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In Episode 28, I talk about the cost of doing business. When I was very young, my dad (who was a hard-working plumber with an 8th grade education – he had over 100 employees in his plumbing contracting company) made me work hard. I hated all of the physical labor at that time, but reflecting back now, I see how it was a very important time for me. As a private practice and real estate owner, I still use these lessons today. It’s important to remember that I can’t keep all of the profits. In speech therapy private practice, the owner will have expenses, but these are necessary for everyone involved to succeed and get what they need: 1. The patient gets the treatment, 2. The employees get the job and benefits of employment, 3. The IRS gets their tax payments and 4. The landlord gets the rent payment. Everyone involved is a winner when this simple rule is followed: 10% of something is better than 100% of nothing.
In this episode:
01:00 – Seventeen thousand four hundred and twenty eight listeners
02:02 – Value of money
03:38 – Something that ties in the Private practice
03:50 – In business there are expenses
05:11 – There is always a cost of doing business
06:40 – Ten percent of something is better than a hundred percent of nothing
08:10 – You’ve got to suit up, show up and not be flaky and get that job done
This is something that ties in the Private practice as well. You’ve to understand its not what you get paid that makes you successful. Its what you retain and what you keep and what you save.
[Commercial]Well, Hello everyone! You’re listening to the Speech therapy Private practice Startup Podcast; this is episode number 28. 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. Today is July 22nd it’s a Saturday and its raining here in Tucson which is a very rare event. As of today we have well over Seventeen thousand four hundred and twenty eight listeners to the show and I am so grateful to have you guys on the program. Welcome back to all you listeners out there, if you are new to the podcast welcome aboard.
I was going back through some of the old podcast episodes one, two, three, four, it was just amazing how things have changed, how the formats changed and how the quality has changed but you know the content is still there so I hope you guys are getting that good valuable information. You know me I got to say it at every single podcast, “Value is what you get in the absence of money”. So these podcasts are free for you so if you wouldn’t mind go ahead and go to the iTunes store and leave some five star feedbacks. That way other people can get the same valuable information that you’re getting. I just wanted to say again welcome aboard and thanks for being a listener to the show. And if there is anything or any need just reach out to me at the website www.privateslp.com/contact.
Today I want to talk about the Value of money. My son recently got a new game station. He got a play station 4, so obviously we have to get rid of the Xbox one. And he came up to me the other day and he says, Dad we can just go right down the street and get rid of that Xbox one, and GameStop will give us eighty bucks. And am thinking that thing doesn’t cost eight bucks, that thing cost a lot of money. And I said, “Goggies your camera son. I am going to give you little lesson and value.” So what we did, I’ve got a great feedback on ebay. So I said lets put this thing on ebay. And he has never done an auction or anything like that. He is eleven. So I said, “watch this, take some pictures”. So he took the pictures. I said lets load that thing upon a listing and we are going to put it there for a dollar reserve.
He says “Wow wow, Dad we can’t give it away. They are going to give us eighty bucks at GameStop.” I said, “No, watch this, we are going to hit the Greet button. We are going to put a nice Xbox one with a external two terabyte hard drive, two headsets, eleven games and all the bells and whistles, camouflage controller and black controller, all these extras.” And I said, “We are going to put Free shipping and we are going to do this. We are going to put it on there for a dollar reserve on a five-day auction.” And he was kind of freaking out and he said, “No, you’ll see by the morning time.” This was 10 at night and I said, “By the morning we are going to have at least 50 or 60 bucks on this auction”. He says, “Okay Dad”. So we went to the bed and woke up the next morning. He was so fired up. Anyway make a long story short. We got Three hundred twenty five dollars for the game system. So I wanted to show him a lesson but this is something that ties in the Private practice as well. You’ve to understand its not what you get paid that makes you successful. Its what you retain and what you keep and what you save.
But also remember in business there are expenses, just like on this Xbox on Ebay. What we had to do? We had to pay some fees. Ebay got a listing fee. They always get their cut. And then PayPal took almost 10 bucks in fees to transfer the money. So they got their cut. So for the free shipping option we had to take that to the UPS store. And for those of you who know me the UPS store that’s where we get all of our mails for our clinic. So I brought it over there, and I got a discount. But still it cost twenty-five dollars to box this thing up correctly who had a double box it and insure and then another fifty-one dollars. Anyway long story short to make it even longer, we spend about eighty-nine to hundred dollars in fees. So that three twenty five minus a hundred, we walked away with two hundred and twenty five dollars. And my son he was saying something like this, he said, “What’s the point? We could have saved this this headache.” I said, “Son you have to realize when you do business, its part of business.”
You’re going to have expenses like with the Speech therapy private practice you’re going to have taxes, payroll, even you would lose some money once in a while when you don’t get reimbursements from Insurance companies. Lets say you don’t get your proper Authorization or you don’t do your benefits check when the Patient come in. You may not get that money. So there is always a cost of doing business so never forget that.
I remember when I was a kid my Dad, he was a plumber. He had a very big plumbing company, about 100 employees at one time. And I remember I was at my son’s age, my Dad always used to take us to work and I used to bock, I hated it. My mom would pack out lunch. We had to get up at four thirty in the morning. And I just remember asking my Dad, “Can I have a break here?” I just want to sit around and watch some cartoons at that time. I am older than forty-seven so we had cartoons, we didn’t have all the content that twenty and thirty years old have today. But I said, “Could I just sit around, just relax and enjoy my summering season?” “No sir you need to go to work. But I am going to pay you.” And so when I was nine, ten and eleven I was making hundred to hundred and twenty bucks a week and getting taxes taking out. But my Dad always had his digging ditches, running sewer pipes, sweating copper and installing water heaters building apartments. He kept his busy.
And I remember one time he had me connect some gag pipe in one of the Offices out back. It was hot, typical southeast Louisiana, sweat and humidity, august or late July, like this in Tucson. And I said, “Dad, can I come in and sit in the Office with you and just hangout the Air conditioner?” He said, “Son, if you want to hangout the Air conditioner go to college but until then you need to get out there and get that work done.” And so that was my lesson and value. My Dad always said ten percent of something is better than a hundred percent of nothing. And so that’s what I told my son. I said, “Yeah, we could have taken the easier and softer way, go down the GameStop, give all these games and components and walk away with hundred bucks.” But no, somebody is going to get good value, some child out there or some adults is going to get good quality, gently used system, they are going to enjoy that and we may little money that, Persons going to get good value.
Also I told my son, “This is a lesson for you in marketing. Remember when I asked you to write the description.” He said, ”Yeah Dad.” I said, “What did you write?” He said, “There was a camouflage controller and a black controller, console, cable, Bluetooth headset and eleven games. He listed all that out. It was really cool watching him do that. And then I put a little fluff-fluff in there. I said, “Watch this son ‘gently used’ or how about ‘manufactured in twenty fifteen’ or how about ‘never moved from room’ or how about this one ‘smoke free environment’. He got to see some of those marketing aspects and how you sell a product. So that’s what I wanted to show to my kids.
Its really important with Private practice you want to correlate everything that you learn throughout your career. And you’ve got to give good value, give good treatments, and give good customer service. And you’ve heard me say it time and time again, you’ve got to suit up, show up and not be flaky and get that job done. Have an offer that converts and that’s therapy services at a reasonable price and you can take insurance. We were just talking about that in the Alex’s forum. If you go to www.privateslp.com/coaching, you’ll see how you can join the forum. We have six members in there right now and we’re just all having a good time having our monthly webinars and all the contents in there. And people are asking questions and their getting answers. If you are looking for something and you can’t find it just let me know and I’ll make it for you, and I tell people that all the time. So we’ve been recently talking about credentialing and insurance plans. And we’re talking about your first patient and what are the proper steps to get that person in the door and paper work, and all that stuffs in the forum. So if that interests you, www.privateslp.com/coaching.
As always I hope this is been a valuable podcast for you and if you need me, reach out to me kyle@privateslp.com, and Thank you for listening.
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