Balancing Passion and Business

These transcripts are AI-generated, and spelling may not be 100% accurate (especially for names, places, and methodologies).

 

when you run a business that you are really passionate about

to be able to like step away from that

and that’s something that I have struggled with since the beginning

but I think I do access some other like

podcasts and things to help me learn about different ways

that you can be able to step away

and not overload yourself

because passion is a wonderful thing

but it can also be  to your own detriment

especially in a service based business

where we work with vulnerable populations

we work with families that have a lot of difficulties

and you just want to give and give and give

but I think one thing that I’ve really learnt over the years is

you actually can’t just keep giving everything to the business

and everything to your clients

because at the end of the day

if you’re trying to do everything in the business

but you’re still a clinician and you’re seeing clients unfortunately

then that kind of affects the clients

and that was something that I realised last year when I was in

a session with a client

because I’m still a clinician working as a speechy as well

and sometimes like everything going on in the business world

then you can’t switch your head into

I’m just here with this client now

so I think like

having boundaries and being able to separate those days

I suppose where you’re working on the business

and then you’re working in the business is something that’s like

I have found really important this year going into it

having days that are working on the business days

 

Hello and welcome everybody to The Healthy Business Lab podcast

where we interview awesome

allied health business owners to get their experiences

their expertise and their experiments

today on the podcast

we’ve got the amazing Hermione Chettle from House of Speech

joining us welcome to the podcast Hermione

thank you thanks for having me

Again, as we always like to do is rather than put a big spiel about our guest

we love the guest to introduce themselves

and their background in the Allied health space

and I’d love for you to share a little bit with our listeners as to

your background yeah

for sure my name is Hermione

my business is House of Speech

and House of Speech was born in 2023

after I actually started not as an allied health professional

I used to be a teacher

and experienced speech pathology in that setting and thought wow

that’s for me I became a speechie a few years ago

and I worked within a private practice myself

and then yes started House of Speech

to really try and bridge a gap between professional knowledge

and educator knowledge and upskill parents

and have quite a holistic approach to speech intervention

so we work within like on the Gold Coast

we’ve got one clinic in Currumbin

and then we also do a lot of rural practice

so my other clinic is out in Kingaroy

and we work very closely with therapy assistants

who we train and upskill to help us deliver that intervention

in a rural area so we’re not just delivering telehealth

we’ve got someone there on the ground to kind of help deliver that

because telehealth comes with a lot of barriers

but trying to remove as many barriers as we can

for those children that live in more rural areas

so that they can have access to support

because there are so many support needs out there

and they’re very underserviced areas

so that is my big passion area

and kind of why House of Speech started in the beginning yeah

I love that background as well as

being relatively new to Allied Health in many ways

and the experience that brings

having a different perspective on things

which I know I’m excited to

get to the experiments that you’ve done

and you’ve already touched upon

a few of those there given the rural aspect and your approach

with your assistants and the like

so we’ll dig into that but I guess coming back to the

business owners often

you know we don’t look after ourselves in certain ways

in managing our businesses

and from a background of health education

what’s one of those sort of

little key takeaways from what you have learned over the years

that you tap into all the learnings that you have had in the areas

and I’m you know

guessing around the especially communication piece of

what do you try to remind yourself to tap into from all that learning

that helps you in the business ownership space

yeah, totally

I mean I’m still trying to master

it is very hard I think

when you run a business that you are really passionate about

to be able to like step away from that

and that’s something that I have struggled with since the beginning

but I think I do access some other like

podcasts and things to help me learn about different ways

that you can be able to step away

and not overload yourself

because passion is a wonderful thing

but it can also be to your own detriment

especially in a service based business

where we work with vulnerable populations

we work with families that have a lot of difficulties

and you just want to give and give and give

but I think one thing that I’ve really learnt over the years is

you actually can’t just keep giving everything to the business

and everything to your clients

because at the end of the day

if you’re trying to do everything in the business

but you’re still a clinician and you’re seeing clients unfortunately

then that kind of affects the clients

and that was something that I realised last year when I was in

a session with a client

because I’m still a clinician working as a speechy as well

and sometimes like everything going on in the business world

then you can’t switch your head into

I’m just here with this client now

so I think like

having boundaries and being able to separate those days

I suppose where you’re working on the business

and then you’re working in the business is something that’s like

I have found really important this year going into it

having days that are working on the business days

and that might be content

that might be supporting our other professionals

and then I have a day that I am just seeing my clients

and that is my focus for the day

so that has been something that’s really helped me

because you have so many ideas

you want to do so many things

but trying to go between everything and do it all doesn’t really work

you end up I mean I end up in a bit of a chaotic mess

so yeah. love that reminder as we were 

Early-ish in a New Year

such a good reminder and I think one of our guests last year

Alex Sim we were talking about having that toy box

yeah you just talk about all the ideas

that’s the thing that stuck at me and having the boundaries like okay

that goes to the toy box

there’s my boundaries because now I need to be doing what I decided

to be doing and again

I love that approach to going hey

clear headspace where am I

what am I doing what’s the focus and attention on yeah

which is a challenge it’s definitely a mental challenge

particularly if you’re like a real like ideas person

and I think like it comes back to that passion

like sometimes you just can’t push passion down

and it’s really hard to manage it because I have that problem

I’ll be like I don’t know

going for a walk on the weekend and I’m like oh

that’s a good idea but now I have a list and it’s an ideas list

and the ideas have to go in there and be parked for a little while

because otherwise

you then try do everything and nothing actually gets done

yea

so good I think

we’re very similar there

we can see why we enjoyed our first initial chat before this yeah

podcast as well so

and even that talking to this idea of being a business owner

and doing experiments in business

no doubt you’ve experimented with approaches for that

the parking lot, toy box ideas list and the like

but I’d love to sort of dig into some of the other aspects that

as you started your own practice

and experiments that you’ve got about

and things that you’ve implemented that have worked

haven’t worked or you’ve evolved and refined

especially with you again

you’ve got the multiple practices there

and you touched upon the way your team operates as well

I think it’s a very unique approach that you’ve yeah

I think probably definitely the way our team operates

but I think also one thing because you know

I haven’t been a speechie for a lot of years

and I know that starting and doing

working for yourself in Allied Health is a lot more accessible

I suppose as well with being able to be a sole trader through NDIS

and I think sometimes also

one thing that I’ve experienced being a bit younger

is that you’ve got to have a certain amount of years

experience as a clinician

but I do think like you can still

I wouldn’t ever recommend it to a new grad

but that was something I experimented

with a little bit in the beginning

as well and like yes

I was an early professional going out on my own

but if you put the supports in place

and you have a mentor and you access that support consistently

there’s no reason that you can’t do that

so I don’t want to turn anyone off from that

because I think it’s so valuable

because the people that want to do that from an early age

or from early in their career

are often going to be the ones that will likely have the most impact

because it’s always going to be coming from an area of passion

or they’ll have some great idea

that doesn’t already exist

so I think that’s just something that I’ve experienced a little bit

being younger in the workforce

and being a younger business owner as well

that I wanted to touch on

but I think overall like as I said before

being able to provide a service in a rural area is so important to me

and that is something that has definitely evolved over time

and I think when I started our practice is out in Kingaroy

when I started out there I was only for two months

I worked in at my mum’s house in the front of her house

there’s a little sunroom and I turned that into a clinic

and I did that for two months

I was full

I could not see any more kids and there was so many barriers to that

I had kids running through the house

some sessions and like it was chaos

I was like I need a space for this

and so then I obviously I got to max capacity very quickly

but then there’s a need there’s such a need out there

so I wanted to get other professionals on board

and trying to hire qualified professionals in a rural area

is so frustrating really

it’s really hard

like it’s hard to get people to go there

it’s an under serviced area

so I thought

what can I do to still be able to provide a service to more kids

and that was by starting having therapy assistants working alongside us

and I’ve worked with therapy assistants

when I worked in another private practice as well

but I always felt that like

the therapy assistants that I worked with were so motivated

and I think the qualification and the learning that they get from TAFE

degree or like a diploma

isn’t sufficient for what they actually need to go into the workforce

and do so we employed some therapy assistants

and our model is kind of hybrid between working with us as a speechy

and a therapy assistant

so all of our therapy assistants have their own case load of clients

and they have supervising speechies for different clients

and we do a joint session with them every fortnight

that might vary for some clients

we do a joint session every fortnight

and then we write them very specific therapy plans

so that then they can fulfill the therapy when we’re not there

cause I’m not always out in Kingaroy

and that has taken a lot of time to get to that

it’s taken unfortunately

some staff as well that didn’t work because again

comes back to the passion

and when you have a serious passion and a really significant mission

you want to make sure that people align with that

and that can be really hard

because no one is ever really going to care about your business

the way that you care about it

but I think now we are so fortunate

with the staff that we’ve got

and we put a lot of time into upskilling them

all of our therapy assistants

have their own professional development budget

and they’re not like

that’s something that you would get if you’re a speechy OT

like wherever you go and like yes

that’s a cost for me as a business owner

and that like takes away from your profits

but it’s just something that is so worthwhile doing

because at the end of the day

these are the people that are there

working with these clients on the floor

delivering that intervention

so yeah it’s taken us a lot

like with that we used to plan for them to do a block of 10 sessions

and then review it at the end

but that didn’t work because kids change so much

you can’t just be like oh

they’ll still be working on these goals in 10 sessions

cause one of them might achieve them quicker

and the therapy assistants

don’t have the skills to kind of step up and step down

so that’s where we come in to support

so yeah it’s taken a lot of back and forth

but I think like at the moment

it’s working really well for us

and it’s providing access to services that people would otherwise

just go without in that area

it’s so good and what I love about what you’ve just shared

it’s kind of like it’s one big experiment

but there’s just countless

mini experiments happening along the way through that whole process

which again just comes back from you identified

a pretty glaring obvious problem with hey

what you want to achieve in rural areas

key problem

hiring qualified people to deliver the outcomes that we want to get

there’s a gap here there’s a mismatch

what can we actually do about that

and again going back to that simplicity of identifying well

what’s the problem what are we trying to achieve

well again

what’s the different processes we can go about and

going with working into your your therapy assistants

which as you chose

whichever profession we’ve gone into straight out of learning

whether it’s school whether it’s apprenticeships

whether it’s TAFE’s or uni or whatever

it’s like there’s always this massive gap is in there between hey

whatever that learning was to this is the real life

you know for people to get that experience

I know my experience was going through was like well

with good employees and good team basis

like you learn so much in that process yeah

so much and so

I guess if I was to sort of

digging to that area of that sort of initial training

and sort of building that part of the model out

and the training for your team

what was that process like

and what were those sort of iterations like back when

you first sort of played with this kind of new approach

and a different idea

how quickly did you sort of the train and the iterations of

and the different versions of what that looked like for you

it was probably like I suppose our model with like

now that we kind of do a fortnightly check in

I feel like that model was probably over like a year of trialing

like at the beginning

it was the block of 10 sessions that we’d planned for them

then we thought that’s not really working

they need more reviews

and we would like when I then got another speechie full time here

that allowed me to kind of have that back and forth of like okay

you support this therapy assistant with these clients

I can support this one with these ones

and then yeah it was probably over

cause I mean House of Speech is still pretty young

like I started in my mum’s sunroom in October 2023

yeah it’s evolved a lot in that time as well

but I think like then

in relation to the training that we decide on

for our therapy assistants

it is absolutely dependent on client need

and I feel like we do things a little bit different with like

we modify so much therapy to be within our clients interest

we make our own resources for a lot of stuff

because that helps us with engagement

so I think like then when we decide

on what our therapy assistants need training on

it’s looking at their case load

and let’s say quite a few of our children are autistic

children who use alternative communication devices

so they have a weekly supervision session on top of that

with a speech pathologist

where they just get to ask whatever questions

what’s been hard what’s not working

what would you like to learn more about

so maybe one week they want to dive into their alternative communication

so we will do like

an in house kind of master class on alternative communication

cause then they’re taking that learning

and then they can apply it to like five clients that they see

and yes it’s going to vary in their therapy sessions

like how they deliver that based on the client’s needs

but all of our training and their PD

that they go and do needs to be relevant to their client base

so it’s seeing what clientele they’re working with

and how can we still get like

I suppose a bit of bang for buck when that is an added expense

like I’ve never worked in a clinic

where I’ve known a therapy assistant to get a PD budget

so like and I’ve worked with therapy assistants before

and they are in most rural places

but I think they’re so underutilized

and they can be a wonderful resource if we like train them

and most of them are motivated to learn

like they want more responsibility

and when you give them that more responsibility

they want to learn more cause it they just feel autonomous

so that’s been really lovely to watch

but yeah it’s really dependent on their needs on their skills

like we’ve got one that’s more experienced than another

so we are having to like since hiring a new person at the moment

we’ve kind of got a step that back and think oh okay

I’ve been writing therapy plans for this one that’s very experienced

I might need to add a bit more detail in here

so it’s really scaffolded dependent on who that therapy assistant is

again number 1

I appreciate you sharing even in context of time

cause yes you’re still very young in terms of the business age

but that concept a lot of businesses will do an experiment

but they dont necessarily let it run for enough to get enough feedback to go oh

how quickly or not and again

there are some experiments that you do need to nip in the bud

but it’s also that notion of giving

time for the feedback loops to actually

play out a little bit and I think that was yeah

really nice to share

cause I think some people kind of go doing experiment didn’t work

and so I tend to find like 12 months is quite often a nice

solid time to have an idea

here’s what it look like there’s probably five different

mini tweaks that might happen throughout that time

I think that’s a really useful thing

that you should and I think that feedback is super

like I’m not the only one that makes these decisions

and I make sure that the team is very involved in it

and I make sure that the therapy assistants are like

I will say what do you think is working about this model

what’s not working about this model

and that was when it came up like with the 10 sessions

one of them said

I think they’re changing more than what we anticipate in the plan

like reviewing them sooner so that I know I’m on the right track

so I get them involved in that too

because they’re the ones delivering the intervention

and it’s gotta work for them as much as the clients

and the parents are involved in this too

like our parents know our model

they know why we use that model and they’re involved in that too

yeah cool

and so on that idea of I guess feedback

I’m curious as to how you’ve either

sort out the feedback or how you’ve noticed things

to get the feedback is that changed

over the 12, 18 months as well

yes definitely

so that’s actually something that towards the end of last year

and this year we’ve refined again

I mentioned before

like we every week each therapy assistant has a supervision session

which is the exact same as a qualified clinician

you would have like your mentoring session

we have those sessions with them

and within that now we have employed a particular framework

which is more

I suppose that one is a little bit of feedback around the model

but it more is helping them kind of get into this critical thinking of

like if they have a question to bring to us

we’re using a model now of like

they need to define their question in their supervision document

and talk about what have they tried already

what prior experience can they draw on

do they have a similar client that’s presented like this

that they can draw on that experience

and then what do you want from your supervising speechie

do you want them to just give you the answer

cause sometimes we do want that

sometimes you’re at capacity and you’re like

I don’t want to figure it out

just figure it out for me

like capacity yeah

I wish I could do that most days

so then I just jump in there

but it’s also you’re not assuming anything

hmm each time

and that could change from week to week

it’s like actually no

I want this

you’re not making assumptions

as a part of that process of building that in

I love it

that’s super cool yeah

it’s just part of being a manager or a leader of not

making assumptions which I know I fall in the trap of quite a bit

so you put a framework in place that not stops

but sort of limits the potential of getting caught in that way of yeah

cool yeah

totally and just having them think about that as well

themselves is kind of like developing their problem solving skills too

but beyond that I think probably

one other thing that’s changed for us a lot is note taking

so after each session they need to do their progress notes

and that is something that in the beginning

we do need to give them a lot of support in what to put in there

because that information isn’t only like legally we need to do it

but for us then if we’re not in the session

we need to be able to look at those notes and realise

what was going on like what were the client’s outcomes

like what challenges did they have

so we’ve really refined our note templates

so that everything is templated for them

and they know that if they’re working with a kid for speech accuracy

they need to be recording the accuracy

and we have trained them in that

if they’re working with a kid that is doing early language development

or learning how to use their alternative communication device

if they use that at any point in the session

I want to know what have they said

and then we do like voice recordings as well

so they might just video their session and we can watch

and then at the end of that note as well

there’s a little pop option for them to say like

yes

needs a review ASAP or I need to talk about this client in supervision

so it just helps them like keep a track of that

it helps us realise maybe if they’re always saying

I need to talk about this client in supervision

then maybe we need to dive into a bit more about why

and what could we do to run a little workshop with them all

to upskill them in particularly

like regulation is a huge one that always comes up for us

so then we will do like some support for them on how to co regulate

what can you do in that moment when these kids running around the room

tearing the place apart how can we stop and pause in that ground

and I suppose within that as well

like when I’m out in Kingaroy

any session that I do

I then do joint sessions with the therapy assistant

so they can watch me deliver the exact

intervention that I want them to deliver

and then we gradually release that responsibility

yeah cool

and absolutely love a good system and a good template

but again even from what you’ve just shared there

the idea that no doubt that had many iterations

and it was coming back to that point of

what do I actually want to know

what do I need to have to keep on coming back

just can help them design

which as with a lot of these things

if we improve the design

the outcomes naturally just naturally flow off the back of that

and I’m hearing that yeah

a very beneficial process from what you’ve just shared there

is that a fair comment absolutely

but a difficult process

because I think like when you’re a clinician yourself

and you’ve done all of this

it can be frustrating to kind of have to take a step back

and it takes time to make a new note template

and it takes time to train people and things like that

so it’s definitely hard to get yourself into that mindset

but I think now

seeing some of the outcomes from that is really beneficial yeah

cool there’s so much there that I couldn’t delve deeper on

and want to unpack even more

but I am conscious at times

you do keep these I’m a speechy

I could yap all day no

but what I love is again

we have had people on these calls and done multiple sessions

so I think there’s a few areas

we can delve deeper and get feedback from our yes

as well as what they want to hear

we get Hermione back for another session

but one thing that we also love to round out our chats with

hearing these experiments

and I can already picture some of the transformations that you’ve had

for your clientele and even your team members

I’m sure there’s loads of transformations out

I love for you just to give an example of

you know what you’ve seen

and what you’ve managed to achieve

in the short time that you’ve been in business

yes so much

it honestly all I feel like sometimes I look back and go

holy heck so much happened in like such a short period of time

like

I think just being able to go from having a home office to a clinic

and like well

to two clinics and five staff members with like

I don’t have I didn’t get any kind of funding to do anything

I didn’t get any loans or anything

so I think like seeing then yeah

the impact that that is bringing to a lot of families

and I think overall like

probably just seeing

the name and reputation that we are developing is something that I

love so much like out in Kingaroy

everyone knows us so well

they know my dog cause he’s a therapy dog

and I think seeing like

how you can provide that service to people that would otherwise

go without is like

kind of the reason why we’re doing this right

like seeing those outcomes and being able to support a family

also

supporting families where sometimes you feel like it’s out of scope

that is kind of like the biggest thing for me that makes

helps me sleep at night

I just love the fact that we can provide a service

somewhere that people would go without

and it’s like a whole little community for us

like and that’s the biggest thing for me with House of Speech

is we are not about come and drop your kid off for 45 minutes

and we fix their speech kind of thing

and I think that is a massive misconception in the work that we do

that like

you’re not going to get the outcomes you want if that’s the approach

so we are about like creating a community and having that

like family feel and I think that has been

the most rewarding thing for me to see flourish

and I think

in the times that I get so stressed and worried about everything

like coming back to that and coming back to my mission

and pausing and being like no

it is coming like it’s

the steps are in place and that’s like coming to real life

I think overall

the whole thing has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life

but also the most rewarding for all of those reasons yeah

when you were talking in the first part of sharing

the part about transformation

the first sort of phrase that came to my mind was community

transformation

and then you use the word and then you continue to elaborate

on that so thank you for elaborating on your version of that

because that’s what I’m sensing and feeling

from what you have created

and again

your approach of what you’ve shared in the different experiments

is that

it’s actually created this whole transformation in the community

around the value of the therapy

and the people that are involved

it’s more than even just the therapy is

and coming back from speech and communication

and those sorts of things

I can literally see the ripple effects of that taking place in yeah

the rural communities that we can see that you are so passionate about

yeah totally

we are starting working a lot more with other professionals

in the area too

and upskilling childcare educators is a huge area of my passion

cause they are with those children all day every day

and the unfortunate truth sometimes in those rural areas is like

that at childcare setting

they might be there from early morning till evening

and that is kind of like their home

so being able to get in and support those educators as well

is something that we’re doing at the moment

particularly in the South Burnett

so that is really rewarding

and like nice to recognise those professionals as well

because they do the hard work

like I see these kids 45 minutes a week

like we’re never going to get anywhere with just that

it’s gotta be a community approach

and I love that! that is a nice little segue into I think

another podcast episode with that

the experiments in the cross collaboration

cause we have talked about that on

this podcast with a few of our guests of the

cross modalities slash education like because I know us always we access

therapist and you’re exactly right

that ability for whoever whether it’s the teachers

whether it’s the early childhood educators

of the whole team that comes around our little ones

to be able to do that so I think I would love to have you back for

to unpack the experiments around

the cross modality collaborations is oh

there’s definitely definitely been some experiments there

and some interesting conversations that I’ve had to have

yeah there’ll be a lot of

stuff that I think people can learn from approaches that have worked

or different just ways of looking at it

which again, let me see a specific uh

aspect of this podcast listeners

let me know if that’s something you would want to hear more

we might even do a special series on cross modality deeper dives

so we’ve done a few episodes in the past year about that

but we might even go a bit deeper on that as well

so again

really appreciate your time and your share Hermione

there’s a whole lot of takeaways that I’m going to reflect back on this

conversation but what we want here in a part of this podcast

is to see amazing professionals

building sustainable

amazing practices so that you can serve more and more clients

serve the community and the teams as well

there’s just so many ripple effects that this can have

and your experiments are proof that

there’s stuff that works there’s stuff that doesn’t work

but we can learn evolve and that way we can have more impact

so once again I appreciate you sharing your story today

no thank you so much for having me on

I appreciate it I haven’t then sometimes when you just like

you think back on it and you’re like

oh wow there is a lot that’s happened there yeah

so yes

take a pat on the back for yourself and you’re doing awesome work

we love to

we’ll stay in touch and for all the

listeners out here that do want to connect to follow you

I do network or potentially reach out and network

where is the best space or places to find and connect with you

yeah cool

so our website is just houseofspeech.com.au and our emails on there

we’ve just got like an admin email

you could also just fill out like an enquiry form on there

if you know any professionals accessing services

you can just reach out via that and just on Instagram

it’s just houseofspeech_

so you can always just message us on there

awesome as always

we’ll include those links in the show notes to this episode

and yeah highly recommend following

along with Hermione and the team are doing there at House of Speech

once again thank you for your time

and that’s a wrap here from The Healthy Business Lab podcast

and really excited to be sharing more amazing stories like this one

today over and out from us thank you