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Welcome back PrivateSLP listeners, I would like to introduce The Perfect Student, Kyle White. Kyle is a super-motivated individual that is out to help as many kiddos in his community by providing some of the best pediatric therapy in the Philadelphia area.
In this episode, you will hear how this United States Marine and MBA worked with his wife, Ashley White, CCC-SLP to create a multidisciplinary clinic with over 60+ patients in 10 short months. Together, they have watched Milestone Therapy Group grow from an concept and idea into a reality .
In this Episode:
02:28 – Introducing Perfect Student Mr Kyle White
04:57 – Getting into Speech Therapy
07:18 – Google source and podcast information
09:25 – Having Entrepreneurial Spirit
12:45 – Leverage knowledge and be multi-disciplinary
17:51 – Getting foundation built
21:02 – Now is the time you want to be an entrepreneur or start your practice
23:28 – Getting help with credentialing
Episode 53 is all about celebrating success, and in this episode, Kyle explains how he found PrivateSLP, asked for help, became credentialed with insurance plans and worked with me one on one on a weekly basis to become the Perfect Student!
Introduction “We started from basically nothing to now multi-disciplinary, several different therapists on board and 60 plus kids a week”.
PrivateSLP Intro Solid, sustaining and successful. You’re listening to this Speech Therapy Private Practice Startup Podcast with your host Kyle Meades, speech and language pathologist. Listen, learn and prosper as we share our experience and knowledge so that you can improve your business and your life, one podcast at a time.
Kyle Meades Well, hello, everyone, you’re listening to the Speech Therapy Private Practice Startup Podcast. This is episode number 53. My name is Kyle Medes and I’m a speech pathologist since 1993. And these podcasts are designed to help you improve your business and your life. One podcast at a time. Welcome back to the show, everyone. Thanks again for all the e-mails and all the questions. And as of today, today is Thursday, April the 2nd 2020. We have well over 65399 listeners to the show. And I’m super glad you guys are out there getting good valuable information. And you know me, I say it every single podcast, value is what you get in the absence of money. And these podcasts are absolutely free for you. So if you wouldn’t mind, just please head on over to the Android or the Apple iTunes platform of your choice and leave some good 5-Star feedback that way other people just like you can get the same valuable information that you are receiving right now. And I also wanted to let you guys know that we have a space available for The Perfect Student, and that is when you get to come to Tucson and work with me hand in hand. You also get weekly coaching calls for me. There’s also some billing and credentialing services in there, too. And so you can find out more information about that at PrivateSLP.com/coaching. What many people choose to do is to work with me online and that’s where you get access to me via the private coaching thread and also access to others in the community. And you can also find that PrivateSLP.com/coaching. Now, today, I’m really excited. This is a great episode because you guys know me and you know me well. I’m always talking about The Perfect Student. And finally, you get to meet a Perfect Student. And this is going to be Mr. Kyle White and his wife, Ashley White. And they are clinic owners in Pennsylvania. And I had the great opportunity to talk to Kyle today and ask him and pick his brain about all kinds of things, about starting and growing and scaling his own speech therapy private practice. And the funny thing is, Kyle is not even an SLP. He is a United States Marine, he’s also got a Masters of Business Administration (MBA). And he’s also just transitioned out of his full time job in the Internet cyber security space, working for a large educational firm. Now he’s working for himself. And all of that happened right here in the last 10 months. And also the bottom fell out with the whole coronavirus thing. And so he’s navigating that and he is learning how to increase his patient load from 0 to over 60+ people per week in. He’s got now many employees, speech therapy, occupational therapists and some other therapists included. So I just want you to kick back and listen to the show today and learn about The Perfect Student.
Kyle Meades Hey, today we’re talking with Kyle White – Kyle White is the owner of Milestone Therapy Group. And you guys who listen to the show regularly, you know that I’m always talking about The Perfect Student and we were taken applications for The Perfect Student and I finally had this bright idea, hey one day you probably would want to listen and meet one of our Perfect Students. Wouldn’t you say that’s the right thing to do, Kyle?
Kyle White Yeah, exactly. It’s a good idea.
Kyle Meades Yeah. Kyle reached out to me. I remember I was on the North Shore, Oahu we were on vacation. It was the last week of May. Kind of going into June. And I get this email from one of our contact pages, you know, is this really nice, guy. His name is Kyle White and he was interested in starting a business at that time. And Kyle and his wife, Ashley, they both own Milestone Therapy Group and they provide speech and occupational therapy services in the Philadelphia area. And I just wanted you guys, the listening community out there to meet Kyle and kind of know what it takes to be The Perfect Student. So, Kyle, if you wouldn’t mind, give me some background. How did you even get into speech therapy? Because if I remember right, you’re not even a speech therapist, are you?
Kyle White That is correct. So kind of a lot of winding, twisty roads even deciding that we were going to start the business then obviously till now. But quick, short background. Yeah, I am by no means a speech therapist, any type of therapist. I always joke, you know, therapists are way smarter than I’ll ever be. So, yeah, definitely not a plan route. Just kind of got here and trial and error and obviously with your help. But to boil it down, my background, I was in the Marines active duty for several years. I mean, then got out in 2015 and went to work for a big four firm doing cyber security. And then in a lot of different conversations and whatnot, my wife and I started Milestone Therapy Group in June of 2019.
Kyle Meades Wow, what a story! And Ashley, your wife, she’s the speech and language pathologist, right?
Kyle White Correct. Yep. So Ashley’s background for several years now, she’s by trade, a speech therapist.
Kyle Meades That’s awesome. And so you guys were just searching the web one day and looking, you know, on how to start a speech therapy, private practice. Is that how you found us?
Kyle White Yeah. So in short, yes. So just trying to understand how to start a speech therapy business. Right. Just, you know, using the old Google, trying to figure out where to start, you know, trying to work backwards, really like what does that look like? We need to do. And really, the podcast is kind of where that’s where I started this in your messages and the different podcast. And then it was like, oh, this guy who actually practices what he preached for lack of better words, like, oh, this guy actually has his own, you know, thriving clinics. And so that was like the model. I was like, OK, I want somebody that’s, you know, for lack of better words, doing it right, not just, you know, putting out some resources, saying, hey, here’s how to do do something that somebody is actually doing it. So, yeah. Long story short was listen to the podcast. And I remember I was even traveling around for work a lot. And so we’d listen to the podcast just to get ideas. Yes, I found you on Google. And then the podcast was the tipping point for reaching out to you.
Kyle Meades Oh, that’s awesome. I’m glad you found those interesting. Sometimes I even wonder. I mean, I see the numbers. I see people from all around the world are listening to the podcast. You know, I see the data. But, you know, it’s nice to hear that people actually get good value out of that. But you said you were traveling through your job. You were in the corporate world of cybersecurity, in the education space. Right?
Kyle White Yep, cyber security and compliance. So, yeah, in in short, I would ensure that the company that I work for, you know, we were compliant in certain areas and then dealing with a lot of different vendors that the company did business with all related cyber security and compliance. So, yeah.
Kyle Meades And you just over time, I guess you were just searching for something more, right? I mean, I knew when I started my own business, I just got sick and tired of working for other people and I wanted to do things on my own. You know, through the good and the bad. And so did you and your wife one day just look at each other and say, you know, “Hey, we should open up a private practice” or did she mention it? Because if I remember right, too, you’ve got a MBA, you’ve got a Masters of Business Administration to so not only are you in the Marines or were in the Marines – you were in the corporate world, in cybersecurity in the education space, but you also have an MBA, right? So you guys wanted to put that together?
Kyle White Right. So I don’t even remember. So to get a little bit a historical background, I don’t even remember what grade I was in. I think, you know, it might have been first or second grade. And I don’t know how I, you know, might have been around Halloween or something like that. But I had a bag of candy, you know, like a little Halloween bag of candy. And I took it to school and started selling the candy. So I made a little bit of profit off of, you know, the the bag of candy I bought from the Dollar Store or Wal-Mart or whatever. And I was like, oh, this is cool. Well, it was cool until the teacher shut it down. But anyway, I was kind of had this entrepreneurial spirit, I guess. So obviously, it took a while to figure out what that looked like. And, you know, being in the Marines for several years and then the corporate world, the at a fast forward. You know, when Ashley went back to grad school and it was like, OK, we’re going to do this, the speech therapy thing, we were thinking we’re like, OK, we might be able to like do our own thing with this time again we had no idea what that would look like. But I’ve always had the kind of entrepreneurial spirit. And then actually, you know, once she was involved in and actually writing speech therapy, realized that there’s a lot of great therapists out there is like great companies, but that we could probably do a better job than the lot of folks to what we were seeing. So we kind of, you know, join forces on her speech therapy knowledge, my business background, an MBA education and put it together and start the business.
Kyle Meades That’s awesome. And, you know, I get a lot of questions all the time, just people wanting to start. And did you find, you know, just getting incorporated – was that a big deal for you?
Kyle White It was I mean, it was exciting. You know, in our prime mentioned this one hundred thousand times throughout the podcast. But luckily, you know, whenever we were able to connect. I mean, you’d been there every step of the way provided, you know, a lock-step program. You know, so many resources. And anytime I had a question, that’s where I was able to reach out to you and understand. OK. Let’s go this direction or do this or what not. So, yeah, getting incorporated was super awesome. Everything’s taken, you know, about 10 times longer. I thought it would. Or 10 times more money. Yeah, it was it was really exciting. We got incorporated and then it took a couple of months for us to “get serious”, you know, get the web site up, you know, reach out to you. So it was exciting. It’s still a journey.
Kyle Meades Oh, yeah. Never stops to. Well, that’s awesome. So you found us through the podcast. You listen to the podcast. You reached out to me directly. And would you say overall that just the coaching and the community inside the All Access Community threads, I mean, did it help shave off some of that time? I know you said it did take some time, but overall, do you think you’ve learned from maybe you wanted to take something one way and it actually went the other? Have you had help and success inside the community?
Kyle White Oh, my gosh, absolutely. So, yeah, I mean, it’s a boss. I mean, not only just time. You know, again, you’re now reaching out to or just search in the forum in the community. So let’s save time and sanity, but also truthfully is allow a business to run, be a business or still be in business. With everything going on. So, I mean, the short answer is yes. Without your help, without joining, without being a member of the community, quite frankly, I don’t think we would have ever got the business going even if we had got incorporated. I don’t think we would have got clients or patients. I mean, at best, maybe one or two. And then with that is we certainly would not be a go in the direction that we’ve been able to leverage your knowledge and be multi-disciplinary. Really have two different business models. You know, a community piece and a clinic piece. So, yeah, to tie it all together and really to to make this as simple as possible. Your help’s been invaluable work. They’re very affordable costs for the membership. But but truly, I don’t know where we’d be without your help, honestly.
Kyle Meades Now, it’s just great to hear. I love to hear people who get value out of the podcast and direct one on one coaching. And if I remember right, you were one of the first people that helped me beta test our app for our community to, you know, from time to time I’ll get the feedback from the community. And I had a few people saying, you know, hey, sometimes it’s difficult to log on because you know me by now, I’m not one of those people to get on Facebook and have these Facebook groups. I just don’t like it. I don’t want to sit there. I want to live. I want to be doing stuff throughout the day. I don’t want to be on Facebook all day long answering questions, you know. I want people to be accountable. I want them to have easy accessibility to me. And so just for those reasons alone, what I chose to do is have my All Access Membership Community inside my own platform. I own it. And I teach that, you know, Own The Clinic series that’s inside the All Access Community. But, you know, I wanted to make it more accessible. So instead of going to your browser on your smartphone, you can just download the app now and reach me that way. And for those of you who don’t know, once you’re in that community, you’ve got a multitude of topics on everything from like billing and insurance and collections and staff and employees and all that. Plus, there’s this one tiny little link in there that says private coaching. And inside that private coaching is a thread that you can start the conversation with me. Kyle, did you ever use that private coaching link inside the community?
Kyle White I sure did. I probably bothered the crap out of you. I’m kidding. You’ve always been there, via that private coaching thread, I was able to find all the information there and then setup weekly meetings with you, which again, I mean, just go back to timesaving and just tips, tricks, knowledge on how to run the business, you know, getting credentialed. I mean, you name it right. It’s just it’s all in there. And that has been amazing.
Kyle Meades Yeah. I’m glad you like it. One of the big things about our All Access Community is, you know, you’ve gotten access to not only me, but other people in the group. And so with that, you know, you can direct message other people in the community. Plus, again, if you don’t want someone to see what you’re working on, like if you want to talk to me personally about something, you can just go in to that private coaching thread. And that way nobody else will see what you’re talking about. So, you know, you’ve got two different choices there. You can get the feedback from the group or you can just get straight one on one coaching with me. Plus, I know you mentioned that there are coaching calls available, too, and that’s something I picked up on you when you first reach out to me. When I was on vacation, I remember you were on fire. You were ready to go. And, you know, at one point I thought, I can’t move fast enough for you because you are just a shaker and a mover. And I remember a couple of times during our coaching calls, I had to slow you down a little bit. I said, you know, I know this saved you a bunch of pitfalls, but I said, you know, you are looking at it one way. But I can guarantee the way you’re looking at it today won’t be the same view about, you know, six to eight weeks from now. And I think we were talking about employee issues, because I know since we’ve been working together and correct me if I’m wrong, it was just you and your wife. You guys were just a sole provider providing speech therapy, but now you’ve actually branched out to occupational therapy and other forms. Therapy. And I think you went from 0 on your caseload now to, what, maybe 50, 45 to 50 children a week. Is that correct?
Kyle White We are actually at 60 plus. Oh, wow. Now, I know it’s again, thanks to your thoughts and suggestions. Yeah, we started out with me being the business, you know, trying to handle anything business related, you know, answering phones. You know, that type of stuff and actually seeing kids. We slowly build that up. And, you know, to your point, patience is not my strong suit. Same. So I’m like, “Go, go, go, kick the door and let’s go”, and yes, you provided some good sound advice, I don’t wanna say reeling it back but, yeah reeling it back saying ok let’s be a little bit more strategic here. You know, I mean, I was like, OK, let’s let’s branch out. You know, it was just like, let’s get that foundation built, get that, you know, solid and really have something to grow on. So we started from basically nothing to now multi-disciplinary, several different therapists on board and 60+ plus kids a week.
Kyle Meades That’s awesome. It’s just really cool to hear how much you guys have just really made a difference in your life. I remember at the end of 2019 I said 2020 is gonna be a lot better than 2019. Right? Would you say that’s true?
Kyle White I mean, you know, the recent events have been a whirlwind. But, you know, quite frankly, we’re still growing like, you know, even the 60 plus. That’s why I say 60 plus right now is because we’re still adding kids. I mean, today, you know, we’re still adding folks, I mean kids, it’s literally every day read more. We’re growing, so. Yeah. 2020 has been good. I don’t wish that the coronaviruses was going on, but now I think 2020’s going good still. And I think you know, there’s a lot of time left in the year and I think it’s going to certainly end great.
Kyle Meades Yeah. And you know, I’ve made the same comment to other people that I’ve talked to recently. I started my whole business in the economic downturn. I mean, I went through Hurricane Katrina back in the day and then we got double whammy with the fallout and the financial crisis back in 2008. So, I mean, I am used to these types of environments. On a recent podcast I was talking about, you know, after Hurricane Katrina, I had rental apartments in multi-family housing. And I remember I had two new rooves the next day. And my next door neighbor who came by and he said he would have insurance company to use? The bank of Kyle, I’m a saver, you know, and I don’t rely on the government or any kind of bail out. I mean, now is the time to start your business. Everybody’s all doom and gloom and getting all jacked up on the news. And, you know, you just have to maintain attention, concentration to the task at hand. And the task at hand is to have at its simplest form, I think an offer that converts and our offer, I think in our clinics are, you know, good quality speech therapy services and occupational therapy services. And I’m glad to hear you guys are just thriving even in today’s environment, because, you know, it’s early April 2020 as we record this call in the corona viruse is out there. You know, the economy, the stock market’s down. It is doom and gloom. And yet here we are sitting and talking about a thriving private practice. I mean, what do you think about that?
Kyle White Yeah. I mean, you hit the nail on the head of a thriving private practice. I certainly would not want to be in a position now or in the near future or in the future of, you know, relying on somebody else for employment. I guess by definition, being an entrepreneur is risk or being a risk taker, something of that nature. But no, I’d rather have control at least as much as I can control or, you know, put the ball in my corner or have my hands or whatever garbage you want to use. But absolutely, I think now is the time you want to be an entrepreneur or start your practice. Yeah. Now, there’s no better time than now because you can at least have some control over some things.
Kyle Meades Absolutely. I’ve had a lot of people reaching out to me about joining that All Access Community. And I think it’s certain level people are afraid to commit. And I’ve seen people come and go in the community. It’s not like, you know, we don’t have a huge group of people who are just, you know, like a Facebook group of, you know, a bunch of free members sitting around, you know, commenting about this and complaining about that. I mean, we have a select group of people, a small niche group of people who are talking about action. And I know that our people you know, I see it on the statistics on the back into the Web site. You may not get tons of comments from every single member, but I do see those members, if they’re not on the life coaching calls on a monthly basis. I see him listening to the replays or I see him downloading the PDF that, you know, those coaching calls are all transcribed and they’ll listen to the audio recording of those coaching calls. And, you know, there’s a couple of people in there that are really excited about growing their practice and they’ll chime in on a few topics. Has your experience been in that community? Have you gotten good feedback from others besides me?
Kyle White Absolutely, yeah. So, I mean, in general, the community both, you know, in there that I’ve had interactions with the been awesome. I mean, everybody’s, you know, super helpful, really willing to help however they can. Well, another thing that’s really cause, you know, just being able to search. So I think the other day I was looking at some insurance question I had. Right. So I just typed in the search bar insurance. I can see all the comments that other folks, you know, posted or questions they’ve asked. And that’s also been kind of great because, you know, you can just leverage stuff that’s already been done. Right. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. So any question I have is search for it. And I’m able to find. Like you said, the PDF or a previous training. But yeah, it’s been amazing. The folks in there are are absolutely top notch materials, you know saved me. Just. And I had a lot of anger in trying to just figure something out. So I don’t have to do that. So it’s that’s a positive.
Kyle Meades That’s awesome. And is the perfect student. You got access to credentialing services. And did you find that getting help with credentialing, was that helpful for you? Because people when they reach out to me and they want credentialing services, always tell people pay for the service. It’s not worth your time filling up reams of paper and just getting all that taken care of by yourself. You want to get somebody who’s knowledgeable and our team of credentials are specialist at what they do. Was that a helpful service for you as well?
Kyle White Absolutely. I can’t say enough good things. You know, Esther, Michel, the credentialing ladies are amazing and I can’t overstate that. Absolutely amazing. I guarantee you, without their help, without your credentialing service, we would not be credentialed with insurances because I was not going to mess around and to your point, go through, you know, a stack of papers for, you know, just one insurance company that’s for trying to build a business, you know, trying to just understand all the nuances that come with starting a business. Right. The taxes, the LLC, the legal right, all that. There’s simply no way would be credential with insurance folks without your service and help of Esther and Michelle, period.
Kyle Meades That’s awesome. I talked to a lot of people about credentialing as well. And you know, there’s so many companies out there who do credentialing services, but they charge him all these fees every year to maintain their contracts. And it’s just it’s a scam. And what we teach our folks with our credentialing services how to manage their own databases and how to to make sure you can do it yourself. You know, you can update your insurance addresses if you move offices. You know, we show you how to do that yourself. So you can be in charge and take care of what you need to take care of, not just leave it up to somebody to do it for you and charge you, you know, gobs and gobs of money. So I’m glad that’s affordable as well. But I mean, here it is 10 months after you reached out for help. I mean, is it safe to say that you received the help that you needed?
Kyle White Oh, my gosh. Absolutely. I mean, one again, just sanity time, etc.. Absolutely. I mean, you know, just the information, the guidance, the coaching, top notch, everything’s been amazing. But it like boil down into economics, if you will, my ROI, my return on investment, you know, for a day and a half. I would consider a low cost really of access to you, access the community, the credentialing. I mean, everything, right the ROI I mean, I couldn’t even put a number because it’s staggering, right. Of how little that cost was to the time and return on resources, clients, etc that we’ve got back, so plus the community, your help – everything is amazing.
Kyle Meades That’s great. And, you know, I had a lady reach out to me recently, went to pay someone $10,000.00 To get help on a private practice. And I mean, we’re nothing close to that, oh, my gosh. And I just said, look, you know, that’s a lot of money. I mean, ten grand. Come on. But, you know, I do this because I care. I genuinely care about people. I show up every single day in that community. I answer questions. If somebody needs a phone call to, you know, go through a certain scenario. I’ll take the call. You know, I’m always available. But the main thing that I want to say is what separates you, what makes you The Perfect Student is because you did the work. I have coached so many people who have done a great job, but it just once in a while you find that person who takes that advice and just runs with it. And next thing you know, extrapolates that data and just make something just much more out of it. And that’s you. And so that’s why I wanted to have this conversation and just a little chat today to let other people know that, you know, there is The Perfect Student out there. It’s not just something I’m sitting there talking about. You know me. Because, again, I’m not on all this social media. I’m not on Facebook. I’m not on Instagram, you know, just sitting there talking about it. I’m work and I got things to do. You know, talking about that Corona virus, too. You know, we’re keeping 48 people employed right now. And, you know, that’s with no government assistance. I mean, that hasn’t even come out. We’re just talking about that whole program, that P.P.P – Payroll Protection Plan before we got on this call. And you know, right now there is absolutely no guidance from the big banks or the SBA from anybody. And that’s why I’m always preaching and teaching. You know, save your cash. And, you know, it’s like the 48 employees that we have. I told everyone, look, you’re not going to get paid. You know what you’re normally going to get paid over the next few weeks right now, because we have to watch our cost. We have to watch our revenue and expenses. But, you know, right now, our caseload have dropped, you know, maybe 30 percent, but we’re gonna be okay. I’m still paying everybody’s insurance. I’m still paying everybody’s health. You know, vision, dental 401K with a match. Everybody still gets what they need. It may not be what they want right now, but we’re keeping people employed. And that’s because we’re not trying to be something we can’t be, you know, being frugal or watching what we need to watch. But we’re still seeing a lot of kids in a lot of families. But I wanted to congratulate you, Kyle, and tell you how proud I am of you for stepping up, getting the job done, and now see your help in all these people in your community now integrate just to see how this thing just evolves.
Kyle White It is it’s it’s truly I mean, it’s so awesome because, you know, like you said, you know, their employees keeping them, you know, a paycheck going on right now. My wife is very close with some of the therapies we have on staff. And we’ve been able to maintain everything and keep them, you know, like you mentioned, trying to balance everything out, keep it lane, but keep them employed and everyone’s happy. Everybody’s able to put food on the table. So, yeah, it’s a good time. Still, even though there are some challenges right now, it’s still a great time. I mean, to be a business practice owner and just, you know, figure this out together and understand we’re all going to come out better on the other side of it.
Kyle Meades Well, that’s great. And at the end of the show, on the bottom in the show knows I’m going to put your Web site so people can learn more about what you guys do to help those in your community, so I hope this has been helpful for you guys. If you have any questions about speech therapy, private practice, how to start, grow or scale your own speech therapy practice. Just reach out to me, kyle@PrivateSLP.com, and as always, thank you for listening.
Out Take Thank you for listening to this Speech Therapy Private Practice Startup Podcasts – for information on speech therapy private practice startup or to stay connected with Kyle, please visit PrivateSLP.com
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