Walk into most ABA clinics and you'll see it. Someone with their head down in front of a monitor, doing the same clicks they did yesterday, while a parent waits in the lobby for a word about how their kid did today. We have somehow built an industry where good people spend their best hours feeding software instead of facing families.

My guest today has spent two decades trying to fix that.

Stephen Donaldson is the Chief Revenue Officer at Boost, a practice intelligence platform for ABA, and one of the people who helped build the data tools a lot of you already know. He will be on stage at ABA C.A.R.E.S. this August for a panel called The Hidden Cost of Bad Tech. In this episode he makes the case that for a decade, ABA software only ever got prettier buttons, and that the real shift happening now is software that handles the busywork in the background and only asks for you when a human actually needs to decide something.

We get into what that looks like in practice:

• The "better buttons" trap. Why a decade of nicer interfaces never solved the real problem, and what changes when the system does the repetitive work for you.
• The black cockpit. Surfacing only what needs a decision right now, like the credential with six weeks left instead of six months, so your team stops drowning in everything all at once.
• Why ABA scheduling is a NASA-level math problem, not a calendar problem, and why it is really a data problem underneath.
• Getting the schedule out of one person's head. What happens to your whole operation the day the person who "just knows" calls in sick.
• AI as a lever, not a replacement. How one strong scheduler can run three or four clinics, so you grow your impact without ballooning your overhead. We still need humans in human service.
• The honest read on the fear of AI. It is the speed, not the outcome. We already trust technology with our banks, our paychecks, and our medical records.
• The contract warning bell, from a lawyer's seat. If a product needs long contract language to keep you, ask why, and learn how to tell a true partner from a vendor.

Learn more about Boost at https://www.boostresults.com

Stephen will be on the Hidden Cost of Bad Tech panel at ABA C.A.R.E.S. in Boston this August. Go to the panel, then get in line and ask him your hardest questions, because tech only gets better when the people using it are in the room.

Register here: https://behaviorlive.com/conferences/abacares2026/registration

We'll see you in Boston August 4th through 7th, or live streaming from the other side of the screen.