We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Melissa Miller-Ramirez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Melissa, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to start by getting your thoughts on what you are seeing as some the biggest trends emerging in your industry

In 2017, I started exploring virtual career options as a speech language pathologist in order to cut down on my commute to and from the school I was working with. When I began seeing speech therapy clients virtually, I was unsure of how I would build rapport and if the sessions would be as effective as in person. I quickly realized that most of my students thrived in a virtual speech therapy session and were meeting their goals even quicker than they were in person. With this knowledge, I launched Connect Teletherapy in 2019. Since COVID-19 hit in 2020, teletherapy has quickly become normalized and has changed the way that therapy services are delivered. Connect Teletherapy now provides online therapy services in the area of speech therapy, occupational therapy, mental health counseling, and physical therapy. We work with both schools and directly with families to continue to make therapy services accessible and successful.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Connect Teletherapy is working to make therapy more accessible for children. We provide virtual services for schools and families in the areas of speech therapy, occupational therapy, mental health counseling, and physical therapy. We are continually working towards making therapy services for children accessible and convenient, while removing geographical barriers that make it difficult to find therapists that are qualified and specialize in specific areas of need.

I am the most proud of the fact that we have built a strong network of therapists who share in the mission to delivery exceptional therapy services to children. Our team of therapists collaborate with one another to share knowledge and work towards meeting each client’s therapy goals.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

What started as my biggest insecurity became my biggest asset when it came to managing a team. As a speech language pathologist, I didn’t have experience in hiring, managing a team, and creating a company culture. Rather than mimicking a traditional “boss” mentality, I decided to be myself, relate to everyone as team members, and create a company culture that consisted of positivity, collaboration, and feedback. This has led to a solid team of therapists that feel like they are a part of the mission and it shows in their work.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

When COVID-19 hit, Connect Teletherapy was in a strong position of being an existing teletherapy company that provided online therapy services for schools. While this was an amazing opportunity, it also led to some very challenging experiences. We started working with several new schools and hired many new therapists. I never really considered cash flow when taking on new schools and hiring. Many of our larger schools had pay delays of 1-2 months, while our therapists were being paid bi-weekly. This led to several moments in that first year of the pandemic where barely scraped by with payroll. Thankfully, I ran the business incredibly lean or that alone may have put us out.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.connectteletherapy.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/connect_teletherapy/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/connectteletherapy/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/connect-teletherapy-253934190/