700 Patients in Three Days: How Five Oaks Speech Therapy Survived the Pandemic and Kept Growing

Renee Robles had a two-month-old, a 13-month-old, and exactly three days to transition 700 patients to telehealth. It was May 2020, and she and her business partner Chris Ramos were staring down a full lockdown with no clear timeline for when it would end.

They didn't stutter-step. They picked a platform, tested it in an hour, and pulled the trigger. By Friday, the brick-and-mortar doors were closed. By Monday, therapy sessions were live online. That speed is what kept Five Oaks Speech Therapy Services running, and it's the same intensity that's driven them from three locations to five in the span of a year and a half.

Renee and Chris are returning guests on Clinic Chats, and this conversation picks up where their 2019 episode left off. The growth story is impressive. But the real value here is in the unfiltered honesty about what it actually takes to run a multi-location private practice through the hardest year most clinic owners have ever faced.

The Telehealth Transition Nobody Planned For

When COVID hit, Five Oaks had just opened their fourth location in Chula Vista, near the Mexican border in San Diego County. Their typical clinic launch process was dialed in. The pandemic threw that playbook out.

Chris describes the transition like a military operation. She tested a HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform with two employees in under an hour. If it was user-friendly enough for staff, it would work for families. Renee handled the back end, signing up, paying, and getting credentials distributed. They turned their front desk staff into an assembly line.

The families who resisted were called personally. "If you don't participate with this, there's not going to be anything to come back to," Renee told them. "We have to stay running." That combination of urgency and care kept 700 patients in active treatment through the worst of it.

By mid-July 2020, they reopened brick-and-mortar locations in stages. When the holiday spike hit, they made the proactive call to go back to full telehealth for three weeks. No hesitation. Protect the staff, protect the patients, keep moving.

Sustainable vs. Profitable: The Question Every Practice Owner Needs to Answer

Renee doesn't sugarcoat the business side. When someone tells her they want to start a private practice, her first question is blunt: do you want to be sustainable or profitable? Because those are two different approaches.

Sustainable means making your own schedule, seeing a manageable caseload, keeping things small. That's a perfectly fine choice. But profitable means growing, and growing means employees, and employees mean unemployment insurance, medical insurance, brokers, CPAs, and a hundred other balls in the air.

Five Oaks manages approximately 4,000 patients a month across their locations. They're 90 to 95 percent insurance-based, which means billing reconciliation is a daily full-time job. When you bill $100 and get back $70 instead of $90, someone has to chase that $20. Multiply that across thousands of sessions and you're looking at real money walking out the door.

Their CFO (who happens to be Renee's husband) reviews profit-and-loss statements monthly. They know their numbers. "One of our famous things is, is it a money maker or a money taker?" Renee says. That clarity is what separates clinics that scale from clinics that stall.

The Employee Reality Nobody Talks About

This is where the conversation gets especially real. Renee and Chris don't hold back about the challenges of managing a growing team of SLPs and SLPAs.

One therapist texted at 7:15 on a Monday morning to say she couldn't come in because she didn't get enough sleep. Another gave a two-week notice mid-semester while supervising grad students, leaving an entire caseload and student placements in limbo. During the pandemic, some employees filed for unemployment benefits while still employed with active caseloads.

"Private practice is amazing and there's so many benefits," Chris says. "But you never stop working. This isn't a nine to five where you clock in, you clock out. That doesn't exist because this is essentially your other baby."

Telehealth created a new wrinkle, too. Once staff saw the option to work from home, some started using telehealth days to avoid coming in, or worse, to effectively cancel appointments without it looking like a cancellation. Five Oaks now requires in-clinic telehealth sessions to maintain accountability.

The retention news isn't all bad, though. They've kept many employees since near-inception. They've created lead positions for SLPAs who can't get into grad school but want to grow within the company. Those SLPAs take on administrative responsibilities like tracking report timelines and authorization deadlines, keeping operations running smoothly while maintaining small caseloads.

From 4 Rooms to 20: Scaling a Single Location

Five Oaks' original location tells the growth story in physical space. They started with four treatment rooms. They now have 20 operational rooms at that single clinic, with as many as 30 people on-site at any given time. Staff calls it "the monster" because of the pace and volume.

That clinic sees pediatric and geriatric patients. The variety keeps things interesting, but it also demands strong scheduling systems and tight documentation workflows. When you're running 20 rooms simultaneously, there's no room for confusion about who's where, what's been billed, and what authorizations are expiring.

They keep productivity at an 80-20 model: 80 percent patient contact, 20 percent for notes, report writing, prep, and CEUs. That's deliberate. Hospitals are pushing 90 to 95 percent productivity, but Renee and Chris know what's appropriate because they're SLPs themselves. They protect that time for their staff, and it shows in retention.

What's Next for Five Oaks

With the fifth location opening in Redlands, California (Inland Empire, right off the 10 Freeway between L.A. and Palm Springs), the plan doesn't stop at speech. Renee and Chris want to add OT services and eventually ABA, building toward a true multidisciplinary practice. They're already renting office space with expansion room built in.

They're also investing in their people. Clinicians with leadership potential are being trained for higher-level roles. The goal is to grow the company and the careers inside it at the same time.

And they're not doing it alone. The day after this recording, Renee and Chris were meeting three other local clinic owners for lunch to talk growth, swap strategies, and support each other. "There's enough for all of us," Renee says. "There's no need to compete."

Running a multi-location practice means tracking patients, billing, schedules, and staff across every site. ClinicNote is an EMR built for private practices and university clinics, with documentation, scheduling, and billing tools designed to keep up with your growth. See how ClinicNote works.

Transcript

Kadie: You are listening to Clinic Chats. Clinic Chats is a multidisciplinary therapy podcast that was created for students, professionals, clinic directors, and supervisors. Clinic Chats is bridging the gap between graduate programs and professionals, sharing personal journeys of the smallest of private practice startups, large and expanding practices, as well as university clinic triumphs and tribulations. We hope you'll find our podcast informative and helpful in your career endeavors. Clinic Chats is sponsored by ClinicNote, an electronic medical record company for private practice and university clinics. ClinicNote was designed to make scheduling, documentation, report writing, and billing effective, efficient, and HIPAA compliant.

Kadie: All right, so today on the podcast, I have returning guests from Five Oaks Speech Therapy, Renee Robles and Chris Ramos. Thank you both for coming back on the podcast. It has been since November 2019, hard to believe. How are you doing?

Renee: We're doing well. We're hanging in there. It was pre-pandemic, so we had no idea what we were in for. But we're doing well. Thank you.

Kadie: So, I mean, I've spoke to quite a few practices on how they navigated the pandemic, but I feel like it was practices of maybe only one location. And at the last time we recorded, you had three or four locations. So where are you guys at now?

Renee: So we have four locations, and we are opening up our fifth location next month.

Kadie: Okay. So tell me, where are your fourth and fifth locations now?

Renee: Our fourth location is in Chula Vista, which is near down in San Diego County, way down. And then our fifth location will be in Redlands, California, which is Inland Empire, kind of in between L.A. and Palm Springs, basically. Right on the 10 Freeway.

Kadie: Now, are all five of your business locations, are they all in California?

Renee: Yes.

Kadie: And what is the driving span, like if you two needed to go to all five in a day?

Chris: Well, Chula Vista, which is down south, it's basically about 10 miles from the Mexican border. And then all the way up to Redlands, I guess, would probably be the farthest. So it'd probably take about two and a half hours distance between the two.

Kadie: That's not too bad. I feel like you're all still right there.

Chris: Yes. Depending on how the freeway, if there's an accident, we're screwed. We're in California traffic.

Kadie: You've obviously grown by a location or two. I think the last time we spoke, you were just about to expand that San Diego Chula Vista area. So it's funny. Now you're just about to expand to the fifth. What has happened between there in the last year and a few months?

Renee: Well, the pandemic really kind of threw us for a loop, but Christina and I, and I want to say a lot of Christina, mostly, we had a transition this time about a year ago. We transitioned about 700 patients to telehealth in three days.

Kadie: Wow. So you're about a year on the mark. Isn't that great?

Chris: We are exactly a year to the mark when we started transitioning. Like today was ground zero. It was a year ago today. 700 patients transitioned to online therapy.

Kadie: And at that time, you might have thought, okay, this might be a month or two.

Renee: I mean, we were very naive at the time, right? We were thinking it was two weeks. And mind you, like I had just given birth. So I had a two-month-old and I had a 13-month-old at the time.

Kadie: I remember. You were pregnant whenever we last spoke.

Renee: Yeah. So I've had two babies since that time.

Kadie: Oh my gosh. Wait. Okay. Let me wrap my head around this.

Renee: Yeah, as I tried to wrap my head around it too. I was like, wait, you're doing what again? So I had two babies back-to-back and then the pandemic hit and we did this transition, right? A whole team effort. We had just opened Chula Vista, which definitely was not what we were expecting. Typically when we open a clinic, it's very, I mean, we have it down a little bit to a science and the pandemic definitely changed that. But we were able to grow it slowly. And what happens is that we maneuver between opening the clinic, closing the clinic, full telehealth, hybrid, trying to navigate all the CDC requirements, all the PPE. And then as coronavirus, we had clinicians that ended up having it. What do we do about that and coverage? It's just been, oh my gosh.

Chris: And some of the things besides that, we never closed. We never closed. We stayed open and we transitioned to tele. But we've had to deal with employees, and that's probably one of our biggest hurdles.

Kadie: Yes, employees. Tell me about that.

Chris: Because we had employees start filing for unemployment benefits. So I was having to go through all of the EDD for unemployment. I'm like, but you're not unemployed. In fact, you still have your caseload.

Kadie: Oh my.

Renee: Oh yes. You know, I was just speaking to somebody who, you know, I had mentioned we're getting ready to open up the fifth clinic and she goes, oh my gosh, you're living the dream. I'm like, yeah, a lot of times it's a dream, but employees can be a nightmare. Insurance companies can be a nightmare. Where you rent your brick and mortar places, they can be a nightmare. I mean, there's a whole slew of things that SLPs don't realize when you open a private practice.

Kadie: So I've been waiting because I want the real on here. We have so many success stories and you guys are obviously successful, but that's what I want to hear and I want our listeners to hear. I want the real life and this year has been more real than ever, right?

Renee: Right. The real is, you know, I tell people this, who say they want to start a private practice. I'm like, you go for it because Chris and I are like, yes, we support anybody that wants to do it. But here's the reality. Do you want to do it to be sustainable or profitable? Because you're going to approach it two different ways. If you're looking at a private practice to make your own schedule and have the flexibility of doing this and that, okay, well then you're going to sustain. You're not going to profit necessarily from that. The profit comes in when you start growing. And then when you grow, as you grow, then you have to take on employees, which means either other SLPs or assistants or front desk staff.

Renee: And there's a lot that goes along with that. Unemployment insurance, insurance, medical insurance, brokers, CPAs, because now you're talking about having to manage accounts and manage money coming in and money going out. Just a lot of things that start kind of coming up that you kind of just throw another ball in the air and you just kind of hope that you don't drop one.

Chris: Well, you have to deal with, you know, when I talk about dealing with SLPs and quite honestly, some of us, not all of us, boy oh boy, are we princesses. I mean, I had this week, I had a Monday morning, 7:15, and one of my SLPs texted me and said, I can't get to work today because I didn't get enough sleep last night. I'll be in in the afternoon.

Kadie: No way.

Chris: Yeah. And it's like, okay, what? Well, we have another SLP at one of our clinics who gave a two-week notice last Friday. You have an entire caseload and you supervise grad students. You're giving us a two-week notice? In the middle of the grad student semester.

Renee: Right. And you know, it's hard enough right now for these students to even get a placement for their hours to graduate.

Kadie: Yeah. And those are the kind of things that there's already day-to-day stuff that needs to be taken care of. So then when these things happen, it's like command center. This is now priority.

Chris: All right. We're in, like you said, we're driving to all of the clinics because now I have to be at this clinic to see what's going on. How can I rearrange schedules? Who can we start making calls? Who's going to come over to this site? How can I move people around so that everything is covered? And I'm on crunch time to do it.

Renee: Right. So Renee and I split responsibilities. We try to tackle everything we think is going to come up from this situation. So yes, private practice is amazing and there's so many benefits. But what I want to say is, listen, you never stop working. This isn't a nine to five where you clock in, you clock out. That doesn't exist because this is essentially your other baby.

Kadie: And I'm sure that weighs on you. With children at your own house to take care of, it's like always a weight on your shoulders.

Chris: We are managing right now approximately, when I saw this number, I was a little shocked, approximately 4,000 patients a month.

Kadie: No way. 4,000 a month?

Chris: Yes. So, you know, you talk about the reason why I had reached out when you said to that person who said she had to return $600. Those things happen and insurance can be, you know, I know people sometimes poo-poo it and they want to do private pay and we have some private pay, but we are generally, I would say 90% to 95% insurance. Now, we do pretty good. We have an amazing office administrator who does our billing and now he has to bill basically on the daily. But it's the reconciliation that becomes an issue because there's all kinds of things associated when you have insurance. You have co-pays. You have, you know, a co-pay to get down. The families have to get their co-pay to meet their deductible. There's HMO plans, PPO plans, DHO plans. Kaiser in itself has about seven different Kaiser plans that you can take. So, not all of them are billed the same and not all of them reimbursed the same.

Kadie: So, you have someone who takes care of this, right? Daily, like you said. That is a full-time job.

Chris: Well, it's like two people's jobs now. And it's also the reconciliation part of it. Let's say you bill for say $100 and there's a co-payment of $10. So, you expect to get back $90, right? Well, when we get the payment and it's $70, not $90, he's got to reconcile that. So, he has to call and say, wait, you shorted us $20. And it doesn't seem like much because it's like, well, it's $20, but when you extrapolate it, that's a lot of accounting and that's money that could be lost.

Renee: Employees, you know, it's like, what I don't understand is I see when I see some of the questions in regards to private practice and it says, hey, I've hired my first SLP, how much should I pay them? To me, I don't understand that question because how do you not know what you're going to pay them? Because you have to know as a business owner what that person, what does your income look like as opposed to what you're going to pay a person going out. So, if you're paying out more than what you're getting compensated for, what are you doing? You're going to lose money.

Renee: So, I mean, these are business tactics that you have to know and understand. It's not something to say, I'm not sure because, of course, any SLP is going to say, hey, we're worth $90 an hour, $80 an hour, but it's like, wait, if you're only getting $70 reimbursed and you want to pay your person $90 an hour. I mean, let's take a look at this. There's a lot to running a business and you have to know. One of our famous things is, is it a money maker or a money taker? What are we doing? Because if you want to be profitable, there's a lot to it. There's reconciliation. It's knowing your profits and loss on a monthly basis.

Kadie: And do you two look at that regularly together?

Chris: Oh, yes. We have a CFO who happens to be my husband who really kind of says, nope, stop. What are you doing? But we take a look at it every month. And the same, you know, we have great employees. I mean, we've had employees that we've had almost since inception. And so we also are under the whole like, we want to take care of them, right? We want them to have a good livelihood, but in order for them to have a good livelihood, we have to be able to run our finances to where we're profitable and we can actually be competitive and we can do that.

Chris: I think what a lot of people don't understand is when you work for bigger entities like hospitals or even school districts, and SLPs are making some kind of salary, that's being almost cushioned by these other programs and the budgets that other programs bring in. When you're private practice and you're speech only, your reimbursement for speech is what it is. In California, our Medi-Cal rates or Medicare rates and rates by insurances are what they are. And so you're going to make a salary that's going to be comparable to what that reimbursement is, and it's going to be different if you work at a hospital.

Renee: There's also different expectations, right? Hospitals are now I'm hearing a 90 to 95 percent productivity. The productivity now for a hospital is very high where we've kept it to what we know is appropriate, right, because we're SLPs. So we're still at an 80-20 model where it's like you have designated time to do notes, to write solid reports, to prep, to do CEUs, to be doing all the things that I think SLPs love to do. And so it's a give and take with that, and I think newer graduates don't get to see that as much.

Kadie: And so you said some of your retention is you have SLPs since the beginning. Would you say that there is somewhat of a turnover for the others, though? I just imagine with that many employees that it's always someone coming and going.

Chris: Well, we've been fortunate in that we do have turnover. We have assistants, and so they get into graduate school, so we're very happy about that. They go on to pursue their master's and become SLPs, so you're going to have that normal turnover. But for the most part, we've retained a lot of our employees now. They've been with us two to three years. We're only a five-year company brick-and-mortar-wise. So I would say that we retain employees at a high rate. But we do have that small percentage that kind of come and go, just wasn't a good fit.

Chris: And I think people think the grass is greener on the other side, and it quite honestly never is. And so we have some that go, and then they realize that the grass isn't green, and then they try to make their way back. But with us, it's hard because we have to fill caseloads. We have to have people in the positions to be able to treat patients. We're at capacity almost everywhere.

Renee: Yeah, and we have assistants. But what we find with some of our assistants is they have these outstanding skills, and they just, for whatever reason, aren't able to get into grad school, but they want to stay devoted to the company, and we love them. So we have growth in our company for our SLPAs. We have lead positions. What they take on is more of like an administrative role, but they still have a caseload, a small caseload. But they help us with the reports and as far as the details of timelines, when these reports need to be sent in so that we can get our authorizations again. They don't write reports, because we know that's out of scope. But as far as keeping track of timelines, that's what they do.

Renee: And we need that because the office that Chris and I are at now, we started with four rooms when we started. We are at 20 operational rooms at this one clinic.

Kadie: Wow.

Renee: At any point, there are 30 people here.

Chris: That's so crazy. It is crazy. This one is a bigger one, and everyone calls it the monster because it is so fast-paced and it's high volume. It is so busy here. And now the only way that we know how to thrive here is when it's this busy. When I go to the smaller locations, I'm like, oh, this is so quiet. And we have pediatric geriatrics, so we have every kind of patient you could think of here as well.

Kadie: Oh, my goodness. I cannot imagine. And I was wondering what worked for you guys when you did switch over to teletherapy. What kind of platform did you all use?

Chris: Well, we can tell you that speed worked because I think had we even stutter-stepped to pick a platform, we would have been behind on the train. So you just had to go. Only because we only had those three days to transition while some patients still felt comfortable coming in before the full lockdown. And so we picked a platform that we knew was HIPAA compliant and we knew that insurances were kind of okay with. I want to say I tried it out with two of our employees in a matter of an hour. I was like, hey, download it. Let's try it. Let's see how it works. It was user-friendly.

Renee: Yeah, that's the simplicity, too, for our patients because they have to be able to have the app. And it has to be easy because if it's complicated, they're not going to do it. So it was a matter of speed and ease and comfort level, and then we hit the ground running. It checked all the boxes.

Chris: It really did. I called Renee. Like, Renee, it works. She's like, all right, I'm pulling the trigger. I'm going to do the back end on it. Let me pay for it. Let me sign up. So we signed up, and then we delegated to everybody, this is what we're going to do. We took all our front desk. We formed like an assembly line, and we got everybody we could possibly get on board. And then when we closed that Friday, that Friday we closed the brick and mortar, right? So the offices were closed.

Chris: Renee, my kitchen, my dining room table became like a ground zero. So Renee would come over. We had like two front desk employees come over, and everybody that we didn't capture, Renee and I made personal calls.

Renee: Yes, because we had families that said, we're going to just wait until we come back. And we were like, well, I love that positive feeling, but if you don't participate with this, there's not going to be anything to come back to. We have to stay running. And not only that, but we need some consistency with our families, because we didn't realize it was going to be this long. But we do need to see our families consistently, even if it's a check-in on a weekly basis, just to say the face and go, hey, how's it going?

Renee: And so we have families that said, you know what? You're right. Absolutely. Continuum of care, because we don't know how long this is going to take. And you never know. Sometimes we think that our patients aren't going to do well on telehealth, and they ended up just flourishing. It was like this novel thing that they thought was so amazing. So you don't know if you don't try.

Renee: So Renee and I made personal calls to families, like, hey, I know you don't want to try, but let's try. And then this went, right, that we're going to remain closed, remain closed. And so then Renee and I had to get back together and go, can we open safely? Can we open in stages? And then we did start opening the brick and mortars in stages, low capacity, until we were basically open to whoever felt comfortable coming in. By mid-July.

Kadie: And has it kind of stayed that way throughout?

Renee: Yes. I don't know if we're going to shut back down. We did, to be proactive, when there was a spike right when the holidays hit, we just felt that due to the spike and just for the health and safety of all our staff and our patients, we were just like, let's just do telehealth for three weeks. Let's limit the exposure. We know that there's a spike going on and let's just try to get through it. And so we did go back to full telehealth during the holidays because of the spike, but then we returned mid-January.

Kadie: Is that such a relief for you guys now? Are you feeling like you're getting back to normalcy?

Chris: I don't know what normal is anymore, to be honest. Because I don't know that there will be back to normal until maybe, I don't know, a year later when we're not going to notice it and we're going to be like, oh. But I think telehealth is here to stay. And so I think this is a new normal for healthcare.

Kadie: So do you have a lot of families, most who want to come back in and then some who are still uncomfortable and would prefer to stay with telehealth?

Chris: It's a pretty 50-50 split, to be honest with you.

Kadie: Interesting. And do you have the SLPs coming to the office then for their teletherapy or is it kind of up to them how the schedule looks?

Chris: Yeah. So this is where we go into the employee thing, right? We like our therapists to be in-house to do telehealth, but with telehealth being available, what we found is there's a little bit of like, oh, I could just be at home. And so that now has been a thing where we use telehealth for basically sole purposes of if there's been some exposure. If there is something to do with COVID-19. But we now get like, hey, I'm going to have this elective surgery done. So I'm going to go on telehealth for two weeks. And it's like, no, no, no. That's not how that works, because again, they have patients who do come in person.

Chris: And just recently too, I've had a patient who decided to use telehealth to cancel their appointments, to make it appear like they have a morning off. And this is why we go, you need to do telehealth in clinic, because I think there's just more of a sense of responsibility and some accountability when you're in clinic. And that's just how your business ran. You wouldn't have the teletherapy option if it wasn't for COVID. So your idea is we're doing this as much in person as we can.

Renee: Yeah. Chris and I take deep breaths on the daily.

Kadie: Oh gosh. I can't imagine how hard that would be to navigate as a business owner's perspective.

Renee: And I think when I talk about sustainability and do you want to be sustainable or profitable, as a, if you want to sustain, what I think a lot of SLPs think of is they want to make their own schedules, which I totally understand. I want to be able to set my own schedule. I want to be able to do this. And that's completely amazing that you can do that. But when you are only doing say a private pay all the time and you have your patients come in, what happens if it's only you? What happens when you need a break? What happens when you have a sick day and what happens when you need a week vacation? Then what do you do about that?

Renee: And that's gotta be a good relationship you have with your patients' families because quite frankly, we love all our families, but honestly we've got some humdingers in there that are just unreasonable. They think that we live and breathe for them, which we kind of do, but it's like, hey, we're human too. We need breaks as well.

Kadie: Absolutely. And Renee, last we spoke, I think you still had a small caseload. Do you still see patients or not?

Renee: I do not. I have given that up. Yes. I let my last of my adults go.

Kadie: Well, it seems like things have been stressful in 2020, but I hope that this next year things just kind of iron themselves out. But like you said, it might be a whole other year before we're quote unquote normal.

Chris: Yes. And like I said, I think telehealth is not going anywhere. So I do think that this is our new normal. And I'll be interested to see what more, obviously our perspective like ASHA and California have to say, because I think the more it stays, the more that we're going to have restrictions on it. It's going to be regulated a little bit.

Renee: Yeah, it's going to be regulated differently. And that's something else that we're going to have to learn and tackle and figure out. It's been such a learning curve for sure. But the nice thing is tomorrow we are planning on meeting three other clinics that we are local to where we're at in the Inland Empire. And we meet with them. And tomorrow we're going to go to lunch together because we're opening up a little bit more and we've all been vaccinated. So we are going to meet with them and talk about our growth. And this is what we do anyways, support each other because it's important. There's enough for all of us. There's no need to compete and we need to help each other out.

Kadie: That'll be so nice to get to brainstorm and vent if needed with the other local businesses nearby.

Chris: Yes. It's like an odd feeling to go out to lunch. You're like, am I doing something wrong? It's like, I've been vaccinated. We're like, it feels so weird now to go out and see people.

Renee: I'm not going to lie. I'm like, oh, there's too many people outside.

Chris: We need a branding system. Just something to stick on ourselves. Vaccinated. Not guilty. Like don't judge me for going out. I promise I'm safe.

Kadie: Well thank you guys for giving me an update. Is there any other future plans to expand past the fifth? Are you going to take it and settle in for a bit or keep on pushing?

Renee: Well, you know, we have plans because that's what we do. But I think what we would like to do is, obviously we want to take over California and have OT. We want OT services and do a multidisciplinary approach, ABA as well.

Kadie: You're going to need a lot more office space, huh?

Chris: Yes. And you know what we do, we rent office space because we think ahead with empty space next door. So we have room for growth.

Kadie: So smart.

Renee: I know it's a little nerve wracking. But yes, we want to maybe add some other disciplines. We want to see some of our clinicians grow into more roles and to higher level roles. We're doing some training now and some clinicians that we see have good potential. We want to just keep growing and we'll see how far we get.

Kadie: Well, good luck. Maybe in another year and a half, we will see where you're at then. Thank you for coming back on to Clinic Chats.

Renee: Well, thank you for having us.

Kadie: 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 at kadie@clinicnote.com.