S2E1: How I Made My Speech Path Business Season Preview

As a speech therapist, have you ever been curious about the entrepreneurial world?  This season, we are so excited to bring you a line up of remarkable professionals who've taken that leap. From clinic owners to digital innovators, hear firsthand accounts of how these passionate and driven individuals manage to create a dream that becomes success.

Get ready to be inspired by the stories of our guests, each sharing a distinct narrative of how they've carved their unique paths in creating their business. You will hear about successes, challenges, insights and dreams.  These conversations will kindle a renewed passion for the field and perhaps even spark the entrepreneur in you!

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For more information on speech, language, feeding and play - visit The Speech Source Website - https://www.thespeechsource.com/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to the Speech Source Podcast. My name is Mary Brazeek and I'm Kim Dillon.

Speaker 2: 0:11

We are two pediatric speech language pathologists with a combined 25 years of experience.

Speaker 1: 0:17

We are your source for speech, language feeding, play and much more in between.

Speaker 2: 0:23

We are so excited about the new season we have coming up on the Speech Source Podcast. It's called how I Built my Speech Path Business. We have found some amazing speech therapists who have gone through this whole process of starting their own business. We reached out to them and asked if they wanted to be a guest on the podcast. We were really surprised at everybody that said yes. It was really exciting. We just started from there. We started interviewing. Everybody is so different in the way that they have started their businesses. They're doing different things. You're just really excited to share each episode with you this season.

Speaker 1: 1:06

This season is going to be so good. On the back end, kim and I have been editing these episodes. We've been obviously scheduling our interviews. That's done virtually that part is we schedule our interviews over Zoom. But then recently, kim and I got to meet these people in real life Many of them. It was just the coolest experience. I'm so excited that everyone is going to get to be brought in to this season. Kim, I don't know about you, but one of the big things for me when I started a private practice was the whole idea of leaving a community that was in my workplace. The whole idea that I would go off on my own and not have coworkers was a really big, scary thing to me. There's actually this incredible community out there in the private practice world. That is crazy. It is true friendships, true women supporting other women and collaborating and lifting each other up, and it's just this whole world that I feel like you and I certainly did not even know it existed, little unhoped. It existed.

Speaker 2: 2:32

I completely agree with you. One of the things I've been most surprised about is we're reaching out to people who we already know are very successful in their business.

Speaker 1: 2:40

We know they're busy.

Speaker 2: 2:42

We know they have a lot on their plate. Their immediate response back to yes, sure, I'll come on your podcast, not knowing who we were before we reached out to them, just shows how willing people in this community are to support other people trying to work and start a company. That has probably been the most exciting thing for me. You're right, we did not plan this season knowing that we were going to even have the opportunity to meet Several, that we interviewed four or five, I can't remember, but it was just so exciting that that happened during this time.

Speaker 1: 3:24

I had no idea that this was such a big community. One of the things that people have told us as feedback even the women that we have asked to be on is every time they said yes, each time they said, oh my gosh, this is such a great topic, this is so fresh, it is so needed. I wish I had this out there. When I was starting my own private practice, kim and I went about this season thinking how do they do this If we want to know this information and think it's fascinating?

Speaker 1: 4:07

I bet there's a lot of other people who think the same way and would love to be able to go off on their own, but they maybe need the skills, the courage, just more insight on what being an entrepreneur in healthcare looks like, because, like we've talked about with so many guests, we don't learn this stuff in grad school. If you're not from any kind of business background which Kim and I are not then it's really hard to figure out how you're going to do it. These women and from what we've seen and we've experienced, you can be so successful and have such a happy, fulfilling career and really renew your love and passion for the field, which is amazing.

Speaker 2: 4:53

Right, and some of these women are still working for a company and they're doing something on the side. Some of them have fully transitioned into their own company, and it's a range from clinic owners who are still doing direct therapy, but then we have people who are doing virtual therapy, we have podcast hosts, we have creators that has been a huge theme across this and it's digital course creators, content creators, app creators, educational website design and creation.

Speaker 2: 5:25

It's just been incredible Everything we've come across, and something that has been very interesting to me is everyone's done it a little bit differently and it's worked. And so to hear someone's journey from the very beginning into what they've created and to see that people can do it differently is, I think, really encouraging. And even between you and me, mary, we did things differently, we have modeled our private practices very differently, I would say, and they're both really successful. And so it's just exciting to hear other people's stories, because, as you're hearing people talk about what they did, that might really get you excited.

Speaker 2: 6:07

But then you might hear something else and you'd be like no, that's not really like for me, and so I think that's great that we have so many different examples of how these women have built a business.

Speaker 1: 6:20

You're so right because each one of these women did it differently and you and I are so different in our practices, but there were also some really big common themes throughout the series which surprised me. It was kind of thinking more of the nuts and bolts of how you start a business, but once we started this season it became so much more. It was really more how do these women, how are they being their best selves? It was incredible just how the themes of authenticity and having time for yourself and renewing your passion and your field and being able to figure out boundaries and how you're going to manage the workload and the family load and how do you find happiness and joy through all of that was really, I don't know, surprising, and it was really renewing too for me to see that kind of what you and I've seen so much of. The details don't matter as much as your perspective and your energy and how you approach being an entrepreneur.

Speaker 2: 7:37

You're right. When we first started the interview process, one of our big topics that we wanted to talk about was balance in creating a business and then home life. I think we quickly realized that that's a really abstract idea when you're talking with anyone who is running a business, but the things that they did talk about, like you just mentioned, being authentic to who they are, finding something they really have a passion for, creating boundaries, all of those things that they talked about doing kind of just naturally creates this balance in their life.

Speaker 1: 8:17

You know, one thing that I was also surprised at for some reason, I don't know why, because, thinking about it, and especially in perspective of what I do as a feeding therapist, it makes so much sense. But a lot of these women, as we talked about self-care or as we talked about the balance of their schedule, so many of them talked about how their workout routine and their activity was a big part of being a non-paterprenuer, that they were scheduling that as much as they schedule a session In the same way. That it's just I think we could do a whole episode on this honestly is just that mind-body connection was super important for a lot of these women. We had a woman talk about how she loves Zumba. Another one talked about scheduling workout classes in between going to clients or playing tennis.

Speaker 1: 9:16

There were all these women that talked about that and, honestly, that was inspiring for me. It actually gave me the courage to say you know what? I am going to forego these two hours in my schedule and now I play tennis as a part of my day and just schedule it just like I do. My patience Is that those two hours are blocked off every week for drills to play tennis, because that really renews my creativity and it really helps me be a better business owner and be a better creator and be a better mom. All to say, I think that the inspiration and the wisdom that we heard from these women just made this so much greater than what we ever thought these women would be willing to share with us. I mean, we got deep. They really just shared everything. It was just so cool.

Speaker 2: 10:13

I would say if you listen to this season, because you and I were doing this, I mean, I was writing stuff down as I was talking to these people because there's so many great tips and just information, but on top of that, I felt so excited and encouraged. After every single conversation there was just this big motivation piece on top of the information piece and I think anyone that listens will feel that and really, even if you aren't in a place where you're ready to start your own business or maybe that's just not for you, I think listening to other people just to motivate you in your work journey or any other journey that you're on, this is just a good season to listen to. We were both just surprised at the excitement and encouragement that came to us when we were trying to get information for our podcast from someone else. We were just getting encouraged and fed positivity to by these guests that came on for us.

Speaker 1: 11:20

It was just fun. I mean, we had our coffee Heck, I could have had a glass of wine and just chatted with these women all day. It was so life-giving, truly. And I think that one of the things, too that inspired me to do this season with Kim was thinking back to my own experience. I've always had that entrepreneurial bug.

Speaker 1: 11:44

When Kim and I started, the speech source that was both of our shared goals is saying what can we do in our field that would serve that creative outlet that we could also, that service piece that we could give back and reach more than our patients. And I didn't know how to do that and I didn't know what platform or what kind of outlet. As Kim and I are on this journey ourselves, having our own individual private practices and then also this business. It was really so inspiring to hear all these different women and how they had that same bug to do something and they did all kinds of things. I mean merch Never thought of that when you just see all these people doing totally different things in our field. I mean branding images that are neurodiverse and they're inclusive, having stock images like that. There are so many women who filled these incredible needs in our field and they're creating both active and passive income streams, and that's a big goal as well.

Speaker 1: 12:57

Any entrepreneur is going to tell you that you are looking at also being able to be paid for your time, and it's so hard sometimes when you're creative, thinking gosh like as speech pass. We're almost all type A and we're almost all creative. There's so many things you can do with that, but how do you actually monetize something that is in healthcare and with our background, it was really just a big question mark. So I think that if, as a listener, you are in that boat of you're just curious, if you are a how I built this junkie, like I am, then I know you're going to love hearing what all these incredible people have done.

Speaker 2: 13:44

Hearing people's stories is one of the best ways to learn because we can have the facts and we can know what we need to do.

Speaker 2: 13:50

But hearing someone else's journey and what they went through and what they wish they had done differently because we have people share that also can really help motivate you to start and it can also help keep you from making some of those same mistakes that maybe set them back a little bit. One of the questions we asked some of these therapists was who mentored them or who encouraged them along the way. Who did they learn from? And it wasn't always necessarily another speech therapist. Sometimes it was a counselor or somebody else in a field that had done the same thing that was, teaching them or encouraging them. So I think, even if you're not necessarily a speech therapist say you're an OT or a PT or you have another field that you want to do something in I think this is useful information across the board. So this will be a really fun season. We plan to release every Tuesday a new guest we are almost done with all of our recording and just really excited to share everyone's story.

Speaker 2: 14:52

We would love for you to subscribe to the podcast, because then you will know right away when a new episode comes out. And we would love for you to leave a comment, because that just means a lot and we read them and we get feedback. We want to know what people are thinking about our episodes.

Speaker 1: 15:10

And it helps other people find this podcast who might be in the same boat and are looking for information, just like we were and as you are, as a listener.

Speaker 2: 15:22

Thanks for listening. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast and check out our website, thespeechsourcecom.

Speaker 1: 15:29

Also check us out on Instagram for more ideas on speech language screening and more Execute speech, peterase speech screening featuringwspeeting and.