Speechies in Business

Helping Speech Pathologists in private practice focus on what matters most: their clients

David Kinnane

Speech pathologists: do you hate networking? Me too. But let’s do it anyway

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Being in private practice can be lonely. We spend most of our working hours on bookings, reports, planning, parent correspondence and calls, and, of course, assessments and therapy. In 2016, whole weeks went by where I didn’t speak to anyone other than my clients, their families and my admin staff. Quite ironic, really, given that one of our jobs is to help people develop their social language skills!

Why network?

We’re a social species. Being on your own in your clinic – and stuck in your own head – for too long is unnatural and stressful.

Isolation can be de-skilling, too. You need a network of people you like, trust, and admire to bounce ideas off, test your own assumptions, and learn new things. Over time, a lack of social interaction can affect your motivation, the quality of your services, and the health of your business – especially if your business relies on local referrals and word of mouth.

Feel the pain and do it anyway

Now, as a rule, I hate networking. I have to stop myself recoiling from professional “networkers”. You know, smarmy “room workers” who look over your shoulder looking for more important people to meet while nodding and pretending to listen to you. And – middle-age alert – it’s also hard for me to summons the energy after a long day at work to go out, especially on a “school night”.

But, despite the risks and challenges, I’m determined to get out there more this year. I want to meet new people, exchange clinical and business ideas, and build better relationships with local business owners and the communities I serve.

Practical networking tips

So how do I plan to get out and meet and greet new people this year without hating myself in the process?

Here are some practical networking tips I’ve tried and tested over the years:

  • Join a few different groups. Speech pathology networking events are great way to meet colleagues and exchange practice ideas. But try to go to other events, too, e.g. local Chambers of Commerce or business networking events.
  • Formally RSVP to events. I feel guilty if I say I’ll go and then don’t. By RSVPing, I increase the chance I’ll go!
  • Actually turn up: You’ve had a bad day? Feeling tired? Prefer to go home, put on your pyjamas and binge-watch Netflix? Me too. But go anyway!
  • Be on time. Not just because it’s polite. But so social groups don’t form before you get there. (It’s much harder to break into an established group than to make your own as people arrive.)
  • Small talk. Small talk is under-rated. It helps build trust and to uncover mutual interests. If you are terrible at small talk, spend a few minutes on the day of the event reading the news so you have a few “go-tos” to discuss in the event of an awkward silence. Avoid politics (especially now), religion and other polarising topics. Look for interesting good news stories of general interest, e.g. in the business, arts and entertainment, and sport sections of the paper. If you’re going to a speech pathology event, scan the latest edition of your association newsletter. If you’re going to a local event, scan the local rag. Some (more sophisticated) networkers suggest researching others’ social media profiles and setting up Google News Alerts for any “movers and shakers” attending the event.
  • You’re not alone. Remember, you have something in common with almost everyone, even if it’s just the event and the room you’re in, or the fact you are in business.
  • Buddy up. If you’re worried about being stuck alone all night clutching a drink, take a buddy, but don’t stay with them for the whole event.
  • Be positive, enthusiastic, and energetic. Even if you don’t feel it initially. People are attracted to positive people.
  • Smile, make eye contact, and be the first to say “hello”! Pay attention to their answer!
  • Introduce yourself by talking about the value of what you do: if you are not good at explaining what you do to non-speech pathologists, click here to find a simple structure you can use to do it. Stress who you help, rather than your job title and expertise.
  • Don’t argue: It’s never a good idea to get into a debate with someone you’ve just met, even if you are right. Even if someone says something inflammatory, try to keep emotions out of it and simply move on.
  • If you say something embarrassing or offensive, admit it and apologise. I’m not unaccustomed to putting my foot in my mouth. When I do, I apologise immediately and unreservedly and make a joke at my expense.
  • If you’re struggling to connect, look for others in the same spot. Find others who look just as uncomfortable as you are and join them.
  • Act like a sub-host, rather than a guest. Introduce people to each other. Offer to get people a drink. Don’t wait for others to do all the heavy lifting.
  • Pay attention to others. Express a sincere interest in what others have to say. Talk about what’s important to the other person.
  • Turn off your phone and don’t text. This is particularly important if you use your device as a shield in social events.
  • Ask for business cards and be ready to hand out yours. People tell me business cards are last season in the age of LinkedIn. But I love the ritual of exchanging cards – and it helps me remember names.
  • Don’t be so hard on yourself! Networking is not a performance art. It’s about turning up and being generally interested in others. Don’t worry if your small talk falls flat, if you say something dumb, or if you don’t click with one or more of the other guests. Get back on that networking horse and have another go!

Related articles:

Read more:

  • Roane, S. (2016). How to Work a Room: The Ultimate Guide to Making Lasting Connections – in Person and Online. Harper Collins, Sydney, Australia.
  • Carnegie, D. (1936). How to Win Friends & Influence People, available here. Well worth its $4. A good, practical, and quick read, even after all this time!

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Speech pathologists: how to build ethical, profitable, high quality private practices that outlast us

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Over the break, while couch-potato gazing at the cricket, I gave some thought to long-term, sustainable business models for private speech pathology practices. Specifically, mine!

When you start out, almost anything you read about launching a small business will at some point hit you with a frightening stat or two, e.g., that 80% of small businesses fail in the first 5 years. I’m not aware of any specific stats on speech pathology practices, but I’d expect that figure to be about right.

Why?

Lots of us start out in private practice because we want the flexibility and independence of running our own show. We are confident (or confident enough!) in our technical skills as speech pathologists and think we can do things better that where we were before to help clients with their communication or swallowing needs.

But knowing how to be a great speech pathologist is not the same thing as knowing how to run a business. To run a business, you need business knowledge and systems.

Business infancy

When I started my private practice, I was pretty much my clinic, and my clinic was me. My wife and I did all the work ourselves. But as we got busier, and our case load grew in volume and complexity, the work became harder to handle. At one stage, we were working seven days a week – often 12 hours a day – to ensure we kept our therapy service quality high. But, even working 60 hours a week to ensure our clients got the best possible service, “non-client” things started to slide. We just didn’t have the time or energy to attend to all the back office stuff.

Business adolescence

Eventually, we got some help. Initially, with some of the back office tasks we despised (e.g. book-keeping), and then by hiring high-quality staff to help deliver our services. The danger with this “teenager” stage of business is ensuring your quality remains high even though you are not delivering every assessment and therapy session yourself. This was (and remains) hard for a control freak like me! But I knew that my practice would fail in the long run if I couldn’t grow it to a stage beyond my ability to do and control everything myself.

Sometimes during this phase, I felt like retreating back to the comforts of the one-person practice. But then I remembered how awful it felt to be overloaded with work, turning clients in need away as my waiting list ballooned.

Planting seeds for growth at the outset

Successful businesses think about the future. Ideally – in the long run – you want your practice to work even when you’re not there. To achieve this, you need to think like a business-person and plan how your business will develop as it grows. So I looked in the mirror and asked myself:

  • What do you care about the most?
  • Why is your practice an opportunity worth pursuing? Is it aligned with what you care about the most?
  • How do you want to live?
  • How much money do you want (or need)?
  • How much freedom from working at the coalface do you want?
  • What sets your business apart?
  • How will you get clients?
  • What type of clients will you help?
  • How will you deliver your services?

(If interested, you can read more about our start-up philosophy here.)

I then developed a one-page business plan with my purpose front and centre, and my break-even point highlighted in pink.

Even though I didn’t want to, I needed to think like an “entrepreneur”. Now, I know that word has some colourful connotations, and not everyone in private practice is comfortable thinking of their practice as a business. But, as I’ve said before, I think it’s perfectly possible to be both ethical and profitable. In my previous career as a finance lawyer, I observed that it was often the well-meaning, but unprofitable and ill-managed, businesses that were vulnerable to major systems failures and pressures to cut corners at the expense of their clients.

Get out of your own way!

Here’s a quote I love from Michael Gerber:

“The problem isn’t your business; it never has been. The problem is you!”

That was so true with us! We needed to realise that many of our early struggles were caused by the confusion and tension of trying to wear multiple hats at the same time. Every day, in the clinic, I was part:

  • (mostly) speech pathologist, focusing on improving my technical skills to help clients with the latest, evidence-based therapies;
  • manager, focusing on boring (but essential) business and compliance systems, organisation strategies, and finding ways of doing things more efficiently; and
  • entrepreneur, creating new services and products, dreaming up new ways of doing things, looking for opportunities to grow and to connect with others.

The (ongoing) problem is figuring out how much energy to devote to each role at any given time.

How to build a business that lasts

Another top tip I learned from Michael Gerber:

“Pretend that the business you own…is the prototype, or will be the prototype, for 5,000 just more like it!”

Now, as an, ahem, former McDonald’s crew member, I’m not a huge fan of the franchise model for allied health. But I loved the idea of designing my clinic to be systems-dependent rather than owner-dependent. Documenting your key systems:

  • forces you to write down the (sometimes conflicting) contents of your head. I discovered scores of duplicated efforts, wastage and service gaps in my systems just by writing them down;
  • allows others to understand and work to your standards without being micromanaged;
  • ensures people are accountable for their outcomes; and
  • increases the predictability of your service quality.

When we started our clinic, we set up systems that we hoped would grow with the business – even if they seemed ridiculously over-engineered for the client flow at first. I even signed my own Code of Conduct.

Why we had an organisation chart for two people

Even when we were (literally) a Mum-and-Dad business, we wrote down all the roles in our practice (e.g. clinical, operations, marketing, Human Resources, accounting, finance, etc.), and then assigned them – initially all to ourselves, but, as the business grew, to our staff and partners. This helped us stay clear on who was accountable for what and when, even (especially) when we were doing everything.

Human Resources: hire people who are smarter than you

When we hire someone to help us, as an employee, contractor or service provider, we test candidates against the standards we’ve set for ourselves in the position. We look to hire people who are at least as good (preferably better) than us at doing the job. We also try to make sure staff and partners understand the meaning of the work they’re doing and how it fits into our purpose and plan.

Marketing: it’s all about the clients

Our marketing plan is simple: doing our job as well as we can. We don’t rely on advertising. We focus all our efforts on solving real-life problems for people who need speech pathology. That’s why we publish free blogs, books and resources, and address frequently asked questions. That’s why we do community and school talks. We try, consistently, to help people who need speech pathology services find the answers they need.

Don’t lose sight of why your business exists

The business development process – the design of business models and systems – never ends, especially in a time of great change for speech pathologists. When we look at our medium-to-long term business goals, we see a complex, but easy-to-run, set of systems and processes that all work together to support our primary aim: helping adults and children to speak for themselves.

Principal source: Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why most small businesses don’t work and what to to about it. Kindle edition via here.

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Speech pathologists: How not to get suckered in business

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Have you ever found yourself saying yes to an important business contract or buying an expensive resource and later regretted it?

Most speech pathologists I know are pretty smart. We also tend to think the best of people.

Optimism and trust are great qualities when working with clients and their families. But they can leave us vulnerable when negotiating business contracts with people trained in human persuasion techniques. Behaviour studies show that people use predictable short cuts (or rules of thumb) when making decisions. Salespeople and others can take advantage of these pre-programmed responses at your cost.

Knowing key persuasion strategies used in business can save you from being manipulated. They can also make you a skilled persuader yourself in business negotiations with other people.

Key persuasion strategies with real world examples

  • Price indicates quality shortcut: People assume expensive items are high quality than cheap ones. Example: When I started my clinic, I bought lots of expensive assessment tools that, in hindsight, were not as reliable as cheaper options. Given limited time to research, price played a factor in my decisions – something I am still paying for. On Speechies in Business, we found that some of our products sold better when we increased the price! I’ve even had feedback from a person that they would have bought my Clinics Template pack but it seemed too cheap to be good!
  • Rule of reciprocation: People feel obliged to repay others for whatever they have provided to us. Example: Ever fallen for the “free sample” trick? A salesperson offers you a free “gift”; or a website offers you a free download. Unconsciously, you feel indebted to the provider and are more likely to buy something.
  • Rejection-then-retreat tactic: People match concessions in negotiations. If a seller asked you to buy a $4000 program but then retreated and offers to sell you a $40 resource product, you would be more likely to buy it than if you’d been offered the $40 product alone. Example: This is a common tactic used by resource sellers. You baulk at paying for their ridiculously expensive product, and opt for what seems like a much more affordable one instead – sometimes something you may never have bought had it not been for the expensive product.
  • Scarcity rule: Opportunities are seen as more valuable if their availability is limited, e.g. by time, or if you are competing with others. Examples:
    • In every lease negotiation, the real estate agent will tell you how many other people are looking at the property too.
    • “2 day flash sales” offered by education publishers where you end up buying stuff you don’t need.
    • Professional or business webinars with tight deadlines and limited capacity. If you think about it, there’s no real reason for them to be so restricted, other than making the “product” seem more attractive and the purchase decision more urgent.
  • Romeo and Juliet effect: We hate losing opportunities. If something is banned or forbidden, it instantly becomes more desirable. Example: one of my colleagues in Australia seemed to become more interested in the persuasive power of testimonials and solicited reviews after these practices were banned by the advertising rules.
  • The commitment effect: Once we commit to something with words or actions, we will act to stay consistent with our commitment. If we are asked to assume a responsibility for doing something, we will go above and beyond to achieve it. Examples:
    • Volunteering: Have you ever volunteered to get involved in a project, then found yourself doing all the work for no additional payment?
    • Mentorship: Mentors are often prepared to move heaven and earth for their mentees, even at the cost of their own work.
  • Initiation trial effect: If we go through a lot of trouble to attain something, we tend to value it more once we have it. Example: I once paid for a very expensive, very intense professional development program. Even 6 months after completing it successfully, I found myself telling everyone how great it was and defending it staunchly from critics, even if, objectively, the program had some limitations.
  • Social proof principle: We often determine what to do by looking at what others are doing. This can lead to the bystander effect where no-one else acts, so we decide not to either. Example: Countless therapy fads have taken hold simply because “everyone else was doing it”. As evidence-based professionals, speech pathologists need to be very wary of this one, and demand proof of effectiveness before changing a clinical practice to follow the crowd.
  • Similar people effect: We are more likely to copy others in our choices when the  other person is similar to ourselves. Also known as peer pressure, and a real risk in speech pathology because of our (currently) limited diversity.
  • Halo effect: We tend to see attractive people as smarter, kinder and more honest than unattractive people. That’s why so many salespeople are good looking. We also tend to like people who co-operate with us for a shared goal. This can play out as the “good cop, bad cop” dynamic, where we are vulnerable to the person who “shares our pain” against a common “enemy”. Again, real estate agents are good at using this one, complaining about how unreasonable the landlord is, while at the same time making sure the landlord gets everything he/she wants (at your cost).
  • Authority effect: People are swayed by authority and even mere symbols of authority. Examples: Fancy titles (again constrained in Australia by our advertising rules), ritzy clinics, cutting-edge websites, silver and gold embossed certificates on walls, white coats, uniforms, power suits and even stethoscopes can be used to generate authority. Looks can be misleading, though. Sometimes the best clinicians wear jeans and work from home. But how are clients to know?

Bottom line

Be on guard for these techniques when negotiating with others. If you are in business, you are probably using some of these techniques, even if you didn’t know them by name! Make sure you stay ethical. Follow the spirit and letter of your ethics codes and advertising rules. Never use persuasion techniques to the detriment of your clients.

Principal source: Cialdini, R.B., Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. An oldie but a goodie.

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The Pesky Lisp Fixer

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Don’t you hate those pesky interdental lisps? You know, the ones that won’t stay fixed?

To fix an interdental lisp – those lisps where your tongue sticks out between your teeth when you try to say /s/ – we, as speech pathologists, used to start with simple tasks, like saying an /s/ on its own. Once the child had mastered their /s/, we progressed in tiny hops (like baby bunny kittens) to slightly harder tasks. This traditional approach works.

But it’s SO SLOW!

Many kids – particularly older and more mature kids – hate being treated like babies. And, even after finishing traditional treatment, many kids have difficulties using their “new /s/” on words they haven’t practised and in more natural tasks, like story-telling and conversation. Which is, of course, the main point of trying to fix a lisp!

A new approach

More recent research evidence supports a different route for better results. Once a child can say the sound on his or her own, randomly mixing up hard and easy tasks can have quicker results that transfer more efficiently to real-world, lisp-free speech (e.g. see Skelton, 2004).

(You can read more about why using randomised practice, non-word practice and other principles of motor learning and speech here).

Our Pesky Lisp Fixer program has three stages

  1. Auditory Bombardment: 2 minutes per day – listening and tuning into the sound and practising it on its own. Audio file included!
  2. Our /s/-Syllable Boot Camp: Based on principles of motor speech, the boot camp involves 10-15 minutes a day of high repetition practice of nonsense syllables designed to get the tongue, lips and teeth working together with different vowel and consonant sequences in random order.
  3. Randomised Practice: Once the child has conquered the boot camp, this gives the child 20-30 minute sessions of imitating and naming words with /s/ in them, across all word positions. Again using a high repetition, randomised approach, we mix imitation, naming, and sentence generation tasks, with old-fashioned story telling, using over 200 high quality photographs – no cutesy vector clip art!

This program works best if an adult is around to give clear feedback every now and then – but no more than occasionally. Use it in your clinic or as a home program for your clients.

So download the Pesky Lisp Fixer today from our Teachers Pay Teachers store and get straight into getting rid of those pesky lisps!

download the pesky lisp fixer now!

Speech therapy by telehealth: research-based guidelines for clients and their families

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As we’ve noted elsewhere, travelling even short distances to the clinic can be hard for some families. Speech pathology by telehealth is convenient and the evidence-base supporting its use is growing, especially in areas of practice like stuttering (e.g. Bridgman, 2014).

But telehealth has its disadvantages, too. Compared to face-to-face therapy:

  • families are more likely to cancel appointments at short notice;
  • you don’t have as much control over preparations, resources or whether the parent and client are prepared for your call;
  • parents and clients are more likely to get up and leave the room during therapy; and
  • siblings are more likely to wander in and interrupt (e.g. Bridgman et al., 2015).

Our Telehealth Guidelines are designed to help you explain to clients what you need from them to deliver effective speech therapy via telehealth to their child.

Click here for our Guidelines for Speech Therapy by Telehealth.

Related products:

Principal source: Bridgman, K., Block, S., & O’Brian, S. (2015). Webcam delivery of the Lidcombe Program: Insights from a clinical trial. Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology, 17(3), 125-129.

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