Live Business Coaching Call with Kristin Park, MS SLP
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Laura Park Figueroa: Welcome to Therapy in the Great Outdoors, the podcast where we explore the business and practice of nature based pediatric therapy of all kinds. If you're an outdoor loving pediatric practitioner in the fields of occupational, physical, or speech therapy, social work, or mental health, this podcast will help you start and grow a successful nature based practice or program.
I am the ever honest, always 100 percent real. You'll hear it all on this podcast. Dr. Laura Park Figueroa. I'm a pediatric OT with over 20 years of experience, and I run a thriving nature based practice with profitable locations in two different states and multi six figures in revenue. I also host the free online community at therapyinthegreatoutdoors.
com to help you pursue your nature based therapy dreams too. Are you ready to take action on those dreams? Let's jump in.
Welcome back everyone to Therapy in the Great Outdoors. Today, Kristin Park is back. If you did not listen to the last episode, go back and listen to it.
Kristin is the owner of the Magic Speech Bus. It is a mobile hybrid outdoor slash inside a van speech therapy. I was going to say clinic, but that's not a good word to use for what you do, Kristin. So go back and listen to that last episode because Kristin shared all about how she started her practice.
And all about how she outfitted the bus, and all about her nature based work as a speech therapist. Today, we are going to do a business coaching call, so a live business coaching call to talk about her business conundrums. All of us have conundrums in our businesses, and it really helps to get coaching and problem solve with someone else who has been through the...
Experience of running a nature based business like I have. So welcome, Kristin. Thank you for being willing to do this and be vulnerable and share about your business.
Sure. I'm happy to be back. Okay. So the first question I generally start off these kind of live coaching calls with is what do you envision?
Like in your dream world, what would you envision your business? Being like in six months to a year. Okay,
Kristin Park: in six months to a year from now I would like my schedule to be full. I think pretty much every practice owner can say that that's the goal So for me that looks like between 16 to 20 individual sessions.
I do one on one speech therapy sessions in my practice. Okay. And I'm shooting for about four or five of them a day. Four days a week. So that's the logistic, the technical goal. And then the other goal for myself is to make it into a true, lifestyle practice for me where it's running smoothly.
It's running almost automatically in any way that it can so that I'm not getting bogged down in keeping the business running. And I want to be able to take a day off here or there and not feel guilty or feel like I. I'm going to take a big hit, financially or just have so much to do when I come back.
So that's my goal for myself and the business in six to 12 months.
Laura Park Figueroa: Okay. Do you envision hiring anyone? Are you at that point right now? So initially
Kristin Park: when I started. It was not an option, or it wasn't something I was interested in as nope, it's just going to be me forever. I'm going to do this business all by myself.
But as I've been taking. More business courses and listening to more advice, hiring is sounding more and more appealing. Just because I want that ability to just step back and, take a breather every now and then and not have to worry about what the business is or isn't doing on any, like one single day.
Having an employee or, I don't know if it would be an admin first or a therapist first, that's where I'm stuck. Like, how do I plan for that? Yeah. And my thought going into this call was potentially hiring long term goal in about two years from now. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.
And it's far out, but that's, maybe I'm giving myself too much time for
Laura Park Figueroa: that, but. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not saying, yeah, you are. I'm just agreeing. Yeah, you're reflecting. So the reason I asked that question about, have you thought about, are you at a place where you want to hire is because unless.
Unless you're there, unless your brain is there and you're ready to hire and grow the business beyond yourself, if the business is just yourself. You are always going to be the one that has to bring in the money, right? And the only way to grow a business is to hire other people to then work in the business with you to free up some of your time.
And so I think you're at least right in thinking that way. I think you can hire way before two years from now. Absolutely. My question also is, okay, I have a couple of questions. Basically, I took a few notes while you were describing things. So you're saying in six to 12 months, you want your schedule to be full.
So your schedule has to be full before you hire someone for sure. So where are we at right now with your schedule? So you said 16 to 20 individual sessions would be a full time schedule for you. I think honestly, that's the other question I had. Sorry, I asked a question and now I'm asking another one.
I think that's really low for a full time employee. Okay. So yes, I think it's important for you to remember that you might be limited at 16 to 20 because your brain is having to do all the work of running the business as well. But for a full, just thinking way in the future, you might not hire a full time person right now or within two years, but really thinking about what.
What is the essentially income potential into the revenue potential of someone working full time in your business? I wouldn't say that 16 to 20 hours a week is a full time schedule for a employee, even though it might be for you as the business owner. So just keep that in mind because obviously you're going to feel.
The weight of everything else in the business. Okay. Does that resonate or make sense? It does. I'm writing it down right now. Yeah. Yeah. Like just making sure that it's okay to ask an employee to do a little more per week than that. So where are you at now? How many kids do you have right now? So I have a few
Kristin Park: that I'm seeing every other week.
So it, it depends. But on the average week, I'm looking at my schedule right now. I am seeing about 13,
Laura Park Figueroa: 13 sessions. Oh, you're so close. Yes. You're so
Kristin Park: close. Okay. Yes. Now sometimes it's, maybe 11, 12, sometimes it's 13, 14, but about 13 sessions a week.
Laura Park Figueroa: Now you had mentioned on the little form that you sent me before this call when I asked you what you wanted to talk about, like really nailing down your ideal client.
So this is something, this is really funny because I'm a big fan. I believe that coaches should have coaches. Just like we. If you're not like Leveling up your own skills. How are you going to help the people that you are supposed to be helping in your business? And your coaching business.
So I just started a coaching program and my first call with the coach was like, she was like, you got to really nail down that ideal client. I'm like, Oh my gosh, are we going back to this again? I thought I had done this work before, but it's reminding me of how important it is to really focus on like the actual needs and desires of your ideal customers.
So do you think it would be good to explore that a bit to think about how could we identify you really only need three more people to get in your range, right? Of your number. Who are the ideal clients that you have who are the ones you really love working with?
Kristin Park: I really I find the sessions that I'm enjoying the most are my preschool age kiddos.
Okay. So my practice, it's advertised as promoted as being, just pediatric in general. I said, ideally ages zero to 12. But I'm really finding a sweet spot here with my three, four, five year olds. You have some, like articulation. Disorders. They have certain sounds. They're just a little bit hard to understand.
Parents are getting frustrated. The kid's getting frustrated. And maybe their pediatrician told them, Oh, just give it six more months. Just give it another year. And the parents are like, Nah, I want to do something now. Those are, I think, the ones that I'm really enjoying because, I know what to do with all of my clients, but with those, I get them and I'm on the phone talking to them and I said, I know exactly what to do with you.
Yeah. So yeah, bring 'em in, . Let me see 'em. So those, I think that's my target audience. . But then, and I've seen this too with finding your. Ideal client is describe them. Where do they live? What do they do? And that's where I get stuck because I don't know. I'm just not generating enough ideas in my head beyond they live near me.
They have, can they have a three to five year
Laura Park Figueroa: old, right? Would you consider. Nicheing your practice to be that age level?
Kristin Park: I'm, I don't know. I never thought about it, but just when you brought that up that I immediately just felt like nervous about doing that.
Laura Park Figueroa: Why do you feel nervous, do you think?
Kristin Park: It just feels limited. I'm just going to push away those others who might not be right in that group.
Laura Park Figueroa: But that's exactly what you want in your business, right?
So that's the key is that like the ideal client should be. Magnetically attracted to you and the client who it's not for knows that it's not for them, right? I'm not saying you should niche to this age level. I just think it's a really interesting hearing you talk about it. It just I in my brain was thinking, how great would it be if every client that you work with could be.
The ones that you feel like that about like I just know what to do like this is my jam I am totally in this like maybe you'd get sick of it and you want the variety I don't know but thinking about like your ideal client like whoever you are talking to on your website and in your marketing it should repel some people it should be like.
No, this is not for me. So I think it's okay to think about, niching and using some of the language I even as you were talking, I was like, she should go back and listen to this recording because that was good. What she, what you were saying was some good language for your marketing promotions.
Like they, I think you said something like they're getting frustrated. Their kid is getting frustrated. The pediatrician told him just wait six more months, yeah. Those kinds of things can go on your marketing. Do you worry that you wouldn't have enough clients? Is that kind of what.
Kristin Park: I think so. Yeah. And I know we talked in the previous interview about imposter syndrome and doubting yourself and things like that. So I feel like maybe I just get in my own head too much where I feel like I'm already asking too much of the potential client. Like it's a bus, which is. It's different, and it's nature based, which is another difference, and now you have to be you don't have to be, but it's like now I'm targeting just a very specific portion of my speech and language field.
Yes, I'm a speech language pathologist, but now I'm only working with articulation disorders. So I just, I feel like it's like you lose somebody at step one, you lose somebody at step two, and which I know you're saying is a good thing because then you get those people that you really want to work with, but then that nervousness of how many kids are there in my area?
That are like
Laura Park Figueroa: that, it's legitimate to do some market research, I think, to make sure that your niche isn't too small. But the other thought I had too, is if you're working in a bus, like that age kid is smaller like physically they are smaller. And so it makes sense, right?
That like your practice would be for younger kids. It's once you get. You and a 12 year old and a parent inside of the bus, it probably feels pretty full in there. I'm thinking, so I don't know. That's just a logistical thing, but I think thinking about your ideal client and drafting your marketing.
I haven't audited or looked at your website, so I don't know what your marketing looks like on your website, but. That's what is going to attract customers to you is having language that like clearly shows who you're not for and who you are for. Yes.
Kristin Park: And I did put on my website the top of the fold. I have. My name and what I do, what the business name and what I do in Eastern Berks County, Pennsylvania. Schedule a free call button and that, and then right after that is where I tried to put some language that would attract what I think is my ideal client. It says is it hard to find time for your child's therapy?
Do your other kids hate sitting in the waiting room? And are you looking for a fun setting your kids will actually want to come to? So that's what it says right now. So I feel like that's like targeting this maybe a little bit. Different parent to me. That's like a tired mom who has multiple kids who just wants to send her kids somewhere that they know they're not going to complain about.
Which maybe now that I'm reading my website, that sounds a little bit different than what I was saying. Five, 10 years ago. So yeah,
Laura Park Figueroa: it is pain points, but I think thinking about the ideal customer and what is their like biggest pain point. And I know Alex Hormozai you can love him or hate him.
He's like a billionaire guy. But he tells the truth when he tells people about business and he talks about how to really convince a customer to do business with you, you have to address. Every single one of their pain points. And so I think that might be a good exercise for you.
Kristen is to do a brain dump, brainstorm list, however you think best, maybe with a pen and paper or on a Google doc and just type it out as fast as you can. Like what, who is that ideal client, right? If it's the hassled mom who has the five year old who has. the articulation disorder. You can write all this out, right?
But what are the things that are frustrating for her? What are the things that are pain points that she feels that will convince her, if you can put that language on your website, that will convince her, what she's going through. And. You have the solution to help, right? So the next part of your website has to talk about how you solve the problem for them.
But I do wonder, I think a combo of what you said earlier and what you just shared from the website is . Is probably what you want. Because really what I think about this a lot I actually just hired Jenny Gill. She did a great job. She's a OT, who's a copywriter to do like an audit of my practice website, because I haven't.
Really paid much attention to it for many years because I was doing my doctorate and I just was like, the practice is fine. We don't need more clients really right now. We're okay. But I want to grow in the next year. And so I had her do this website audit. And one of the things that came up in our call together, when we were going through my website and looking at stuff that needed to be reworded or changed, I had this like epiphany moment on our call where I was like, The hard thing about therapy is that you can't really guarantee an outcome like we're not selling a widget that changes in a clear way for people, it's not like you're going to buy this business for business coaching.
Business coaching service that will you'll go from 0 to making money in your business. There's like metrics that you can see in therapy. It's a lot harder. It's nuanced, right? Yes, we see kids make progress on goals, but it's nuanced. And I, my epiphany on this call with Jenny, when we were talking was parents actually just want to know that they're doing everything they possibly can do for their child.
Like it's the outcome we sell is not like your child's going to be perfect and have perfect speech and language or have perfect sensory integration. If you're an OT or whatever, it's really that we're partnering with families to help them feel confident that they are doing everything they possibly can to support their child with whatever challenge they have.
And so I think that language is really important of helping. Families feel like when they come to you, they will be confident knowing that they are doing everything they possibly can to solve all these pain points, which you have outlined so beautifully on the top of your website, right? I don't know if I'm
Kristin Park: going to listen to that again, because that was good.
I like. The talk about the confidence and helping the family feel like they're doing what they can. Yeah.
Laura Park Figueroa: Yeah. Cause we can't offer like a it's hard. Cause like anytime in sales, you want to be able to offer a guarantee, right? We'll guarantee that. And in therapy, I think a lot about how in our practices, we just can't, we just can't, there's too many variables, right?
We can't control like what happens to the child all day at school or in the home all 24 seven with a family that may be a little bit. Chaotic or who knows, like what's going on in a child's life. There's so many variables and we're just, one therapist working with this family. And so I think using that in our marketing, like just helping parents feel confident, like they can feel at peace in their soul that they are supporting their child the best they can.
We went down a rabbit hole. I feel like, where are you? So let's focus on the getting you, I think you can do the ideal client pain points, make sure those are listed on your website like figure out what the pain points are. If people who are that person, interview them and ask them, use the language that they use right on your website.
But I do think just to get those three more clients have you wait, what have you tried to get a few more clients? I guess I should ask that first before I start diving into here's what I think.
Kristin Park: Yes. So the majority of my current clients, I believe, were just Google searches, Facebook groups, word of mouth.
I did get, I did do a couple screenings at local preschools over the last month or two. And I've gotten a few leads from that children who would qualify for, an evaluation and then treatment with speech therapy. I haven't officially gotten any of them to. schedule that evaluation.
There's a couple email talks going back and forth. Okay. So that's a little pain point for me because it's just hard when you have somebody who's so close and they would be a great candidate and they just aren't committing to that just yet.
Laura Park Figueroa: So have you given them a deadline?
Kristin Park: No, that is something.
Yeah. I regret.
Laura Park Figueroa: yOu can still do it though, right? Like you can still do it. Because I think deadlines drive decision making. And even if something's a pain point, our customers still need us to help them to make the decision and sign on the dotted line and commit to doing it, right? I think emailing those three people that you have these communication going on with that, they'd be ideal candidates, a very brief email just saying, My waitlist is growing.
If I don't hear back from you by Friday to confirm a spot, I'm going to, you can word it nicer than this. Maybe I'm being pretty direct, but, then I'm going to move to the next person on the waitlist and you can reach out again, or I'll reach out in six months or I don't know, whatever you want to, however you want to structure it in your system.
And I do think you, Those are really warm leads, right? If they've shown interest and they've gone back and forth with you on email, you want to have some way that you're tracking those. So whether that's a Trello board where you just put people's names, like January, February, March, April, you have lists of people that you talk to in those months, whether that's like tagging them somehow in your email and going back in to look, I don't know how you want to organize it.
It could just be an Excel spreadsheet. And you just keep people's names on with notes about when you last talked to them, but some way that you can circle back to them and check in in a thoughtful way. I think that actually builds good. No and trust value for your business.
And that even if they didn't become a client, maybe if you reach out in three months and just say, Hey, I'm just checking in, wanted to make sure you got so and so the help that he needed. I'm here if you need me. Hit reply and we can talk about how to get you started. If you're interested, like very friendly and just Hey, I'm just checking in on you to make sure you got the support you needed.
Having some sort of way that you can cycle back to people I think is important too, cause. You never know when things might have gotten a little bit worse, but normally I say people won't remember the name of your business or whatever, but with your business, it's a little different. You have a rainbow bus, it's memorable.
Yes. I don't think people are going to forget you, but I do think life gets in the way and they. Don't make decisions unless we give them
Kristin Park: a deadline. It's just that thing like, oh, yeah, I should get to that. I should get to that. Yep. And then like you said, you just shoot that little email.
I do as you're, as you were explaining that, you were using wording that was more about them, more about the client than it was about me. Like not saying hey, I still have openings or my wait list is, I'm still waiting You know, not full or, but you were saying, Hey, you just want to make sure you're getting the support that you need.
Laura Park Figueroa: Yeah. That's that definitely even noticed that, but yeah, that was something too that Jenny and I talked about on my website. A lot of times I think our line on the main page was like expert outdoor occupational therapy. To help kids grow more coordinated, confident, and connected to self, others, and nature.
Okay, so that was like our tagline. And she was like, you need to change that to your child. Instead of to help kids, it's like when someone lands on that page to help your child, so it's speaking to you, and so a lot of times when we went through the copy on my website, she was like, change that to you, change that to your child, instead of just like kids in general, or children in general, so it's very important to remember they are not concerned about you, they are concerned about themselves, right?
Yes. It is okay to say, I do think you could say in that email to them, my, I have three more spots left in my weekly schedule before my schedule is full and I will be starting a wait list. If you want one of these last three spots, please email me by Friday, or just a very kind of direct, that's not lying.
It, when you hit 16 kids, you're going to be nearing towards full and maybe, you might find that 16 is plenty while you're also running. The other aspects of everything else. Yeah, so 16 is a lot to manage the communication, the documentation, all of that, my a full time case. I don't know if this will help you and maybe this will transition us into talking about hiring.
But in my practice a full time caseload for an OT seems to be around 30. Kids per week, but that is also in delivering mostly in groups, so it's not as much time in person 30 might be way too much if the full time therapist was doing individual sessions because that might be just a lot of time to be doing hour long sessions outdoors with kids, right?
It's great that you have a caseload that you can document how much time it's taking you to do everything. And then when you hire someone, you can work together to figure out what that reasonable number is for productivity, right? For you do need to make sure that the person is like making enough money for you to justify paying that and keeping some money in the business too.
But okay. Sending the emails to those couple of people and giving them deadlines, I think is really important and even putting that on your website putting a deadline on your website saying, my caseload will be full and three more clients click here to book an inquiry call or whatever.
Oh, that's the other question I had. Are you, do you have an email list? Are you capturing. Leads that come into your website. I was actually
Kristin Park: working on that this morning. I do have several website subscribers and everyone that signed up for a preschool screening is listed in a separate, category of emails.
Okay. So I have been trying, I've sent out like two follow up emails to just all of those families in general. Okay. Okay. Just explaining things you can work on at home for speech and language. And then I followed up saying here are the steps to getting started with the magic speech bus.
And that's in addition to those little ongoing personal communications with those interested families. But a lot of the people that are subscribed to my website are other speech therapists and therapists in general who like the magic speech bus. Yeah,
Laura Park Figueroa: yeah. And I'm not 100
Kristin Park: percent sure who's a potential client and who's the speech therapist,
Laura Park Figueroa: yeah, you're gonna have the problem I had when I first started, which was... I had a lot of therapists reaching out to me and joining the email list or emailing me directly to say like, how did you start this practice? Can I talk to you about how you started? And I definitely, I did a lot of those for free and eventually I was like, I can't do this for free anymore.
I'm going to start trying to, that's how my business coaching practice started. Essentially it was just sharing what was working for me. So I think you're going to have to, what I would really encourage you to do. It sounds like maybe you don't have this quite set up on your website and bedrocks will walk you through this.
So we didn't even talk about this, but Kristen is in the business hive, which is my business coaching program. And this call is free though. We're not, I always say this, like these live calls are not paid everyone. They're just for free to help everybody else too, for people who are willing to come on and.
Get some coaching and share with the community. But it is inside the business bedrocks curriculum, like lead generation and email marketing setup, what you're probably going to want to need on what you are probably going to need on your website is a list for therapists to join and a list for families to join because it's fine if therapists want to join your parent list, but you're not going to be sharing stuff about how you started the bus on that list or because you could build a consulting.
practice alongside, you could be offering that as a service on your, and I think you do, right? Yeah. So you're going to want two separate email lists and you want some way when people land on your website, because when people land on your website, like 2 percent of them, maybe are ready to sign up for speech therapy.
How many people do you think probably land on your website that are like I kid maybe needs this. I'm not really sure, but then maybe they, if you don't capture their email while they're there so that you can get in touch with them, they go somewhere else. And again, your practice is very memorable.
They probably would be able to find you again, but it's important that you have their contact info because if you're going to hire in the future, you have to know that there are. A large number of people that you can immediately get in touch with who are interested in your services enough to give you an email.
So have you done that module yet in the bedrocks curriculum? Okay. I think. Okay. All the marketing
Kristin Park: stuff starts. Yeah,
Laura Park Figueroa: like now. So yeah. We're just starting the marketing piece. So it's probably in two more modules. You have access to it now if you want to, I don't know if people are like working ahead or, we're not like strict about what we're doing, which week I don't like do the drip modules anymore or anything like that, where you don't have access.
But what you want is some yeah. Some it's called a lead magnet. Have you heard of a lead magnet before? Yeah. So something that's a value to family. So maybe it's these are the top three. I don't, I'm not a speech therapist, so this will be hard for me. But these are the top three most difficult sounds for three to five year olds.
And here's five ways you can work on each one or at home or whatever it may be. And just a very simple kind of a tip that will give parents a quick win, right? And you're basically going to put that on your website as if you give me your email, you get this free thing. That's why it's called a lead magnet.
Cause it magnetizes the leads to give you their email. They give you their email and then you have an email list that is housed in like a legit email service provider. So this is different than like having a list of people in Excel who might be interested in your, which is what we all start out with.
It's totally fine that you're doing that. But, to capture people when they hit your website is very important. It's especially important to grow and to hire later, because that way, that you have that group of people that you can get in touch with when you want to get in touch with them, to tell everyone that the deadline is whatever date in order to enroll for whatever program, so I think that'll be a good.
Next step for you to get, start working on getting that set up. And then you can do the same thing. It's fairly simple to do, but you can do the same thing to have a a different list essentially in your email service provider that would be for the therapist where they could sign up for any communication you want to.
Give them about building the bus and all the cool things. Okay. How is all that feeling?
Kristin Park: It's good. I've got some actionable steps that I can start doing like this week, which is good. And it's also reassuring because I feel like I am on the right track. Everything. Yes, everything that you're saying so far just sounds like the next logical step that I need to take, which is good because it's not Oh my gosh, that was totally out of left field and I'm not doing any of that.
Yeah okay. I've heard these things before. Yes. And I am at that point in the business where I need to be really focusing on those. It's good. And then that just makes me think about hiring in the future because you were mentioning like making sure that I'm full. Client wise before hiring somebody else.
Yeah. And can I share some of the questions or thoughts that I've
Laura Park Figueroa: had? Of course. Yes, please. Let's do. Let's dive into it.
Kristin Park: Okay. I've seen other solo therapists hire online and they tend to hire VAs or admin sometimes first before hiring other therapists. But I'm wondering if that Is a smart move to do, or if it would be better to just get a more revenue generating employee first, give them some of my caseload so that I can continue to do the administrative things and then go from there.
Maybe I was curious to hear your thoughts on that.
Laura Park Figueroa: Yeah, I think, I'm so torn because. The way I did it seemed to have worked and I'll just, I'll tell you what I did, but I also think that you could do it a different way and it might work out as well. So it's we'll focus on what you might want to do.
Okay. So I'll tell you what worked for me. So I hired at the time we called her a virtual assistant and then it was like online business manager, and then it was like practice manager, and now she's like executive assistant and financial manager, she is, has been in the business for eight years with me.
And it basically co runs the business with me. Because she's grown in that role and shown her value. THe initial hire was strictly administrative kind of stuff that I wanted to offload. The way to start that is to just start making a list of things that someone else could do that don't require your speech therapy brain, okay?
All the things that you're doing, even if you like doing them, make a list, if there are things that are admin that you could hand off to an admin, and then you'll know how many hours you might have in order to be able to hire for an admin assistant role. There is just FYI inside the resources in the hive.
There's an application. For a template, a Google form template for an application for an administrative assistant. So you don't have to like reinvent the wheel. You can just make a copy of that form and change the questions as you want. Based on I've hired several over the years for various different things in the business.
So I started with admin first but I pretty quickly hired employees after I hired her. I think that the, Logical thinking is that if you want to, if you want to do more direct treatment, if that's just really your jam and you love it and you want to do more direct treatment in the business, then yes, you should hire an admin first because that will obviously free up more of your time.
Eventually. You have to train them and you have to get in a flow of things, right? But it will free up more time for you to see more kids in the practice. However, If you love running the business and you really are like the entrepreneurs, this is how I am. Like, I love the entrepreneurship stuff.
Like I love being in the woods with kids, but I am just a business. I love business. I love thinking about the business. I love creating systems around the business. I love thinking about solving problems in the business. So even though I hired an admin first, like It might have been better for me to hire an employee first and keep doing some of the admin stuff on the back end because I really love that kind of work and I only hindsight is always 2020.
But what kind of person I guess that brings up the question of who do you think you are as a business owner? And I want you to be free to say either one. Like it's okay to be a speech therapist and actually love being an entrepreneur and running the business too. Okay. So freedom to be honest about your opinions on this one.
So what do you think? Okay,
Kristin Park: good. Because I am feeling a little bit more towards that side. As I'm getting more into business ownership and the entrepreneur. Part of all of this, that is really exciting and I'm really enjoying all of it and, making all of the pieces come together and, just working on the business is really exciting.
Yeah. Yeah. Obviously I love being a speech therapist. I've been doing that for forever and comfortable with it. And it's something I know how to do very well. But I think the novelty and the ability to be so creative with the business is what's really. Really exciting to me. As we were talking admin versus therapist, I think in my head, I was already thinking hiring therapist because I would still in the future, love to just have some of those few, like my, not that we have favorites, but my favorite clients keep some of those more like those specialty ones, maybe those three to five year olds, those are like, give them to me.
But then still. Have another therapist who's seeing all of the other
cases. Yes.
Laura Park Figueroa: I love, okay, I want you to remember this moment, okay, for when you hire someone. Because what you said was, maybe I keep the clients that I really love to work with. I did the opposite when I hired. I gave everyone, I kept the group that was very challenging.
And gave everyone else the, like you said, we say we don't have favorites, but it was, there are easier and there are harder groups to run. Let's just be real here. Okay. When you do nature based therapy. And so I did not do that. And I wouldn't say I resented it. Cause I did enjoy those kids, but it was.
I think it's good for you as the business owner to remember that you started this business. You get to say what kids are yours and you get to say as if an employee comes to work for you, you get to say the clients. That they need to see, and that's okay. That's okay. If they want to start a business and they want to take the risk and they want to invest a lot of money like you have in creating a beautiful van, that is this hybrid, amazing model for outdoor and indoor, but with access to the outdoors through the van door model.
Really, if they want to do that then bless and release, go on and do it. But you as the business owner get to. Say what your caseload is, say what their caseload is, and that you should really be able to do that, that you should really be able to keep some of the kids, it should be a benefit of owning the business.
And I think a lot of times as therapists, we are martyrs and we give away, we don't want to make anyone uncomfortable and you have to get a little bit uncomfortable with making other people uncomfortable and having like standard operating procedures in the business so that every employee.
Is. They see you as fair, and that you're managing in a fair way. That's really important. Okay. Leaning towards hiring a therapist then that's,
Kristin Park: it gets tricky.
Laura Park Figueroa: Okay. Tell me why you think that.
Kristin Park: Because I have one bus.
Laura Park Figueroa: Yeah, I thought this actually, I was like will someone else drive the bus?
What will happen? This is interesting. So
Kristin Park: somebody else can drive the bus. I can certainly add them to. The liability and insurance and things like that, but it's just, I think it's just a logistics issue of the bus is parked at my house. They have to come get it, how does that work?
Do I meet them at the park with the bus? And they do the therapy while I'm doing administrative things. Somewhere in the park. I don't know. So those are just some of the questions that are just swirling right now and I haven't sat down and thought about them until this coaching call because I knew we were going to be on this coaching call.
Laura Park Figueroa: It does lend the, it is a good thought experiment to have, I think, right now before you grow because You always need to be thinking about scale in your business like will this scale will this actually be able to be multiplied and replicated in order for the business to grow right and as cool as the van is it is a limiting factor as far as once you get two or three therapists you might need to get another van and then it's are you going to have a fleet of vans maybe you do you know like maybe there's Maybe that's how you figure it out.
And you'll figure that out when you come to it. I have no doubt you are a very keen entrepreneur brain. I can tell. But with one person. dOes the van have to be there? I know it is your brand, but does the van have to be there? Could it be that there are some nature based sessions?
Could it be that the employee runs like small groups for socials? I don't know if social is something that you work. I know speech therapists do, but I don't know if that's something you do in your practice, but are there other things that would fit under your model? But maybe not require the van to be there every time.
Maybe the van comes sometimes, but not always.
Kristin Park: I've thought about that too. If it's, if we're just going true, nature based speech therapy, we don't need the indoor portion as long as it's safe outside. Yes, so I have thought about that. But yeah, then I run into the question of what if it's.
Not safe outside or yeah, for one reason or another having that indoor option. It's nice, but
Laura Park Figueroa: yeah. But also how often would that be? I think this is something sometimes as business owners, we can get caught in the what if cycle and oh my gosh, if we lived like that, we would never hire anyone.
What if someone gets pregnant and I don't have anyone to cover them happening to two people in my practice pregnant right now. Okay. So I'm figuring it out. Like we're going to be okay. Or what if something happens and someone gets hurt on the job or what if something, we get in these you just gotta be like, okay, I'm going to cross that bridge when I get to it.
I think maybe right now, though, maybe doing some, maybe just doing some intentional journaling and planning, like actually writing out on a calendar, what, what would your schedule, ideally, what would your schedule look like once you hire this person? What do you think? Like, how many kids would you be seeing?
If you hired someone once
Kristin Park: I had an employee who is doing essentially, maybe those 16 to 20, maybe more for all intensive purposes, like a full time employee, what I could see myself doing as the business owner is maybe one or two days of sessions and then one or, the rest of the week, two days or more being.
That administrate I keep saying administrative, but it's, like a
Laura Park Figueroa: higher level management. Yeah. It's business operations and management. Yeah. And
Kristin Park: the marketing and all that fun stuff too. Cause I really do like that part too. Yeah.
Laura Park Figueroa: Oh, you're so good at it. You're, if you guys, I said this on the last episode, but if you haven't seen her Instagram account, you just need to go.
It's so cute. It's you're so good at it. Your stories are so on point. Like I just love, it's so fun to see you in my little feed of stories there. What was I going to say? Okay. So you'd be, you're thinking seeing two days a week of kids, two days a week that you'd be doing admin stuff and then one day a week off, like you want to work four days a week.
Okay. Yes. Yep. Easy solution would be that the person just has the bus on your admin days. That, that comes to mind right away, right? I didn't, you didn't need a business coach to tell you that, but, but it helps. I think it helps to think out loud about these things and be like, Oh, actually it's really not that.
Big of a problem. Like the person could be doing nature based work on the days that you are not, or maybe you guys share the van in the same location. Are any of the places that are big enough, are any of the places big enough for you both to be there, but maybe one of you to be in the woods, one of you to be in the van or vice versa?
It could become a kind of conundrum, but
Kristin Park: yeah, because I was imagining like, okay, let's say we're going to this one park and we both meet there. fRom three o'clock till, I don't know, eight o'clock. That's when I do like my after school hours so they could meet me there. And yeah, we could switch off.
Like you get the bus for this hour. I get the bus for the next hour. And then the next week it switches again. So every client has an opportunity to have access to the bus if needed. buT then there are some weeks where they're just outdoors for the entire session. Yeah.
Laura Park Figueroa: Yeah. That could work. And then you both have your supplies there cause the supplies can be in the van.
Yeah. I think that could work. And especially for your first employee, it might not be someone full time. Even you might hire someone like 20 hours a week.
Kristin Park: Like I was imagining like a school based therapist who. Yeah. Does their school hours and then maybe just picks up one or two nights a week.
Laura Park Figueroa: Yeah. So something I would say, I'm glad you brought that up because I just, right before we got on this call, I had a call with my lead therapist in my practice who's been there for gosh, I think this is her sixth or seventh year. I've lost track. She's been here a long time. She was one of the first people I hired and she's still here.
So she's so great. And we were talking about the difference. In the team and in my practice this year versus and last year, maybe versus in previous years, because. The people that are working in the business right now, primarily some of them have other jobs, but primarily like half of them are only working at Outdoor Kids OT.
And there's two of them that have like other, like how you said, like a school based job or they're working in a hospital. Just one of them really wants to come on, but we just need drum up more. We're trying to drum up more business and like more clients and more groups for her to come on more like halftime or so.
So anyway, the vibe on the team is very different when you have people that are committed to your business, like they're not their attention isn't divided. It's just we can only do so much as therapists. And when we're working in multiple different practice settings, it can be hard to really give the time you want to the job that is like the smaller, I just work.
five hours a week for them or whatever. So I would really encourage you if you can to try to bring people on who are working primarily in your business as their main gig. And you can't control what people do, right? But there's always people who maybe they don't want full time work. Maybe it is a young mom or something who doesn't want to work full time and because your kids are young and she wants to be with them, whatever that may be.
That's the quint quintessential typical Example, right? But I'm thinking about more hours versus less hours is what I want to encourage you to think about so that someone can really be a partner with you in growing the practice because you will love if you hire the right person. You will love working with them so much because they will not just be an employee to you.
They will be someone who is supporting you as the business owner in like thinking bigger about what else could you guys do? What other services could you offer? What other programs could you develop? What, what supports could you develop for families? It'll be like having a partner in the business versus doing it all on your own.
That's what I love about having a team, but the wrong hire can also be really challenging. That is there's actually a previous episode of this podcast called how to hire great people. I don't remember what number it is off the top of my head right now. It's early. It was probably in the first 10 or 20 that I did.
I'll put it in the show notes, if I. I wish I'd
Kristin Park: remembered. Yeah, I'll have to go back. Yeah. I think I listened to every single episode,
Laura Park Figueroa: Yeah. And if you're not, maybe you didn't because if you're not ready to hire, that's one that's eh, whatever. I'm not going to listen to it.
But so there might be some tips in there worth listening to. But the other thing, I know we need to wrap up because we've been going an hour, but the other thing that I really want to encourage you to do, the other mistake I made was that I paid people too much when. They first started because I did, I did a look on Indeed to figure out what like people made in the Bay Area and I just did not I wasn't bringing in enough revenue with each person for how much I was paying them with the addition of taxes because in California and the U.
S. is Most states are moving this direction with like contractor versus employee, but specifically in California, if you are like an occupational therapy practice and you hire occupational therapists, they cannot be independent contractors. They have to be employees because they are providing a service that your business exists to provide for the customer.
So an admin person can be. Contractor easy, but a therapist that you hire typically in the, and this is the way the IRS is moving to y'all. And this is a serious thing because you could be like owing a lot of back taxes if you hire people as contractors and they should have been employees generally as business owners.
We're hiring employees. We're telling them who we want them to see, where we want them to go. There's a lot of ways that we control that if someone's an independent contractor, you would not be able to control them that way. anYways, when you hire employees they should not be given in pay anything more than 60 percent really 50 is ideal, but 60 percent of the revenue that they bring in.
So if this therapist is just, let's do easy math. Okay. So 10 clients a week, a hundred dollars an hour. I hope you're charging more than a hundred dollars an hour. This is just for easy math people, but like 10 clients a week at a hundred dollars, that would be a thousand dollars they're bringing in. Okay. So their pay, their total pay, including taxes and any kind of benefits you're giving them or whatever, should not be more than 600. And your business is going to take the 400 and pay your taxes and pay your admin costs and pay all the other things, supplies and all the other things that you need in your business.
They're in therapy practices. It can be pretty tight, right? Like the because the employee employees are expensive and therapy practices. They're skilled employees, right? So that's just a metric that I think is really helpful to keep in mind so that you don't put your business at risk of going under by hiring someone and paying them too much when they start.
Kristin Park: yeS. That is, that is helpful. I like having that specific number in mind too.
Laura Park Figueroa: So thank you. Yeah. And there's also in the business hive too, there's a spreadsheet called what can I afford to pay an employee spreadsheet? And you can plug in numbers. If I pay this person 46 an hour and my tax rate is this, and I have to pay this much on credit card fees and this, and they're going to work this many visits per week, it'll spit out like a number for like how much money they're going to bring in.
And then you can take all the expenses in your business and divide them out. And it'll actually like on the second page of the spreadsheet, you can just click profit question mark at the bottom and it'll show you whether or not the employee is going to be a profitable hire or will be costing your business money.
So that's a really useful thing. There's like a video in there too, of how to use it. I made it sound really complicated in this description, but it's pretty simple. It's like plug in the numbers and then you can play with. What you can afford to pay them to because you can say, okay, if we are making this much per visit, how much, okay.
Oh, if I pay them 46, that goes way over, but maybe 44 could be, you can really play with like how much is the maximum I can afford to give them. And it's helpful too, because you can show the employee. If you want to, you can actually show them that you did. You did actual calculations to determine how much you can afford to pay them.
It's not just that you're being like chintzy with the money and you don't want to give them all the money and you're trying to keep the business, make money in your own pocket and all of that. I think the more transparent we can be with our employees about I really am trying to make sure this business stays profitable.
And this is what we can afford to pay based on what we charge right now for our services. So that is a resource too, that you may need to. Make use of when you're getting ready to hire.
Kristin Park: So it's perfect. Yeah, it's been incredibly helpful. I feel like, Oh, I'm so
Laura Park Figueroa: glad. So tell me your takeaways.
This is what I do at the end of every call. Okay, what are your top three? I always say tell me your top one to three. I'll give you three if you need them. What are your top three things that you feel like you need to get going on now or takeaways that you had?
Kristin Park: Takeaway number one is that I need to continuously, take a look at my target audience and not just, set it once and say, okay, I've got it and never come back to it. And that includes, refreshing the vocabulary on the website figuring out who is subscribed and who I want to subscribe, what's going to get them to subscribe to that email list.
So if you like... I learned, that those emails are where you can really nurture those relationships. Yep. And speak directly to those clients who are like hovering on the click button. So that's a takeaway. And I've also learned that deadlines. Are important for just that extra little nudge no, it's okay to let them know that, the waitlist is filling up and it's okay to say doors are closing and it's not, sleazy marketing.
It's just letting them know that I'm getting full. So if you want to do this, let's do this. And then of course. All the hiring takeaways from today maybe shooting for 2 years from now is too far. Maybe I can do it sooner. And if the way you were talking about it today made it seem okay, there is a very logical progression to knowing when you're ready to make that 1st hire and it's not something that.
Needs to take two years if my business is full and I'm ready to do it, see, I need that deadline for myself too let's do this. And then just all the, like the ideas of writing it down and, doing some journaling and reflecting on what I actually want or need out of an employee and how to get there.
It's a big takeaway.
Laura Park Figueroa: I have a, so in my mind, I'm like, I wonder, do you think it's a reasonable goal for you to hire someone by the end of the hive next July? Ooh,
Kristin Park: maybe I got to commit to it. Yes. I think it's a reasonable goal. I could, I
Laura Park Figueroa: think it's a reasonable goal for you. Honestly, if you have 13 clients already, you just need a few more to get full.
And that wouldn't need to be a full time employee. It could be someone, sometimes people want to work part time and build up. I don't know. Like it, it doesn't have to be full time, but I would love to see you do that. I would love to see you hire before we end the your cohort in the hive next, next summer in July.
That's that's a good eight months from now, nine months, nine months from now. Yeah, I think that's doable. A little closer than two years, but,
Kristin Park: I know, I feel like I do that to myself a lot though, where I'm like, I'm going to do this. sometime in the future. And then I sit down and I think about it and it's actually, I could do that a lot sooner than I think I could.
Yep.
Laura Park Figueroa: Yep. And at the same time, sometimes things take longer than we think. We think they're going to? It's true. Very true. That is so funny. Tell me a little bit before we go. Tell me what your experience in the Hive has been like so far. You started in July. So we've been out for three or four months now,
Kristin Park: right?
Yes. Yeah, it's been great. I've really enjoyed the pace of the modules. I, and I, have it all printed in this big binder that I'm, going through and checking things off, but I really do like the way that it's organized, starting with the mindsets for business and just making sure I feel like that's the bedrock of the bedrocks.
Laura Park Figueroa: Yeah. Totally.
Kristin Park: Making sure that. You in that, entrepreneur mindset and focus on what it is that you want out of this business and why you're doing this business. And then just recently we've been really diving into the organization and the systems. And I think all of the resources that you have in the hive have been phenomenal.
Even the like recommended readings that you've dropped here and there have been great. I've been reading Profit First and I just finished the E Myth yeah, and it's just, it really every week it just rejuvenates my excitement to be a business owner. But it's also giving me those practical things to do too, yeah. I really like it.
Laura Park Figueroa: Yay. Oh, I'm so glad. Yeah, we tried to, we do the pace, I think the rhythm of having the we do one week of the Bedrocks curriculum and then one week of the open Q& A calls that we do. So it, I think it. Has been so helpful for people to have space and time to really dive in to each module and not feel like it's I used to do it the first time I did the bedrocks curriculum.
It was a 10 week course. It was like boom. It was just it was too fast. People were like we could have done this in 6 months, but 10 weeks, but there were great reviews of it. But it was like, yeah, people were like we're going to meet and revisit. I think a core group from the 1st and 2nd cohorts that I had ended up like meeting.
Together after the course was over to keep implementing. So it's cool. Anyways. I love having you there. I, you are totally the type of person that is just you're going to do such great things in your business this year already are in like next summer, we're going to have you an employee.
It's official. It's in the recording. It's in the recording. Now you cannot back out. That is one thing to do. If you want to hit a goal, say it out loud for some accountability publicly, that is a way to do it. So definitely. . Thank you, Kristen. This was so great. And I hope you got some value out of it.
And thanks for being so willing to be public about what's going on in your business.
Kristin Park: Sure. Absolutely. Thank you again for having me. And it's been a blast.
Laura Park Figueroa: Okay. Bye.
Thanks for joining me today for therapy in the great outdoors. If you want valuable advice, as you start or grow your nature based pediatric practice, get my free ebook, the nature based practice roadmap. It is a guide to help you focus and avoid. Mistakes as you start or grow your outdoor work with children in it.
I share the four stages of nature-based practice, what you need to focus on and common mistakes to avoid in each stage. Plus a checklist of specific action steps for you to take at each stage in the process. Get it at Therapy in the great outdoors.com/. roadmap. So until next time, get outside, connect, reflect, and enjoy therapy in the great outdoors.
