Speechies in Business

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

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The value of speech – 14 hot tips, from 107 1/2 years ago

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Back when I was a pompous lawyer – with lots of books but no time to read – my wife bought me an embossed, original, 9-volume set comprising the “International University Course”. Exactly the kind of thing that looks good on a shelf, but no-one ever reads.

Until now.

With (slightly) more time on my hands as a (slightly) less pompous speech pathologist, I’ve cracked open volume 1. And, ignoring the regular blasts of British Imperial propaganda, several gold nuggets glint inside, including an address by Lord Bryce to the State University of Iowa back in 1910 called “The Value of Speech”.

Lord Bryce had 14 tips for speakers. Most of them are spot on for 2017. Paraphrased for a post-Colonial, ‘politically modern’ readership, here they stand for your inspection:

  1. Always have something to say.
  2. Always know what you mean to say.
  3. Always arrange your remarks in some sort of order.
  4. At all hazards, be clear. Make your meaning plain to your audience.
  5. In controversial speaking (e.g. in a lawsuit or when arguing with the government), always think of what your opponent will say and anticipate his/her answers. Meet your opponent’s jests with earnest, and earnest with jest.
  6. Know your audience and be prepared to adapt/discard your prepared speech to suit them.
  7. Never speak down to your audience, “whatever you may think of their intellectual attainments”.
  8. Be sparing of literary ornament.
  9. When you tell a story, plan it out, make it relevant, and don’t overdo the humour, even if you’re good at it.
  10. Never, if you can help it, be dull.
  11. Remember, delivery matters. “Articulation, modulation and expression may all be cultivated”. Make sure people can hear you. Do not shout. Don’t wear out your voice. Vary your pitch. Speak slowly.
  12. Never read from a script if you can help it. The fewer notes the better, unless you’ve got a terrible memory.
  13. Always memorise the last two of three sentences of your speech.
  14. Never weary your audience. If they are tired before you start, cut your talk short, unless your speech is good enough to freshen them up.

True to his tips, Lord Bryce finished his address with panache. Paraphrased and em-bulleted for your modern attention span and disposition:

  • Remember the purpose of your speech. Are you trying to persuade or entertain (or both)?
  • You will sometimes fail – no-one is always at his/her best.
  • Don’t give up. If you stuff up a speech, try to fix it next time!

Source: Lord Bryce (1910). The Value of Speech. Address to the State University of Iowa, April 1910, in Volume 1, International University Reading Course, International University Society, London.

Image: https://tinyurl.com/ycly9vk9

SLP Three-piece Thursday 5: on business models, scaling up your practice, and making your website more useful for clients

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  • On getting your business model right:
    • Are you looking to service the “mass market” for speech pathology services (e.g. children with communication issues), or just a niche (e.g. adult voice, or stuttering, or working only with children with ASD)?
    • What value do you give clients?
    • What “channels” do you use to sell your services, e.g. direct vs parent training, in a clinic, in schools, home visits, one-to-one, groups, telehealth?
    • Do you sell products too?
    • Will you personalise communications, automate communications, or use a combination of the two?
    • Are some parts of your business self-service (e.g. online bookings)?
    • Do you earn a fee per service, or do people book and pay for blocks of therapy like a subscription?
    • What resources do you need? (a) physical resources (e.g. office, equipment); (b) human resources: staff, contractors, advisors, (e.g. lawyers and accountants); and (c) intellectual resources: your copyrights, licences, etc for assessments and therapy resources – your tools of the trade.
    • What are your critical activities? production (e.g. session preparation/set up), problem-solving (e.g. developing management plans and recommendations), partnerships (e.g. alliances with key referrers and other speech pathologists).
    • What’s your cost structure? Are you low cost, high volume (requiring lots of automation), or low volume, high cost (requiring lots of tailoring and extra servicing of clients)?
    • What do your customers really need? Empathise with them: what do they think and feel when they come to you, what do they see when they see you, what do they hear, what do they say to others about you?
    • Who is your ideal client? Think age, interests, needs.
    • What emotions do clients feel when they use your practice? Write business scenarios about telling your ideal clients’ stories.
    • Offer free services, e.g. community talks, eBooks and blogs, so potential clients can get to know you.

To succeed in business you need to add value to your client’s lives. For more information, see: Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur. Also, our related resources: Profit Calculator (break-even analysis) and the One-page Business Plan for Speech Pathologists.

  • On scaling up your practice: Growth doesn’t always lead to success. You’ll fail in the long run if your team/strategy/systems don’t grow with the practice – especially if communication breaks down. Before growing, establish and publish your core values and purpose; as well as your brand promises to clients. Have a long-term audacious goal and tell people about it. To grow a practice, use the 4Ds:

(a) Drive: stay motivated and improve yourself/team with training and mentoring;

(b) Demand-juggle: balance your reputation for quality, personalised client service with the need for delegation and automated systems (especially for backend repetitive tasks that don’t affect service quality);

(c) Discipline: use routines for meetings and reviewing performance against goals; and

(d) Decisions: don’t be afraid to make big calls.

Define who is responsible for what: if more than one person is accountable for a task, then no-one is. Switch from ‘managing’ to personally coaching your staff. Invest in training. Listen to your team. Set clear expectations. Use your strengths – what are you known for? Use incentives/training/bonuses to increase loyalty/reduce turn over. Have a one-page strategic plan. Routines set you free!

Watch your cash flow, especially your cash conversion cycle – growth sucks cash. Look at your prices, how long it takes clients to pay you, and how long it takes you to pay suppliers to find ways to get cash in, more quickly. For more, read: Verne Harnish’s Scaling Up and Rockerfeller Habits and other free growth tools. You can also check out our related resources: One-page Business Plan for Speech Pathologists, Performance Appraisal Agreement Template and Difficult Messages: Increasing Prices.

  • On making your website more useful: Make it as easy as possible for clients to find what they want without having to think too much. No-one reads the user manual. People prefer to play around and figure it out for themselves. People won’t use your website if they can’t find their way around it. Clients make quick decisions when they surf the web, and most people click on the first thing that gets their attention. Don’t think of your website as a brochure: it’s like a billboard for browsers to zoom past as they look for what they want. Your home page should make a good first impression: include a tag line that summarises what you do and for whom. So use short paragraphs, headlines and highlighted key words. Use visual hierarchies – make important stuff obvious. Use sections. Have a search bar. Link your company logo to your home page on every page. Have a “utilities section” which includes all the nitty-gritty – FAQ, site map, etc.

Don’t hide information people want. Use conventions. Don’t sacrifice clarity for creativity – prioritise what the client wants. Test: ask clients and non-clients to use the website and to give you feedback. Ask people who’ve never looked at your website to look at it, and watch what they do. Look for ways to make your site more useful. Fix big problems with your website first, and leave details for later. Make your website mobile responsive so people can use it on their phones. For more, read: Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited.

So what to do you think? Do any of these ideas inspire you to change the way you plan or run your private practice? Let us know! Send a tweet to @speechiesinbusiness or leave a comment.

SLP Three-Piece Thursday 4: on becoming the boss, leadership and meetings

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  • On becoming the boss: To avoid burn-out, prioritise things that matter to your business vision. Leaders need to lead themselves first, so get organised – at work and at home. Being a great SLP is not the same as being a great boss. Good bosses have empathy, and a basic knowledge of the systems used to run their business and how they work together, including computers, resources, design, social media, accounts, etc. Good bosses are visible (they don’t hide away), different to others (they have something that makes them stand out from the crowd) and consistent (especially under pressure). Communication as a boss cannot be about you: your focus should be on the team. Call staff by their names, use good, assertive non-verbal language skills, and don’t be afraid to say you don’t know or to delegate tasks outside your skills set. Avoid gossiping about staff and especially about clients. For more, check out Lindsey Pollak.
  • On leadership: All organisations have leaders and followers. A leader’s first job is to make staff feel safe (including safe to make mistakes and to learn). Empathy is underrated. Think of your business as a team of people working together to achieve something meaningful, rather than an abstract organisation. Stick close to the clinical coal-face. Trust is not formed over screens, but across tables. Own up to your mistakes – no-one expects you to be perfect. As in the US Marines, real leaders eat last. Read more: Simon Sinek, Why Leaders Eat Last.
  •  On meetings: Meetings can be terrible: they suck up time, energy and interrupt work – especially if dominated by people who love listening to the sounds of their own voices. Calculate how much a meeting costs your practice by multiplying the total of everyone’s hourly rate by the length of the meeting. Horrifying waste! Here are some tips:
    • If the meeting isn’t relevant to some staff, don’t require them to attend.
    • Start meetings on time and require everyone to get there 5 minutes early. This is especially important on phone/conference calls to avoid wasting time introducing and reintroducing attendees to each other.
    • Good staff meetings can increase team spirit. Hold them when people’s energy levels dip – for me, this is often around 11am or 2pm – when people need a boost.
    • For small practices, have a “daily huddle” – it can take as few as 7 minutes – to run through the day, air any issues, answer questions and solve problems.
    • Share positive news – meetings shouldn’t all be doom and gloom.
    • Finish meetings with a call to action: e.g. “Let’s get out there and go!” (not as corny as it sounds).
    • For formal meetings: (a) have an agenda; (b) appoint a chair to stick to it; (c) appoint a time-keeper to track time; and (d) appoint a “closer” to summarise action points and people responsible for executing them.
    • Let juniors run meetings for experience, and encourage introverts to speak up.
    • To stay focused, it might make sense to have separate business and clinical meetings.
    • At least once a year, get offsite for a new perspective. For more, read Cameron Herald.

So what to do you think? Do any of these ideas inspire you to change the way you plan or run your private practice? Let us know! Send a tweet to @speechiesinbusiness or leave a comment.

SLP Three-Piece Thursday 3: on being different to everyone else, using social media properly, and choosing the right suppliers without going nuts!

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  1. On standing out from the SLP crowd. You won’t last long if you market yourself like every other SLP. People are busy and distracted. They want someone who stands out – who is remarkable, and offers what they want. Take some risks with your marketing, but stay ethical. Being different will mean some people won’t like what you do. If you don’t cop any criticism, you should be worried! If you try to please everyone, you won’t please anyone! Read more: Seth Godin, Purple Cow.
  2. On using social media to build your practice. Most of your clients (like folk in general) are addicted to smart phones and social media. Find out which platforms they love and publish great content on them that answers their questions for free. If you’re marketing to stay-at-home parents, think about Facebook and Pinterest. If you’re marketing to busy professionals, think about LinkedIn. If you’re networking with SLP researchers, other professionals, and students, use Twitter. But write for the platform, and don’t ask for anything until you’ve provided lots of free value. Read more: Gary Vaynerchuk – Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.
  3. On choosing the right suppliers quickly (then getting on with your life). When it comes to choosing suppliers, there are too many choices! You’re busy running a practice – you don’t have time to become an expert in silly sideshows like photocopiers, practice management and accounting systems, and insurers. Too many choices will paralyse you: lots of options reduces your satisfaction and makes you feel out of control. You’ll end up regretting whatever choice you (finally) make. So make fewer choices! For many things, good enough is good enough. For example, after a bit of research – and I mean a bit! – I opted for Guild for insurance, Camnet for my printer, Timely for my practice management system, Xero for my accounting system, and Officeworks for my stationery. Are they good enough? Yes! Are they the best in the world? Who cares! I want a great practice, not an advanced degree in researching micro-stuff. Check out Barry Schwartz – The Paradox of Choice.

SLP Three-Piece Thursday 2: on founding and starting up a great private practice, and connecting with clients

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  1. On founding a great practice. Design your private practice to increase your freedom and autonomy. Hire talented staff to shore up your weak spots, especially good all-rounders. Before you launch, build you ‘social capital’: your social and professional network. Back yourself, but if you lack confidence to launch solo look for a co-founder. Be stingy on giving others part ownership of your practice. Clearly define everyone’s roles – as founder you are the CEO. Be careful about hiring friends. (See: Noah Wasserman.)
  2. On starting up your private practice: Starting a business has never been easier. Make a stand for something you care about. Get the core of your business right, then launch. Make your service inimitable by sharing what is unique about you. Then share all you know. Start small and make mistakes while you are obscure. Remember you are in business. Start saying no, and keep your services lean. Be honest, personal and nimble in communications. Communicate with others in your practice honestly. Treat employees like adults – foster independence. Stay agile. Stay focused. (Check out Chris Guillebeau.)
  3. On connecting with clients. Connect with people honestly. Be authentic. Say “no” and skip events where you can’t be authentic. Be consistent and confident in your communications. Remember communication is about the “3 V’s”: verbal, vocal, visual. Be curious. Listen. Use similarities with your clients to build trust (people are comforted by what they know). (Read Michelle Tillis Lederman.)

So what to do you think? Do any of these ideas inspire you to change the way you plan or run your private practice? Let us know! Send a tweet to @speechiesinbusiness or leave a comment.

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