Welcome PrivateSLP listeners to Episode 54!

Today we are talking with Leanne Sherred, CCC SLP, founder and speech pathologist from expressable.io.

In today’s interview, We will find out exactly why Leanne Started her own business as we talk about the following:

* Venturing out and starting expressable.io,

I coach a lot of SLPs and OTs for that matter in our all access community at privateslp.com. And we’re always talking about marketing and how to drive business and traffic to our websites and to our practices, into our clinics. And, that’s one thing that I always talk about to our members is, this stuff does take time. It’s not happening overnight and not everyone can do this. Not everybody is cut out to start and grow and scale their own businesses because I think it takes a special person to make things happen.

Well, hello everyone. You’re listening to the speech therapy, private practice startup podcast. This is episode number 54. My name is Kyle Medes and I’m a speech pathologist since 1993. And these podcasts are designed to help you improve your business and your life one podcast at a time. Welcome back to the show, everyone. Thanks again for all the emails and questions. And as of today, today’s Thursday, June 11th 2020. We have well over 68,912 listeners to this show. And I’m super glad you guys are out there getting good, valuable information. And if you wouldn’t mind, please go to the iOS or Android platform of your choice and leave some good five star feedback that way other people just like you can get the same valuable information.

And if this is your first episode, welcome to the show. You can gladly start out at episode number one and work your way through all the episodes. And hopefully here you’ll find all the tips and tricks you need to start, grow and scale your own Speech therapy private practice. But if you need some more help, I’m here to help you. I have a group of people that I help online, and that is at privateslp.com/coaching. And there’s two selections there. You can simply access the All Access Community and work with me hand in hand in our online platform. And you can also have weekly coaching calls with me as the Perfect student. So those choices are right there for you there. So if you need my help, I’m there to help you.

Now, today, I’m going to talk to Leanne Sherred. She is a speech and language pathologist and the founder of expressable.io, and she is going to be interviewed today and talk to us and our listening community about the rewards and challenges of starting and growing and scaling her own Speech Therapy Private Practice. Let’s listen.

Kyle: Hey today, we’ve got Leanne Sherred. She’s on the line today and she’s going to talk about her business. Hey Leanne, how are you?

Leanne: I’m good, Kyle. Thank you. How are you today?

Kyle: I’m doing well. It’s early this morning. I had to wake up and have a couple cups of coffee. What about you? Are you a morning person?

Leanne: I am not. If I don’t have the coffee, I don’t know. Don’t come near me. No, I’m good. I get up and go when I need to, but if I’m given the choice, I’ll go slow in the mornings.

Kyle: No, that’s awesome. I’m just the opposite. I think I was up at like 3:30, 4 O’clock getting ready for everything. And right now we have a fire on the mountain here in Tucson. So I was reading the news reports and I just got a pilot’s license. So I was looking there’s a temporary flight restriction right over our house. Some guy was flying a couple of drones, yesterday and grounded the whole rescue crew where they spray water on the fire. So that was kind of discouraging, but we’re trying to get through this, so,

Leanne: Oh my goodness.

Kyle: Oh, it’s always something.

Leanne: Yeah. Well, be safe. That’s a bit scary.

Leanne: Yeah, so, uh, our company expressable, we are a teletherapy provider, for right now just Speech Therapy Services is our business. And, we got started before all of this started going down, but we’ve really seen that it’s, it’s been a great resource for people, hopefully dealing with all this stuff going on with Coronavirus. We are a private practice or we’re an out-of-pocket practice. Our mission is really to provide therapy more conveniently for people. They can do it anywhere, anywhere they’re comfortable, most do it from their houses, which is very convenient. And then also trying to provide therapy at a more affordable out-of-pocket rate. And so we’re trying to leverage the cost savings that can come along with just having the teletherapy and not needing to rent an office space, not needing to pay gas, mileage, to drive around the house, to house, take those cost savings and pass them on to the clients. And outside of that, we’re also trying to provide a flexible working experience for therapists as well.

Kyle: Yeah, that’s a great idea. I know in our business we see thousands of people a month and at the drop of a hat, we were forced to move all of these people to telehealth and it was a challenge, but we were able to keep everyone employed and pay everyone’s insurances and, dental, vision health, and even 401k with a match. So we’ve done okay. But I’m glad we had that tele-health piece ready to go. One of our key employees, her name is Nikki. She helped us move all these kids and families, and the therapist got them already. But it sounds like you guys were ahead of the curve and got all this planned ahead of time. Also, I like what you’re saying is affordable for families. I know in our business, we try to keep things really affordable for people. And I know moving forward, we’re gonna make this telehealth thing, part of our business model. It’s something, we were forced to do, but it sounds like you were ahead of the game. Tell me a little bit about the working environment for one of your therapists. How does that work for them?

So if you are someone who’s willing and able and comfortable working with all sorts of populations, that’s great. And we can just keep your caseload staffed really full. If you’re someone who has a sort of niche population that you really love working with, or maybe that you’re particularly skilled at working with, then we can also help staff that in particular. And so, cause I know, it happens in some other settings where you get cases that come along and, you’re equipped to deal with them and under your scope of practice, you can, but maybe it’s just not your favorite population to work with. And so we do consultations for all of the referrals that come in. And so that’s a good opportunity to kind of find out a little bit more in order to get people matched up with a therapist is going to be a good fit.

Kyle: It’s really important.

Leanne: Yeah. I think it just lends itself towards greater success. They blend more and they hopefully are making really solid progress in that case. So the next big thing for therapists is the paperwork side of things. I think because we’re out of pocket, we’re not dealing with insurance, we don’t do any direct billing with insurance. We provide superbills if families or individuals ask for them. But outside of that, we are really not super interested in jumping through those hoops. So we document to the extent that, is clinically necessary and important for everything to be understood, but we’re not shaping things to be exactly the way that different companies require this, this one wants this, right? Your goal is like this, please, we’re not doing that. We’re going with what the clinician feels is best.

Kyle: That’s awesome. Yeah. And as far as like, what patients have to pay and families have to pay, is it like a per-visit model? Is it a package deal? How do you guys work that out?

Leanne: It’s a per-visit model. Yeah. So it’s a per visit model and we’re really transparent about the pricing on the website. We think that that’s important that families have a good picture of that coming in. So it’s right on there on the pricing page. It’s $59 per session. And so it’s per session. And then the way that we set up our bill and again, aiming to just build convenience, aiming to build cost savings by not having to pay someone, another employee to separately do billing. Our billing works like a subscription. So if they’re ready to do one time a week, then they’ll just get one charge a week for that $59. If they are doing two times a week that they’ll just get one charge, but just for that price and it’s flexible, right? So if someone was, the therapist may be recommended every other week or they requested every other week, then we can stretch out the cycle of this subscription and it’s canceled any time. There is no secret loophole or anything about that. And if we try to always reschedule, if they have to cancel, we issue credits, if we can’t get that makeup session done. But for the most part, we are trying to just keep it simple and have that be just a really transparent thing that everyone is clear about coming in.

Kyle: Yeah, that’s a great model. And I think people these days that they’re looking for convenience, I mean you store their credit card, you just do it and just move forward. I know in our clinic we do have package rates and things like that for kids, but that sounds really, really convenient for therapists. I mean, I know these days, a lot of therapists are looking for work life balance. We’ve been looking at a four day work week for our therapists. We’re slowly trying to implement something like that. Especially after this COVID thing, everything’s on the table now we’re looking at every single way we can to help our therapist, help our patients, help our families. It sounds like you guys are really doing a great job. And I know from personal experience, when I hire a therapist, I’m looking for somebody under, you said at least 10 hours a week, we want somebody who’s consistent because once you take all that time and energy to match that patient up to that therapist, I mean, you want, if everybody shows up, it works, so the therapist shows up and the family shows up. It’s great, but we want people to stick around so everyone can get what they need to. Do you guys have a big cancellation or no show rate with your sessions?

Leanne: I don’t know that it happens with any more propensity than any other setting. The way that we do everything now we send the intake forms, we ask that the billing is submitted prior. And as far as like having things done in the centralized office and making things as easy as we can on the therapist, we really do the hunt down and the initial kind of gathering of all that information to make sure that those clients are ready to go for their appointment. People are busy and sometimes they’ll wait till that last minute to submit those intake forms, even if we’ve reached out a couple of times earlier than that. And so again, that’s where we really find it important for the consultations to be completed by a therapist so that they can be asking the right kind of questions ahead of that first evaluation because the families they’re paying for that first evaluation.

So we want to come in as prepared as possible. So we’ll take the opportunity to just jot down a couple notes so that the therapist knows what they’re planning for ahead even if the intake forms come in a little bit late. And then as far as the no shows go, it happens, we do work, we’re all remote. So, we call and, and we have a HIPAA compliant text messaging service that we use as well. And sometimes a person might schedule with us and then kind of, we say for a lack of better word ghost, and they ghost us, when we say, “Hey, are you confirming for the appointment?” I don’t think it’s at any higher ever propensity than another setting. And I think the consultation really helps with that too. They talk with us, we explain every part of the model, answer any questions they have.

So hopefully if they’re agreeing to sign up and do the appointment, then hopefully it’s because they feel like they have all the information they need. And then as far as, once they come to that first session. We don’t really see us with a high no show rate. Actually I think because that subscription model is there. So the charge is going to go through, of course, if it’s, they aren’t going to come, we’d issue a refund, but it’s sort of hopefully an incentive to just keep on track and reach out to cancel if you have to an inappropriate time, just because of the way that we have that set up.

Kyle: Yeah, people who own and start and scale their own businesses. I think we realize the amount of work, it goes in to just making these appointments available to the therapist and to the families themselves too. But it’s a whole lot of backend work, making sure, screening the families, making sure they’re in the right place, getting them the paperwork, getting the payment information, with us, dealing with insurance companies, authorizations, obviously you guys don’t do that, but there’s a lot of work that goes in behind the scenes to make these things happen. I know you said you’ve worked in a variety of settings and, as a career speech pathologist, I mean, what made you want to venture out and start your own business anyway?

Leanne: Um, I think it was just a feeling. Feeling the pain points of a lot of that bureaucracy and whether it was insurance companies, or I did a little bit of work when I was working in an outpatient pediatric clinic. I fulfilled a contract for them with a nearby school district doing some of their, evaluations. And then here in Texas, they call them ARD meetings instead of IETS, but doing those for them and hauled up paperwork that goes into that. I know that it’s really important that it’s there and I understand absolutely why it’s there, especially in the case of IETS. But I think I just felt very constrained by that, all that stuff. And I just wanted to do the therapy. I just wanted to meet with the families, do the therapy plan, keep track of things that were important to me.

So are they making progress? Okay. No, I need to readjust my plan. I want to go do some more research, spend time planning, something creative instead of spending time slaving over paperwork. So yeah, and my fellow co founders of the company all come with a background in Healthcare IT mostly, so various areas of that industry. My husband actually is one of the cofounders Nicholas and I came home one day, probably complaining about some part of it. Oh, I can’t see one of my favorite little kiddos right now because his insurance switched plans and now I have to wait for another month and he, we kind of just thought one day. Why not just start our own thing right now and make it not, do with insurance? How can we do that? The answer was, was Teletherapy by mile.

Kyle: Yeah, big sense, I remember in New Orleans, right before hurricane Katrina, I would come home from work and we were walking around Audubon park there by the zoo. And that was complaining about just, this plan and that plan. We can’t see these people. We only get like four visits. I mean, four visits after a total laryngectomy and this guy needed help. And it’s just so frustrating. We had to call and get the authorizations and I understand too about those IEP meetings. I remember when I worked in the schools, we had to send a registered mail to get the families to show up to their kids, their own IEP meeting. I mean, we try to help their kids and they won’t even show up and it was insane. But it sounds like you guys are really, you’re doing a great job and you’re doing this for the right reasons, your pain point, you created something out of that. And I mean, as far as rewards and challenges, I mean, what are the rewards and challenges that you’ve had by watching this thing that you had in your brain grow and seeing, getting employees and paying the bills. I mean, tell me about those rewards and challenges that you’ve seen after you’ve just started this thing from scratch.

I was used to having clients just kind of plop on my lap and not having to do some of that backend stuff that you mentioned. So I think with anything, just learning these new aspects, they were challenging. Luckily like we have a really good team, a lot of really smart people who are helping sort those things out much more than I would be able to on my own, honestly, without a lot of research, probably. So I have to give a lot of credit to the team that we have. And I think the rewards have outweighed the challenges. I mean, it’s been really exciting for me to see just some of the feedback that we gathered from clients. We had one person the other day, she’s working with one of our amazing therapists, Beth, and she just sent a text message again, on that HIPAA compliant platform.

She sent a text message, just really excited about something that her daughter had done. And her daughter she’s about like 10. So this was their first therapy experience. And she said, I’ve always wanted to do speech therapy, but it’s just always been too expensive because they, the insurance plans that they have didn’t cover it. Or perhaps they might not even have a plan. I’m not sure, but she said, it’s always been too expensive. And she said, to be honest, you guys are like heaven sent. And it just was, it was really rewarding to be able to give families and people access to something that they really needed or wanted. I mean, in some cases we’re working with adults who are dealing with something that insurance wouldn’t cover, so many plans, if you’re an adult, they won’t cover anything for you unless it’s trauma-based or, yeah laryngectomy surgery result of things like that. And so many clinics are maybe pediatrics only. I know, I’ve done a couple consultations where that person said, yeah, I might just be having such a hard time finding somewhere. I can go to work on my stuttering that’s not pediatric.

Kyle: That’s right. They just don’t fit into that clinic, right?

Leanne: Yeah, the chairs are too small.

Kyle: Absolutely. Well, sometimes too people, they don’t want to go to a kid’s clinic. At our place, we see adults and kids for our speech side of things. We had a mom the other day, she was so fired up because she’s, she got the meet, the therapist online, she got the review, the goals. I talked to every single parent that comes through our clinic. Right now because of social distancing, people are waiting out in their cars, but, if there, if there’s like, if they have a van, tran or some sort of, Medicaid transportation, they can wait inside, but we got the social distancing, six feet apart chairs, that kind of thing. But, I was talking to one of the moms and she says, I love it because I can see it in the session right now. I can communicate with the therapist, but you’re right. It’s nice when you get that validation, this idea that we’ve had and you’re able to move forward and touch the lives of those we serve. And it’s affordable too.

I’ve talked to a lot of people about wanting to start their private practice. What are you going to charge you? I want 150 bucks. I’m like, okay, good luck. A lot of people can’t afford that. And I mean, that’s the reality, maybe in certain parts of the country, but not here, there’s no way. And we want to make it affordable for everybody because that’s what we’re trained to do. We’re trained to help people to get the services that they need. And I think part of that just gotta make it affordable. Right?

Leanne: Yeah. I think a big part of the thing that we were kind of testing when we set out was something that was going to resonate, cause at the time COVID-19, wasn’t happening. We were just setting out as a teletherapy company. And we were wondering really, like, was it gonna resonate with people to join us and do the therapy and, would the price point resonate? And I think we definitely proved that it does. And we still pay our therapists a really competitive wage and we’re saving so much time on paperwork and things like that. So, I think our therapists find it to be a really enjoyable experience as well. And I know there’s a lot out there where another therapist might look at that rate and say, Oh, we’re not valuing our scale, but I just would argue otherwise.

I think that we are trying to bring this service to more people and we’re widening the net. I think that might not otherwise have been wide enough. So again, like a lot of the adults that we see are people that probably just would have not pursued speech therapy at all. Otherwise, and the same thing, like the market for pediatrics as well is, well that family said, they wanted therapy, but they never went out to get it because they couldn’t afford it. So we’re kind of capturing an audience that otherwise might have been on the sidelines.

Kyle: That’s right. And you said something really important too. Like these insurance companies that have these exclusions or limitations, it has to be an accident, illness or an injury. A lot of people just can’t afford that amount of money per session until I think you guys are just doing a great job on that too. Offering these families support, they get what they need, the therapist gets, but they need the kids that the patients get what they need. I mean, it’s a win-win. It’s awesome. And you started this from scratch, that’s the best part. It’s an idea you had, and I don’t know about you, but I just got sick and tired of just pushing paper, dealing with authorizations and, I just got tired of trading my time for money.

Leanne: Yeah, we tell them again, that consultation is important so that those questions are answered up front, but, they certainly were happy to do that little bit of paperwork for them in order to, again, hopefully it’s helping them access the therapy, if that’s how they need to have it covered. We want to help them do that. But if a family contacts us and they’re looking for insurance coverage, we’re just not trying to mess around with it. Like you said, all these different plans want different things and we’re just really trying to keep it paired down and just do what we want to do clinically. And that was really the main reason.

I think it’s also kind of interesting, teletherapy wise. If you look at some of the companies that are doing perhaps a similar thing in the mental health sphere. I feel like you might be just capturing more of an audience by just saying, let’s make it a clean exchange. You can get on the schedule with us, the next day if you want. You don’t have to wait for all that approval.

Kyle: Well as far as entrepreneurial therapists, how does expressible support entrepreneurial therapists with this self-referral model? How do you guys do that?

Leanne: Yeah. So I think that was something that started to grow in our minds after we had started, we hadn’t thought of it initially, but again, I think we looked at all the stuff that we were doing to get set up and we kind of said, well, I can understand why not everyone is just going out and starting their own practice because there’s a lot involved. And so at the same time, like we mentioned, some therapists have a niche, like a caseload that they’re trying to build a population they love to work with and we’re all remote. Right? So, we’re in a number of States at this point. And so it’s hard to establish the kinds of relationships with other providers that you might be in your same city, in your same local area. So what we have is we build out a webpage for our therapists, if they’re interested in that.

Kyle: Wow, that’s incredible. Especially these days like you said, if an ENT wants to have one of their patients seen you guys can do it tele-health and right now too with COVID for the older population, I know my mom and dad, my dad’s 83, my mom’s 80 they’re at home. My dad, he orders his food online. The guy brings it, puts it down. He goes up to it, picks it up and signs the ticket. He leaves it on the ground. The guy picks it up. My dad, 83, he’s got to figure it out, but I’m asking him, “Hey, you’re getting out and doing anything?”, “Nope”, “You go into any doctor’s appointments?”, “Nope”. We did a telehealth visit though. So I mean he’s into it. So I know a lot of, even older adults or especially in our clinic too, they’re still doing that telehealth thing. So I just think it’s amazing what you guys are doing. What kind of tips for therapists thinking about making that entrepreneurial plunge? What kind of tips would you give them to get started?

Leanne: I would say a big one is figure out how you’re gonna like make a plan for how you’re going to get your name out there. I think that’s the hardest part. I’m on a lot of the Facebook groups for Speech therapists. And that seems to be a really big point of conversation for everyone. And I think it’s important because here you are, you have this fantastic skillset. It makes you do all this work to get set up. And there’s a lot of like, maybe front-end cost there, and then you might just sit there and say, “How am I going to let people know that I’m here and available to do therapy?” So if you’re someone different from us, like if you’re just kind of working in your local sphere, I think the same thing there, right? If you set up your business, you did your LLC, or you got your tax stuff set up, going out and making connections with local providers, the ENT, the pediatricians, the daycares, and the preschools. I think advertising is a really big part of it.

And it’s, it’s also kind of like, how are you gonna explain that someone should do therapy with you rather than the next therapist, maybe. And for us obviously, because we’re teletherapy and we’re remote, in various places of the country for us, it was really about figuring out online advertising and how all of that stuff works. And again, luckily, my colleague, Spencer – our marketing officer, he is fantastic. And so everyone in the team does a lot of work to figure out, the ad spend versus building out content on your website is really important. So if you’re going to do kind of like social media advertising and things like that, I’m trying to think about, what’s going to resonate with the population and the people that you think might be interested in services with you. So, I know a lot of people write blogs. A lot of people do videos. That kind of stuff can really start to add up over time and attract people to your website and have them say, this person looks really knowledgeable. Look, they have 20 blogs about Saturday in therapy. They seem like they know what they’re talking about.

Kyle: Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head. It does take time to do this, this stuff doesn’t happen overnight. I coach a lot of SLPs and OTs for that matter in our all access community at privateslp.com. And we’re always talking about marketing and how to drive business and traffic to our websites and to our practices and to our clinics. And, that’s one thing that I always talk about to our members is, this stuff does take time. It’s not happening overnight and not everyone can do this. Not everybody is cut out to start and grow and scale their own businesses because I think it takes a special person to make things happen. And that’s okay. And if you’re that person, that’s okay too, but it’s a lot of drive. And when we first started talking, I was asking you about, what made you want to do this?

And, sometimes I asked myself the same thing. Cause some days I think to myself, why did I do this? But again, it’s those comments. And it’s the feedback that we get from our patients and families that really make it all worthwhile or for our employees, for that matter, when somebody buys a home or they get alone, so they can buy a home or they put braces on their child’s teeth, I’m providing work for therapists, providing an income for people, providing a place to work, providing therapy for children and adults. It’s a lot of responsibility. Do you ever feel that weight of all of this on your shoulders at times?

Leanne: Yeah, I really do like how we’ve scaled right now. Our central operations are still pretty small. I think it’s kind of a Testament to what we’ve been able to accomplish and kind of make really efficient about the process. So I think with that, we’re really passionate. We tell our therapist that we crave their feedback honestly, about what they feel like is working, what they would like to maybe see changed. So we really want to create and say, obviously we’re constantly getting feedback from customers to do surveys and stuff, but we really want it to be the best experience for everyone. And yeah, we want the therapists to feel like they are continuing to move forward towards their own goals, whether that’s a professional goal, “Hey, I want to become an expert in this area. Give me all those cases.” Or a personal goal, “Hey, I am looking to get my work life balance a little bit better, see my kids more but still be able to practice the profession that I love and earn a great wage?” So we want to kind of get it all, all done.

Kyle: That’s awesome. I’ve been speaking to stress and I’m just going to ask you this. What do you do to take care of yourself? What do you do for fun?

Leanne: Lately it’s like walks with my dog around the same neighborhood loop. It feels like my husband and I, we like to play tennis. So that’s been, a fairly safe thing to do with them, the pandemic going on, if just the two of us hit the court and we just make sure to, if someone else’s ball comes our way, we make sure to just kick it back instead of touching it, we live in Austin, Texas. And if we’re getting a fair amount of rain and water, there’s really great watering holes. You can walk along the Creek, take the dog for a hike, and teach the dog how to swim every time because he forgets. So yeah, I think doing outdoor stuff, especially at this time, if we can get outdoors and breathe that fresh air and kind of leave work behind for a second. That’s good.

Kyle: Yeah, you got to take care of yourself. I just turned 50 and I just got a pilot’s license. I’ve always wanted to do it. And I said, I’m going to do it. And so I did it and now working on my instrument rating and good friend of mine has got a plane. And last night we flew over to Sedona and had dinner. I took him out to dinner, he bought the fuel, I bought the dinner and it’s like 60 bucks. And then we came back and flew back to Tucson. Work is work and I’m always working. And I think a lot of people don’t remember and understand when you have your own business, you’re always on, there’s always something to think about, the fire alarms going off or, it could be something, a patient’s upset because this didn’t happen or they have to pay their copay or whatever it is. I mean, we’re always on, but I think it’s so important to take care of ourselves and to take care of our mind, our body. I mean, it’s really important to have hobbies, so

Leanne: Yeah, I think you got it spot on. If you’re a business owner and you’re ever not doing something towards that business. I don’t know about other people. I don’t know about you, Kyle, but I sometimes feel a little like nag in the back of my head. Like, well you could be doing this.

Kyle: And sometimes that means blocking your calendar even saying no, because the more you say no, but the more valuable yes becomes, right?

Leanne: Yeah. I have my calendar blocked this Saturday morning. Because usually I work like a good person on Saturday mornings and afternoons. The Barton Springs pool is this really awesome natural spring-fed pool here in Austin, like really close to the city and they were closed for the pandemic, but they’re slowly opening and they’re letting only a certain ticketed number of people in, I got us tickets to go on Saturday morning. I blocked it off on my calendar. We’re going. Yeah.

Kyle: That’s awesome. Leanne, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me this morning about your business. Before we wrap it up, is there anything else you want to add?

Leanne: No, I think we talked about a lot of different corners of it there. I think I just like to add, thanks for having me on and letting us take the opportunity to talk about our business. Share about starting businesses in general in this field. So no, I think just, I’d like to say, thanks.

Kyle: My pleasure. And as always, I’ll leave these show notes at the bottom for all our listeners. Thanks again.

The post 54. Online Speech Therapy Business: Meet expressable.io founder Leanne Sherred, CCC-SLP appeared first on PrivateSLP.

Welcome back PrivateSLP listeners, I would like to introduce The Perfect Student, Kyle White. Kyle is a super-motivated individual that is out to help as many kiddos in his community by providing some of the best pediatric therapy in the Philadelphia area.

In this episode, you will hear how this United States Marine and MBA worked with his wife, Ashley White, CCC-SLP to create a multidisciplinary clinic with over 60+ patients in 10 short months.   Together, they have watched Milestone Therapy Group  grow from an concept and idea into a reality .

In this Episode:

02:28 – Introducing Perfect Student Mr Kyle White

Episode 53 is all about celebrating success, and in this episode, Kyle explains how he found PrivateSLP,  asked for help, became credentialed with insurance plans  and worked with me one on one on a weekly basis to become the Perfect Student!

Introduction  “We started from basically nothing to now multi-disciplinary, several different therapists on board and 60 plus kids a week”.

PrivateSLP Intro Solid, sustaining and successful. You’re listening to this Speech Therapy Private Practice Startup Podcast with your host Kyle Meades, speech and language pathologist. Listen, learn and prosper as we share our experience and knowledge so that you can improve your business and your life, one podcast at a time.

Kyle Meades  Well, hello, everyone, you’re listening to the Speech Therapy Private Practice Startup Podcast. This is episode number 53. My name is Kyle Medes and I’m a speech pathologist since 1993. And these podcasts are designed to help you improve your business and your life. One podcast at a time. Welcome back to the show, everyone. Thanks again for all the e-mails and all the questions. And as of today, today is Thursday, April the 2nd 2020. We have well over 65399 listeners to the show. And I’m super glad you guys are out there getting good valuable information. And you know me, I say it every single podcast, value is what you get in the absence of money. And these podcasts are absolutely free for you. So if you wouldn’t mind, just please head on over to the Android or the Apple iTunes platform of your choice and leave some good 5-Star feedback that way other people just like you can get the same valuable information that you are receiving right now. And I also wanted to let you guys know that we have a space available for The Perfect Student, and that is when you get to come to Tucson and work with me hand in hand. You also get weekly coaching calls for me. There’s also some billing and credentialing services in there, too. And so you can find out more information about that at PrivateSLP.com/coaching. What many people choose to do is to work with me online and that’s where you get access to me via the private coaching thread and also access to others in the community. And you can also find that PrivateSLP.com/coaching. Now, today, I’m really excited. This is a great episode because you guys know me and you know me well. I’m always talking about The Perfect Student. And finally, you get to meet a Perfect Student. And this is going to be Mr. Kyle White and his wife, Ashley White. And they are clinic owners in Pennsylvania. And I had the great opportunity to talk to Kyle today and ask him and pick his brain about all kinds of things, about starting and growing and scaling his own speech therapy private practice. And the funny thing is, Kyle is not even an SLP. He is a United States Marine, he’s also got a Masters of Business Administration (MBA). And he’s also just transitioned out of his full time job in the Internet cyber security space, working for a large educational firm. Now he’s working for himself. And all of that happened right here in the last 10 months. And also the bottom fell out with the whole coronavirus thing. And so he’s navigating that and he is learning how to increase his patient load from 0 to over 60+ people per week in. He’s got now many employees, speech therapy, occupational therapists and some other therapists included. So I just want you to kick back and listen to the show today and learn about The Perfect Student.

Kyle Meades Hey, today we’re talking with Kyle White – Kyle White is the owner of Milestone Therapy Group. And you guys who listen to the show regularly, you know that I’m always talking about The Perfect Student and we were taken applications for The Perfect Student and I finally had this bright idea, hey one day you probably would want to listen and meet one of our Perfect Students. Wouldn’t you say that’s the right thing to do, Kyle?

Kyle White Yeah, exactly. It’s a good idea.

Kyle Meades Yeah. Kyle reached out to me. I remember I was on the North Shore, Oahu we were on vacation. It was the last week of May. Kind of going into June. And I get this email from one of our contact pages, you know, is this really nice, guy. His name is Kyle White and he was interested in starting a business at that time. And Kyle and his wife, Ashley, they both own Milestone Therapy Group and they provide speech and occupational therapy services in the Philadelphia area. And I just wanted you guys, the listening community out there to meet Kyle and kind of know what it takes to be The Perfect Student. So, Kyle, if you wouldn’t mind, give me some background. How did you even get into speech therapy? Because if I remember right, you’re not even a speech therapist, are you?

Kyle White That is correct. So kind of a lot of winding, twisty roads even deciding that we were going to start the business then obviously till now. But quick, short background. Yeah, I am by no means a speech therapist, any type of therapist. I always joke, you know, therapists are way smarter than I’ll ever be. So, yeah, definitely not a plan route. Just kind of got here and trial and error and obviously with your help. But to boil it down, my background, I was in the Marines active duty for several years. I mean, then got out in 2015 and went to work for a big four firm doing cyber security. And then in a lot of different conversations and whatnot, my wife and I started Milestone Therapy Group in June of 2019.

Kyle Meades Wow, what a story! And Ashley, your wife, she’s the speech and language pathologist, right?

Kyle White  Correct. Yep. So Ashley’s background for several years now, she’s by trade, a speech therapist.

Kyle Meades   That’s awesome. And so you guys were just searching the web one day and looking, you know, on how to start a speech therapy, private practice. Is that how you found us?

Kyle White  Yeah. So in short, yes. So just trying to understand how to start a speech therapy business. Right. Just, you know, using the old Google, trying to figure out where to start, you know, trying to work backwards, really like what does that look like? We need to do. And really, the podcast is kind of where that’s where I started this in your messages and the different podcast. And then it was like, oh, this guy who actually practices what he preached for lack of better words, like, oh, this guy actually has his own, you know, thriving clinics. And so that was like the model. I was like, OK, I want somebody that’s, you know, for lack of better words, doing it right, not just, you know, putting out some resources, saying, hey, here’s how to do do something that somebody is actually doing it. So, yeah. Long story short was listen to the podcast. And I remember I was even traveling around for work a lot. And so we’d listen to the podcast just to get ideas. Yes, I found you on Google. And then the podcast was the tipping point for reaching out to you.

Kyle Meades Oh, that’s awesome. I’m glad you found those interesting. Sometimes I even wonder. I mean, I see the numbers. I see people from all around the world are listening to the podcast. You know, I see the data. But, you know, it’s nice to hear that people actually get good value out of that. But you said you were traveling through your job. You were in the corporate world of cybersecurity, in the education space. Right?

Kyle White  Yep, cyber security and compliance. So, yeah, in in short, I would ensure that the company that I work for, you know, we were compliant in certain areas and then dealing with a lot of different vendors that the company did business with all related cyber security and compliance. So, yeah.

Kyle Meades  And you just over time, I guess you were just searching for something more, right? I mean, I knew when I started my own business, I just got sick and tired of working for other people and I wanted to do things on my own. You know, through the good and the bad. And so did you and your wife one day just look at each other and say, you know, “Hey, we should open up a private practice” or did she mention it? Because if I remember right, too, you’ve got a MBA, you’ve got a Masters of Business Administration to so not only are you in the Marines or were in the Marines – you were in the corporate world, in cybersecurity in the education space, but you also have an MBA, right? So you guys wanted to put that together?

Kyle White Right. So I don’t even remember. So to get a little bit a historical background, I don’t even remember what grade I was in. I think, you know, it might have been first or second grade. And I don’t know how I, you know, might have been around Halloween or something like that. But I had a bag of candy, you know, like a little Halloween bag of candy. And I took it to school and started selling the candy. So I made a little bit of profit off of, you know, the the bag of candy I bought from the Dollar Store or Wal-Mart or whatever. And I was like, oh, this is cool. Well, it was cool until the teacher shut it down. But anyway, I was kind of had this entrepreneurial spirit, I guess. So obviously, it took a while to figure out what that looked like. And, you know, being in the Marines for several years and then the corporate world, the at a fast forward. You know, when Ashley went back to grad school and it was like, OK, we’re going to do this, the speech therapy thing, we were thinking we’re like, OK, we might be able to like do our own thing with this time again we had no idea what that would look like. But I’ve always had the kind of entrepreneurial spirit. And then actually, you know, once she was involved in and actually writing speech therapy, realized that there’s a lot of great therapists out there is like great companies, but that we could probably do a better job than the lot of folks to what we were seeing. So we kind of, you know, join forces on her speech therapy knowledge, my business background, an MBA education and put it together and start the business.

Kyle Meades  That’s awesome. And, you know, I get a lot of questions all the time, just people wanting to start. And did you find, you know, just getting incorporated – was that a big deal for you?

Kyle White It was I mean, it was exciting. You know, in our prime mentioned this one hundred thousand times throughout the podcast. But luckily, you know, whenever we were able to connect. I mean, you’d been there every step of the way provided, you know, a lock-step program. You know, so many resources. And anytime I had a question, that’s where I was able to reach out to you and understand. OK. Let’s go this direction or do this or what not. So, yeah, getting incorporated was super awesome. Everything’s taken, you know, about 10 times longer. I thought it would. Or 10 times more money. Yeah, it was it was really exciting. We got incorporated and then it took a couple of months for us to “get serious”, you know, get the web site up, you know, reach out to you. So it was exciting. It’s still a journey.

Kyle Meades Oh, yeah. Never stops to. Well, that’s awesome. So you found us through the podcast. You listen to the podcast. You reached out to me directly. And would you say overall that just the coaching and the community inside the All Access Community threads, I mean, did it help shave off some of that time? I know you said it did take some time, but overall, do you think you’ve learned from maybe you wanted to take something one way and it actually went the other? Have you had help and success inside the community?

Kyle White Oh, my gosh, absolutely. So, yeah, I mean, it’s a boss. I mean, not only just time. You know, again, you’re now reaching out to or just search in the forum in the community. So let’s save time and sanity, but also truthfully is allow a business to run, be a business or still be in business. With everything going on. So, I mean, the short answer is yes. Without your help, without joining, without being a member of the community, quite frankly, I don’t think we would have ever got the business going even if we had got incorporated. I don’t think we would have got clients or patients. I mean, at best, maybe one or two. And then with that is we certainly would not be a go in the direction that we’ve been able to leverage your knowledge and be multi-disciplinary. Really have two different business models. You know, a community piece and a clinic piece. So, yeah, to tie it all together and really to to make this as simple as possible. Your help’s been invaluable work. They’re very affordable costs for the membership. But but truly, I don’t know where we’d be without your help, honestly.

Kyle Meades Now, it’s just great to hear. I love to hear people who get value out of the podcast and direct one on one coaching. And if I remember right, you were one of the first people that helped me beta test our app for our community to, you know, from time to time I’ll get the feedback from the community. And I had a few people saying, you know, hey, sometimes it’s difficult to log on because you know me by now, I’m not one of those people to get on Facebook and have these Facebook groups. I just don’t like it. I don’t want to sit there. I want to live. I want to be doing stuff throughout the day. I don’t want to be on Facebook all day long answering questions, you know. I want people to be accountable. I want them to have easy accessibility to me. And so just for those reasons alone, what I chose to do is have my All Access Membership Community inside my own platform. I own it. And I teach that, you know, Own The Clinic series that’s inside the All Access Community. But, you know, I wanted to make it more accessible. So instead of going to your browser on your smartphone, you can just download the app now and reach me that way. And for those of you who don’t know, once you’re in that community, you’ve got a multitude of topics on everything from like billing and insurance and collections and staff and employees and all that. Plus, there’s this one tiny little link in there that says private coaching. And inside that private coaching is a thread that you can start the conversation with me. Kyle, did you ever use that private coaching link inside the community?

Kyle White I sure did. I probably bothered the crap out of you. I’m kidding. You’ve always been there, via that private coaching thread, I was able to find all the information there and then setup weekly meetings with you, which again, I mean, just go back to timesaving and just tips, tricks, knowledge on how to run the business, you know, getting credentialed. I mean, you name it right. It’s just it’s all in there. And that has been amazing.

Kyle Meades Yeah. I’m glad you like it. One of the big things about our All Access Community is, you know, you’ve gotten access to not only me, but other people in the group. And so with that, you know, you can direct message other people in the community. Plus, again, if you don’t want someone to see what you’re working on, like if you want to talk to me personally about something, you can just go in to that private coaching thread. And that way nobody else will see what you’re talking about. So, you know, you’ve got two different choices there. You can get the feedback from the group or you can just get straight one on one coaching with me. Plus, I know you mentioned that there are coaching calls available, too, and that’s something I picked up on you when you first reach out to me. When I was on vacation, I remember you were on fire. You were ready to go. And, you know, at one point I thought, I can’t move fast enough for you because you are just a shaker and a mover. And I remember a couple of times during our coaching calls, I had to slow you down a little bit. I said, you know, I know this saved you a bunch of pitfalls, but I said, you know, you are looking at it one way. But I can guarantee the way you’re looking at it today won’t be the same view about, you know, six to eight weeks from now. And I think we were talking about employee issues, because I know since we’ve been working together and correct me if I’m wrong, it was just you and your wife. You guys were just a sole provider providing speech therapy, but now you’ve actually branched out to occupational therapy and other forms. Therapy. And I think you went from 0 on your caseload now to, what, maybe 50, 45 to 50 children a week. Is that correct?

Kyle White We are actually at 60 plus. Oh, wow. Now, I know it’s again, thanks to your thoughts and suggestions. Yeah, we started out with me being the business, you know, trying to handle anything business related, you know, answering phones. You know, that type of stuff and actually seeing kids. We slowly build that up. And, you know, to your point, patience is not my strong suit. Same. So I’m like, “Go, go, go, kick the door and let’s go”, and yes, you provided some good sound advice, I don’t wanna say reeling it back but, yeah reeling it back saying ok let’s be a little bit more strategic here. You know, I mean, I was like, OK, let’s let’s branch out. You know, it was just like, let’s get that foundation built, get that, you know, solid and really have something to grow on. So we started from basically nothing to now multi-disciplinary, several different therapists on board and 60+ plus kids a week.

Kyle Meades That’s awesome. It’s just really cool to hear how much you guys have just really made a difference in your life. I remember at the end of 2019 I said 2020 is gonna be a lot better than 2019. Right? Would you say that’s true?

Kyle White I mean, you know, the recent events have been a whirlwind. But, you know, quite frankly, we’re still growing like, you know, even the 60 plus. That’s why I say 60 plus right now is because we’re still adding kids. I mean, today, you know, we’re still adding folks, I mean kids, it’s literally every day read more. We’re growing, so. Yeah. 2020 has been good. I don’t wish that the coronaviruses was going on, but now I think 2020’s going good still. And I think you know, there’s a lot of time left in the year and I think it’s going to certainly end great.

Kyle Meades Yeah. And you know, I’ve made the same comment to other people that I’ve talked to recently. I started my whole business in the economic downturn. I mean, I went through Hurricane Katrina back in the day and then we got double whammy with the fallout and the financial crisis back in 2008. So, I mean, I am used to these types of environments. On a recent podcast I was talking about, you know, after Hurricane Katrina, I had rental apartments in multi-family housing. And I remember I had two new rooves the next day. And my next door neighbor who came by and he said he would have insurance company to use? The bank of Kyle, I’m a saver, you know, and I don’t rely on the government or any kind of bail out. I mean, now is the time to start your business. Everybody’s all doom and gloom and getting all jacked up on the news. And, you know, you just have to maintain attention, concentration to the task at hand. And the task at hand is to have at its simplest form, I think an offer that converts and our offer, I think in our clinics are, you know, good quality speech therapy services and occupational therapy services. And I’m glad to hear you guys are just thriving even in today’s environment, because, you know, it’s early April 2020 as we record this call in the corona viruse is out there. You know, the economy, the stock market’s down. It is doom and gloom. And yet here we are sitting and talking about a thriving private practice. I mean, what do you think about that?

Kyle White Yeah. I mean, you hit the nail on the head of a thriving private practice. I certainly would not want to be in a position now or in the near future or in the future of, you know, relying on somebody else for employment. I guess by definition, being an entrepreneur is risk or being a risk taker, something of that nature. But no, I’d rather have control at least as much as I can control or, you know, put the ball in my corner or have my hands or whatever garbage you want to use. But absolutely, I think now is the time you want to be an entrepreneur or start your practice. Yeah. Now, there’s no better time than now because you can at least have some control over some things.

Kyle Meades Absolutely. I’ve had a lot of people reaching out to me about joining that All Access Community. And I think it’s certain level people are afraid to commit. And I’ve seen people come and go in the community. It’s not like, you know, we don’t have a huge group of people who are just, you know, like a Facebook group of, you know, a bunch of free members sitting around, you know, commenting about this and complaining about that. I mean, we have a select group of people, a small niche group of people who are talking about action. And I know that our people you know, I see it on the statistics on the back into the Web site. You may not get tons of comments from every single member, but I do see those members, if they’re not on the life coaching calls on a monthly basis. I see him listening to the replays or I see him downloading the PDF that, you know, those coaching calls are all transcribed and they’ll listen to the audio recording of those coaching calls. And, you know, there’s a couple of people in there that are really excited about growing their practice and they’ll chime in on a few topics. Has your experience been in that community? Have you gotten good feedback from others besides me?

Kyle White Absolutely, yeah. So, I mean, in general, the community both, you know, in there that I’ve had interactions with the been awesome. I mean, everybody’s, you know, super helpful, really willing to help however they can. Well, another thing that’s really cause, you know, just being able to search. So I think the other day I was looking at some insurance question I had. Right. So I just typed in the search bar insurance. I can see all the comments that other folks, you know, posted or questions they’ve asked. And that’s also been kind of great because, you know, you can just leverage stuff that’s already been done. Right. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. So any question I have is search for it. And I’m able to find. Like you said, the PDF or a previous training. But yeah, it’s been amazing. The folks in there are are absolutely top notch materials, you know saved me. Just. And I had a lot of anger in trying to just figure something out. So I don’t have to do that. So it’s that’s a positive.

Kyle Meades That’s awesome. And is the perfect student. You got access to credentialing services. And did you find that getting help with credentialing, was that helpful for you? Because people when they reach out to me and they want credentialing services, always tell people pay for the service. It’s not worth your time filling up reams of paper and just getting all that taken care of by yourself. You want to get somebody who’s knowledgeable and our team of credentials are specialist at what they do. Was that a helpful service for you as well?

Kyle White Absolutely. I can’t say enough good things. You know, Esther, Michel, the credentialing ladies are amazing and I can’t overstate that. Absolutely amazing. I guarantee you, without their help, without your credentialing service, we would not be credentialed with insurances because I was not going to mess around and to your point, go through, you know, a stack of papers for, you know, just one insurance company that’s for trying to build a business, you know, trying to just understand all the nuances that come with starting a business. Right. The taxes, the LLC, the legal right, all that. There’s simply no way would be credential with insurance folks without your service and help of Esther and Michelle, period.

Kyle Meades That’s awesome. I talked to a lot of people about credentialing as well. And you know, there’s so many companies out there who do credentialing services, but they charge him all these fees every year to maintain their contracts. And it’s just it’s a scam. And what we teach our folks with our credentialing services how to manage their own databases and how to to make sure you can do it yourself. You know, you can update your insurance addresses if you move offices. You know, we show you how to do that yourself. So you can be in charge and take care of what you need to take care of, not just leave it up to somebody to do it for you and charge you, you know, gobs and gobs of money. So I’m glad that’s affordable as well. But I mean, here it is 10 months after you reached out for help. I mean, is it safe to say that you received the help that you needed?

Kyle White Oh, my gosh. Absolutely. I mean, one again, just sanity time, etc.. Absolutely. I mean, you know, just the information, the guidance, the coaching, top notch, everything’s been amazing. But it like boil down into economics, if you will, my ROI, my return on investment, you know, for a day and a half. I would consider a low cost really of access to you, access the community, the credentialing. I mean, everything, right the ROI I mean, I couldn’t even put a number because it’s staggering, right. Of how little that cost was to the time and return on resources, clients, etc that we’ve got back, so plus the community, your help – everything is amazing.

Kyle Meades That’s great. And, you know, I had a lady reach out to me recently, went to pay someone $10,000.00 To get help on a private practice. And I mean, we’re nothing close to that, oh, my gosh. And I just said, look, you know, that’s a lot of money. I mean, ten grand. Come on. But, you know, I do this because I care. I genuinely care about people. I show up every single day in that community. I answer questions. If somebody needs a phone call to, you know, go through a certain scenario. I’ll take the call. You know, I’m always available. But the main thing that I want to say is what separates you, what makes you The Perfect Student is because you did the work. I have coached so many people who have done a great job, but it just once in a while you find that person who takes that advice and just runs with it. And next thing you know, extrapolates that data and just make something just much more out of it. And that’s you. And so that’s why I wanted to have this conversation and just a little chat today to let other people know that, you know, there is The Perfect Student out there. It’s not just something I’m sitting there talking about. You know me. Because, again, I’m not on all this social media. I’m not on Facebook. I’m not on Instagram, you know, just sitting there talking about it. I’m work and I got things to do. You know, talking about that Corona virus, too. You know, we’re keeping 48 people employed right now. And, you know, that’s with no government assistance. I mean, that hasn’t even come out. We’re just talking about that whole program, that P.P.P – Payroll Protection Plan before we got on this call. And you know, right now there is absolutely no guidance from the big banks or the SBA from anybody. And that’s why I’m always preaching and teaching. You know, save your cash. And, you know, it’s like the 48 employees that we have. I told everyone, look, you’re not going to get paid. You know what you’re normally going to get paid over the next few weeks right now, because we have to watch our cost. We have to watch our revenue and expenses. But, you know, right now, our caseload have dropped, you know, maybe 30 percent, but we’re gonna be okay. I’m still paying everybody’s insurance. I’m still paying everybody’s health. You know, vision, dental 401K with a match. Everybody still gets what they need. It may not be what they want right now, but we’re keeping people employed. And that’s because we’re not trying to be something we can’t be, you know, being frugal or watching what we need to watch. But we’re still seeing a lot of kids in a lot of families. But I wanted to congratulate you, Kyle, and tell you how proud I am of you for stepping up, getting the job done, and now see your help in all these people in your community now integrate just to see how this thing just evolves.

Kyle White It is it’s it’s truly I mean, it’s so awesome because, you know, like you said, you know, their employees keeping them, you know, a paycheck going on right now. My wife is very close with some of the therapies we have on staff. And we’ve been able to maintain everything and keep them, you know, like you mentioned, trying to balance everything out, keep it lane, but keep them employed and everyone’s happy. Everybody’s able to put food on the table. So, yeah, it’s a good time. Still, even though there are some challenges right now, it’s still a great time. I mean, to be a business practice owner and just, you know, figure this out together and understand we’re all going to come out better on the other side of it.

Kyle Meades Well, that’s great. And at the end of the show, on the bottom in the show knows I’m going to put your Web site so people can learn more about what you guys do to help those in your community, so I hope this has been helpful for you guys. If you have any questions about speech therapy, private practice, how to start, grow or scale your own speech therapy practice. Just reach out to me, [email protected], and as always, thank you for listening.

Out Take Thank you for listening to this Speech Therapy Private Practice Startup Podcasts – for information on speech therapy private practice startup or to stay connected with Kyle, please visit PrivateSLP.com

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With the onset of COVID-19, I talk about making changes in your your Speech Therapy Private Practice. With sudden change comes anxiety, but in this episode, I look back at other events in my life that gave me the abilities to make good solid changes in our business so that patients can get their treatments and employees can receive a paycheck during these difficult times.

Resources for Small Businesses:

The Small Business Owner’s Guide to the CARES Act

In this episode:

I remember I was on a business trip in Vegas about four weeks ago, and we were talking amongst ourselves, some other big clinic owners and we were talking about the same thing, we’re hearing on the news about this Coronavirus. And I said, I started thinking about that Teletherapy thing and I said, we got to get ready for this. We need to go to our pandemic plans and get this thing moving.

Well, Hello everyone you’re listening to the Speech Therapy Private Practice StartUp Podcast. This is episode number 52. My name is Kyle Meades and I’m a Speech Pathologist since 1993. And these podcasts are designed to help you improve your business and your life one Podcast at a time.

Welcome back to the show, everyone. Thanks again for all the emails and all the questions. And as of today. Today’s Friday, March 27th, 2020. We have well over 64,836 listeners to the show. And I’m super glad you guys are out there and getting good, valuable information. You know me, I said every single podcast value is what you get in the absence of money and these podcasts are free for you. So if you wouldn’t mind, just please go to your Android or iTunes platform of your choice and leave some good 5-Star feedback. That way other people just like you can get the same valuable information that you are receiving right here today. And I’d like to welcome those around the world who are listening to the podcast. We’ve got Australia, Japan, India, Canada, the U.K., Germany, South Africa and the Republic of South Korea just to name a few countries. So those are popping up on the list right now. So it’s just really nice to have you guys out there. And if you have any questions, you can also just reach out to me at privateslp.com.

I wanted to let you guys know that we still have space for the perfect student. And if you want some one on one coaching with me, you can also get that head privateslp.com/coaching. And for those of you who are starting out and you are working with insurance companies, if you need some help with your billing or credentialing, you can always just go to privateslp.com/billing and I can help you there.

Well, today is one of those topics that we all need to talk about. It’s really the 800 pound gorilla in the room, right? It’s called change. And change is something that happens whether we like it or not. And, with this whole coronavirus thing, I mean, I was forced to change, 47 employees, 48 employees, and we had to move thousands of patients over to a new platform and we had to do it quickly. And so I wanted to talk to you about that today.

I just got off of a live webinar with our all access community members. And we were speaking about the same thing that I’m talking to you about here right now. And that’s just really how to adapt to an online platform so we can continue to help those that we serve, with speech or occupational or physical therapy or even a B.A. therapy. So, I get many calls from around the United States, e-mails, communications about people starting, different kinds of clinics.

And so, we just have to get used to that change. And it’s just really a crazy time in the world right now. And it’s everybody. But it really got me thinking about when I was a kid. I remember I was in a Middle-Class home. And my mom and my dad were hardworking people. And my dad was a plumber. This was back in the 80s. For those of you who are old enough to remember the savings and loan bust back in the 80s.

And that’s when pretty much interest rates went sky high. And values of properties went low. And my dad was a plumber. And I remember at that time, he had about 100 employees and he was worried. And I just remember I didn’t know what was going on, but I know that it wasn’t good. I remember my dad. He had some land down the way and he built a couple of duplexes. And I remember he couldn’t sell our house. I just remember that Century 21 real estate sign was just in our yard for the longest time. I remember asking my mom, why isn’t the house selling? And she gave me some answer, but I really didn’t understand it. But I remember my mom and my dad. And now we moved out of that house and we moved down to one of our duplexes. And so, looking back, I saw that what my dad was doing is, he was consolidating and kind of, riding out that storm at that time so other people would pay rent and he could use that money to pay the mortgage. So, that’s one of the things my dad did.

But, I just remember that and how we had to adapt and change. You know, we had a Middle-Class lifestyle. We used to take trips, used to go out to eat. And I remember for the most part, all of that stopped and then I remember I had to go to work. I remember my dad and I’ve spoken about this on some of my earlier podcast. I had to go to work on my dad’s plumbing trucks and I had to wash cars and run gasline and dig ditches. But I really understood the value of money. And then fast forward to, the early 2000s and I just moved back from New Zealand and got back into New Orleans. And then, a few months later, here it goes, Hurricane Katrina. And I just remember going through that natural disaster. I lost my job overnight. Yet I had no income. But I did have about eight to ten thousand dollars in the bank. I do remember that. And I remember just all the devastation, all the doom and gloom. I had a hospital pass because I worked at a major hospital, Ochsner Hospital in New Orleans.

And I remember I was able to come back a little bit early. My buddy Bobby was in the National Guard, so I got back into the city earlier than most. And I just remember seeing all the flooding. And there’s a Web page that I put up on privateslp.com. If you want to see some of those images, just the destruction that I saw. And it really did something to me. It changed me just like that event that changed me when I was a kid in the 80s.

This event changed me in the early 2000s, Hurricane Katrina. And I remember, I had a couple duplexes at the time and I was living on top and renting the bottom out and that was paying for that mortgage. And then down the street, I had another couple, two bedrooms, one bath place, and that was paying for their mortgage. And all of a sudden, after one day there were no more tenants.

And that students at Tulane, they were gone. And the students said all the major universities, the whole place to shut down overnight. And I remember getting back to my house and it was just gross. It was a lot of water. And I remember walking my roofs and I needed a couple roofs and called my friend. He was a contractor. And I said, hey, can you hook me up with a couple roofs?

And he says, yeah, I do two roofs for it’s going to be about fifty five hundred cash on. Said you got a deal. Next day, I had two new roofs on my house and I remember right then and there I learned this lesson again. My neighbor comes over, he says hey wait insurance company do you use. And I said, oh, that’s the Bank of Kyle. I just pay cash. He goes, Really?

I said, Yeah, I don’t have time to wait for insurance companies. I mean, why would you do that? Because when you need to get things done, you got to move quickly. You got to get it done and get it done fast. So I made that phone call and I had two new roofs that next day the roofs were on my house. The top of my house, put a new roof on, so I was grateful I had that money saved up.

And here it is the Coronavirus. We got 48 employees, we see about thirty eight hundred patients a month. And then all of a sudden, boom, I remember I was on a business trip in Vegas about four weeks ago. And we were talking amongst ourselves, some other big clinic owners. And we were talking about the same thing, we’re hearing on the news about this Coronavirus. And I said, I started thinking about that Teletherapy thing and I said, we got to get ready for this.

We need to go to our pandemic plans and get this thing, move in. And so we got into action. And a couple of weeks ago before all this hit, on our terms. And, because I was seeing all these states being closed down and people, stuck at home and couldn’t leave their house and in quarantine and stuck at home and people were dying at hospitals, this is really getting bad.

And so I said, on our terms, let’s get a plan for this. Let’s go and get online and get an online platform and let’s go ahead and start talking to our families and patients and staff and getting them ready, because again, I want to do this on my terms. So that’s what we started doing. I’ve got some wonderful staff here who helped me get this done. And I mean, really worked hard to get all this coordinated.

And we got it done. We communicate with staff and family members. And I remember this past Monday, I just decided to shut the doors because really, look, this is not about money and greed. And, I still see businesses open right now who are still seeing patients one on one. And look, I’m not judging. I’m just saying for me and only me speaking for myself. I want to take care of my families, my staff and things that I’m directly in control of.

So that’s what I did. I chose to shut my business and have everybody work from home. And I promised everybody I said, I’m going to pay your insurance. I’m going to pay for your dental, your vision. I’m in a match your 401K and you may not get 100 percent of what you normally make, but you might get about 60 to 75 percent. And that’s what I did. We made some changes in watching our payroll and watching our expenses right now.

But I promised everybody you. Will have a place to comeback, too, to continue to work. And as a leader, as a boss, as an owner, as a clinic owner, it’s my job to make sure that we all have, during this moment of crisis. So that’s really what I wanted to talk to you guys about today. And, if you’re one of our all access community members, you know how I am.

You’ve got direct access to me to bounce all these ideas off of the same thing you’re going through. You can talk to me. We have that private coaching thread where you can work with me one on one. Nobody else will see it or read your comments. But we also have the community of people who are working hand in hand to get through this crisis. So that’s what I wanted to talk to you guys today about it. It’s about change.

And with change comes opportunity. And it’s an opportunity to improve and grow and just get better because it forces you to do things you really wouldn’t do. I get comfortable over time and I’m always used to doing this. And I drive the same way to work and I eat the same foods and I wear the same clothes. People who know me have always got a white Costco t-shirt on, and vans or whatever. I just do the same thing over and over.

But boy, when this change happens, it’s always good to have a plan. So I’d like to know what you guys are doing to manage, the Coronavirus crisis around the United States. If you’ve got a clinic or you’re in private practice, comment below this posting and let me know what you’re doing to take care of yourself and your family and your patients. So I hope this has been helpful for you. And if you have any questions, you can always reach out to me at privateslp.com. And thank you for listening.

The post 52. Managing Change in Your Speech Therapy Private Practice appeared first on PrivateSLP.

2019 has been a great year for PrivateSLP, the Speech Therapy Private Practice Startup Podcast and Kyle’s clinics, Therapy Group of Tucson!

When starting, growing or scaling a real speech therapy private practice, one of the benefits of learning from an active clinic owner with multiple disciplines and locations is gaining real-life experience and expertise so that you can avoid the pitfalls and mistakes that Kyle has made already.   If you’re going to learn, then learn from someone who is actively managing thousands of visits and multiple locations.

In this episode, I review 2019 and list our highlights and celebrate our overall growth while giving you an idea of what to expect if you start and grow your own clinic.

Also, the time to join my PrivateSLP All Access Community is right now before the price increases on January 1, 2020.

In this episode:

If you sit around and talk about it on Facebook or sit there and watching YouTube videos and kind of dreaming about it, you’re going to get what you’ve always got. Nothing, no change, whatsoever, you can sit there and absorb information till the cows come home. But if you don’t get off of it and change and do something get into action nothing’s going to change.

Well, Hello everyone you’re listening to the Speech Therapy Private Practice StartUp Podcast. This is episode number 51. My name is Kyle Meades and I’m a Speech Pathologist since 1993. And these podcasts are designed to help you improve your business and your life one Podcast at a time.

Welcome back to the show everyone. Thanks again for all the emails and all the questions, and as of today, today’s Friday December 27th 2019, we have well over 59769 listeners to the show and I’m super glad you guys are out there getting good valuable information because you know me I’m going to say it every single episode, value is what you get in the absence of money. And these podcasts are absolutely free for you, so if you don’t mind, please go to the iOS or Android platform of your choice and leave some good five star feedback that way other people just like you can get the same valuable information that you’re receiving right now.

And also I wanted to have a shout out and welcome to Julie Griffith. She’s a speech pathologist. She joined the All Access Community here in early December someone to welcome her to the community. And in our community right now we just launched an iOS and Android application so the community is actually easily accessible more so than ever before. And we’ve got monthly trainings we’ve got weekly coaching calls also wanted to recognize one of our perfect students who’s doing a splendid job. Their company now they contacted me in June of this past year and this is just amazing. I was in Hawaii vacationing with my family and I get this email about the All Access Community and some questions. I pick up the phone and I speak to these two individuals and I start interviewing them for a possible membership in the community but more specifically I just knew that this person was the Perfect student.

And since we’ve started working together this past June their business now has over 20 visits per week in less than six months they’ve actually got their own office now. We helped their company complete their credentialing and contracting. I helped these two individuals negotiate their service contracts and helping them with their employees. It just gets better and better and you’re going to be hearing from this company very soon I’m going to do some interviews with these guys.

They’re just killing it and it’s just this is what I do this and it’s just wonderful to see what happens when people just ordinary people who have a dream, who have a skill set, who have that degree. Well it’s funny because the person that I’m helping doesn’t even have a degree in Speech and Hearing or communication disorders or Speech therapy services. This person is a husband of a person and it’s just really cool to help people grow and improve their life and sit there and have these conversations knowing that 2020 is going to be even better than 2019. I mean what a great feeling it is.

I remember before Hurricane Katrina I used to take these walks around Audubon Park in New Orleans, just complain and edges ticked off and hateful. I was so angry inside because I hated to go to work. I hated the kind of hours I was pulling at this local hospital. And my boss was doing the best she could and the people I work with, they were doing the best they could. But this big organization was just sucking the life out of me. we used to have these beepers on my pants there and on the edge of my coat and that thing would go off constantly, “We need you on this floor.” I mean yes, I’m a hard worker. Don’t get me wrong but I knew I wanted something different, I knew I wanted a different life, I knew I needed a change but I was just stuck in that comfort zone. When you get those checks weekly or bi monthly checks and you just get stuck in a rut and that’s when Hurricane Katrina happened and I moved to Tucson.

And so that’s when my life changed. So it’s just nice to see that change happened to other people who reach out and contact me. I’m able to help these guys improve their business improve their life and I can’t wait for 2020 to help these guys grow even more. So I’m just fired up about that so I want to share that with you. But this Episode 51 is sort of a year in review for the Speech Therapy Private Practice StartUp Podcast. My business Therapy group of Tucson and also some things I’ve been doing on a personal note so just to kind of give you a glimpse into what can actually happen when you do change your life or when you do change your mindset, when you do have that shift.

And again people say, you’re just bragging and blah-blah-blah. No I’m not. I’m showing you guys if you want to do this, what can happen. That’s simply all I’m doing here. I’m giving you guys a roadmap. I’m a guide. I’m kind of a conduit. I’m showing you guys what can be accomplished when you do certain things. So if you sit around and talk about it on Facebook or sit there watching YouTube videos and kind of dreaming about it, you’re going to get what you’ve always got. Nothing, no change, whatsoever you can sit there and absorb information till the cows come home. But if you don’t get off of it and change and do something, get into action nothing’s going to change. I mean doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, that’s called insanity. So you can continue to be insane or you can reach out and pay a little bit of money and get some help and get the right information, so you can change your life and get into action and do it the right way. Or you can get multiple opinions from multiple people and sit there and kind of like a dog chasing their tail spin-spin-spin and you just get sick and fall down right. So I’m just trying to help.

We also expanded our disciplines to meet the wants and needs of our community. We increased our Speech Therapy discipline, we also increased our occupational therapy and added physical therapy to the mix. So we’re now offering all three disciplines speech occupational and physical therapy. Also this year I increased the benefits for all our employees. We offered a couple different health plans to choose from. One is always free and it’s a great plan. It’s the same plan that I have for my family but we also added a couple more.

There was an HSA plan and also a plan that you can pay a little bit of money every paycheck and get just a little bit lower deductible copay. So we did that for our employees. Also I increased bonuses for our employees this year. Also going back to that commercial building I went to pay the first half of the year’s taxes on that real estate property and it’s real property. You have real taxes on real property so went to pay and the City of Tucson they sent me my first payment back and they said you don’t have to pay taxes we’re refunding this amount and it floored me.

I called and I said, “Why are you doing that?” And they said, the owner of that building in January was approved for a non profit status. And you get that for the year, so basically you don’t have to pay taxes. We’re given twelve grand back to you for the year of 2019. So I said, great I’m gonna give that to my employees so that’s what I did. That’s part of their bonus this year. I also increased the profit sharing plan from a traditional 401 k to a higher plan to give more free money to all the employees who work with me at Therapy group of Tucson because our employees are the best they do the best job they’re the hardest working people that I know wonderful people. And so I wanted to give them more bonuses. And so that’s what I did. I increase that profit sharing for them. So that’s just some of the things that our business has done this past year to give you guys an idea of what we do and how it can be done. It’s not the only way it’s just the way I choose to do things.

And also with our all access community and PrivateSLP we had a great year in 2019. We increased our membership and that it’s always fun because there’s always somebody out there who bring something to the table for the other members to learn from. And we’re now doing weekly coaching calls with select individuals who want that service. Also we’re doing that 24/7 access to me via the apps we’ve got that Android and iOS application now on your smartphone or your tablet. And that way you can just reach out to me anytime and I’ll be there to help you and answer all your questions. And don’t forget with the All Access Community you’ve got the experience of an active owner of multiple occasions who’s running thousands of visits per month in multiple locations with multiple disciplines. So when you need help you’re not getting, I mean how many business owners do you know right now who sit here and answer all your questions. I mean some people who reach out to me once in a while via email, they get a little bit frustrated because I don’t spend 10 hours with them answering like 50 questions that they dump on me and I don’t mind answering questions and I don’t mind helping. I want people to answer questions but at the end of the day I’m not gonna sit here and answer 50 questions for free.

I had one person recently reach out to me, he said, “Do you have a cheaper option for coaching?” The answer is “No”. And the reason is because I want to make you accountable for your actions. And I don’t give this stuff away for free and that’s just the way it is. If you want my expertise and my abilities you do have to pay a fee to access me which I think is totally reasonable and appropriate. Now is it thousand dollars. Nope it’s a few hundred dollars. And by the way the membership to the All Access Community will be going up at the end of this year. It goes up by 100 dollars every single year. So when you join you only pay the price that you subscribed under so that way your price will never go up. So I’m sorry I don’t have time to answer 50 questions for someone for free. But I do answer maybe about 10. So anyway enough of that. But we also in our all access community like I said earlier we’ve got the apps now to help people access the material and the content of the videos, the PDF transcriptions and the MP3s all at your fingertips so that’s something that we did in 2019.

And on a personal note, I’ve been taking some personal time from the office and the podcast because I had been pursuing something for me and that’s a pilot’s license. And you probably heard that on episode number 50. And that’s something I’ve always wanted to do and I’m doing it right now and I should be fully licensed here by January the 15th and I’m going to start doing some more podcasting from about 10500 feet. So that’s gonna be exciting. I was also talking to one of our members in the community about coming to her clinic flying in and doing an interview style podcast or video and just flying in and helping them.

So again when you join the all access community you get all access to me and my experience and I can help you. And also if you want to come to Tucson and let me show you how we run our clinics when you join you also get that perk. And we also have a service if you’re interested in credentialing or contracting for insurance services, we do offer that as well. We also have billing services for your practice and we can coach you and advise you on all of those aspects of a Speech Therapy Private Practice, and who does all that? Me, I will help you. You’re not gonna get pushed off to someone else or some sales pitch or something like that. But anyway if you’re interested in joining the All Access Community you can just simply go to privateSLP.com/membership and I just again wanted to say thank you guys for being a listener and I hope you had a wonderful 2019, and I hope your year was better than 2018. I hope you guys with your practice are seeing more patients, getting more revenue and seeing more profits and just helping and changing the lives of others.

So with that I just wanted to leave you now and say Happy New Year. And as always thank you for listening.

The post 51. PrivateSLP Year in Review appeared first on PrivateSLP.

Welcome to Episode 50 of the Speech Therapy Private Practice Startup Podcast! This episode is all about doing things differently to achieve maximum results in business and your personal life. To celebrate my 50th birthday this Christmas Eve, I decided to accomplish another one of my life goals – That is to earn a private pilot’s license In this podcast, I talk about something that I realized while I was soloing a 172 Cessna in the pattern at KTUS (Tucson International Airport), speech therapy private practice just is like flying a private plane – when all else fails, use your checklists, get the right training, get over the fear and don’t give up!

In this episode:

We have a checklist in the All access community, PrivateSLP. There’s a checklist for referrals. There’s a checklist on how to get paid. There’s all kinds of checklists that I’ve documented along the way. When it comes to staying airborne, I was thinking I’m freaking out. I’m sure you guys freak out too when it comes to your business. I mean I’m sure some you do but I know a lot of the people I work with on a daily basis they’re always up to something and there’s always something to learn. So my instructor gets out of a plane and he says remember the checklist.

Well, Hello everyone you’re listening to the Speech Therapy Private Practice StartUp Podcast. This is episode number 50. My name is Kyle Meades and I’m a Speech Pathologist since 1993. And these podcasts are designed to help you improve your business and your life one Podcast at a time.

Welcome back to the show everyone. Thanks again for all the emails and all the questions. As of today, today is Friday, November 8, 2019. We have well over 57,000 listeners to the show and I’m super glad you guys are out there, getting good valuable information because you know me. I say it every single time, value is what you get in the absence of money, and these podcasts who absolutely free for you. So if you wouldn’t mind please do your part and go to the iOS or Android platform of your choice and leave some five star feedback. That way other people just like you can get the same valuable information that you guys are getting.

I hope you guys are doing well, and I’ve had some listeners reach out to me recently and they’re saying things like, “Hey Kyle, where you been? or are you alive or hey, when’s the next podcast coming out?” All right I got you. So I have been taking some time off to myself. When I first started the Speech Therapy Private Practice starter podcast, I always said I was going to do these at least once a month. Sometimes try to do two a month but life is life, and unlike other podcasters that I know I’m actually running a full time clinic. We have two locations in Tucson. We just opened our second location. We offer speech and occupational and physical therapy services to many people here in our community. And we just do a lot of great work. On top of opening our second location and purchasing a new commercial building, it’s a little over 7800 square feet. We’re using all of that space too for Speech and OT, and one of the locations we’ve got PT.

On top of that, we just had our Annual Trunk or Treat where we had a ton of kids come out we gave them tons of candy with a cakewalk and we got a D.J. and face painting. And if you think I’m doing all this there’s no way, I mean I am not that smart. We’ve got some really great people who work here for our practice and our clinic and they come up with all these ideas. I just pay for these things and just supply the canvas and let them do the painting. So that’s what we’ve been doing.

We also did our annual Halloween employee night out. We went over to Old Tucson studios. If you Google that, it’s an old movie set out here in the mountains outside of Tucson, Arizona. I mean back in the day I was way out but because of our population growth here in Tucson it’s not too far out now. But John Wayne filmed a lot of movies out there and like the Three Amigos with Steve Martin was filmed out there. And for those of you who are a little bit dated if you remember the episodes and show Little House On The Prairie was filmed out there, parts of it. That’s where I took all the employees. They turned that whole movie set into a haunted house. So that’s my favorite time of the year. My son and his friends they like to do all that, and I get tickets for everybody, and the employees, their kids & families and we just give tickets and go out there and have some fun.

That’s what we’ve been doing lately and just keeping it real. And like I said earlier I’m actually doing this, I’m running multiple locations and paying health insurance for the employees 401K profit sharing dental vision for our employees. We’ve got many people that we see some running an operation, so sometimes I just may not feel like getting behind a microphone and podcasting. But today I have been really wanting to get back into it. But there’s another reason I haven’t been behind the mic and that’s because I am pursuing something that’s really important to me personally not really professionally. But I’ve got a little bit of time to myself during the week so I’m taking up flying and when I was at LSU, Louisiana State University, I was there from ‘87 to ‘91 and when I was graduating I was also in the ROTC program at LSU and I was supposed to be commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force, and I was supposed to fly planes. But because of growing up around guns and shooting things in the bayou. You’ve all seen Swamp People that’s where I grew up. So shooting guns and just not taking care of my hearing and playing drums and things like that, I had a mild noise induced hearing loss in my left ear. I couldn’t get a waiver. It’s kind of cool having a speech therapy audience base because you guys get it. I couldn’t get a waiver for my left ear so I had to scrap the idea of being a pilot or a navigator in the United States Air Force. I mean it was all set. I was supposed to go Lackland Air Force Base and do my Officer training.

So for the many years that I’ve been a Speech pathologist I always said when I get a little bit of time I’m gonna start flying. I want to get my private pilot’s license and so back in June and July, which is the hardest time in Tucson. And that’s when the air is the most bumpiest in Tucson, because the heat rises and it causes thermals and you get thrown around. I said I’m going to do it. And so that’s what I’ve been doing. I have been studying and getting in a plane two-three times a week I’ve been working with a couple of instructors and learning how to fly a Cessna 172 and recently I soloed which is when you get in a plane and you go up by yourself with a student pilot license and now next Thursday, I’m supposed to fly from Tucson to a place called Benson, and then a little bit north to another place called Safford, Arizona. And that’s kind of going towards North E sort of close to the New Mexico area border of Arizona. So that’s part of the private pilot training, you have to do Solo in a plane without the instructor.

And that’s what I wanted to talk about today because when we’re starting, growing and scaling our own Speech therapy private practice, this stuff can be so overwhelming and so mind boggling because you have to not only deal with scheduling a patient, you got to see the patient and then after you see the patient, you got to document what you did and then you’ve got to take that information and put it into a billing system or have somebody bill it for you.

And then once you bill it, which anybody can do really but it’s the AR the accounts receivable, that really helps you get paid. That’s when you go through and because it’s probably going to be denied. Right? And then you have to send your notes and things like that to the Insurance company. So you’re doing all this work just to get paid to see one patient and then if you want to have a real true Speech therapy private practice, you have to multiply that. You got to rinse and repeat, and do this over and hopefully you can build it up to 100 or 200 or 500 people a week. I mean that’s the goal. Why wouldn’t you want to be in business? Why wouldn’t you want to just do something, the best you can do and be the best you can be?

Let’s think about it. If you don’t change nothing is going to change. I mean if you keep doing what you’re always done you’re going to get what you’ve always got. That’s what I’m trying to say. So this stuff is mind boggling and that’s what we’re doing at All Access Community. We talk about these things, these systems in Private Practice and that’s why really it dawned on me one day and when I was on the plane because I’m sitting there and I’ve always got my instructor with me, and finally one day he says, “Hey, I need to get out of the economy.” I want you to get out because I want you to solo. I don’t want a solo because it’s time you need to do this.

So he gets out of the plane and he shuts the door and the engine’s humming. I’m sitting there, what do I do? There’s nobody in here to yell at me. There’s nobody in the cockpit to tell me what to do. What if I crash? What if the engine goes out? What if there’s no fuel? What if there’s oil burns up and I crash? I know we’re talking Tucson International Airport there’s Alaskan Airlines as FedEx planes taken off all day long here at Tucson International there’s United Airlines is American Airlines. There was a big Hawaiian Airlines jet, they got diverted from Phoenix to Tucson recently. There’s F16 is in and C 130 is in. Like how am I going to do this? And I just remembered, he says, “Take your checklist, follow your checklist.” I’m like, “Oh, yeah the checklist. Oh yeah”. We have a checklist in the All access community, PrivateSLP. There’s a checklist for referrals. There’s a checklist on how to get paid. There’s all kinds of checklists that I’ve documented along the way. When it comes to staying airborne, I was thinking I’m freaking out. I’m sure you guys freak out too when it comes to your business. I mean I’m sure some you do but I know a lot of the people I work with on a daily basis they’re always up to something and there’s always something to learn. So my instructor gets out of a plane and he says remember the checklist.

So what do I do? I grab my checklist and I go through it. Okay, the avionics (the radios) are on and the lights are on, the strobes are on, the fuel is on, there’s a fuel tank selector it’s turned on both, engines running, air pressure is good, everything’s in the green and here I’m on the West ramp and I’ve got my Bose noise cancelling headset on and I’m really freaking out. At one point I said I’m just going to wait till tomorrow and do this. And I said I can’t wait till tomorrow. I gotta get this done. I got a solo I gotta do this myself. If I can start a Speech Therapy Private Practice, surely I could fly a plane. I supposed to do this years ago and then I start doubting myself and I know you guys doubt yourself too sometimes with what you’re doing.

And I said I gotta do it. If I Crash, I crash, right? But I’m gonna do it. So I get on the radio and I say, “Hey, I’m on the West ramp. I’m with Charlie,” which is this code they give out. It’s called ADAS and it gives you the weather and all this blah-blah-blah and I’m sitting there, and I went through the checklist. I told him where I wanted to go in the pattern and fly around and do some pattern work, and take off and land. That’s what I wanted to do and they told me what to do and I did it. And so I’m sitting there by myself on a runway Tucson International Airport and he says you’re clear for takeoff. I’m like holy moly, I ease that to our land and we get up to about 55 or 60 and I pull back on and there I am I’m flying. I got overwhelmed with happiness, joy, and fear, and just the same stuff I was talking about in episode one. You can hear it my voice scared to death.

I went up and I took a right turn, and I went all the way back around, watch my speed and do what I was told. I watch my checklist there and I put my flaps in, I brought the throttle back and it started to coast in, and there I am looking at runway 1-1 right. Because 1-1 left is where all the big planes are and I’m on runway 1-1 right which is parallel and there I am just kind of gliding in. And look there it is. I landed, I didn’t bounce. I didn’t crash. The prop still on and I hit my flaps. I slowly increase the throttle and I did it again. I’m sitting there and second time I’m thinking. Okay, I got this-I got this. So I go around and I go down when I’m looking at the runway on my right and they told me I’m clear to land, and touching goes. And I just did it again and I’m looking at the runway and 1500 feet and 1000 feet and 500 feet and 250 feet, and whoop, did it again. It has a good landing.

My God this is so much fun. Well I ease the throttle and through the flaps up and I take off again and this time the controller, he tells me to do something I wasn’t expecting. He says, I want you to extend this and take a ride here and go way out over here and I’m thinking, come on, I said, “I’m a solo student pilot” and he said, “Keep doing what you’re doing”. And so I kept doing it and it just threw me off. But I went back to the checklist. I went back to my little trusty checklist and next thing I’m looking at the runway again and 1000 feet, 750 feet, 500 feet, 250 feet, boom, touched down again. It was so cool and then I exited the runway on Alpha 11 and I was waiting on holding short of runway when I left and next thing, Four F16 just go, they took off. I’m like Wow, check this out. And then I got permission across that runway and hangar left and I’m going back to the hangar on the West ramp.

And I got this F16 fighter jet, looking right at me. He’s in my way. He’s on my yellow line, and the tower says he’s going to yield to me and this guy wasn’t going to yield to me. He’s looking at me and I’m looking at him. It’s an Air Force pilot and he looks at me he waves. I think about it folks. Here’s an F 16 fighter pilot waving at me and a little Cessna plane. And I just motioned him to go ahead he can just go around and I’ll let him up. So it’s kind of like in traffic you let somebody in let the guy in.

And then as I passed him, there’s four other planes ready to take off. There they’re waving at me because I guess back in the day they had to train in one of these planes. This kind of cool waving at the pilots and everybody’s happy. Next thing the airports kind of shutting down. All these fighter jets are taken off and Vice President Pence coming into Tucson on that Thursday. He was going down to do some work on the border. So I got caught up and the vice president of the United States on the day I solo go figure. But I listen to what I had to do. I did what I was told and I got over it. So now I’m all fired up and ready to fly again. So next Thursday I’m going to Safford, Arizona and I may get a private pilot’s license and I’m gonna start flying around the United States and come in to see you at your clinic. So if you want me to fly up there and let me know and we’ll start seeing if we can carve it out and make it happen.

But anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to for the last 60-70-80 days. Sometimes I just don’t feel like making a podcast but I tell you what I have been doing I’ve been showing up and the private SLP all access communities we’ve got two more members in there and it’s really great because I’m meeting with these folks on a weekly basis. They’re getting their checklist, they’re learning how to start and grow and scale their own Private practice from somebody who’s actually doing it. And everything is good and I show up and you’ve got direct access to me and you can reach me on the All Access Community. There’s a place where you can ask privately and if you want to have a private coaching session with me online you can do that or if you want me to call you during the week I can do that or if you want to throw something out there to the community you can do that.

So there are some options for that private coaching section of the All Access Community. But I just want to give you guys a heads up and let you know this is episode number 50 and guess what. I’m going to be 50 this year Christmas Eve. I’m going to be 50 so this is kind of that big FIVE O thing for me. And I’m just so grateful that I can help you guys grow, scale and learn. So if there’s anything I can help you out with, all you have to do is reach out to me, go to PrivateSLP.com/contact, you can see how to get in contact with me there. And as always thank you for listening.

The post 50. Keep Doing What Your Doing & You’ll Get What You’ve Got appeared first on PrivateSLP.

In this episode I talk about the idea and mindset of being fully committed and “All In” in your own speech therapy private practice. So many times people start their own business and simply give up. They quit because they can’t seem to cut away from their job, or they just don’t have enough patients coming into their practice. Most often, they quit before miracle. Also in this episode I take time to recognize a very busy and motivated speech therapist Grace Tan Cheng Man, a speech therapist based in Malaysia who has an online magazine!

In this episode:

Well, Hello everyone you’re listening to the Speech Therapy Private Practice StartUp Podcast. This is episode number 49. My name is Kyle Meades and I’m a Speech Pathologist since 1993. And these podcasts are designed to help you improve your business and your life one Podcast at a time.

Welcome back to the show everyone. Thanks again for all the emails and all the questions. As of today, today is June 26, 2019 we have well over 51,979 listeners to the show and I’m super fired up. You guys are out there getting good valuable information and it’s free for you. And you know me I say it every single podcast. It wouldn’t be my podcast if I didn’t say it, “Value is what you get in the absence of money” and these podcasts are free for you so what I would like you to do is, just simply go to the iOS or Android platform of your choice and just leave some five star feedback that way other people just like you can get the same valuable information that you’re receiving right now because it’s important to give back.

And when I started this podcast over three years ago I wanted to give out as much free information as possible and to do that I want to be able to drive traffic to our website and we’re doing great. When you Google “Startup Speech Therapy Private Practice”, we’re right there on top. I mean we’re helping a lot of people, I get a lot of questions during the week and I’m doing conference calls and coaching calls with people in the All access community. And they’re always wanting to know how do you do it all. Well that’s because I have a team I don’t rely as a podcaster and as a business person, I don’t rely on other clinics to show my subscribers and members of my community how to do things. We do it all here in-house so if I want to teach one of the access community members about billing we can get on the phone to have a coaching call with our billing department. We have a referral department, we have a scheduling department, we have a team of therapists multidisciplinary team of people and locations where we can help as many people as possible. That’s from patients all the way to all access community members so if you want to learn how to start your own practice, you’re in the right place. And again if this is your first podcast, welcome, start at the beginning and work your way through all 49 episodes along the way. If there’s anything you need from me, all you have to do is reach out to me at privateSLP.com/contact and I’ll help you.

I get people all the time that say, I can’t believe you’re just picking up the phone and calling. Well absolutely, I’m picking up the phone and calling because I don’t like typing emails. It’s just too much work so I’d just rather get on the phone, talk to you, see what’s going on in your business and see how I can help you. Because there is a solution, if you need help with your billing or credentialing. Let me know we can help you. If you want to start your private practice let me know we can help. If you want to grow it and scale, we can help you with that too. Because with all the experience that I’ve had doing this there’s always an answer, so I’ll be more than happy to help you in anyway that I can.

OK. Today I’d like to answer some questions from Gr​ace Tan Cheng Man she’s a certified Speech therapist and she’s a member of the Malaysian Association of Speech-Language and hearing. She’s a candidate member of the Malaysian Writers Society. She’s also certified in Hanen. She also is certified in Picture Exchange Communication System and Vital stem. She also has expertise in Parental training on Hanen. She also does talks on breastfeeding, feeding disorders and feeding therapy talk tools and also written communication therapies and her website is Gracetanchengman.com and I’ll leave this in the show notes below. But she simply reached out to me and wanted me to answer some questions for her so that she could share with her listeners. She’s definitely a motivated individual. And she has her own magazine online. It’s a subscription based model so I wanted to answer some questions for her so let’s get to these questions.

Question 1: “I always come to the words of Freelance. In Malaysia, we use the word “freelance”, for describing the Speech therapist who work on their own practice. So may I know what it is called? Is Freelance equivalent to the definition of Private practice. Or do you refer to those Therapists who own a center? Please advise.”

That’s a great question. So basically the question is about what you would call someone in a different setting basically freelance or a Private practitioner. Now here in the States we have multiple places that we can work in different settings so to speak. So when clinicians work as a Speech and Language Pathologist we can work in an outpatient clinic or an inpatient hospital or a school setting or a private practice. It can be in the community and when people work for someone else they’re generally an Employee or a licensed Speech pathologist who works in a different setting. But when I know other people when you want to work for your own, when you want to be outside of an employment agency or you want to work for yourself, and kind of hang your own shingle for your own location, you can call yourself maybe an independent speech and language pathologist or a private practitioner or a center based SLP or community based SLP.

Here’s one how about PrivateSLP or even PR in, that’s when you kind of part time your way around different settings or something like that. But I think for this question when you have your own business, when you have your own clinic, I wanted to start my own business and I wanted employees in that business so I try not to put my name on the business that way I can hire a team to help serve those who need Speech occupational, physical therapy services in our area. So I hope that answers that question. Let’s go ahead and go to the second question.

Question 2: “So Mr. Kyle as you know what is the meaning of Private practice, it seems like a very new subject for those Speech therapists who used to work in the center, who work for the center rather than working on their own. So before we start any new venture we might be afraid of the uncertainty. So from your experience what are the mindset for Private practice startup. Kindly mention the mindset we shall have for those Speech therapists who are wishing to have their own practice.”

The mindset needed for private practice I mean for me and I’m only speaking for myself but its drive. I just had to have a lot of drive. It’s scary, it’s the unknown and I just don’t know what else to call it. I’ve got something in me. It’s just a fire and I just can’t stay still. I just wanted to make my own business I know what I want and I know I had an expiration date on this. I mean after Hurricane Katrina I knew that I only had a limited amount of time to make the move and I just had to take care me and my family and so I also didn’t understand the meaning of No. I’m a very hard headed individual which means in the States somebody who just doesn’t take No for an answer. My grandfather was the same way I think it’s a personality trait. But besides drive and not really taking No for an answer kind of what this podcast is today it’s about being all in attitude and just being 100 percent committed to being the best clinician I can be for my patients to come to see me in my office. And really I think for most it’s legitimately wanting to do a great job for the patients and families that we serve.

I’ve seen and talked to people in our profession and you can always tell when someone’s taking the job for the money or if their heart’s in the right place and definitely I think the people who are the most successful at private practice are the ones that you can just tell it who’s is out of their system. They want to make a difference in their patients and their families because really for me it’s not about the money. It’s about how I can help other people and help as many people as possible so I hope that answers the question about the mindset needed for private practice. Let’s go to the third question.

Question 3: “How to prepare our self and how to tell that we are really ready for a private practice startup? Maybe you can give us some advice on how to get a solid foundation to start a private practice.”

Well to have any business that’s successful and to have a solid foundation I mean specifically for Speech therapy we have to have patients, we have to have a referral source. So I think having what’s called an offer that converts at its simplest form is how that you are going to have a solid foundation. So let’s think about that an offer that converts what’s our offer in our Speech therapy private practice. Well, obviously it’s speech therapy services for kids or adults or whatever market that you’re going after. So you have to offer a good solid treatment for the patient at an affordable price that they can afford so they can come back again and again and get the help they need from you and you have to set yourself apart from other people in your community. So I think that referrals are very necessary to have that solid foundation because if you don’t have a patient flow then you really don’t have a business do you.

Also another thing that I would focus on is community alliances with pediatricians or doctors offices, psychologists or referral clerks in the area and really being very embedded in your market in your community having talks, you can go to the library and educate families on what speech or language disorder is. I mean being a very big advocate in your community and to me I think that is what makes that solid foundation for Speech therapy private practice.

Let’s go to question number four.

Question 4: “In my personal words, your PrivateSLP podcast is really amazing. What motive do you have to come up with something so fascinating and influential. Is there any incident or any event that pushed you to come up with something that is so amazing?”

My motive behind the creation of PrivateSLP.com and the All Access Community where I coach other people to start, grow and scale their own private practice and even the motivation to start my own business to start what I’m doing is really simple. I love helping other people I genuinely love helping other people I like watching the light bulb go off and I like helping other people. I like coaching people and I remember after Hurricane Katrina, I was living in New Orleans and I lost that job that I had and we were uprooted from New Orleans to Arizona and there was this little window of opportunity where the light went off. I remember talking to the accountant at the time because I was trying to get my taxes in order so I could file my taxes and because we had some losses in New Orleans and things like that. But I just remember she saying you can always go back and get a job. You can always go to the school or the nursing home and that just really made sense to me.

And when I was younger and graduate school I used to make study guides. I would take my notes in class and I would make them into colorful notes in packets that I could sell. So I really like to sell things when I lived in New Zealand. There was a time where I lived in the Northland. I worked for the Northland District Health Board. I used to import and export different things I also used to study information products at that time. Some key players over in the New Zealand and Australia market who really helped shape the way that I made information products so that was a big thing. I like to motivate others but really I think Hurricane Katrina was the best thing that ever happened to me because after Hurricane Katrina I had a decision to make. There is never a better time to start something when it’s uncomfortable and I had to take care of my child my family. I had to make money and I just had to do what I had to do. So this whole PrivateSLP part of this was just documenting everything that I do in my Private practice so I could teach others how to do it.

So really when someone asked me for coaching, when someone wants to become an All access community member at PrivateSLP.com then I can show them step by step what I did to create what we have here in Tucson Arizona, the multidisciplinary clinics at multiple locations. So that was really the motive behind PrivateSLP documenting what I’m currently doing clinically here in Tucson Arizona so that other people can learn.

Let’s go to this last question.

Question 5: I think we’ve listened to all the podcast. Can you tell us a little bit of your background? Like what is your education and what is your background, your interest and your specialties so that our readers can understand you better. Thank you.

My background is pretty simple, I have humble beginnings. My father was a plumber. He did not graduate high school but he had a serious work ethic. My grandfather was also a union pipe-fitter which means my grandfather did water pipes and built hospitals. I remember as a small child I go to see my grandfather work and here they are building these big hospitals in a town called Morgan City Louisiana. It’s kind of in the bayou area. But I remember going to see my father and I just really thought it’s really cool my grandpa was building all these big malls in Baton Rouge and it’s just really neat. And I remember my dad, he was a plumber. He had over 100 employees at one time in his business.

And I remember I just got the taste of money, I remember one summer my father asked me if I wanted. Well he didn’t ask. He said you’re going to work with us this summer because you’re out of school and I said well I need to take a break, it’s summer. He said now you’re gonna come work with me I’m going to pay you. So I would get 80 to 100 dollars a week and I got a company paycheck but I really worked hard. I remember my dad saying, “Son, you are the owner’s son but you’re going to have to work harder than other people to show them that you’re not some spoiled kid who just sits around and gets anything you wanted. For some reason that stuck and I remember my dad used to tell me. He would say, “I need you go out to the plumbing shed out there and make some gas line for me. I need 100 of these fittings and 100 of those fittings.” And I just remember one time going into the office and I said Daddy it’s really hot in southeast Louisiana, it’s really hot in August and September in the summer. And he said, “if you want to come sit in the air conditioner maybe you might want to think about going to college. But right now you need to go out there and do what I told you to do.”

And things were non-negotiable back in the early 70s, so it’s a completely different world now. But that really shaped me just being around my father and I remember my dad he used to pack me around on his shoulders and I was a little kid and we’d be at the fair and I remember him having conversations with other men about business and of course I didn’t know what they were talking about but something about my dad’s voice. He would shake hands and those were handshake deals and he kept his word. He was honest still is. I’ve talked to my dad almost every day. And my father was just a big influence in my career now. I went to LSU and Baton Rouge, I’m a graduate of Louisiana State University. I went to graduate school at LSU Medical Center Louisiana State University Medical Center in New Orleans and did the program there for two years.

I moved my first job was in Whitesburg, Kentucky for Appalachian Regional Healthcare and then from there I moved on and went back to New Orleans. And I’ve lived in New Zealand, I’ve lived overseas. I’ve traveled, I’ve worked in all the settings known to man for speech and I just love doing what I do and helping people. I’ve got one son and he’s now 13 and we ride dirt bikes and we have fun. He loves skateboarding I’m an active parent and my son’s life and I care about him and his school. He’s a smart boy and I’m just trying to show my son a good example of what a good father and a good parent can be and that’s one of the reasons I like to do what I do is kind of document the stage in my life, the growth of our business. Document the people that we help in PrivateSLP.com.

So that’s a little bit about me and what really early on shaped me to be what I am today. And I just wanted to say thank you for sending these questions to me and I know the reason that I’m playing this for our listeners is I know that our listeners just like your listeners in Malaysia will get a lot of value out of your question. So again thanks for sending those questions to me.

Now Today’s episode is about ‘Being All In’ and when you think about being all in, a kind of think of it as is like breakfast. The head makes a contribution to the breakfast but really the pick is the one that’s all in, right. And the biggest question that I hear all the time is when you started, why did you do it? Now for me I wanted more time with my son. He’s now 13 but I really want him more family time, because after Hurricane Katrina I needed a life change and I said this is the best time for me to start from scratch. So I just did it. But you really have to ask yourself when you’re going all in. Why do you even want to be in business? Is it just for more income or do you want to have more time with your family or is it personal growth time? Do you want to just the challenge of it all? Do you need a career change? Maybe moving from more treatments to more of a management role so those are some questions you have to be very honest. Because I talked to a lot of practice owners and some of them are just kind of dabbling in the fact that they want to be in private practice. But when it comes down to it they’re still relying on their job and their paycheck from their employer so they can make ends meet or they’re run in high debt – credit card debt, consumer debt and that’s not a good place to start.

I remember when I made that step to being all in, when I made that jump on I made that leap. I had to get very honest with myself. So that’s one of the biggest questions I would say to you as a potential practice owner somebody who really wants to scale it, why do you even want to do this because if you don’t set it up right the first time it can be really difficult to manage it later on. So that’s one of the greatest things I think about being a member of the All Access Community at privateSLP.com, is you’re learning from experience and I’ve made tons of mistakes and I document those mistakes in the community. So it’s just another way to reassure you that you can get what you need.

Now a lot of people the second question is, “How do I even start?” Some people use that term, “fake it till you make it.” I disagree, there’s no way to fake. Being in business there are some things you can’t do to make it look like. You’re a big business owner like with your phone systems, answering your phones, returning your phone calls and hiding your number, to be a big clinic number or having a bunch of zeros at the end of your number but at the end of the day you’ve got to have a good service to give your patients and if you don’t have that. You’ve heard me talk about this in other podcast. You got to have an offer that converts and an offer that converts at its basic form. You have a service to provide in exchange for the fee and you provide that service and you provide it to the best of your ability. And when you do that well and take care of your patients and families, you’ll see what I’m talking about. You have exponential growth.

And again that’s how you start to got to have an offer that converts, you got to have strategies, systems and you may want to make sure you’re providing the best location for your patients and your service delivery. Is it going to be group or individual or if you’re going to take insurances or if you’re going to just do packages, cash deals and things like that. So when it comes to starting how to start, that’s another thing that the All access community talks about. How to even get credential with insurance companies if you want to take insurances and people say, “Oh, what a headache.” But there’s a way to do things appropriately. I talked to a business owner recently who was working and just really working hard but she was doing her billing at the end of the week, one time per week she was doing her billing and she couldn’t figure out why she couldn’t get paid. And I said the first thing is when you see a patient you got to get your money and that might be in a check or a credit card or bill the insurance with a copay or deductible or coinsurance. And again this might be confusing to you but it’s a lot of information but you can get paid at the time of service.

And another reason to bill at the date of service is because the following week you can give the patient a copy of the EOB once that claim is processed and you can say this is what you owe per visit. So it’s really clear. But again billing in accounts receivable two totally different things. I always use the expression you can train a monkey had a bill, but it’s an art in a science to be able to pick up the phone and call the insurance company to work your denial. So again how to start, you got to make sure you’re going to get paid and you want to work your claims.

And also when to start” Sometimes people say, “Is there a better time to start during the year, anywhere when than January or June or in December? Really, I don’t think that makes a difference. But when it comes to insurance as you have to remember about deductible. Many people’s insurances have deductibles and those are generally met by the fifth of the six months. So when it comes to cash flow from insurance companies you may want to consider starting in June, July or August or something like that. But that’s just a suggestion. Every place is different, every market is different, every city is different, just depends on your demographics and your patient. But again in this episode I wanted just to kind of review being all in and why you even want to be in business and how to start and maybe when’s the right time to start.

So I hope this has been a helpful episode for you. And if you have any questions about growing or scaling your own Speech therapy private practice you can reach me at privateSLP.com/contact. And as always, thank you for listening.

The post 49. Fully Committed and “All In” in Speech Therapy Private Practice appeared first on PrivateSLP.

A speech therapy private practice is not always easy or fun and games. Many people suffer from the illusion that business owners are sitting around at the beach on their laptops getting rich while paying employees to do all of the grunt work. This is far from the truth. To be successful in speech therapy private practice, one has to be dedicated, motivated and have serious discipline. Starting, growing and scaling a speech therapy private practice requires hard work, money, elbow grease and late hours but the payoff can be rewarding. In this episode, I discuss the discipline required to make a speech therapy private practice work and discuss some of the challenges along the way!

In this episode:

So at an early age I learned the value of a dollar and how to work. And so I really believe those experiences as a child I carried it over into my business life. So these days what it looks like I’m always up at 4:30 I don’t need an alarm. For the last three or four days, I’ve been really excited to get to work I’ve been getting up on my own at about 2:33 a.m. And got there and sit on my hot tub and I do my morning meditation. I drink my carrot juice, beet juice, I do my juicing and then I go to work. Sometimes I’m at this new office getting it ready but I got to do it. If I don’t do it nobody’s going to do it.

Well, Hello everyone you’re listening to the Speech Therapy Private Practice StartUp Podcast. This is episode number 48. My name is Kyle Meades and I’m a Speech Pathologist since 1993. And these podcasts are designed to help you improve your business and your life one Podcast at a time.

Welcome back to the show everyone. Thanks again for all the emails, all the questions and all the SpeakPipes. As of today, we have well over 48,432 listeners to the show and I’m super glad you guys are out there getting good valuable information and you know me, I say it every single time, “Value is what you get in the absence of money” and these podcasts are free for you. So if you wouldn’t mind just go to the Android or iOS platform of your choice and leave some good five star feedback that way other people like you can get the same value that you’re receiving right now.

Now if this is your first episode, welcome and you can just easily go back through all the podcasts and start at episode one and you can hear all the great topics that we have all the way from Accounts Receivable, billing, referrals, there is other information on there about mindset. I mean it’s all on there and if you have any questions at all, all you have to do is just reach out to me at privateSLP.com/contact and I’ll do my best to help you. I also received a recent question from SpeakPipe and it was from a gentleman. His name is Michael and he wanted to know about getting contracts and he’s got a business in another state and he’s got some home health going but he also wanted to add another discipline besides speech therapy. He wanted to recently add occupational therapy as well to the mix and he didn’t want to do that in the home and community you wanted to do that more of an outpatient clinical setting. Now again I’m not a lawyer but I did speak to him and I thought the best way to go about this would be maybe just to start another entity another private practice name and get your contracts through a clinic based entity and just start from scratch so that way you can keep your home visits home and then you can run that separate business out of the clinic and just make that a separate tax I.D. and NPI and you can just run everything through that through your contracts and so that was one of my suggestions and again I’m not a lawyer you definitely want to talk to your attorney and make sure these things are working for you in your state in your own unique situation. So that was the advice that I gave.

I also wanted to let you know we have a space for the perfect student and that’s when you fly into Tucson work with me hand in hand and I’ll be more than happy to help you work and set your clinic up and also under unique circumstances I can fly out to your area and help you pick a location for your clinic and all you have to do is just reach out to me [email protected] and I’ll help you as much as I can. We are accepting new students right now in the All Access Community and you can find that at privateSLP.com/coaching and I just wanted to say hi to Darla. She is a new member in the All access community and I heard from her in the forum a couple of days ago and she was just working through all the trainings. We just recently had a training yesterday about how to maximize what you currently have because a lot of people right now think that bigger is better and you got to buy all the software and tools and have multiple locations but you’ll be surprised. I spoke to a clinic owner recently who was not doing well financially and they’re losing thousands of dollars today a day over multiple locations so that’s not good. And trying to help that person adjust and readjust working on contracts and things like that.

I wanted to talk to you today about discipline. Discipline is something that I really I’m glad I have because I wouldn’t be in the spot where I am today without a ton of discipline. I’m actually recording this podcast right now in one of our administrative offices at our second location. Currently we are opening up our second location here in Tucson. We just purchased a 7580 square foot building about five to six miles away from our current location. And it’s really exciting because when I first started this business I never dreamed that I would have a building of this size and capacity. I remember I used to see a doctor at this small doctor’s office and he left the state and he was selling his office space and I remember going over there and it was a thousand square feet and I was thinking how I could raise my son at that time. He was about six years old and I was going to try to find out in the back. There was a little woodshed and I was going to try to make that into an apartment and I was going to live and he was going to live in that apartment with me and we were going to live in the back and then I was going to try to rent the front. How I can chop that up and make that three rooms and then right down the street there was a property for sale. And at the time I really didn’t have the money saved up for the down payment.

But I remember I was just trying to find a way to make that happen. And that was about a twelve hundred square foot building. But if I would have gone through with either those two deals I wouldn’t be sitting in this administrative office right now recording this podcast in this 7580 square foot building I mean this thing is huge. It’s gorgeous and again I’m not bragging or boasting. I’m just stating the facts and it’s because of discipline that I am able to sit in this little squeaky chair you might hear a little bit but in record a podcast and let you guys know that this stuff is doable and you can attain what you want to attain if you have the discipline to do it. And we’ve got this gorgeous huge gym. There’s actually three big 600 square feet spaces in one’s gonna be a motor room with single point swings. The other room’s gonna be like an office admin meant for our physical therapy and occupational therapy and assistant rooms and there’s gonna be a rock wall in there and then we’ve got a whole huge 600 square foot kitchen with two refrigerators microwaves, so the OTs can do their feeding and then on the other side and I’ll leave some pictures below this podcast so you guys can see it. We’ve got these big beautiful Speech therapy treatment rooms.

The people before us who own this clinic, it really was designed for children and they put a lot of money into this building. They kind of I think overbuilt the building for the area but they couldn’t sell it for what it was worth because they really overbuilt the building into giving examples moving some tiles the other day because this whole building was rebuilt and constructed in 2016 and they left a lot of paint cans and leftover tiles and carpet tiles and the place has a new roof and there’s five air conditioners ten ton ACs, the furniture. There were some furniture left but I was moving these tiles and these things are super heavy. I had to grab the Dolly and I look in these tiles were made in Italy and I’m like wow these people put a lot of money into this building but we didn’t pay that kind of price. We got this thing about 40 percent off and so it was just another reason to save your money and to run lean and to be able to purchase an asset.

And I did a walkthrough of this building and I put this into the All Access Community for our members to show them all the ins and outs of when you buy a clinic or when you rent and lease a space. Things to look for like safety features if you’ve got fire sprinklers and alarms things to take into consideration, security cameras, the space layout, how people check in, the workflows – checking in / checking out, the check in Windows placements all of that is included in this walkthrough that I did for the All access community. It was just really nice to show the members what it looked like, what it feels like to move in and get it ready and get the equipment going and the insurances that I need to make this thing operational.

So it’s just a real delight to be able to have a podcast and record this podcast in my new space. So I just wanna let you guys know that we are really growing and do the best that we can to help our families here in Tucson we just hired another Occupational therapist and we interviewed a Physical therapist this morning and we’ve got another interview for a Physical therapist coming if you’re looking for work in the Tucson area, you can go to therapyjobtucson.com and you can find a place to apply for a Speech occupational or Physical therapy position here in our clinic.

So I just wanted to talk to you today about discipline. Discipline is something I remember as a child when we weren’t in school we had to work with my dad and my dad was a licensed plumber. He was a really tough and still he’s a tough guy and a hard worker. And so was my grandfather. My grandfather was a union pipefitter who used to run pipe, gas pipe, water pipe and he would fit hospitals and I remember as a young boy I would go visit my grandparents and I go see my I my papa I’d go visit my papa and he would be working on this big hospital in Lafayette Louisiana. I remember just going up these elevators and up these flights of stairs and just seeing my Papa and I thought it was a big deal, there’s my Papa and he’s working on these buildings and new construction for these big hospitals.

And then my dad he had a plumbing contracting business in Belle Rose, Louisiana. He had over 100 employees at one time and I just remember growing up my dad. In the summertime, he used to wake us up early in the morning. He wakes up at 4:30 in the morning. He’d say, “The train’s leaving at five o’clock, if you’re not on it you’re going to be in some trouble, so it’s time to get up and go.” And I just remember saying, “I’m tired. Can’t we just have a day off?” and my dad would say, “No, you don’t have a day off. You gotta get up and go to work”. And that’s what my summers looked like when I turned nine and ten years of age. But there was a payoff too. I remember asking my dad how much I get paid. And he laughed. But I remember getting a company check when I was that age, I get 100 bucks sometimes 120 and that cash I had my bank account and I used to save my money. I just love making that money and saving it.

But I remember getting up and my dad used to talk to us on the way to work. He did say, “You know what boys sometimes you got to do things you just don’t want to do and you got to get up and you got to work”. And he’d give us a shovel and we’d go out there. I remember there was this man Mr. Johnny Jones and I would have to ride with Mr. Johnny Jones in his pickup truck and I had to do what Mr. Johnny Jones told me to do and my dad says, “This man when he tells you to do something it’s just like me saying it because you need to do it”. And I remember Mr. Johnny Jones would say I need you to dig a line trench. It needs to be four feet deep and needs to be 25 feet long and you need to do it. And I remember going back in the office and I asked my dad I said “Dad, it’s really hot out here and this was southeast Louisiana, like sweaty and I’m hot and tired”. And he said, “well get some water”. I’m like, “Well, can I just hang out in the A.C. with you in the office” and he says, “If you want an AC job at an office you might want to think about going to college. But right now you need to get out there and go listen to what Mr. Johnny Jones wants you to do”. And I did it and I didn’t want to. And I remember when I wouldn’t work with Mr. Johnny Jones, My daddy had me making pieces of pipe to run gas lines through attics so houses could have gas lines for heat and water heaters.

So at an early age I learned the value of a dollar and how to work. And so I really believe those experiences as a child I carried it over into my business life. So these days what it looks like I’m always up at 4:30 I don’t need an alarm. For the last three or four days, I’ve been really excited to get to work I’ve been getting up on my own at about 2:33 a.m. And got there and sit on my hot tub and I do my morning meditation. I drink my carrot juice, beet juice I do my juicing and then I go to work. Sometimes I’m at this new office getting it ready but I got to do it. If I don’t do it nobody’s going to do it. So yeah, I got help I got people to help us move around some of these walls and put our Internet systems in and have our cables going through the ceiling all the way to the back in the server room. All that stuff I’ve got people helping me with that. But at the end of the day I’ve got to be the one that’s gotta get up and I’ve got to do it and it takes discipline.

Discipline is what’s going to help you build your own Speech therapy private practice. And if you don’t do it today when are you going to do it. And I’m just going to tell you right now if you wanted to do it yesterday and you don’t start tomorrow chances are in about five years from now you’re going to look back and go, “I should really start my own business”. So I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news but I will say this, “if there’s something in your life you don’t want, change it. If you don’t like where you are living, move.” I mean you’re not a tree you can move. You can do anything you want to do be anything you want to be, as long as it’s legal, right. You can do and start and grow any business you want but there’s one thing you got to do, have discipline. Do the same thing over and over in that positive direction. And what does that look like to start. Well it might be starting to get some patients on the side and might be putting some business cards out. It might be getting some contracts with some insurance companies or getting an NPI number, a tax I.D. number starting your own corporation with a paralegal or a lawyer or getting a bank account under your business name and getting referrals out there talking to doctors, talking to other health care professionals who would deliver, recommend and refer patients to you. So that’s what it looks like.

And there’s certain steps I mean when you want to go in to a gym and start lifting weights you don’t just go grab the 200 pounds and start going. Now you got to start out slowly and that’s why at privateSLP.com, we help people just like you who want to grow scale start your own Speech therapy private practice. So that’s something to interest you get in touch with me and I promise I will work really hard to help you achieve what you want to achieve.

So I hope this has been helpful today if there’s anything you need for me. Hit me up at PrivateSLP.com and as always thank you for listening.

The post 48. Discipline in Speech Therapy Private Practice appeared first on PrivateSLP.

Today’s episode is all about practice management software with Beata Klarowska, M.S. CCC-SLP. Beata is a speech and language pathologist who started working on practice management software and apps after listening to a professor speak about telehelth services in graduate school. Today, TheraPlatform has grown into a robust practice management and EMR software for SLPs, OTs, PTs and mental health providers. Its features include: scheduling, documenting, billing, secure video conferencing, teaching tools, reports and homework.

In this episode:

It kind of all started for me when I was in grad school, so we had to take a technology class and this class mainly focused on AEC devices. It also covered all over button of practice management and therapy software. And at some point and during this class our professor briefly mentioned that ASHA approved Tele practice and that one day we’ll be just doing therapy online. And so he really kind of planted this little seed in my brain and since that point I was doing a lot of research. I was taking CEO classes about a Telepractice. I did a lot of market research and I finally decided to build a Telepractice software.

Well, Hello everyone you’re listening to the Speech Therapy Private Practice StartUp Podcast. This is episode number 47. My name is Kyle Meades and I’m a Speech Pathologist since 1993. And these podcasts are designed to help you improve your business and your life one Podcast at a time.

Welcome back to the show everyone. Thanks again for all the emails and all the questions and as of today, today is Sunday February 17th 2019. We have well over 45691 listeners to the show and I’m super glad you guys are out there getting good valuable information, and I said every single episode, “value is what you get in the absence of money”. And these podcasts are free for you so if you wouldn’t mind can you please go over to the iOS or Android platform of your choice and leave some good five star feedback. That way other people just like you can get the same valuable information that you’re receiving. Also if you are interested in joining in all access community where you can learn how to grow scale your Speech therapy Private Practice, look no further if you go to privateslp.com/coaching you’ll see some options there. I’m not really talking about working from home or just working on the side, I’m talking about a speech therapy empire. I’m talking about having employees, paying taxes and being independent. I’m not really talking and really trying to help people just have a few clients on the side or something like that. I’m talking about the real deal so if you want help you’ve come to the right place privateslp.com/coaching.

Now today we are talking to Beata Klarowska and she is a Speech and Language Pathologist and the Owner of TheraPlatform, and what she has done is created an all-in-one practice management software platform. Now TheraPlatform.com is a practice management EMR software for Speech Therapist, OTs, PTs and Mental health providers. Its features include scheduling, documenting, billing, secure video conferencing, teaching tools, reports, homework and more. So let’s take a listen to today’s interview.

And today we’re talking with Beata Klarowska and she is one of the co-founders of TheraPlatform and the Virtual speech center.

Kyle: Hey Beata, How are you today?

Beata: I’m good. How are you?

Kyle: Oh, I’m doing great. We’re in Tucson and we’re just enjoying the 65 degree weather. I think it’s a lot different from our listeners up in the Michigan area. I was speaking to a gentleman recently from the state of New York and he said it was freezing cold. Do you guys have the same problem there and on the west coast?

Beata: Not freezing cold. I’m in Los Angeles in Burbank area, so February was very nice for us. We got a lot of rain which we highly appreciate given that we had a really bad two years of dry season and the fires, which really appreciate the rain here in February and it looks nice. I enjoy it and I miss the Four Seasons so I’m definitely enjoying the rainy weather today and planning to have a pizza party with my boys. We have tent put out in our living room and after this podcast we will make our own Pizza and have Pizza party. So it’s been nice.

Kyle: Oh that’s great. I remember my son used to like to make tents out of the sheet, we’ll get the clothes, pans and I get the broom handle and make the Center for the tent. And then we would go to the camping store and we will get used camping equipment and we used for sleepovers he would have a sleeping bag in the tents and now everything is just dirt bikes, fortnight and YouTube. So those times are going for me. I miss those days.

Beata: Yeah it’s fun. I love it. My boys are young so they’re 3 and 5, and such a beautiful imaginary. So I’m definitely enjoying them and camping, cooking, pretend play every day. It’s definitely fun. But they grew up way too fast.

Kyle: What a great age and obviously your accent, you’re from Texas. Right? I’m just joking.

Beata: No

Kyle: Where’s that accent from?

Beata: What accent?

Kyle: Yeah right. What accent? We’ve got a group of speech pathologist listening in and I’m sure everyone’s trying to guess the accent it’s not New Zealand it’s not Australia, it’s definitely not Southern Texas or Louisiana, that’s for sure. Where are you from originally?

Beata: I was born in Poland. So I have Polish accent. Yeah, I usually have people telling me Oh maybe you’re from Russia maybe you’re from Germany. I actually had one person who thought I was from Texas so I was kind of interesting. My accent is Polish.

Kyle: Yeah. My other half. Her mother’s name is Timinsky so I know about the Polish. I know about that. I know perogies and all that good food.

Beata: Yeah. My mom is here too. She’s visiting us from Poland too. So she’s treating us perogies, kyompki and poarst, good polish food.

Kyle: Gotta have it in. You’ve got your two boys. Are you able to stay home with him now that you’ve got this new business or are you doing speech pathology work and working with your businesses. How do you do both of those careers?

Beata: Well I’ve been in speech pathology for over 11 years in an medical setting so when I started of my career I didn’t have any children. But after we launched our software company I did get some somehow from family and friends. But having your own business gives you this flexibility and I’m not running a private practice so it’s a little bit easier for me I can kind of arrange my own schedule to meet both needs – the company needs and my kids needs and then it gets easier. They’re growing and are going to preschool now. So I definitely have more time. My working hours are longer. I work five hours in the morning and I have a year break with my kids and I we play and then I work from 6 p.m. to midnight sometimes. But it’s nice to be your own boss and to kind of have this flexibility for sure. It’s not always easy to combine the two but you just do your best.

Kyle: So you mean you’re working five hours in the morning and like a local hospital or something like that and then working 6 to midnight.

Beata: For our company.

Kyle: Oh, So you’re not even practicing any longer.

Beata: I am still in the clinical wards. I go to the hospital just twice a month just to keep in touch. It’s hard for me to quit the clinical setting completely. I love both. I love technology and I’m very dedicated to our software company and again our field is so flexible so I’m really blessed that I can focus in our company full time and then still be in touch with our speech word. So it’s nice.

Kyle: Yeah that’s awesome. Yeah it’s great to be your own boss. I mean that’s one of the reasons I started my own Speech therapy private practice was just so I could have free time with my son. I mean unfortunately he was sick the other day. He was home Monday and Tuesday because of this god awful flu thing going around but I was able to just text the office manager and say, “Hey I’m working from home today” and he was in bed and it’s just a nice benefit to have when you’re your own boss. How did you get from the Speech therapy world with direct treatment for 11 years to just saying “Hey, I want to start Thera platform or the Virtual speech center”? How do you do that? Did you have help or did it hit you like a bolt of lightning one night when you’re going to sleep. I mean how had that happen?

Beata: Well it kind of all started for me when I was into the grad school, so we had to take a technology class and this class mainly focused on AEC devices. It also covered all over button of practice management and therapy software. And at some point and during this class our professor briefly mentioned that ASHA approved Telepractice and that one day we’ll be just doing therapy online. And so he really kind of planted this little seed in my brain and since that point I was doing a lot of research. I was taking CEO classes about a Telepractice. I did a lot of market research and I finally decided to build a Telepractice software. So in 2010 me and my partner we built a prototype video platform but technology back then was not there for what we wanted to accomplish. And the video conferencing technology back then was changing and moving away from all dirt to new technologies. And so we decided to put the video conferencing piece of our business on hold until technology matures a little bit more. So we started developing apps in 2011, which we planned to incorporate later on in our Telepractice software.

And when it comes to TheraPlatform we are just so blessed because over the few years we built a nice user base. We had a lot of SLPs using our apps at schools and private practice and so we had a lot of a SLPs who really helped us with launching TheraPlatform. We had over 300 SLPs who contacted us and they helped us of Beta testing of TheraPlatform. And we were just so overwhelmed with their response and we were just very thrilled. A lot of them were very thankful and appreciated. And they thanked us so we built something very specific for Telepractice and I spoke of a few of them on the phone and they told me I always wanted to implement Telepractice in my private practice but we didn’t have the tools and I met one SLP who told us that she tried to provide Telepractice in the past too. But she was unable to compete with larger companies because she didn’t have a platform built for Telepractice. She was competing with a general video platform but she wasn’t winning the bids. And so if you are listening to us now and if you did help us with launching Theraplatform and testing I just want to say thank you so much and we highly appreciate it.

So it was a team effort. I mean I have a really great team of Software engineers, graphic designers, customer support and also SLPs who were very helpful during this journey. So that’s how it’s kind of all started.

Kyle: That’s great. Yes, Speech therapist they’re just a great group of helping professionals and you hit something right on the head too, you said you have to have a team. And I wouldn’t be where I am today without my team and it sounds like you’ve got to have your team to survive. I just don’t see how you could do it all in one day really.

Beata: It takes a village. Thera platform is really comprehensive and very complex so you do have to have a team. You have to have a strong team to provide a reliable and nice platform. So I know my goal as a therapist was to empower SLPs of an open ended platform that would help them conduct therapy online. And before we launched our platform back in 2011 there was not a single platform for Telepractice that was built for Speech therapists. I mean there was Skype, but it wasn’t HIPPA compliant and the general video conferencing platforms were very limited. So my goal as a therapist was to build a software that is open ended and allows us therapists to apply Multi modality learning approach. When it comes to speech therapy I’m very eclectic and I know that we all are. We like to incorporate a little bit of everything when addressing a goal. So we made use flashcards, worksheets, books, toys and I think there’s eclectic approach really helps children to stay motivated and it speeds up the progress. And we all know that when we address these small goals we always keep in mind the big picture or the ultimate goal. So we know for example when we work on the sequencing we might pull up pictures so kids can put them in order but we don’t stop there because we all know that sequencing is not all about putting pictures in order. We need sequencing to tell a story, we need sequencing for life skills and executing functioning. So we made use pictures to address sequencing but then we can take it to the next level. Right? We can move to the more natural or real life activities like dressing up the doll or cooking with Plato and we made at the end ask the child to verbalize different steps of different activities.

So I really wanted to build a software that would help therapists to do what I just described to be eclectic and to be able to take the activity to the next level. And we achieved this by incorporating different teaching tools and AIDS in therapy platform. So we are not a general video conferencing platform. We do have a lot of building tools that you can utilize and they’re very open ended. So for example you can upload your own resources. So if you have PDF worksheets or handouts you can organize your own library and set up platform and then you can present these worksheets during life session or you can even the sign them for home practice too. But we also have built in whiteboard which has endless possibilities for us too. I mean you can type, draw, follow directions, and you can paint. We also incorporated our ups, so we have absolutely no target articulation, phonology, memory, problem solving, sequencing.

We also have in addition to our building apps, building games to motivate the kids, so we have like a basketball game or a dentist game which you can implement for therapy itself too. And we also allow our users to screen share so again our goal is to give you this open platform which you can utilize different resources like worksheets whiteboard apps and also whatever is available to you online through our screen sharing feature. And what makes us unique to is that the apps that we have in TheraPlatform they are interactive on both ends. So you’re not just mirroring our built-in apps. They’re interactive on your clients ends too. So they can touch the objects on the app they can manipulate the game on their end too. And our screen sharing feature is also unique because it’s two way. So it means that you the clinician can interact online playing a game and your client on his or her end as well too. So let’s say you have like online puzzle game that you like kids can play the online game in TheraPlatform and you’re going to see what they’re doing with their mouse too. So that’s why we did incorporate all of these tools to help you be eclectic and to be able to move the goals or activities through different levels and you might make it fun and very interesting to kids.

Kyle: Wow it sounds like you guys have it covered. You can use PDFs, apps and games and you get that built in whiteboards, screen shares and major corporations, schools and therapists using your Teletherapy platform right now?

Beata: So our clients base is very diverse. We are a multidisciplinary platform. We have solo therapists using it so we have Mental health providers, Speech occupational therapists, few doctors and they are all vary in sizes. We have Solo therapists, private practices and staffing agencies. We have quite a bit of university clinics who are using TheraPlatform to teach graduate students to be Teletherapists. And so it’s just a very rewarding experience for us to know that we are helping practitioners run their business smoothly. And also helping to build up the case a little bit more and to provide services to locations where Speech therapy wasn’t option because of the geographic location. So it’s just amazing and very rewarding to us to be part of those and TheraPlatform is a centralized platform. So if you’re now ready to provide Tele practice services yet you can still use our platform. I mean we have customers who are not there yet or they don’t even consider Tele practice services and they still use our platform to run their practice because we allow you to schedule both office and Telehealth visits. You can document in TheraPlatform on your online clients and your office clients too. So we have a lot of practice management tools built into it. So as I mentioned scheduling, appointment reminders, documentation, we have reports too so you can kind of view the progress of your clients or students in a graphical format. We have a built-in consent and intake forms which are interactive and you can send them via our secure client portal and then your clients can fill out your intake forms at home and submit it through our system and we are very flexible too. We offer a lot of built-in templates and intake forms but you can modify anything in our platform. So if you like our intake form but maybe you have some additional questions you can add to it. You can modify it according to your needs.

And we also have this very core builder that allows you to build pretty much anything you can build an old template with it, you can build an intake form with it. I know some of our customers use our builder to build questionnaires or surveys or screeners and you can build all sorts of different core resources of it too if you want and then share these with your clients. So it’s a very flexible tool to have for sure. And we also allow you to organize your resources too and there is homework section too. So even if you don’t have Tele practice services in your practice you could use our homework section to share your handouts or worksheets and then your clients will get an email notification that you did share resource with them they can securely log into our platform and download it and even print it out too. So a lot of nice comprehensive features not only for Tele practice but also for regular office practice if you will.

We have a few customers who are moving to our platform too because they used to have three different systems for everything. I met a few SLPs during ASHA convention and they had one software for scheduling and documentation, then they had to subscribe to another software for billing and now they’re looking for a video conferencing to add to the practice too. So they really liked the idea of having everything in one location and we also offer billing too. So you can collect credit card payments you can create invoices and send them to your clients. We have super bills and e-claim is coming soon too so we are a very centralized platform that’s very user friendly too. And we also have a few customers who are using our platform primarily for EMR and Practice management. But we do have this video conferencing built into it with no additional charge. It’s just for you to use in case you have a situation or a client can’t get to your office like last week we had a lot of sign ups from Seattle because they had a lot of snow and speech therapists were not planning to necessarily implement Tele practice services in their practice but because of snow their clients couldn’t get to their offices. So clients actually were calling SLPs asking, “Hey, do you offer video conferencing because I can’t get to you”. It’s very cold and it’s just overwhelming. So they were able to hop on and the online therapy and keep up the business. And I mean you may live in a state where you had some bad weather conditions every year and it will affect your business. So having those additional option bells into your practice management platform is a big bonus. And we don’t charge you extra for it. It’s just built into the Practice management software.

Kyle: That’s insane. This is a huge system. This is beyond telehealth. This is a complete Practice management system and Tele practice if you want that too. It sounds amazing. Now you were talking about invoices it sends out credit card invoices you can personalize your invoices. You were talking about super bills which is a big deal for billing insurances. Now you said you’ve got e-claims coming soon. You guys are working on that?

Beata: Yes, so we are working on that. We are integrating of clearing houses so sometime in spring you’ll be able to submit e-claims through the insurance companies too. That’s a big one and its coming soon.

Kyle: Yeah, absolutely when we first started I was using Office ally and practice made for our clearing house but recently we switched to a pretty large EMR system and we’re using just a massive clearing house and that stuff is not cheap but you have to have it. I mean primarily in our clinic we do private insurances in Medicaid and Medicare, so we’re constantly billing insurances. All of our computers are cabled into the Ethernet system, so we can get the fastest speed possible because we’re on these massive systems so we can get paid. And it’s just nonstop we have a complete billing and A.R. department that does all of our work but it’s very very important for practices if you want to stay in business you’ve got to get paid.

Beata: Yes.

Kyle: Do you guys notice from around the United States all these clinicians using your software, are people getting reimbursed through insurance companies when it comes to Tele health and Tele service?

Beata: It all depends on the state. Tele practice, the policies and regulations and insurance. It’s not a global thing. So it will vary from state to state but we definitely see a huge change in comparison to 2011. There are more states who did pass Tele health and Medicare doesn’t cover Tele practice for Speech therapy yet as of today. I know that mental health providers do get paid through Medicare but SLPs not yet. But it will change but more and more insurance companies they do pay for services. The best practice is to call. So if you have a client who’s reaching out and asking questions about Tele practice I would call the insurance company first. And another tip that I have if you call the insurance company and from a colleague that they do cover and someone tells you on the phone that we don’t. I would ask for a supervisor because it’s a new addition to health insurance too. And some of their representatives may not have the adequate information either. So if you can ask for the supervisor to get the valid answer but definitely pick up the phone and ask if they do cover.

Kyle: I know we have 38 employees in our private practice and right now I’m offering 100 percent health insurance for all of our full time employees and dental envision and things like that. I was reading through our policy we have to renew every February every calendar year. And I was going through our policy and there is Telehealth if they’ve got a call they can log in for free to the United HealthCare Website and talk to a nurse practitioner with no cost. And if you have a common cold or an infection then they’ll have that online meeting with you and send the prescription request to your local pharmacy for you all at no charge. So it’s changing I remember when I first started 26 years ago in this field. It was amazing how far computer technology has come in. Like you were saying even in 2011 it’s a huge shift from the online platforms and just the video software and the cameras. I’m looking right now my Logitech camera and it’s amazing the quality in the sound and there’s no buffering and there’s no lag anymore. I mean it’s just incredible.

Beata: And it’s not expensive either. You’ll have to invest a lot of money in nice headphones. I’m also actually wearing Logitech. Its like $20 but the quality is amazing.

Kyle: Yes it is. Do you find that like on your platform if you’ve got somebody using a P.C. in the clinic and the client’s got like an iPad or an iPhone? Is there any problems with communicating with two different platforms and different IOS systems or Android systems? Does it communicate just fine?

Beata: It communicates just fine because we are a web based platform so you can access our platform from anywhere. As long as you have access to internet and browser, you’re good to go. So it’s very easy and convenient.

Kyle: Gotcha. And it works on all the major browsers like the Chrome and Firefox.

Kyle: Yeah, its quick. What’s the difference you’ve been talking about TheraPlatform and you also mentioned Virtual speech center at the beginning of the show. What is the virtual speech center website? Is that where the apps were at one point and everything is integrated or is it two different sites or how does that work?

Beata: So a Virtual speech center is our mother company if you will. So we developed over 40 iOS apps so you can purchase our apps on the App Store too. But we incorporated our apps in TheraPlatform as well. They’re not iOS apps in TheraPlatform we basically had to reprogram every single iOS that we developed but it simply built into TheraPlatform and ready for you to use.

Kyle: Got you. And if you’re paid member of TheraPlatform you have pretty much access to all the apps that were on the virtual speech center as well.

Beata: So we offer different plans with different pricing and features. So our Pro Plus plan includes practice management features and Telehealth. And this plan has our built-in apps and games. And now if you maybe work with adults or maybe you’re just a voice you may not even need our apps. We also offer a Pro Plan, so Pro plan has all the features that I mentioned except for our apps and games. And we also offer the enterprise account for larger companies. We have API and we can do some professional services too. But most SLPs they go with Pro Plus because they like the idea of apps and games.

Kyle: And when you have that Pro Plus plan, can you also just download as well to your devices.

Beata: So that’s a separate. So the apps are simply built into TheraPlatform and these apps have nothing to do of the apps or they’re just part of the platform. So if you want to download apps specifically just one app you would have to go to a Virtual Speech center. But if you do your online session and you have a kid for example who has iPad at home then they will have access to the app that we have in Pro Plus. But we also have clinicians they don’t provide Tele practice services, they still use the Pro plus because they can log in to the meeting in their office and they can have a child or students sit next to them in front of the desk and they can pull up our apps or pull up our whiteboard or pull up their own resources, so they use our tools not only for Tele practice but for office therapy too. So we could definitely utilize these apps even if you don’t do Tele practice.

Kyle: That’s great. Do you guys have anything special for our private SLPs listeners out there.

Beata: We do. Of course we do. So we’ll be more than happy to offer 50 percent off on our first month if you subscribe to TheraPlatform.

Kyle: And how would they get that subscription and then that discount.

Beata: So we did share a link with you so they can just go to this link and we included a Special promo codes so when you’re ready to subscribe you just enter this promo code to our coupon field.

Kyle: That’s awesome. Yeah, if you go to TheraPlatform.com/privateslp there will be a coupon at the bottom there and you can just simply click on the link there and you can get your discount. Beata, this is great. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. It is or anything else you’d like to share before we say goodbye.

Beata: Thank you so much for having me. And enjoy your Sunday.

Kyle: Thank you so much.

Beata: My pleasure. Thank you.

The post 47. Private Practice Management Software with Beata Klarowska, M.S. CCC-SLP appeared first on PrivateSLP.

In a busy, growing speech therapy private practice, there simply isn’t enough time to make everything happen: Referrals, Faxing, Billing, Payments, Accounts Receivable, Follow Up, Service Delivery, Cleaning, Payroll, etc. That’s why the goal of every private practice owner should be redundancy. The question for every owner should be not HOW to do something, but WHO is going to take the task. In Episode 46, I answer three listener questions and then dive right into the steps to become redundant in speech therapy private practice!

In this episode:

And then all of a sudden, you’re farming out your payroll and you’re marketing to other companies or people in your business so you don’t have to do it all. I mean over time I found that the biggest question of, how am I going to get this done turn into this? Who’s going to do it?

Well, Hello everyone you’re listening to the Speech Therapy Private Practice StartUp Podcast. This is episode number 46. My name is Kyle Meades and I’m a Speech Pathologist since 1993. And these podcasts are designed to help you improve your business and your life one Podcast at a time.

Welcome back to the show everyone. Today is January 26, 2019 and we have well over 44,503 listeners to the show. And I’m super glad you guys are all out there getting good valuable free information and you know me I’m going to say it every single episode, “Value is what you get in the absence of money”. And these podcasts are absolutely 100 percent free for you. So, if you wouldn’t mind just go to the iOS or Android platform or Spotify platform of your choice and leave some good five-star feedback, that way other people just like you in the same boat can get the good same valuable information that you’re getting. I would appreciate if you do that.

And I would also like to welcome the new listeners to the show if this is your first episode. Welcome, if you wouldn’t mind to just start at the beginning and work your way up through all these episodes and you’ll see what we’re all talking about. We’re all talking about how to improve our lives, the quality of our lives so we can spend more time with our families and friends. And at the same time help other people get the services that they need through our clinics and our Speech therapy services. So that’s what this show is about, it’s to help you grow and scale or start your own Speech therapy private practice. And if you would like some help doing that, I have a ton of experience I’ve been doing Speech pathology work now for 26 years.

And if you want to get some access to me it’s very simple. You can always just go to privateslp.com/membership, there you’ll see two ways to work with me hand in hand. You can do the Perfect student, that’s where you come into Tucson and you can just immerse yourself in our clinic and work with me one on one. Now that’s kind of difficult for a lot of people because they just can’t leave their job and take three or four weeks to get over to Tucson. But if you would like to work with me online that seems to be the easier option for most people and that’s where you can join the online All access community and you can work with me one on one. There’s a private coaching section in there. We just recently had our first online Zoom conference there where we had members from the All Access Community and we were talking about credentialing, contracting, billing in, pay rates and reimbursement. It was just a really good quality membership meeting. And so, we just finished that and we’ve got something planned for February and that happens once every month in the All Access Community we always get together and we’ll have a live webinar. There’re also private coaching sections, there’s forums in there, there’s forums and systems everything that we use to run our Speech therapy private practice in Tucson is in there. So, if you’d like to have access to that just go to privateslp.com/membership. Also, if you would like you can always ask me a question and I’ll be more than happy to answer your questions for you.

Also, I’d like to welcome three new members to our All access community. That would be Kimberly, she’s an Occupational therapist and she joined the Speech therapy private practice – All access community, Welcome Kimberly. And also, I’d like to welcome Dana and Kristin who are both Speech pathologists. Now I want to take some time now to answer a few questions from our listeners. We recently had a listener from New York, he was wanting to place a flyer for his Speech therapy services at a local coffee shop. And his question was pretty direct. He wanted to know if that was considered solicitation or was that an advertisement. And I was actually camping with my son and his best friend whose father is an attorney. So, we were in a cabin out towards the border of Mexico, very south Arizona. We ride dirt bikes and camp in and just eating dirt and having a good old time, eaten MREs and MREs or what they give to the military for meals and they have vegetarian MREs. So, I had one of those and my son and his buddy, they had the other MREs. But we’re out there and this gentleman emailed me and, on the way to bed I was able to check my email. And of course, I spoke to the lawyer and I asked him that simple question. Now again even though I’m not a lawyer but the other guy was we are not in the state of New York. But I did get a pretty nice answer for this gentleman.

Now I know solicitation is not recommended in any state for Speech therapy services. In other words, you can’t go to a local school with a Private practice flyer, imposes flyers in the school. But if you’re in a Starbucks coffee shop or a local coffee shop and when you put your cream or your sugar in your coffee you look up and there might be a bulletin board. I don’t think there’s really anything wrong with putting a business card or a flyer on that bulletin board there. But here is what the suggestion would be and again we’re not lawyers. I’m not a lawyer. I don’t give legal advice, but my suggestion would be in a small 10 font red at the bottom of the flyer you can put, “This is an Advertisement for Speech therapy services” and I think that would do the trick. I mean in the big scheme of things I think Speech pathologist, we have to get out of that mentality where we should ask for permission. I think we shouldn’t ask for permission but ask for forgiveness later because we have to push the envelope sometimes. Again, he can’t bring a flyer and put it at the school. But if you want to leave a business card or a flyer around town, I think that’s Okay. I don’t see a problem with that. And if somebody calls you on it, you just say, “Hey, I’m sorry I didn’t know that. Show me the law and we’ll fix it”. That’s what I would do about that one.

Second question, this gentleman wanted to know about starting up his new Private practice and he wanted some sort of a dummy budget plan so he could get a good friend of his who is willing to invest into a profitable and financially healthy business. He wanted to get that going in so I just simply wanted to respond to that question as well. I never had a dummy budget plan nor I really never had a budget. I never really had a business plan of any sort. I went to the Small Business Administration and I asked for help and they really didn’t give me any direction so I just did it on my own. I made it up as I went along. I started as a Single sole provider. I did all the work, I did everything and every penny I made I saved. I ate a lot of beans; a lot of rice and I didn’t spend any money and so I had no plan or budget to try to sell anybody really anything. So, my answer would be very specific. Number one, I would not mix your friends and your business at all. Because I’ve seen and talked to many Private practice owners and I will say this that friends and money don’t mix and I have seen a lot of partnerships break up. I would actually go the more Sole proprietor or LLC PLO sea route and just be a sole owner of your own business and start that thing yourself. And every bit of money that you make you save and you live on a financial budget as far as budget of your spending habit. Just meet your basic needs, pay your rent or your mortgage or your car insurance, get your food bill paid, if you’ve got credit cards it’s another thing. If you’re in debt get out of debt before you start your business. You don’t want to do that because it just makes it more and more difficult. But just keep it slow. Keep it simple and take your time. And you won’t have to pitch anything to anybody until you do have two or three or four locations and then if you want them triple that then you can start hitting people up and the dummy budget plan you would give that person would be your profit and loss statements from your CPA, that way you can get investors. So that would be my answer to that person’s question.

A third question I received recently was about a young lady who is working as a Contractor for a business owner in her community. And she wanted to know why that person was deducting a fee for every session. She wanted to know what that fee was called. Or maybe like a referral fee would she expected it’s reasonable to request that she purchase therapy materials or assessments for her. Was she covered under her liability insurance; should she expect reimbursements for travel? And she understands that she will send her a 1099 at the end of the year. She had to pay taxes on that money that she’s paid. But she was wanting to know more about optimizing her deductions and that never exceeds her standard deduction. So, I mean in a nutshell what she’s doing she’s contracting so the person she’s working for gets a lump sum of money and pays this person per visit to see kids for Speech therapy or adults for speech therapy. That’s not a referral fee. That’s just business the person who owns that company has every right to make a profit. And you would want that company to make a profit otherwise you wouldn’t have a job. So, there’s no name for that fee, it’s not a referral fee it’s just called business. You guys when you talk to someone and you accept a job working with someone on a 1099 basis you should be clear and under the full understanding that you’re not going to receive anything but that one lump sum payment for every visit that you perform. That person would not put you under their liability insurance. They’re not going to reimburse you for travel. It’s not reasonable to ask that person who owns that company to purchase therapy materials and or assessments, I mean they could but they really shouldn’t have to because if they did all that they should just hire an employee and pay the employee taxes and just hire somebody to do that. So again, it’s nothing to be angry about. Ask someone for clarity, “Hey, we’re going to be working as a 1099 contractor position. I understand that I’m going to get X amount of dollars for every visit. I’m going to cover my own liability insurance. I’m going to have my own bag of tricks, my own assessments, my own toys I’m going to put that in my trunk of my car I’m going to drive around and I know I’m not going to be reimbursed mileage but I’m going to get a very good rate and that rate is going to be directly deposited into my checking account every two weeks. Is that right?”. And you can ask for that in writing but it all goes back to clarity. And at the end of the day, I don’t think it’s fair to go back to someone like an employer and just secretly give them a little note and say, “Hey, can you help me on reimbursements for these miles”. You should do those and ask those questions before you take a job. Get all that upfront because again you really don’t want to have any ambiguity in any business relationship. You want to be clear, upfront and honest.

So again 1099 employees of the IRS.gov website has tons of information on that. It’s just very clear. You pay your own taxes and you can itemize your deductions. And if they don’t exceed the standard deductions, that’s Okay. That’s what standard deductions are for. So, I hope that helps. And if you go back to some earlier episodes, you’ll see the expense tracker application that I used to use when I had an iPhone and that’s a great app for tracking mileage and things like that so you can help increase your itemized deductions depending on how much work you’re doing.

I hope those were helpful for you. That was three questions from three different listeners. Today, I’d like to talk about redundancy and now, what is redundancy? We all know what that means but redundancy in its simplest form that’s the state of being no longer needed or useful. And as Speech language pathologist, when we’re trained with our master’s degree and PHDs for some people, we’re really trained to help other people. We’re trained to go above and beyond to assist people, family members and their children, and people who’ve had strokes, traumatic brain injury, dysphagia, stutterers, fluency issues, we’re designed to help people. That’s why we went into this profession in the very beginning so we can help others. I think when we start helping others it’s hard to pass those tasks on to other people. That’s always known as just delegating, in it something you have to get used to in Speech therapy private practice because when you’re first starting out you’re doing everything, you’re doing all the service delivery, referrals, billing, A.R. (Accounts receivable), all the general office cleaning or the janitorial work, I.T. work, you working with printers and credit card processors, and you’re getting all the supplies, Amazon and getting that stuff done. You go into Costco, you doing all the payroll and the marketing I mean as a Sole practitioner we’re doing everything. And it could be really challenging but these systems need to be run by others as one grows so it’s not uncommon for the first thing to go would be service delivery.

I remember when I first started my own business, I wanted to have more time so I could spend with my son and take him on his class field trips. I just wanted to be a father. I’d worked my whole career working at hospitals and clinics. I had that whole hospital phone / beeper thing attached to me the electronic leash and run down to the emergency room to do dysphagia evaluations and running back up to the NICU to look at a child in the nick you or the pick you. So, I did a lot of different things in my profession and my career, but it was really bad when I wanted to have time off and I just couldn’t have it. So, my first goal in private practice was not financial it was time. And so, one of the first things I did was I hired staff I saved every single penny and I hired staff I trained an SLPA, an assistant who still works with me today she’s one of the best people in the whole wide world. She helps me on a daily basis with other things but not SLPA at all. But that was one of the first things I did was train other SLPAs how to do really good top-notch therapy and over time I was able to replace myself. I was able to be redundant as far as being a speech pathologist which freed me up to start working on my referrals and working on my billing and accounts receivable. And then over time I just simply couldn’t do it myself. So, I hired our office manager Esther and she started taking that bull by the horns and worked on driving referrals and then doing our billing and our accounts receivable. And then as we kept growing and growing, we had to have the place clean because when you’re dealing with children you’ve got all the flam, coughing, sneezing, floors, walls, handprints and the bathrooms, that’s another subject. Even in the All Access Community we talk about how much toilet paper goes into a clinic. I know people laugh about that but it’s something you need to keep in mind how much cleaning supplies do you need to run a clinic; how much soap; how much hand sanitizer; all of that stuff we discuss in the All Access community. And so there came a point in my career where I had to hire someone to help with the office cleaning. It was every other day and then it was twice a week, then every other day, then now we have cleaning personnel that come in six days a week to keep our office spotless. And then it just came to from me being the I.T. guy and working with printers, credit card processors and software. I just had to hire other people to help with this task. Even utilizing services like Amazon to get a discount where you have your Subscribe and Save application, where you’re going to need how much toilet paper every month delivered and hand sanitizer, and things like that, things that the clinic’s going to need.

And then all of a sudden, you’re farming out your payroll and you’re marketing to other companies or people in your business so you don’t have to do it all. I mean over time I found that the biggest question of, how am I going to get this done turn into this? Who’s going to do it? Because I just simply didn’t have the time and that’s not going to be me. I am growing our business and scaling our business so I can’t really stop and change a faucet or it’s the plumber’s job. Let’s just call the plumber and pay for it or when the network is going down it’s time to call the I.T. guy. Have him come look at things or when we are looking for billing and accounts receivable, I just can’t stay on the phone and argue with insurance companies. There’s only so much that I can do.

So again, your goal in private practice is to become redundant and that is the truth because you’re not responsible for everything in under the sun. You just simply can’t do it all. And so, once we realize that we’re supposed to be redundant in our own businesses you’re making progress. I mean I don’t even have an office. I’ve been kicked out, moved around as we’ve grown over the last 11 years from this place to that space to this table and now it’s funny. We had a recent audit and the lady came in and she wanted to know where some of our records were and I brought her into our private bathroom which is under lock and key. And I went to the shower stall and she was surprised to see that I had a lockbox with records in there. MIKE Absolutely. This is my spot. So, she laughed I laughed, it was awkward but, that’s the way it goes when you’re growing.

So, I hope this has been a good episode for you guys. It’s nice to be back on the mic. We’ve been gone for about six weeks traveling and having family time and just work in and growing our own business. But it’s just so fun to be back behind the microphone and I appreciate the listener base and thank you for the questions and if you ever need anything just go to privateslp.com/contact and you can always find me there. Also, if you need help with billing or credentialing, we have a billing or credentialing service with PrivateSLP you can find that at privateslp.com/billing. And as always thank you for listening.

The post 46. How to Become Redundant in Speech Therapy Private Practice appeared first on PrivateSLP.

In today’s episode, I have a great conversation about online and telepractice therapy services with the founder and CEO of BlinkSession.com, Eric DeGrove. Eric and his wife, Rikki DeGrove, CCC-SLP started a new outpatient clinic about 2 1/2 years ago, Sprout Therapy Services in Colorado Springs, CO but suddenly realized many of their patients were coming from far away. Since Eric’s background is in programming, he jumped onto the opportunity and that’s how BlinkSession was born!

In today’s episode, we discuss why Eric built Blink Session, Opportunities to Offer Services Online, The Biggest Challenges to Offering Services Online, and then Eric offers online-based Private-Practice Startup Advice for people wanting to enter the space.

In this episode:

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Now a lot of it goes back to what I said earlier about focusing on the results. The result of Speech Therapy is improvement, improvement of your patients life of whatever their therapy goals are. The goal is not just to do therapy. The goal is to see their lives improved and so this online tele therapy option offers that a different way to achieve the same goals.

[Commercial]

Well, Hello everyone you’re listening to the Speech Therapy Private Practice StartUp Podcast. This is episode number 45. My name is Kyle Meades and I’m a Speech Pathologist since 1993. And these podcasts are designed to help you improve your business and your life one Podcast at a time.

Welcome back to the show everyone. Thanks again for all the emails and all the questions and as of today, today is Sunday November 25th 2018. We have well over forty one thousand seven hundred and sixty six listeners to the show and I’m super delighted you guys are out there. And if this is your first episode Welcome to the Speech Therapy Private Practice StartUp Podcast, and I hope you find everything that you need to grow, scale, start your own Speech Therapy Private Practice. I know you’re in the right place, lots of people get value here every single month and if you don’t mind you hear me say it time and time again, Value is what you get in the absence of money. These podcasts are absolutely free for you, so if you wouldn’t mind just go to the Android or iOS platform of your choice and leave some good five star feedback so that other people just like you can get the same valuable information that you’re receiving now, they can find it much simpler if you would just do your part and leave some feedback.

Also we have a space available for the perfect student that’s when you fly into Tucson and work with me hand in hand and we’ll show you how to get credentialed, how to bill and how to grow, scale, work on your referrals, all the things that you need to know. It’s a supercharged system to get you ready to go in Speech Therapy Private Practice. But a lot of people just can’t leave their job and if that’s where you are right now we have another option where you can get training from me and I’m there to help you. It’s the Private SLP All Access Community and you can find these options at privateslp.com/coaching.

Now I wanted to jump in today and answer a question. We had a listener and her name is Stacy and she was wanting to know if we are able to treat individuals in their home that have been discharged from home care or maybe they’ve maxed out their Medicare benefits. She goes on to say that she works with adults and the geriatric population, strokes and traumatic brain injuries. She’s got referrals to see these families in their home and she knows that these folks they can’t get to the outpatient clinic. But she’s more than willing to go and see these people in the home setting.

And so she wanted to know if they can pay cash and she wants to see those patients and so that’s what she wanted to know. And my big disclaimer here I’m not a lawyer. I don’t want to be a lawyer but I will say this. You want to double check and make sure that you don’t have a contract with Medicare. I mean you may want to have a contract with Medicare but I guess the main issue here is you can take someone’s cash if you’re not in network with that person’s insurance plan and you just might find out if you work for long term care centers. You may already have a Medicare contract attached to your NPI number, so you definitely want to call. If you go to cms.gov, that’s the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, you can reach out to them, give them a call and give them your name and NPI number. You may find that you are already in the Medicare system and if you are you may want to think twice about taking cash from that person because if you are a network provider from Medicare services you’ve got a bill those Medicare plans appropriately and accurately.

So it’s a contractual issue and again I’m not a lawyer but I do know that if you are in network with any plan, that could be Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, Humana, UnitedHealthcare, Tricare or any other plans when you are in network you’ve got to provide that service to those patients under those rules that you signed in that contract. So you might want to just do your due diligence and double check if you’re in network.

There’s nothing wrong if you’re not credentialed with any health insurance plans and you want to see people in the home. That’s fine. If you have an agreement you can do that. In the All Access Community, we talk about how to bill insurance companies if you do have those patients that you see that are in network with those plans that you’re credentialed with. We show you how to bill it and how to collect it. Also too when someone has Medicare especially with these geriatric patients they also might have other insurances like they might have Tricare for Life or they might have Blue Cross and Blue Shield. You need to build those plans first because any sort of government plan wants to be the pair of last resort. Any Medicaid plans or any Medicare plans they always want to be the pair of last resort. So there’s other plans that you need to bill appropriately first if you’re in network with those other plans. So that’s just something to think about.

And today what I want to do is I want to talk to you about teletherapy. And recently I had a gentleman named Eric DeGrove. He reached out to me. He is the president of Blink session and you can find him at Blinksession.com. He is a programmer and he is the CEO of Blink session. He reached out to me and wanted to tell me about his software platform that he has made from the ground up and it allows someone to perform teletherapy sessions, bill it, get paid and had a schedule on his platform. And it’s just really nice to see another person out there really making a change and making a difference in other people’s lives through the platform of teletherapy. His wife is a speech pathologist and they own sprout therapy services out in Colorado Springs, Colorado. So when he reached out to me he wanted to let me know that they started out as a brick and mortar business but they found that they really had another opportunity to help people that couldn’t get to their clinic for Speech Therapy services and that’s where this whole idea of blink session got started. So in the interview that we complete today we talk about why he built blink session and some opportunities to offer services online. We talk about the biggest challenges to offering services online. And then his Online Private Practice startup advice so anybody out there who has an interest in teletherapy or maybe is thinking about starting a teletherapy business or some sort of addition to your own Speech Therapy Private Practice, this is the episode for you.

Let’s get started,

Eric: Doing good.

Kyle: Hey, how was your Thanksgiving?

Eric: It was really good, had a good time with family and ready to get back to work here before Christmas.

Kyle: That’s awesome. Yeah I just got off the plane, got out of Baton Rouge in New Orleans and I’ve been doing that whole vegan diet thing. But once a year I go crazy and ate too much crawfish, grow oysters and fresh seafood.

Eric: You got to dig in once in a while.

Kyle: Oh yeah. Hey, tell me about this blink session program you made. Why do you do that?

Eric: Yeah, So my wife and I we live here in Colorado Springs and she’s been a Speech Therapist for 13 years now. And my background is in software development. We founded a clinic here two and a half years ago and during the time, that we were starting up we were looking for business. We noticed that a lot of our clients were coming from further out from our location out in rural areas and we thought maybe this is a business opportunity for us. Maybe this is an opportunity to serve people who are on the outskirts of the city but do it online. And so we looked into doing Tele practice or Teletherapy and at that time this was about two years ago. So about six months after we started our practice there was really only one software package available specifically for doing Speech online. And it wasn’t very good and it wasn’t selling well. And so since I had that background in software development I thought, let’s look into building something to help Speech Therapist do Speech therapy online to take what they do in person and to do it online. And so that was kind of the impetus for creating this software.

Kyle: Man what an idea. We have a lot of emails, all my listening audience sends me emails all the time about software. In our clinic, we had the same scenario. We serve southeast Arizona and the outlying areas but sometimes we have people who are an hour and a half out and they just really don’t have the time to be driving back and forth from the clinic. And once in a while we’ll do some Skype sessions but from what we’re talking about the other day, we had a little chat the other day and I guess Skype is not the way to do it. Is it?

Eric: Yeah and when we were looking at software two years ago for our Private practice and we found nothing in the market really. What I wanted to do was to make it easier for my wife to do therapy online. And so we thought well I can use Zoom, Skype, these products that were designed for personal chats or business meetings we can do that. But they don’t really help the therapist get used to doing therapy online or they don’t provide that feature set that therapists really needed. And so that’s what my heart was. What I really wanted to do was make it easier for therapists to start doing therapy online.

Kyle: That’s great. Now in your software blink session, does your platform take payments? Does it allow the therapist to manipulate the environment? If you have online tools, tell me little bit more about that?

Eric: So if you go to Skype or Facetime in any of those products we’re used to using, they’re typically pretty easy to use especially Facetime. You can get on you have a video call with somebody and some of them like Skype now and Zoom, particularly Gotomeeting those products have screen share so you can share maybe a window of your computer or you can share the whole screen.

And so that’s a tool that a lot of therapists were using to kind of provide interactivity in the session. Well there’s other things that you’re doing within a session that we wanted to help with. And there’s things you’re doing outside of the session that we really wanted to help with. So I said that one of our goals was to make a software platform that made it easier and so we started with this idea of resources that when you’re a therapist when you’re SLP you’re using flash cards games with kids definitely you’re using exercises, all these different types of resources that are aiding you in teaching and going through exercises with your clients. And we wanted to replicate that online with resources that would work seamlessly in the virtual space. So if your client was on an iPad and you’re on a computer that you could bring up that resource and it would work well in that setting.

And so we started with that and we developed a resource catalog but we wanted to develop a resource catalog that enable people to be creative and invited other therapists to share it with each other so instead of just making a few apps or games that we allowed you to use in blinksession we made a store where you can share and sell with one another. And so that’s really the central focus of blinksession. But so there are so many other features that we saw that therapists were needing when they do the sessions Online. And one of those is Writing notes, your Soap notes. We didn’t want you to have to go to another program to write your notes so you can write them all in this session. We didn’t want you to have to have a different payment processors say you wanted to take credit cards online your clients and do that. You can schedule appointment reminders, all these little features you can learn about the features at Blinksession.com. But we wanted to create the tools that make it easier for not only you to do therapy online but for you to run your business online so that your clients had a place to log in and they could see things you’ve shared with them they could pay their bills. They could see appointments all those little things. So our goal Kyle was really just to make it easier particularly for that Private Practice Startup, for that private practice person that speech therapist to get into this world of Teletherapy.

Kyle: That’s awesome. I have some of the All Access community members. I threw that out there when you reached out to me, I threw that link to Blinksession.com so they can learn more about it as well.

Now explain to me a little bit more. Do you have to be on the same platform if somebody is using like an android tablet or an iPad tablet, I guess is an old School Speech pathologist. I’m working with these kids. One on one in the clinic and we’ve got our iPads or tablets or we’ve got that kid right in front of us. Can you actually take like the iPad or what’s on your screen or in the Android device, it’s right on your platform there? So the other person on the other hand can see that.

Eric: Yeah, so this is a question I get a lot from people looking to get into Teletherapy or Telepractice, is because we’re used to using. I’m not used to it because I’m not a therapist. I know my wife like you she’s used to using her iPad. I think we have three of them at our clinic for even evaluations, to play games. And it makes sense because now I have three kids. They’re 5, 9 and 11 and my 5 year old would be on an iPad 24 hours a day. If we didn’t stop her from it. But she’s used to an iPad, it makes sense to her. It’s something she can interact with in a therapy setting. We’re used to using that technology and so the natural thing is to think, can I just use this technology in a Tele situation? Well one thing you have to think about when you’re doing therapy over the Internet is that whatever you do on your side on your computer has to be replicated on the other side, their computer or their device. And so I always remind people that because there are some technical differences that you really have to be aware of that maybe you’re sharing from your iPad over screen share and you figured out how to do that to your student on the other side. But you have to think about that they can’t touch that. They’re used to touching it and manipulating it with their fingers. So what we found and what we want to do at Blinksession is kind of provide alternate ways that we know will work on both sides of it that they’ll replicate if that kid’s on an iPad at their home and you’re on a computer at your office. Does that make sense?

Kyle: Yes, so did they have to have a touch screen on their end to interact with the program on your side?

Eric: So with Blinksession, technologically one of our tech goals was to make it compatible no matter what device you’re using. So we wanted that solution where people didn’t have to download anything. I get tired of having to download a new program every time someone want to have a meeting with me. And so we wanted to make it all in the browser. So on Blinksession, if you’re on a iPad you simply bring up Safari. You go to blinksession.com, log in and you’re ready to go. If you’re on a computer, you can use chrome, safari, Firefox, you just log right in. There’s no software to download and it will work seamlessly no matter what platform you’re on, as long as you’re on one of those browsers. So we try to make it super easy that way not having to download software.

Kyle: That’s great. When I’m interacting with my podcast audience when I’m sending out emails I’ve got these things called API keys that one program’s got to have an API key to communicate with the other program. And sometimes you got five or six things going on in the background. It can get really challenging. How easy is this for your average Speech Pathologist who isn’t tech savvy to operate?

Eric: Oh yes. Super easy. If you can login and do Gmail you can do therapy online. I think anything new is going to take some learning. But at the same time our goal at Blinksession is to put ourselves in the shoes of a Speech Therapist. And so we’ve designed it to fit your working pattern to fit the features you need. And we say that a lot because a lot of therapists today are using Zoom or other products that were not designed for therapist and they don’t have that feature set that makes it easy for them.

Kyle: Right, I would think too there’s HIPPA compliant, that’s a big thing with skype or something like Zoom. What about your platform? Is that HIPPA compliant?

Eric: Yes definitely. And that’s another issue where I’ve just written three articles for our Website about this. Recently one yesterday where I was looking into not only security, and a lot of therapists will come and ask us. We were at Asheville last week and so we got a lot of questions about in the end encryption, are the video calls encrypted end to end and these technical things. And all those things are important of course Blinksession is a 100 percent HIPPA compliant but there’s so many other things to consider when you’re online. Things like data privacy, if I have a Skype call with somebody or I have a facetime call, is Microsoft or Apple or Google whoever they’re going to sell that data are they going to know. It’s super important that you use a platform that states they are HIPPA complaint. That they’re following rules that they’re underneath those regulations because you don’t want it to come back two years ago that you used a platform that wasn’t HIPPA complaint and some data got out that you had sessions with different people and so that’s why we take the security and privacy really seriously.

Kyle: Absolutely. I mean that’s a big deal. What about if somebody wants to review their sessions? Can the client log back in and go over sessions that they had last week? A parent wants to go over their own take exercises with a kid? How did they do that?

Eric: Yes, so going along with the features to help therapists we were just rolling out to be ready in about two weeks a recording feature so you can record sessions and then they’ll be stored in our cloud environment which is HIPPA compliant. You don’t have to worry about session recordings being on somebody’s laptop and getting sold but they’re there and then you can share those recordings with a patient. You could even go in and you’ll be able to record maybe a sample of how to do something and then you can share with the client. They can log in and then the parent could bring it up and interact with it. So we have those tools in place where they have a dashboard. Your client has a dashboard and they can go over things without you being there. So that’s one area of therapy we’ve really tried to help with is really that home programming piece.

Kyle: That sounds exciting. Do you have ever find out that your online practice is growing faster than your brick and mortar business.

Eric: Yeah, well the growth is amazing. We were at Asheville last week like I said and 18,000 people at this conference last week. But we must have personally spoken to 800 people who want to introduce tele therapy or they want to get into tell a therapy or they want to bring it into private practice. So I see both growing, and what I see is that there’s just such a need for speech therapist that any avenue where people get services is growing.

Kyle: Absolutely. You can expand your market, you can serve people that are homebound and they can’t get out of the house. In southeast Arizona, we have people like I was saying earlier two and a half three hours away that need therapy services and I know people even in the medical space, even UnitedHealthcare the insurance that I provide for our employees at no cost. There’s a nurse 24/7 that you can just dial it up and you can talk to the nurse and get a prescription online.

It’s amazing how doctors visits, nurse practitioner visits, therapy visits. It’s kind of going online now.

Kyle: Right. And it’s something that your average consumer, I’ve started five businesses that I’ve been involved in marketing and so I’m kind of addicted to entrepreneurship and so I study the trends a lot. But your average consumer is kind of expecting these services and as the therapies that could kind of be scary because what therapies has had a tele therapy class in their graduate program? Very few of them if any. And so that can be scary, so how do I provide this service when I don’t know how to provide it? Maybe you could share some ideas on that.

Kyle: Right. We were talking before this we have kids and my kid’s almost 13 years old. His generation they’re so used to standard people on the other end on their phone or they’ll have webcams going, they’re playing fortnite, they’re doing three different things at one time. For my son, it’s nothing just to pick up the phone and facetime his friends. I mean for me I’m pushing 49 at the middle of the month and it’s just totally different. But there’s so many people who like you were saying who are demanding these services now, not just a brick and mortar clinic where you’ve got outpatient speech therapy visits, but for those people in the outlying areas who really want these services and I’ve noticed too that it’s not just send somebody a PayPal link anymore and get paid. Insurances are starting to reimburse as well for online services. Did you come across any reimbursement issues at ASHA?

Eric: Yeah, it really wasn’t talked about much as I thought it would be in the courses. But I do know that CPT there’s a reason change in CPT codes related to where the service is rendered and things are definitely going that way that turns in reimbursements. But one thing I have learnt that’s really come to mind recently about transitioning from in-person to online services is that we tend to think a lot about how we do things in-person, how we’re used to doing them.

And then we think that is therapy, therapy is how we do it instead of the goals. When online so much of it is how do I achieve that same therapy goal online with a different method. Does that make sense?

Kyle: Well yeah. I mean and also just the technology behind it, it can be a nightmare. But over a Blinksession.com it sounds like you’ve got everything kind of under one roof. I was saying too like PayPal, do you guys use PayPal as your payment processor or is it through Stripe?

Eric: Yeah, we use stripe to integrate because it’s super easy. Once you have your Blinksession account just go in and click two buttons and you can link a stripe account. If you don’t have one you can set it up with your bank account and then people can pay online through the system. Of course you can definitely use another invoicing system outside of Blinksession. Some people have other systems they’re already using and so we just integrate that feature to make it easy for them.

Kyle: That’s awesome. So you’re able to schedule, you’re able to get paid, and you’re able to complete the sessions online. It sounds like you guys are really scaling this thing. What other features do you have coming up in the near future?

Eric: Right, so besides the recording we really see that it is an important thing where especially for the school setting. 80 percent give or take of online speech right now is a school setting. So a lot of companies will have a contract with the school who can’t find a therapist locally or they want the virtual experience for some reason. So they have that contract, they end up having meetings with the principal, Special Ed department, parents and to go over IEPs. So we wanted to introduce this recording features so that you could even record your session bring it up there in IEP meeting, you can bring up other documents and all these things. That’s a big feature for us coming out. The other one is we’re going to have a self schedule features. So right now you can log in say your availability for your schedule and then you can set it for other therapists in your organization. But we’ll have where client can log in and then they can schedule themselves if you’ve given them permission to do that. So that way you’re not dealing as much with having to talk to them on the phone. So those little features there’s about 100 other things we want to add definitely to make it easier to do therapy online.

Kyle: That’s great. Is it pretty costly to jump on a platform like this or is it something you can work in too or if you really wanted to jump on this platform and start out online. How would you do that?

Eric: With Blinksession, go to blinksession.com you can sign up for a trial, you can watch a demo or you can definitely you may ask any questions. And then what we’ve done is if you have five or more therapists, what we found is a lot of private practices that have five plus therapists they want to get into tele therapy but they’re going to be slow at it. So that makes sense. They’re going to ramp up, they’re going to start with maybe four or five. And so what we do is if you have enough therapists we’d give you a custom quote so that you’re not paying as much. Your paying for basically what you use. So go on blinksession.com let us know what your needs are then we can help accommodate the pricing that fits your needs.

Kyle: That sounds awesome. Yeah, there’s a lot of therapists out there who are emailing us. I probably get three questions a month about tele practice, tele therapy and just starting out. That sounds like this is a really exciting space for you guys and just to think that you guys started with a brick and mortar speech therapy business and then just said, “Wow what a niche. That’s where it’s at. Just niche niche niche.”

Eric: Exactly, in niche you bring that up. It’s so important when you get into any business especially online space because when you go to Google.com you put in a service. You’re competing with everybody, everybody in the country or everybody speaks English for your services and so having that niche is important. In software it is really important from our perspective because we wanted to build something that fit the needs of therapists, not just the needs of people who wanted to have a video meeting. So that was important to us.

Kyle: Do you find that more therapists that you spoke to offered ASHA? Were they working more with pediatrics, articulation or did you see more people with strokes and traumatic brain injury or aphasia type therapies or was it kind of a little bit of both?

Eric: Well really all over the place, I think any speech therapist is going to know that kids are the majority and then with so many schools having big needs. The school tele therapy space is huge, but honestly our biggest user right now is a clinic that does a facial treatment. So people who have had strokes and obviously your audience would know what a facial treatment is for.

Kyle: Absolutely.

Eric: But the thing I’ve noticed is that the more specific your therapy is especially in private practice, the more niche specific your therapy is, the better you’re going to be online. So say you do aphasia therapy and you’re really good at that. You’re one of the best in the world at that. It’s gonna be easier to market that to faraway places because you’ll become known as that person, clinic that can do this really well. And people will be willing to go online and do it. And it may be that population who’s had strokes it’s easier for them to get on a computer. You might not think that somebody who’s elderly or over 70 could get on a computer and easily do this but it might be easier for them to do that than to find transportation to a clinic.

Kyle: Even in our clinic some of our patients rely on the back of the insurance card, there’s free transportation to and from the clinic. But sometimes there’s three or four people on those Van trans and the patients late. And sometimes they miss half their session. It’s not their fault but they’re totally dependent upon public transportation, Van Tran through the Medicaid or Medicare system and it’s frustrating for them. And you’re right, my dad who’s 83 I was talking to him and he’s looking to get one of these IMax that we built for our clinic. We just switched over to an online medical records documentation system. So we’ve got these IMax that I built later in the clinic and he wants me to mail them one so he can start jumping online and learning about this stuff. So I mean that’s my dad totally from the Southeast Louisiana, 83 years old from a small town and he’s really thinking about. And he’s texting too that’s the funny thing and he’ll face time you once in a while. Times are changing.

Eric: Right. Well somebody motivated to come in like that who’s going to be motivated to go to a clinic, do therapy. They’re likely going to be motivated to learn what they need to learn to get online and now a lot of it goes back to what I said earlier about focusing on the results. The result of Speech Therapy is improvement, improvement of your patients life of whatever their therapy goals are. The goal is not just to do therapy. The goal is to see their lives improved and so this online tele therapy option offers that a different way to achieve the same goals.

Kyle: This is really interesting. I’m glad you reached out to me so we can tell our listening audience about blinksession.com. Is there anything else that somebody would need to know about before jumping on blinksession.com? Any last words.

Eric: No, I would encourage your listeners especially in that Private practice space to kind of think of tele therapy as another option to your in-person therapy. I consult a lot of businesses that want to get online and they want to get into that online space, they want to sell products online. And you’re not going to compete with Amazon.com to sell products and the same is true with therapy. There’s several companies that are big and they dominate Google and you’re not going to really compete with them.

But what you can do is go around to those doctors and those other people that referred you and present this as an option. I think that’s a really good way to get started to say, “Hey, we have this tele therapy option. We can provide it online. We have a platform. It’s HIPPA compliant.” All these things and show them the benefits of doing therapy online. Show these refers, how much you can serve people who can’t get to your clinic and those things. Think of it as the same way you would think of doing in-person therapy and that’s really the last word of advice I’d have.

Kyle: Yeah. And I guess with patient permission too you could probably show a referring doctor or pediatrician an actual session. May be a 30 or 40 seconds in a session and show him how the kids or the adults really respond to that technology.

Eric: Definitely. You got to think as a marketers, as somebody who’s coming in with a new idea and showing them even research articles, look up things. Be prepared when you go in because not everybody is going to be familiar with this or familiar with its efficacy. I think you’ve got to be prepared. But I really would encourage you guys to focus on getting people to referred you for Tele practice. You’re not going to get a lot of customers just you by putting an ad on Google or Facebook, but really focus on that and focus on those people in your community that maybe can’t make it to your clinic or they’re a little too far out, but you can provide this service online as another option.

Kyle: Yeah I know a lot of people when they reach out to me or they join the PrivateSLP All access community, people are tired they’re frustrated they’re working 50 hours a week and they think if they just hang that shingle and start that business that those patients are going to just start rolling in. And sometimes it’s just not like that and and that’s why I tell people to please take it so and do your homework and really focus on the patient. This is not about just filling clinic space this is about outcomes. Like you were saying earlier this is focusing on the outcomes and making people better focusing on the patient. And the more that I focus on the patient the better everything gets. The therapists have their work the patients get their help and everybody has. But I think a lot of people they get frustrated because it just doesn’t happen fast enough and I’ve said that before in a previous podcast. This is a long game, this takes years and I’m sure you know your wife is a speech pathologist. When she started that clinic it’s not like people were being in on your door to jump in and when you open those doors.

Eric: No, Speech pathology is one of those things where there’s so much business out there. But that doesn’t mean that people are automatically going to know you exist. I can definitely prove that. Same with software you do have to take the time to get out there let people know you exist. And with Online therapy to me it’s just that other piece that your competitors probably in your city are providing it’s that other thing. But you really have to be focused on it and say add a page on your Web site. This is Tele therapy this is why it’s effective and then start really a concerted effort to market it to your community.

Kyle: Right. Make it meaningful. Absolutely right. Well Eric thanks for coming on the show today and I know the listeners got a lot of information today and the best place to reach you is.

Eric: Yeah, blinksession.com and then if you have any questions there’s a contact form. Definitely let us know. We provide all kinds of services besides the software, we do consulting, for bigger companies custom development and different things, training, we can provide training for your staff in different things we’re here to help people. And that’s our goal is we’re here to help Speech therapists and other types of therapies get online get their services online and succeed online.

Kyle: Awesome. Eric thanks again.

Eric: Thank you Kyle.

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