97: Help Me Help YOU! - (Life & Business Updates from Laura - December 2024)
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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. Hello friends. I have not done an episode like this in a long time now. But I used to do. These semi-regular episodes called life and business updates from Laura or life and business lessons from Laura, something like that. And I felt the need to do this right now, because there are a lot of things I want to share with you all that may encourage you in your nature-based practice.
So. I am taking this opportunity to record while my house is quiet and no one is home except for me and the dog, because my daughter flew in last night. I had not seen her since July. So it was, she cried when she hugged me. She was like, I miss you so much. It was like, oh, it made me tear up. But I am so happy to have all three of my kids home for the holidays for the next few weeks.
And also. We don't live in a huge house. Even here in Madison. We bought a house. When we moved from California a few years ago, we bought a house that is relatively small. It's not a, it's not a gigantic house. It's three small bedrooms. And three children and a dog and my husband and I feels a little chaotic here.
And I want to share with you all that. I shared it in my email that I sent this week that I'm recording. Many of you probably heard about it on the news. There was a school shooting here in Madison at a private Christian school. Just heartbreaking. Like, I, it always is heartbreaking when we hear about things like this, but. It was particularly. Jarring for me because my husband and I had literally just been less than 24 hours before. The event happened at that school. That tragedy happened. My husband and I had been at the church on that campus.
So we had gone to church in the morning. And showed up at our church that we normally go to every week, but we hadn't been in awhile. Cause I had been out of town and my husband had been doing stuff for my son's baseball and and we show up and there's no one at the. Like it didn't even look like it was open.
There was no one there. And we went online and realized that it was an evening service for advent lessons and Carol service for the holiday, for the Christmas holiday. And so we literally typed into Google Church near me, Madison. And we ended up at this church called city church, which was on the campus of abundant life Christian school.
And I, it was a lovely church service and I just. I, it was particularly hard because. I had just been there for some reason, it made me feel like more connected to it. And so the reason I'm sharing this is that I feel like. When we are in the chaos, of raising children and the chaos of family dynamics over the holidays and relationship challenges. And. As people, we just it's hard when we all get together. Sometimes people. Nobody is just like you. And there's always going to be some kind of level of conflict in our lives.
And. I think when. We remember that some people are going through things that are just unimaginably hard. And that might be you right now. That might be you going through something that is unimaginably hard. We have to just remember to embrace the chaos. We have to remember to love the people around us.
We have to remember that. Many of the things in our lives that are blessings are going to be hard things sometimes. And just was reminded of that yesterday and have been, trying to remind myself of that. Today as my house has felt very full and a little bit crazy. Um, But just to, just to remind myself to, to find joy and these relationships that I have with my family And if you are a praying person, please pray for these people who Who are going through. Just horrific life experiences and right before. The holidays well as well.
Anyways, That being said. I am feeling grateful right now for a quiet house because everyone has gone. For some reason, my husband took my son to the gym. And then my daughter left with my middle son to go over and see his place. He lives here in Madison. And so I was like, oh my gosh, I'm going to be home alone.
I can actually record the podcast because I don't know how I was going to get to record you guys with this week with everyone being home. Okay. So today what I'm going to talk about. As a little bit of the peek behind the curtain of my. Kind of My emotional states and my feelings and my energy that I'm feeling about my businesses right now about both of them.
So this is not going to be my end of year recap episode. I do an end of year recap every year for my business to share with you the numbers and things like that. I am going to do that in January. I normally do it near end of December, but I decided this year that I want to have actual numbers for the entire year for 2024.
For you. So I'm going to wait to do that, like year in review episode about my business, with all the, the profit and the numbers and how much the business made and all of that. I go behind the scenes and share with you guys those things, because I hope that it helps you when you're building your own. Business to see the challenges and the rewards of running a nature-based practice over a long period of time.
This is not the year in review. This is more me pulling back the curtain on my feelings. And the reason that I felt like this would be helpful for you all is because. I know that y'all go through feelings about your nature based work. And if you. are getting ready to start this work. You're having feelings.
And if you've been doing this work for a while you're having feelings. And I will admit that this is going to be a little bit more of a.
Business related episode because I am running these businesses, right? I'm going to talk about outdoor kids, OT my practice, as well as the online business therapy in the great outdoors, which this podcast is part of. I'll start with, OKOT. That's my, my. I was going to say my brick and mortar practice.
Isn't that funny? My nature-based practice. That is what most people consider brick and mortar, but there's no bricks and no mortar because we're outdoors in nature. It's my clinical practice. My therapy practice that I run and I have run since 20. I incorporated in 2015. I feel really good right now about outdoor kids OT. We have a team in place that is phenomenal.
We have systems in place to allow the business to grow. And I really feel like we are prepped for growth in the new year. We have gotten a few contracts. In the last month or so I hired, you'll hear more about this on the ear interview episode. I'm not going to go into deep detail about the business here, but. I hired one of my employees to be the COO this year, the chief operations officer. And so her primary purpose is to grow the business.
She is doing a lot of outreach into the community and she has already established two different contracts with schools. For us to provide services, screening, observation, and direct services for children in their schools and their schools that we really align with their vision and the way that they deliver educational services.
And so it's very exciting. And I am thinking that this is going to be a year of real growth for the business. So I'm really excited about that. My role, I am still staying CEO in the business chief executive officer. And my role is now too coach because I love business coaching. You'll hear more about that in a bit. I love business coaching and my job.
Now, the reason that I've made this decision in the business to hire Gabby as the COO. Is because she can do more of, well, first of all, she's in California. I live in Wisconsin. Most of the business is in California, we have a very small branch of the practice here. But she's in California. And so she's able to do that outreach and the purpose of hiring her was so that I can lean into the things that I really love doing. And because I love business coaching so much staying CEO of outdoor kids, OT, but having a COO. Allows me to. Coach the person running my own business, essentially.
So I am supporting her I'm consulting with her. I'm coaching her on good business practices. And, I think we should always be thinking in our businesses about the long game. And I could see her one day owning the business really now. I don't know that she'd want to, honestly, but. Gabby.
If you're listening, I'm not gonna force you to run the practice later. If you. If you don't want to of course, but I would have no way to do that anyway, but so I feel like if. I'm training people in my business. Then it is thinking about the longevity of the practice. Over the longterm when I will no longer be involved in the future.
I really hope that my practice outlasts me. Like I would love it if we could say. Outdoor kids OT. And hopefully by that Time it would just be outer kids therapy because I want to become multidisciplinary at some point in the future. We just haven't gotten our ducks in a row and all the systems in place to do that yet. But, I hope that, that the entity itself exists long after I'm gone from this earth.
I hope that it is something like my legacy that I can leave on this earth for kids and therapists and families for many years to come. But you have to think that way about your business, if you want that to happen. So we need to take the long game here and the long range vision here. So right now, outdoor kids OT requires very minimal time on my part.
I am not spending a lot of time every week working on outdoor kids OT tasks or management of that business. It is running. Very well. Without me being heavily involved. So I. I might even be overestimating. When I say that I probably spend about 10 hours a week on Outdoor kids, OT. And you'll hear all about the money and stuff and like what I paid myself and all of that in the episode that's coming out in January.
I'm not going to go into the business metrics right now. So for outdoor kids, OT, I feel really good. I feel like there were in a good place to start 20, 25, and I'm really excited about the coming year and excited about the team we have in place. Therapy and the great outdoors TGO Is a little less, I'm feeling less positive or less energy about this business, but I want to remind you, this is an opportunity for me to remind you. That you will go through emotions early on in your business.
And even later in your business, you will like. I mean, I can't say that in six months about outdoor kids OT I'm not going to be feeling like, oh my gosh, I'm so overwhelmed. I hate this. You're going to go. It's like a rollercoaster as an entrepreneurship. Like any time that you are the one responsible that like you are the one fully responsible for this. Entity you are going to go through emotions.
You are going to feel ups and downs. And I would highly encourage you to sit with the emotions and try to push through to the other side. Now there is a time.
Of course when for some people it will be time to say. I am ready to do something else in my life. I'm not, I don't want to do this anymore. But I think that a lot of us. Maybe throw in the towel too early when things get hard. And so I want you to acknowledge and to know to go in eyes wide open, if you are thinking about starting a nature-based practice or a nature-based business or service. Go in with eyes wide open and know that you will go through emotions.
It's really exciting at first, but as soon as the rubber hits the road and you have some kind of real big challenge or something you're going to want to quit, there is going to be a desire to quit. So I have felt that this year with the TGO business, and I have to say, like I just said, I love business coaching.
Kinda makes me sad because I feel like. Maybe the niche that I have chosen, this is the other thing I like big takeaway I wanted to share with you all, is that. Your niche will affect how big your business will grow. And I need to acknowledge that. This niche of serving.
Pediatric professionals. Who are therapists who want to work in nature with children, and even more specifically who want to run a business? Doing that. It's at. Teeny tiny little niche. Okay. So it's important when you think about in your nature-based practice now, this does not just relate to an online business.
This relates to a practice. And I believe I've said this on the podcast before. But it's important that you think about your niche and your business. When you think about building your nature-based service or practice? If you choose a niche, that is way too specific.
Your business will be limited in how much it will grow. And if you choose a niche that is way too broad and you serve everyone, you're not really serving anyone. So there's a sweet spot where the niche is big enough to give you. A good caseload, that can sustain you by paying you a livable wage in your area. And you need to do the math around that,
there's a way to do math, to figure out if your niche will be big enough for your business to grow, to be a sustainable business. Okay. So you can do a little bit of math to look at let's say you wanted to serve only kids with ADHD. Okay. You can actually look up statistics about how many kids are typically diagnosed with ADHD nowadays, how many kids live in the geographical area, where you are estimate how many kids that would be estimate, how many of those might be able to pay for the service that you're offering?
How many of those might be able to, or might enjoy doing an outdoor type of service? There's lots of ways that you can just make some estimates, some are or guesstimates, I guess I should say. Cause really you're guessing on some of those numbers. And doing some market research to determine if your niche is big enough.
Okay. I don't regret choosing this niche for my online business. I love the people that I get to work with. I mean, when I was at that nature based business retreat, about a month ago, It was the pinnacle of my year. It was the best few days I spent all year for work because they just are such y'all you all who I'm talking to here? Are such. Heart-centered thoughtful people, kind, people giving people just supportive, encouraging. Like mission-driven.
I mean, th these people that I get to work with, all of you. Are the cream of the crop in the world, like the best humans in the world, in my opinion. And. It's hard. It's still as hard though. To build a business around this niche, because it's really hard to find. Y'all like it's hard for me too. Know how to find online, the people who I want to connect with, because I want to connect with therapists who are in pediatrics and also love nature.
And also for my business coaching program, want to run a business, right? There's this whole level of layers of people that I am looking to reach on social media and just in my networks for this online business. That it's really challenging. It's such a small niche. It's really challenging to find these people and have the ongoing need for my services that justifies the business continuing to exist.
I'll share. I'll share some of my thoughts around this. The Contigo course, my nature-based therapy certification course. Has had a good amount of now I haven't done the numbers yet for this year. So that will be in the metrics episode, maybe. It's had a good amount of people enrolling in it and it definitely has more people that, that take it.
Then people who enroll in my business coaching program, which is to help people, start a nature-based business. Right. Um, So I the thing for me is that I, I have a hard time, I think because I'm an entrepreneur and because I am very curious and interested in a lot of things. I have a really hard time doing the same thing over and over and over. And I'll tell you when you run a business. You have to do the same thing over and over and over, over time. Now, it doesn't mean you don't innovate.
It doesn't mean that things don't change but you have to do the same thing over and over in order to continue to serve people and serve people well. And so for me, if I'm really honest, like Contigo to me feels like second nature. Like I could teach it in my sleep. I've been doing it for several years now.
Like I. I know that stuff inside and out. I know what questions are going to be asked on calls now because I've done so many of the calls. So it's really hard for me to know that that is the thing in my business that people really need and want. And it, the reviews on it and the testimonials on it are outstanding.
People say that it is that it has completely helped them. And there I have never had not one person. I, the question on the. Feedback forms at the end of Contigo. There's a question that says, did Contigo help you increase your confidence to offer nature-based therapy services for children? And I have never had someone say no on that. I've never had someone say no, a hundred percent of people say yes, and almost a hundred percent of people rate it like a five out of five as far as the usefulness of all the different types of content in there that are in there.
And there's occasionally a four on some of those, like a four rating. But the feedback is incredible. We. We are right now redoing our websites. And I had to gather all the testimony is there, there are so many testimonials about Contigo that attest to the value of this program, to the community. And me personally, as the person who created it, I know that it's valuable.
And at the same time, it's like hard to keep promoting the same thing over and over, over the years. So I think that may be where some of my energy is feeling sapped in the online business is because of having to sell in a sense, right? Anytime that I open enrollment, I have to make sure to do the emails and write the, Make sure to mention it on the podcast and things like that.
Speaking of which we're open now until the end of December. Um, Contigo is open. So I will, I will talk about that at the end. Maybe I always make the announcement right at the end, but so there's just this pressure on me to always be managing that, that calendar and making sure that you all know. If you're on the waitlist, that when it's open and to know that it's time for you to enroll in all of that.
So that tight takes a toll. So I think maybe that might be where some of my energy is feeling. Sapped in the online business. I also have to remember. It's very early in this business. That's what I meant to say is when I was saying you'll go through emotions. It's this business has really only been going for two years now.
I think I, I split out the business or maybe almost three. I think I, I split. The therapy and the great outdoors out from my private practice and moved everything into its own official business in 2022. So we're coming up on 2025. It's been almost three years. So I think I also need to remember to myself that I'm very early in this business and the emotions.
are okay. It's okay to have emotions very early in a business and feel sapped of energy and. Really I think thinking through how you can. Get your energy back. I tend to feel this way only when I'm not actively engaging with people. And right now we're not having calls for Contigo.
Like they don't happen until February. And it's just interesting, like when I'm having to work on things on the backend without much interaction or feedback from people. That's when I feel my energy sapped and it's hard for me. But much of this online business is that way.
So this podcast is that way. This podcast, I very rarely get feedback about the podcast. When you guys do send me an email or reach out to me on Instagram and say I love this episode or thank you this helped me. It really does boost my spirits because podcasting I've said it before.
It's the weirdest thing where. You are speaking, but you're thinking about the people you're speaking to, but there's not immediate feedback, right? I'm not having you guys immediately give me feedback about it. And a lot of times when you're consuming this, you might be driving. You might be out on a run.
You're not in a place where you can be like, oh, let me text Laura and tell her that I really learned something or whatever.
Podcasting is just strange in that way. So it is harder to do these things for the online business, where I'm running the free community, I'm doing the podcast. These things are free. They're things that I'm committed to doing to serve everybody for free. But they also can be weird because you don't get a lot of feedback about them and that's really hard.
So I think. I think. Maybe as I'm speaking here. So this is so funny, you guys, I didn't even tend to say this, but. I often say to my team, That I am such an external processor. It helps me to talk out loud in order to come to ideas. So this is something I think, as a therapist, you should really know about yourself and figure out about yourself.
Do you, how do you come to your best ideas? And. I know personally that I come to my best ideas by talking out loud about them. And I literally didn't even realize it until I was just recording this episode based on my little outline that I have here in front of me for you all. That may be part of giving myself more energy from the TGO business is to do more things where I personally am in engaged and interacting with all of you.
For a while inside the supporting members areas of our TGO community, which is a very low cost, $9 a month membership, where you get access to some extra resources inside of the TGO community. So for a while in our supporting members area, I was doing these free monthly TGO together calls. Like I was calling them TGO together because we just meet up on zoom and it was open time to talk about nature-based practice. Just ask me questions, ask other people questions and group discussion. And I stopped doing those because they were not well attended.
So I don't know if they were not at a good time or maybe now that there's a few more members inside the community. Maybe I should try to do them again, but I do feel like maybe that is the solution to my lack of energy in the online business is more in person on zoom, connections with people and more interaction with people would maybe revive my spirits a little bit because when I am running calls consistently, like for my business coaching program, which happens, those calls happen every week. I'm so invigorated about that program.
I always get off those calls feeling like I always text my admin assistant oh my gosh. I love doing the business coaching goals. Because the people are very engaged, they're very committed. They're very they're showing up, they're doing the work, they're asking questions and that is so rewarding for me as the facilitator of the calls too have that engagement on a weekly basis.
So I really love those calls. I think the free TGO community. Is hard. And I actually considered closing it completely because of extremely low engagement. And I think there's a lot of people there that are lurking. They're like looking at things and like looking at what's in the community, but they're not contributing to the community.
They're not They're not asking a question or answering someone else's question or, sharing and introducing themselves. And so I need feedback from all of you. So this is something that I am doing in the business for the first time. This year for TGO, I'm doing an end of year survey. And so if you are listening to this episode, it's going to be, I'm going to have the link to the survey in the show notes.
So even if you're out on a run, when you're done with your run, you can stop and click on the link and it should take you straight to the survey. If you are driving, please don't do this while driving. Pull over to the side of the road to do the survey or do it when you park your car. But I want to hear from you all because I am interested to know if you are listening to this podcast. What can I do to be of more help to you?
What can I do to. Or what can I not do, honestly, like I'd love you to tell me which resources of mine that I've offered for free this year. And there's like a lot, there's several different ones that I've offered at different times. What have you participated in? What have you found useful? And if if a wide variety of people are not finding the free community useful, then why do I have it?
So maybe I just eliminate it. I don't know. I want to hear from you all. It's really important to me. That I am doing what is helpful to you? I don't want to be doing this work if it is not helpful to you. Please participate in the TGO end of year survey. Even if the only thing you listened to as the podcast, and you're not even a member of the community, I want to know that.
I made it super quick and easy to do. It's click. It's not a lot of Tell me why you feel like blah, blah, blah, type a paragraph here? No, I made it super easy, super fast. Like you can just click things and then hit submit. It is completely anonymous. So it will not take your email or anything. And you can find the link in the show notes or wherever you're listening to this.
The show notes should be there. You can also find the link inside of the therapy in the great outdoors community. If you go to therapy in the great outdoors.com and click join the community, you will be in the free community and you can find the link there as well. So I want to know, I want to know your opinions about the things that I have offered this year inside of therapy in the great outdoors as a business, as a whole. And I want you to tell me what was valuable and not valuable to you, so I can figure out how to do things well in the new year for you. So that's it. I hope that this episode shared something with you when you see behind the scenes of how I'm feeling about everything. I really it's so funny when I do these. I already in my brain, I'm going, oh my gosh.
Did I say, I maybe shouldn't have said that. I already think like in my brain. That I'm nervous about. Sharing my honest feelings about things. But I think it's valuable. And I think we need more of this in the world. We need more of us willing to say gosh, I'm not feeling the energy right now in this business.
Or this is really hard for me, and. I think that's, I think that's important. I think it's important to honor that sometimes things are not all great and perfect the way everyone wants to make them look on social media.
So. Oh, yeah. I try to give it all to y'all but I am, oh, I, I should end to end on a positive note here. I should end on a positive note to say. I do feel like in the TGO business I do have a cadence down now that I think is going to work. At least for the next year as well. So I open Contigo the S the nature-based therapy certification program three times a year. And then I'm opening the business hive, my business coaching program twice a year. And that seems like it, it is a good cadence.
It seems like it works well. So the hive opens in January and June or July. I can't remember. And then. Contigo, we hold calls in February, may and October. So enrollment opens right before those months. And. It seems to be working pretty well. And that's the cadence I'm going to keep for 2025, for sure.
I do know that about my next year in the TGO business. Contigo, like I said is open till the end of December for 2024 pricing. So if you want to get in at our 2024 rates for enrollment in the pediatric nature-based therapy certification program. You will want to enroll before December 31st. And if you enroll this December, you have a year to finish the certification requirements. So you can attend calls any time in 2025. So I'm keeping it open all the way through December until December 31st at 5:00 PM.
That's new year's Eve. So you're going to forget, so you should go and enroll right now if you're thinking about it. Because we are raising our rates for the first time since we opened Contigo in 2019. So first time in five years, I'm raising the rates. We revamped the requirements and the certification program this year, significantly got amazing feedback on the changes to the program.
People were just raving about it and saying how helpful it was. So I think that we are going to keep it as is for a while. Now it is 30 hours and 3.0 CEUs , approved by the American occupational therapy association. So you do not have to be an OT to take it it's for any pediatric professional who's a therapist, but it is approved by AOTA for those CEUs.
And we give anyone who finishes the certification that shows that you did the CEUs. So even if you're in a different profession, hopefully the fact that it is AOTA approved lends some credence to the validity and the rigor of the certification. That is open for you till December 31st, we are raising rates by $150. so. you will save $150. If you enroll by December 31st, you can get all of the info at Contigo approach. Dot com that's C O N T I G O. Okay. \ I think that's it. So until next week, get outside connect, reflect and enjoy therapy in the great outdoors. Bye.
