7 Deadly Mistakes Made By New Practice Startups

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12: Speech Therapy Private Practice Is a Long Game

When I am working with others, I always stress the importance of dedication and persistence.  You have to remember that success in anything that we do happens over time.  So many people think that making a few changes in their life will automatically lead to a successful outcome.  In business, we must be cautious and take appropriate steps over time so that we can become successful.  We shouldn’t act in haste.  It’s also important to seek help from others.  Let’s be honest, we cannot do this alone.  We have to learn how to trust and delegate so that we can continue to grow and improve.  In this episode, I share some  insights on speech therapy private practice and how a successful business is built on long-term commitments, financial honesty and integrity.

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In this episode:

01:32 – Home health avenue for Perfect student
02:50 – THANK YOU for the emails, tweets and feedback
03:32 – Success
04:03 – Mines on Pontatoc ridge
05:20 – Establishing relationship with your patients
06:31 – Supportive and Sustaining
06:45 – desire to work and to do everything yourself
08:25 – You can’t quit before the miracle
08:46 – You can’t keep co-payments
09:51 – This is a long game and you can’t cut corners

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Transcription of Episode Twelve:

Someone was asking me the other day about being successful. And they asked me “What’s the most important thing about being successful” and I really thought about that question because the answer is really simple – You got to be in this for the long call.

[Commercial]

Well, Hello everyone! You’re listening to the Speech therapy Private practice Startup Podcast; this is episode number 12. 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.

Hey, thanks again for all the tweets, emails and also wanted to thank those who are emailing me about the Perfect Student. I still am looking for two students to mentor. And you are able to fly in to Tucson and come spend a week with me in Tucson. You are also going to have access to me on weekly calls and those can be either Skype or telephone. And you’ll have access to me via my personal email. You can come and learn the way we do our business here in Tucson, Arizona. Also it is not just a brick and mortar outpatient clinic that we have, we also have a Home health agency. So you can come and learn both aspects of that too. That always sparks some interesting people who want to try the Home health avenue as well.

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Its got to be a perfect fit, so I want to make sure when you do email me please tell me a little bit about yourself and let me know what you’re up to, what you want to accomplish, if you are just starting out or you’ve been into the game about 2, 3 or 4 years. Let me know some background because I do email people back and I never hear back from them. So I just want those people to know this is not a free service but it is valuable information and again it is something that will change your life but its got to be the right fit. Just like gaining relationship you want to have a successful two-way relationship so that’s why am asking all these questions back and forth when people do email me. So let me know what you’re up to so we can work it out and make it happen for you because I would love to help you get your practice up and going. Even if its just starting out and getting you setup this is totally doable. And again for the right people its great value.

Hey, and also thank you for the emails, tweets and feedback on iTunes. It’s really nice to have good 5 star feedback on iTunes because just like you out there listening when other people want to find is, you find the feedback and you find us easily on iTunes. Please do your part and help us, help others by leaving some good quality feedback on iTunes so people know that we are real. I do this for free and all the blog post that I put out its no cost and I want to help as many people as I can. I really truly like doing that.

Today I want to speak about Success. This is a long game, this is not something that you just start out doing and you strike it rich kind of back in days, digging for gold, mining for gold. As a matter of fact where I live here in Tucson, I live in North of Tucson. It’s a place called Swan Road, and if you take Swan Road all the way to the top, where dead ends into the Mountains there, there’s a ridge called Pontatoc ridge, and if you go up in that ridge area there are mines back from the 1800’s. Am actually got online and look at these maps, and there are really cool mines, where they use to mine for minerals, coppers and all up in this neighborhood ride live here this old mine places where they were digging. My Property is actually is next to an old mine area. Its actually 14 acres you can’t build on it. And we have an acre land that borders that 14 so my son used to play on this land and its really fun out there. But there are some cool areas where you can see back in the day where people would start digging and mining for copper because this part of the country is known for its copper mines and producing copper.

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And that’s a slow process, if you’ve ever looked at the mining industry those companies don’t just go in and live there for 4, 6 or 8 months. They are there for long time and they do their research and they’re constantly looking at the geography, images and trying to find where the best place for mine is. And that is so true when it comes to business. Business specially is what we do; it’s a relationship that you establish with your patients. That relationship doesn’t last for just 6-8 visits. This is not like a general practioner offers where you go there once every three or four years or you see your GP for your annual check up. This is something that takes work, when you’re changing speech and language skills and working on far motor skills, we see these kids and adults weekly sometimes for 6 or 8 months, or 52 weeks in a year. So we might see these kids sometimes 52 visits in a year and so we are building relationships. And our business needs to be supportive and sustaining so we can provide that service. If you have listened to my other podcasts, you’ll see that you can’t be flaky. You’ve got to provide a very good, very solid customer service business where you can meet those wants and needs of your patients. This is at just something you’re going to start, your private practice is not going to be started and up and running and going in 6 months or 8 months.

You can get it going and start working; this is a very long game and you’ve got to have that desire. I’ve spoke about that, I believe it was episode number 11, this last podcast. That inward motivation, that intrinsic motivation and you’ve go to have that power, you’ve got to have the desire to work and to do everything yourself. If you listen to other podcast it goes down to – taking the phone calls, doing the referrals, sending off reports to the Doctors when you’re finished. All that is part of the business and you’ve got to do it. You have to do everything in your power to make sure that you do the best job possible so that Doctors looks good; your patients were doing better; your employee are getting paid and everybody is happy. That’s what it is going to take to be successful. It’s not a quick easy fix; there is nothing easy about it. I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again, if it were easy everybody and their mom would be doing it.

When you make that commitment, you’ve got to stay in it for the long call. We are talking years folks years, years, years, years; and you will see that it will pay-off. You’ve go to do this. If you are sitting there thinking I’m sick and tired working for the Boss, I cant take off time on Holidays. I’m just going to nursing home and doing my nursing home gig. If you are just being sick and tired then be sick and tired. Start your own private practice and I’ll help you.

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Another thing too, someone was asking me the other day about being successful. And they asked me “What’s the most important thing about being successful” and I really thought about that question because the answer is really simple – You got to be in this for the long call. I think a lot of people stop too early and they don’t give themselves the opportunity to be successful. You can’t quit before the miracle because sometimes the miracle is financial freedom sometimes it’s having more time with your family. Its freedom kind of come and goes you please. But that miracle takes time and you’ve got to do the right things and be honest in business and in with your checking account, with your money. You can’t keep co-payments; you’ve got the right that refund cheque because sometimes those families don’t know that they have a refund coming. You can’t keep that money. You’ve got to give it back; you’ve got to be honest. And that is what will set you apart from other people in the community because when they get that refund cheque they’ll know you didn’t have to do that, but they will be thankful you did.

I had a lady one time I gave her $800 cheque and she said “what’s this?” I said, “this is your money. You pay this co payments and we also got he insurance from the insurance company.” It was months later, almost a year. We just ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, these insurance company everyday just refer months, months and finally we got paid. That mom she looked at me, she had tears in her eyes. She said, “I needed this money so badly.” And I said, ”Its your money.” And because of that she still comes to our clinic today and she brings her kid, the kids are getting better and everybody is happy.

That is really what its all about, helping other people, being honest and doing the right thing. This is a long game and you can’t cut corners, because if you cut corners now, you’re going to cut corners in the future and your business will fail I promise you that.

Hey, thanks again for all the listener support and if you have any questions hit me up on twitter at privateslp and if you want to them email – kyle@privateslp.com.

Thank you for listening!!

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