62 I What to Do First When Starting a Myofunctional Therapy Business (Don’t Skip This Step)

Are you trying to start a myofunctional therapy business but still feel stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure where to begin?
 
 I’m diving into this topic because I see so many dental hygienists and trained myofunctional therapists trying to build a business in the leftover crumbs of their day — and then wondering why nothing gains traction. 

Inside this conversation, I walk you through the first and most critical step to building momentum: defining and protecting your business hours so your business actually has a place to exist. 

When you claim your time, you create clarity, confidence, and the foundation for consistent growth.
 
 Grab your ☕coffee and your courage - and let’s dive in!  

Xo, 

Carmen

🌐 The Profitable Myofunctional Therapist™ 

https://theprofitablemyofunctionaltherapist.com

📅  Need help? Book a "Get Unstuck" call today 

myofunctionaltherapytrainingacademy.com/discovery-call/

Transcript

Welcome And Who This Is For

SPEAKER_00 1:04

All right, my friend. My goal with this episode is to teach a small but very critical first step when starting your myofunctional therapy business. This is defining and protecting focused business hours on the calendar so that you can have clarity, momentum, and confidence to begin. If you're a burned out, bored dental hygienist who knows that you can't do this forever, or you've already taken myofunctional therapy training but feel stuck on how to actually start, grow, or simplify your business, welcome, my friend. You're in the right place. I'm Carmen, a dental hygienist who once sat exactly where you are, overworked, physically tired, mentally done, knowing that there had to be more, and wanting the fastest, simplest, most organized path forward with someone holding my hand along the way. This podcast is for women who don't want more information. They want transformation. They want clarity, consistent clients, predictable income. Without building a business that takes over their life, they also want support while they do it. So if you're ready to stop spinning, start moving, and finally make sense of what comes next, grab your coffee and your courage, my friend. Let's build a business that works for your life, not one that runs it, so that you can build a life that you're genuinely bonkers about because that's my superpower. Well, hello, friend, and welcome back to the podcast. Today we are continuing, uh, continue working on building that life that you are bonkers about by starting, growing, and simplifying your myofunctional therapy business. This is my zone of genius. It is absolutely my superpower. So I am excited to get to it. So the first thing I have to tell you, my friend, is you cannot build a meaningful business in the leftover crimps of your day. It just absolutely cannot happen. I am seeing this constantly with students who they desire, they want to build a successful myofunctional therapy business, um, but they haven't yet decided where that's gonna happen. They haven't yet decided where that business is going to exist. If it's not on your calendar, friend, it's not going to exist. Because I can tell you this after almost a decade, businesses don't grow in stolen moments. You have to be very intentional. So if you don't put it on your calendar, eventually you're gonna be having this conversation, wondering why you still don't have a successful business. Okay, so before we dive in, uh, I just want to paint a picture for you. I have a student that I'm coaching right now. She uh is a student inside the ditch hygiene academy, and she has so much going on. So one of the first things, you know, when I start coaching somebody is, you know, to to follow the steps, to figure out, okay, when are you doing business? So let me tell you this. She's a full-time dental hygienist. Um, Lord, she is also homeschooling her kiddos. Okay, she has a lot going on. She has kids in sports. Her husband is a very busy um partner, okay. I also think he coaches. So their days are very, very full. She really wants this myfunctional therapy business. Um, she has a very big financial pressure for it to work. So when her and I talk about, you know, what her business hours are, she's really trying to fill in both her learning, getting competent with her skills, getting confident with her skills. She's really trying to fit these things into just little teeny tiny pockets of time. Okay, she has trouble with consistency, she has trouble gaining traction. Um, she wants a change, but but she doesn't know where this business is going to exist. Meaning, when I say, Hey, do you have, you know, where's the white space on your calendar? She can't find any. And we're not going to cut into her sleeping time, you know. So basically that was her option one day. She said, Well, I guess I can get up earlier, and we just cannot have that. So it's difficult because when I have students in that situation, they're they're just reacting to life all day long, okay? Like catching all the balls that are coming their way. They they're just hoping that the business is gonna fit in somewhere versus building a business that has protected time is totally different. Okay. So everybody has the same 24 hours. No time genie is coming, nobody's coming to save you. Definitely not a time genie. So um, boundaries is where where you're gonna win with the business. So let's talk about this, okay? So I think I have one, two, three, four, four steps. Okay. Um, the first step is to define your business hours. I bet this doesn't surprise you. So when does your business exist? If you are just starting out right now, yes, I'm very aware that you have nothing in that space. That's totally fine. This is what I call butt-in-chair business hours, okay? This might be two hours, this might be 10 hours. The amount matters less than clarity. But I will say this: I really think you have to have three hours at least to gain traction and get building your business because there's a lot of moving parts. You cannot decide to what you're going to work on until you know when you're going to work. Okay. So defining your business hours. So for me, I know that I can look at my calendar right now and see I am working Wednesday 10:30 to 5, and I am working Friday 10:30 to 3:30. Okay. So if somebody asks me at the store, I could answer that. So that is important. Okay. What are those hours going to be? Then step number two, you're going to protect that time like tiger time. So these this goes on your calendar, okay? On my calendar, it says client fulfillment hours and it's blocked in. So when I say I want you to protect this time like tiger time, this is non-negotiable. Okay. Not if I feel like it, not after you have served everybody else. Okay. This is focused, protected time with real boundaries. My husband is at home with me. Okay. And every single morning, it's like, okay, goodbye. I'm going to work. I will be back down at noon. And at one o'clock, I say, okay, goodbye. I'm going back up to work. I will be back down at 4:30 or 5, you know, whatever it is. Those um, those boundaries are there. He he's doing his things all around the property. I could be sitting out on the patio, you know, enjoying the afternoon with him. I'm not. Those are business hours. And I do protect them like tiger time. Um, step number three is to know your hours so that you can speak with confidence. So, like I just mentioned, if I was out at the store and somebody asked when I see clients, you want to be able to speak with confidence. You already know the answer. I see clients on Wednesdays and Fridays, okay? No waffling, no sounding unsure. You make yourself sound inexperienced or like a flake if you don't know when you're seeing clients. Uh, I have been at weddings, I have been every every place that you can imagine where somebody asked me where I see clients, and I can tell them exactly. Boom, boom. Okay. Set your hours. I had a colleague several years ago who was struggling to grow her business, and my business was just going bonkers. And I asked her when her business hours were, and she said, Well, I don't know because I don't know what Susie's volleyball schedule is going to be next week. So essentially she wasn't setting business hours until she knew the volleyball schedule, until she knew, you know, what the next week held. And that is really difficult. Number one, when you have set up scheduling systems and automated systems, like I am hands off on scheduling. So I never do that with a client, but they do it on my calendaring system. Some of them schedule six months in advance. My six month clients book every single one of their appointments. And so if I was operating that way, first of all, I would be overwhelmed because I wouldn't know when I was working. I didn't know when I would have time to do certain tasks. Um, and so that's where you have to get serious about are you building a business or are you just building an expensive hobby? Because it's very, very important. Um, confidence, when you know your hours, that confidence that helps your confidence. Okay. The next confidence builder, which I'm not going to talk about in this episode, is um just knowing and understanding what that process, what your appointment looks like, what your uh your client journey looks like, all of those things. Outside of that, everything else can figure itself out, but knowing those things really help your confidence. So I want you to set these hours, have them on your calendar at, and I want you to know them, okay, when you're seeing clients. Also, notice I said Wednesdays and Fridays. I didn't say Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, like a little bit here and a little bit there. I do have students who are also doing that, and I think it's going to become an issue of um of well, it could be a burnout issue and it could become an issue of just trying to bend to offer something to everybody. My experience is that if somebody doesn't want um the out, or if if your hours that you're offering, if they're not going to work for them, they're gonna ask you for something different. But uh I know back to my dental hygiene days, people always wanted something different, something more ideal for them. But we had business hours. And so they had to figure out how to make it in in within those hours. All right, my friend. And then step number four, let the business evolve inside the same time block. So in the early stages of your business, you're gonna be learning and you're gonna be doing setup and you're gonna be doing your setting up your systems. And then later in business, you will be doing client fulfillment in that block. Okay, you will be doing marketing, you will be refining your business. The hours stay the same. What happens inside of them is what involves uh evolves. So eventually you're gonna have humans in those spots. So, um, like for me, I can look at my calendar this week and I can look on Wednesday and it looks like I am booked back to back all day long. Looks like I have a 30-minute opening in the afternoon. Okay. On Fridays, I can see that it looks like I might have two 15-minute slots. Um, so as your business starts to grow and you have people in those spots, then yes, your marketing time, your learning time, all of those other times have to expand beyond your calendar. But this is the beautiful thing when I help people go from, you know, being a full-time hygienist then to partially retiring from hygiene or fully retiring from hygiene. So it's kind of like you're trading a little bit of hygiene for more myofunctional therapy, uh, you get more time on the calendar. And so I, my calendar is broken up into essentially what I like to call uh onstage, offstage, and backstage, thanks to Michael Hyatt for that. So my client days, nothing is planned on client days because if I was planning to batch my podcast on client days, that's not gonna work if it's really full. So I have to plan things in different time containers on my calendar. And then if I get to a client day, so say I get to Wednesday and I do have open time, I can swallow the toad, which is, you know, doing all sorts of little tasks that I have that are um, you know, don't have a hard due date or they're less than 15 minutes. So I can do a day of just, you know, swallowing the toad, doing all the things. Or if I have a big chunk, then it can be focus time. So that's what your your calendar will look like. It will evolve in your business. But for now, that's at least when you're defining the time that you're going, that's when you're doing business. So I always tease my students, if you tell me that you're gonna be in your office from 8 to 12 on Friday mornings, I should be able to email you and say, hey friend, what are you doing? And you're in there doing business. Okay. So that, in my opinion, this is the first crucial step is defining when you are going to do business. So let's get ready to land this plane. And I'm gonna give you a little bit of homework. Um, my friend, overwhelm is just a lack of boundaries, okay? It's not a knowledge problem. It's not that you don't know what to do, it's usually a boundary problem. So if you decide when your business is going to exist, then you're gonna have that container in which to figure out what you're gonna work on in that time, okay? Time um create having that time claimed creates momentum for you. And that momentum is what creates clarity. You don't need more time. Um, you just need boundaries and focus. So I'm gonna give you your first real CEO decision. If you haven't already done this, is to get your calendars put out there into the universe. Define them, know them, memorize them, block them, protect them, don't change them. They don't change every day. All right, my friend, that is all I have for you today. Until next time, keep working on building a life you are bonkers about. And I will be back soon to talk more things about starting, growing, and simplifying your myofunctional therapy business. I hope you loved today's episode, friend. I pray that it lifted you up, motivated you, and taught you something. If so, would you stop right now and go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review? And lastly, make sure you've joined the profitable myofunctional therapist Facebook community. Links to all the goodies can be found wherever you're listening to this podcast. That's it for now. Cheering you on, my friend, and we'll chat soon.