The Speech Source

S2E15: Start and Grow Your Private Practice with SLP Jena Castro-Casbon

• Mary and Kim

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In this epside, hosts Kim and Mary welcom Jena Castro-Casbon, a speech therapist with her own private practice and creator of the Start Your Private Practice and Grow Your Private Practice programs. Jena shares her journey into the field of speech therapy, initially inspired by her father's experiences with stuttering and his positive feedback about speech therapy.  Despite her early aspirations to become an FBI agent, this personal connection led her to pursue speech pathology, and eventually creating The Independent Clinician. 

Jena credits her father's business mind for sparking her entrepreneurial spirit, leading her to start her own practice shortly after becoming certified. She developed educational programs to fill the gap in resources available for speech therapists looking to start and grow their private practices. Her initiatives, which began as an ebook, have evolved into comprehensive online courses assisting thousands of students across the country.

Jena also discusses how her programs have expanded to include occupational therapists (OTs), ensuring the content is inclusive for various disciplines. She emphasizes the importance of staying current with industry changes and integrating these lessons into her teachings.

Jena highlights the challenges of insurance and reimbursements in healthcare, advocating for creative financing options like school contracts and state-funded grants. Her programs provide structured mentorship, offering real-world advice from experienced practitioners to those new to private practice.

She stresses the importance of robust legal and financial structures to protect and sustain private practices and strongly advocates for business education as essential to professional development in speech therapy.

We end this info-packed conversation with Jena sharing inspiring stories of the people she's mentored, underscoring the transformative impact of proper guidance in building successful private practices.

This episode is a must listen if you are ready to dip your toe into private practice or if you are ready to grow and multiply your practice!

Important Links:

Jena's Website - The Independent Clinician

Follow Jena on Instagram - Independentclinician

Start Your Private Practice Program

Grow Your Private Practice Program 

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For more information on speech, language, feeding and play - visit The Speech Source Website - https://www.thespeechsource.com/

Jena:

So I see one of my roles truly in this profession is to learn to do the learning and synthesize the business information and distill it down in a way that makes sense for SLPs to be successful in private practice, because there's a lot of people who start private practices who kind of DIY it, and a lot of those people frankly get in trouble because they're not doing things either legally right or financially right. And so it really is important to start your business and to grow it on a very solid foundation that does use business principles and not just what people think is a good idea or something which certainly may be a good idea. But I've had lots of people come to me after even years of having their practice where they're not profitable at all or that they've been breaking rules from the IRS and that kind of thing.

Mary:

Welcome to the Speech Source Podcast. My name is Mary Brezik and I'm Kim Dillon.

Kim :

We are two pediatric speech-language pathologists with a combined 25 years of experience.

Mary:

We are your source for speech, language feeding, play and much more in between. This season, on the Speech Source Podcast, we are going to be interviewing 12 incredible SLP entrepreneurs who have all built their own businesses. Some of these women are app designers, content and digital course creators. Some are podcast hosts, speakers, coaches, business owners, so much more. These women are going to give us all the inside scoop on how it's done as a speech pathologist, going off and building your own business. So join us each week as we hear their journey and how they built their SLP business.

Kim :

Welcome to today's podcast. We have Jena Castro-Casbon on and we are so excited to talk with her today. She has her own private practice. She is also the creator of two programs the Start your Private Practice program and Grow your Private Practice program. She is an author and I'm sure we're going to learn that she does many more things, so we are excited to have her on, jenna welcome.

Jena:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited about this.

Kim :

If you'll start off having me. I'm really excited about this.

Jena:

If you'll start off and just tell us a little bit about how you got into the field of speech therapy. Yeah, absolutely. My dad stuttered as a kid and so my whole childhood growing up, he used to talk about how he stuttered as a kid. He used to go to speech therapy and how helpful that was, and so I had that in the back of my mind. But I actually wanted to do something completely different.

Jena:

I wanted to be an FBI agent, which is like wild and crazy and the opposite, I feel like, of what we do is a selfies. But anyway, I was going in a totally different career path and then I was in a psychology class in college and they were talking about language development and then disordered language development and I was. I don't actually know if I want to be in the FBI, maybe I just want to watch movies about the FBI. And I had one of those aha moments about maybe speech pathology is what I should do, and so I started exploring that, and then I decided to go to grad school for speech and my dad was so happy and so proud that I had chosen a profession that had helped him so much as a child. So that's how I discovered and came into the profession.

Mary:

Wow, that is beautiful. Now I did know just reading a little bit about you that your dad has been a major supporter for you and your life and getting started with your own practice. Can you tell us a little bit more about his influence on your start and then how he just encouraged you to do your own thing?

Jena:

So my dad's a businessman and before I was talking about going to school for speech pathology, when I was heading in the direction of the FBI, he was like you should do business, come join my company and everyone y'all. He does land title insurance, which has got to be one of the most boring things, like for any of you who are listening who bought a house and you have to get title insurance. That's what my dad did and so I didn't want to do that and I kept telling him, dad, I'm a helping people person, I'm not a business person. So then when I said I was going to go to school for speech pathology, he's oh, okay, great, maybe you'll have a private practice one day and that's how you'll do business. And I was like, okay, sure, dad, maybe one day right Decades into my career, but at the time I was so focused on fluency and then I got to grad school and discovered adults and aphasia and traumatic brain injury and then I ended up going in that direction but nonetheless, like he was encouraging me to follow this profession, but he also really planted that seed of being a business owner and again I thought this would be something I do way later in my career.

Jena:

But I was surprised as anyone when, about nine months after getting my C's, I had an opportunity to work with private clients and people had asked me oh Jenna, do you see private clients? And I said no, because I was 26. And I thought you had to wait for forever to start a practice. And I asked my dad about it. And he's Jenna, if people are asking you to see them privately or to see someone else privately, that means that they want to hire you. So maybe you should say yes next time. And so it was that encouragement that I was like, okay, sure. And then I also had some professional colleagues who had said basically the same thing that they had started practices much earlier in their career. Also, and if people are asking you about private therapy, that means they're interested in working with you. And that's all I needed to hear to shift my mindset from private practice is something that you have to wait decades to do versus something that you can start earlier in your career.

Kim :

I love that you had that encouragement just within your family already, but then also knowing how important that is for other people needing to start a private practice and all that you've created to come alongside people and help them in doing that. So my next question for you would be as you're, you decided that you can do this. You have your C's, you're working. When did you decide, or what made you decide, there should be a course? There needs to be something out there to help people along the way.

Jena:

Okay, perfect question. So this was back in 2006, right, which is a long time ago and there was no information at all, zero information. I figured a lot of this out on my own. As I mentioned, I did have a couple of co-workers who had private practices and they showed me some of the early ropes, but again, there was no references, there were no Facebook groups, there was no courses, there was nothing.

Jena:

And my friends started asking me what I was doing. I was talking about it at parties or whatever else and they're like Jenna, what are you doing and how are you doing that? And so I started telling them, and then they started their own practices too. But then I thought, you know what? I could take this a step further and not just help my old buddies from grad school, but there've got to be other people across the country who also might be interested in this information.

Jena:

My very first thing before I had courses, y'all, I had an ebook which was a popular way to distribute information back in the mid 2000s, and people started buying it and started telling me that it was working and everything else. So I sold my original information as a digital download, pdf ebook for a good while and then we completely overhauled and updated it and I had learned a ton in the meantime and we changed it into online courses, which is, of course, like a much more popular delivery model these days and now we've served over 3000 students through the start program and approaching 600 students through the grow program.

Mary:

Wow, wow, that is amazing. Yeah, that is another one of my questions is I know from your Instagram as well that, in addition to your dad being such a big supporter, you also have two wonderful boys and a very supportive wife. Is she part of your business? Does she do something totally different? Anything like that?

Jena:

So this is a great question. So she's a pediatric physical therapist. She does early intervention, so she is in the therapy world, but she has no interest in business at all. Whenever people find out about us, oh so cute, you all could have a private practice together. She works with kids. I work with adults. She is not business inclined at all Like I eat, sleep and breathe all things business At the end of the day. She's been working with kids all day. She just wants to come home and watch TV and everything else and that's totally fine. She's very supportive but not involved in the business at all. But my boys are. It's funny. I have a 10 year old and a seven year old and they're super interested in business stuff. They ask me about it and they're always like how many new students have you helped? And stuff like that. And that's a really nice feeling because I also want to encourage them to be business owners one day.

Mary:

What a great example to be able to show your boys of hard work and using your gifts to do something that really helps people. So one of the things I saw about your course is that you help SLPs, but also OTs as well. And then you just mentioned your wife is a physical therapist. Tell me a little bit about how OT got involved as well and if you are considering other related disciplines.

Jena:

Yeah, so great question. I'm obviously an SLP and so when I first created the START program, it was 100% for SLPs, right? All of the examples were late talkers and autism and feeding and fluency and whatnot. But what happened was a lot of OTs were like, listen, we don't have anyone to learn about this from OTs. Can I join your course? And I was like you can absolutely join it, Just know that you're going to have to change all of the examples from, like, aphasia to sensory or handwriting or whatever else. But I said, please let me know if this doesn't work for you, right, Because I want the feedback. And I told people I would reimburse them or give them a refund if it didn't work. But nobody took me up on that offer and everyone said, no, it works for us.

Jena:

We recorded the course for the first time in 2019, and then we completely updated it and overhauled it in 2023. And when I did that, I actually hired an OT who had gone through the START program and was doing well with her practice to help me OTIs the course to make sure that it was completely inclusive for OTs, and we also hired an OT mentor to be able to support T's through the mentorship aspect that we also have for the program For PTs. I've had a couple of pediatric PTs join the program and I think it works well for them, but a lot of more adult focused PTs. It's a lot about sports injuries and there's different equipment and there's different billing styles and there's other people that PTs can learn from. But so pediatric PTs I'm happy to help because it aligns very nicely with OTs, but I think for most PTs there's some other people they can learn from.

Kim :

I can tell just by our conversation at the beginning of this podcast that you stay up to date with all of the new things you were telling us about some programs. What advice would you give for someone who is going through that process with just continuing to learn and stay up to date? Because, just like you said, y'all did an overhaul in 2003, because obviously things changed you could add to it. You probably pulled new information in. How important do you feel like that is for an entrepreneur?

Jena:

It's hugely important, right? Our clinical education that we got in grad school, no matter when everyone graduated, right? Things change all the time. What we were doing with autistic kids back in the early 2000s seems to be the opposite of what people are doing with autistic kids these days, right? So we know that the clinical world changes and most SLPs are obsessed with clinical education.

Jena:

But if you're going to start a business, you also have to possibly don't become obsessed with business you can leave that to me but you do have to gain some business skills if you're going to be a business owner.

Jena:

So I see one of my roles truly in this profession is to learn, to do the learning and synthesize the business information and distill it down in a way that makes sense for SLPs to be successful in private practice, because there's a lot of people who start private practices, who kind of DIY it and a lot of those people frankly get in trouble because they're not doing things either legally right or financially right.

Jena:

And so it really is important to start your business and to grow it on a very solid foundation that does use business principles and not just what people think is a good idea or something which certainly may be a good idea, but I've had lots of people come to me after even years of having their practice where they're not profitable at all or that they've been breaking rules from the IRS and that kind of thing, and so again, I'm happy to be the one who reads all of the business books and actually watches the news, the financial news and stuff, and takes that information and makes it applicable to SLPs.

Jena:

I'll say one thing that's hot off the press is that just yesterday the FTC decided that non-compete agreements are not legal. So there's a lot of people out there who would like to start private practices but previously have not been able to because they have non-compete clauses through their workplace and we've been knowing that this was coming, but it feels so good to see it actually happen that now people are not being held back by non-competes and that is a huge win for workers and it's a huge win for, again, slps who just want to maybe even see some private clients on the side of their job but previously were not able to do so yeah, that's another example of a new piece of information that now I have that I'm able to share not just with our students but even prospective students who have been wanting to do this for a while, but haven't been able to.

Mary:

Oh, this is a huge win. I am a major supporter of this. Really nicely into my next question, which I really wanted to get your take on health care these days, because it has changed dramatically. I have a seven-year-old. I think about what was available for therapies when she was young, and then today I have a two-year-old that has received some different therapies wildly different and insurance is different. Availability of solo practitioners is different. Can you give your take on what you think about those changes and how it's going?

Jena:

Yeah, covid did a number on all kinds of things, but one of the things really was the healthcare system. I think that we're in a really interesting financial position, not just in the United States but the world, where prices of things are going up and then reimbursements, unfortunately, are going down. And another major issue is staffing right. There's just not enough people oftentimes who are working at hospitals or outpatient facilities or whatnot. So the ability to get services for a child who needs therapy through traditional mechanisms really is decreasing In terms of like reimbursement and whatnot for services like insurance companies unfortunately love to charge people premiums for their insurance but don't actually like to cover as much as they cannot cover. They're going to do that, and so that's become a problem for some of my private practitioners who do take insurance, because they're getting less reimbursement. So one of the things that I really want people to try to do is to be very creative about how they accept money into their practice. So there are some practices that are private, pay only, and they really have positioned themselves as either experts or like the go-to person for that thing in their community, and for those people, parents and family members are happy to pay maybe not happy to, but are willing to pay premium prices for what they are perceiving to be a premium service. If you have more of a private practice, that's more like a catch-all kind of thing, like a generalist practice that sees everybody and takes all the insurances and everything else. I'm not knocking that strategy. It's a high volume strategy where you have to see more clients. But the reality is that if insurance companies are reimbursing less, you may have to find other ways to get paid, and so some really great other ways to get paid.

Jena:

I can talk about two of them. One of them is school contracts. A lot of private practitioners are going the school contract route because that's a great way to add a larger sum of money on top of the practice. That is predetermined what the rate is and you're not having to wait on reimbursement from insurance companies. And the other one is things like grants and scholarship programs.

Jena:

There's a lot of states out there who have state funding that kids with disabilities or different populations can tap into, where, like, the child is the recipient of the grant money and can use that money for anything they choose, including going to see a private practitioner. So that's where I want people to get creative about the services that they're offering through their practices and what payment they accept. Because, just what you said, the healthcare system is changing so much and the practices that I see that are in trouble right now are the ones that are not adapting. The ones that right now are the ones that are not adapting, the ones that are thriving are the ones that are adapting to the changing times and they're aware of what the changes are and what to do with them.

Mary:

It makes a difference whether or not you're informed, either clinically or from a business point of view. So, tira, I remember even when the good faith estimate came out not too long ago, all of a sudden everybody needs that document and you need it now. So you really have to be either take that on yourself, if you're a solar practitioner, to be apprised of all that information, or be connected with someone like you to say I know that's not something I can take on my plate right now and that's something that I'm going to need to outsource because I'm growing my. Not something I can take on my plate right now and that's something that I'm going to need to outsource because I'm growing my business or I'm being creative. But when people are part of your grow program specifically, that's probably something they can really count on is the support that they might have left leaving a big practice.

Jena:

Yeah, totally. And there's certain things that, like people like just don't. There's certain things that have to be done for your business. Right, like you have to do billing. Right, you have to not just send the bills but actually make sure that you're recouping that money back. Right, you have to schedule clients, you have to do marketing, but you also, like you don't have to be the one to do all those things.

Jena:

So, as a practice is growing, one of the things that we help people do is to hire support, and sometimes that support is a virtual assistant or an administrative support person that they can do some of that stuff, because, frankly, that's not a good use of the business owner's time. You can be making more money and being in your zone of genius, treating clients like making the phone calls to insurance companies or sending a thing, and so when people's businesses start to kind of take off, they really have to make a decision like am I going to continue doing this all by myself, where there's only so many hours of the day and maybe they have kids and have some limitations on their time, or am I going to hire somebody to delegate some of the stuff to? And the stuff that you should delegate truthfully, is the stuff that needs to be done for your practice but that you don't want to do, and maybe even you hate doing, but someone else isn't going to mind doing it.

Kim :

I really like how you've broken up these programs into two programs, because when someone's about to start a private practice, I think it can be, so maybe take on taking insurance if that's what I want to do or I've exploded. I need a team, things like that. It's great that you've broken it up like that. Everything together would be really overwhelming. But just insurance in itself and having to keep up with those changes to be able to have someone that is knowledgeable about that walk you through that is huge.

Jena:

Yeah, totally. I'm an SLP too. I understand the SLP brain and a lot of times we just put the cart before the horse. I have so many people who are like, jenna, I'm thinking about buying your program and I really want to get as many clients, but how do I hire? And I'm like, okay, do you have clients yet? And they're like, no, not yet. I'm like, okay, then let's not worry about hiring yet.

Jena:

And again, it comes from such a well-meaning place and SLPs tend to be very organized and lots of people are a little bit more perfectionistic and want to make sure that they do everything right from the very beginning, and I really respect that.

Jena:

But what I see is the flip side is sometimes people have so many perfectionistic tendencies when starting their practices that it actually ends up in procrastination.

Jena:

And I think it was Brene Brown who said that perfectionism is a form of procrastination. And I see that all the time with people who are getting their ducks in a row together for years when really they're scared to tell people that they have a practice Another big part that I do in my program and I don't tell people about this enough because they just want just tell me what to do, jenna, but we do have some mindset stuff that is woven through the program on things like analysis, paralysis and imposter syndrome and money mindset and those kinds of things, because those are the things that like hold people back where, even if they have the information that they need to move forward, sometimes it's those mental traps that actually keeps people stuck, either from starting or growing. And so, believe me, I give people all of the how to's but I also infuse some mindset work because I know as a business owner, that is what's going to keep people actually stuck and not moving forward.

Mary:

That's a good entry to this too, because one of the questions I had for you owning the independent clinician is how you are able to serve people in your groups. And you say that in your grow program, for example, you have mentors that they're going to work people in your groups. And you say that in your GROW program, for example, you have mentors that they're going to work with or talk with. Can you talk a little bit more about what that looks like? How much transparency and kind of open book are they giving and then also, what is the background of your mentors when they're talking?

Jena:

Great question. So, just like in graduate school, we went to classes and we learned theory and we learned how aphasia works, but we also had clinical instructors and supervisors who actually taught us the nitty gritty of how to actually do therapy. And so the way that I have our course lined up is you get the information right. The recorded trainings are self-paced, you get checklists and worksheets and all that kind of stuff for that type of learning. But we include mentorship so that you can learn from people who have also done what it is that you want to do and who are in the trenches every single day with different types and sizes of practices. So both of my programs come with mentorship and coaching so that you can tap into people who maybe have a similar practice thing you want to make.

Jena:

Katie Brown, for example, is one of the mentors. She's in New York. She has an adult-focused private practice. She has employees, she has a brick and mortar. I have another person named Bobby Adams Brown. She lives in California. She's a solo private practitioner who does teletherapy only. I've got another person, amanda. She lives in Toledo, ohio. She does all home visits for preschoolers and she is hiring a contractor right now.

Jena:

And that's just like half of the people who are coaches and mentors for the program. Just like in grad school, when you had different supervisors that you learn different things from, I want people to be able to learn from different types of private practitioners. For any of you listening who have listened to my podcast, you know that there's a million ways to have a private practice. It doesn't have to be this cookie cutter thing that I think lots of people think that it has to be. So in the same way, I want you to learn from other private practitioners who are also out there, who are helping their own clients and have dealt with their own struggles in business, and they are also committed to helping the next generation of private practitioners do things better, quicker and easier than they were able to do that's something that we have definitely seen just in our interviews.

Kim :

That we've been doing during this series is that every single person has done it a different way and it's encouraging too. I'm sure with your podcast all of the people that come on and tell their stories someone can hear something that resonates with them and they're like I can do that. That's what I would want to do. You might listen to something else. I'm like no, that is not for me, but everybody does do it different. It's so great to be able to have all those options as mentors. So the mentor schedules it with the person in the group based on their schedule.

Jena:

Sort of. So in the start program it all takes in both of my programs. Really, a lot of the mentorship takes place in the Facebook group. You get to come to this big community. The START program has, let's see, we've got over 3,000 students, but I think we only have about 2,700 in the Facebook group. So there's a lot of questions being asked by our students and they're being largely answered by the mentors, and so you get that mentorship there and then we do a live group coaching call at the end of the month where you can come on and basically ask the mentor anything and they share their experience and everything else. So in that program mentorship happens that way.

Jena:

In the GROW program the way that mentorship works is that first of all, people meet with me individually twice during their time in the program and I help them make a private practice growth plan that is specific for their practice, because a lot of people are just winging it and don't have a growth plan and air quotes.

Jena:

Real businesses have growth plans in place, and so that is what we help people put into place. In the meantime we also have weekly office hours with private practitioners who are mentors for the program. So people come on like office hour style that again they can ask any question. And then we also have trainings once a month where I bring in experts on a variety of topics to come talk about Facebook ads or on marketing your practice, or on adding community classes to your practice or whatever else. But these are all things again that come later, after you've started your practice. So we try to not only give the right information at the right time but also the right support at the right time so that people feel completely supported along the private practice journey in a way that makes sense for where they are in their business.

Mary:

When you built your business, there were so many ways that you saw people needed support and in so many different stages of their business that you needed to outsource, and for your own life you didn't want to probably be the person responding to every single Facebook thread that you possibly could, so that makes so much sense. Then, hiring wise did you feel like that was a slow progression for your company that you kept adding as you went, or did you start a new? Okay, we're going to do the mentorship program. I need a team. How did that kind of develop?

Jena:

So a couple of things. My company has really grown a lot over the past couple of years and I've actually been doing this since 2008 is when that ebook first came out. So I've had the independent clinician since 2008. But our programs really accelerated during COVID. At the very beginning of COVID, I had just released the start program. I was so excited. And then COVID happened and I'm like, oh gosh, like here goes my whole business. Who is going to start a private practice now? I had my own mentor, because I've been in lots of business coaching programs and basically she's Jenna, your people need a leader right now. You go out there and you be the leader that your people need and that's all I needed was someone to say go, and I did.

Jena:

Has grown pretty exponentially since 2020 started, and one of the major reasons why is because people had all kinds of disruption in their careers, but also they wanted more flexibility, they wanted more time with their kids, they wanted to work in safety. People realize that they were maybe being taken advantage of at their jobs before and they're like I don't want to go back to that. I want to create something that is mine. So as our programs grew in the beginning, I did do all of the support, I did all of the answers, I answered all the emails. I did all of those things but we grew pretty quickly. So for our programs, basically what I did was I started hiring people who were our star students, the people who are already in the group, already answering questions for their peers and whatnot. I brought them on and paid them to be mentors for the program and every single one of those people is still with me years later. And then as we've grown the different programs, we've added more people and also different types of experiences. Like I mentioned earlier, once we added OTs to the program, I knew obviously we needed to have at least one OT mentor. And as we're adding more OTs, my next hire is going to be another OT mentor, because now we have more and more OTs joining the program and then also just for making sure that we're being well-rounded in what we're teaching.

Jena:

The majority of private practices are pediatric practices, but I definitely wanted to have at least one adult, adult, focused private practitioner who that's all they did, and so I mentioned her earlier. But Katie Brown is our adult mentor for SLPs, being able to do topic specific kinds of things as well as making sure that people who like in Grow we talk a lot about hiring right Every single one of those mentors has a team. They've got a mix of employees, they've got contractors, they have administrative support, because, again, I want people to be learning not just from me, but from also other people who can say what happened that day in their practice with an employee who wasn't meeting their goals and whatnot, and they had to let them go. I've had to deal with that too, but I think, again, it's really important for people to learn from a lot of different types and perspectives. When it comes to business, just like when it comes to clinical work, we also learn from different people.

Mary:

When I think about your business and your growth plan for the independent clinician, some of the kind of data points along the way have been your book and then also your podcast. So can you tell us a little bit about what led to the decision to start both of them?

Jena:

And obviously the podcast takes a tremendous amount of your time and energy doing that, and then the book must have been a large chunk of time, as well, people have been asking me to do a podcast for a while and I kept saying no, and the reason why is because I'm an introvert and no one believes that. But it's true. And I just was what am I going to talk about for an hour a week? I'm just going to say the same stuff. Who's going to listen to me, whatever? So then I was literally shopping at Trader Joe's one day I remember this and I thought you listen to podcasts all the time and most of them are interview-based podcasts. Why don't you just interview people? So then I said, okay, probably I could do a post in my big Facebook group, the SLP NFT Private Practice Beginners Facebook group, and I could say who would be willing to come on the podcast. And if I could get at least 12 people to say yes, then I could do one podcast episode a month and that would be great. I did my post and 12 people wrote back in the first 10 minutes and so I was like, interesting, there are more people willing to share their stories than I could have ever thought. And now we are a couple of years into the podcast. I can't remember exactly when we started, but we're on episode 273, which the average number of podcast episodes is six, because there are some podcasts that have one episode and that's all it is. There's other people who maybe get to 10 episodes. Being in the late 200s is high and I love doing it and I do not have enough time in my schedule to book as many episodes as people are volunteering to do. I could release probably three episodes a week with the amount of people who are willing to be on the podcast and share their stories, and that, to me, is so cool. And again, my whole purpose of the podcast is to show people that there are so many different ways to have a private practice. That has been fantastic.

Jena:

The book same thing. People are like oh, you should write a book, you should write a book, and I wanted to write a book and so basically it took me about nine months to write my book. I did hire a book coach because I have ADD and getting stuff done on deadlines is not always a skill that I have, and so by hiring basically a book accountability coach, I was able to write that book in nine months. And then she also helped me with all the other stuff like formatting and how to get your book on Amazon and all that kind of other stuff, but again, I wanted to bring this information to the masses as best as I could. Not everybody's in Facebook and on online stuff, and people like books.

Jena:

I love physical books and I also was envisioning people receiving a book about private practice when they were like graduating from grad school. I want this information to get in the hands of as many people as possible. So fun thing that I did last year at ASHA I went conveniently was in Boston, which is where I live, but we actually gave out 700 copies of my book completely for free to anyone who came by the booth. Because, again, I want this information into the hands of as many people as possible, because I think that private practice is the future. This is the way that psychologists have gone. It's gone really well for them. Between staffing and pay cuts and all kinds of reasons. Things are not going well for most people who are working in schools and hospitals as SLPs, and so if you want to take back control of your professional, your personal and your financial life, I truly believe that this is possible for us, but it's also possible for individuals who are maybe wondering if it's possible for them.

Mary:

Okay, I'm going to ask. A real question that I think everybody has when they think about starting their own private practice is but am I going to be able to pay my bills? Is the money going to work for my family? Can I take this risk? What do you say to people like that?

Jena:

risk. What do you say to people like that? Slps tend to be a risk averse type of people, right? I'll say that the old way of starting a private practice was to quit your job and then start a practice. The new way to start a private practice, which is what I teach people to do, is to start your private practice on the side of your job so that you have that stability, you have that regular pay, you have those benefits and you add a couple private clients after work, on the weekend, over the summer and you start making more money on top of your job. And then, as your caseload grows, either you reduce the hours at your job maybe at a part-time, let's say so you still have some of the stable income, but you also are loading up your schedule with as many private clients as possible. And then at some point you decide okay, do I leave my job or do I keep it?

Jena:

Some people are like I'm three years away from retirement, what should I do?

Jena:

And I'm like you should stay, don't give up your retirement. But I think what happens is people start to do the math and they realize that they can make exponentially more money through their own private practice and it's actually like they're losing money by staying at their job, and so once people get a little bit more comfortable with being a business owner, they have a wait list, they have demand for their services. That's when they realize, oh, I am safe to leave my job. I was worried about this before I got going. But people get to a point where they're like I got to get out of this job as soon as possible because I'm literally losing money every day that I go to work. That's a mindset shift that comes a little bit later, but for anyone who's worried about it in the beginning. That's why I teach people to start on the side, so that you get that money coming in and you start to build a caseload and build your confidence and then you can decide if you want to go all in on your private practice or not.

Kim :

Jenna, you've really thought of almost every angle for somebody that's wanting to start this, and one of the things I love that you offer is the bundle of forms that included in that is a lot of the legal forms and a lot of the financial forms, and this is a conversation that Mary and I have. A lot is just the legal things that people might be missing when we didn't get any of that stuff in grad school as a speech therapist and it's stuff that you're not I'm not knowledgeable about, just as a speech therapist so can you talk a little bit about the importance of some of these forms that for a therapist to just have in their hands when they start a company, because that can take so much time in creating and it's so important? So share a little bit about how you came to just create all of those.

Jena:

Yeah, totally so again, I know our population because I'm part of it. I know that SLPs are risk averse and people think, oh, private practice is risky. It certainly can be risky. For example, if you do quit your job and then go to try to find clients, that's financially risky. For example, if you do quit your job and then go to try to find clients, that's financially risky.

Jena:

It's legally risky to not have your legal ducks in a row, to not have clients sign acknowledgement forms, to not have HIPAA forms, to not have intake forms or like a fee schedule or an attendance policy and all that kind of stuff. You have to have those things not only because it protects you legally but it also protects your practice financially. So, for example, if you don't have an attendance policy, then you can't enforce attendance. So if you have clients that are canceling all the time and sometimes people cancel right, lots of us have kids, sometimes kids are sick I'm not saying be a monster or whatever, but if you have a family that is habitually canceling, that's going to affect your finances. If you don't have a policy in place and people don't know how to write this stuff and again, I'm not a lawyer.

Jena:

I partnered with a lawyer to help me create all these documents. I said what we needed and they created everything. So their lawyer created and reviewed, but with my guidance, to say this is what practices need and so, again, just adding that additional layer of legal protection makes it so people can sleep at night. I want to take private practice and make it as simple as possible for people to be able to do, and that's where I get nervous for all the people who are like winging it or yeah, whatever, and you're putting your license at risk and you're actually putting your finances at risk or your legal situation at risk. I want to help people not only have practices, get them off the ground, but I want people to have successful private practices that are truly set up for success from the very beginning, and one of the ways that we help people do that is obviously through our programs, but also through the legal forms.

Mary:

One of the things that I've been looking into lately is I need to do some more continuing education hours. Of course, now it's really opened up a lot with the whole professional development hours as well. There are so many courses out there, but what I would really like to do and I think a lot of people who are listening feel the same way is I would like to get more of that business PDH hours that will help me in my profession. That might not necessarily be a specific topic like autism or apraxia or whatever. Do you have certain things that you would recommend to listeners to take?

Jena:

Yeah, my programs both offer PDHs. So the start program offers nine, and we just need to recount the grow program because we added a bunch more. It's around 20. So that's a pretty significant number of pH hours. And again, it is very specific to business for speech pathologists. I'm also looking for continuing education that is relevant to the business world and you're right, there is not a lot out there and I feel like the stuff that is out there is the same thing. So, yes, I'm very committed to offering continuing education through my programs. I'm not and I have no interest in becoming an approved ASHA CEU provider and we don't have to have ASHA approved CEUs to use for our continuing education. Basically, when you come into my programs, there's learning objectives, there's an assessment at the end. When you pass the assessment then you get a certificate and then you can use that certificate as I don't know if evidence is the right word, but something like that to show that you have these hours and you can submit it as far as your hours and get continuing education that way.

Mary:

What about the people that you have in your GROW program? Maybe they've gotten their feet wet, now they're entrepreneurs, they're seeing the success of their private practice, and then they start seeing all the other shiny things. They see, oh, people are doing courses and people are doing merch. What do you tell them about those things? Because in one sense, it's a great diversification of income, but then also thinking about that for them specifically.

Jena:

Really good question. It's funny two weeks ago, I did a whole training for our growers on selling digital products, which is obviously something that I know a thing or two about. At the very beginning of the conversation, I said listen, this is a great way to earn extra money but, to be completely honest, it is a slower way than what many of the things that you are currently doing are. For example, if you're really in growth mode, if you're choosing to spend your time creating resources, let's say, for Teachers, pay Teachers, which you're going to sell for $1 to $5 each, or you spend your time going after a school contract, which you could get a hundred, a hundred, fifty thousand, two hundred thousand dollars for a school contract which one of those should you spend your time on? I don't mean for this to come off the wrong way, but when you're growing a practice, you really do have to follow the money, because your business needs money in order to be successful. So if you are choosing between two different things and one of them is going to help your practice make money, like now, and another thing is going to help make your practice make money, maybe later, infrequently, or whatever then you really have to choose which one of those is the best use of your time.

Jena:

I'll give you another kind of example here, like paid presentations. Sometimes people want to do paid presentations and again, I think that is great, but you're not necessarily in control of how many presentations you do a year and where they are and how much they pay and that kind of stuff when instead you could offer something like parent child classes, which are going to lead to referrals for your practice. So you're going to make some money on the classes and that's great, but the real money is made with that of generating more referrals for your practice and generating word of mouth. So you always have to be making decisions as business owners. How do I spend my time? And yeah, there's a lot of shiny objects out there and I actually do teach pretty much all of them in the GROW program. But that's one of the reasons why we meet with people and help them make a growth plan, so that they don't get distracted by stuff that's not going to help them meet their most immediate financial goals.

Kim :

That's really great advice. When we started our series, just talking to different therapists, we kept hearing your name and hearing about your course, and so Mary was like we have got to get her on. So we were just thrilled when you agreed to come on. You just have so much information to offer. Just having this conversation with you was really eye-opening. So I'm really excited to share this with our listeners. But just out of curiosity, outside of your programs, do you offer private coaching as well for people who have specific questions?

Jena:

So I don't at this time. The only way to work with me on an individual basis is through the GROW program and is through these structured growth planning sessions.

Kim :

Okay, that's great to know. All right, mary, did you have any other questions? No, we can just do the fun questions. One of the fun questions is what you would be if you were not a speech therapist. I wonder if that would still be an FBI agent. I was curious if that was still a passion or thought in your head.

Jena:

It's funny I just I really like watching law enforcement kind of shows, murder shows or whatever that kind of stuff. Yeah, I think I probably would still go in that direction.

Kim :

Good question. You're busy and I know you have a family that also keeps you busy. But what do you do?

Jena:

Something for you, self-care time for you, so the two things that I really like to do is I like to go for walks. Like a lot of people, we got a dog during COVID and our dog is super cute but a little crazy and definitely got to tire him out on walks and it's good exercise for me. And I read a lot. I read mostly business books every year. I'm like Jenna maybe try a fiction book this year, but I don't know. You like what you like and so I do. I read a lot of business books, but, again, that's what I like. Other people are like you're at the beach, why don't you read whatever? But this is what I like.

Kim :

What about dinner? Do you like to cook or do you have a go-to? When your day has just been crazy, you're like, okay, I can get this on the table. Do you have something easy?

Jena:

Yeah, so my wife helps because, again, planning isn't always great. So she usually plans what we're going to eat for the week and I am the one who puts the meal together. But I'm really good at throwing stuff together and making it come out really good. I'm from the South. Originally I'm from New Orleans, so I do some Southern cooking gumbos and jambalayas and that kind of thing. Of course I've got kids who would love to eat pasta every night, so I'm always just trying to get them to mix up what they like to eat too. But I do like to cook, but I don't like cooking from recipes quite as much. I really just like to throw stuff together.

Mary:

Okay, and then I have one random last question for you. So I know from listening to your podcast that you have interviewed so many people with all of their different stories, but I would love to know what is a story that really touched you personally, or do you have someone that kind of stands out to you, of a story of someone that you helped, or a private practice that you really helped get started, that really made an impact on you and helped you really keep going at what you do?

Jena:

I can think of so many people, but I guess I'll give one example. Her name's Tia Javier. Tia has a private practice in Richmond Virginia. She has two little girls and a husband. She's Black, she's bilingual and she wanted to have a private practice to serve those populations and so she has a brick and mortar private practice.

Jena:

She came through my start program and then my grow program, but the thing that is so cool about Tia is she's just like a connector. She connects with people, she spots the need for services in her area and she creates them. So she now has a multidisciplinary private practice again in Richmond Virginia and she sees there's last I knew there was five or 600 clients a month coming through her practice. She also has billboards all over. And one really cool thing she applied for a grant that TNT was running. It was a small business grant and, if I'm getting my numbers right, there was 45,000 people who entered this competition for the grant and Tia won. Just an amazing person who saw a need in her community wanted to be a good representation for her clients and she's doing amazing things with her practice.

Kim :

Wow, that's a beautiful story. Yeah, that's really inspiring. And just your talk about the grant process, that's something that, honestly, I had never even thought of before, so that's really interesting.

Jena:

There's a lot of opportunities out there that people just get in their heads and they're like why would they ever pick me? They picked Tia out of 45,000 people. So what's that quote? I think it's Wayne Goretzky that you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. So put yourself out there and see what happens.

Mary:

Thank you so much. We are so inspired. I love your podcast. This was so much fun. Thank you so much for sharing.

Kim :

All right, bye y'all. Bye, jenna. Thanks for listening. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast and check out our website thespeechsourcecom.

Mary:

Also check us out on Instagram for more ideas on speech, language feeding and play.

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Mary Brezik and Kim Dillon

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