Learning Curves: The Top 5 Mistakes We Made in Our Occupational Therapy Practice

 In this episode of Animals and Aquatics, Gina reflects on the mistakes made in their occupational therapy practice. Joined by her husband, they share insights into common pitfalls such as spreading themselves too thin, failing to set clear boundaries, and reinventing systems unnecessarily. They discuss the importance of prioritizing tasks, simplifying processes, and choosing a memorable business name. Tune in for valuable lessons from their journey in occupational therapy business.

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Microphone (3- Logitech USB Headset) & Integrated Camera 0:00

Welcome to this week's podcast. I don't know about you, but I've been seeing so many reels. And videos on the mistakes that people have made in their businesses. I don't know if it's a current trend right now, but I thought, Hmm. What are the mistakes that we've made in our business. And would that be helpful for you to hear. So let's get started. Hi, welcome to animals and aquatics I'm Gina your host. Today, we're going to talk a little bit about some of the mistakes that we've made and if you don't know us yet, We are a husband and wife, occupational therapy team. I'm an occupational therapist and my husband is a certified occupational therapy assistant and we've worked together providing unique occupational therapy services, incorporating hippotherapy aquatic OT, and nature-based services. And we absolutely love what we do. We run our own private practice. And it gives us a lot of flexibility to really incorporate occupational therapy the way we believe it should be. We have created the animals and aquatics podcast to help other OT providers who want to work either in the animal space. So that could be with farm animals or with dogs or even small animals or in the aquatic space. And we wanted to make sure that people had the resources that we had been searching for as we started to make this journey. So. We're glad that you're here with us and I'm happy to share that right now. My business barn raising course is open for enrollment for the summer program. I absolutely love working with occupational therapist, from students to people who have been in the industry for many years. And I like to help them get their business started, grow their business or add hippotherapy, to an existing practice. Business barn raising has been really perfect for answering all those business questions that people have. You get all the forms and templates that I'm already using in our business here, as well as weekly accountability. So if this is something you're interested in, please reach out and I can help get you started. So what are the five mistakes that we want to share with you that have really. Definitely held us back in different ways. And have been part of the learning curve in other ways. And there's always mistakes that are going to be made and they're a great way to learn. Some of them have been harder than others and some of them were probably still making. So let's get started with these mistakes. The first one. That we have struggled with and occasionally still struggle with, but we're definitely doing better. Is trying to do. All the things and it can be really excited when you're starting your own practice and you suddenly have this opportunity to really do things that excite you, that might be beneficial to your community and you can see. Different areas of need within your community. And you're like, ah, as an occupational therapist, I can offer that I can do that. I could run a feeding group. I could run a adaptive sports group. I could run a journaling nature-based journaling group. Right. And they all sound super exciting and lots of fun. And especially when we were first really getting started and bringing all of our ideas to the table, we found that it seemed like we wanted to start a new group or activity. Every three months and it really would take away our focus from doing one thing and doing it really well. Getting solid systems in place. And. Really getting known for what it is that we were going to do an offer in our community. And we kind of have our three pillars with animals, aquatics in nature. And sometimes we still want to go a little bit off the rails with a new idea or trying to decide how much focus to put in any one of those areas. Certainly any one of those areas could be its own niche practice by itself. And there are certainly many people who do just practice incorporating aquatics or animals, or just in the nature based area. And we like having some variety in what we do and where we're at. And it allows us to see our clients in different settings, which is really nice. But it also can, again, lend to distraction. It can be harder to market because we have to decide. Which area are we maybe full with clients? And where's an area we want to attract more clients to, or where is one of our facilities have opening and time for us that we could add more. Clients, and that works with our schedule and maybe is there another area where we have clients, but we don't have that facility availability. So trying to focus on the things that we do best. And making sure we're staying focused on those things and not doing all the things. Now. This kind of a little bit ties into the second area that has a mistake that we've made is not setting good enough guardrails. I like to call them guardrails because they really, again, help keep you on the road to success. And. We've been talking about this in that when you're running your own business or private practice. It's so much of a representation of you. And, you know, it's just you and your face and it's your business. And we want to make it obviously the best business that it can be. And that leads to being very giving, giving of our time, giving of our expertise. Very supportive to our clients and families. And of course, those are all important things, but it's also important to set guardrails. On our time on our expertise. On our travel arrangements on our locations. In so many of the different ways that we have practice, that we continue to practice. Making sure that we have those guardrails in place. And of course, being in a profession like occupational therapy, you're very empathetic and you understand deeply what your clients are going through with the families that you work with are going through. And that can, again, lead to sometimes not having those guardrails in place that really keep you on the road keep you focused, keep you moving towards success. And that's something that we continually kind of revisit, especially if we notice that we feel like we're getting sidetracked a little bit or pulled off a little bit, and that's an area that is an ongoing area of development. But definitely has been a mistake of not setting up those guardrails early on and being really clear with families through that intake process of. How we work. What's important to us when we're available, when we're not available. And I'm going to tie that into the next mistake that we have made, which is reinventing the wheel for our systems for intake and onboarding. It seems like we will use one intake and onboarding system for a year, and then we want to tweak it to make it better, which is a great thing. You certainly want to be able to make your systems better as you grow. But it seems like instead of tweaking the system, we're really reinventing the system a lot. And that takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of effort. It doesn't lead to a smooth intake process for families often. And one of our mottoes for a business really is keep it simple. Because we're parents of three young. Young children. And like, we need to keep things simple for ourselves right now. If we're gonna run our business and have it be successful. We need to keep things simple and. We want the intake process to be simple. One of the really important things on with onboarding clients is to make it feel intuitive for them to make them feel like they're smart and they understand the process. So they don't get hung up in doing the paperwork in completing the process in getting lost in your email inbox or messenger inbox. And for us, it does feel like we'll have a bit of a flow and then. We want to tweak or change something. And instead of making those small adjustments, we really go back to the beginning. And, you know, create a new spreadsheet in the way that we're going to track people or create a new email sequence that people are going to get. So I think that's one area that we could save some time and we could get a consistent system that we all know how it works and just keep making it better rather than changing it. Now another area that I would say has been a mistake for us. His priorities and. This is again, you know, is one where we spend time putting out little fires sometimes before doing things that would generate income for us, or even things that are important to our family. And one of the benefits of being in private practice. Is that it gives us the freedom and flexibility to be home with our children, to put family first. And whether that's a client's family or own family, that's an important part of our business and our business model. And so if we're stuck putting out little fires, whether that's just. Email com like answering emails or. Looking for paperwork to see if it's been completed or updating things in our system. Those are things that can take a lot of time and definitely could be outsourced when we get to that point. It would be nice to be able to outsource them to a virtual assistant or administrative assistant so they could work on some of those things. And help us really keep our priorities on things that generate income and things that are important to our family. So as I was working with a fieldwork student and I was explaining. Some of the pressures of private practice and some of the areas that we really love. And I was saying that I was going to miss going on a field trip with my daughter. And she looked at me and she goes, But isn't it. Your business? Couldn't you just like cancel or reschedule? And it was such an obvious statement. That. Yes, it is my business. I could reschedule. I could. Cancel. And. You know, to her, it was, it was really obvious. And to me, Again, it felt like such an imperative that I had to be there at that time. Kind of no matter what. Then realizing, like I was going to miss out on one of the key perks of having my own business, because I wasn't exactly sure for that day where my priorities were, where they, with my family going on the field trip with everybody. Or were they showing up in service to my clients? So laying out our priorities and putting that, down, I think would have helped us. And it was definitely a mistake as we've gotten started and is an ongoing process because priorities change. The different seasons require different things. Certainly having, you know, a baby was a different season than now having a toddler and a preschooler and a first grader. And knowing how to organize all of that. And I've always said, like, I don't like the term. Work life balance. I like the term work-life priorities because sometimes work is a priority and sometimes. Life or family or the things that happen, Outside of work are a priority. And really when you're running your own business, a lot of it runs together. Because your work is what supports your life. As a a job does too, but there are much more clear cut boundaries, often around a job. Then there are around your own business when you're responsible for all the things. And. It's one of those things that is really important to talk about. And come up with like what your structure is, what your ideas are for how you're going to manage changing seasons, both the actual outdoor seasons, as well as seasons within your family. And how do you get those priorities? And check in with them every so often. So that way. You can make sure that you are reaping the benefits of having your own private practice. Now the one that I've saved for last for number five is. A little bit of a touchy one, I suppose, because it's our name, our business name. It's. The name that I came up with a long time ago and it was really meaningful to me. So our business name is Epona therapy services and Epona is the Celtic goddess of horses and healing. So if you know anything about our business, that totally makes sense, except that none of her clients know what Epona is. They don't know how to spell it. They don't know how to say it. They won't remember it when they need to go look it up. And. It's kind of a sunk cost prison at this point, because. If people know us at all, they're going to know us that way, or they just know us as Gina and Ryan. And so. Although we have wanted to change our business same and we have come up with several other viable, well, several other names. That we thought were viable. We found out that there was an aquatic swim school nearby with one of the names that we had come up with as an idea. And we had actually registered that name as a DBA with the state. And it didn't come up. Anything for that name and therapy? But we didn't realize that it came up with that name and swim. Or swim school. So that was one. Name iteration that we went through then. Maybe a year later, we came up with another name iteration. We were really excited about it. We did some preliminary branding around it and we hadn't like told anybody. And. We had one discussion with someone who was not in our local community. A professional from far away. And we have no idea. How this works, but somewhere in the universe, That once we spoke it, it came into being and. When we did the next round of Google search to see what that name like, making sure nothing came up with it or nothing that we had already seen. Cause you're not going to find a name that's like completely. Not taken in any way, shape or form, unless you're kind of. Gobbly looking something together. And then you're going to run into the same challenges that we had is people aren't going to know what it is. They're not going to remember it. They're not gonna know how to say it. So after we had. Talked about our next future name this second time around. Probably. Maybe two months after we had kind of come up with the name, we Googled it again. And sure enough, there was now. Google listing. And a Facebook page that had been started like five days before. Like five days ago, but had been like, after we had talked about using that particular name and I'm not sharing any of these names, cause it doesn't really matter. To the mistake part, but now we're kind of like now what do we do? Like the two names so far that we have come up with. We've struck out with, we still have our name. And we continue to do business with our name. We continue, you know, people know us, we put out marketing, like our community partners have our name and our information. So then it's like, well, you do, we. Should we just keep it like. I don't know. So it definitely, it didn't feel like a mistake at the time. That was a long time ago. This is a 2007. But it's definitely feels like a mistake now, because again, Nobody knows. What it is, how to say it, how to spell it or how to find us. So. If you search. You know, for us in our town name, like Gina and Ryan and the town that we live in. I don't know. Maybe you'd find us. Maybe if they search hippotherapy, in our area, we're going to come up, but we're may not be the first on the Google search. So that's another area that I would say was a mistake for us. So to regroup and go through what those five mistakes are that I wanted to share with you today are one of our mistakes was doing all the things we definitely took a while to get focused. Then I would say, not setting good enough guard rails was an early on mistake and something that we periodically have to go back and review to make sure that we're staying on track. Then reinventing the wheel and our systems intake and onboarding. Is a mistake that takes us time. And does not help us to keep things simple. Our priorities and making sure that we're revisiting them through different seasons of life, as well as different seasonal seasonings is important because. If you work in a nature based practice and you work somewhere that has a climate that has four seasons outside. You do have to look at those priorities. As you go throughout the year. And the last one that I talked about was our name. And thinking about. Something that is easy to say and easy to remember. In your name? Would definitely be some advice I would give. So I want to thank you for joining us today on animals at aquatics. And I hope this was helpful to you. And maybe you'll see one of my reels with the mistakes that I've made, because they seem to be very popular now. And I thought, well, if I'm learning from other people's mistakes, And maybe just one tidbit that they give me. Can help me avoid a mistake. As I grow in my business, as I grow in my practice. Then maybe if I can share some of the mistakes that we have made that can help you grow in your business and your practice. If you haven't already, please go ahead and subscribe to the podcast, share it with a friend. And if you would do us a big favor, go ahead and leave us a review. Thanks for listening.