{Momentrepreneur} Meet Speech Therapist Laura: Don't try and work and parent at the same time!

This week meet a Laura, a speech therapist mom who decided to take on rooms for her practice to better separate work and home, and believes that you can’t do both parenting and work at the same time.

Tell us about yourself, a bit of background.

I am a qualified speech-language therapist, wife, and mother to two little girls aged 4 and 7 years.

What were you doing before you started this business?

I worked as a PA for many years before finally taking the plunge and going back to university to study as a speech therapist. After qualifying, I worked as a full-time at a hospital, and then when I had my first daughter I went part-time at the University of Cape Town as a lecturer and clinical educator. When my second child was born I decided to go out on my own and open my own practice.

Is your business full time or part time and why?

It depends! There aren’t really any such thing as fixed hours when you are self-employed. When there is work, I work and when there isn’t, I don’t. Sometimes I work 7 days a week and sometimes I only work a few hours. I never know what is going to come in and I can’t afford to turn work away, so I take it when it comes! There is also no such thing as 9-5. I try to get lots done in the mornings while my kids are at school so I can fetch them and be around in the afternoon, then once they are in bed I carry on working (but it does mean husband gets neglected, which is not great either!).

How do you juggle the responsibilities of being a mom with your work?

It’s a challenge. You have your business, your husband and your kids, and every time to choose to focus on one you are aware you are neglecting the other two (and never even mind spending any time on yourself!). There is no downtime and if you have been up all night with sick kids, you still have to get out there and put your business face on in the morning. You have to super-flexible and be able to switch between invoicing, building tents, making supper, wiping a snotty nose and emailing a client all in an instant! On that note, I have found that having an office at home really didn’t work for me- the children bother me constantly, and I am easy to distract as I enjoy being with them! My husband also works from home and they don’t bother him at all…I moved into offices this year and although the extra expense is a burden, I find I am much more productive. It also helps me to separate work from home-life- I found before I was constantly trying to do both, like checking emails on my phone while helping my daughter do her homework. When I try to work and parent simultaneously, I find I do neither thing well! Now, for the most part, work and home are separate. It is also getting easier to do some work at home now that they are older, although it is still inevitable that the minute I get on a business call, one of them will start shouting that they need a poo!

Do you have a business plan? If so, can you share a bit about your strategy to make it successful?

I didn’t initially, which was a mistake. I just kind of bumbled along and dealt with things as they came. It’s good to be flexible because you can never predict what is going to happen and how plans might change, but having a longterm vision is very important. I eventually got some help from a wonderful PR person (Claire Winson – “Entrepreneur Mom”) who helped me to figure out a business plan and how to market myself.

How do you get clients/ market yourself?

Most clients find me through my website. Getting a website set up with proper search engine optimisation is definitely money well-spent. It also really useful getting professional advice on how to market myself as I was making stupid mistakes (like marketing in health magazines, when my target audience was corporates). I only recently put up a proper LinkedIn profile and I have made so many useful connections, I wish I had done it sooner.

I also contacted all the organisations and people in my area that I knew could make use of me (schools, doctors, hospitals, other therapists etc). I’ve found that getting in touch with my competitors and offering to collaborate and cross-refer has also been hugely helpful- we work together instead of against each other, and we all benefit.

Word of mouth is invaluable and I always make sure I deliver excellent service so that people will recommend me to others.

What’s your biggest challenge right now?

My biggest challenge is that my practice is growing to the point where I’d like to take someone else on, but I don’t yet have enough money to pay them a full salary (but can’t grow a caseload WITHOUT taking someone on). It’s a tricky transitional period. Also managing my admin and finances is very time-consuming and tedious as I didn’t get a good system in place to begin with. Finally, the feeling of wanting to invest time in my business to make it grow, but not wanting to miss out on spending time with my children. It’s a constant tension. Basically, my biggest challenge is how to clone myself!

Did you need a lot of money to start off? And how long was it before you made a profit?

Luckily I hardly needed any money to start off with as I just did home-visits and made my own therapy materials. I took on rooms this year and the extra expense has been a challenge but it is nice to have my own space. It probably took 6 months for me to break even but it still varies so much month from month. December is bad because everyone is on holiday (and out of medical aid funds!) while January is hectic because everyone has medical savings again! So some months I do well and other months I barely scrape through. I’m much less financially secure than I was when I was employed, but life is certainly more interesting, and I’m happy to do without material things for the opportunity to be around for my kids more than I was previously.

What makes your business unique from other brands?

I work mostly with adults who have voice disorders, which is fairly unique in South Africa as the majority of speech therapists work with children (or with adults who have had a neurological injury). My background in corporates means I understand how business works so am not just limited to the clinical setting- my clients are call centres, CEOs, sports presenters, radio commentators…it’s really varied. While many people who work with voice come from a speech & drama background, I have the added clinical expertise. I also LOVE what I do!