Your BCBA career has more possibilities than you were shown.
You know behavior analysis extends beyond autism intervention.
Figuring out how to build a career in another area? That’s where things get overwhelming.
The BCBA Career Expansion Playbook
That’s why I made…
A practical, 56-page digital guide to help you explore your options, identify what you need to learn, and create a realistic plan for taking your next step.Maybe you’ve searched for BCBA jobs and found the same positions over and over.
Maybe you’re interested in adults, aging, fitness, or another area… but you’re unsure how your experience transfers.
Or maybe you have an idea you keep coming back to, but you haven’t figured out whether it could become a job, contract, service, or resource.
This playbook was created for that space between “I want to explore something else” and “I know what to do next.”
You don’t need your entire career mapped out. You need a place to begin.
You want something different. You just don’t know what comes next.
A six-step roadmap for exploring what’s possible
Narrow your interests to a population, setting, or problem you want to explore—without committing to it forever.
1. Choose one direction
Learn what professionals in that area actually do, what outcomes matter, and how to investigate whether an opportunity exists.
2. Define the work
3. Evaluate and expand your competence
Identify the experience you can build on, the gaps you need to address, and the training, mentorship, or collaboration to investigate.
4. Find people before trying to find clients
Discover ways to connect with professionals, organizations, mentors, and potential referral partners already working in your area of interest.
5. Get experience without starting a business
Explore employment, projects, contracting, collaboration, and other manageable ways to build relevant experience.
Turn your ideas into specific actions, starting with research and relationships and progressing toward testing a real opportunity.
6. Make a 30-60-90-day plan
Practical tools to help you move from reading to doing
Reflection prompts and worksheets to help you choose a direction that fits your interests, experience, and life.
A competency development plan to organize what you already know, what you still need, and how you’ll evaluate your progress.
A “Before You Offer Services” checklist to identify questions about competence, licensure, insurance, documentation, funding, and collaboration.
Questions to ask before accepting a contract, including pay, workload, scope, support, and responsibilities.
Examples of career expansion across adult services, gerontology, health and fitness, workplace training, community education, and more.
Curated readings and professional resources, including dedicated behavioral gerontology and health, sports, and fitness resource lists.
Ready-to-adapt outreach scripts for informational interviews, mentorship requests, organizational conversations, and small projects.
Opportunity-validation tools to help you investigate what people need before investing in a new offer.
Your next step can be small.
Career expansion might mean exploring a different full-time role. It might mean taking on one focused contract, proposing a project at your current job, or finding someone you can learn from.
You can explore another area while keeping the stability of your current position. You can want a small side practice. You can discover that employment fits you better than business ownership.
This playbook gives you room to explore those possibilities and choose a next step that makes sense for you.Hi, I’m Rachel. I’ve built my career by exploring what else behavior analysis can do.
My work has taken me through public schools, severe behavior services, Medicaid waiver programs, adult disability services, behavioral gerontology, and private-pay community support.
I’ve also combined behavior analysis with personal training and nutrition coaching, contracted with organizations, and created professional consultations for BCBAs exploring their own next steps.
My career developed through learning, relationships, and small opportunities that grew over time.
I created this playbook to share the questions, resources, and practical steps I wish had been easier to find along the way—and to help you start exploring a career that fits you.
A few questions you might have
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Yes. The first step helps you narrow your interests by population, setting, or problem. You can begin with curiosity rather than a fully developed idea.
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No. The playbook explores employment, contracting, collaboration, projects, and educational resources. Business ownership is one possible path.
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It provides a framework for exploring different areas of practice, with examples across several fields. It also includes dedicated resource lists for behavioral gerontology and health, sports, and fitness.
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The playbook helps you identify competence gaps and plan further learning. Developing competence may require additional education, mentorship, supervised experience, collaboration, and demonstrated skills.
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Individual consultation is a separate service. You can work through the playbook independently and then request a consultation if you would like guidance tailored to your background and goals.
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A 56-page digital PDF containing guidance, worksheets, outreach scripts, checklists, research links, and planning tools.
