We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Robin Fapp a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Robin , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about how you went about setting up your own practice and if you have any advice for professionals who might be considering starting their own?

I began this journey of becoming a orofacial Myofunctional therapist in late 2021. There were many things that happened to bring me to this point, most notably the birth of my grandson Josiah in 2017 and the struggles he has had and my inability to keep practicing dental hygiene due to physical problems. I was 57 years old and realized that I had to pivot my career, which felt really crazy. In fact, during this whole journey I’ve kept asking myself if I was crazy to start my own business at this age. Most of my friends and peers thought I should just retire but I wasn’t ready to do that. I heard about Myofunctional therapy when I was taking a continuing education course for my RDH license. What I learned in that overview class tied right into what my grandson was struggling with in his life. So, I began to take courses in Myofunctional Therapy. To date I’ve taken many courses as I pursue the field of OMT. So, that was the first step, education. My boss at the time let me start seeing a few patients in his office as well as staff and I found an OMT about an hour from where I live and began to shadow her. As I got my feet wet, I realized that I wanted to practice OMT on my own, in my own place. I wanted to be my own boss. In order to do that I began the process of getting my LLC, meeting with my accountant, establishing my website and applying for all the necessary documents and licenses that I needed. I was still working as a RDH in the dental office and trying to establish myself as a business owner.
And while I knew I was doing something hard, my motto was “one step in front of the other, just keep going “. I had a lot of guidance and help along the way. I do believe my willingness to take a risk, work hard, ask for help and my faith were probably keys to my success. What would I do differently? Nothing! I did it and I’m still doing it!
Advice for anyone starting their own business would be to:
1. Get your website up and running-people need to be able to find you
2. Establish social media accounts
3. Seek advice from someone in the field you are pursuing
4. Seek advice from a successful business owner
5. Be willing to fail
6. Be willing to put yourself out there
7. Say yes to everything as in speaking to groups, joining groups like professional organizations and city chambers
8. Go to fundraisers or help those less fortunate; donate a service from your business
9. Don’t be shy about telling people about your business, give your business cards out
10. Seek referrals-think outside the box on this one. For instance, I would normally seek referrals from dentists and orthodontists but I wanted to widen my referral scope so I’ve reached out to chiropractors, cranial sacral therapists, acupuncturists, OTs, PTs, osteopaths, NDs, functional medicine doctors, ENTs

Robin , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Robin Fapp and I’ve been a registered dental hygienist for 37 years and an orofacial myofunctional therapist for two and a half years. My father is a dentist and I followed in his footsteps. I got into the field of OMT because of my grandson. He is my “why”. When he was born he struggled with breastfeeding and ended up in the hospital with failure to thrive. It was a very traumatic time for our family. My daughter sought help from lactation services with feeding him but nothing really helped. It was during this time that I tried to figure out what was wrong. He ended up having multiple mouth ties; tongue, lip and cheek ties but nobody, including the lactation nurses, figured this out. I had learned about ties in hygiene school but it was really only how to recognize them, not how they could create a problem for a person and what to do about it. Once I realized what we were dealing with and how Myofunctional Therapy could help I started educating myself in the field of Myofunctional Therapy. OMT covers a range of orofacial dysfunction including ties, TMJ pain caused by dysfunction, orthodontic relapse, mouth breathing, tongue thrust, open bites, snoring, sleep disordered breathing, thumb and pacifier sucking, oral habits.
I’m really proud of myself in stepping out of the mainstream workplace and becoming an entrepreneur. I love working with people and families but most of all I love helping people get better and improve their life and health. I love watching kids and adults breathe and sleep better, change their bad habits and get out of pain.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I’m somewhat of an introvert. I often stay silent and don’t speak up about things because I don’t want to engage. Owning my own business has made me step out of that mindset. I need to speak up and out about many different issues that affect my patients. I have to be an advocate for them with other health professionals and I advocate for them when they are unable to advocate for themselves.
It’s been good for me to push myself in this area. I think I would have grown stagnant in my old age if not lol!

Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?

If I could go back I would choose to be a RDH but I would have become an Orofacial Myofunctional Therapist much sooner!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.myotherapycc.com
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• Facebook: Myotherapycc

Image Credits

Rich Kirby