culture While Scaling
- 20:13Future Innovations and Industry Impact
- 22:53Closing Thoughts and Vision for ABA Care
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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There are ways that we can help them adapt to the world, but we don't need to force them into this box that neurotypicals have created.
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[Music] All right, guys. Welcome to the President's Corner on Beyond the Science podcast. I'm your host Gerard Trotman, where we dive deeper into people, the platforms, and make sure that we're getting to the passion behind the field of ABA. Now, today's episode is proudly
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brought to you guys by Motivity, a company redefining how clinicians and organizations deliver quality care through data-driven all-in-one solutions.
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And we're live here at the CAST conference. So, I'm honored to sit down with two incredible leaders. We have Smith Anderson, who's the CEO of Motivity, and Emily McCulla, their Chief Clinical Officer, and together they're guiding one of the most exciting transformations in
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ABA tech, and so we're going to get into it with them and talk a little bit about Motivity. How you guys doing today?
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Great. Thanks for having us on, Tron. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, so quickly for our listeners that don't know about Motivity, can you, Emily, can you talk to us about the origin story? Talk to us about kind of where Motivity was
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at when it first started and kind of where it's aiming to go right now.
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Yeah. Yeah. So, for those of, uh, the folks who have not heard of Motivity, Motivity has, uh, traditionally been known as a clinical data collection platform, um, in the ABA space, and I joined Motivity six years ago when it was
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pre-commercialized, but it was, um, it's been over 10 years in development. Um, so what's unique about Motivity is that initially our, um, we were funded by the National Institute of, uh, Health research grants, um, and, uh, founded by Rex
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Jacobitz, uh, who is, uh, an amazing grant writer and PhD engineer. Um, he saw, he had, uh, provided software solutions in the space of radiology and then saw through connections that he knew friends that he could apply, apply his knowledge to the
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field of applied behavior analysis in terms of creating software solutions. So he, um, wrote a grant, wrote two grants, wrote three grants and got 11 million in research funding and, uh, research and development funding through National Institute of Health. So Motivity really
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uh, was founded to be a clinical tool focused on solving clinician problems in the field. And so we started out, um, with, uh, clinical data collection, automated graphing, uh, documentation, um, telehealth, video, uh, capture, um, and, uh, it's developed beyond that now as
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we've grown six years later. So I joined six years ago to come in and do, uh, commercialization. Um, I'm a behavior analyst by trade, but, uh, like we were just talking about this earlier, I kind of fell into the tech space in about
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2010, 2011 through Autism Training Solutions, and so I had taken that technology to, um, commercialize it to the space, and when it was acquired by Relias, I kind of got itching to be back in the tech startup field, and I met
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Rex in Hawaii because we both lived there in Hawaii, and I saw what he was doing, and, um, he asked me to join him and help him commercialize this, and so in 2019 I joined Motivity, um, and back then
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we were just doing clinical trials within National Institute of Health through the University of Washington and a couple of service providers in Washington. And then from the work we did there, um, we, we saw that the niche, the niche that we were filling was that
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the current clinical tools that were out there back in 2019, um, had a major, uh, some limitations because they were the first generation of data collection, right? And so there was, uh, some clinicians were looking for something that where they could put more
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customization, more, um, uh, protocols that were focused on the way they want to do things. And in ABA, the science is the same, but if you take like four different clinicians in the same room and say, "Oh, how are you going to teach
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this one skill?" You're going to get four different ways of teaching it and four different ways to collect the data.
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So you can't fit, you know, those, you know, all those different strategies into one platform. You know, you can't put a square peg into a round hole. And so that's what Motivity was solving for was allowing the clinicians to design
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the teaching protocols to the way they wanted to teach rather than the other way around. Oh, I love that. Love that.
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And I see Motivity everywhere now, too. So you guys are doing some great marketing and getting you guys' product out there as well. So thanks for sharing about that journey. Okay. And I'm going to give this one to either one of you
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guys. Can you guys talk about how Motivity grew from a data collection tool to kind of an all-in-one platform and kind of what sparked that expansion?
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Maybe I could start and then I could pass you. Okay, sounds good. Let me start with, um, okay, so we, we really started growing six years ago. We started commercializing, but, uh, about 2021 is when really when the, uh, hockey
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stick started, you know, going up. And this is when, um, we said, "Hey, we're a clinical platform. We're focused on clinical outcomes and data collection tools. We really don't want to get distracted with, um, you know, all of the
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practice management features at this stage. Let's just like partner with groups that are just doing a great job with it. Then we can continue focusing on what we're good at and they can do what they're, focus they're good at." So
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that was great. We had integrations with multiple practice management systems and we had good partnerships. Um, and, you know, we did that for a while and, um, after a while we just kept hearing from our customers like we really, we really
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love Motivity. We love your culture. We love your support. We love the people we talk to and we want just one throat to choke. Yeah.
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I love it. And so I, we just got people requesting like, couldn't you guys just do this as well? And so we really did start looking into how can we provide an all-in-one experience. And this is when we started
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looking at our partners to see if there was a really good culture fit to become an all-in-one platform. Really put a lot of investment into that deep partnership. Um, and so this is when we discovered this, this diamond in the
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rough practice management system called Calmanac. And Calmanac has been built over 10 years. It was originally built for one of the largest, uh, ABA providers in the nation. Okay. That they still use it today. Um, and but they were, they're
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based out of India and they were just like had their heads down. They're engineers and they just didn't want to have to do all the work with commercialization. And, um, we had really like you just said like you've seen
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Motivity everywhere and we kind of had relationships. We knew our customer success, um, uh, plans and how we were to keep customers happy. So we just said, "Hey Calmanac, you have an awesome platform.
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You've worked out all these amazing features. Let's us be your customer-facing, um, experience." And, um, so that was the start of the journey. And then that's when we needed, uh, a round of funding so that we could make it real.
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And that's where I can introduce Smith into the story. I love it. Look, I, I think that a lot of times you look at any sort of industry where there's a lot of growth. You, you, you find that you can
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scale or you can have high quality products. And, and Motivity, what we're trying to do is make sure that they're not mutually exclusive, right? So we can continue to grow and we can scale and we can keep quality high. And there was a
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couple ways that we could go about doing that, right? You, you when you're looking for a deliverable, there's like three options, fast, cheap, and good. Um, and usually you had to pick two. And in the case with Cal, when we thought about
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launching our all-in-one, we could go build it fast and it probably wouldn't be as good and would be super expensive.
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Um, and what we decided t
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this new world where Motivity PM and Motivity Clinical work together, we're now able to make strategic decisions about product improvements that allow a clinician to really focus on better outcomes for their learners, but also a more sustainable business, right? And I
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I think one of the things that I find so interesting is that when we're going and talking to a lot of our customers, their goal is is helping kids uh evolve, right, and and go through the treatments.
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Uh we can already do that with Motivity Clinical. We we know that we've built a flexible platform that can support any type of clinician in their in their therapy.
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With Motivity PM, we're now going to give them the opportunity to run their business more efficiently, to be able to return more billables, uh to use smart scheduling capabilities to get more of their clinicians in front of kids,
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right? And so, if we can make decisions where now we're able to provide both of those to our clinicians, a best-in-class clinical with a thoughtful practice management solution that will grow with them, we feel like we're winning. And
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and that it was an it was a no-brainer, right? like what what led us to an all-in-one it was we need to make sure that we can remove the bottlenecks from treatment for kids. So that's how we got
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here. Yeah, I love that. And one thing that I hear about everybody using Motivate talk about this that culture that you guys have, the support that you guys give your customers as well when there may be some troubleshooting. So I
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guess either one of you guys, can you guys talk about the new features you guys have? you guys excited about any new features you guys have especially on the practice management side you guys can share with our listeners so one of
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the one of the things that we are really excited about is a smart schedule so an AI augmented scheduling capability one of the things that we know to be true about AVA right now is uh tech burnout technician burnout BCBA burnout
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where we are mission driven as an organization and really focused on making sure that we take care of as many kids as we possibly And what we also know to be true is that life happens. I mean, we're we're at this conference,
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our booth didn't show up, right? And uh but life goes on, right? And so that happens with these kids. We may run into a scenario where someone is sick or they might be having an episode and they may
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have to cancel a session. with a with an AI augmented smart scheduling capability in the practice management, we may be able to go to a priority list of kids who are on the wait list and be able to
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slot them in. That way, we continue to provide as many sessions as we possibly can. Uh along with that, we're we're also thinking about, you know, out of home sessions and similar to what UPS does and Amazon does, start smart
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routing. So, if we have a technician that is going to see, you know, four kids in a day or six kids in a day, can we make sure that they're not backtracking and taking more time away from being in front of kids? And so,
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that's something that that we really want to focus on. Again, this that efficiency that we want to build in the platform. Running business is hard, but it doesn't have to be hard. And so, if we can think about removing some of the
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barriers that technology is able to solve for us, that's our goal. And it may not be flashy, it may not be shiny, may not be the coolest thing ever, but it's for sure going to make your job easier. Um, guys, you're listening to
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Beyond the Science special edition of President's Corner. Um, this episode is brought to you by Motivity. Um, you guys check out Motivity is offering clinicians smarter, simpler ways to manage and deliver exceptional ABA care.
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We will link them in this episode. Now, I want to stay here with you, Smith. So, you have led other fast scaling companies in your history. Can you quickly talk about what has influenced your approach at Motivity and how has
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your previous experience helped that experience right now at Motivity? Yeah. Uh something that Emily would probably back me up on is one of the things that I I use often uh just in my life and also when we're thinking about how do we
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scale motivity, it's exposing people's superpowers. If if you have the right people focused on the right jobs, you can win. And I know that we're going to talk about culture and leadership probably a little bit later, but when I
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came into Motivity, I found a group of people that were incredibly missiondriven, super smart, uh, excited about what they had been able to accomplish, and even more excited about the future. So, we think about what the lessons I've learned in the past is if
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you have the right people in the right seats, you give them focus on being able to accomplish the task that that is their superpower, you can't lose. So we've you know really given Emily for example a huge opportunity to focus on
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getting back into research getting back into the clinical side of motivity uh on the clinical side as well as the practice management side and taking the approach of we are building technology and solutions for clinicians. We need to
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think like clinicians and if we give Emily the space and the time and the resources to really focus on that we're going to get access to best-in-class insights to make decisions for the business to grow. Uh same thing for for
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Rex, right? Our founder, previous CEO, he now leads strategy and innovation. His time is only going to be spent in uh the clouds. What are the problems that we need to solve that we don't even know we need to solve yet? And and I think
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that's what separates challengers like Motivity from some of the incumbents in the space is that we're we're out here with an underdog mentality. like we're gonna go try and win every single day and uh we are recruiting people that
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want to be able to lean into their superpowers and focus on solving really hard problems um and making a real difference. So I I I think that humans are specialized by design and if we can find the superpowers in each one of our
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leaders and every one of our managers and every person that's participating in building motivity whether it's through sales or building the the technology or supporting our customers or being a part of our marketing organization. If we put them in the right seats then we're going
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to have a team full of superheroes and that's really what the goal is. I love that, Smith. And I feel like you guys have a team of superheroes. You talk about finding those power. You got to talk about that underdog mentality that
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that they keep as well. These are exciting times in Motivity and you guys have recently got a pretty big investment. Can one of you guys speak about what that investment means for Motivity and what you guys would like to
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see moving forward with that investment you guys have? I think it's clear. Um, and one of the things that we've I think done a pretty good job of is day one help the team understand exactly what this investment is for, right? It's not
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to keep a war chest. It's to go and invest in the business to hire more of those superheroes that I was talking about. Uh, continue to invest in uh the industry. So hiring BCBAs to be a part of our team to make sure that we don't
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lose sight of what's really important is having our a pulse on the industry and going and allowing us to accelerate some of that growth. Uh this morning at the the talk we we heard from some executives at Google around how they
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think about AI and their investments there. We don't have resources like Google. Very few of us do in this industry, right? And so can we even put a little bit more firepower behind what we're doing? And that's our goal. So,
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it's it's investing in our team, continuing to keep a pulse on the industry, making sure that we hire from within the industry to make sure we don't lose sight of it, and then accelerating in parts of businesses that
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in parts of our business that we know we can uh building some of those features, expanding our partnership uh pool across the industry, as well as obviously, you know, the all-in-one. It's a huge part of our our growth strategy. So the the
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investment in itself opens up a lot of doors and it's one one thing that I I hope is clear from from what we've talked about already and the way that we've built the brand around motivity is you know we
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took on money not to make everybody rich, right? We took on this, we took on this investment from private equity because there was a belief that we had the right people in the right industry solving the right problems and we were
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under capitalized to be able to go and actually do that at scale. So we're going to do everything that we were doing just at a better scale, bigger scale and faster. And the goal is that we are able to affect the lives of more
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people, right? And improve the lives of more people. Um so we're really excited about what opportunities are in front of us because of this investment and five elms is also very unique in this space that they uh do look for missiondriven
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organizations and they really understand that it's not just about making sure that you have a business with good fundamentals. Do you have a business with good fundamentals, good culture, good people and a drive and a desire to actually make change and and disrupt the
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status quo? I love that. I hope you guys are listening to the the culture uh around Motivity. Um Smith, you talk about Emily being able to get back into this clinical research space that she's doing. So, I want to come to you and ask
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you when you're looking at building these new features with Motivity. How do you stay grounded in clinical outcomes rather than more this flashy tech things? How do you make sure that we're staying grounded in those clinical outcomes? Yeah, I love that question.
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Um, so I get the chance now to go back and work with Rex again. Like we're like a dream team where he's like very very uh detail oriented like in the trees in the data and he's a data scientist. Um,
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and as a behavior analyst, I'm I'm also I'm kind of more of like a forest person. So we make a great team. like we're go we're I can I can speak for the field what people are wanting to see
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right now. Now there are some really cool flashy uh technologies that are being talked about right now and they are really cool. Whenever I hear about them I get intrigued and I I get excited like oh that's going to be coming down the
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pipeline someday. But yes, it's really important for us to look at what's happening now, especially because we have a platform that has hundreds of thousands of data points coming in every month and all this data can be surfaced to the clinician in a
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meaningful way for us to make clinical decision decisions today um what's going to be right for our clients. So the one of the very first things we're working on is um actually something that was generated through National Institute of
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Health grant called Acuity and it's uh basically um clinical data that's being surfaced in your daily workflows as you're like going through the charts of your learner going through the uh the the session data and it's going to
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surface up at that level to give you insights into things that you should pay attention to. for example, oh uh Sarah Sarah's behavior has spiked and it with this particular staff member. Okay. And you can you'll see like there'll be a an
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alert that comes in or like an icon and you can instead of like reviewing hundreds of graphs on a weekly basis, it's going to highlight the graphs that you need that are meaningful that you need to look at. So, it's going to
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highlight graphs that are like at a plateau or that the the trend is decreasing um or or that that there's a certain program that hasn't been run in a while because it's being ignored or maybe it's just being missed because
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it's at the bottom of the list or something like that. Yeah. um these are going to give clinical insights to the BTS in the moment when they're in their data in their session in the data collection UI but then also for the
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behavior analysts to be able to see and then they can make those uh treatment modifications on the spot. So right now that's our like project that we're looking and excited about offering today and then you know a year or two we're
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looking at some uh AI features with agents where we can ask questions about uh how certain questions about patients or or clients and then giving us some support on decisions that we can make based on the data that's in there. I
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love that and I love all of my VAS that are listening right now. Now, I know you guys really like what Emily was talking about with that feature with the graphs because from a clinical standpoint, we like to know that is any way that we can
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make things more salient instead of going through things using ours and we can kind of pinpoint that. I think that's key right there. So, that's a good feature that you guys do have. All right, let's peek behind the curtain a
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little bit for you guys. Let's have a little bit of fun. Um, Emily, we were talking just now off air that you are a singer. You do a little singing, which we know. Um, and I love learning more
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about you guys' team. So, can you tell our listeners um one thing about you that would surprise people that they didn't know? I thought you were going to ask me to sing something. I was like, "Oh, don't you go there, Jerry.
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I'm not going to do that to you on air." Um, no. There's one thing people would be surprised to learn about that they don't know. Okay. I'm actually going to use your your your uh fun fact that you
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pointed out last night at dinner. Oh, which one? Uh, when I go to conferences, my one of my favorite things to do is to do a ghost tour. Oh, yes. Okay. I'm fascinated by ghost tours. Super fan of
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the spooky. I do like I love that. I love that. And Smith, you have completed a lot of um Iron Man triathlons. I learned. Yeah. Back in the day. Yes.
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Back in the day. But can can you speak to our listeners about how that discipline shows up in your leadership style?
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You know, I think that there's no question that there's a reason why a lot of these uh big consulting firms and big tech firms like to hire NCAA athletes, right? Because there is there is something to be said about setting out
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to accomplish a goal and accomplishing that goal at almost all costs, right? I mean, we um are very conscious and thoughtful about mental health these days and, you know, being uh building culture that supports employees, but you know, we're out here as as a challenger
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brand trying to solve really hard big big problems, right? And it requires commitment. Uh Iron Man is something that I don't know that I necessarily when I was a little kid said, I got to go do that. you graduate college and you
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end up with more time on your hands than maybe you you did before. And so, um, I thought, you know, what's a what's a really big goal accomplishment that I could just go out and try and do and
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challenge myself? I wasn't an endurance athlete in college and, uh, got into it, fell in love with it, and, uh, the the dedication and the commitment and the fun and the reward, you you can find parallels in in your job, right? And so
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that's uh I think that's what led me there. Man, if you want to go out and do an Iron Man, start while you're young.
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It's a young man's sport. Yes. But you brought up those really good points, too. And because you really do learn some of those things when you do events like that. You know, I played basketball and I took a lot of those traits and
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carried over to what I'm doing now. So, when you say that, it resonates. Um, okay. We're going to speed this up a little bit, too. I'm going to ask you guys a question. You have 10 seconds to answer. Okay. Okay. Emma, you ready?
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Yeah. What's your go-to hype song when you need motivation? Uh, Ain't No Mountain High Enough. Great song. What you got, Smith? Uh, we found love. Is that what it is? The Rihanna song. Rihanna. Oh, yes. Classic classic song. Okay, you guys are doing
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good. Let's do one more. Um, this is a little more serious for our listeners.
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If they could um read one book or listen to one podcast. Let's say book because we know what podcast you can listen to.
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If you guys could recommend one book to our listeners that really influenced you and shaped you guys life, what would you recommend? Can I say podcast? You can.
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Absolutely. so many books. But currently, right now, a podcast I really love uh listening to.
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It's called uh Breaking Down Patriarchy. Oh, I know that one actually. You do? I do know that one. Yes. Oh, that's so good. It's so It sounds a little bit negative like anti-atriarchy. It's not.
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It's It's breaking down meaning it's breaking it down under to understand like why our society is built on patriarchy and giving you guys concept of like the pros and cons. And it it's really fascinating. Yeah. Once you start
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listening to it, you're kind of hooked. You kind of get hooked on that one. What about you, Smith? If you had a book or a podcast for our listeners that you'd recommend, what would it be? This is a
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tough one. Uh just because it he he's such a character these days, but Elon Musk's autobiography, there's a lot of good lessons in there, you know, despite what you might think about him these days. Um it took him a lot to get to
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where he is, and I think there's a lot of lessons in there. Yeah. Awesome. I've heard I haven't read that one person, but I've heard great things about that book. So for our listeners are looking got them podcast recommendations and we
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got a book as well. Um guys this conversation is powered by motivity allin-one platform helping providers work smarter connect better and deliver outcomes. Again we'll leave those links in there for you guys. Um I want to shift back to you Emily. I want to talk
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about just the future and impact of ABA. Now you've been in the space 20 plus years uh doing some good things. We talked about some stuff off air. Um but can you talk about what's changed the most in how we support our families um
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from when you started to kind of what it looks like now? Well, one of the things that um I don't talk about very often because my son is doesn't like to talk about it publicly is but my uh I am a
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parent of a adult with autism. Um and uh so he was diagnosed after I was in the field already. I was already a behavior analyst and uh he was two and a half years old. And my friend who was a
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behavior analyst was like, "Hey, uh you should check out maybe get get him evaluated." And what I what I'm getting to is I I learned from there the other side of the the family experience. And it was it
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really was a lot of humble pie for me. I I look back on some of the exchanges I had with families before I went through going a through ABA myself with my own son and there were some conversations
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that I just like highly regretted that I had and I many of them I called the parents and I was like I I'm sorry that I this is what I said or did you know I am now in this place and um
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and I think that one of the things that I'm really proud of the field of the industry now is in the late 90s in the early 2000s it was I mean there were organizations called cure autism now.
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Yes. Right. And it was we're trying to make them indistinguishable and we're trying to reverse the symptoms of autism. And I just love that that's that narrative has been flipped and it's let's meet them where they are. Yes,
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they have autism spectrum disorder. This is not a death sentence. This is a and in some circles that you know sometimes they refer to as a personality type or a neuroype and that there are there are ways that we can help them adapt to the
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world, but we don't need to force them into this box that neurotypicals have created. And I I'm so grateful especially now that my son is an adult and this is the world he's able to be in. I mean think we have lots of
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progress to go. But uh in general the acceptability of people that are neurode divergent is um is gives me a lot of hope. I kind of echo those same sentiments in terms of we still do have a long way to go, but I
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have seen that evolution in um us being able to really be more considerate. You know, BA sometime we get a rap for not being considerate sometimes and talking in a certain way. So, I hope that you know people that are listening that we
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continue to push the field forward in that way. So, I really appreciate you sharing that perspective. Now, when it comes to technology, uh I want to stick with you here. How do you feel like the technology from back then to now is
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really helping providers and families stay more connected? Uh I mean the technology when it first came out was really just trying to solve the problem of replacing the binder and the paper pencil, right? Uh so now um we've evol
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evolved beyond that and now it's the instant data the instantaneous access to data. how. And so you can you can be in a session, you can pull up that learner's progress and timeline and you can see overall like the parent can see
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overall a summary of everything they're working on, all of their goals. Um, and it it's it's broken down in a meaningful way for them where I mean I mean going through and looking at a whole stack. I mean I still have my son's binders. I
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have like seriously there's like six of them. I still have time to sleep and you know it's you know I could understand them as I was but I mean imagine these these parents that are like looking at these and like flipping through um
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technology is now able to to give it at their fingertips but also uh visual it shows visuals uh of goals in a way that is uh accessible to the parents. you know, access to be able to participate, I think, is also making families feel
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involved and like they are able to contribute. This one for you, Smith, when it comes to tech, I know you kind of tapped into that lane. What What opportunities from a tech perspective do you think maybe ABA hasn't tapped into
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yet that you could see us in the maybe future tapping into? I I think in general what you're seeing with technology is just becoming more connected right across industries and one of the big motivators for us to bring on practice management alongside
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our clinical is it allows us to share data more efficiently and frictionless and I I imagine that when we look at ABA and some of the things some of the ways that we're solving problems in ABA we're going to find parallels in other
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adjacent industries and and adjacent um uh you know challenges. Perhaps it's SLP, perhaps it's OT, PT, something like that. And what we what I'd love to see is is a way for us to be able to look at
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early intervention as a category that ABA is a part of and creating technology solutions for that. Um I mean this is this is kind of out there not so far out there that it's uh crazy but you know
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what what we have done as a society is we've created these solutions that feel very uh focused and vertical right there's a solution for ABA there's one out there for every sort of issue that that humans deal with I have a when
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someone cuts your lawn you have one sort of uh payment platform somebody if you have a pool cleans your pool it's a different one and each one of these industries has is a single solution. I I bet in a future state these are all
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connected ecosystems that allow us as humans to be able to look at uh how we are engaging with service providers with the medical field with um any of the inhome and out ofome solutions that you need. So I would say that you know in a
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notsodistant future you know we may have a more connected system of service providers and technologies around uh medical support and when we talk about motivity so what do you guys see with what's next in terms of you partnerships
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or where you guys are moving forward to in the future. Can one of you guys speak about that to our listeners? Uh, number one, the the partnership ecosystem that already exists in ABA as well as within Motivity's four walls, we're going to
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continue to support. I I firmly believe that competition will breed innovation and we need to make sure that we're a part of that. And if you're a clinician and you want to use one of those other guys for your PM uh or your clinical,
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but you want to use Motivity for the other half of that equation, we're happy to support that. uh because we're similar to the way that we're meeting patients where they are, we need to meet our clinicians where they are in their
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journey. We believe that we're small enough today to be able to understand the challenges of a sole practitioner and big enough to be able to support the biggest ABA providers in the space today, but we may not be the choice for
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them for one reason or another as it relates to where we're going, partnership or otherwise. And I'm stealing Emily Emily's language here, but you know, in the in the big bang of AI, the AI universe and evolution, we're
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in the first five seconds. Like, we are just at the very very tip of what we know will happen eventually. Other industries have evolved a little bit faster. We have challenges of our own around PHI and making sure that we're
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leveraging AI in an ethical way. And I want to dig into that just a little bit because, you know, we know that AI agents are only as effective as the data set that they're trained on, right? And how many people out there actually have
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a validated data set of human to human interactions in ABA? Probably not that many, but everybody's out there trying to create an AI agent. So one of the ways that at Motivity we're thinking about this is we have this massive super
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unique data set where all time we can look back at an individual humanto human interaction from the very beginning of motivity and every month we're collecting 20 million more human to human interactions. And when we think about leveraging that number one it has
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to be ethical. We need to make sure that we're trying to solve problems that we can solve with the data set that we own and that we're surfacing it in the software in a way that allows the practitioner, whether it's a BCBA, a BT
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or RBT, a a clinic owner, to be actually able to make decisions, correct decisions based on that AI agent. So for us, it's a huge investment in AI, but doing it the right way. Does that mean it's going to be fast, cheap,
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and and good? Probably not fast. probably not cheap, but we're gonna do it the right way. So, it's gonna be good. And when I when I talk about the first five seconds of the Big Bang of the AI universe, truly in a year, we're
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probably going to be 7 seconds in. And it it it's going to take us time to be able to learn how to leverage the the power that AI brings along with it. And I think that's going to require the
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industry to also be thoughtful about how they adopt it. Making sure that, you know, do I think that we're going to go out replace BTS tomorrow? Absolutely not. Do I think that that's something that we should even consider trying to
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solve right now? Probably not either. But can we supercharge them and make them superpowers like superheroes? Yes.
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The same way that we want to put the right people in the right seats, we give them access to the tools that will complement their existing skill set and that's that's where we're going to focus. I want to shift to leadership here u with
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you guys' company. Leadership and culture. Smith talked about that a little a little bit, but could either one of you guys kind of speak to what leadership looks like in a tech company and how does that serve behavior
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analysts in general? One of the things that uh we're seeing in Motivity that is is unique and and Smith touched on this a little bit is we're getting a a wave of behavior analysts that have been in this field and have you know been
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working one-on-one with with clients for years and they want to find another way to make an impact and not I mean maybe some of it is you know I I need something that's a little more remote that's part-time, but also I've been
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doing this now for 15 years, and I'd really like to take the knowledge I've learned and put it into something that's going to impact even more people. So we we get we just have this group of behavior analysts that are working in
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motivity, but what's so cool about it is we have them in sales, we have them in product, we have them in customer support, and um they're kind of sprinkled throughout our company. And working in a tech company is different
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than working in an ABA company. there's different KPIs, uh different structure and hierarchy and um how and processes and so it's really fun to see them adapt to new ways of using the science and adapt to to the new a new type of
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company and like use their superpowers that they have as a scientist in a different way.
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Most clinicians are in the business, right? They're either their owners or they're founders. They some of them are still practicing while also making sure that payroll happens. And that can be boiled down to servant leadership, right? And so at Motivity, one of the
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things that we believe as part of a leadership organization is we must be servant leaders. We we must be able to get into the seat of our employees and do that job and show them that, you know, we still have our hands-on the
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front lines and what's going on. Uh and but you talked about culture and I think culture and leadership are are a little bit different. So you have to build culture with intention. You have to be in in intent
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about the way and thoughtful about the way that you're building culture because it doesn't happen, right? Like it's not just one of these things where if you just water the plant it grows, right?
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You have to be really thoughtful about it because uh performance of a team always follows values. And if you create the values that are going to motivate a team, for example, you got to hire good people. Good people want to be around
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good people. Top talent trucks top talent. Um, diversity, equity, inclusion, right? You need to have diverse points of view. You need to have different people at the table. Uh, you need to be thinking about being resilient and making sure that you are
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being inclusive and thoughtful about setting those goals. And so all of that, you know, boils down to are you there building a culture that people want to be a part of? And if the answer is yes, then your employees will go above and
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beyond. They will unlock their superpowers. And if at any point uh we are in a position where a leader or an employee or a manager says, I'm no longer getting the value out of my time here, we'll find a new place for it.
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Right? This isn't uh in the US we have these at will agreements like employment agreements but they're birectional and I think that's one thing that employees don't recognize right it's it's not that the employer can fire you at at will but
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you also have the opportunity to leave and so at Motivity one of the things that we're going to really focus on is that making sure that you like the people you work with you like your manager you're learning you're growing
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your career you're fairly compensated and and you get the work life balance that's important to you and at some point that value exchange of all those six things is there's a an unbalance of what your expectations are, then let's
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find a new spot for you, right? But you you need those six things. I've come into contact with a lot of leadership of you guys' team and it's always been pleasant. I don't know who's doing your marketing on social media, but y'all are
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showing up everywhere. So, kudos to whoever's doing that is doing a great job of that. Um, shout out to Brian and Mark. There you go. Yes. Love both of them. Love both of them. Um, I want to get a little bit personal here with both
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of you guys. Um, with terms of your legacy and kind of what you guys have done both individually.
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What were you guys and I guess I'll start with you, Emily. How would how would you define success at at this stage in your career? Um, and talk about what what what still drives you? What keeps you motivated to continue to do
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the work that you're doing right now? I have always been someone that's been motivated and reinforced by seeing people I love succeed. And I think that's why I really love being a leader is because that's my job. My job is to
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find people I love working with and help them succeed. And by not managing them and telling them how to do their job, but giving them the tools to do what they do really well and remove the barriers that are there in
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front of them and problem solve together. And I I think that as as I continue in my journey as a career in my career that that's what I want to continue to I want to continue to f to uh support the people that I
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manage and help them succeed and find a career path that they're excited about because uh that just makes me excited too. Yeah. We need folks at the table that are going to really focus on the team, not themselves.
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Um, I think it's it's a little bit of a loaded question. I I uh I don't know that I I've thought too much about how I define success. I'm a builder, right? I just want to build. I want to build I want to build good
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teams. I want to build good culture. I want to build good product. And if you really focus on those things, then you tend to build good companies.
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Um, and so for me, it's going to continue to to be focused on that. And will the good company come? Will we build, you know, the the next central reach? Hopefully. Um, but we're not setting out to do that. We're we we are
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dead set on focused on making sure that we're building better outcomes for our learners. We're building more effective, efficient practice management software for our clinicians. and we have an amazing team that helps us do that. And if we focus on doing that really well,
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then yeah, maybe we'll be the next central reach. Um, but we're not out there every day saying how close to them are we, right? Uh, what is what is the saying? It's like comparison is the thief of joy. Joy. Yes, it is. And so
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all of my direction, all the leadership team's direction is focus on what we can control. And we can control those things. Build good teams, build good product, build good culture, and then what will follow is a good company.
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Trusting the journey, right? Keeping your head on if doing the work now and then the outcomes, everything else is going to work out on its own, right? But if you're looking too far ahead and doing that, you can rob yourself of a
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lot of joy and the beauty of the process of being able to do that. So, I think that's a great message um for our listeners. Um guys, this has been powerful. I'd love to to learning more about you guys, about Motivity's growth,
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about you guys' leadership, your philosophies, hearing both of you guys and um your stories. I hope our listeners are, you know, taking note.
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I'm going to give a big thank you to, you know, Motivity again for this episode. If you guys are looking for ABA platform um that involves your practice, please head over to motivity.net to learn more. Um and as we wrap up this
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discussion, as we start to come down, um Emily, I'm going to go to you here. Um, any final advice for ABA professionals um, looking to embrace innovation, looking to do different work? Just any any final advice for maybe young Emily
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who's out there, you know, watching right now. What What would you tell them? I'm gonna try not to tear up because one of the things I would have liked to tell my younger self is when you are working with these clients
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and these families, you remember that you're they're going to be 18 years old. They're going to be 20 years old.
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They're going to be 25 years old. And hopefully you'll still know them and hopefully you'll stay in touch with the family and you'll get to see how their life unfolds and um keep that relationship. I know that there's you know there's ethics you have
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to boundaries and stuff like that but there is always room for keeping in touch keep in touch with those those clients because the reason why is you will learn so much from them after fact when they tell you about their
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experience and they can tell you what it's like to be a client and you will learn one what you could do to be better for the future families that you work for or clients that you work And also you'll all you
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will just have so many heartwarming stories about what the work has done for them.
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And you'll be able to see them graduate. You'll be able to see them get their first job. You'll be able to see them be able to um express their love for their family in a whole different way that you
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didn't get to see. And you'll get to see them be uh become adult humans uh that are impacting the world. So keep in touch with those people. Look, I I think that just in general, I I don't know that I can follow up with that, but
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you know, life is too short to be unhappy, right? It's never too late to reinvent yourself and you have to continue to focus on improving one little step at a time. I think that's a, you know, one of the biggest aspects of
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ABA that I've I've learned recently and as well as thought about how it transitions my life is we're all just uh on this one journey together, this this one path of life. And each little step, we're just learning along the way. And
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when we get rewarded, we do it again, right? And if we don't get rewarded, it's okay to try again. And there's a lot of a lot of deep thought that you could probably put into that, but I just
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think that um you know, you just got to focus on making sure that what you're doing is bringing you uh fulfillment and there's a lot of fulfillment in the space and what we are building at Motivity and what our competitors are
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building. We're changing the lives of kids and I um I I hope we are all successful because that means that we've done an immense amount of good for the world and it brings me joy when that happens and so we want to continue to do
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that. Just in general make sure you focus on happiness. Do what brings you joy every day. All right, you guys are giving us some gems here. Um Emily Smith, I I want to personally thank you guys for your contributions to the
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field. um for your time uh for both of you guys' leadership that you guys are displaying and um per on a personal note uh supporting a lot of endeavors I have going along too in my organizations.
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Thank you guys for that as well. Um I hope our listeners took a lot away from this episode, learning more about Motivity, getting a little peak behind the curtains with you guys. Again, check out motivity.net to learn more about you
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guys and thank you guys for this episode. We look forward to checking in with you guys soon and hope we can do it again. Yeah. Sounds good. Thanks. All right. Thanks, guys.
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Topics:MotivityApplied Behavior AnalysisABA technologyclinical data collectiontelehealthbehavior analysis softwareclinical outcomespractice managementCalmanacABA care transformation
