Maybe you're a BCBA who's ready to step away from some of the direct clinical work and bring in a little extra income with an IEP advocacy business.

Maybe you're the person everyone comes to with IEP questions, or you were a special education teacher before becoming a BCBA, so moving into advocacy feels like a natural fit.

Or maybe you have a transition coming up and you're starting to think about what you want your professional life to look like next.

Whatever the reason, you've started considering offering private IEP advocacy services.

(If you're still deciding how to present your advocacy work, start with Your BCBA Credential Isn't Your Brand. And if you're a BCBA ready to learn IEP advocacy from the ground up, Pivot Into IEP Advocacy is where I teach it.)

Providing a service isn't the same as running a business

But there's something that I think catches a lot of BCBAs off guard.

Knowing how to provide a professional service and knowing how to run a business that provides that service are two very different things.

Most of us have spent years learning about assessments, interventions, behavior, and working with families. We haven't necessarily spent much time learning how to start and operate a business.

And there are quite a few decisions to make before you accept your first paying client.

Sole proprietor or LLC? Structuring your IEP advocacy business

For example, have you thought about how you're going to structure your business?

Will you operate as a sole proprietor or form an LLC? What are your state's registration requirements? Do you need a separate business bank account? How will you handle your taxes, and how much of each payment should you set aside?

An LLC and an S corporation aren't the same thing, and choosing a business structure doesn't automatically determine how you'll be taxed.

What your advocacy service agreement should cover

Then there are your contracts.

Let's say a parent hires you to attend an IEP meeting. You've reviewed the records, prepared recommendations, and blocked off three hours on your calendar.

The parent cancels that morning.

Do you still get paid?

What if the meeting runs two hours longer than expected? What if the parent wants you to review another 100 pages of records afterward? What if they disagree with your recommendation and decide they don't want to pay your invoice?

These are things you want to address in your service agreement BEFORE they happen.

Pricing IEP advocacy: are you actually going to make money?

And here's another question that I think deserves more attention: Are you actually going to make money?

Let's say you decide to charge $150 for attending an IEP meeting. That might sound like a reasonable amount for a side business.

But you spend two hours reviewing records, an hour preparing with the parent, two hours at the meeting, and another hour writing a follow-up email and reviewing what happened.

That's six hours of work.

If you only charged $150 for the meeting, you just earned $25 an hour before accounting for business expenses and taxes.

That's a very different number from the one you had in mind when you decided to start offering advocacy services.

Insurance, student records, and professional scope

And we haven't even talked about professional liability insurance, securely storing student records, protecting confidential information, establishing payment policies, or making sure your advocacy services are appropriately defined within your professional scope.

None of these things is particularly exciting. But overlooking them can create real problems, even when you're only working with one or two families a month.

Walk through the process with your first paying client

Here's one thing I would encourage you to do if you're considering starting an IEP advocacy business.

Think through the entire process of working with your first paying client.

A parent reaches out tomorrow and says, "I'd love to hire you. How do we get started?"

What happens next?

How will they sign your contract? How will you collect and store their child's records? How will you explain your fees? When will they pay you? What happens when the work is finished?

And just as importantly, how much time will you spend providing those services, and how much will you actually earn?

If you're not sure about some of those answers, you've just identified some of the business systems you'll need to establish.

And that's a useful place to start.

You can learn the business side of advocacy

The good news is that you don't need to have an MBA or years of business experience to figure this out. You can learn the business side just as you've learned other professional skills.

But you do need to take it seriously, even if you're only planning to do advocacy as a side business.

Because the goal isn't just to find your first client. It's to build a business that allows you to do good work, get paid appropriately, and protect both yourself and the families you serve.

Are you a BCBA thinking about starting an IEP advocacy business? Join the waitlist for Pivot Into IEP Advocacy, my program that teaches behavior analysts how to support families through the IEP process.