From Speech Therapist to Coach: Building a Coaching Business While Raising Two Toddlers with Tala Hershey [Ep45]

Welcome to the thriving therapyneur podcast. The show for ambitious therapists who are ready to unapologetically make more money, scale their impact and build their dream coaching business. I'm Carly Hill, therapist turned coach turned CEO of a seven figure online business. I created the Thriving Therapeutic podcast because I'm obsessed with helping big hearted therapists outgrow the office and build successful and sustainable online businesses. So if you are wondering how you can continue to make an impact without sacrificing the life you love. Welcome Therapreneur. This is exactly the place for you. Think of it like the business school we never had. I am so excited to dive in with you. Let's get started.

Hello Therapreneurs. Welcome back to the thriving therapreneur podcast. I have a special episode because I am with a client of mine, Tala. We have been working together for, or we just calculated, just shy of a year, like nine months. Tala is a speech therapist who has started her coaching business. She has a big mission to help tiny talkers toddlers talk easier, faster with a proven system. And she's also building freedom for her own life because she has two little ones herself. So, Tala, I'm gonna let you introduce yourself and then going to shed some light into what this process has been like for you. Adding coaching. I asked my listeners what do you guys like to hear on this show? And a lot of you said like real life stories of therapists adding coaching. What does the day to day look like? So we're going to talk all about what this process looks like and how you're managing to do this as a busy mom. So welcome to the show.

Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

That was my introduction of you, but tell everybody who's listening, your introduction.

Yeah, sure, sure. Yes. So again, my name is Tala Hershey. Carly mentioned that I am a speech language pathologist. I have my own private practice that I've had for about five years or so now and I just started adding coaching. So I guess I can say I'm a speech and language coach. I am also a mom of two toddlers. I have a three and a half year old and a one and a half year old at home. So that's me in a nutshell, very busy.

Let's talk about your process of adding coaching because I don't think it was always a thought in your head but I feel like it really came to fruition for you when the pandemic hit and you had to Switch your model of how you were working with parents and kids. And then you kind of had this epiphany of wow, like I can make something of this, but how do I do it in a systematic way? Right?

Yeah, totally. Yeah. That's actually exactly when the seed was sort of planted for coaching. So what happened during the pandemic was as everyone listening knows, everything had to go online. So if you were a two year old getting speech therapy from me and you needed speech therapy, it had to be online. I couldn't be in the room with you. Also, I don't know if anyone's listening who's a parent. If you have a two year old, you, you can probably assume that no two year old is going to stare at a screen with me on it for 30 minutes. So I had to sort of figure out what else to do. And what I did was I would have parents set up the computer so that I could see the room. They would take out some toys and they would put AirPods in or headphones in so I could see what was going on and hear what was going on. But what was happening is I was giving the parents real time feedback of, you know, they did this, let's try this or let's use this strategy. And I was basically training the parents to be me in the room because I couldn't be in the room. And what I started seeing is that the toddlers who went through speech therapy this way were discharged in a few months versus my training and everything that I've learned where I have toddlers come to me in my private practice and they're with me for at least a year minimum because they get speed once a week, maybe twice a week. And so that's when I sort of started to realize like I can train parents to really do this. And you know, parent training has always been a part of speech therapy. This isn't something innovative that I came up with, but it's to a different extent. So I always have parents sit in, in my sessions and I always, you know, give them things to work on. But when you have a 30 minute session and you're working one on one with a kid, you really have like three to five minutes to spend with the parent. And it's usually like, try this activity at home versus what I was doing during the pandemic, which was, here are the strategies and here's how you use them all day long. You can use it with this toy, you can use it when you're here, you can use it when you're Here. And so parents were learning the strategies this way in a way where they couldn't unlearn them. And so what started happening is they were just using these strategies and supporting their kids everywhere. And their kids were being discharged, their kids were talking. It was great.

It's the ultimate win win because you're leveraging your time, you're leveraging technology, you're working smarter, not harder, which is what we're all about, but also for the parents. I mean, I've audited enough of your calls that I feel like I know all of the struggles of these parents and the ins and outs of your program. But I'm hearing from your parents and I know you're hearing it more than I am is the frustration of a wait list. How long they've been on a wait list for therapy. And they also have this urgency because either their kid is going to school soon or they're having huge tantrums and meltdowns in the house because their toddler can't communicate with them. And it's frustrating for the parent, sad for the parent. So this is a time sensitive matter where it's, they don't want to be in therapy for a year, they don't want to be on a wait list for six months. They're looking for a faster, easier solution with this proven system that they can do at home too, because they're busy moms and the flexibility is so important to them. It is just, I feel like the ultimate win win.

Yeah, it really is. And you know, the parents who have gone through the program have seen such amazing progress, which is so nice. And one thing, just going back to planting the seed, I had no idea how to even implement this. So like most therapists or, you know, I see on other speech therapists websites, it's like add a parent coaching session. You know, click here to add a parent. No one's adding a parent coaching session. Nobody cares enough to add a parent coaching session unless you really dive into why this is so crucial and so important. And yeah, I think you're right. It really just eases a lot of frustration.

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Yeah. So let's talk about this process of you building your coaching business, because like you said, you really had no idea where to start. You didn't even have a business license filed. You had an idea. And of course, you have all of the clinical knowledge and skill. Skills. But how do I monetize this baby? How do I get this up and off the ground? So let's go back to even taking the leap into mentorship. I actually just recorded an episode yesterday on, you know, why you shouldn't outsource all of your marketing first or just hire somebody to do it for you, because you're not going to know how to lead them like you are the CEO of your business mentorship. And my opinion is a first step to even know your blueprint of what you need to do. So what was looking for mentorship like? And making the leap to investing in mentorship. And then we can talk about the steps that you took and where you are now, because now we're doing so many fun things with ads and digital products and tripwire funnels, and you're like a CRM master these days. So take us back to first deciding you were going to do this.

Yeah. So I feel like we've been working together about nine months, I would say for about six months to a year before that. What started to happen in the speech therapy world was people aren't becoming speech therapists anymore. And I see it on all the Facebook blogs I'm in. And the reason mostly being is that they're burnt out. When you go to a school, you have, you know, 80, 90 kids on your caseload, which is just absolutely insane. So people are actually telling other people not to become speech therapists. And there's a huge shortage. And this is happening more and more. And I kept saying to my husband and I kept saying to my parents, this is something that I can tap into because this is the future. The future is there's not going to be any speech therapists, and the future is wait lists and these kids not getting help. But I don't know how to tap into that. I see it. It's like a glaring problem, but I don't know how to tap into it. And I don't even know what happened between then and finding your program. It was like, I said that to my husband, and all of a sudden you just started popping up on my feed. Yeah, I honestly, I have, like, no recollection of how this happened.

Your phone was listening to you and.

Yeah, it was listening to everything I was thinking and saying and. And you started appearing and I guess I must have been like googling coaching or something. And I said, you know what, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it. And that's sort of how I am. I'm like, if I'm going to do something, I'm going all in and it's going to happen. And so it was sort of a leap of faith. You know, I did a little bit of research. Everything on your website aligned with what I was feeling and doing and that was sort of it. I signed up for your program and that's how I started with mentorship.

Yeah, it was a no brainer for you, it seems like. And I totally see that in your personality. Like you, if you're going to do it, you're going to go all in. You definitely don't half ass.

Yeah.

Through this process. And that's something I admire about you so much because I know you are a busy mom and I see you putting in the work at night, you're a fast implementer, I'll give you feedback and it's like, boom, done. You know, you do not mess around and there's a lot of floating pieces when you're building your coaching business. And so I know we recorded a testimonial a little while ago and I was like, what's one piece of advice you would give to anybody who's wanting to add coaching? And you're like, truly, whatever you put into it is whatever you're going to get out. And I feel like you're a testament to that because you have put in hard work and dedication and you still, still are like, I would say you're just now in, in the thick of everything. There's a lot of things coming to fruition for you. So it was a no brainer. You invested in mentorship. How has the process been of all the floating pieces to dialing in your messaging, to learning social media marketing, to learning some of the technology that goes into it building funnels. Because you're kind of at this advanced style stage, paid advertising, I mean we can break these things up but on a high level. What has been helpful for you in this process?

Yeah, so I will say it was no joke that I really had no idea what went into this, like signing up and then getting the course and it was like, okay, let's do this. And there were aspects, I would say almost none of this occurred to me to do on my own. I just never would have done it on my own. So there was a huge learning curve, a really big learning curve. But, you know, I still had a full caseload when I started. I still pretty much. I wouldn't say full. It's like 3/4 full. But, you know, at night, after I put the kids down is when I would listen to, you know, episode. Not episodes, but modules. I had your app on my phone when I was driving to work. I would listen to modules. And any free time I had was no longer free time. It was what I was dedicating to this to learn the ins and outs. And it was a huge, huge learning curve. And I will say, the more you get into it and you do it and you implement and you get feedback. I feel like my messaging right now is so clear. Yeah, I thought it was clear before, but now it's like, crystal clear. And my target audience is crystal clear and how to do some of these things and the push and pull of it, right? If something's not really working or coming to fruition, what can you do instead? How do you make it better? All these things with time and just putting in the work, really do they come together?

I feel like it takes a solid year for somebody to really dial in their messaging. Like, we think we know at the beginning, and we do know to a certain extent, but this is why I always say market research never ends. And work constantly listening to our audience and as we put out more and more content and we get responses from our ideal client, like, all right, this is what's landing with them. This is what they really resonate with. This type of stuff gets crickets. This is not resonating with them. And we're constantly optimizing and making our messaging better and better. So that makes sense to me that you're kind of approaching a year and you feel like you're in this awesome spot with your messaging. And it's also to say that, like, it's probably still going to continue to evolve because I still tweak my messaging and I'm still constantly listening to my audience. And that's where you get your audience. So your audience's parents to be like, yo, did you bug my house? Like, are you in my brain? How does that know? Yeah, exactly what I'm thinking. And it's because you're listening all the time and you're optimizing, organizing. I bet you anybody who's listening is curious how soon you took off and about your success. So walk me through like how long did it take you to get your first paying client from Zero. No. LLC filed. No idea. The first freaking step to take to taking a credit card, how long did that take? Do you remember?

I do. I started with you, I think, think March, maybe late February. And I got my first paying client in April.

Oh, wow.

And I launched my program in May.

Okay. So before you even launched. So a month in you got your first paying client.

About a month and a half in. Okay. Yeah. That was when I did the, my initial launch of my program. It wasn't even really created yet. I think I had created like my program is in. It's a three month program, but it's in six phases. I think I had created the first phase and I just sort of started selling it. And then I got my first two clients in April and maybe one more in May.

Great.

Was my first beta round.

Okay. And you're selling high tickets. You have your signature coaching program, but now that you're really in the growth, like you're moving out of the foundational phases. Because I always say there's three phases, foundational phase, growth phase, and then scale phase. I would say you're still in the growth phase, kind of moving into the scale phase. And we have your firm foundation, you have your signature high ticket program. It's pretty much up and running like a well oiled machine. We're working on constantly getting you more leads and refining the marketing process, especially through paid advertising. Now, not only organic marketing, all the funnels that we're building out together, but we're also working on low ticket items as well, which is something that I feel like a lot of people want to start with. And they're like, oh, I'll just start with a mini course or I'll just start with like a $97 product. Can you speak to how it is just as hard, if not harder to sell a $97 product than let's just say a $2,000 product?

Totally. I've actually sold fewer of my low ticket items than I have my high ticket items. The marketing is exactly the same as much as you're marketing your high ticket item. You have to market your low ticket item. But the question also is, and I was in this boat also, I had created like a couple of online things that I was trying to sell but not really knowing how before I started this program. But now the real question is, so if you have your low ticket items, say you have a $97 item, what happens next?

Right.

So somebody buys your $97 item and then where do they go?

Right.

So if you have this whole system in place where you've already created your high ticket offer, this is where you want them to be. You want them to be buying your 2 to $5,000 offer by selling them a $97 offer, otherwise they just buy it and they're gone and then you've made $97, that's great. But then what?

Right, yeah, you can extend them into your high ticket offer. It's a way to build trust. Exactly right. They're getting like a little bite size mini taster of what you have and they're like ooh, I want more of where that came from. Right, right. So yeah, in my opinion these low ticket items are a scale strategy and this is something that you're starting to implement now. But there's a lot of work even on the technology side of it that go into setting up all of your automations and building out your funnels and you have help with this. Let's talk about your team for a second. How many people are on your team? What does your team look like?

Yeah, actually my team is not very big. I have one setter that's perfect.

Most people's teams are not big at this.

Yeah, it works for me right now and I would say every so often, very rarely I'll hire a va but everything else that I do.

Yeah, well you're there funnels that case like it's just I feel like you like to do it, you like the challenge and you like learning how to do it. But a lot of the things that, that's why I said you're like a CRM master. And for anyone who's listening and they're like what the hell is the CRM? It's a customer relationship management system. So you guys are probably used to like simple practice or therapy notes like your ehr, your EMR for therapy. But when you have a coaching business you need a email marketing system, you need a pipeline system, you need somewhere to host your websites and your funnels, you need somewhere to host all of your automations. It's kind of like a one stop shop that does all of this for you.

And I had no idea this existed before starting a program by the way. No idea what a CRM is. Yeah, I love it, I love it, but it's rare.

Yes, I was the same way actually. I really love learning. But you do get to the point in your business where you just, it's so much easier to just delegate it, you know, but you'll Be able to explain it in a way of exactly what you need built because you do know how to do it yourself. And going back full circle to what I was talking about at the beginning of this episode where I think people hire out too soon and they think that it will just be easier to skip the learning curve. Like I'm just going to hire an expert. Who knows? Like I'm going to hire a marketing expert. And sometimes they get stocked into paid advertising way too soon. I've seen that, especially in the high ticket coaching space. Could you speak to now being in mentorship and also having your own team and also running paid advertising? Do you agree with like the order of operations of learning at first maybe why somebody shouldn't hire out too soon?

Yeah, I think I actually see both sides. I see people hire out too soon and then there's actually people like me who can't let go.

True.

Which is 100% me. It's me in my private practice, it's me here. But I think it's so, so important to learn it on your own because if something goes wrong or something isn't built out right for some reason or your funnel disappears or, you know, something happens, you don't know what to do, you're sort of frozen because you don't know where to start. So things like building my own funnels is really important to me so that when one disappears, I can rebuild it or setting up. We were talking about my low ticket offer, which is actually a tripwire funnel. So what happens is you buy a very low ticket offer, like a 997 offer, and then you get offered one step higher and one step higher. And that was the first thing that I had somebody else build out for me. And it had been running for like a week before you. And I realized that something wasn't right with the automation. And so had I had no idea what the automation was or what it meant or how to fix the funnel or anything, I would have been frozen. It would have been really scary. But I can go in and check the automation and check that everything is working properly. The same goes with sales calls. I'll admit I hate sales calls. I don't like doing them. But I think it's so important that I do them. Not only to learn how to do them, but but also to eventually train somebody else to do them. But also for market research.

Right.

Everything that I'm now spitting out on my social media is something that somebody said verbatim in a sales call. So that's how I've really niched down. My marketing is by doing it all.

Myself and wearing all the hats. But you're doing it again with two little ones at home. It's not an excuse for you. You're having great success. We're continuing in mentorship. We have so many plans in the works for you to continue scaling. If it's something that is really worth it to you, you'll make the time.

And you are 100%.

It's not only your mission to fill the gap. I would say there's a massive gap. And it's like this in the mental health field too. I mean, we, we have a shortage of mental health therapists. Staying with the speech therapist, you're filling the gap. You're being innovative. You're impacting more lives because you know that there is a shortage. You know that these parents need help and that is your calling. In a way, it's a huge responsibility that you have that you've stepped up to. But personally, on a vision level, you want to spend more time with your kids. They're only getting older. You're setting yourself up for success. You're putting in the hard work now, you know, it's, it's gonna take another year of like hard ass work to get to this place where your business really is dropping all the fruit. Right? But you, yeah, you're in it for the long game and you're in it for the vision. Can you speak to that or give any advice to anybody? I know you said whatever you put into it is whatever you, you get out. But it carries a lot of weight coming from you because you're doing this day in, day out. I mean, I've been doing this for years. So what do you want to say to any listeners who they're scared now about this technology, this learning curve, not knowing the steps to take? They also maybe have a full caseload. They also maybe have little ones at home and holy shit, how are you doing this? What do you have to say to them?

Yeah, you know, it is, I don't want to scare anyone off who's listening. It is a lot, a lot of work. You know, I've created another full time job for myself. So my full time job as a mom, my full time job is my private practice. I have six clinicians who work for me there. I have a full caseload and I now have a coaching business and there's no beating around the bush, that it is absolutely insane. And there have been nights of like mental breakdowns. But, you know, I'm a person who looks at. Let me take a step back. Anyone who starts coaching, the second you join Carly's program or somebody else's program, your feed is going to be covered in coaching. It's like the world knows that you've signed up and every coach is going to be at you. And I'm sort of the person that looks at these people and I'm like, there's no reason I can't do this. If you are doing it, why can't I do it? But I think it does take realizing that it. It's not just you'll also see ads for, you know, implement my funnel for a hundred K months and that it's never going to be as easy as that. There is a lot, a lot of work to put into it. But if you can see the end goal, which I really, I see a vision of yesterday alone, I was sitting while my kids were eating breakfast on my computer, planning out social media content. And I sort of saw a world in which I had just one day to sit and batch emails and social media content. And that was my day, or even half a day. And it just worked. You know, now I'm sort of, you know, my kids are eating breakfast. I do it between sessions. But you have to see the end picture, the end goal. And I see the end goal of having more time back once I've built it up. But you have to build it up.

Mm.

And you have to know that you.

See the light at the end of the tunnel. You can conceptualize how this whole coaching thing works. You're probably even starting to see some of these ads. Cause they don't really stop on your social media for these other coaches. And.

Oh, yeah, you're right.

I mean, you can either be inspired or you can be intimidated. You can use it as evidence that you can do this too. But instead of getting sucked in by this, like, shiny object syndrome and thinking that you can just poop 100k out of nowhere, you're probably now looking at their content with a different lens where you are conceptualizing, Ah, I see what they're doing here. Oh, this is the funnel that they have. I could implement it in this type of way. You're like doing a little bit of funnel hacking, if you will.

Yeah, right, exactly.

Because the more you learn about marketing, the more you start to really look at the online world differently. And this is totally different animal than your private practice, which is why there is a learning curve. So, yeah, I mean, the more you learn, the more you learn how much there is to learn. And how much.

So true.

Because there's endless amounts of stuff you can learn in the online coaching world. I mean, it's fascinating. It is just. It's honestly, like, addicting in a way, because you can just. Yeah, you can learn so much. I mean, at least I feel that way. I just kind of obsessive about it. And that's actually.

That's the one thing. I don't know who I was talking to. But recently I said, you know, I love working on my coaching business because there's always something to learn. There's always something new. There's always ways to scale in ways that you can't scale in private practice. And you can reach so many more people. And it's just. It keeps me on my toes so much more than private practice.

Yeah. For the ambitious entrepreneur who has that itch for more. You will never get rid of that itch in the online coaching space because there is just always more available to you and your business. And it's just fun and creative and ideas pop in and you get innovative and you're like, how can I implement this? And there's another side to that coin, right. Of how we can totally get bombarded and we have so many things on our list. We procrastinate and we don't even do the important things, and we get frozen. But, you know, I've been there. At the same time, you can scale infinitely to the moon, to the stars, more and more and more, up and up and up, together we go. So I'm so proud of you. Thank you for being here on this show.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah. For any of the mamas listening who need help with their toddler or ye. Hey, maybe they just want to lurk your social media because they want to see how you're doing, your copywriting and how your titles are working and how are you doing.

All funnel hack. Go for it. Funnel hack.

Where can they find you?

Yeah, so my Instagram is @HersheyspeechCoach. That's probably where you can find me the most.

I'll put that in the chat. I think you have a Facebook group and website.

I do have a Facebook group. My Facebook group is called Hershey Coaching Tiny Talkers Tool Soul Kid program is the name of my program. I don't know why I decided to make it like a tongue twister for people that are really talking, but it is what it is. We're. We're here. It's not changing. Yeah. So I do have a Facebook group you can join if you do follow my Instagram. You're interested. I do lots of live sessions, lots of trainings. If you are a parent who has a toddler who is a talker, reach out to me. I'm happy to chat with you. I love, love when parents reach out to me because now sort of in this coach, I can reach parents everywhere.

Which is the best part, nationwide, worldwide. You're impacting so many lives. Well, cheers to you, girlfriend, and thank you. I'll see you on the coaching calls. Thanks for being here.

All right, see you there.

All right.

Thanks for having me.

Bye.

Thank you so much for listening to the Thriving Therapy podcast. I hope that this episode has inspired you to reduce burnout, work smarter, and see the freedom potential you have as a therapist. We would love to have you inside the Therapist to Coach Accelerator Facebook group where we have live trainings and cheat sheets on all things marketing, sales and adding coaching, ethically and legally. I am here cheering you on and I'll see you around.