Episode 72: The 4 Pillars of The Myo Membership & A Bonus Training

Quick Disclaimer all information, content and material of this podcast are the opinions of the speakers and is for the informational purpose only and not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis and or medical treatment of a qualified healthcare provider. Welcome to the Untethered Podcast. I am your host, Hallie Balkan. I'm a certified orofacial myologist, feeding specialist and mentor. This podcast is all about getting your questions answered and collaborating with colleagues to bring you the most up to date information in the orofacial myofunctional therapy, tethered oral tissue and airway space. I challenge you to keep an open mind and join my mission to get this information out to the masses. Let's get started. Hi and welcome to episode 72 of the Untethered Podcast. First and foremost, this is your host, Holly Bulkin. And I really am excited, you guys, because I was just looking at something in like the analytics of the podcast and my eye caught the number of the downloads that we've had. I mean, this podcast has now been out for about a year and a month I believe. We launched it in July 2019 and I'm super excited to announce that we have just under 95,000 downloads. We're almost at 100,000 downloads. Like, holy cow. That's incredible. I'm so, so excited because what that tells me is that we are obviously speaking to topics that you all want to hear that resonate with you all. But I always welcome you to email us@clientcareadthepedes.com with any topics or guests that you would like to hear on the podcast. We are gearing up for doing more guest interviews this fall and winter. We took a little bit of a break while I was doing a little mini business seat series and we have lots of awesome interviews set up for this for the fall episodes. But one, if you are somebody who thinks you'd like to be on the podcast because you have a message to share, I would love to hear from you as a listener. That's number one. Number two, if you have somebody that you can recommend, as I mentioned, that would also be more than welcome. Clientcareadheped.com and number three, I'm absolutely looking to continue the conversation on cultural sensitivity and race racism. And I would love to even talk about the equality of, you know, providing services through the lens that we do as practitioners because I know that it is not equal. Right? I know that that is just the nature, that's the systemic issue that we have going on. And I would love to bring conversations like that. To the podcast. So if you have, like I said, if you or you have a recommendation for somebody, please email us@Clickclientcareadthepedes.com, our goal is to bring you, as the listener, what you want to hear, information that is relevant to the work that you're doing in the MYO airway and TOT space as practitioners or referring practitioners or parents even. I know we've got parents who listen to this podcast. So if you are a parent, definitely, you know, let us know what has been super helpful for you to hear so we know what we can bring more of to the podcast. Okay, so that's my little ask for today. Now what I want to talk about is this is going to be more relevant today to practitioners who are treating or looking to get into treating in the MYO airway and taught space. And I say that because today we officially are opening the doors to our MYO membership. And I really want to speak to you all about that. Now. We did just do a five day free training in my Facebook group and my free MYO Facebook group. You do have to be a practitioner who can provide myofunctional services in order to participate in that group. What we did is I walked everybody through doing their first screener using the Fast Myo screener. And you can get that@fastmyoscreening.com and we used my daughter Lily, who just turned five. So we had so much fun going page by page during the five day challenge. We'll do this challenge again, but it probably won't be till the end of the year or the very beginning of 2021. I have not looked that far ahead on the calendar yet, but this is the only time, unless something major changes, this is the only time I currently have planned on the calendar to open the membership up for the rest of 2020. So we'll get into that in a bit. But what we did in the free training, which is going to be taken down today, unfortunately. So if you have not watched it, no worries, we'll do it again in the future. But you can still get the screener. As I mentioned, we walked through that screener and what was really cool was it was fun to watch people do their first MYO screening and come back and even report back that they did it on family members and on patients. And that is just so cool to me that you are, you know, confident enough to go out there and actually immediately implement this screening tool because it's meant to be something super quick and easy. But what I found Was a lot of the members in our free group and the free Facebook group were saying, well, yeah, Hallie, I mean, this is good and great, but how do I convince a parent that their child actually, you know, they came to me for speech or they came to me for feeding, or how do I convince a parent that they actually need a myofunctional evaluation or official myofunctional evaluation? I'm not in the business of convincing per se, but what I do think we need to do is we need to educate, we need to discriminate, describe the symptoms that we're seeing. We need to describe. Our goal is to get down to the root of the issue here and we need further information. Right? So what I want to share with you today before we get into talking about the MYO membership is I want to share with you some of what I discussed during the free bonus training I gave our group on Friday, just this past Friday, because I think it was really well received. Like, a lot of us know, we see, see the patient, we see that there are some concerns, but like, how do we go from, okay, I see those concerns, I've done my own little mini screening to telling a family, oh, hey, this is, you know, you need an orofacial myofunctional evaluation when that's not what they came for, or that's not what they called you for, or, you know, the parents giving those red flags over the phone. Right? Or you've been working for this with this patient for a long time and now you're stepping into this space of learning more about orofacial myology and you're going, holy cow, half of my caseload would really benefit from this. How do we go about and really get vulnerable with our own patients and say, oh, hey, I have something new that I want to do with you all. You know, how do we do that? So that's what we're going to talk about. Now, the first thing that I want to say is that it's a good idea to research who is in your area that you can refer to for various things when you're getting into the space. Now, understandably, there are some areas that are going to have more practitioners in this airway centric myo and TOTS space versus other areas. So, for example, some areas, it can be really hard to find an ENT who really gets what we're doing, right? But maybe you have an amazing dentist who is doing growth appliances like the ALF or a DNA vivos appliance. Or, you know, there's also Other appliances. But that's just what I share because that's what I'm most familiar with. Lily and I have both used one of those. You know, what you want to do is you want to get out there and you want to figure out who is already doing this in your area, just so that you understand if there is a network to refer to when you do get these patients. Because sometimes the patient is not ready for myofunctional therapy. Right. Sometimes they have a different step one before they come back to you. So, so here's what I do. When we have, let's say we have a parent on the phone, they call for several concerns or one concern. Maybe it's a speech sound error that they're calling about or their child's just hard to understand in general. And you're kind of going, hmm, I think some of these sounds could be, definitely be related to a myofunctional disorder, maybe even tethered oral tissues. We need to definitely take a look and do a functional evaluation. What do we do to help that patient almost lead themselves into saying, well, yeah, we definitely need to do this right. So that we're not hard selling anything. But we're telling a parent, okay, my antennas have gone up. I think this is what your child needs. And the parent saying, well, yeah, this is a no brainer. I totally agree with you. Because ultimately our goal is to make sure that we're providing our patients with the best type of assessment and treatment. Right. The best care. And so we do have to do some education to help parents move from what they come to us and ask for for initially and where they actually end up. Right. Like if they come and ask for a speech evaluation. Well, by all means, as an slp, I can do myo as part of a quote unquote, speech language pathology evaluation. It's within my scope. But the type of evaluation I'm technically doing is either going to be a speech sound evaluation, a language evaluation, a feeding evaluation, or an orofacial myofunctional evaluation. Right. So there's different types of evaluations that fall under the scope of what we do. And I like to be very upfront and clear with my families as to exactly what they're getting. So a lot of my parents who may call, for example, might call for a speech eval. And I'll say, well, that's great, we're totally going to do a speech eval. But based on what you've told me, I would also love to do an orofacial myofunctional evaluation. In fact, we're going to do that first, and we're going to always do the speech eval right at the end because that does not take significant amount of time. We can get through that super quick. When your child is kind of fatigued after the rest of it, and they're like, okay, yeah, they don't need to know all that information. But I tell them that when they arrive in my office, so that they're not sitting there the whole time going, why hasn't she assessed my child's speech? When I thought that's what I was coming here for? So I hope that that that helps at least set a little bit of the groundwork. So the biggest thing that I do with families is I ask the parent what their concern is or their concerns, maybe they have more than one, and then I speak to those concerns. We really need to listen to our parents and our, you know, or the adult patient, if it's an adult that you're treating. And we need to listen to what they say. We need to listen to how it's impacting their quality of life or their child's quality of life. We need to listen to what words they are using, and we want to reflect those back and use them. Because I know that students, so many of us are listening, but our patients don't realize we're listening because they are so used to being talked at by professionals that they already have their guard up. And I know that a lot of us myofunctional therapists, really, we do this work because our goal is to get to the root problem of what is actually going on so that we can graduate our patient and they can be done with therapy. They don't have to continue to come back on repeat. Right? So not to say that other therapists want people coming back on repeat and don't want to graduate them, but I think we all feel like, wow, MYO is the missing puzzle piece, and I can finally graduate some of my patients that have really had a hard time in therapy. Or, this is the missing puzzle piece. And oh, my gosh, like, look at all these other things we now need to address. But hey, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Like, I can totally see us doing X, Y, and Z, and then this. This patient will be graduated for all intents and purposes, right? So I think that that is a very common belief that a lot of us have, is that MYO is the missing piece, and we can get those patients graduated, at least from the myo. Portion of their therapy. They may have other things going on from a speech, language, feeding, ot, PT type of viewpoint. However, when we're talking purely about the orofacial myofunctional goals, that. That is what I'm speaking to here. And speech and feeding can tie into that, obviously. All right, so what do I do? Right? So I listen to the parent. I listen very clearly, and I speak to their concerns. I'll even use the terminology that they used because I want them to know that I'm listening. I really do. My goal is to help them, and I can't help them if I'm going to put, you know, if you put yourself up on a pedestal and you use all this, like, jargon and terminology that your parents don't understand, you are going to lose them the second that you do that. So come off your high horse. This is even something I had to do. Like, stop talking like a therapist or like a speech pathologist or an OT or an RDH or a dentist or whoever you are. Stop speaking like the professional and speak parentees. Like, speak in the words of the parents that you're talking to, because that's gonna, you know, they're immediately gonna take a deep breath, they're gonna let their guard down. And I can guarantee you're gonna get more helpful information that way that will actually allow you to step into your role of treating that patient, Whether it's the parent, an adult, the child, whoever. It will definitely get you more information because you'll build a different type of rapport, poor, than if you keep yourself on the therapist pedestal. Like, I know more than you do. Nobody knows more about themselves or their child than the actual person or parent of that child. Okay? So let's also keep that in mind. So that's number one. Number two, I ask about eating, sleep, and mouth breathing, okay? And we're going to break each of these down. So number one, I like to ask parents about the child's eating habits. Like, is your child by any chance a messy eater? Are they picky? You know, do they? And look, I don't love the term picky eating, but that's what parents use. So again, use what your parent is saying. If your parent comes to you and says, oh, my child's a selective eater, okay, well, then use that word. But if they come to you, which 99% of them will say, like, oh, they're picky, you know, if they say they're lazy, I will squash that one because your kid is not being lazy or stubborn. Usually your child is usually responding to what's going on in their mouth and what they're they've learned they're capable of doing. However, if a parent describes their child as like messy or picky or they only, you know, I will ask them, well, what kind of foods does your child eat? What's a typical meal or snack look like? And when they start to describe it, I'll say, so, you know, it sounds like your child, because this is very common, sounds like your child prefers foods that are pretty easy to chew, maybe bland or neutral in color, like white, you know, yellow, brown, beigey kind of color foods. And a lot of my parents are like, yeah, how'd you know? And sometimes I ask that before they even tell me what a typical snack or meal looks like. Or they'll tell me, oh, you know, they just graze all day, they don't really sit down for meals. And I'm going, okay, my antennas are all going up right now. There's either a feeding, big, big feeding disorder here or we have some myofunctional issues or a combination of the two. Right? And so I will gather that information first, then I go on to ask them about something. Sleep. How is their sleep? You know, is their mouth open or closed when they're sleeping? Well, guess what? Most parents have no clue. Sure, plenty of us check on our kids when they're sleeping or we have monitors in the room, but we're not typically peeking in to look at their mouth. We're typically just kind of maybe peeking in to check on them in general. So, and to be honest, like once my kid goes to sleep, I don't want to peek on them. I have a camera in my 2 year old's room, a baby monitor, but I don't want to open the door and wake them up. Right? But I will give homework to my parents and I will ask them to report back to me. I'll tell them, please email me in the morning after you've had a chance to look at this. Make your parents accountable. Right? We want, I think that the most helpful thing we can do is we can give them a little bit of information, give them one action item that they can take and that they can, you know, actually look at their child and report back on because that's going to solidify what we're recommending already. And so, you know, we get into talking about sleep. Like do they sleep through the night? Do they frequently wake up? Do they wet the bed? Are they ending up in your bed? And I always tell parents, look, this is no judgment. I'm just trying to understand your child's sleep patterns because this can be highly connected to what's going on with X, Y, and Z, like these other issues that you reported. And parents are always like, what? This is connected? Oh, yeah, it's connected, right? You guys know that. But parents don't know that. And so we may be the first person who's ever asked them about the sleep issues that may be going on. We know that there's an airway issue at play here. Most likely, if that child is not sleeping through the night, and it's not usually related to a potty training thing, it can be early on in potty training, but we know if they're still wet in the bed at night, they probably have some sleep disorder breathing, because that is rampant among our kiddos. So, you know, parents end up being very grateful when we ask them, hey, take a look at your kid's mouth. Is it open or is it closed when they're sleeping? And then I'll have the parent, like I said, report back to me. They'll send me an email the next morning. Morning. And, you know, if they say the mouth was closed, they'll be like, oh, that is fantastic. Hey, can you do me a favor? And because I'll ask them, right? The last thing I'll ask them about is mouth breathing. I might, depending on the parent and the conversation, I might also ask them to report back on daytime mouth breathing or if the mouth is open during the day. But if not, and, you know, based on how the conversation is going, I might just follow up with the email response that they send me. But that's the next thing. Mouth breathing. I'll say, hey, you know, does your child usually have. Is their mouth usually open or closed? Like, not when they're eating and speaking, but like, you know, when they're doing nothing, when they're just playing or watching TV or the iPad or doing homework or something, or, you know, based on the child's age. But at a time when they're not eating or speaking, like, is their mouth open or closed? And so that's when I think it starts to click for these parents, because no one's ever told them that what they're seeing is not. It's not typical, Right? It might be common that there's a lot of mouth breathers out there, but that does not make it normal or typical. Right? We know that, but again, our families don't know this. It's our job to educate them, and it's our job to do it in a way where, one, we are not being judgmental, okay? Because our families don't know this information unless we teach it to them. And number two, give them a way that they can report back to you so that you can also continue the conversation. Okay? So I think that's really, really important. I will tell you when my families and I mentioned this before, when my families call and say they have a picky eater or they tell me their child has some of the red flag speech sounds or history of speech, and then, you know, history of speech, they're still not dismissed. And. Or, you know, the dentist or orthodontist are referring them like, these are all red flags for an orofacial myofunctional disorder. I've shared it previously. I can't remember if I shared it on the podcast, but I believe. And I'm like, I'm gonna have to go back and find this research. I will put the official number and the research in the show notes for you guys. But I think I shared this last. In the past couple weeks, I believe it's as high as 80. Maybe it's 83% of children who have articulation disorders also have an orofacial myofunctional disorder. It is high. It is a high, high, high number. So we really need to be looking at who, out of these children that we're already working with or who are being referred to us with these speech sound disorders might actually have neurofacial myofunctional disorder. And what good is it to treat their speech if we don't address the underlying root cause of what's making their speech atypical in the first place? Okay, so that's. That. That's your little training for today. But I wanted to share that with you guys. You guys, because it was super well received. You know, I think we all can talk about doing screenings, but what happens, like, when we actually get that parent on the phone or we have that patient on our caseload now what you can do. Because I had a really great question in our group last week about what do we do when we're already working with that family? Like, I don't want to upset my family and come back and say, you know, oh, hey, I really want to evaluate your child for an orofacial myofunctional disorder, despite the fact we've been working together for a year already, you know, and that it is getting a bit vulnerable in a sense that you're basically going to a parent and saying, hey, I didn't have this information before, but it's also, it's okay to say to them, look, I took part in this training and I was learning from some of my colleagues about this area called orofacial myology. And look, I really think it would be beneficial to your child. So what I personally choose to do is, and this is me stopping that little example combo for a second. But what I personally choose to do is I'll just do an eval as part of their session. And I'm private pay, so I have the flexibility to do this. But I'll do an evaluation as part of their next session and then we'll decide if we need a formal eval written up or not. And then that formal eval can, you know, there will be an additional charge for the evaluation write up. However, the actual eval itself, we'll just do as part of the normal therapy session. Because basically as somebody new and I did this, this is exactly what I did. I came back and I said to patients, oh my gosh, I just did this four day training. I learned so much that's within my scope of practice, but nobody had taught me before. And I really think it would be super beneficial to your child. Are you okay with me doing an evaluation to look at this, this and this during our next session? And then I'll send you an email afterwards and we can hop on the phone or we can hop on the phone and discuss the results. And if I have any ideas of where to take therapy, like what next steps, what we can tweak in our therapeutic process or program, Every parent, you know, every parent was like, yeah, totally. Like, if you have something else that can help my child, go for it. Like a few had questions about what it was, like, what specifically I'd be looking for, which is totally fine. But they were all happy that I was coming back. Because what it shows them is that one, as practitioners, we are continuing to learn, which I know a lot of us are like major nerds in this space. And we just go down the rabbit hole. And we are way deep down the rabbit hole. And we just stay way deep down the rabbit hole. We're continuing, we're like lifelong learners, right? So our families are, they're going to appreciate that. They're not going to look at you and go, oh my gosh, why didn't you have this information, you know, a year ago? No, they're going to be like, wow, you're taking courses that can benefit your clients and then you're coming back and actually applying it in hopes that, like, this will truly help my child or help me. I can guarantee you guys, they're not going to be upset about it. But it's all in how you describe it and explain it and how you offer it up. If you come back and say, I, oh, yeah, you know, I took this course and I, I want to do this eval and your child, oh, and by the way, it's gonna be $1,000 or 700 bucks or 400 bucks or, I don't know, 200 bucks, whatever you charge. These are all just hypothetical numbers. You know, the parent might be a little bit like, well, like, I don't know if we need that. Right. But if you're truly newer in this space and you're coming back and trying to apply this information, be it through a screener or an official evaluation, see what you can do to work it into the time you already have that you're spending with your patients so that they're not having to really invest further unless they want a report. That's the process I take. And I can tell you, all of my families were just super happy that, you know, I had this new thing that really seemed promising and really graduated a lot of their kids out of therapy much faster than I think they would have gotten off my caseload otherwise. So, you know, I love my kids, I love my patients, I love my adult patients, but I don't want them to hang around forever. We want to get them in and get them out. People are busy. They don't want to spend endless amounts of money on therapy. So for me, this has been that missing piece the whole my world. But anyways, I digress. Okay, so what is the MYO membership? Let's talk about that for a minute. There are four pillars, and it is the doors. If you're listening to this, on Monday, August 31st, doors are officially open to the MYO membership. And you can just go to themayomembership.com and you will find everything you need to know. So what is it? Well, there's four pillars, right? The first pillar is called ceus that matter. And this is me being a little bit creative because matter is actually mat. So myo airway tots m a t your ceus that mater. Did you guys get that? I'm really proud of myself for that one. These are basically ceus that are led by me and or other guest experts, and you will have exclusive, exclusive access to these as part of the membership. You will be getting CEUs as we apply for them and receive them back. So for example we are, we should, we should have approval soon from the IAOM for the September training that we're doing. Angie Lehman is doing a crash course in orofacial myofunctional therapy. Yay. Love her. And so that one, I think that's actually like 2.75 hours for that one. But really excited and usually will be two hour trainings each month with like a 15 minute Q&A at the end. And we are just going to have one focus topic every month. So our upcoming guests for this is a pillar number one CEUs that matter. Our upcoming guest as I just mentioned are Angie Lehman. We're going to have Ken Hooks who's going to come and talk about airway types of sleep study related things which is going to be super awesome. We're going to have Autumn Reid Henning, she's going to talk about pre and post ophrenectomy approach and therapy. Yay. And then we also have Patrick McEwen lined up to do a webinar for us in December talking about Buteyko breathing. So that's just this year and then we will open up the membership again. We do have more guests already lined up for 2021 but for right now let's just focus on those guests. Although some of you may want to buy it for the year. So if you have questions about the other guests we have lined up, let me know briefly. I will tell you that we do have my dentist, Dr. Jennifer Tippograph lined up for January. Kim Baer might be joining her. I'm not sure I have to confirm whether or not she'll be joining us. But they work together in the same office and do a variety of growth appliances. And so they're going to be speaking to those different growth appliances because they are not just a one stop shop. They're basically a shop where you go and they tailor to you the type of growth appliance that's you know, best for your situation and needs. And then we have in February a dear friend and colleague, Cheryl Schaefer who will be joining us and she'll be talking about the effect of malocclusion on orofacial myofunctional structures and basically, you know, the relation to OMDs or facial myofunctional disorders. So I'm really excited for that. That's what we have officially confirmed lined up with the next six months of the MILE membership. What I wanted to do before officially inviting and confirming other people is get you all in the door and then once you guys are in in a week or so that I'm going to actually source our members and find out who do you want to hear from, what do you want to learn about specifically? And then also this will tie into other areas too of things that we're going to learn about in the my membership. That said, I did do two trainings in July and August that you will have access to. So when you join today or this week, you will be able to gain full access to my two trainings that I already did. One was deconstructing the orofacial myofunctional evaluation and the other one was basically the myofunctional evaluation. Making sense of all of the making sense of the findings and your results and creating a treatment plan and then also next step referrals. Those were our two topics. So it really covers everything related to the actual orofacial myofunctional evaluation. We even created a checklist evaluation for you so you can print that off and use it. We have created a ton of marketing materials that have been shared as well as just. There's just a lot of. There's a lot of tools in there already for us having only been doing this two months and we're constantly creating more. So you have access to all of that. You will have ongoing access to all of this as well every single month going forward as long as you remain a member of the membership. But when you're a member, you're more than welcome to download our forms and everything. You've got sample report templates, you've got sample evaluation write ups from cases that we reviewed and you also. So the next part of the next pillar, if you will, is called Mastering Mayo. And Mastering Mayo is your online virtual study club or online and virtual are the same thing. So it's really your online study club. Right? A lot of you have told me that you just don't have that person local to you that you can link arms with or you just can't figure out who the team is around you. Maybe you're more remote. Maybe it's just it's newer to your area. So you get to join up with us, our MYO family, and collaborate on real cases. So you know who's ready to network and collaborate and learn. Maybe with a glass of wine or a cup of coffee from your couch. Me, me, me. I love doing this stuff, you guys. So I'm really excited about this. And then our next pillar is know what you don't know. So we have done for you research reviews in the MYO airway and tot space. And look, research is not my favorite thing. I do not enjoy sourcing it and dissecting it and making sense of it all. So that's why I brought on a team of myO moderators to create this content for you. They are SLPs and myofunctional therapists and they do their own little research review and we put it into a nice PDF for you every month. So far we've been doing four per month. So we already have eight in there for like eight total studies that we reviewed in there for you. There'll be another four coming in September and then another four in October and so on. And then pillar number four is niche down to up your income. This is for those, those of you who want to launch your myofunctional therapy business either in person or online or you just want that little side hustle. Maybe you just want like a couple patients. You don't want a full blown thing. Basically, you know, you can get in here, learn how I launched my private practice to six figures in eight months as a solo practitioner. Then I built a team. I became certified in MYO and then more than doubled the income in my business with this added niche which was honestly not even like a goal or a plan. It just happened. So this was all while being private pay. I joke that business and marketing are my love languages. So you know, this is really fun for me. But you get a 30 minute training each month. I try to keep them short. 30 minute training each month. Where you, for those of you who are interested in this, like you can take that information and directly apply what I'm teaching you to whatever it is you're doing in your practice, whether you're starting one, growing one, so on and so forth. So. Or you have one in the future maybe that you've planned for. So These are the four pillars. CEUs that matter. Mastering Myo, your online study club, know what you don't know done for your research reviews and niche down to up your income, your little business training. Those are the four pillars. You get those every single month. Ok? It's basically everything you need to hone your MYO skills. And you know, I think that if you're in our training last week, some of the big things that we also talked about in our group is that we all make time for the things that are of value and of importance to us, right? We should be okay with investing in ourselves both time and money wise. And a lot of you, I know there's a lot of self doubt and a lot of feeling of I'm not good enough. And I really want those of you to realize if you are still struggling with something like that the MYO membership community has got your back. Like, we are a community where you, we link arms with you. There are no stupid or silly questions. We've actually had members already tell us that. Just this a couple days ago somebody commented and I have to go back and see who it was. But she said, you know, it's been so refreshing and so nice to be a part of a group where I can ask any of my questions and not be afraid that someone's going to make me feel stupid or somebody's going to make me feel like I should have already known that. No, this is why we've created this place. So that is a place that we can all learn from each other. We can have discussions, we can discuss why something might be what it is. You know, I know that's vague, but the whole idea is this is a safe place where we elevate each other up, we lift each other up, and we want everybody to celebrate each other's wins and really, you know, be okay in asking vulnerable questions that relate to patient care or your understanding of the material. So, yeah, that's that. So, look, here's the truth, right? Nobody lies in bed at night wishing that they had 15 more courses their belt to help them achieve this. Okay? Let's just be honest. Nobody wants to pay on a regular basis for some type of ongoing education, right? It would be really nice if it was available to you for free, but that's just, that's not the case, right? In the business world, in the world of me, for example, bringing this to you, it costs a lot of money, so there has to be a fee associated for the simple fact that I have got an amazing team who we're bringing to you to pay to bring you the information you need to then in turn go in and help your patients. So the whole idea behind the MYO membership was to make something that is more affordable that people can choose to stay in on a monthly basis, or if you want to pay up front, you will get one month free. And all that information with the pricing and everything your investment is located on, on the page@themyomembership.com but my goal is that I just want to give you guys something that is going to help you actually help your patients at an affordable price, okay? And so I know all that you want is something that will actually give you that functional training, get you, that community done for you research, allow you to actually get out there, assess and treat your patients, right? I mean, that's the whole goal here. And then to have the ability to get them real results and treat the root of that problem. Not just, you know, the symptoms, get them out of therapy quicker, like I talked about before, like that's, that's the goal here. Once we know we're getting them results, getting them the results that they need, right? Then look, you can always continue to take coursework and hone your skills because like we've talked about, we are all lifelong learners. But the thing that I take major issue with is that there is no standard across the intro courses out there. And a lot of people leave like 90% of the intro courses without the ability to assess and treat or they're so overwhelmed from a four day course that they're unable to. And this is what I, this is what a lot of you have shared with me. I'm not, this is not me making things up. Like this is from probably over 100 of you that I've talked to over the past several months where you shared. Even if there were courses where they did go over assessment and treatment, you were just so overwhelmed and really didn't understand where to start. And, and some of you took courses several years ago and have still not treated your first patient. This is not okay. I want more for you. We have patients who need you. So, you know, the bottom line is you shouldn't leave an intercourse without the ability to assess and treat. But that's what's happening and I want to change that with the MYO membership. So here's the other thing, right? Despite this, many are going out there and taking course after course after course because they were unable to get what they needed from their intro course. I don't want you to do that. I want you to take courses because you want to dive deeper into an area of interest to you, an area that's relevant to your patients. Not to try and make up for what you didn't understand in your intro course, okay? Not to make up for information that should have been very clear, like how to assess and how to start treating. So that is why I have created the MYO membership. In the membership, we teach you what you actually need to know so that you can get your patients real results and treat the root of the problem instead of slapping a band aid on the symptoms, having the right access to ceus that matter. Ceus that matter. There was a whole idea behind that that's really what's going to make or break how easy it is to get your patients results and graduate them from therapy. And it's also what's going to help you become known as the expert in your area who's going to get all those word of mouth referrals, right? Whether you're working for somebody else or yourself, if you want to position yourself as the expert, this is what's going to help you do that. So, you know, I want you to think about, like, has there ever been a time where I took a course and I left with new ways of assessing and treating my patients? Right? Ask yourself that question. Have you guys ever taken a course where you left with new ways of assessing, assessing and treating your patients? Yes, of course you have. But like I said, unfortunately, many walk away from many of the four day intro courses without that same experience. And so for those of you who have already been there and done that, I get it, I see you, I hear you. You're frustrated. I would be too. But how much of your time are you taking trying to pop around random Facebook groups, asking colleagues for assistance with cases, literally copying pasting the same question from one group to the other group to see what people say because you're really not sure who to trust or what's going to resonate with you for your patient, right? So you just start posting because you're really at a loss of how else to get this information and best treat your patients. Like, I see this all the time. I'm in these groups. So I see, especially when people, you know, serial post across several. Same question across several groups. And look, I'm not knocking you for that or judging you for that. What I'm saying here is that you shouldn't have to do that. There should be another way. Okay. And so to help you get all those CEUs that matter, as I mentioned before, we're going to bring in area experts each month to teach you their area of expertise. And really, when you, when you learn about myo, airway and tots and how they all work together, you will seriously be unstoppable. Like, you can't treat and work on the mangles of MYO if your patient can't breathe or has oral restrictions. But a lot of courses don't talk about the airway much, or they talk about it, but they don't actually tell you how to assess or treat it beyond like one little thing. But what I want you to realize is if you think you can just jump around and learn just one or two or three of These important topics, like, you're going to be doing a major disservice to yourself and your patients. So many of my patients have told me that I'm the first person they've met that has actually listened or who has really cared to help them. You can see this hope wash over them that, wow, there might actually be. I'm getting chills saying this. Like every time I talk about this, it gives me chills. But they're basically finally realizing that somebody can help them treat the root of their issue. Treat the root of their issue. And that to me is incredible. Like that is the most important thing that is, it's a little bit self serving, but that it makes me feel good that I can actually do this for my patients. And look, it's not that other health care practitioners don't want to help their patients, but they may be bound by other restrictions in the offices that they're in or whatever the case may be where they don't have a lot of time to spend with the patients or they, you know, maybe their bedside manner isn't the best, despite the fact that like they got into this profession because they really want to be a doctor who helps and cures. Right? But that doesn't matter to the patient when they feel like they're not heard. They don't care what credentials you have after your name if you don't listen to them. And to a patient, listening is somebody who is like we talked about earlier in this episode, somebody who gives them the time to share what's going on, asks them questions about that reflects back the language that they're using so they can hear that we're truly listening to what they're telling us. Right? That's where it all begins. Okay, so that, that is a powerful, that it starts with the first conversation. And, and if you have somebody who answers your phones and makes the evaluation, that's the appointments and everything, totally fine. That question does not have to happen during the intake phone call, but it should definitely be happening the first time you meet the patient if you're not the one who does those intake calls anyways. So all that to say, when you join the MYO membership, you're going to see how easy it is to take these three areas, myo, airway and tots, and apply them to your patient cases. In fact, you'll be this person that I've just been talking about for your patients and the first person who is actually listening to them, right. Who they know truly cares is the person that they're going to become more open with. They're going to give you more helpful information. And this is, you know, these are the types of things that we talk about, we learn in addition to all the medical mumbo jumbo. But this is the magic of the MYO membership. It is truly a magical place. It has been. We've had so much fun. Like, we are truly a MYO family in there. And the other thing I want to mention to you guys is Autumn Reed Henning, who is going to be one of our presenters in November. She is also one of our fabulous MAYO moderators. She and I are the two primary people in there right now. We may continue to add more individuals to help us out as we grow. But for right now, Autumn and I are in there answering all your questions. So when you pop a question on the wall, we are the ones that are helping to moderate the group and answer those questions, as well as other therapists who are in there. You know, we're getting a great dialogue going for some of the therapists who are more experienced in the MYO realm, who have joined the MYO membership as well. So for those of you wondering, like, who is this for? I will tell you that it is. It was initially intentioned to be for someone who's taken that intro course and is like, I don't know where to go next. And that is totally appropriate for someone, you know, if you're that person, totally appropriate for you to join. But if you're someone who's more experienced and wants the continuing ed and you want that. That virtual study club and you want some maybe a little business training and, you know, even though you feel very, very experienced from a skill level, this is still a great place for you. And it's even a great place for the newbies who kind of want to dip their toes in and start to figure out, like, is this something that I should pursue? And I say that because the first two months we went over the evaluation and, like, the main goals of MAYO and treatment planning and referring out. And so even if you are someone who chooses not to treat going forward, those couple months alone are worth going through. So you at least know how to do an evaluation. You at least understand what orofacial myofunctional therapy is. Like I said, Angie's gonna do a crash course in orofacial myofunctional therapy. Oh, my gosh. Tongue twister. And so we're gonna have a really great call with or training webinar with Angie in September, and you're gonna get some great information on orofacial myology, especially if you're a newbie to the space. So like I said, everybody is welcome. We would absolutely love to have you. If you have any questions, feel free to email them to supporteedthepedes.com and we will definitely answer any questions you have. But also make sure that you're in our free Facebook group because we are going to do a live Q and A this week. I have yet to schedule the date and time for that, but we will announce it in our Facebook group. So make sure that you go to facebook.com groups myomembership and that one is where you can access the free it's called the MYO membership. I want to uplevel my MYO skills I think is the name of it. But we'll put all of these links in the show Notes. We'll also put that all of these links on the website page so that if you click through to the untethered podcast.com and go to this episode it'll be these links will be right there for you to the Facebook groups. The free MYOS screener to the MYO membership so you can join. All this info will be there for you if you have questions. Again when this episode goes out. If you're on our Untethered podcast list you can just hit reply and ask away. Or as I mentioned, if you have specific questions, email supportethepedes.com and we'd be more than happy to answer them for you. Alright guys, I hope everyone has a fabulous, fabulous day and we will see you in the MYO membership. Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you want to hear more of these MYO Tots, Airway and Feeding related episodes, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or pledge a small amount on patreon.com forward/the untethered podcast. If you found value, others you know in this space will too. So be sure to share this episode on your social media platforms and join us over on Facebook on my Facebook page @hallebulckin biz on Instagram at Hallebulcken and you can head over to theuntetheredpodcast.com to grab a copy of the Show Notes where you can also subscribe to be kept up to date on the latest podcast episodes.