Speech Therapy Private Practice Startup Podcast

When you start, manage and grow your own speech therapy private practice, time is always limited. Let’s face it, there are only so many hours a day, right? Making a commitment to start a speech therapy private practice is important step in your financial future.

Sunset Beach, North Shore, O’ahu

In this episode:

01:37 – Over 3800 + listeners to the program

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Transcription of Episode Fourteen:

When you are starting your own private practice, when you are managing your own private practice, when you are growing your own private practice, you can’t really focus on consumption you’ve got to PRODUCE.

[Commercial]

Well, Hello everyone! You’re listening to the Speech therapy Private practice Startup Podcast; this is episode number 14. 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.

North Shore, O’ahu

As always I wanted to start this show out and say thank you for all the emails and all the tweets and mentions. It really cool to have so many people listening to this show and I hope you guys are getting valuable information from the Podcast. And again value is what you get in the absence of money. These Podcasts are free and all that I ask you to do please go to iTunes and leave some five star feedback so other listeners can learn where to get this valuable information. So please go to iTunes and login with your account and leave five stars. I would really appreciate that.

And I know you guys are listening because as of today this is June 16 2016, we have over 3800 listeners to the program. And I am so delighted to get all the emails, tweets and mentions. It’s just really cool and I hope you guys are really learning something from this. So I also want to give you an update, I don’t have any room available right now for the Perfect Student. But if you would like to get on the waiting list, if you shoot me an email and please put THE PERFECT STUDENT in the subject line and send me an email. Let me know where you are in the process. Are you just starting your private practice, are you thinking about a private practice, or do you have something going already or you actively seeing patients so just let me know, give me some details so that I can help you better. Also I have to remind you I have turned down few people here and there because it got to be a perfect fit. These podcasts are designed to help and give you valuable information but when you work with me one-on-one you’re going to be have ability to come in and to Tucson and you can work with me in the clinic. You can work with me side by side to see how I run the Outpatient Speech therapy clinic and also we have a Home health agency as well. So you are going to get that knowledge base from both Outpatient and Home health Company. You can see how we set it up, how we bill it, how we collect it, forms that we use and everything that we do, you have access so you are going to get thrown into this.

This is the best way to learn. And I will tell you if I have this kind of information available to me when I was just starting out, I would have paid a lot of money. I am not even going to charge a lot of money for this monthly service. It’s a minimum of a six months commitment. The price is very affordable and when we talk I’ll give you the price. It may seem like a lot of money to some people but the valuable information that you will receive from these interactions is priceless. You will be pleasantly surprised and all you have to do is reach out right now. I don’t have that availability but I do have a waiting list so if you are interested email me !!

North Shore, O’ahu

And what are the things that will just kill a business idea or kill that desire or kill that dream?  That is just too much consumption. When I say consumption it can be Facebook, it can be too much Twitter, it can be too much email or your Inbox, it can be too much texting, it can be too much binge watching, it can be too much alcohol, it could be drugs, it can be any of these things. This is pretty limited what I am talking about right now but anything that’s taking you away from meeting your goals, means you are consuming too much. And you’ve got to get out of that consumer pattern where everything leads to reaction and get into the producer mode; You’ve got to produce so you can be proactive.

Let me go into detail. When you are consumer, let’s say you wake up in the morning and what’s the first thing that we do. You grab your phone or your tablet and you go to your inbox. Or you check your Facebook post or you go to your Twitter account. Right there that’s where the distraction starts. We get on this link and we click on that link or we go to this person’s Facebook page. And then we’re off. We don’t even remember what we came to our phone for. You have to be very careful; you have to guard your inbox. You have to be very systematic in this. You’ve got to change your pattern, your behaviors. And again when you are consuming Facebook for four-five-six hours a day, you’re not going to get anything done. You’re not going to be proactive. You’re always going to be reacting, such as “this person just tweeted this”, “this person just posted this on Facebook”, “I just got this email with this new great product that I just have to try, it’s a speech therapy product”. We all know everybody is fighting for our attention, everybody wants our money, everybody wants to sell us something, you know its going to happen. You are going to get off on a tangent and just going to forget about what really matters. That’s growing your own private practice pursuing your own dream and making your financial future better.

So here are something that you can do to become less consumption more producing. And getting out of consumer/reactive into producing/proactive, try some of these things:

Another thing you want to start doing to be more proactive, not just controlling your Inbox but Journaling. This is really important. Lot of people, they say, “I can just document things. I can text myself or send myself an email reminder or I can just write things down on a WordPad.” You want to start taking a pen to the paper – Carrying that notebook around with you and physically writing things down. Getting it out of your mind, putting it on paper because that’s where the magic is. If you’re going around seeing people in Home health around town, you’ll say, ”this is the area, I really think I want to start my own private practicing.” Take your pen out, you get open that Notebook and you write that in there. This is the area and you write down an address. You physically have to take your pen to something powerful, still about pen to paper. So Journaling is a very important activity when you are becoming proactive, when you are producing.

Waimea Bay, North Shore, O’ahu

Another thing you want to do is be careful about your schedule. Mind your time. How many times have you had your family members come up or people come up and say, “Hey, can I pick your brain about something?” That’s an open invitation right there to take all your time. “Can I pick your brain for a second?” it’s not going to be a second, its going to be four hours. They are going to suck everything out of you and you’re going to be left with nothing. Or how about this, “Hey I got a three rod, he’s only saying like four or five words. Right there, guard your time and you say, “Hey, I can help you with that. Let’s schedule an evaluation appointment tomorrow at 9 am. Do you have that time available?”

Guard your time, take care of your time and have a place where people can go like an online scheduler to schedule time with you. And keep it limited, have it on your turf not theirs.

Another thing if you have the idea of starting your own private practice of if you have your own private practice and you want to grow it, ask for help. I have done this for a long time and I am here to help you guys. So if you need help growing, starting or expanding your own Speech therapy private practice, send me an email and I will be more than happy to reach out and help you.

And as always, thank you for listening!

We really aren’t trained in graduate school to create boundaries for ourselves and say “no” sometimes.  When scheduling clients, we need to be clear and have expectations for clients and families so that we can do the best job possible.

Treatment is a 2-way street.  We have to value client’s time and they must value ours.  In this episode, I discuss scheduling strategies that I feel are helpful in a speech therapy private practice.  Whether you are just starting a speech therapy private practice or have an ongoing operation, there is something to learn in from recording.

In this episode:

01:26 – Beautiful Tucson, what A beautiful place to live

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Transcription of Episode Thirteen:

So those are kind of conversations we don’t like to have with people, but its necessary because you don’t want to sit around and wait on people. You don’t wanted be taking advantage of. We have a service and we have to provide that service. We can’t provide that service unless the family works in conjunction with us.

[Commercial]

Well, Hello everyone! You’re listening to the Speech therapy Private practice Startup Podcast; this is episode number 13. 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.

I want to always start out and say Thank you for all the follows on Twitter, emails and Tweets. It’s just really cool I have this kind of feedback because when I am sitting here behind this microphone, I am kind of staring at this wall. I got a whiteboard here. I am in my office at home. I am kind of here on edge of the mountain here in North Tucson. Its really beautiful area and I got a shadow in here; sun coming through and birds are outside. It’s a gorgeous day and I am talking into this microphone.

I always wonder are you guys doing anything with this information?   Are you following these instructions and are you taking action? I am kind of curious because I get this emails, “Hey, I want to be mentored by you”.  Sometimes people just don’t get back at me; some people say “Thanks” but I never hear back.   It’s nice to know here you guys doing anything with this information. I really think its valuable information. This is the kind of stuff that I wanted when I started my own Private practice. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I downloaded some PDF and I went on some websites but I couldn’t find the good solid information like checklist, do this, do this and do this and then you can have this. I just didn’t find that so that’s why I am throwing this out there for you guys for free and I just wanted to know, Hey leave some comments for me at the bottom. If you go to PrivateSLP.com you’ll see this blog post and at the bottom they’ve got a place for comments. Shoot me some comments, let me know what you guys are finding valuable so I can kind of steer this Podcast which now as like over 3300 listeners (Its really cool) from all over the world. I can steer this thing the way you guys wanted to go because I got the microphone right here.

I also wanted to tell you I have one space left for the “Perfect Student”. I have one time slot this summer to work one person in. So the Perfect Student is going to work with me weekly it’s a minimum of a 6-month commitment (and its not free but it is affordable) and I really think that the person who gets this spot is going to learn so much information. You’re not only going to get the ability to fly in to Tucson and work with me for a week for seven straight days. You’re going to see the clinic; you’re going to see the home health agency that we have. You’re going to see how we bill it, how we collect it, how we schedule it, how we get the referrals, how we fax it, how we answer our calls, our systems, everything that we do, you are going to get that information too. I will personally work with you one-on-one to make sure that you get the best information. You’re just going to be blown away if you can do it. I got a lot of emails from people, “Hey I want to do this.” And I throw right back catch you and no body does anything with it. I don’t hear anything from people any longer, once a while I get a Thank you and I appreciate response. This stuff is kind of hard and this is not easy stuff. This is a long game and on the last podcast I talked a lot about that. This is a long game and when you start a monster like a Home health or a Speech therapy private practice business, you’re in for the long hold. You can’t get flaky; you got a show up, shoot up and get it done. And for the right person if you’re listening right now, I want you to send me an email and put The Perfect Student in the Subject line of that email. I want you to tell me about yourself where you are in this Journey for Private practice and what you wanted to accomplish. I will help you and if its a good fit between you and me, I will personally help you. But you got to take the first step; you got to get into action, send me an email. Don’t be scared, don’t be shy, come on do it and I will help you. For the right person you’ll see that this will change your life. And I’ll tell you it’s going to happen.

Also I want to read an email that I received from a lady named Christina. She’s up in New York and I send her a reply recently and I just got to thinking about this email that Christina send me recently this month, May 2016. I sit down and do a Podcast on this because this is really good. This is a great email. So let me read it to you, “Hi Kyle, I recently relocated to New York city to live closer to family. And now I am working at a big Home care agency. I’m considered it Independent provider which means I pay my own Taxes and Insurance. I do my own scheduling and paperwork. The Agency takes care of payment processing through early intervention and Insurance for patients and they just refer cases straight to me. I’ve thought about going into private home care a lot as I’ve recent especially as an Independent provider I feel as I’m doing half the administrative work already and I am excited to learn more about the financial aspect of the business and I have not yet experienced too much of that. As such I really enjoy your podcast and all the valuable information you offer to so many of us as an SLP. A big question I have at the moment is whether or not you use any type of special Software to manage your appointments for Home health care or if you have tips to better manage location-based services; I would love to hear how you do it. (and there was a big smiley face there.) and all the best. Thanks again for all the great tips and pointers”

Thank you Christina. Well Christina, that’s an excellent question. I know you already get my email reply but I actually slept on this and thought of a lot of information for you. I wanted to make this into a Podcast. Here it goes, you’re doing all the work anyway. Why don’t you just go ahead and get your own early intervention contract in the state of New York. I can’t really speak for your State but I know in Arizona it’s a process. You can go ahead and carve out about six months for that process but start Google-ing – special needs, early intervention New York, developmental disabilities New York. And start looking on those Government websites and find some contact information, just throw it out there and put in that email, “I am a Speech pathologist and I have done this for so many years. I want to help kids and adults. Please give me the information that I need so I can obtain a contract to provide services in Speech therapy.” That’s how I did here in my state.

You would be amazed finally after sending out few emails failures out there, you’ll get somebody that will just say, “Hey, this is the person you talk to, this is the man or woman you want to reach out to.” You can pickup the phone or call them. They might give their number or direct email, but do it. Go ahead. Also follow these steps too. What I suggest is getting incorporated. You can go and talk to a lawyer and pay few thousand bucks. We’ve done this three times now. I use the services of a good paralegal here in Tucson and she is wonderful. She is very inexpensive; the last time I incorporated, it was actually few months ago, it was under four hundred bucks like Three seventy I believe. It was so inexpensive. It took about two weeks. I had my name already picked out and the paralegal just gave me a questionnaire. I filled it out with my name that I wanted, the address.

And also when you do your address for your business, don’t use your Home address because when you use your Home address, you’ll going to get all kind of solicitations through the mail and stuff like that. Go ahead and get a UPS box. Use that address as your point of contact when you register your business. So it gives kind of buffer between you and the public too. Its kind of privacy thing. Use that address and get incorporated. After you get incorporated what you should do is go ahead and apply for Tax ID number. And when you get that Tax ID number you can do that online. You want to get NPI number. You take all those articles of incorporation and Tax ID number to the Bank. You get a Business checking account. You want to get some general liability, some professional liability insurance. And once you get all those things you can apply for that contract. Once you get the contact person in your state’s information, you can apply for a contract under your business because you already got it done. Once you get the contact you can go ahead and start saying people like I said in the first few podcasts I started in the Home settings.

You can kind of start working in the Homes and certain areas. And you wanted to know about scheduling. There is nothing really magical about scheduling but I do know one thing you have to do to that we don’t learn a lot about in graduate school, that’s clarity. You have to be very clear about scheduling your patients. When you have a list of patients that you need to choose from in certain area you want to work in areas. For us we work within 5 square miles from a data on the Map. And once you work from that data on the Map, you speak to patients in that area and you say, “Hey I’ve got two opening in your area.” You give them a choice of two and you say, “I‘ve got a One O’clock or Two O’clock, would you like one of those appointments? And then you wait and the family might say, “Well, I cant do that. I am available on Wednesday but just don’t have anything available on Monday.” You can simply say and again we don’t learn this in Graduate school, “I am in only your area on the Monday. But I’ll keep your name and details and if something opens up on that day I’ll call you back. Sometimes the family will go “I can’t make it work on Monday and I can’t take that One O’clock” and you want to be very clear, “I have seventeen people waiting for an appointment but I will give you this appointment and its going to be weekly appointment and if there is any no shows or excessive cancellations, unfortunately I’ve got many people who want this appointment I’m going to have move on.”

Conversations that we don’t like to have with people, but its necessary because you don’t want to sit around and wait on people. You don’t want to be taking advantage of. We have a service and we have to provide that service. We can’t provide that service unless the family works in conjunction with us.

So that is either you’re on board with us on you’re not on board with us. Those are the conversations that are kind of hard to have because you are creating a boundary there. You are creating the opportunity to give that family way out or they can keep the appointments. So that’s how we do. I basically go far out on my Five square miles from a data on the Map and I work my way back towards home. If I am starting at point A and I’ve got six patients schedule that day. I try to go all the way to the top of that list to the furthest distance away and then I am working my way back home.

Right Outside my Home Office Window

It’s really nice when you get those families when they work with you and they know that you are busy and they do respect your time and you respect their time as well. It’s a two-way stream. You have to respect their time, show up, shoot up and be there on time and they’ll respect you too.

That’s my answer for that part of the question. Also as far as Calendars, we use Office Ally calendar in our Clinic and it’s a great program. We use that for billing. But the calendar part of it is good too. I have heard people use Google calendar, it is secure as far as HIPAA I am not sure about that. If you have information on Google Calendar and HIPAA compliance please leave a comment below and let us know about that.

I really suggest that Kristina at least go ahead and start working and learn the process of getting people on board, scheduling, building a case load, managing that case load and then overtime go ahead and do this suggestions that I am putting out there for you. Go ahead and get incorporated, get your Tax ID, get your Insurance, get the NPI number, get all that ready. So when it comes time to slowly work in your own Private practice, you’ll be ready for that.

I hope this is been a good episode. I hope this giving you guys some very good information and as always I would appreciate if you go to iTunes and leave some good quality feedback for me, some five stars. That way other people when they are looking for Speech therapy private practice podcast they’ll find it too. And they can get the same valuable information for free that you are getting.

I hope this is been helpful. This is Kyle Meades and Thank you for listening!!

When I am working with others, I always stress the importance of dedication and persistence.  You have to remember that success in anything that we do happens over time.  So many people think that making a few changes in their life will automatically lead to a successful outcome.  In business, we must be cautious and take appropriate steps over time so that we can become successful.  We shouldn’t act in haste.  It’s also important to seek help from others.  Let’s be honest, we cannot do this alone.  We have to learn how to trust and delegate so that we can continue to grow and improve.  In this episode, I share some  insights on speech therapy private practice and how a successful business is built on long-term commitments, financial honesty and integrity.

In this episode:

01:32 – Home health avenue for Perfect student

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Transcription of Episode Twelve:

Someone was asking me the other day about being successful. And they asked me “What’s the most important thing about being successful” and I really thought about that question because the answer is really simple – You got to be in this for the long call.

[Commercial]

Well, Hello everyone! You’re listening to the Speech therapy Private practice Startup Podcast; this is episode number 12. 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.

Hey, thanks again for all the tweets, emails and also wanted to thank those who are emailing me about the Perfect Student. I still am looking for two students to mentor. And you are able to fly in to Tucson and come spend a week with me in Tucson. You are also going to have access to me on weekly calls and those can be either Skype or telephone. And you’ll have access to me via my personal email. You can come and learn the way we do our business here in Tucson, Arizona. Also it is not just a brick and mortar outpatient clinic that we have, we also have a Home health agency. So you can come and learn both aspects of that too. That always sparks some interesting people who want to try the Home health avenue as well.

Its got to be a perfect fit, so I want to make sure when you do email me please tell me a little bit about yourself and let me know what you’re up to, what you want to accomplish, if you are just starting out or you’ve been into the game about 2, 3 or 4 years. Let me know some background because I do email people back and I never hear back from them. So I just want those people to know this is not a free service but it is valuable information and again it is something that will change your life but its got to be the right fit. Just like gaining relationship you want to have a successful two-way relationship so that’s why am asking all these questions back and forth when people do email me. So let me know what you’re up to so we can work it out and make it happen for you because I would love to help you get your practice up and going. Even if its just starting out and getting you setup this is totally doable. And again for the right people its great value.

Hey, and also thank you for the emails, tweets and feedback on iTunes. It’s really nice to have good 5 star feedback on iTunes because just like you out there listening when other people want to find is, you find the feedback and you find us easily on iTunes. Please do your part and help us, help others by leaving some good quality feedback on iTunes so people know that we are real. I do this for free and all the blog post that I put out its no cost and I want to help as many people as I can. I really truly like doing that.

Today I want to speak about Success. This is a long game, this is not something that you just start out doing and you strike it rich kind of back in days, digging for gold, mining for gold. As a matter of fact where I live here in Tucson, I live in North of Tucson. It’s a place called Swan Road, and if you take Swan Road all the way to the top, where dead ends into the Mountains there, there’s a ridge called Pontatoc ridge, and if you go up in that ridge area there are mines back from the 1800’s. Am actually got online and look at these maps, and there are really cool mines, where they use to mine for minerals, coppers and all up in this neighborhood ride live here this old mine places where they were digging. My Property is actually is next to an old mine area. Its actually 14 acres you can’t build on it. And we have an acre land that borders that 14 so my son used to play on this land and its really fun out there. But there are some cool areas where you can see back in the day where people would start digging and mining for copper because this part of the country is known for its copper mines and producing copper.

And that’s a slow process, if you’ve ever looked at the mining industry those companies don’t just go in and live there for 4, 6 or 8 months. They are there for long time and they do their research and they’re constantly looking at the geography, images and trying to find where the best place for mine is. And that is so true when it comes to business. Business specially is what we do; it’s a relationship that you establish with your patients. That relationship doesn’t last for just 6-8 visits. This is not like a general practioner offers where you go there once every three or four years or you see your GP for your annual check up. This is something that takes work, when you’re changing speech and language skills and working on far motor skills, we see these kids and adults weekly sometimes for 6 or 8 months, or 52 weeks in a year. So we might see these kids sometimes 52 visits in a year and so we are building relationships. And our business needs to be supportive and sustaining so we can provide that service. If you have listened to my other podcasts, you’ll see that you can’t be flaky. You’ve got to provide a very good, very solid customer service business where you can meet those wants and needs of your patients. This is at just something you’re going to start, your private practice is not going to be started and up and running and going in 6 months or 8 months.

You can get it going and start working; this is a very long game and you’ve got to have that desire. I’ve spoke about that, I believe it was episode number 11, this last podcast. That inward motivation, that intrinsic motivation and you’ve go to have that power, you’ve got to have the desire to work and to do everything yourself. If you listen to other podcast it goes down to – taking the phone calls, doing the referrals, sending off reports to the Doctors when you’re finished. All that is part of the business and you’ve got to do it. You have to do everything in your power to make sure that you do the best job possible so that Doctors looks good; your patients were doing better; your employee are getting paid and everybody is happy. That’s what it is going to take to be successful. It’s not a quick easy fix; there is nothing easy about it. I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again, if it were easy everybody and their mom would be doing it.

When you make that commitment, you’ve got to stay in it for the long call. We are talking years folks years, years, years, years; and you will see that it will pay-off. You’ve go to do this. If you are sitting there thinking I’m sick and tired working for the Boss, I cant take off time on Holidays. I’m just going to nursing home and doing my nursing home gig. If you are just being sick and tired then be sick and tired. Start your own private practice and I’ll help you.

Another thing too, someone was asking me the other day about being successful. And they asked me “What’s the most important thing about being successful” and I really thought about that question because the answer is really simple – You got to be in this for the long call. I think a lot of people stop too early and they don’t give themselves the opportunity to be successful. You can’t quit before the miracle because sometimes the miracle is financial freedom sometimes it’s having more time with your family. Its freedom kind of come and goes you please. But that miracle takes time and you’ve got to do the right things and be honest in business and in with your checking account, with your money. You can’t keep co-payments; you’ve got the right that refund cheque because sometimes those families don’t know that they have a refund coming. You can’t keep that money. You’ve got to give it back; you’ve got to be honest. And that is what will set you apart from other people in the community because when they get that refund cheque they’ll know you didn’t have to do that, but they will be thankful you did.

I had a lady one time I gave her $800 cheque and she said “what’s this?” I said, “this is your money. You pay this co payments and we also got he insurance from the insurance company.” It was months later, almost a year. We just ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, these insurance company everyday just refer months, months and finally we got paid. That mom she looked at me, she had tears in her eyes. She said, “I needed this money so badly.” And I said, ”Its your money.” And because of that she still comes to our clinic today and she brings her kid, the kids are getting better and everybody is happy.

That is really what its all about, helping other people, being honest and doing the right thing. This is a long game and you can’t cut corners, because if you cut corners now, you’re going to cut corners in the future and your business will fail I promise you that.

Hey, thanks again for all the listener support and if you have any questions hit me up!

Thank you for listening!!

I was thinking the other day after speaking to this gentleman about his private practice.  With all of the technology at our finger tips, there is no substitute for old-school drive, desire, motivation and “elbow grease”.  He wanted to know what app that I used to organize “this” and complete “that”.  He kept asking what programs would sort out “this problem” and offer solution for “that” scenario.  At the end of the conversation, I encouraged him to not over-think speech therapy private practice startup and suffer from “analysis paralysis”.  I then encouraged him to get into action.  Because action and only action causes change.   In this episode, I discuss the original solution to getting things done:  Do it!

Here is a link to the Univision segment that was filmed at Therapy Group of Tucson, PLLC in Tucson, Arizona.

In this episode:

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Transcription of Episode Eleven:

I was talking to this guy the other day, and he was like “What do you do to get your things done, to make things work and how do you remember payroll, how do you do your referrals, how do you return your phone calls, you have a certain time of a day?” he was picking up my brain about all this things and I said, “No, its really old school, you just do it.”

[Commercial]

Well, Hello everyone! You’re listening to the Speech therapy Private practice Startup Podcast; this is episode number 11. 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.

I am so thankful you guys are listening and its just really need to get the questions, feedback, tweets and emails. I actually get couple of phone calls and just want to say please don’t because am busy in the clinic and I would be more than happy to talk to you via email so shoot me an email!

Now we just stand really busy at the clinic. We just had a couple of new hires. We are seeing more kids and adults than ever before. I just little find a new contract here in town to see more adults. I was actually talking to couple of therapists and they really enjoy treating the adults. And that’s one thing I want to talk to you about today is having a good mix in your job. If you do one thing all the time you may get bored with it. Its just a fact of life, its just something that happens to all of us. But it’s nice to have a healthy balance and a healthy mix. So what I have done to keep people happy in the clinic is bringing in more adults so we can treat the adult population as well. And I’ve always done that ever since day one when I started the clinic.

I have always focused on not just kids but adults as well because we deal with traumatic brain injury strokes, despeja voice fluency, all those things that you would see in children but adults as well. It’s nice to have that balance so we’re bringing in some more adults here in the clinic. Its always nice to serve both population’s pediatrics injuriatrics.

Also we were featured last week on Univision. If you go to the Univision website, you could probably Google or something like “Therapy group of Tucson” and you’ll see one of our Speech Pathologist who works in our clinic, her name is Sayleen, she is a Speech Pathologist. She is a very talented person and she was featured on Univision. We have the autism walk this past weekend and Univision came to our clinic and interviewed Sayleen and filmed a little bit of her session with this little guy he came into the clinic. She works with him on a weekly basis, so its really need to see Sayleen do her thing on television because she is really good and obviously the kid and the family enjoy the service. Its nice to get that recognition once a while because as a Speech pathologist we do this all day long. We are really good at what we do. We help so many people but we don’t get a lot of recognition so its nice to have that recognition at the Univision station here in Tucson came out. If you want to Google that you’ll probably find it somewhere. I think it’s on the Twitter account. You can look and there is a link to it. If you check out our website supportvoice.com that’s our clinic website, you’ll see there’s a link to one of our twitter account that shows that video. Kudos to Sayleen for doing such a great job!

I want to talk about the system of just getting things done. Its pretty much just do your work. I was talking to a gentleman the other day and he wanted to know how I got all of this stuff accomplish. How you do a podcast? How do you run business? How do you take care of your family and going to the Gym and exercising? How do you get all this stuff done? But there’s no App, there’s no magic electronic device that keeps me organized. I was talking to Christ and she’s our Ninja scheduler in the clinic and I was talking to her the other day. I work in piles. I literally have referrals on my floor in pile. So I have one area of town in one pile, another area of town in another pile. I know there are electronic apps in organizational tools to do this. I am an old school guy see touch and feel kind of a thing I have to put things in piles and that’s how I do my job. And it works.

I was talking to this guy the other day, and he was like “What do you do to get your things done, to make things work and how do you remember payroll, how do you do your referrals, how do you return your phone calls, you have a certain time of a day?” he was picking up my brain about all this things and I said, “No, its really old school, you just do it.”

These beautiful pictures were taken at Saguaro Lake Ranch.  More information can be found here.

And I remember recently I was on a fishing trip with my kid, we went camping with a friend of ours. They share the same classes at school but it was their dad and the child, and me and my son. We are on the fishing trip and I have to get up at 3 in the morning. On a vacation day and I have to run payroll. I didn’t want to do it. But we got to get paid and I have done that couple of times in past year and a half to 2 years. Sometimes you just have to get up and do what you got to do. So I got up, I snuck out of the cabin, I went to cross street, we were in Mesa, Arizona. And that’s way east of Phoenix, there is a beautiful lake called Saguaro lake and it’s an old dude range. Its been featured in old mini films, 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. And if look online, I’ll leave a link in the show notes here so you can see some beautiful pictures at this camping trip.

Here I am sneaking out trying to grab some Coffee from the cabin across the way there so I get Café day and get my Payroll done. But it took two hours; everybody is going to wakeup around 5:30 to 6 o’clock, the sun is going to peak-in over at the beautiful lake there. And Boom here comes Kyle, finished up on the Pay roll. Its just called ‘get it done’. There is no special app, its something internal, its something that is way deep inside of me. And I am sure people out there listening to the Podcast; because of you listening to this Podcast you have the same feeling too. Its way deep and down inside of you, and its just this energy that just come out and that’s called ‘Desire’. And you want to take that desire and you want to mold and shape that desire; and make things happen.

So if you are having problems with your own Speech therapy private practice from managing your employees or if you just stuck, shoot me an email and I’ll be more that happy to help you out. I still am looking for two students if you want to have some help on an individual basis starting or managing your private practice shoot me an email and the subject line put “THE PERFECT STUDENT” and tell me a little bit about yourself because again relationships they have to match. I can’t request everybody but I am picking two students right now. This is not a free service but you will be able to come in to Tucson. You can fly in. I’ll show you the clinic. You can spend a week with me and then you have access to me every week via a webinar and we’ll talk about your private practice and get it setup. I’ll be your mentor; I’ll help you do everything I do with my clinic.

If you want to do that send me an email, put “THE PERFECT STUDENT” in the subject line and I’ll reach out and help you. Also please go to the iTunes store there and leave us some good feedback because when you leave good feedback its going to other people find us quicker. Please do that and if you have any questions shoot me an email or you can send me a tweet at ‘privateslp’.

Thank you for listening!!

Sharon, a SLP from Washington State emailed me recently (actually while I was in the hospital passing a kidney stone — there’s a first time for everything, right?!) regarding out-of-network benefits (OON). In this podcast, I discuss a checklist that you can use in your business to process referrals that are out of network in your clinic.

In this episode:

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Transcription of Episode Ten:

There’re going to all these checklist as they’re bringing me back to the backroom and it was highly standardized and the treatment was really good.

Well, Hello everyone! You’re listening to the Speech therapy Private practice Startup Podcast; this is episode number 10. My name is Kyle Meades and I’m a speech and language pathologist since 1993 and these podcasts are designed to help you improve your business and your life one podcast at a time.

I want to start out like I do all my podcast and say thank you for listening to the podcast, thank you for sending me those questions via email, thank you for sending me those tweets and to let me know that you guys are listening out there. Its because of you guys out there we now have over 2000 listeners to the show from all part to the world and every state in united states. It’s because of you guys leaving good solid feedback on iTunes that other people can find the podcast easily. I want to give you guys value and I know I sound like a broken record but values is what you get in the absence of money. Listening is free for you guys and I want you to get the latest best information out there to help you either start or grow or improve your speech therapy private practice. And I just again want to say thank you, I really appreciate it and I want to start out this podcast with a Story.

So yesterday I am on the way taking my son to school about 07:30 and the way we go to school we go right past the speech therapy clinic. And my son always like, “Dad, there’s the speech therapy clinic.” And I said, “Yes sir, there it is”. New office, new place and this time he points to it and I see Esther, she is our Office manager. She is always back into her parking spot right there. But this time I had to turn in and he said, “Dad, where you’re going?”. I said, “Son, dad didn’t feel great and must meet attorney. I couldn’t even finish driving my son to school. I had the most excruciating pain the night before. I tried to take hot bath, I tried to get rid of it. I thought it will pass, I didn’t know what was going on. I am sucking it up to get my son to school on time and I just cant even drive the car so I pulled into the clinic and I banged on the door. Esther comes out and she says, “Hey”, and I am like all my interior. I said, “Esther, can you please take my boy to school? He tell you how to get there. He knows how to do this.” She said, “Whats wrong?”. I said, “I am in such bad pain. I cant even drive.” She gets the keys and she gets behind the wheel and all she goes to take my son to school.

And then I just kind of curl up in the fetal position in my office and couple of people they hear me. And they want to say, “Hi Good morning Kyle, how are you?”. You know how Speech pathologists are, they always want to figure out whats wrong and treat the problem. That’s how speech therapists are, we’re neurologists, psychologists and educational specialists. We’re all that stuff combine into one little package. So Christine comes in and she says “Oh my god, whats wrong with you?” And I’m like, “Awwwwww…” anyway she says I was stuttering, my pain was so bad.

Esther comes back after taking my son to school. She come in and says “Kyle, we cant have you here like this. You need to go to emergency room right now.” I said, “You know what I hate the hospital but I’ll do it.” We lease from Tucson Medical Center so we’re right across the street from the hospital. So she puts me in the car and drives me across the street and as soon as we get across the street, I am opening the door, I start vomiting I know it sounds gross but the pain was so bad. I just started throwing up in the parking lot while we were moving and I am just like get us to the hospital. I don’t know whats going on I have never ever experienced pain like this in my whole entire life.

So Esther gets to the front door of emergency room, they came out and get me to the wheel chair, they roll me into the ER there and I didn’t have to wait and gave them Blue Cross Blue Shield card and gave a copy of my license, they are going to these checklist. They need this and that information; are you allergic to anything. They were going to all these checklist as they’re bringing me back to the backroom and it was highly standardized and the treatment was really good. So I get into this backroom and then there was a nurse that came in and I really don’t even remember what was going on because I was in so much pain. I am on the ground like on my knees with my head against the gurney there. And this left-handed nurse, the reason I know she was left-handed is because I am left-handed too. She says, “This is classical kidney stones.” Anyway she comes in, this is before the Doctor comes and she’s been around. You can tell, she knows her stuff, she was very confident.

The nurse comes in and she can just tell I was in all this pain. She came up to me, “Mr. Meades, did you have anything to eat? Did you have a bowel movement? Did you pee today? All these standardized questions, because that’s what doctors, physicians and nurses do, they have a list of procedures that they have to follow. And I’m listening all this I can barely speak because I am in pain. Anyway to make a long story short finally the physician’s assistant didn’t even see a medical doctor. I saw a PA she came in she knew exactly what it was. She said, “Oh, you got kidney stone, this is classical.” I said, “Yeah that’s what the left-handed nurse said 30 minutes ago. But can I please have something for the pain.” And for those of you who know me out there folks, I don’t drink, I don’t take drugs, I don’t take anything, I am a nerd. I am a good person. And I just said, “Look you got anything Non Narcotic” and they said, “Look, trust me you want something for this pain.” Anyway they gave me some Non Narcotic injection. And it really worked, and then I went to CAT scan. You get the CAT scan and they get all this standardized procedures. They’re asking you all these questions; do you have metal inside your body? Do you have ever had surgery? again procedures and standardization. So we get through all of that and make a long story even longer.

About 4 hours later, 2mm kidney stone, here’s your discharge paper, everything standardized again, checklist after checklist. Go home drink lots of water, take this medications, you should pass this little thing in about next 4 to 7 days. So here we are the next day sitting here and listening all of this stuff and going through all this checklist and answering all of this questions.

I thought about this email that this lady named Sharon; she is a speech pathologist in Washington State. She says to me, “Kyle, Thank you so very much for the Podcast. I find them informative and they’re really helping me grow my private practice.” She says, “Hey, I have a question. When you receive a referral if it’s a pair that you are in contracted with, do you still call and schedule that family? And if so how long do you wait before you actually call them?” Great question and we have a checklist for that that we use in our office.

So I got online this morning and pull some forms out of our online forms there and I wanted to read you guys these steps that we take for our referral when we don’t take that pay resource. So this is good information and can you believe how I tied all this stuff in from my Kidney stone to a checklist for a payer that we’re not contracted with.

So here it goes, number 1, you receive the referral and the referral will usually indicate who ever the payer is.

So you go to number 2, the Payment source. Now in our clinic, users are going to be Private Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid or Cash.

Number 3, Eligibility at the time of referral, Why is that important? That’s important so when you speak to that family and get them on the schedule, you can kind of give them an estimate how much it’s going to cost. People want to know what it’s going to cost, don’t forget. Healthcare is the only business where everything is just financial ambiguity at its find. I went to the Hospital yesterday, I gave him an Insurance card, I don’t know how much they’re going to bill me. I don’t know how much they are going to collect from me. I don’t know the final amount. It’s the only business where we don’t have a final answer but I tell you what its very important when you call and schedule your patients you want to given them a range, we don’t take your insurance but based on our experience the phone call we have with your Insurance company today, 80% of its going to be covered and here is the amount that we are going to charge your Insurance company and 80% of which is X amount of dollars is going to paid for so you are going to be left with 20. So the range is going to be anywhere from 150 bucks which is our cash way up to 190 bucks. So there’s the range you can give the family because they have a right to know about what there cost of care will be. So that’s why you want to check the Eligibility at the time of the referral.

Number 4, you want to find out the out of network benefits for speech therapy. You ask if the patient has met there the doctor for this year and the representative should be able to tell you the actual amount that patient has spent on their medical care up to this date. So for instance, if you are in urgent when you call this people and get them schedule, they should be able to say, “Oh, so and so met their the Doc the last month, everything should be covered up to 80% over the plans going to get cover.

So number 5, you can then tell the family what their cost of care will be for the evaluation. You may even find that your Cash rate may be more affordable for that family rather than using their Out of Network benefits. Now here is something that you want to remember, since you are not contract with this Insurance Company you had the ability to price it that way because when you are not in network with this insurance company you are not bound to those terms of service. So you are able to say, “Look, here’s our cash rate and your Insurance will cover this amount and this would be your cost of care, so whichever wants cheaper.” That’s how we are doing in our clinic because people really like to have value.

So we are always say, “Look if you want to use your Insurance it’s going to be this much, If you want to do cash its this much, Its up to you what would you like to do. And once we make that decision, we have them sign and we are bound to those terms.

You can’t do that if you are in contract with Blue cross, Blue shield. You can’t just say, “Hey, they’re going to reimburse this and our cash rate is cheaper, so we’ll just go with cash. You can’t do that because if you get caught doing that when you are in contract their network with these Insurance companies, they can pay you and reimburse you that lesser rate because you’re doing that. You’ve got to follow the rules.

So I just wanted to give you guys this checklist, these five things that we do in our clinic when someone comes to our clinic and they have out of network benefits. So I hope this has been helpful for you guys. This is been a little bit of a story tell to as well because we all get sick. Thank the good lord above that we have insurance. Anyway I wanted to say Thanks again to Sharon for sending me this email and to kick this whole podcast off. It was because of that email I started to think about checklist, policies, procedures and kidney stone.

Thanks again to all of you out there who are listening to the Podcast and I’ll see you soon. Thank you!!

Distractions are everywhere. In today’s world, companies left and right are competing for just 2 seconds of our time in order to sell us something or capture our details. As a business owner, we have to remember that staying focused is very important to business growth and development. In this episode, I will share some strategies that will benefit you so that you can keep your eye on the prize, which is speech therapy private practice start up and growth.

In this episode:

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Transcription of Episode Nine:

Everybody is fighting for our attention but the reality of this is we need to stay focused, work on ourselves and try not to be so distracted. Because distractions I believe are what can really kill the desire to start your own business.

Well, Hello everyone! You’re listening to the Speech therapy Private practice Startup Podcast; this is episode number 9. My name is Kyle Meades and am a speech and language pathologist since 1993 and these podcasts are designed to help you improve your business and your life one podcast at a time.

Hey I want to say Thank you for listening to this Podcast, its been really need to have you guy listen and without you I wouldn’t been around and I just want to say Thank you for allowing me to communicate monthly with you because it absolute pleasure to get the emails, comments, tweets and all that stuff. Its really nice to have you guys out there and I really want to help you to start your own Speech therapy Private practice and so I am trying to always improve my vibe as well get valuable information so I can pass it on you.

Right now I am recording this podcast Episode in Manly Australia. Now you might say “Hey Kyle why are you in Manly Australia?” Well its an easy answer, I am a member of SuperFastBusiness.com it’s an online community of Top Internet Marketers and Business Owners. There is an annual live event every year in Manly Beach. Manly beach is a little bit North of Sydney so you simply up on a Plane, you fly to Sydney, you get on a train, you go to the fairy, right there is a upper house, you take a 30 minute ride to Manly and boom you’re right here in the heart of Manly beach. It’s just a beautiful place. People are so wonderful here in this part of the world and it’s such an honor to be around of this Top Notch Marketers and Business owners. People of like-kind mind and just sitting there swiping ideas and information, its just a privilege. So you guys are going to getting good value out of that too because I am going to implementing some of the things I’ve learn this week here at SuperFastBusiness live event. This was the eleventh event so I just want to give James Schramko shot out for hosting a wonderful annual event. It’s just privilege and honor to be associated with James and his community.

Also I want to say Thank you for listening and all the wonderful feedback we’ve received on the Podcast and because of the feedback that we’re getting it’s allowing other people on iTunes to find the podcast easier so if you wouldn’t mind to, please give us some feedback on Apple iTunes so we can help other people to find the podcast. I want to get that out of the way and I want to talk today about – Wasting time, and its something that I think since the invention of Smartphone, I think its something that getting more and more difficult to stay present. I just want to talk about this today on this Podcast because something that is close to my heart and something we had some speakers here at the SuperFastBusiness live event talk about. So I just want to bring that to light and share with you. With our Smartphones and Apple devices and Android devices we have this things on us all the time. We bring them into our bedroom and you sitting there next to the one you Love. They are on their Smartphone and you’re on your Smartphone. Sometime we don’t even hug and kiss to the one we love good night. We’re sitting there to closing out email and shooting off texts. These Tablets and Smartphones are just such an integral part of us that we are going to forget that there is a real world out there that is not electronic. That is one of the thing that I am going to talk about today i.e. How to not waste time getting so distracted with your Smartphone, because as a Business Owner, as a Clinic owner we have to stay focused. We have to take time for ourselves to do things like Journaling, reflecting and meeting our goals so we can be successful. So I want to give few strategies and share few tips on how to minimize the distractions that are caused by all these applications, tablets and smartphones.

One of the first thing I would recommend you do if you want to seriously take back some of your time is to start cleaning out that Inbox. When I say cleaning out the Inbox, I mean start unsubscribing to everything. I mean just go in their when you get those marketing emails or if you get those coupon emails, stop and think if this going to benefit me? Am I going to act on this email? If you’re not just simply unsubscribe and delete that email and that way you can start cleaning out your inbox and gaining control.

Another thing you really want to think about doing is get rid of all those Push notification on your Smartphone and tablets. Is it really to know that your Amazon.com product was just shipped 2.5 minutes ago or that the Cat food that you ordered yesterday is in Boise, Idaho and in direct route to you and its going to arriving hopefully before 10am tomorrow? Is it really that important or can I just allow other people to their Job, do it well and I don’t need to know about it. That’s another thing that we really want to start focusing on, get rid of the push notifications, turn off all that stuff and try not to look at that phone and check it 250 times a day because on average we check our phone 150 to 250 times a day. So if you really think about it we are training ourselves to be distracted. From a marketing standpoint think about all of the companies who are just trying to get 1 or 2 seconds of our attention.

We have all this little dings, bells, whistles and lights; everybody is fighting for our attention. But the reality of this is we need to stay focused, work on ourselves and try not to be so distracted. Because distractions I believe are what can really kill the desire to start your own business. A lot of people they want to do this and they want to do that but they just don’t take 2 or 3 hours a day and plan, implement goals, Journal and do some really nice things for themselves like go get a massage, haircut, grocery shopping or take a walk. I know that sound really simple and easy but its not. It’s really difficult to stay focused and to not waste time. I am guilty of it; I sit there sometimes on my laptop at night. I’ve got my beautiful partner Stefanie, she’s to my left and she’s on her thing, and I am doing my thing. She is a business Owner too. Sometimes it’s just hard because I click this link and I am in the black Internet funnel. So we all do it but there always a solution in that. Solution is to take 2 or 3 hours per day and not check your phone, and Journal, and reflect, make a gratitude list, stay grateful. You know those are some action steps you can take to not waste time, not be distracted.

I hope you found this podcast beneficial and if you did, would you please go to iTunes and I would really appreciate some 5 star feedbacks on iTunes. Also shoot a tweet out to ‘privateslp’, it would really mean a lot to me and thank you for getting in touch with me those who have emailed me already about The perfect student. I still am looking for 2 students who are willing and able to change their life. This is not a free service but all you have to do is reach out to me and we can talk about it. If it’s a good fit then absolutely I will work with you personally one-on-one. You can fly out to Tucson, Arizona. You can come out to the clinic and see how a nice, productive real clinic operates. You are more than welcome to pick my brain. The Perfect student will have direct access to me for a minimum of 6 months. You have access to my personal email or you can text me and I will do my best to help you in any way I can to improve your business and your life. I really want 2 students to shoot me an email and thank you for listening and I will talk to you soon.

Managing your expenses is a key part in having a successful private practice. One way to do this is by using an Apple or Android device and certain applications. In this episode, I will share my experience with one application called XpenseTracker. I have used this application to manage multiple properties, business mileage and business expenses. It’s worked well for me and I think it will do the same for you.

In this episode:

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Transcription of Episode Eight:

I am a firm believer of giving you guys’ value. And value is what you get in the absence of money.

Well, Hello everyone! You’re listening to the Speech therapy Private practice Startup Podcast; this is episode number 8. My name is Kyle Meades and am a speech pathologist since 1993 and these podcasts are designed to help you improve your business and your life one podcast at a time.

Now, I’m getting a lot of listener feedback and emails and I wanted to go quickly into this episode’s topic and it is ‘How to manage your expenses?’ this question came from a Speech Pathologist – her name is Monique, she wanted to know how I managed my expenses, how I tracked my expenses for the clinic. So I wanted to answer that question now. And I want to say this, when I started my own business, I really obsessed on tracking efficiently and effectively. You guys probably did the same thing.

I downloaded a bunch of trial software off of the internet. For instance I tried FreshBooks, I tried QuickBooks which is an Intuit-based platform. I did all those trials and I really had good intentions of sitting down and putting all that information at the end of the day into that program or those programs and trying to keep it organized and keep it tracked and it never worked.

And so around 2010, 2011, 2012 I started really utilizing this application on my smartphone and that app is called XpenseTracker with an X. And it’s made by a company called silverwaresoftware.com and I’ll provide the links to this Application on the Show Notes when I’m done with the podcast.

And again, these people don’t know who I am; I just know this stuff works. And I am a firm believer of giving you guys’ value. And value is what you get in the absence of money. You hear me say it over and over and over and over again. Value, Valuable information and this is something that will help you track your expenses. I don’t get any kind of commissions or affiliate or anything by throwing this out there. I just know this program is awesome.

And I used it up until 2015 when I had to switch. Our clinic got so busy and our expenses grew to a level where I had to hire a CPA two month ago to go into our checking account and credit card statements and itemize every single thing because it just took too much time. But this is the application that I used to manage my apartments. I’ve got 2 triplexes on a half an acre of land here in Tucson and I’ve got 6 units. I used to live in one of those units when I was starting my business. I lived very frugally. If you go to episode 1 and 2, you’ll hear me talk about those days when I lived in that two-bedroom apartment when I raised my son there.

But this application not only will it reconcile and track your business expenses but it can do property. It can also do mileage so when I got in the car and I went from one patient to the next, I was able to enter the mileage and it just figured it out. And it was so easy. Or when I went to Casco and got clinic toilet paper and the cleaning supplies, all I would do is take a picture of the receipt and it filed it and I just tapped a few buttons and it filed it in the right folder for me.

So I just wanted to throw that out there that XpenseTracker is a wonderful tool to use for making sure you can track your expenses and get the most benefit from your business expenses and deductions. It’ll sort your expenses by day, you can see running total in the currency of your choice, depending on what country you’re in. You can email your expenses, you can export them directly on your Mac or PC or you can PDF at the end of the year and give it to your CPA. It’s got a built-in backup feature. What I did was I paid and got an add-on for like a couple of bucks but it synced with Dropbox so everything that I did on my phone would back up just seamlessly to Dropbox. So we use a lot of Dropbox in our clinic.

I just wanted to throw that out there for you and answer Monique, answer her question. So you guys can get value from that. So there’s that and also I wanted to say I’m still looking for two students who are interested in working with someone who has experience starting a Speech therapy Private practice. If you are interested and again you’ve probably heard me say this in my other episodes: sometimes relationships just don’t match.

So if you want to consider being mentored or you need help from me in a one-on-one basis, make sure that you put “the perfect student” in your subject line and email me and tell me why you think we should work together and I will read that email and if it’s a good fit, I will get back to you and we can work together. That’s not free but it’s not too terribly expensive either. So if you want to learn and come in to Tucson and come have a look at our clinic and work with me for a week or two. You can have access to me for up to 6 months at a time, just send me an email and we can talk about it.

So also I wanted to say thank you guys for leaving some good 5-star feedback on iTunes because when you do that, it’s going to help other people find value. And again, you’re just helping other people learn something that you already know now. So when people search for “Private practice Startup”, they’ll be able to find this podcast too. So thank you for leaving that good quality feedback. I really appreciate it because I really do try to help as many people as I can.

And again, As always I want to thank you guys for giving me the opportunity to speak with you today. And if you ever need anything about Speech therapy Private practice Startup please go to privateslp.com keep an eye out because the membership website at PrivateSLP will be coming soon which is finishing up programming and I am making tons of content for the website and you’ll really going to like it because its got everything you need and everything we use in our clinic on our day to day basis, all the forms, how to bill it, how to collect it, its all there. And you’re going to get the community on top of that. So it’s perfect. You’re going to love it. So if you need anything, give me a tweet, shoot me an email. Thank you guys for listening.

Cognitive distortions are ways that our mind convinces us of something that simply isn’t true. These irrational thoughts are usually used to reinforce negative thinking or emotions, such as telling ourselves things that sound rational and accurate, but really only serve to keep us feeling bad about ourselves. Generally, these distortions are at the subliminal level, but with awareness they are easily identified.

Is this podcast, I discuss the 10 most common cognitive distortions and relate them to our world of speech therapy private practice.

In this episode:

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Transcription of Episode Seven:

You’ve got to take care of your mind as a business owner, as clinic owner, you’ve got to take care of yourself, especially your mind. You are your most important asset to your business.

Well, hello everyone, you’re listening to this Speech therapy Private practice Startup Podcast, this is episode number 7. My name is Kyle Meades and am a speech pathologist since 1993 and this podcast is designed to help you improve your business and your life one podcast, at a time. Well everyone it’s 2016. This is the first episode of 2016. Today is Monday January 4th, I’m really thrilled to be on the podcast today to share with you some things that I’ve been thinking about already this year. We had a wonderful New Year’s Eve I took my family up to Phoenix for the weekend. We went up and shared some time with a very good friend of mine. He’s a clinic owner up in Phoenix. We also went to a NFL football game. I took my son to his first NFL football game. It was the Seahawks versus the Cardinals. Now we live in Arizona, but my son, he loves the Seahawks he loves the Seahawks. So he had his number three Seahawks jersey and I’ll tell you what, the Cardinals got shut down and my friend that I was with in Phoenix he told my son, he said you know you’re going to be crying by the half-time. Because the Seahawks are going to lose and every time the Seahawks scored or made some great play, he turned around and looked at my friend and he gives him that little grin you know that little, I can’t repeat it but that little grin just shuts everybody down. But anyway, the Seahawks won. It was very fun. We had a great family time; we stayed at the Hyatt out in Scottsdale, beautiful resort, beautiful place to stay, the team for West Virginia who played Arizona State. They were staying at the Hyatt. My son was playing corn hole. I think that’s a game that was invented in Cleveland, Ohio if I know my history right, Cornole. Leave a comment if you know where cornole that game where you throw the beanbag up in the air and to the other side, it hits the little board and goes through the hole. Leave me a comment. Seriously, leave me a comment and tell me where cornhole was invented. I think it was Cleveland Ohio because my other half, she’s from Chardon, Ohio, which a suburb or a place out in the country kind of around Cleveland. She says it was Cleveland, but I’m not too sure about that. So let me knew where corn hole was invented.

Cardinals Got Killed by the Seahawks

Anyway, we hung out at the Hyatt and play corn hole with West Virginia football team who also beat Arizona State. It’s a really fun weekend and I was reading some books and reading some material and I got to reflect on what’s called cognitive distortions and I’m not trying to go all hippie on you, but this stuff is real. This stuff can stop you dead in your tracks, because your mind. You’ve got to take care of your mind as a business owner, as a clinic owner, you’ve got to take care of yourself especially your mind. You are your most important asset to your business. A lot of people think once you start that private practice, you can jet on out to the beach and just, you know, get rich on the beach and live that dream. But you know what, that’s not how businesses is, you’ve got to take care your business, you’ve got a take care yourself. You are responsible for all the patients that come through your doors; you’re responsible for all the employees that you have got to pay taxes. You’ve got to do those things, this is serious, and you’ve got to keep your mind clean. You got to take care of your body. You’ve got to eat well, you’ve got exercise, you can’t drink a lot of alcohol. You can’t get bloated all the time you got a have a clean, pure, clear head to operate a business and you know what, let me know otherwise, but last time I checked, you’ve got to keep a clean head. I go to Casco, I shop at Casco, and so I’m drinking my organic mighty green drink. It’s apples, celery, cucumber, kale, colly greens, lemon, mentees, spinnage, ginger and all these other things that I can’t even say, Barley grass, alfalfa grass.

Now for someone who comes from Southeast Louisiana, this was not on our dinner table. We didn’t have organic mighty greens. We had red beans, rice sausage, gumbo, jambalaya, it’s good food but I can’t eat that all the time. I’m trying to take care of myself, I’m exercising I just got out of the gym. I ran 5K, I went and did my stretches. I did my steam session, I did my Jacuzzi, you know I’m cutting up a little bit, listen to episode number six, I’m trying to liven up a little bit, trying to have a little fun. You know, think about it. Try to say Speech Therapy Private practice Startup podcast backwards [unclear] exactly, can you do that backwards? Well I just did I downloaded this, I reverse speech app from the iTunes Store downloaded it and that’s what came out. So I think it’s kind of funny. Trying to liven up a little bit. You know have some fun. You know, have fun, that’s what life is about and download the app it will be fun. Your kids will like it, the kids you work with in your clinic, your kids, you know your own personal children, and they will like it too. I don’t know about you guys, my sons always grabbing my phone and he’s 9, he’s playing on the phone all the time. Dad may I have your phone, he’s got his own phone but mine has more storage and so I’ve got more apps that he just put these things on. But anyway, check out that I reversed speech app and download it and have some fun with that.

Cognitive Distortions Can Be Dangerous !!

Yeah checklist of cognitive distortions, number one, All-or-Nothing thinking, that’s when you look at things in absolute black and white categories. You ever done that?

Number two – Overgeneralizing, that’s when you view a negative event as a never ending pattern of defeat.

Number-3 – Mental filter, you dwell on the negatives and ignore the positives. You ever done that?

Number-4 – Discounting the positives, you insist that your accomplishments are positive qualities that just don’t count.

How about Number five – Jumping to conclusions. There is two parts to that you can be a mind reader or a fortuneteller. Mind reading, that’s when you assume that people are reacting negatively to you, when there’s no definite evidence or B fortune-telling; you arbitrarily predict that things will turn out badly. You ever done that? Probably could write a book on that.

Number six – Magnifications or minimizing, that’s when you blow things way out of proportion or you shrink their importance inappropriately.

Number seven, Emotional reasoning you reason from how you feel, like I don’t feel like an idiot, so I really must be one or I don’t feel like doing this so I’ll just put it off.

Number 8 – Should statements, you criticize yourself or other people with should or shouldn’t or must or adds or have to or similar offenders.

Labeling, Number nine – you identify with your shortcomings. Instead of saying I made a mistake. You tell yourself I’m a jerk or I’m no good, or I’m a fool, or I’m a loser, or I’m stupid.

Number ten – Personalizations or blame, you blame yourself for something that you weren’t entirely responsible for or you blame other people and overlook ways that your own attitudes and behavior might contribute to a problem.

So those are ten cognitive distortions that I came across this past weekend when I was doing some reflection and some reading. I just want to throw it out there because I’ve noticed when businesses, things get stressful or things just don’t go my way. You know look I’m a vulnerable individual. I’m going to throw it out there and life is just not perfect all the time. Oh my gosh, you mean Kyle the podcast guy for Speech Therapy Private practice Startup podcast says his life is not perfect, that’s right. My life is not perfect and I make mistakes all the time, all the time every day and some of this negative thinking, this cognitive distortion comes up and I think it’s important because again, this subliminal self-sabotage, it’s real. It can happen. And it’s important to recognize it shinning a light on and call it out by name. So you don’t make that same mistake because, again, our mind is our most important asset to our business and our profession, and it affects everything. So we have to stay clear and stay on top of things. So I just want to share that with you guys because it’s important.

                                               Family Time is Important

You know if you have any comments or feedback please reach out anytime. I wanted to also give you some information right now I’m looking for two students. Since this is the first half of twenty sixteen I’ve got some time for two extra students. You would be able to fly into Tucson, come spend a week with me in the clinic and I can show you how to run and start up your own clinic or your own home health business. You can have direct access one-on-one access to me for at least six months, I’ll answer your questions, give you honest feedback. Real advice, I’ll be your personal coach, so to speak. This isn’t free, but for the right person. It’s got to be the right fit. You know not everyone is designed to be together. So what I’d like you to do if you think you have what it takes to start your own private practice and if you think that twenty sixteen is your year to be successful in private practice and speech therapy private practice I want to work with you and I want to show you how to do this the right way, because you know right now we have twenty five part and full-time employees. You know we’ve got benefits now in a clinic for our employees. You know we’re just growing. We see over twelve to thirteen hundred people per month. We do excellent work in this community and we’re very proud of it and I want show you how to do the same.

Also I’d like you to help others by doing one small tiny step. I want you to go to iTunes here and I want you to click on five-star rating and share your personal comments about this podcast because I want other people to have value to ad again value is what you get in the absence of money and this is a very, very valuable podcast and I want others to be able to find it easily. So please help others to find this podcast easily by giving it good, honest feedback, give us a good rating five stars would be very very appreciative and again, this is thank you for listening. If you have any questions, leave your comment to the bottom of the post. Have a wonderful week, folks. Thank you.

If starting and running a speech therapy private practice were easy, everybody would be doing it. Winston Churchill was a British statesman who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. He acknowledges six important principals that are important for success, and I relate these principals to speech therapy private practice.

In this episode:

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Transcription of Episode Six:

If this were very easy everybody and their mom would be doing it.

Well hello everyone! You’re listening to the Speech Therapy private practice Startup podcast this is episode number 6. My name is Kyle Meades and I’m a speech and language pathologist since 1993 and this podcast – The Speech Therapy private practice Startup podcast is designed for all you speech pathologist out there who want to start your very own speech therapy private practice.

Now, I remember starting my own business a few years back and I looked online and all I could find was a PDF download here or a little web page here and some general information. But I want this to be valuable for you all. And number one I want to say thank you for allowing me to talk to you today. I appreciate your time and because of that I want to give you valuable information.

Valuable information in the absence of money is where you get your value, and this podcast is absolutely free for you and I’m going to share with you all these things that go on in the day to day workings of a speech therapy clinic.

Now we have an outpatient clinic here in Tucson Arizona. We also have a home health company in Tucson. And, between those two businesses we have approximately 1200 patients per month and 23 to 24 full and part time employees who help out. So between all of those people and all those patients we’re getting good at what we do and I want to give you valuable information, so that’s what I’m doing with this podcast today.

I want you to hear a comment I received on privateslp.com that’s the website where you can reach me, it’s kind of my portal. You can go there to the Contact Me section and you can go to the very bottom of that privateslp.com website. You can use speak type application. It’s at the bottom you can click it and record from your own laptop or computer there and I’ll get the message instantly to my email address and I will read your question online here on the podcast so other listeners out there can gain more insightful information too.

So if you want to contact me that way you can just again go to the contact section of privateslp.com, at the very bottom there’s a speak type application. You can also email me directly, I’ll get your email that way or you can leave a comment on privateslp or simply give me some feedback on iTunes. I really would appreciate a five star rating from you, because when you give me good ratings on iTunes that’s going to allow other people like yourself realized that these podcasts are valuable.

And it really means a lot to me and it’s going to mean a lot to other people. Also want to tell you guys that we are now approved through the Google platform for their podcasting service that hasn’t come out yet but it actually set to release very soon. I don’t know the actual date on that, if you guys know when that’s going to happen please put that in the comment section below. But you are more than welcome to listen to us on iTunes, google platform or you can just simply go to privateslp.com, all my episodes are uploaded there where you can leave your comments.

But I wanted to read a recent comment that I received earlier in the month, her name is Camille and it says…”Hi Kyle, I’ve been thinking about private practice for a while. I’ve been a therapist for 7 years in a variety of settings for children, children Hospital, schools, agencies…” and she says…

“I am currently in the school since I have young children of my own. I would like more freedom in the decision making and possibly make more money than working for someone else. Your podcast is so inspiring for me. I’ve been doing a lot of research and I have so many questions for you. One of my big questions is hippa. How do you develop your privacy policy? Did you get a lawyer right away? I don’t have a lot of money so startup would have to be very small in addition to liability insurance and business registration. I would love your advice. Thanks!!”

Well that is a great question I do have an answer and it’s going to be kind of long so let me kind of go back. If you go back to my episode, number one and number two you will realize that the first time I started my own speech therapy private practice I did that with a lawyer. He was a high dollar attorney here in town, really good by the way. She answered all my questions, she gave me a lot of advice and she gave me a really big bill at the end. And I took that bill and I paid it and I was happy to have that information. The second business I started a few years later, the home health agency that we now have I use the services of a paralegal because all I needed to do was to get that name file with the state, the incorporation etc.

So the first part of the question Camille sitting here she says she wants more freedom with private practice, yes. Private practice will give you more freedom because you’re going to get to pick and choose when you want to see patients and when you don’t want to see patients.

But let me tell you this, when you start that private practice it’s a lot of work. Nothing comes easily and I need to stress that. This is not for everybody because I’m going to be seriously honest when I say this. If this was very easy everybody and their mom would be doing it. This is a tough business and it’s not for everybody. I’m just going to say it again. This is not for everybody because you’re going to be doing all the referrals, you’re going to be doing all the billing, you’re going to be doing all the scheduling, you’re going to answer the phone. Go back and listen to podcast 1 and 2 of mine you’ll see all these little intricate parts that come with private practice. So just remember that when I say it’s not easy.

Now it’s something that is very doable if you have the drive and motivation to succeed. Now talking about lawyers and hippa. Yes hippa is real, we have privacy laws that we must follow. I am right now developing a membership website for you guys. It’s probably not going to be ready to go until the end of January 2016. I’m recording this on December 1st 2015 so it’s going to take me about another 60 days, the programmers just finishing up on the site but I’m going to have it loaded with all these privacy policies, all of the paperwork, all of the forms, all of the referral forms, everything you need to start your own private practice it’s going to be on there. And not to mention I will be on there answering your question anytime you want to reach out to me. Anytime you can shoot a message to me through that membership site and I will personally answer your email and get to you that day with an answer. So this is really exciting because I just keep getting more and more questions like this.

Let me also say that when I first started my own private practice I got into what’s called Analysis Paralysis. Now we are all smart right, you know speech pathologist we have our Masters degree here in the States. I know in New Zealand and Australia it’s a bachelors degree but still we are all very educated, very smart people. You know it’s just what we do it’s how we roll.

Now sometimes we tend to overthink things. Don’t let a policy in procedure stop you from starting your own private practice. I mean it! Go ahead and get into action. Call a paralegal, get an appointment with the paralegal, get some name that you want to call your business, go get a checking account at the local bank and get your articles of incorporation. It’s that simple when you want to start working at your office or your home office what you can do is simply go to American Speech and Hearing Association you see links to purchase, professional liability it’s not that expensive. Honestly the policies are very, very affordable and we have many employees in our business. I think it’s about $750 a year for 24 people. Now you break that down and it’s really cheap and its a lot cheaper than you think.

So don’t get into analysis paralysis, get into action, get that name register with the state. Get into action, get that business going and for you who want more information and want to work with me directly go to privateslp.com. And you’ll see very soon there is going to be a membership area you can simply subscribe to the membership and you can have direct access to me right there.

Ok moving on I also want to let you guys know that we’re getting a lot of listeners around the United States and the world. It’s kind of cool because we have many listeners out of the US. We also have listeners in Australia, and Canada, South Africa, the Philippines, United Kingdom, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and India. And I want to personally say thank you guys for listening to the podcast and again if you want to get in touch with me go to privateslp.com and you can reach me there.

I also wanted to say it’s very important to remember that I do have a podcast, I have two very successful businesses, I have some wonderful people that work with me, but look I’m not perfect. I have my stuff that happens to me every single day. Just for instance we’re about to leave and go off for Thanksgiving and the apartment that I used to live in. I only use apartment. I have six apartment here in Midtown, two sons in Arizona and I raise my son in one of these apartment well I was starting this business. I have a tenant in there right now and someone threw a rock all right in front of her window and broke into our apartment and it really burned me out to see that people would do something like that.

But, you know we learn from our mistakes, we learn from our past experiences so what I did was I immediately went over there had a brand new window installed for one of my tenants there and I said look do you feel comfortable staying here tonight, if not we have an extra bedroom you can sleep in our house. You know she was fine she used to be in law enforcement she’s a tough lady. But you no – compassion. We have to have compassion for others and you know my life is not perfect. I got drama just like everybody else. I’ve got headaches, we all have bills. You know money sometimes is great, money sometimes is tight but don’t think of me as some kind of great big Guru out there who has his big radio show, no I’m Kyle. I got a little podcast, I got a great little clinic, I got wonderful people who work with me and if you need help please reach out to me.

Also we need to keep things real because you know things do happen and I need to say it so that I can hear it myself. I have so many failures under my belt. My whole life even with Hurricane Katrina going through all that craziness and move into Tucson you know it’s a long story. But life really worked me over one point in my life, I didn’t have much left. I remember driving the Volvo and the transmission just went out on Broadway in Campbell and here I am I don’t have enough money to go and buy a new car, I don’t even have enough money to put down for a new car. I’m like what am I going to do now but it’s failures and problems that happened to me that made me who I am today that makes me work harder than anybody I know and makes me more grateful than a lot of people I come across. And that is what I try to project when I get around the patients and their families and the employees who work with me. People who know me know that I’m really honest hard working guy and that’s what I want to share with you guys today too. Keep it real and remember that our failures are what’s going to keep us successful in the long run.

And you know when you get too comfortable that’s when the problems occur. You know when you’re green you grow, when you’re ripe you rot. And I have to make sure that I stay green, that I read books, and I exercise, I take care of myself because that’s where the learning experiences. When I’m out of my comfort zone it’s when I do my best work. So I just wanted to throw that out there.

Now I want to go through 6 principles and if you go online I want you to look at Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill was one of Britain’s biggest leaders. He was a compassionate, kind person who really understood people and he went through six principles and I wanted to share those six principles with you because they are very important to be successful in speech therapy and really successful in life.

First thing I wanted to talk about was focusing on what’s in front of you. Now I need to remember that too because it’s important to stay focused because you know if we get to buckle down in the past or we get just worried about what’s going to happen in the future we don’t really get to appreciate the now. And right now is where some of life best moment can occur. You know because again you need now to grow in the future.

The second thing I wanted to share is be concerned about action. You want to stay present, you want to lighten up and take small steps. Now when you start that private practice you don’t just want to go to the paralegal or go to your lawyer and next thing you know I’m going to see 50 patients. It doesn’t work that way and if it did everybody would be doing it. You want to take small steps, get out a piece of paper and a pen and make a checklist. Go to a lawyer or paralegal get your name incorporated, go open up your business checking account. All those things that I talk about in the first 1 and 2 podcasts you want to do those things. You also want to keep it real lighten up a little bit. You know this is life this is supposed to be exciting and you’re going to have ups and you’re going to have downs but keep it real and stay present.

The third thing is you have to stay optimistic. How many times do we get around these god awful people you are just pessimistic complaining, moaning, groaning just gripe. Who wants to be around somebody like that? Stay optimistic. You want to set examples for families and patients and people who work with you be positive. Hey buy people lunch, buy somebody a cup of coffee be optimistic.

Also number 4 you want to be persistent, don’t give up. Again when things happen they happen for a reason. It’s you’re higher power way of just saying hey look at this in a different way. I mean people always say look at Hurricane Katrina, you know Carl, I know you’re from New Orleans. It was the best thing that ever happened to me because if it weren’t for Hurricane Katrina I wouldn’t be talking to you right now, I’d be still working in New Orleans doing the day to day grind working for the man and be miserable and being bored. I guarantee it.

Number 5 don’t lose your enthusiasm stay enthusiastic keep it real have fun. And number 6 Most negative things never ever happened. Now I love to worry, worry is fun sometimes for me it keeps me busy and occupied when I don’t have enough to do. Hey let’s worry, let’s turn that worry switch on that will keep me busy right? Wrong! Most negative things ever happen they never come to fruition so please don’t forget the six principles. Winston Churchill look him up awesome leader. And look if you guys need anything for Speech therapy private practice please hit me up at privateslp.com and you can send me a tweet. Go to twitter and my handle is privateslp. And if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me I really appreciate you guys listening I would appreciate some 5 star ratings on Google and 5 star ratings on iTunes and thank you for listening.

People come and people go. Business is up and business is down. One thing that needs to remain consistent is you. You are the only constant in your business. Financial, emotional and physical health are keys to starting and maintaining a successful speech therapy practice. If you ever need help with your speech therapy private practice, contact me . I am here to help you.

Your first office doesn’t have to be perfect.  As a matter of fact, easing into your new space and growing slowly over time is a smart way to manage cash flow while growing your referral base.  In this episode, you’ll hear how we moved from community visits to our first office, then adding 2 additional offices in that suite before settling into our first free standing clinic.

In this episode:

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Office Suite Number One

Office Suite Number One Waiting Area

Transcription of Episode Five:

Well, hello everyone! You’re listening to the speech therapy private practice start up podcast. This is episode number 5. My name is Kyle Meades and I’ll be your host for today’s show and I’m a speech and language pathologist since 1993. And after a hurricane Katrina hit the New Orleans, you know, I’ve moved to sunny, dry  Tucson Arizona and I was just really bummed out.  I was really sad about the whole hurricane and I had to pick up and start all over from scratch.  So I decided to start my own speech therapy private practice and at that time when I did start it, I looked online and I remember searching for just anything (and if you listened to my other podcast, you’ll hear the same story where I searched for a mentors, I searched for help from the small business association, I searched and searched and searched and I just couldn’t find any information design for a speech therapists and speech language pathologist out there who wanted to start their own private practice).   So that’s what I’m doing in this private practice start up podcast – showing other speech pathologist how to do this correctly.

And when I say how to start a private practice, I’m not really talking about just working on the side and seeing one or two patients and making a few bucks here or there. I’m talking about a business that will support you and your family for years to come. I’m talking about employees, paying taxes, paying rent, all those things that a normal brick and mortar business would do. So that’s what this podcast is designed to do and in today’s episode, I wanted to share with you the way I started my own brick and mortar business and how I transitioned from seeing people in the community to seeing people in my first office. So, that’s what I wanna to talk about in today’s podcast – how to get that first office.

It’s just a really kinda of a humorous story;  For those of you who know me about my first office, it’s pretty funny. So, I just wanted to share this whole scenario with you guys and this is my story, so, it will kind of give you a little bit of an idea on how to ease into that brick and mortar thing. When I first started, again, if you to my other podcast, podcast 1 and 2, you’ll hear about how I started seeing people in the community. There was a time when I just couldn’t physically drive to all the consumers homes. So, I really got tired of doing that and gas was expensive at that time and I just didn’t have all of that time available. So, what I did was I got online, I think it was craigslist.org and I searched office buildings.  There was a picture of this pretty pretty building, and a picture of that pretty pretty building, and a picture of this not so pretty building and a picture of that not so pretty building. I was thinking, what part of the town could I start in? You know, I wanted to be, professional and have a nice comfortable office so when people would bring their kids or their mom after their stroke or whomever. When they come to the office, I wanted them to be comfortable and have a nice professional experience. So, you know in Tucson, we’ve got this nice part of a town called the Foothills and in the Central part of town we’ve got the University and the Medical Center and then you’ve got the south part of the town going towards in Green Valley.  I wanted to stick close to where I was living because that time I was living in a two bedroom apartment  and I wanted to stay close to the middle of the town. I wanted to stay around the University of Arizona, the professionalism of the university – I wanted to stay central because I felt that if i can stay Central, I could hit everyone.  So, I started looking for business space in the middle of the town. And I remember calling a nice beautiful location, it was called La Paloma, it’s a nice resort here in Tucson. There was an office center there I specifically said “Hey do you mind if I come see some office spaces and then they said, what do you do? I said, I’m a speech pathologist, I work with kids and adults.  She said “This may not be the place for you”. Because at that time, it bummed me out and I’m thinking “Why wouldn’t my business fit in your corporate center?” And when I really started looking at the other tenants in that area, you know, you had accountants and lawyers and everything else but speech therapist.

                                                        Free Standing Office Number One

                                                        Free Standing Office Interior

                                                                  Free Standing Office Waiting Area

So with my kids (I don’t know about your kids you see in your clinic) but sometimes we get a little bit rowdy.  We see children with autism, language delay, speech delay, voice problems, fluency problems,  and sometimes kids get rowdy.   They get a little bit loud. So, I got the feeling that this lady didn’t want a bunch of kids running around in their courtyards. So, she gave me the number to a wonderful person who really helped us out. She’s a local attorney here in town, she rented us an office suite and her complex and it was just really nice. It was a nice, beautiful little office and there was a courtyard kind of inside with trees and sky lights and then the back, she built as a playground and it was just a really nice. It was nice parking in the back. I had one big office and in that one office I remember she was so nice and let me borrow furniture. Now she’s a lawyer and the furniture that I got from her to borrow was law furniture, I had this big huge desk.  I remember putting my feet up one day and (I even took a picture of this, I’ll see if I can find it and put it on this post) I remember putting my blue converse sneakers up on the desk and I’m like “man I have finally made it. I’ve got my first office and I had my printer over there on the right. My little Vonage box on the right and my router on the flickering lights on the right. You know, mind you, these kids love this flashing lights so the kid came in wanted to grab my router. It’s so like “uh! It’s high dead thing.” But anyway, I had my first big office. This was my place. You know, when people came in, there wasn’t somebody to greet them. But they would walk through the door and then they come in into this atrium area with these beautiful skylights and trees and they sat down. And they waited their turn and then I would greet them in the lobby and say “hey good to see you today! Let’s get the treatment going and let’s keep everything go in so we can see your child and come on in for the evaluation. Did you get the paperwork that I emailed you and I bring them in the office? And again, it’s just one big room and I had the desk there, I do the interview and I had the kids on the ground there and they were playing with their toys while I was talking to their families and you know, it’s just got the job done. Well, about three or four months later, that one room I just kept growing, you know, the referrals just kept coming in because if you listen to other podcast, I’m sure you had a get those referrals and market your services in your community and talk to pediatricians and put the referrals just kept coming in. And I was given a lot of referrals from the website and again, if you go to the other podcast, you’ll learn how I did that. But you know, we just kept growing and then I remember talking, her name was Joanie, she’s an attorney here in town and I said you know “Jonie, I’ve got one office, I think I could probably hire my first employee now. I don’t like to have a, do you have any rooms available with maybe two rooms?” She said, “let me see what I could do”. You know so and so down the hall, they’re retiring” so maybe you could have their office and we had a wonderful child psychologist in our office, his name is Dr Jerry Day, really super cool guy. He had an office and when he retire he had that one big room like I was telling you about. But it was a small little waiting room attached to the side. Well, my big head said “well, look I could take that waiting room and put an assistant in that room and then I could be in the other room doing treatments and at the same time my SLPA, my speech language pathologist assistant was doing treatment in that room. So, that was my idea.

                                                        Free Standing Office Number Two, Outside

                                                                  Free Standing Office Number Two

                                                        Free Standing Office Number Two, Inside

Our front office/billing crew AKA “the bosses” (L-R,  Angelica, Esther, Nikki and Sarah)

And when Dr. Day retired, I took their office. I remember my first office was 500 bucks in month for rent. My second office Jonie gave me a deal and she said “what about 800 bucks?” So, you know, maybe in the cautious money guy. I said, I think I can make that happen. So, paid Jonie 800 bucks a month and I had two rooms. Well, I hired Nikki, who’s one of the speech therapy assistants in our clinic, she’s still there today, one of the first people ever to hanging in there with me and she’s awesome. She was seeing people in one little room and I was seeing people in the other room and we just made it happened. It was really cool. We had not one but two families coming through the door, they walk in and they go to the atrium and then there was this nice big Ficus trees and the kids are out there and mind you there’s other person in the office space too. We had programmers who make video games. We had one guy who’s an attorney and Jonie the attorney, she’s got her corner office. You know she’s top dog so she’s got her spotted. We had a hanky pancreas. And one of the rooms and so, you know we had all these people around and here we are with our speech kids coming in and sometimes these kids would yell and scream and they want to play with toys and sometimes I would ask them to go outside and you know, when it wasn’t too hot, because in Tucson, it’s a 100 and gazillion degrees outside. So sometimes the kids could go out to the play area. Sometimes when it’s too hot or very cold the kids would have to stay inside. So it kinda a little bit loud in that waiting room and I always felt kinda nervous when the kids would yell and scream and you know, we just kept growing then I hire another speech and language pathologist assistant. And her name is Amanda and she’s still with us and she’s awesome and does a great job by the way. So, here’s Nikki and Amanda, we had to get our third room and I remember Jonie gave me, you know, rent of a thousand bucks. So now, we’ve got three big rooms. I’ve got my one big square then two little squares and I’m in the one big room and then Amanda and Nikki were in the other two rooms. And you know, we’re just all work in and seeing kids and it is just got crazy. I don’t know if you guys, some of you may remember school house rock which was a television show on Saturday mornings and you would see the school house pumping out you know, sound and energy. But that was us we were just constantly busy and then of course, with the busyness, you had screaming and yelling kids. So before you know it, I knew what will happen we started kinda make a little too much noise and you know, kinda taken people off. It’s not a good idea to have a speech clinic next door to a hanky pancreas and massage therapist because it just doesn’t work. You know, you’ve got speech kids running around, your autistic kids running around and your center integration kids running around and we’ve got family with. You know one kid’s coming to speech and you’ve got a four, five kids whether and they’re all screaming and yelling and going on to the bathroom.

That’s another thing. Bathroom. People will tear up your clinic bathroom, they’ll take your toilet paper, and they’ll throw it everywhere. They’ll take your Febreze, all that stuff. It’s just crazy. And I remember finally Jonie came to me and she said you know, I just don’t think this is working out. And I’m like uggh! I knew it was coming. But you know, when you work with kids, it’s just part of the job. You know, it gets loud, crazy, screaming, yelling, you know, we just started to take off a lot of people the hanky pancreas, the lawyer, you know, it’s the programmers, I’m out of the programmer’s care they’re always just “rapping sound” on their keyboard. So, they always working at night till 3 am anyway. But you know, we just really outgrew that space so. You know we worked from those 3 rooms and I told Jonie “Thank you, I cleaned the carpets just make sure that everything was perfectly clean when I left when I got another office right across from TMC, Tucson Medical Center in Tucson area there is this Medical park. And I remember negotiating, I would walk bottom rent. So it was my large company here in town and we got our first free standing clinic. And it was so cool because we had our own waiting room where kids could scream, yell, you know tear up my Ficus trees you know, throw books, rip books, take toys, whatever, I mean you know how it is. I mean, it just happened. It’s kids. And it’s great to have those kids around. And we had our own waiting room, we had six offices and I remember, Wow, we had six treatment rooms that used to be and old irenology practice. And we were able to take that practice and turn it into a speech clinic. We’ve got the dollar store and hand cool decorations from the CL Lynx, so it’s just really really nice. So you know, that lasted you know, for a while and we were able to see kids in that office but the time finally came when we outgrew our office. So we needed more space. Because the need was so great and the Tucson area that we just have to move again. And this was only, I had a three year negotiate. A three year lease and this is only after a year and not even a year and a half. So, we had to move to another office in the same area. So I talk to the management company I said, hey we’re simply just growing do you have any more space? Or this is where Im pretty good with business but I don’t have to deal anything. I’ll just stay here until my lease terms and then I’ll just go somewhere else. Now, Kyle I think we can find something. The management company, you know, route us around in the medical part in the 3 buildings to complete dumps. The third was perfect, it’s just a huge gym area and I just saw a gym area and I saw the same amount of a treatment room. Seven treatment rooms but just more space and I said, you know what, this will work.

The hospitals are so nice, TMZ is such a wonderful people to work with. And it really helped us. They helped us getting into this largest space and I just didn’t want to pay the money but I had to. You know, when you need to do what you need to do, you just do it. So I took that money and put it into this new office and that’s where we are now, Rosemount in grant road right across from TMZ but that’s the progression that our business took to get where we are today. And why am I telling you all this because you need to know out there that when you start your private practice you don’t need to go out and buy or rent all the space because let’s be honest, what if you don’t get that patient flow when you want it. You’re lap holding the bank, and if you boring all that money from the bank, you could have to keep making those payments and you’re gonna be straps so you wanna grow slowly. You wanna grow very systematically and there’s nothing wrong with moving a little bit. And I don’t know of you guys remember podcast 1 or 2 when I’m talking about you know, you have your phone with Vonage, your internet, you can take all that with you. So your phone number won’t change. It will grow with you. So I wanted to share the natural progression of our business so those of you out there who would thinking about starting your own speech therapy private practice can see it. And it’s okay. Patients can move with you to different locations and they’re really, they’ll be excited for you. They’ll be “Oh Kyle, look! You’re growing again. It’s so nice. This is a nice office. I like this one compare to the other one and remember when you were working at the attorney’s offices, it’s so much better. Our kids can yell and scream and not get “shhhh” by everybody in the office.”

Exactly, so, that’s a natural progression of our business. Hey, if you want, why won’t you post some comments at the bottom? Let me know how your businesses doing? Let me know what kind of space you have for your private practice? I would love to see how you guys, you know what kind of buildings you have? What kind of places you lease? What kind of place you rent? I’d love to see it. Share us some information down there on the comments and always, if you have any questions about speech therapy private practice, please go to privateslp.com. You can contact me there. I’ve got a SpeakPipe application there you can leave me a message for the podcast. And I’ll answer them in the podcast so also if you have any questions about private practice start up or if you would like me to work with you, shoot me an email I be more than happy to get back to you and again, thank you for listening to the podcast, and I would really appreciate some five star ratings from you all and thank you for listening.