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Many people do quite well as a single provider in their speech therapy private practice. However, you’ll soon realize that there are only so many hours in a day, and that you can only see only so many patients during the week. With all of the other duties involved in a private practice, it can be very difficult to do everything yourself.
If this sounds familiar, it may be the right time to scale your speech therapy private practice and grow a team, but this can be tricky, and if done incorrectly, it can be devastating. If it’s done right, it can be one of the biggest rewards in your career, resulting in patients getting valuable assistance while providing jobs for others! In this episode, I discuss the 4 key components in scaling your speech therapy business and discuss other aspects to consider when scaling and growing a team.
In this episode:
01:04 – Over 37,718 listeners to the show
02:03 – Space available for the Perfect student
03:26 – How to build, scale and grow Speech therapy private practice
04:35 – How do you get paid for your services
05:14 – Standard Operating Procedures
06:02 – Invest profits back into your business in the form of a team
06:53 – Don’t scale when you don’t have core set in stone
09:12 – Infrastructure is very important when you’re scaling
When we look at its basic form we’ve got to have what’s called an offer that converts if we don’t have an offer that converts into a patient or a customer we really don’t have a business.
[Commercial]Hello everyone you’re listening to the Speech Therapy Private Practice StartUp Podcast. This is episode number 43. 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.
Welcome back to the show everyone. Thanks again for all the emails and all the questions. And as of today, today is Sunday September 16, 2018. We have well over 37,718 listeners to the show and I’m super glad you guys are out there getting good free valuable information. And if this is your first episode to the Speech Therapy Private Practice Startup podcast, Welcome, I hope you get everything that you’re looking for in these podcasts. And if there’s something out that I can help you with, always feel free and reach out to me at kyle@privateslp.com, and you’d be amazed how fast I can get back to you and answer your questions. And also too if you would mind, head on over to your iOS or Android platform of your choice and leave some good 5-star feedback. And that’s going to help not only us as a whole but it’s going to help other people just like you get the same valuable information like you’re getting right now. So, go ahead and do that that will help us a lot here at the Speech Therapy Private Practice Startup Podcast.
Also, I also wanted to tell you we do have a space available for the Perfect student. If you go to privateslp.com/coaching, you’ll find two options there one is where you can fly in to Tucson. And it’s kind of like getting pushed into a big deep end of a swimming pool 12 feet, 15 feet, 20 feet whatever. You got the idea. Once you’re thrown into it, you’re going to learn superfast. You’re going to see how we bill it, collect it, document, schedule, handle referrals. We’re going to help you get credentialed. All that stuffs included, but it does take time and that means you’ve got to physically get on a plane, get in a car, get to sign work with those hand in hand and we’ll show you. But it does take commitment and it’s not free. If it’s something that interest you though please reach out. Also, if that doesn’t work for you what most people find more helpful is learning online. That’s the All Access Community at www.privateslp.com, just wanted to say hi to Christy who just recently joined. She’s a clinic owner in Texas and she’s got a thriving business over there and she’s scaling at this moment. She’s bringing a lot to the community and we’re also helping each other out. So, it’s nice to have not only people who are just starting out but people who have a thriving business who want to learn about scaling and growth.
So, which brings me to today’s topic and that’s how to build a team and also scaling grow a Speech therapy private practice. Now when we look at its basic form we’ve got to have what’s called an offer that converts if we don’t have an offer that converts into a patient or a customer we really don’t have a business. So, at its simplest purest form you’ve got to have an offer that converts. Now what is the offer? For a Speech pathologist that could be maybe someone who deals with fluency issues or maybe a Voice Speech Pathologist who specializes in voice or dysphagia swallowing disorders or you might be one of those gurus who work on AAC devices or maybe someone who specializes in autism and social groups or you might be a pediatric facility who works with regular normal developing children who have speech and language delays or you might work on the other side of the coin with geriatrics and do strictly work with geriatrics.
And another thing is how do you get paid for your services? With the offer that converts you’ve got to get paid. And when you get paid, does that mean you build that patient’s insurance? Do you take cash? Do you take checks? Do you take credit cards? Do you take all of that? And so, when you’re doing this when you’ve got the offer that converts and once you get paid, you want to be journaling and writing these things down on your tablet smartphone, good old-fashioned paper and pen like I use and start writing down these systems.
If you go back in the earlier episodes of the Speech Therapy Private Practice Startup podcast you’ll see S.O.Ps. Those are called Standard Operating Procedures and when you start getting that offer that converts, you start getting paid and you start going through the daily process of taking calls and accepting referrals and getting patients scheduled in. Once you get him scheduled you do the evaluation and you bill for the evaluation. You write the report, you send that report back to the referring physician. All those things are Standard Operating Procedures. Write them down. That’s what you’re going to need in order to duplicate the process. And once you start getting paid you have to save your profits. And when you save your profits you can use those profits not to go shopping or take these expensive trips or buy all these things for your family and friends. No, you invest those profits back into your business in the form of a team. The team is people who can help you answer the phones, do your referrals, do your billing, collections and all that other fun stuff. And other therapies too, because I speak to a lot of Private practice owners and the biggest problem that I’m seeing is people are burned out. They’re frustrated they’re tired. Some of them are just purely mad because they’re not getting paid from insurances and they’re not collecting from their visits. They’re not billing their visits out at the end of the day and they’re not getting paid.
So that whole part of the process that I just listed having the offer that converts, getting paid, writing down your S.O.Ps, saving your profits and duplicating that. There’s a breakdown there. So, you don’t want to scale when you don’t have that core set in stone. So again, when you’re scaling your business the big thing to remember, is it even time to scale? because if you have a breakdown in any four those areas that I just explained you really will scale the problem and you definitely don’t want to do that. If you need help with your billing reach out to us at privateslp.com/billing. We do Credentialing services and billing to help people who were maybe in that billing rut and it is a rut. I remember when I was just starting out I remember going to my CPA and her name was Loretta and I said “Loretta, I got to get a loan” and she looked at me and she says, “Let me see your papers” and I showed her the statements from the billing company. She says, “You don’t need a loan. You need a new biller”.
And that’s when I learned that it’s not normal to go over 30-60-90 days and not get paid. I really honestly, I just didn’t know it was that simple. So, I had to do something I really had trouble doing at the time was firing our biller and getting somebody who really helped us and knew how to be aggressive with our accounts. That’s called AR, accounts receivable somebody who got us paid. And once I started tweaking that out, I was able to get paid and I saved the profits and I was able to hire more people, have a staff and a team.
That’s when I noticed that the business was just growing and thriving and I was able to offer free insurance health insurance for the employees and given them all the good stuff, time off, vacations, dental insurance, vision insurance, 401k and bonuses. And that’s what I like to do but it didn’t happen overnight. I had those bumps on the road. I had to get those S.O.Ps in order. I had to get all that stuff taken care of. Another thing is when you want to scale your business, is it time to scale? Do you have a team? Do you even have the money in the revenue? So, you’re not relying on the bank. You guys you hear it from me first. You don’t want to go, buy and borrow money from the bank because then you’re working for the bank. How bad is that? Can you imagine you think you’re really owning your own business but you really just own your own job and then the bank owns it for you? So, you’re not really working for yourself.
And also, infrastructure that’s something very important when you’re scaling. Do you have the right infrastructure? I mean right now our business is going through a major change. For the last 10 or 11 years we have had paper charts and people used to laugh at us and say, “Why would you do that?” Because I wanted to wait until the right time. I mean Electronic health documentation programs. They’re not cheap. And I like my paper charts and it’s served us well until a point and so I’m investing thousands of dollars into the infrastructure of our business. So, the therapist will save time and make their job easier.
The other day on Amazon I had an order for ten thousand dollars and I was talking to Stephanie I said check this out. I said, “I’ve never ever order 10,000 dollars of stuff on Amazon Prime”. We have the business Prime account and it’s linked up to our American Express platinum card. So, I like those points. Yeah, but the point is I never thought I’d get to the point where you order 10,000 dollars’ worth of laptops. 25 of them which is a great price. You guys who know me I got a killer deal on these laptops by the way. But my point is this we have infrastructure we’ve invested in the clinic, we’ve invested in the process, so it will make our job easier even on the billing, credentialing and the accounts receivable side it’s going to make everything easier for the whole system.
So that’s where we are right now we’ve got our space available. We’ve got the infrastructure set. We’re getting reimbursed. We’ve got the team, it was time to scale because we’re scaling again and so again I wanted to share this with you guys because the offer that converts get paid. Write down your S.O.Ps, save your profits in order to duplicate. It’s really that simple. You’ve gotta take this step by step and don’t get too emotional and don’t get too hungry, angry, lonely, tired so they say don’t get into fear. Take your time sleep on things for 24 hours. Make sure you’re moving the right checker pieces around the board at the right time. Timing is everything. But if you have any questions about Speech Therapy Private Practice growing it, scaling it, anything at all you can reach out to me at kyle@privateslp.com. You’ll find more information about our All access community or the Perfect student or our billing services there on the Web site. But as always thank you for listening.
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