From Clinic to Stage: Cari Ebert on Building a Speaking Career Around What Kids Actually Need
Most SLPs don't plan to become professional speakers. They don't think about touring the country, building a social media following, or publishing books. But Cari Ebert wasn't most SLPs. She was the kid who volunteered first for book reports, the one who never once felt nervous in front of a crowd.
And when she started sharing what she knew about childhood apraxia of speech at local trainings, the feedback was immediate: we need more of this. Longer. Deeper. So she leaned in, closed her private practice, and built a career as a full-time continuing education speaker. On this episode of Clinic Chats, Cari talks about how self-employment has shapeshifted across her career, why she believes containers and screen time are changing child development, and what it actually takes to turn clinical expertise into a national platform.
You Don't Have to Stay in the Lane You Started In
Cari graduated from grad school in 1995 convinced her calling was geriatrics. She worked in skilled nursing facilities for a couple of years. Then she had two daughters 11 months apart, got fascinated by child development, and pivoted hard into pediatrics.
She did Birth to Three services in Missouri for about eight years, working out of her car in families' homes. Eventually she opened a small two-room clinic and built it into something real, running summer language groups (she called them LEGO groups, short for Language Enrichment Group Opportunities), supervising CFYs, and pulling in grad students from local universities.
But the private practice grind wore on her. Marketing, billing, being the therapist, all at once, with no one else on staff. She was a Blue Cross Blue Shield provider but never cracked the insurance billing code beyond that.
"You either have to grow it big, or it's just such a struggle," she says. And she chose a third option: she grew herself instead.
Apraxia Opened the Door. Social Media Blew It Open.
In 2009, Cari found a note on the Cross Country Education website: "Are you interested in becoming a speaker?" She clicked, submitted her credentials and her topic (childhood apraxia of speech), and got a phone call the next day. Her first tour, starting in Chicago, was a hit.
But real momentum didn't come until 2015, when her husband quit his full-time job to run the business side. He built a website. And suddenly they existed online.
"Before 2015, we didn't even have a website. And now we do more business through the website than we could have ever dreamed was even possible."
Then came social media. Cari posts twice daily on Facebook and Instagram, with themed content every day of the week: Motor Planning Monday, Toys I Love Tuesday, Words of Wisdom Wednesday. She's added around 6,000 followers in a single year. She speaks at the Apraxia Kids National Conference, state-level conventions, school districts, and early intervention agencies across the country.
Her take is blunt: "Without social media, I'm not where I am today. Social media is, in essence, free marketing."
Containers, Screens, and Why Kids Aren't Playing Anymore
Cari now offers five different seminars, and several of them circle the same concern: young children aren't moving enough, and it's showing up in their speech and language development.
She points to two culprits. First, the overuse of containers in infancy. Car seats, bouncers, swings. When babies spend hours immobilized, they miss out on the vestibular input, proprioceptive feedback, and core strength development that gross motor movement provides. And as her PT colleagues like to say, "hips before lips." You need stability in the hips before you get stability in the jaw for speech.
Second, screen time is replacing play-based movement. After the iPad launched in 2010, Cari started noticing that her young clients lacked purposeful play skills. The connection between play deprivation and speech delays became the foundation for two of her seminars.
She's careful to note that containers aren't evil. "If you have a fussy baby and you need to shower or cook dinner, that container is not going to do any long-term damage if you use it 20 minutes a couple times a day." But when containers become the default, and screens replace floor time, development suffers.
Making Self-Employment Work as a Family
Cari's business runs out of the basement of her home, and that's by design. Her husband handles the website, Zoom logistics for webinars, product shipping, and email. She handles the creative work: writing seminars, designing therapy products (including her Silly Sounds cards, illustrated by a Hallmark Cards designer), doing research, and, of course, speaking.
They've considered renting office space. But working from home is what makes everything possible, especially with their 14-year-old son Aaron, who has autism, apraxia, and sensory processing disorder.
"The way and the only way it works is that my husband is home full time," Cari says. She's a morning person who does her best work between 5:30 and 7:30 a.m. If she had to commute, she wouldn't do it that early. Instead she walks downstairs to an office she painted her favorite color, surrounded by children's books organized by the colors of the rainbow.
And her best advice for anyone going into self-employment? Get a very good accountant. She and her husband tried to muddle through taxes on their own for a few years before finding a local CPA who helped them navigate quarterly taxes, set up as an LLC, and eventually restructure as an S Corp for better tax benefits.
"She was the one who helped us figure out how to become an LLC, and now we're an S Corp because it's got better tax benefits. I say words I don't really understand, but I'm very grateful she can help us navigate the crazy tax world."
Expertise Compounds When You Share It
What stands out about Cari's trajectory isn't just the speaking career. It's the way her clinical knowledge deepened because she started teaching. Her apraxia seminar led to a play seminar. The play seminar led to a technology and screen time seminar. That led to early intervention best practices. And now she's developing a course on working with families in poverty, a topic she says is too often overlooked when clinicians think about cultural competency.
She still sees a few kids directly and doesn't want to stop. But her reach is exponentially wider now. She's a published author, she runs an online book club through Facebook, and she's in a different city almost every week.
Not bad for someone who started in a two-room office with a LEGO-themed language group.
Turning clinical expertise into continuing education means more admin than most SLPs expect. ClinicNote is a HIPAA-compliant EMR built for private practices and university clinics, so you can keep documentation, scheduling, and billing organized while you focus on the work that matters. 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 will 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 am your host, Kadie Jackstadt, and this is Episode 5.
Kadie: Hi there to all of our listeners. Today I'm speaking with Cari Ebert. Cari, how are you today?
Cari: I'm doing great. Thank you.
Kadie: Cari's story is actually a little bit different than our previous guest. She had a private practice, but Cari, correct me if I'm wrong, the practice no longer exists?
Cari: I mean, I'm still self-employed, if you will, but I no longer have a clinic practice. It has evolved into something much different. So yes, I did early intervention in the state of Missouri, and because it is a natural environment, we didn't actually need a clinic. We would go into the family's home to provide services. But I did start a private practice where I could work with kids from age 3 to 5. And so I had that for several years, but then I became a professional speaker and started traveling around the country doing continuing education seminars for other SLPs and educators and other therapists. So I closed my private practice a few years ago.
Kadie: That is such a cool story. So you are not new to the self-employed world. You've done it in several different ways.
Cari: It is crazy, yes. And I will just say that my best advice to anybody who is starting a private practice or is looking to build a private practice is you must have a very, very good accountant because that is going to be extremely important as a self-employed business person.
Kadie: And did you get an accountant right away?
Cari: Well, I will tell you, for a few years, we just kind of tried to muddle through and do it on our own. But when you're self-employed, you should be paying quarterly taxes. And so that was something brand new to me, and as someone who is not necessarily a business guru, it didn't take too many years before I realized I needed professional help. So I would say after doing it for a few years, we found an accounting firm, a local one, which I thought was really important because Leanne, who is our CPA, I mean, she knows our situation. We can, you know, she is only a few blocks away from us. So if we need to go in and sit and talk strategy with her, and she was the one who helped us figure out how to become an LLC, and now we're an S Corp because it's got better tax benefits. So things that I say words that I don't really understand, but I'm very grateful that she can help us navigate the crazy tax world.
Kadie: Yes, all of those terms, it's like you hear them, but we don't, that's not our background. We don't know exactly what that means without the help of someone else.
Cari: Absolutely.
Kadie: So that's great advice. And how long did you see early intervention clients before then jumping into having a clinic?
Cari: Yeah, well, so I graduated from grad school in 1995, and I thought when I got out of grad school that my calling was working with the geriatric population. So I worked for a couple of years in skilled nursing facilities, and then my husband and I, we got pregnant, had our first child, and I was like, this whole child development thing is really fascinating. And then we had our surprise second child 11 months later. So our daughters are 11 months apart.
Cari: So we were kind of bombarded with child development, and I was just so mesmerized by the fact that I had these two babies who were learning all of these amazing things, and speech and language just seemed to come and develop naturally. And I was so fascinated by typical development that I decided maybe I needed to switch gears and go into pediatrics. And so I'd only been out of school, I don't know, maybe three or four years before I decided to switch gears and go into peds, and absolutely loved it.
Cari: So worked in a clinic in Des Moines, Iowa for a couple of years, and then my husband and I relocated to Kansas City. And that's when I started doing Birth to Three and just fell in love with the whole Birth to Three world. It comes with plenty of challenges. Working in the natural environment, living out of your car, working out of your car, certainly has its challenges. But I did that for, oh, I would say, six or seven years, maybe even eight years. It was probably about eight years before I decided to go ahead and get a clinic going.
Cari: And so started at a very small little two-room office, one for my office and one for the clinic area. And that expanded to where I added another two offices to it because I started doing a lot of social language groups in the summer. And I had the funnest name for it. It was LEGO. And I'm trying to think what it was. Language Enrichment Group Opportunities.
Cari: So I had the red LEGO group and the blue LEGO group because, you know, I don't know, you just have to be all cutesy. But anyways, it worked. And I had grad students from a couple of the local universities. I had a couple CFYs under me. And so we were able to do these, even though it was just me in the practice, because I had students and CFYs and things like that, I was able to offer these groups.
Cari: And the summer language groups were the most challenging thing I ever did, but also I think the most rewarding. So we always had four children with speech and language struggles, but then we always had one typically developing child. So we had five kids in every group. And it was all private pay. I never really figured out the billing insurance. I did have Blue Cross Blue Shield. I was a provider for them. But other than that, I just found it was so, unless you're going to hire someone to do your billing, it's really hard in private practice too.
Cari: And this is the main reason I got out of it, because I didn't know how to do the marketing, the billing, and also be the therapist. You either have to grow it big, or it's just such a struggle.
Kadie: So what led you into the speaking world?
Cari: So I, in 2009, started doing some local trainings. I'm an apraxia specialist, so started doing some local trainings and was getting very good feedback where SLPs were saying, oh, we need more. We need longer. So I decided maybe I need to go out and do some trainings. I was the weird kid in high school. I mean, my whole life, I've always loved speaking in front of groups. I've never had any fear.
Cari: I think for most people, their number one fear in life is public speaking. And when I was in high school, I remember they would have an English class. Okay, who wants to go first for their book report? And I would always volunteer first. I love speaking in front of people. I've never, ever gotten nervous or had any fear. So I recognize now, I've been a professional speaker for 10 years now, and it is my true calling.
Cari: So I continue to see a few kids and don't ever want to stop that direct contact. But most of the time, I am on an airplane. I am traveling. I speak in a different city almost every week. I travel pretty much every week now and do continuing education seminars all around the country.
Kadie: And how did you get your name out there? You told me about how it kind of began, but then how did it expand?
Cari: Well, so in 2009, I presented my course as an option to a company called Cross Country Education, which is one of those big continuing education companies. And I think they recently got bought out by PESI, which is another one of those big continuing education companies. I remember getting online, and I went to Cross Country Education's website, and it had a little note up in the top of the website that said, are you interested in becoming a speaker? And I clicked, why, yes, I am. Thank you very much.
Cari: So I clicked on that, and it asked for your credentials and what topic would you be interested in speaking on. So I submitted it, and the very next day, I got a phone call, and they said, you know, we get asked about apraxia a lot. We would love to send you out on a tour as a trial and see how it goes. So I did my first tour with them in 2009 in Chicago, and it was a big success. So they asked me to just speak for them ongoing.
Cari: So every time I would speak, I would obviously hand out business cards and things like that. So I had started growing, I guess, a following just from being a presenter. And then in 2015 is when things really took off for us. We finally decided, my husband and I, that we needed to make a major change.
Cari: So my husband quit his full-time job in September of 2015 and came to work for our private practice. And that's when he set up a website. And everything took off from there. If you don't have a website, you don't have a presence in the digital age. So he started the website and started to be able to attract followers via that.
Cari: And then in the past, literally, I would say maybe 15 to 18 months, I have started to have a pretty significant presence on social media, which has been a whole new ballgame for me. So I have a professional Facebook page and a professional Instagram page. And I do daily posts related to early child development, and I have a theme every day.
Cari: And so I have added, I think, probably 6,000 followers in the last year alone, just by the presence on social media, paired with presenting not only to different agencies and school districts around the country, but at national-level conferences. So I have presented for the past four years at the Apraxia Kids National Conference. I speak at several speech and language state-level organizations, their annual conferences. So I just kind of have built a following.
Cari: It's been gradual, but I will just say, in general, social media is the key. I get people asking me around the country, like, how did you get here? How did you build this? And I'm like, without social media, I'm not where I am today. Because social media is, in essence, free marketing.
Cari: I do pay, obviously, certain fees for certain things on social media, but I can do my daily posts. And I have a theme every day. So as an SLP, we love alliteration. So Monday is Motor Planning Monday, and Tuesday is Toys I Love Tuesday, and Wednesday is Words of Wisdom Wednesday, and Thursday is Thematic Thursday. So I have these themes that I do. And I do a post at 7 a.m. and a post at 7 p.m. every day.
Cari: So I've learned, I'm learning over the years, more and more about social media. And also, I'm a published author now, and I have several products that I sell on my website, everything from therapy materials to things like t-shirts and gifts for SLPs. So I just find that we are continuing to broaden kind of our horizons and offering more products, more knowledge, more skills.
Cari: And I will tell you it's a whirlwind, and my husband and I can hardly believe that before 2015, we didn't even have a website. And now we do more business through the website than we could have ever, ever dreamed was even possible.
Kadie: And how old are your kids now?
Cari: Well, my oldest daughter is 21, and she is a senior in college. She is in nursing school, and she is getting married in December, so I am the mother of the bride. I'm so excited. My second daughter, Allison, is a junior. She's 20. She's a junior in college, and she's going to be a teacher. And then we have a 14-year-old son, and Aaron has autism. He has apraxia, and he has sensory processing disorder.
Cari: So one of the unique things about me is that I can approach audiences from both sides of the table, if you will. Both as a pediatric SLP as a professional, but also as a parent of a child with special needs. And so my perspective is going to be significantly different than most presenters and most SLPs in general, I would say.
Kadie: Yes. I originally asked that because I was just curious how you juggle, you know, you still have a child in the household, and you're traveling. And now knowing that he has special needs adds another challenge on top of that. So how do you manage all of his needs and a family's needs?
Cari: Well, let me tell you. The way and the only way it works, I mean, there is literally no other way in my mind that it would work, is that my husband is home full time. We office out of our home. And so we have gone back and forth because our business has grown so much, should we rent a space, get our business out of our home? But the reason everything works is that the entire basement level of our home is now our office.
Cari: So like over the summer when our son and our two grown kids were home, they were here and they could come down and talk to us whenever they needed to. And we can go up and make lunch or whatever. But we can also, it allows me, I'm a morning person, my husband not so much, but I can get up. I do my best work between about 5:30 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. Like if I have something I need to crank out, I am really good first thing in the morning. But if I had to shower, get dressed, drive to work, I don't think I would do it at 5:30 in the morning.
Cari: So for me, being able to go down, and I have a very nice office. I mean, we just redid it, and this is my haven. I painted it a color I love, I decorated it so that it feels very comfortable to me. So my office is actually my favorite place in my house because it's my space. It's all for me. I'm surrounded by all my reference books, all my children's books, which I have organized by colors of the rainbow. So my bookshelf is just, to me, artwork to look at.
Cari: So I think the reason it works is my husband is in this with me 100%, and he runs the business side of it. He does the website, we do a lot of webinars, so he runs Zoom and knows everything about all of that, and does all the shipping of all of our products, and takes care of all the emails and all of that. And it allows me to be the creative spirit that I am in designing products and writing new webinars and doing research and all of that.
Kadie: I'm just blown away.
Cari: Oh, well, thank you. It's an interesting life we lead. It's hard to explain to people what we do, because we have such a very unique lifestyle.
Kadie: And you created it for yourselves. So do you do primarily one specific presentation that you created? Or has it since expanded, and you've created several different types of courses?
Cari: Yes. So I started with, because I'm an early interventionist, my first course, and still probably the course I'm most passionate about, is assessing and treating suspected childhood apraxia of speech. With the very little ones, we often don't know for sure if there are motor planning struggles. So we're suspecting it. And that's what my book, Dave Hammer, another apraxia specialist, and I wrote the SLP's Guide to Treating Childhood Apraxia of Speech. And it got published in 2018.
Cari: So that was my first course. And in my original course 10 years ago, I had a few slides on the power of play in the development of young children, because play is so important. And so it got me really thinking, I need to write a whole seminar just on play. So my second course is called The Power of Play in the Development of Young Children.
Cari: And I presented that along with apraxia for a few years. And then from that came my technology seminar, because after 2010, which is when the iPad was released, and soon after, smartphones became very popular. And so I was noticing that a lot of my kids, very young children, were spending a significant amount of time in front of a handheld device, in front of a screen. And they weren't playing.
Cari: And I was noticing that children were losing on play skills, and that we were seeming to have children with speech and language issues who also lacked purposeful play. So I got very interested in the research on screen time. So my third seminar was Wired Kids, How Technology Affects Early Child Development.
Cari: My fourth seminar was specific to early intervention, and it is called the ABCs of Early Intervention. And it is looking at best practice guidelines under Part C of IDEA, because working in the natural environment poses some real challenges that we don't typically have in the clinic setting.
Cari: So I have a whole seminar on that. And what happens is I tend to do that in one area of a state. And then it seems like every other early intervention agency eventually wants me to do that. So I kind of weave my way through states. So I'm in the state of Iowa, speaking to almost every education agency that they have. They divide their state up by AEA. So I've been doing that seminar to all the early intervention providers.
Cari: And because really now what we're moving to in early intervention is coaching. So not so much doing direct therapy, but rather coaching the caregiver. And it all sounds great and fine and dandy in theory, but we are therapists, and we're trained to do therapy. We're not trained to coach adults. So it poses an issue, because it's all about adult learning. So that's my fourth seminar.
Cari: And then my brand new seminar, my fifth one, is called Sensory for the SLP, because we're finding there are more and more kiddos with sensory issues. And it used to be every now and then we'd get a quirky kiddo who had some sensory things going on, and we'd refer to OT, and it was all good. And now it seems like all pediatric therapists, all early childhood educators have to have a basic understanding of sensory, because it is affecting so many more children.
Cari: And so my sensory course, I'm just looking at how sensory motor issues can affect speech, language, social skill development from the perspective of an SLP.
Kadie: Why do you think that we're seeing such an increase?
Cari: Well, and my soapbox that I get on when I do my play seminar and my sensory seminar, is there are two primary things that are happening in early childhood. And one is increased use of containers in infancy. So our babies are being containerized. Parenting has become a hands-off experience, as babies spend hour after hour in car seats and other types of containers. So they're not being held as much.
Cari: And so when you think about, for example, you should be holding babies and bouncing them and swaying them in different positions. And so the vestibular sense develops every time the fluid in the inner ear shifts. When you readjust your baby, put them over your shoulder, rock them in your arms, bounce them on your knee and play horsey, those are all critical things for building that baby's vestibular sense, proprioceptive sense, body awareness, all of that. Just the tactile input that we give our babies when we hold them.
Cari: And because of containers, we are seeing babies being immobilized. And the one thing we know is that if you immobilize an infant, it's going to be very hard for them to develop core strength, gross motor skills. And from the SLP's perspective, anytime you delay gross motor, you better watch out because babies walk before they talk. And as our physical therapy colleagues say, hips before lips. You have to have stability in the hips before you get stability in the jaw for speech.
Cari: So if we're delaying gross motor, what we're now seeing is delay in speech as well. So I'm concerned about the increased use of containers.
Cari: But the second piece of this is the lack of or the significant decrease in play-based movement. And that stems from the increase in screen time. So everything is connected.
Cari: I mean, when we don't, one of the books that we're reading in my professional, so I have a professional online book club that I just run through Facebook. It's just something that I feel like we all have all these great resource books, but we don't get a chance to read them because we're too busy. So I started a book club where I just assign a certain number of pages every week. And it just allows people to be able to read a great reference book and maybe actually finish it.
Cari: So the one we're reading right now, and we're just finishing it up, is called A Moving Child is a Learning Child, How the Body Teaches the Brain to Think. And it is just such an amazing book because from the SLP's perspective, some of these things I've never thought of. I'm sure PTs and OTs think about this stuff more, but for me, it has been extremely helpful to really recognize the importance of play-based movement in a young child's development.
Kadie: Wow, first of all, I want to join this book club. Second of all.
Cari: Well, I hope you do.
Kadie: Yes, I have a 20-month-old right now and another on the way.
Cari: Oh, congratulations. That's so exciting.
Kadie: Thank you. Yes, and I was very adamant with the firstborn. No, we're not using a bouncer. We're not using a walker. None of that. Well, I was already thinking in my mind, maybe I made that more challenging on myself. Maybe we should get one. But you just reassured me. Nope.
Cari: Yeah, and you know what? I just, since you have, I'm sure you have a lot of listeners. I just want to say this, that containers serve a purpose and containers should be used primarily for safety only. So what I always say is the car seat was a great invention. Don't ever think I'm suggesting it wasn't. But if it was actually a car seat, it would remain in the car. It's when we take it out of the car and put the baby in it for extended periods of time.
Cari: If you want to have a little swing in your house, a little container, a little bouncer that vibrates or something, there's nothing wrong with that. If you have a fussy baby and you need to shower or cook dinner and you can't hold your baby, that container is not going to do any long-term damage if you use it 20 minutes a couple times a day or use it sparingly occasionally.
Cari: So there's nothing to be said about, oh, we don't want any containers. But fewer containers is better. It really should be for safety. You need to run to the basement and throw your laundry in and you don't want to leave your baby upstairs unsupervised. So you put him in a container. Does that make sense? You use it for safety.
Cari: And I always say, just like you give your child, your older child, a piece of candy every now and then, it's not going to rot her teeth out. So putting a baby in a container occasionally isn't going to cause long-term challenges with development.
Cari: But what we're trying to get families to understand is that a baby's playground is the floor. That the baby, even if you don't put your baby on his tummy, if you put him on his back and he's on a hard surface, like the floor, the crib, something that's firm, your baby will be able to roll, not just lay on one part of his head. So we don't have to worry about flat head syndrome then, plagiocephaly.
Cari: So your baby will eventually get to his or her tummy if he's just put on a firm surface. But the one thing I know with great certainty is that if you put a baby in a car seat or a bouncer or a container excessively, he's never going to get to his tummy. When we inhibit mobility, we inhibit development.
Cari: So as long as those containers are used sparingly, just like we give kids cookies and candy sparingly, it's not going to likely do any long-term harm. So it's more about education. And that's the main thing we try to do in early intervention.
Kadie: It sounds, well, it's obvious how knowledgeable you are in several topics. Are you continuing your own continuing education? Has that just been something that you don't want to ever stop and your interests continue to expand?
Cari: Yes. Oh, I'm so passionate about our field and it gets, I know some of your listeners are going to think, oh my gosh, that woman talks so fast. That's one of my biggest issues. I'm so passionate and I get so excited that I just, I don't need much sleep and I can't stop creating products and thinking about seminars.
Cari: My next seminar, I've started collecting the research for it. It will be working with families in the culture of poverty because it is a huge issue. I've never lived in poverty. And yet a lot of the families that we serve in our job are living in the culture of poverty. And I just think it's important that we understand that culture. We always think about culture as being your ethnicity or what language you speak, but culture is bigger than that. I always say deafness is a culture and autism is a culture and poverty is a culture. And so that is one area that I am gathering research on currently and will hopefully be writing that soon.
Cari: I do have to get my own continued education. I still have to have my state hours and my ASHA hours. And so I am one of those weird people who loves to go to seminars. I just love it so much because I thirst for more and more knowledge. I always say I wish I had this drive when I was actually in college. It might've made college a little easier.
Cari: So I do love going to courses. And I think it was last year, maybe, I got my first ACE award from ASHA, which means you spent a lot of time and money getting continuing education hours more than you certainly needed. But yeah, so I love to get it. My big issue is I travel so much that oftentimes I can't attend the ones I really want because I'm already scheduled to speak myself. So that's my biggest dilemma.
Kadie: Well, can you tell our listeners exactly where to find you on Instagram, Facebook, website? Give us some information. I'm sure everyone will be just as intrigued as I am.
Cari: Well, I appreciate that. So everything is really just my first and last name. So it's Cari, C-A-R-I, Ebert, E-B-E-R-T, seminars.com. So cariebertseminars.com is our website. On my professional Facebook page, you can follow or like Cari Ebert Seminars. And on Instagram, it's the same thing, Cari Ebert Seminars. So I try to keep it consistent so it's easy to find me.
Cari: The professional online book club is through my professional Facebook page. So you can ask, it's just Cari's Book Club or Cari's Professional Book Club. I think we have about 400 members, close to 400 on that. And we just started that a few weeks ago. So we're going to be doing a feeding book for our second read after we get done with the current one that we are doing.
Cari: So you can follow me on one of the social media platforms or both of them. I tend to post the same thing on both, but I do post more frequently on Facebook. I just feel like Instagram's just more about pictures. And so I do post a few more things on Facebook probably than Instagram. And I do my daily posts. So you will hear from me every single day.
Cari: I have lots of webinars. So if you want to be added to our email list, just to know when we have an upcoming webinar, you can certainly send me a message through the website and we'd be happy to add you to our email list.
Cari: And then I just have to give a plug for my new product, my Silly Sounds cards, which we have set A, set B, and set C. And these, I designed these for those minimally verbal kiddos who are struggling to find their voice. And they are sound effects instead of the actual label. So instead of a car, there's a picture of a car, but it says beep beep. And instead of cow, it says moo. So we have three sets. We have 72 different sound effects in those three sets.
Cari: And my illustrator is a Hallmark Cards designer. So Hallmark Cards is based here in Kansas City. And so I was very excited to get an illustrator who works for Hallmark Cards to do the illustrations. So they are perfectly adorable. So I hope you guys will check those out as well.
Kadie: Perfect, thank you so, so much. I truly appreciate that you took time out of your very busy life to join me on the podcast. That is all we have time for for today. So I did want to thank our listeners for joining us today. Clinic Chats, the speech therapist private practice podcast, can be found on iTunes and Spotify. If you have a moment, please leave a five-star review for Clinic Chats and help other SLPs find us. 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.