50. Keep Doing What Your Doing & You’ll Get What You’ve Got

Welcome to Episode 50 of the Speech Therapy Private Practice Startup Podcast! This episode is all about doing things differently to achieve maximum results in business and your personal life. To celebrate my 50th birthday this Christmas Eve, I decided to accomplish another one of my life goals – That is to earn a private pilot’s license In this podcast, I talk about something that I realized while I was soloing a 172 Cessna in the pattern at KTUS (Tucson International Airport), speech therapy private practice just is like flying a private plane – when all else fails, use your checklists, get the right training, get over the fear and don’t give up!

In this episode:
02:09 – Taking some time off
05:12 – Taking up flying
06:52 – Learning how to fly a Cessna 172
08:49 – If you don’t change, nothing is going to change
10:08 – Take your checklist, follow your checklist
10:45 – Remember the checklist
14:58 – It’s kind of like in traffic
16:15 – Learning how to start, grow and scale own Private practice
17:01 – Big FIVE O thing

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We have a checklist in the All access community, PrivateSLP. There’s a checklist for referrals. There’s a checklist on how to get paid. There’s all kinds of checklists that I’ve documented along the way. When it comes to staying airborne, I was thinking I’m freaking out. I’m sure you guys freak out too when it comes to your business. I mean I’m sure some you do but I know a lot of the people I work with on a daily basis they’re always up to something and there’s always something to learn. So my instructor gets out of a plane and he says remember the checklist.

[Commercial]

Well, Hello everyone you’re listening to the Speech Therapy Private Practice StartUp Podcast. This is episode number 50. My name is Kyle Meades and I’m a Speech Pathologist since 1993. And these podcasts are designed to help you improve your business and your life one Podcast at a time.

Welcome back to the show everyone. Thanks again for all the emails and all the questions. As of today, today is Friday, November 8, 2019. We have well over 57,000 listeners to the show and I’m super glad you guys are out there, getting good valuable information because you know me. I say it every single time, value is what you get in the absence of money, and these podcasts who absolutely free for you. So if you wouldn’t mind please do your part and go to the iOS or Android platform of your choice and leave some five star feedback. That way other people just like you can get the same valuable information that you guys are getting.

I hope you guys are doing well, and I’ve had some listeners reach out to me recently and they’re saying things like, “Hey Kyle, where you been? or are you alive or hey, when’s the next podcast coming out?” All right I got you. So I have been taking some time off to myself. When I first started the Speech Therapy Private Practice starter podcast, I always said I was going to do these at least once a month. Sometimes try to do two a month but life is life, and unlike other podcasters that I know I’m actually running a full time clinic. We have two locations in Tucson. We just opened our second location. We offer speech and occupational and physical therapy services to many people here in our community. And we just do a lot of great work. On top of opening our second location and purchasing a new commercial building, it’s a little over 7800 square feet. We’re using all of that space too for Speech and OT, and one of the locations we’ve got PT.

On top of that, we just had our Annual Trunk or Treat where we had a ton of kids come out we gave them tons of candy with a cakewalk and we got a D.J. and face painting. And if you think I’m doing all this there’s no way, I mean I am not that smart. We’ve got some really great people who work here for our practice and our clinic and they come up with all these ideas. I just pay for these things and just supply the canvas and let them do the painting. So that’s what we’ve been doing.

We also did our annual Halloween employee night out. We went over to Old Tucson studios. If you Google that, it’s an old movie set out here in the mountains outside of Tucson, Arizona. I mean back in the day I was way out but because of our population growth here in Tucson it’s not too far out now. But John Wayne filmed a lot of movies out there and like the Three Amigos with Steve Martin was filmed out there. And for those of you who are a little bit dated if you remember the episodes and show Little House On The Prairie was filmed out there, parts of it. That’s where I took all the employees. They turned that whole movie set into a haunted house. So that’s my favorite time of the year. My son and his friends they like to do all that, and I get tickets for everybody, and the employees, their kids & families and we just give tickets and go out there and have some fun.

That’s what we’ve been doing lately and just keeping it real. And like I said earlier I’m actually doing this, I’m running multiple locations and paying health insurance for the employees 401K profit sharing dental vision for our employees. We’ve got many people that we see some running an operation, so sometimes I just may not feel like getting behind a microphone and podcasting. But today I have been really wanting to get back into it. But there’s another reason I haven’t been behind the mic and that’s because I am pursuing something that’s really important to me personally not really professionally. But I’ve got a little bit of time to myself during the week so I’m taking up flying and when I was at LSU, Louisiana State University, I was there from ‘87 to ‘91 and when I was graduating I was also in the ROTC program at LSU and I was supposed to be commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force, and I was supposed to fly planes. But because of growing up around guns and shooting things in the bayou. You’ve all seen Swamp People that’s where I grew up. So shooting guns and just not taking care of my hearing and playing drums and things like that, I had a mild noise induced hearing loss in my left ear. I couldn’t get a waiver. It’s kind of cool having a speech therapy audience base because you guys get it. I couldn’t get a waiver for my left ear so I had to scrap the idea of being a pilot or a navigator in the United States Air Force. I mean it was all set. I was supposed to go Lackland Air Force Base and do my Officer training.

So for the many years that I’ve been a Speech pathologist I always said when I get a little bit of time I’m gonna start flying. I want to get my private pilot’s license and so back in June and July, which is the hardest time in Tucson. And that’s when the air is the most bumpiest in Tucson, because the heat rises and it causes thermals and you get thrown around. I said I’m going to do it. And so that’s what I’ve been doing. I have been studying and getting in a plane two-three times a week I’ve been working with a couple of instructors and learning how to fly a Cessna 172 and recently I soloed which is when you get in a plane and you go up by yourself with a student pilot license and now next Thursday, I’m supposed to fly from Tucson to a place called Benson, and then a little bit north to another place called Safford, Arizona. And that’s kind of going towards North E sort of close to the New Mexico area border of Arizona. So that’s part of the private pilot training, you have to do Solo in a plane without the instructor.

And that’s what I wanted to talk about today because when we’re starting, growing and scaling our own Speech therapy private practice, this stuff can be so overwhelming and so mind boggling because you have to not only deal with scheduling a patient, you got to see the patient and then after you see the patient, you got to document what you did and then you’ve got to take that information and put it into a billing system or have somebody bill it for you.

And then once you bill it, which anybody can do really but it’s the AR the accounts receivable, that really helps you get paid. That’s when you go through and because it’s probably going to be denied. Right? And then you have to send your notes and things like that to the Insurance company. So you’re doing all this work just to get paid to see one patient and then if you want to have a real true Speech therapy private practice, you have to multiply that. You got to rinse and repeat, and do this over and hopefully you can build it up to 100 or 200 or 500 people a week. I mean that’s the goal. Why wouldn’t you want to be in business? Why wouldn’t you want to just do something, the best you can do and be the best you can be?

Let’s think about it. If you don’t change nothing is going to change. I mean if you keep doing what you’re always done you’re going to get what you’ve always got. That’s what I’m trying to say. So this stuff is mind boggling and that’s what we’re doing at All Access Community. We talk about these things, these systems in Private Practice and that’s why really it dawned on me one day and when I was on the plane because I’m sitting there and I’ve always got my instructor with me, and finally one day he says, “Hey, I need to get out of the economy.” I want you to get out because I want you to solo. I don’t want a solo because it’s time you need to do this.

So he gets out of the plane and he shuts the door and the engine’s humming. I’m sitting there, what do I do? There’s nobody in here to yell at me. There’s nobody in the cockpit to tell me what to do. What if I crash?