Rethinking Aphasia Recovery: Bill Connors on Building a Telepractice-First Business
"It's kind of silly to think that somebody with the kind of problems that can be presented with stroke and brain injury are going to go to a clinic two times a week and get better."
That's Bill Connors, and he's been saying some version of that for over 40 years. The founder of the Aphasia Center for Innovative Treatment and the brain behind aphasiatoolbox.com, Bill didn't just build a niche practice. He built an entire ecosystem around the idea that aphasia recovery requires more intensity, more follow-through, and more technology than traditional models can deliver.
On this episode of Clinic Chats, Bill walks through how he turned decades of clinical expertise into three distinct businesses, all running on telepractice, and shares what he's learned about marketing, platforms, and growing a private practice without burning through capital.
Two Hours a Day Isn't a Luxury, It's the Baseline
Bill's clinical philosophy starts with a simple but uncomfortable observation: most therapy schedules don't match the severity of the problem. His clients practice an average of two to three hours a day, supported by therapists, practice coaches, and carefully developed materials designed for remote delivery.
That kind of intensity doesn't happen in a twice-a-week outpatient model. And it was the gap between what clients needed and what the traditional system offered that pushed Bill out of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in 2005.
"They would do well for a week or two, then they would go back home and have no resources to follow up with, or very poor."
So he built the follow-up himself. Today, about 92% of his clinical work happens at a distance. Clients fly into Pittsburgh for a two or three-day kickstart, then continue via telepractice. Five therapists, a couple of practice coaches, and a private-pay model that lets the team focus on what actually matters: cognitive underpinnings, fluency, and conversation.
He's deliberate about staying outside the insurance model for now, not out of principle, but practicality. When you chase the data points third-party payers want, he says, you lose focus on what the client actually needs. That said, he's watching Medicare closely. Once telepractice reimbursement opens up, the whole marketplace shifts.
Word of Mouth Scales When You've Got 40 Years Behind It
Bill's marketing playbook is old school in the best sense. He's presented at roughly 30 state conventions. When he walks into a room of 140 speech therapists for a six-hour session, the referrals follow naturally. That's the kind of trust you can't buy with ads.
But he's not resting on reputation alone. His operations manager, Aaron St. Meyer, has been expanding the brand's digital footprint through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Their website is designed with one clear goal: get people to call or send an email. From there, they use a CRM to respond same-day and offer a free first consultation.
"Probably five out of six of clients we talk to end up working with us, so we want to give them that opportunity at no cost to see what it's like to do telepractice and see if we're a good fit."
That 83% conversion rate is the result of decades of trust-building, not a clever funnel. For therapists who are just getting started, Bill's advice is straightforward: do great quality therapy, treat your customers well, and let others know about it. Get your reviews. Build word of mouth. It's a step at a time.
Three Businesses, One Mission
What makes Bill's story unusual isn't just the clinical work. It's the fact that he's built three interconnected businesses, each serving a different corner of the SLP community.
Aphasia Toolbox is the service arm, where clients with aphasia connect with therapists for intensive, telepractice-based treatment. Everything SLP is an online marketplace built on Shopify, where clinicians can purchase therapy materials that are modern, searchable, and telepractice-friendly. Bill's team vets the products for quality, which sets it apart from the dump-and-go approach you'll find on other platforms. They've already added a popular book series on adults with ASD and a sophisticated set of logic puzzles by Joyce Olson.
The third business is Telepractice Community, a training and coaching site. Bill has personally trained over 1,600 speech therapists to conduct telepractice sessions. His operations manager, Aaron, also helps clinicians build affordable websites, get their therapy practice software set up, and integrate telepractice into their existing workflow.
His advice on websites? Don't spend thousands. "You can do it for a couple hundred dollars if you get some help." He recommends Therapy Sites at about $40 a month, where you get full control over content, a blog, and easy updates.
Pick Your Platform Like You'd Pick Your Tools
When it comes to practical advice for new practice owners, Bill doesn't hold back. He's seen too many therapists ask Facebook groups for the cheapest or free video platform, and he thinks that's the wrong question entirely.
"If you're a carpenter, you wouldn't go to the dollar store to buy your hammer."
Your video platform is your primary tool. The right one can solve scheduling, billing, client self-scheduling, and even payment collection. He specifically recommends three SLP-centric platforms: Blink Session (which his practice uses), TheraPlatform, and TheraVNetwork. All three are designed for speech therapy workflows, and they're constantly adding features.
Beyond the platform, Bill's startup checklist is practical and lean. Get your Google My Business listing set up. Get reviews coming in. Learn social media, but be efficient about it. And be smart about how many disconnected tools you stack. When you've got one EMR, one CRM, Google G Suite, and Stripe, things get complicated fast. Look for products that consolidate those functions so you're not bleeding time and money across five different logins.
The Telepractice Tipping Point Is Already Here
Bill sees a growing entrepreneurial energy among speech pathologists, and he's encouraged by it. His parting message is simple: add telepractice now. Not because it's trendy, but because it's inevitable. And it's not just for treating clients over the internet. You can use it for business meetings, parent education, consulting, and mentoring other therapists.
If you've got a niche, telepractice lets you serve people who would never be able to drive to your office. If you're a generalist, it expands your reach without expanding your overhead. Either way, the tools are available, the training exists, and the market is moving whether you're ready or not.
Bill's been at this since 1976. He's watched the field evolve from analog to digital, from local to global. And his message hasn't changed: do great work, invest in the right tools, and don't wait for permission to build something new.
Running a telepractice-first clinic means your technology has to keep up. ClinicNote is a HIPAA-compliant EMR built specifically for private practices and university clinics, handling documentation, scheduling, and billing in one place so you can focus on client outcomes instead of juggling platforms. See how ClinicNote works.
Transcript
Kadie: You are listening to Clinic Chats, the speech therapist's private practice podcast. A podcast full of personal journeys where we not only talk about success stories, but also real life struggles of small business startups. Clinic Chats is sponsored by ClinicNote, a HIPAA compliant cloud-based EMR platform used specifically by private practice owners and university clinics. I'm your host, Kadie Jackstat, and thank you for joining me today.
Kadie: I want to welcome Bill Connors, the owner of the Aphasia Center for Innovative Treatment. Hi, Bill. Welcome to the Clinic Chats podcast.
Bill: Hey, Kate. How are you doing?
Kadie: I'm doing great. I'm excited to get to know a little bit about your background and your practice specializing in aphasia.
Bill: Sure. In today's world, our brand is aphasiatoolbox.com. We are set up to, what I've tried to do is revolutionize the treatment of adult acquired communication problems, in particular aphasia and apraxia. We've worked hard to create programs and materials that speech pathologists can exploit in order to really help people maximize their aphasia recovery.
Kadie: Right. And so these materials are not only for clients, but also resources for clinicians. Is that correct?
Bill: Yep. Primarily clinicians. What we're doing is updating all of our materials we've done over the years, because I've been at this over 40 years, but we want to update them for today's world. We started an online marketplace called Everything SLP, and there we're going to have our materials, but also others, a lot of free materials there, so that we can begin to move forward in maximizing the recovery process. We know there are a lot of really good resources for living well with aphasia and helping collaborate with aphasia. Our focus has been to help people recover.
Kadie: I'm sure over the years is how you kind of got to where you are today with figuring out exactly your market and your brand, and there's several branches to that with different websites. Can we first speak a little bit about the treatment aspect? Do you have a brick and mortar practice, or is it strictly teletherapy?
Bill: I left the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in 2005, and there we were working, I was working with people with aphasia, but also it was a general hospital practice. And we had an intensive aphasia program there, residential, where people would come. But it disappointed me, because they would do well for a week or two, then they would go back home and have no resources to follow up with, or very poor. So when I left UPMC, I wanted to not only change how we improved aphasia treatment, but also exploit technology, and in particular telepractice. So right now, we have our main offices are in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We see clients here from Western Pennsylvania. Clients will fly in here for a two or three-day kickstart. But about 92% of our work is at a distance, online.
Kadie: If a patient is interested in doing teletherapy, is it a typical model with insurance, or is it a little bit different?
Bill: Well, we work in a private pay relationship only. One of the problems with third-party payers is they're looking for the kind of data, the old-fashioned traditional data. And what we found is when you focus on creating and identifying the data points that insurance companies want, you lose your focus on that client's actual what they really need, which is working on the cognitive underpinnings on fluency and conversation. We're not in the third-party payer market right now. However, probably in a couple of years, Medicare will begin to reimburse for telepractice services. And in that case, the whole marketplace is going to change.
Kadie: Absolutely. How many therapists at this time do you have doing teletherapy for you?
Bill: We have five therapists, a couple almost full-time, a couple part-time, plus myself working on this. We also have a couple practice coaches. One of the important elements to what we call in brain indigenous aphasia recovery and treatment is that our clients practice an average of two to three hours a day. It's kind of silly to think that somebody with the kind of problems that can be presented with stroke and brain injury are going to go to a clinic two times a week and get better. You really need a lot of work, and hence we need those materials to follow up on.
Kadie: Switching gears over to obtaining all of your clients to teletherapy, what has been the business model that's worked best for you as far as marketing and how clients across the country find you?
Bill: The first is old-fashioned. I'm just out there. I've presented at probably 30 state conventions. Next month I'll be presenting at the Oklahoma State Convention, so I'll be in a room for six hours with maybe 140 speech therapists. We have such a good interaction that we will get referrals from speech therapists to whom I've presented. It's word of mouth, however, that's kind of hard for a person just starting up a business, and it's even hard for a local geographic sort of practice.
Kadie: Definitely.
Bill: Yeah, so we've expanded from that brand name, that word of mouth, and just me being around a long time. We're doing a lot of work with our Facebook page. We're moving into Twitter and Instagram sort of things with Aaron St. Meyer, who's our operations manager. Our website is designed primarily for people to give us a call, to send us an email. Then we use Less Annoying CRM, customer relations manager, and we get back to everybody the same day. We offer a first free consultation. Probably five out of six of clients we talk to end up working with us, so we want to give them that opportunity at no cost to see what it's like to do telepractice and see if we're a good fit.
Kadie: Yes. Well, it definitely seems that really just your name over the years has helped the business in its success, and that is what's able to lead you in the next direction online.
Bill: To those therapists who are out there getting started or who have experience and want to move forward, I always say, do great quality therapy. Treat your customers well, and then let others know that. Get your good reviews. Get word of mouth. It's a step at a time.
Kadie: Yes. Do you recommend for new therapists in private practice to have a specialty? Do you think that has made you more successful to kind of hone in on a certain area?
Bill: Well, certainly for aphasia, and in some respects that's not been hard because not a lot's happened in terms of new stuff in aphasia treatment. There's just not a lot of new clinical ideas and techniques out there. So me having that sort of niche is helpful, but remember, I cut my teeth on aphasia therapy with the early pioneers, Audrey Holland, Bob Marshall, Alvin Davis. So there was a very creative bunch back there, and it spurred me to just move forward. From day one, when I started my first business in 1976, I was a generalist. I would take on any case, and I'd learn and study and go to the experts.
Kadie: Speaking on the behalf of the clinicians who might find your resources, can you tell me a little bit about the business model in selling products? Is it a monthly subscription? Is it a buy one thing at a time? What does that look like?
Bill: We started out using a subscription model with Aphasia Toolbox. Over time, we learned, and I would say to everybody first, do the best you can do to get organized and get started, but you're going to learn, and it's all about change. What we did was we used the Shopify platform, and we were in the process of continually adding new products to our Everything SLP store. It's been fun. It's been hard work. It's been a lot of learning. We focused first on updating and adding Aphasia Toolbox materials, and when you put your materials up there, I mean, you can go to Teachers Pay Teachers, and you do your PDF, and you dump it in there, and you get paid. Our thought was we want something that is more with today's world, easily searchable, updated modern materials, materials that are telepractice friendly, so it required a lot of thought on our part as to what that looks like because there's really not much out there like that.
Bill: Then, we've started to add other therapists can sell their materials through us. Again, though, we are doing a little more vetting and screening and trying to take on more quality products, so we've added something for a book series on adults with ASD, autism, written by a speech therapist whose son has ASD, and that's been very popular. We've added a whole series on logic puzzles by Joyce Olson, really nice, very sophisticated with a lot of thought going into it about how you really use those. So basically, people come to our site. They look around. We've tried to make it easy to look through. If they like a product, they select that product, put it in their shopping cart, and pay. We have some bundles, and we're beginning to add other therapists.
Kadie: That sounds great, and especially that it's going to be a place specifically for SLPs. I mean, Teachers Pay Teachers is a great place, but also materials can kind of get lost in the mix with the teacher materials, that's for sure.
Bill: With your business model, I know it's you. You have a, did you say a manager?
Kadie: Aaron St. Meyer is the operations manager. We have, like I said, several therapists who work for us. Our other kind of help in today's world, we tend to ship it out, accounting, those sorts of things.
Bill: Our third company is telepracticecommunity.com, and what happened was once I started doing telepractice in 2005 and moved forward, there were so many barriers that I realized, boy, our community, our SLP community, which I care a lot about, really telepractice is coming. It's going to be slow, and it was slow, but they need some kind of training that's accessible and affordable.
Bill: My first big course, I went to the Waldo Hospital in Maine to do it. Great people up there, but it was two days of travel, two days there. Being in a room and things moved a little slowly for me, I kind of like to move fast. I just thought, gee, we need to find a way to train people online or do it quicker and more efficiently. That's where we do the telepractice training.
Bill: Part of that, what has evolved, again, these things evolve. As you start doing them, you start saying, boy, this is another need or this is an opportunity. I realized that a lot of speech pathologists wanted to do some work on their own, start their own little practice, their own business. Erin has become an expert at helping therapists start their own business at affordable costs. Now, what she'll do is if a person already has a website, she'll help them add telepractice to it relative to how it fits there seamlessly in scheduling and so on. We use a website called Therapy Sites, and I think you end up paying about 40 bucks a month, but they will either move your website over there or they'll create the website for you. Erin helps you design it and logo and things. My advice would be never spend thousands of dollars on a website today. You can do it for a couple hundred dollars if you get some help.
Bill: The website design, the look, the feel, the content, who's your customer and how do you match that stuff up is what Erin will help people do and what she's done for our websites, but really Therapy Sites does that work. Then when it's all done, the individual speech therapist has total control and can have a blog, can change content and so on.
Kadie: Right, and they're trained on that. They're feeling a little more confident in adding things to their website. I think that's very helpful to beginners who might have some sort of budget to spend on that and just feeling a little bit more confident in starting the business. Is there any advice that you would give? I know you've had a hand in quite a few areas of the field and different avenues in business. What's some advice that you would give a new private practice owner?
Bill: Well, things have changed since I started mine 40 years ago. Number one, since I'm a telepractice kind of person, add telepractice because it's not a matter of if you're going to add it, you will. It's a matter of when. You may as well get in early. You can do it inexpensively and recognize that telepractice is not just treating people over the internet. You can use that in so many ways for business meetings, consulting. You can be an expert and help other therapists somewhere if you do have that niche. You can have business meetings, parent education. It's today's world.
Bill: That's one of the things I would do first. Secondly, I would really get good at, if we're talking about attracting new clients, I would get really good at social media, be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, know how to use that judiciously. That takes a little time and attention, so you want to do it as efficiently as possible.
Kadie: Absolutely.
Bill: I'd make sure you have your Google My Business Geographic set up and that you're getting reviews in. Be smart about the products you use. One of the things that happens is people end up with one EMR, one CMR, then Google G Suite, and then Stripe to collect payments. You want to be smart about how you spend your money and get organized in the beginning.
Kadie: What would your recommendation be on that as far as absolute necessity for starting out if they're going the route of teletherapy?
Bill: In terms of telepractice, you want to be really smart about what video platform you choose because your platform is your major tool. What we see on Facebook all the time is a therapist will say, gee, I'm just seeing a couple clients, what's the cheapest or free platform I can use? I always say, if you're a carpenter, you wouldn't go to the dollar store to buy your hammer. You really want to get the right product because the right video product can solve a lot of those issues you're talking about. Some of these products, like Blink Session, you can actually do billing and collect payments through it. TheraPlatform, I believe, allows you to bill. Down the road, they're going to let you do third-party insurance billing. That's going to come.
Bill: Get the platform that's going to let, for example, one that will let your clients schedule themselves to save time. That's what people want to do now. They want to get on their phone, click a button, and schedule an appointment.
Kadie: Does Blink allow that?
Bill: Yes. I think TheraPlatform does. My first recommendation would be get the right platform. I would pick one of the three SLP-centric platforms. Blink Session is the one we use, TheraPlatform.com, and then TheraVNetwork.com, which Mikel Smith created because they're designed for speech therapists. They're constantly adding products for you.
Bill: Look at the ones that are adding products for you. If you're a small company, you want one of those products that lets you have an administrative control that your client has their own folder. It saves so much time. What's the major complaint about burnout and stuff? It's time. There's not enough time. That's what I would suggest first. Then you look at how you want to do your EMR or your CMR or whatever it else is you're going to do.
Kadie: That concludes the questions that I had for you. Unless there's anything else that you wanted to share in regards to your experience in private practice and teletherapy.
Bill: Well, I think we covered a lot of ground there. I know from some of our surveys we've done, there's a big interest in an entrepreneurial ship in speech pathologists. It seems to be growing. I think that's a great idea to grow the business end of things. I encourage people to do that.
Kadie: Well, I appreciate all of your recommendations as far as teletherapy platforms as well as getting started in the teletherapy world. Your background in general is impressive and intriguing. I'm sure our listeners will enjoy. Thank you.
Bill: If you want to just mention one more time all three places where we can find you.
Kadie: Absolutely. aphasiatoolbox.com is our service division where people with aphasia can contact us or therapists who want to learn more or refer their clients. The second website is everythingslp.com, our growing marketplace. If therapists have products they'd like to sell and distribute, we'd be glad to add them, take a look at them. Nothing simpler than Teachers Pay Teachers, the payout's better and so on. And finally, there is telepracticecommunity.com, a business site where we offer training. I've trained over 1,600 speech therapists to conduct telepractice sessions and also telepractice coaching and business coaching, affordable, keep it simple, get yourself started and have ongoing support.
Kadie: Perfect. Well, I appreciate your time. All right. Thank you for joining me and listening to Clinic Chats, the speech therapist's private practice podcast. If you have a moment, please leave a five-star review for Clinic Chats to help other SLPs find our podcast. If you'd like to share your own personal journey through private practice, please email me kadie at clinicnote.com, that's K-A-I-D-E at clinicnote.com.