Cindy Jepson's January Project: Get the bones for a very small speech-therapy private practice done.

Hi! I am Cindy Jepson and I live in League City, Texas.  

 The Nora Connection:  We met at CEU (College of Eastern Utah) in the Dorm Freshman year and became fast friends.  In fact, I spent most of my first two years of adulthood with Nora.  This picture was taken after freshman year on our way to our the beautiful Teton Mountains for our summer jobs.  We also lived together when we got back for our second year of school and the following summer we worked together at camp Oak Crest.  Such fond memories! Nora is the kind of friend everyone needs: spontaneous, helpful and supportive, and quick to forgive.  She watched me gain the freshman 25 and didn’t say a word (what? It is 15? Well why be average!) and helped me through way too much self-created boy drama.

Me:  This is my life now and I adore this family of mine.  This summer my husband and I will celebrate 18 years of marriage.  It is crazy how the time flies.           

                                                

Having all girls (ages 15, 13 and 10) is about what you’d expect- high emotion mixed with sweet tender moments.  

Richard, my husband, and I met at college (go Utah State University!).  After he got his bachelors and I got my Masters, we moved to College Station, Texas so he could go to graduate school.  We were off for what I thought was a short span away from my home state and family.  Opportunities and the spirit led elsewhere instead we have had us many adventures across 4 states, lots of towns and a couple countries.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.  

My January Project: My project was to get the bones of a small private practice done for a speech-language therapy practice.  I am a Speech-Language Pathologist.  I have been very grateful for the flexibility that this field has had for me because some years I have worked full-time, some I have worked part-time and many, especially when my kids were small, I didn’t work at all.  The reality that college, marriage, missions and hopefully retirement is around the corner makes me want to be more serious about helping to save.  However, being home when my kids leave for school and get back from school is important to me.  With one in High School, one in Middle School and one in Elementary that doesn’t leave much time for work.  The latest school starts at 9:00 and the earliest school gets out at 2:30.  I decided the best answer for me right now is a small private practice with up to 10 clients. 

I started the project a little late because I wasn’t sure I wanted to share what I was doing with the world, but I decided accountability was good so here I am.  These are the steps I planned:

1. Establish a LLC.  – I decided to use Legalzoom.com (my husband had previously formed a LLC with them)
2. Make a Logo- I planned to have my husband help.  He is artistic and good with a computer 
3. Make a basic website- I planned to form a secondary site from a primary site my husband has. The host site has simple tutorials and templates that make it easy to design one. (More details will be provided in next month's post.)
4. Order business cards

I was on fire and ran with everything.  I decided on the name “Simply Better Speech.”  I did a web search to make sure that no one else seemed to have that name and checked to make sure the domain name was available.  Both were clear so I applied for a LLC under that name.  While that was processing, I got a domain name under “Simply Better Speech.”  My husband already had a primary account so it was inexpensive (around $10 a year) to add a secondary site to it.  Then we designed the logo.   My husband is good with art and the computer so he was able to put my idea on paper.  I think it turned out nice!

 

 So after I got this all done legal zoom contacted me and let me know that my name was similar to another speech company in the greater Houston area “simply speech therapy”  and I could choose to contact them and get permission to use my name or I could choose another name.  Woops! How did I miss that one?  Geographically they aren’t close enough to be competition, but I didn’t want confusion.  After thinking about it for a couple of hours I decided to choose another name that gave more of a geographic region in the name.   It makes more sense anyway because we live in a large city surrounded by lots of other large cities.  

 

The name got approved and now we are in the waiting place.  You know… that awful waiting place and we have learned legal zoom can also not be so zoomy.  It takes several days to do the simplest thing.  I put in a request a week ago for them to resend something that I am supposed to sign.  I have even called about it, but I am still waiting.  My husband had a very different experience.  So this is where I stand with my goal.  WAITING.  Forming the PLLC is the gate keeper to moving forward with the other goals.  

I did go ahead and design a new logo with the new name.  It is very different from the first one above, but I am waiting until next month to share.  Hopefully, I will have much more to share too, but it all depends on how fast- or SLOW the paperwork goes.  If I did it again, I would go with a local legal company to file the PLLC.

If anyone else in my field is interested in forming a private practice this article is a good starting point
Starting a Private Practice.

The project was good for me though to get me started and it is fun to be sharing in all of your journeys too.  Happy goal achieving everyone!! 

Next Month:  Finish January’s Project