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Lessons in ABA Company Leadership: Saying No, Building Culture, and Scaling with Purpose
What does it take to grow an ABA organization for more than a decade without losing sight of the mission?
In this episode of Tim Talks: Behavioral Health, Tim Zercher sits down with Jennifer Helten, CEO and Founder of Unique Pathways, to discuss the leadership principles that have helped her scale a thriving ABA organization while staying committed to children, families, and meaningful outcomes.
“There has to be this understanding of why this is affecting the kids or why it could be affecting families or the team or the individuals… You have a great responsibility in shaping this child’s life. And that’s not only a responsibility, that’s a gift.”
Learning to Say “No, Not Right Now” as a Leader
Jennifer Helten shared that she rarely says an outright no as a leader — instead, she reframes requests as “not right now” unless something conflicts with her value system or company mission. This approach lets her plant the seed for future initiatives, build the foundation needed to support them, and revisit the idea once the timing is right. It’s a leadership philosophy built on patience and intentional sequencing rather than shutting ideas down. (Internal link opportunity: leadership/company culture page, or a blog post on ABA business ownership.)
Building a Mission-Driven Culture That Retains Staff
For Helten, every piece of feedback — coaching, accountability, or praise — has to tie back to the company’s mission first. She emphasized reminding her team that working with children isn’t just a job responsibility, it’s a gift, and reinforcing that connection helps staff stay engaged for the long term. She also pointed to intentional, agenda-driven communication (citing the book Death by Meeting) as critical once a team scales past a single location, since unspoken norms that work for a small team don’t automatically transfer to new hires or new centers.
ABA-Specific Marketing and Client Acquisition
Outside of word of mouth, Helten’s team works with a marketing agency that specializes exclusively in ABA, speech, and OT companies — a decision she called one of the best she’s made, since generic marketers often miss the nuances of who they’re actually trying to reach. Her current strategy leans into organic growth and longevity: emphasizing over a decade of company history (and multiple decades of hands-on experience behind it) to build trust with parents evaluating ABA providers in a crowded market.
About Our Guest: Jennifer Helten
Jennifer Helten is the CEO and Founder of Unique Pathways, LLC, and a respected name in ABA company leadership, where she has spent more than a decade building a values-driven ABA organization focused on helping children and families thrive. With extensive experience in organizational leadership, operational growth, staff development, and behavioral health, Jennifer is passionate about creating sustainable organizations that deliver exceptional clinical outcomes while maintaining a strong mission-centered culture.
Visit the Unique Pathways Website
Episode FAQ
What does effective ABA company leadership look like day to day?
For Jennifer, ABA company leadership means tying every piece of feedback, coaching, and accountability back to the company’s mission first. She emphasizes keeping the “why” front and center for her team — reminding staff that shaping a child’s life is both a responsibility and a gift — while running intentional, agenda-driven meetings that respect everyone’s time as the organization scales across multiple centers.
How does Jennifer approach saying no as a leader?
Rather than shutting ideas down outright, Jennifer tries to reframe a “no” as “not right now” — unless something conflicts with her values or mission. This gives her team room to build the foundation needed to revisit the idea later, once the timing and resources are right.
What marketing strategy has worked best for client acquisition?
Outside of word of mouth, Jennifer works with a marketing agency that specializes exclusively in ABA, speech, and OT companies, which she says has been one of her best business decisions. Her current marketing strategy leans into emphasizing the company’s longevity and organic growth — building trust with parents by showing decades of hands-on clinical experience behind the brand.
Episode Transcript
View the full transcript
Timothy Zercher
Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate you taking the time.
Jennifer Helten
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Timothy Zercher
Absolutely. Let’s jump right in. I want to hear about how you’ve grown unique pathways. You’ve grown it for more than a decade while still staying very mission-focused. What originally pushed you to start the company and what vision do you want to create differently?
Jennifer Helten
When I initially started the company, I was looking at a need. I had started in ABA back in the late 90s, and it was all home-based, parent paid. There wasn’t insurance, there wasn’t BCPAs. So when I started the company, I wanted to continue with the mission of what I had initially got into the field for, which was to help the kids be the best versions that they could be. And I wanted to reach more people, more families during that time. And I thought owning a company would help me do that, meaning I would get to work with more kids. That was completely the opposite. However, what did work for me was that I did learn how to find mission-oriented individuals and professionals who not only care about the science of ABA, but care about the outcomes for the kids. And so that was my primary focus was what could we do to help our next generation of children and ABA professionals move into this industry and make this meaningful change?
Timothy Zercher
I love that. And I think you’ve had a lot of that impact, even if you don’t get to work with the kids daily anymore. You’ve definitely had that impact. Shifting topics a little bit, I know you’ve spoken openly about learning how to say no as a leader. And I think that’s part of your mentality when it comes to leadership. How did that shift change the way that you approach growth and decision making? And how do you lead now using that approach?
Jennifer Helten
That’s a great question because I try not to say no. I try to say more no, not right now, unless that’s just a hard stop. Maybe it doesn’t align with my value system or it doesn’t align with our mission of the outcomes that we’re trying to accomplish. But a lot of times it’s more of a maybe not right now. So let’s table this and get to a place where we have grown that we can accomplish this goal. And that seems to help a lot because then it puts the seed, it plants the seed, and then we can start preparing for that, building a foundation for it so that when it’s time to reintroduce it, we can now say yes, let’s move forward.
Timothy Zercher
That makes a lot of sense. Another part of your leadership philosophy centers, I know, around a lot of culture and retention. What have you learned about building teams that genuinely stay connected to the mission and stay long term?
Jennifer Helten
Always making sure that any feedback that you’re giving to your team is mission driven first. So if we’re gonna say that we’re truly about the mission of our company, then any accountability measures, any feedback, any mentoring has to stem from that mission first. So there has to be this understanding of why this is affecting the kids or why it could be affecting families or the team or the individuals. And so I believe that is also making sure that you’re on repeat of what your mission is, reminding everybody, hey, this is why we’re here. You have a great responsibility in shaping this child’s life. And that’s not only a responsibility, that’s a gift. And reminding people of that too, that what an amazing gift that you have had to show. Like when we have a child graduate, like you were part of that. Like, how amazing is that? So keeping that mission at the forefront of everything we do and any feedback that we provide, whether it’s coaching feedback, whether it’s accountability measures, whether it’s just, hey, great job, but always making sure that we tie it back to why that is so important in the mission.
Timothy Zercher
I love that. I think sometimes it’s hard to communicate how things are tied back to the mission, even if they are mission-driven. Sometimes it’s still hard to be like, well, our policy about how you behave in the break room still does have an impact long term. It can be hard, but it makes complete sense of why that is so important.
Jennifer Helten
And sometimes you just have to show people how those dots are connected and understanding that nothing happens is truly personal, but you have to just remember that we have to think outside of ourselves because this is a field that you do need to think outside of yourself. It can’t be about you.
Timothy Zercher
Absolutely. And I think if you’re in this field, you’re likely care more about the people outside of yourself anyway, right? Exactly. So I know that you’ve grown your team a ton, especially just like in the last two years. What have you found is the hardest part of growing your team?
Jennifer Helten
I think the hardest part is making sure that the day-to-day communication and teamwork do not take a hit. I see that running four centers, my time is very split now. And I’ve put a leadership team under me that’s amazing. But there’s still that making sure everybody, we’re all so busy that we’re intentional in our communication that when we do have a meeting, I don’t know if you’ve heard the book Death by Meeting, they’re very productive. We have an agenda. We want to get in, we want to get out, we want everybody in there. We don’t want to waste two hours of everybody just bantering. So the intentionality of the communication is probably one of the biggest challenges because even when you bring in new team players, even if they align with your mission, there is so many little things that you can’t put in a book. You can’t put this in the employee handbook or the operations manual. There’s so many tiny nuances. And then when you’ve worked together for so long, also there’s things that drop when you bring in a new team member and you see your holes. So you have to be intentional with that communication with the new team members and the current ones because what we did a year ago may not apply to now because of the change and the growth.
Timothy Zercher
Absolutely. Yeah, and I find there’s often unspoken rules that just develop in an organization when you have length of time. And sometimes those are good things, but they’re very hard for new people to learn.
Jennifer Helten
Right. And that’s very true. These are sort of the unspoken, and when you’ve worked together for so long and you’ve developed this company with your entire team and leadership, and you bring in a new amazing person, you’re gonna have to watch to make sure, oh, I’m gonna put that on the burner that I make sure that I’m intentional about communicating to the new team member or this current team member that just joined us.
Timothy Zercher
Absolutely. So because we’re a marketing agency that specializes in behavioral health, we always have to ask some marketing type questions. The first one is what works best right now, especially outside of word of mouth when it comes to client acquisition for your team?
Jennifer Helten
Well, we’re going through that right now. We’re working with a marketing company that specializes solely in ABA marketing. And that has been a very great move on our end, especially in our newer locations where we’re not as well known. We’re so ingrained in the community. We’ve been there for so long. But the new communities that we’ve joined, we want to get ingrained with those communities as well. So I’m working now with a marketing company that only works with ABA, speech, OT companies. And we’ve been getting really great results with them so far.
Timothy Zercher
That is fantastic. And if you don’t mind me asking, what kind of marketing are you guys doing? Digital ads, website, where are you guys focusing?
Jennifer Helten
A little bit of everything. They focus solely on the social media ads, but I do have an amazing web designer that also does all of our SEOs and drives that for us as well. And he’s also in the ABA industry. So we’re working with marketers who understand ABA and understand what you’re trying to accomplish. That was probably one of the better decisions I’ve ever made. Instead of just a marketing person who’s telling me things, and I’m like, yeah, but I kind of think you’re missing the clientele on that one. Like it makes sense to me, but you have to think about the consumer. And this is a special niche of people that you’re trying to make sure that they’re being communicated with.
Timothy Zercher
And every industry has different quirks. I think that’s one of the things that people just don’t understand is how different marketing needs to be from an ABA group to a coffee shop. It’s a very different world. So this makes complete sense. And then the last question is what is one marketing tactic or strategy that either you’re just watching really close in the marketplace or that you’re actually considering for yourselves?
Jennifer Helten
The one strategy that I’ve really emphasized with our current marketers is to emphasize the longevity that we have working with kids. I think that’s really important, especially since every time I get on Facebook or any of these boards, I hear somebody wanting to start a new ABA center. I think the longevity speaks for itself for parents. There’s a sense of trust that we’ve weathered, we’ve gone through this, we know what we’re doing, we have good outcomes. That’s something I really emphasized with our marketing. The company has over a decade, but I mean, there’s multiple decades of experience behind that decade of the company itself. So that is a big strategy that I’m really pushing. The organic and the organic side of it, privately owned company that’s grown organically over the past decade.
Timothy Zercher
That’s awesome. It’s great that you realize the advantage that is there. I think a lot of organizations miss that. It costs a lot. Not necessarily visible, but if you don’t communicate what makes you different, then you’re the same. And if you’re the same, then there’s no reason to go to you versus anybody else down the street.
Jennifer Helten
Well, and I will be honest, when I first started my company, I was like, well, we’re amazing. I don’t know why everybody just doesn’t think we’re amazing. Now that I’ve got skin in the game and I look back and I can see where even if I’m consulting or mentoring new business owners, I understand why there has to be this proof is in the pudding now. So I knew what we were gonna do was gonna be exceptional, that we were gonna have good outcomes because I knew the people that worked for me. But we had to be patient and we had to make sure that we built that trust along the way. And so I think that speaks for itself. And I think that’s needs to be stated when you’re marketing. Hey, look, we didn’t just pop up on the side of the road because we thought this was gonna be cool. We’re in this for the long haul.
Timothy Zercher
That’s like I love that you have realized the power that there is in communicating differentiation. I think more ABA owners, especially ABA clinicians, really need to learn that same principle. You’re not legitimate until you’ve proven that you’re legitimate and have to do that. It’s just part of the world.
Jennifer Helten
It is, absolutely.
Timothy Zercher
Thank you so much for joining us, Jennifer. We really appreciate uh you taking time and sharing some of your insights and experience with us.
Jennifer Helten
Absolutely. Thank you again. I really enjoyed it.
