Launching Online Programs Successfully with Sarah Good OT 066

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About Launching Online Programs in OT

Imagine overcoming imposter syndrome and learning to value your unique skills as a therapist. Sarah, an Occupational Therapist (OT) and mindfulness teacher from Ottawa Ontario, narrates her transformative journey from traditional OT roles to launching her private practice during a global pandemic. This rapid shift to online consultations during the pandemic was one of the pivotal moments in her career. 

Sarah’s journey from overcoming imposter syndrome to becoming a successful OT entrepreneur is a powerful reminder of the importance of valuing one’s skills and building a supportive network. Throughout the episode, Sarah’s passion for integrating mindfulness and nature into her practice is evident. She often incorporates walks into treatment sessions and leads with meditation, bringing a unique approach to occupational therapy.

In this episode, you will learn about the struggles of charging your worth, the importance of creating a supportive network of fellow therapists, the intricacies of implementing online programs, how she gauged interest to achieve successful launches for online programs, and the organizing strategies that helped her balancing this with her client caseloads and personal life.

Sarah breaks down the process of taking her mindfulness-based symptom management curriculum online, from marketing challenges to managing group dynamics and overcoming technical issues. She dispels the myth that online programs should be cheaper and underscores their true value, especially for patients with persistent pain. Whether you’re considering a career shift in occupational therapy or looking for practical strategies to navigate online programs and services, Sarah’s invaluable advice is not to be missed.

Resources

• Sarah’s Facebook Page
• Sarah’s Instagram
• Sarah’s Online Programs
• Teachable
• Jane Software
• Book Do Less, by Kate Northrop

Related episodes

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• From Occupational Therapist to Polish to Prosper and clinic owner with Joan Johnson OT MPH 026
• Working for Corporate Healthcare to Building Your Brand with Brittni Shae OT 009

Bio Sarah Good

Q&A with Sarah Good

What is your desired transformation(s) from this alternative journey?

I can grow my business based on my creative ideas and interests as well as what I see the world needing.

What was at stake if you didn’t take the risk of pursuing your alternative career?

I think the risk was that I could get bored and worn out in my employed position. I needed to be able to be creative.

What is your story behind the first sense of awareness that things weren’t quite right with your rehab career?

I noticed a high number of rehab and nursing colleagues who were experiencing burnout and compassion fatigue.

What was the specific moment you realized your rehab career wasn’t for you? What was your decisive moment to transition to something else?

I’ve actually never doubted that my rehab career was for me! I love being an OT and have not questioned it. I have moved my career in different directions to meet my needs as I’ve grown and developed.

What made you decide to pursue your current career? Why this specific one?

I’ve always wanted to work with helping both people and the planet to be well. I feel that I can do that in my current role. After working as an OT for more than 10 years, I felt that I had a lot to offer clients and wanted more control over the types of clients that I would work with.

What was the biggest frustration or challenge in making your transition from bootstrapping your business up to doing it full-time?

I actually never wanted it to be full-time! I am a family caregiver and a big appeal to this work is that I’m in a leadership position while working part-time.

What do you love most about your new reality?

Variety of online programs, in nature, and in people’s houses; working with 1:1 client groups and other professionals

Transcript of Launching Online Programs in OT

Intro 00:01

Welcome to the Rehab Rebels podcast. Are you a rehab professional ready to transition to an alternative career? Hear inspiring stories from others just like you and learn the best ways to bridge your career gap. This podcast has you covered. Now here’s your host, doctor of physical therapy and podcaster, Tanner Welsh. 

Tanner Welsch 00:21

Welcome back to another Rehab Rebels episode. Today’s guest is Sarah Good. Sarah lives and works in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, as an OT and mindfulness teacher. Both in her personal and professional life, she uses nature and mindfulness meditation to bring calm and joy to each day. She often incorporates a walk into treatment sessions and leads with meditation. She has 20 years of experience as an OT and has been practicing mindfulness for the same length of time. She presents to other OTs in the areas of mindfulness, pain management, women’s health and sleep. 

Sarah Good 01:01

Thank you very much for having me, Tanner. 

Tanner Welsch 01:03

Yeah, excited to dive in here with you. I would like to start with this transition from traditional OT employment to your OT, the start of your OT business. How did all that begin? Can you help us paint a picture there of how it started? 

Sarah Good 01:21

Yeah, so I’ve had a private practice business as an OT for it’ll be 10 years this year. Before that, I worked in a hospital, I worked in a school system and then I worked for a larger private practice, which gave me exposure to the world of private practice, and then, about 10 years ago, I thought it was time to have a little more control over my time and the type of clients that I saw, and as well it aligned with my personal life. My youngest child was starting school full-time. Prior to that I’d worked very part-time. So I moved into private practice, moved around a little bit with different client populations at the beginning, but based on what my skill set is and what the world seemed to need. I primarily work with people with mood issues and persistent pain, and so from that then that’s led to some creativity in terms of different ways to deliver services and so forth. 

Tanner Welsch 02:15

Nice and the delivery of your services is something I want to talk about too. But before we get into that, let’s talk about some of the struggles and pain points that you were having when you were initially starting out the very infant stages of this initial business. Can you help us walk us through a pain point or a struggle and how you overcame that? 

Sarah Good 02:37

I mean, I think the big difference for me of starting my own business is that not only was I working as an occupational therapist, but also by having a business, I was also putting myself out there and asking other people to come and pay for my services or refer other people to my services, and I think that’s different than a business where we’re selling something other than ourselves, right when we’re working as healthcare providers and with the business owners of that, and I felt very vulnerable to me. I’m not sure I was deserving of that or I would then lack confidence in actually sharing my prices with people. I’m probably undercharged Well, I definitely undercharged at the beginning as well because of that. 

Tanner Welsch 03:14

For sure. It sounds like maybe, if I may put a label on it, a little bit of imposter syndrome that many of us face on, even just becoming a traditional OT or a PT or whatever, because right after you get out of school, I don’t know about everybody else, but I didn’t feel completely ready to start seeing patients, you know. So I’m going to refer back to that how did you get through that phase of vulnerability and you know, learning how to charge what you were worth and your value and all that. 

Sarah Good 03:45

Yeah. So I think two things I mean time and starting to have enough client referrals that the number of slots that I wanted to fill in a week were full most weeks. So then it became not, oh, please come be my clients. It became, yeah, this is the kind of person I can help, I can fit you in in this many weeks. So that made it feel like okay, I’m doing stuff that people want and it’s helping people. So that certainly helped. The other thing was finding a group of other therapists to be able to share the journey with and we can all agree that our services are worth this much and we can all agree that this type of client is challenging and problem solve together how we’re going to handle these types of situations that we come up with 100%. 

Tanner Welsch 04:25

I love the network aspect of it. It makes a big deal. So we talked a little bit about some of the struggles in the initial phase of your business as it was growing and evolved. What are some challenges that you faced? I’m going to go ahead and throw COVID out there, because I imagine there was some challenges with that. How did you evolve and grow to get what you’re offering today? 

Sarah Good 04:48

Yeah, certainly COVID, I think, pushed us all to learn and change a little faster. For me, the biggest challenge of that was that the caregiver needs that I had in my personal life and balancing work there I was able to pivot fairly quickly to seeing clients online. When the COVID lockdown happened it was March break for school, so I planned to be off that week and over the course of that week the electronic medical record software that I used rolled out video calls. It was as a beta version, so people who are already subscribers got the video calls so I was able to send an email because I had that system already set up right and it was easy. I had an email list of my clients and I had everybody in these electronic medical records.

05:27

I was able to fairly quickly reach out to people and say things are changing and in Ontario we weren’t allowed to see clients in person. So if you had an appointment with me it’ll be online. You know, if online doesn’t work it’ll be by telephone. So that was a fairly quick pivot and I didn’t get a drop of claims or drop of income during that time as well. The services that I was able to offer, because I think it’s normalized now to see therapists online. I can see people throughout Ontario, which is the area I’m regulated in, which is a huge geographical area. But before I was only seeing people in Ottawa. I was primarily seeing people in their homes in Ottawa. So I was traveling to their homes a lot, so I was no longer spending much time traveling and I was able to see people in a broader area and I mean, some of that bounced back a little bit. Now I do like seeing people in their homes and I like seeing people outdoors. 

06:15

But there’s still the opportunity if somebody wants my services and they’re in another part of Ontario, or they prefer online, or they’re paying out of pocket and they don’t want to pay for my travel time. 

Tanner Welsch 06:26

That’s great. It allows another layer of convenience for the patient, another option for you to still be able to see them without the burden of travel, and things like that. Okay, so what are all the services that you’re currently offering? We talked a little bit about, I think, telehealth and in-person home visits. 

Sarah Good 06:44

Yeah, so I probably like variety a little too much, but that keeps things interesting. It’s probably a bit of an outlet for my creativity to offer different things. So it’s maybe not the best business sense, but my primary offerings are I see clients either in their homes or in the community, and I see clients online. So that’s, as I mentioned in the beginning, primarily people with mood issues or with persistent pain. So I see a lot of first responders younger veterans. Because I’m in Ottawa, I see a good number of federal government employees that are struggling with burnout. I also see physicians who are off for burnout or for long. 

07:17

Covid I do infuse, in various ways, depending on the clients, mindfulness into my individual client appointments, but I also teach a program, and that’s a program Mindfulness-Based Symptom Management which was designed and researched at the Ottawa Mindfulness Clinic, and so I trained to be an instructor about 10 years ago. I trained to be an instructor there. I taught there. They closed their doors in 2020. 

07:39

With COVID, it wasn’t cost-effective. The two psychologists that run it were nearing retirement, so I teach that as an online offering now, so that’s allowed me to reach people all over Ontario. It’s an eight-week program where we meet once a week. Then I’ve just finished having two occupational therapy students with me for the last seven weeks to put all this together. But this spring I’m starting a nature-based therapy group and that’s primarily for people who are living with mood issues, targeting primarily people with post-traumatic stress disorder. So that’s going to be a six-week group where we meet once a week for two hours in a large urban park. So it feels fairly nature-y. So those are my primary client offerings, and then I have other offerings for other therapists as well. 

Tanner Welsch 08:21

For sure. So that’s for your clients. And then don’t you also teach therapists how to incorporate mindfulness in their practices with their patients, and stuff too? 

Sarah Good 08:30

That was another creative outlet for me in 2020. And it’s continued and grown and evolved and changed. But I run a course, the Mindful OT Mastery Program. It’s a course and it’s coaching and community support. Initially I targeted just for OTs. I’ve had a variety of other allied health professionals take it physiotherapists, social workers and then, following that, I have a community of practice that people can join as a membership program after they finish that program, and then I have a variety of one-off masterclasses that have been done on different topics that people have signed up for as well. So a variety of different ways some bigger, some smaller for therapists to learn to use MindPulse themselves as a tool to avoid burnout and also bring it to their clients. 

Tanner Welsch 09:13

For sure. It sounds like there’s more of a virtual course content that you offer and that would be more towards the rehab professionals and that community and incorporating that within their practice and learning it themselves, and then more of the in-person group things, the nature groups and things like that. Is there any online stuff, course content or work with the nature program that you’re talking about for patients like with PTSD? 

Sarah Good 09:39

The program that I’m doing, the nature program, is entirely. We’re meeting once a week in nature and then there are the different handouts and worksheets that optionally that I’ll give people each week to do. But I have learned through my work that giving people a lot of you know homework or modules that they need to watch between sessions it can be challenging. People come and half the people have done it and half haven’t, and so forth, so it really is an in-person endeavor. I’m hoping later on to find a way to share that with more therapists after I’ve run it several times myself and worked the kinks out. So then I’ll do an online, more of a virtual offering for other therapists to share the curriculum that we’ve developed and so forth. But for right now the nature-based one is entirely for people who are in Ottawa or willing to drive to Ottawa in person. 

Tanner Welsch 10:23

Nature-based one is entirely for people who are in Ottawa or willing to drive to Ottawa in person. Cool, Can you walk us through? You know how these additional services started for you and then how you started implementing them, Like the very first one. You can even talk about whether it’s a virtual online offering for the specific patient population you talk about and would love to dive a little bit deeper into what are some pain points that you had and how did you overcome those? Because it’s pretty clear you’ve got some experience with this because things have been built out for a while. So I want to try to go back to how did all this get started and what were some struggles that you had to share with others maybe who want to create something similar, like a similar offering, as well. 

Sarah Good 11:01

Yeah. So I’ll give two different examples for two different programs. So the first one would be the mindfulness-based symptom management curriculum well-established, well-researched curriculum which I was trained in. In terms of offering that as an online offering, I didn’t need to sort out the curriculum. I didn’t need to figure out what’s going to go, what week it’s set up and it was initially designed to be two hours each week in person. So it’s a fairly straightforward curriculum. So adapting that to online didn’t take a lot of development time or a lot of work. 

11:31

When I first offered it to clients, I think it was January 2021. So the offering of that wasn’t such a challenge, but getting the word out was more challenging. When I’m offering client groups, they’re small group situations. I’m not trying to have huge numbers. I aim for sort of six to 10 in a client group, so there’s enough different people and you know if two people are away one week, you’re not sitting there with one person or something like that, but also small enough that if everybody wants to answer a particular question that I put out, there’s enough time for that to happen, right. So that was then spreading the word, putting it out there on my mailing list and setting up calls to talk to clients who wanted to sign up, and getting some people that I see their services are paid for by third party. So then talking to the third party payers and getting that approved for them, so explaining a bit more about what it is. 

12:15

And, interestingly, there was a bit of a misnomer that if it’s offered online it should cost less than in person. At the time I think we’ve moved a little bit past that now. In fact, even my supervisor said no, we’re going to. You know you should charge less for this, it’s online. So I did the first time. Then I thought well, hold on, I’m not sure this is worth less to the clients. In fact, given that this particular group is targeting people with persistent pain, they don’t need to go anywhere. 

12:38

The first time I offered it, there was almost zero absenteeism from the program and normally in a group in person for people with persistent pain, there’s people who are away every week. Somebody’s got a medical appointment or somebody’s joints were just too stiff to get their shoes on that day. There’s all kinds of reasons. People don’t show up or the driving’s not good. I mean, you live in a place with a lot of snow, so I wouldn’t even normally offer that group in the winter. So I say I ended up learning a lot of good things. I do teach it with another person each time and I’ve been fortunate that I haven’t had to hire other people to teach it with me. There’s usually somebody who’s training to be certified to teach the program, but some learning they’re involved in Every time. 

13:16

People have trouble logging in. Somebody has trouble logging in Even a week, six of eight weeks of the course. One person needs to lead the opening meditation, somebody else needs to just be there with a cell phone and everyone’s phone numbers texting back and forth. Okay, your camera’s not working. Have you turned off any other apps that might’ve kept me? It’s like a lot of that tech support I felt I had to do. Those are probably the biggest challenge. People are not expecting to pay as much if it’s online and still tech support. And then just reaching out. When the Ottawa Mindfulness Clinic, which had a very good reputation in Ottawa, closed, letting people know well, this program is still being offered. Here’s how it’s offered. 

Tanner Welsch 13:48

Awesome. What was the platform? Or you know, things that come to mind are like Slack or Circle or even just YouTube, to getting like video content. What platforms did you use for this online service that you were offering patients? 

Sarah Good 14:04

I do use in terms of software. I use Teachable for the programs that I’m offering to other occupational therapists and other therapists. Generally, I use Jane as my electronic medical records, and the first time I taught the mindfulness program for patients, I put all the handouts on Teachable and then people got totally confused. They had links to Teachable where the handouts were, and then they had links to Jane. It was just too much. So I have learned that actually there should be one software for any program, whether it’s for therapists or for patients. 

14:31

So what I do is I mean, when I say it’s an online program, the Mindfulness for Symptom Management, it’s a live online program, right? So we’re meeting for two hours. You know everyone’s coming into a meeting space. I’m not sharing video content outside of that. Clients are at the meeting, so if they miss it, they miss it. There’s no recording of the session because of patient confidentiality. There are handouts, so what I do is I put those in everyone’s electronic medical record and share it with them through that, so that they really only have one platform that they are using from their end. So I’ve simplified that. 

15:01

So, really, in terms of what patients see, they need to show up onto a link for a call which is sent to them by email and they need to log into their Jane account for any handouts. Again, there’s email sent to them and they need to push on it, send them to their Jane account. 

Tanner Welsch 15:17

Cool. I love you sharing that, because we’re so used to using technology platforms so we may not consider some patients or our clients or customers not being familiar with whatever it is we’re using and then it can get overwhelming very quickly and I really appreciate that insight to really try to streamline and keep everything in one platform if possible to deliver the service and or product that you’re delivering. 

Sarah Good 15:44

So the other program I was going to tell you about the development of was the program for therapists, and so that one I in the summer of 2020, I wanted to offer something to therapists. So I did develop it based on the eight-week program of mindfulness for symptom management, and I adapted it quite a bit so that it met the needs of therapists. By each week’s module would have something on practice for ourselves, but then also a part on okay, how could you take this particular principle of it to your patient population? There’s ways to adapt it to the different populations. And so then I reached out to various therapist groups on Facebook and said would people be interested in coming to a webinar on what mindfulness is and how to be used in therapy? And I had a whole ton of people sign up for my mailing list that way, because everyone was interested in this. So then I had a mailing list and from that mailing list, I offered the program, and I think that I hit a really good timing on that one, because I launched it the first time in September 2020. And I put the price fairly low, but I didn’t create the whole program. I sold it with the okay sign up. Here’s the window of sign up and some dates in August and the program will be dripped out one week at a time, starting September 15th or something like this. 

16:56

And I had a whole ton of people. I had 30 people sign up right away. So that was really exciting. And then I knew, okay, I’ve got enough people that it’s worth my while to make this. So then I had video content and handouts and those I use Teachable for that. And the way that program worked is, I say, drip out one week’s content every week and then there’d be a group call every week which I would record and put up there as well. That then remained up there. Yeah, Then I’ve evolved and changed the program in different that’s cool. 

Tanner Welsch 17:24

Can you remember any challenges that you were having with creating really any phase of this, for trying to get basically a online course trialed to see if there’s really like enough interest, enough people, and then also to deliver on the content of the course? It sounds really simple, right, but there’s really a lot of steps, start to finish, to actually execute this, and I really like how you were able to gauge the interest by taking advantage of the Facebook groups, reaching out to see who is interested and then offering a webinar and get people on your email list. So it all, as we’re talking about it and, as you know, being on the other side. Okay, this is what I did, this is what made sense, but is there something that, throughout that process, that was just really a struggle and you obviously overcame it, but how did you overcome whatever that was at the time to finish this final product that you ended up with? 

Sarah Good 18:22

Yeah, I think it took me a bit to come to that product. I’d actually, just before COVID, I’d gotten myself together to offer an in-person group for women in midlife sleep difficulties and I had the pamphlets all done and it was all set up and at the time that didn’t pivot to online. It wasn’t like this was the first idea that I came up with of a program, but it was certainly the first thing that I’d offered as part of my business, whether to patients or clients or to other therapists that was, to more than one person. So I was really very pleased that that many people signed up right away and I had put myself in a good position here of if two people had signed up, I could have refunded them the money and not done it. I mean, I didn’t need to do it because I got a few hundred dollars from two people. 

19:00

But once I got enough people, I’d say one of the challenges was I’d really committed myself to putting out a pretty significant amount of content every week. It took me about a day a week to do that for those eight weeks. Now I don’t carry a full-time client caseload, partly because I like to do these other things as well. So I do anticipate having time for other parts of my business, and at the time I had one kid at that point still at all so I was balancing out her schooling as well as all the teaching and seeing clients. So it was certainly a fairly involved busy time, but it was also something that I think it really was my creative outlet during that time and so that was helpful for me. It was inspiring to me to pull this together and to get to know all these occupational therapists from all over the world who signed up for this. 

Tanner Welsch 19:45

That’s something I really enjoy about Rehab Rebels is, too is just really meeting all the really interesting, unique, driven people. It’s just really cool. Follow-up question that I had for you is how do you keep yourself organized? I mean, you’ve you mentioned you got basically you’re juggling a lot of things and have, throughout a lot of your OT career, a lot of multiple things at once. What are some practices? Or I don’t know if you use any applications, or basically, how are you able to manage this successfully and dedicate the right amount of time at the right day to get done what you need to get done? 

Sarah Good 20:16

Yeah, I mean, that’s something we all work on, but certainly I do do a fair bit of organizational things to manage that. One of the things that I find really changes the week for me is I take time every Monday morning to plan the week, and by that I hone in. I’m inspired by Kate Northrup’s book Do Less when am I at physically, where am I at mentally, emotionally, where is sort of my world at this week in terms of things outside of me? Then reflect on what are my top priorities for the week. I actually use a notebook and I fold pages right in half so that there’s one side of the list is my to-do list and one side is the universe’s to-do list. So on my side, it’s not everything I need to do, and I use this strategy with clients too, because I find to-do lists can be very overwhelming for a lot of us, me included, and if I write down everything I need to do, this’s a lot, whether it’s work stuff, it’s managing household, parenting, extended family stuff, whatever else, right, and so I put down my top five things. Okay, what really needs to happen? And in my mind I try to do three of them professional and two of them personal that are just these essentially need to get done this week, and if I have a lot of personal ones, then there’s less work ones, or vice versa, a lot of work ones should be less personal. So that’s the left side of the page, it’s my top things, and then the right side of the page is things that need to get done, but they’re actually outside of my sphere of influence right now. So if I’m hoping for the weather to be good for a particular thing or I’m hoping that somebody gets back to me on something, which doesn’t mean it’s gone from my responsibility forever I mean, if it doesn’t happen, it may end up back on my priority list, but right now I’m perking it there as okay. I’m just hoping that with a week’s time this will get moved along. So I think that’s probably my biggest thing that I use. 

22:02

And then I use Google Calendar to organize myself, and if there’s small tasks, I put them on the task list or put them in Google Calendar. I try not to have too many things on the task list. Though there’s a lot of tasks, I try to block off time in the calendar for them. So this week I want to do some fixing, redesigning my website. So I’ve blocked in three hours of time in my calendar to do that, rather than just dropping it as a to-do list thing, because then it just becomes something stressful that I can’t really fit into my week. So trying to put things in my calendar backing up a bit from that. 

22:31

I do do annual planning and quarterly planning and as part of my quarterly planning I actually have thoughts of what groups am I offering, what free products am I putting out this spring, and then what are the tasks that need to happen to make those the reality. And I pop those into different weeks on the quarterly plan. So when I started my Monday morning planning this week, I wasn’t just thinking, well, what do I want to do. I look back at my quarterly plan and saw, okay, here’s the things. 

Tanner Welsch 22:57

I love all that. That’s brilliant. It’s lovely. The universal list I got a question Is this something that’s things out of our control but we’re being mindful and aware or observant of it, to keep track of it, I guess. Or am I completely off there with how to define what goes on the universal list? 

Sarah Good 23:16

It can be that for sure. It can also be things like Lester couldn’t eclipse, so I could put on there oh, I hope there’s clear weather for the eclipse, so it can be things that really nobody’s going to do anything about, but things I’m hoping. But also, yes, things are out of. I don’t want them front and center in my mind of I need to do this this week, but they still matter to me. So the things that somebody else has said they’ll do and I’m putting it there because that other person is part of the universe and they’ll get back to me on it. But if they don’t and it stays there on the universe’s to-do list at the end of the week I need to think about okay, am I getting back to them on that, or is it good to just stay on the universe’s to-do list for a month? I start with a fresh list every week too, so I look back at the weeks before and see what needs to move forward, but I don’t just keep adding to it. But I mean, some of this might be my processes have changed over time. 

23:58

When I started my work, I worked, I worked at the hospital and I worked a physiotherapy partner and we would just start the day every morning with, okay, who are the new patients, what are the priorities? And the two of us would either say which ones do we need to go see together so we could, you know, both transfer or people in palliative care. If they could just answer the question once and both of us could hear the answer, that was obviously far better than both of us going and bombarding them with the same on a daily basis. So in that work it was really hard to predict and so weekly planning wasn’t as realistic for me. But it was key for me to start the day with, okay, what do I need to do? And check in with my physiotherapy partner and see what can we do together. So having some time in one’s life whether it’s weekly or daily, depending on how fast paced the work is it’s helped me a lot. 

Tanner Welsch 24:44

For sure, absolutely. What is maybe something that’s obvious to you now that you have struggled with, you know, in the past on this business career journey that you’re on, and then I’m going to ask how did you get over that? 

Sarah Good 24:57

Yeah, yeah, I mean what I’ve mentioned is charging enough for my services, and I think that’s been asking others, looking at other professions that are often offering comparable things and seeing what they’re charging and it’s usually more, even non-regulated health professionals as I’m charging a lot more. The other thing I’ve struggled with is saying no to all the different opportunities. I mentioned at the beginning that I do really like variety, and so if somebody comes along and says, oh, would you help edit a chapter for this book? Or oh, would you come be a guest speaker? At this I used to just say yes to everything. Oh, this is so exciting, I want my input. And now I started saying, well, hold on a minute, it’s an exciting thing, but go back to my quarterly plan. What’s my gist here? What’s my overall direction? I want to be going. This may be an unexpected opportunity that’s actually taking me in the direction of that quarterly plan, or it might be a complete sidetrack, in which case the answer is no and I feel bad saying no. 

25:50

I had a long-term client who’s doing well and he’s discharged, but he’s helping organize a mental health symposium at his church, and his church reached out to me and asked if I would come speak and first I was quite tempted. Then I realized the church isn’t actually in Ottawa, it’s in the periphery of Ottawa but it’d take me 45 minutes to drive each way. And they wanted to do it on a weeknight evening, which is not my best time to shine. And I realized that I’m not that close geographically to these people. If they actually want an occupational therapist, I’m not going to be their go-to. There’s probably somebody closer that they could grab. But still I did feel bad saying no. It’s a hard one to keep to say yes to all of it. 

Tanner Welsch 26:25

Absolutely. The airtime is really valuable. What do you want people to know? What do you hope people know? Learn and understand from your career and your business journey and your story. 

Sarah Good 26:37

I think one important thing I hope people learn, especially people who are just entering the profession, is that in allied health professions generally, and certainly in OT in particular, there’s a lot of ways we can vary our profession. I think sometimes people work in one particular area and I’ve never worked out on that area and sometimes people stay in it for a very long time after they’re pretty worn out from that area. I have friends who stayed in areas very long times before they realized they could move, and so I think one message there is realize that there’s huge variety and you don’t need to go back to school for years If you are one of the professions that your podcast caters to. There’s all of them. There is a whole lot that you can explore and change the population you work with. Maybe take a little bit of professional development and be able to offer some different modalities or offer it privately or for some people, billable hours and hourly rates really stress them out, in which case find a job with a clear salary, right. So there’s a whole bunch of varieties and we are really fortunate to be in professions that I think you can move around and shift, and I’ve certainly really enjoyed that and even having a private practice. I mean, I graduated in 2002 and, you know, worked a number of jobs between 2002 and 2014. 

27:54

But even since 2014, what I offer in terms of my private practice has changed right, so it’s not like it’s just one job, that I’ve been doing the same thing for 10 years, day in and day out, and that might be the right thing for some people, but it wouldn’t be for me. So, then, that’s one, and the other is really finding things that help you decompress, either during the workday or at the end of the workday, whether it’s exercise or time outdoors or meditation or playing music or art. But that’s not optional when we’re in caring professions. We need some way to work our way through the stress tunnel of we are with people in pain in our work mental pain, emotional pain, physical pain. When we’re carrying that all day. It’s not the same as somebody comes home from work and something where they haven’t been carrying that all day. So I think it’s important to really give ourselves permission to do the things we need to do to take care of ourselves and not hold on to that for too long. 

Tanner Welsch 28:44

Absolutely. What is a question you wish you were asked more? 

Sarah Good 28:48

hold on to that for too long, absolutely. What is a question you wish you were asked more? Ah, that’s a good question. So I’m wondering here if we’re thinking about generally people who want to know more about my work out in the world, or other therapists. Yes, I’ll go with other people. People make a lot of assumptions about what the work is that I do, so I guess the question would be nice to be asked more is what, not what is occupational therapy, because that’s going to be quite broad, but what is my role? How do I work with people? I do think people who I meet outside of my professional spheres do make assumptions, and people are often surprised about the role that OT plays in mental health and well-being for instance. 

Tanner Welsch 29:28

So, yeah, it’d be interesting for people to ask me more about what goes on in day-to-day work that I do. So if I was curious and just wanted to know what you did and what your role was, because, you’re right, the OT I mean all the rehab professionals, I think just, unfortunately, the marketing and the general population is just, for whatever reason, there’s a big disconnect, you know, with PT. They’re always oh, you give massages or like just some real basic assumptions. That’s not exactly what we do or all we do, you know. So I would love to hear from you how do you describe because you do a lot of things too how do you describe to somebody that really has no idea what your role is as an occupational therapist? 

Sarah Good 30:03

So, as an occupational therapist, I’m interested in all 24 hours of people’s lives, so it’s not just their workday. I’m also interested in their sleep, their leisure, their taking care of their house, taking care of their pets, their kids themselves, people in the context of living with persistent pain or mood issues, and how those issues make it a challenge for them to do what they need to do and want to do in their day-to-day lives, and helping them find ways to bring more meaning and productivity into their lives. 

Tanner Welsch 30:33

Perfect A plus. 

Sarah Good 30:35

It also surprises people that we don’t just work with people on the return to work. Right yeah, there’s so much. 

Tanner Welsch 30:40

Just I don’t know. It’s mind-blowing that people know what a pharmacist does and a doctor and a nurse or a dentist. You know, these other professions are pretty clear about the role and the services that they offer, but for the rehab profession it’s just not there. What do you think? 

Sarah Good 30:56

Well, I mean, I think in most people’s day-to-day lives, I’ll stick with occupational therapy here for the one I know the best, but I think most of what I’m saying is probably applicable to the other rehab professions as well. We don’t actually come across an occupational therapist in our day-to-day life like we do a dentist, right. So most of us go to the dentist, say, twice a year Our whole lives, from when we’re born. We go to the doctor, we take our kids to the doctor, we take our parents to the doctor, right? We? We know what the doctor does roughly, whereas an occupational therapist you don’t come across until you’re actually going through one of the toughest times of your life or you have a family member going through one of the toughest times in their life. 

31:29

Things are really challenging before people get referred to an occupational therapist because there’s a real breakdown. It’s not just oh, I’ve got this sore tooth or I’ve got this rash or I’ve got stomach pains, I’m not able to do the basic things I need to do in my life, or my life is really void of meaning and productive activities because of what’s going on in my health. And I think people are slow to refer to occupational therapists. Even I was at an information session for health professionals that work with first responders and the psychologist said well, I don’t refer to OTs too early because you know people aren’t always ready for exposure therapy right away. And I think hold on a minute we do a whole lot more than exposure therapy, you know. So if people are stuck in bed all day because of their mental health, I’m going to be there helping them figure out how to put one foot in front of the other and get out of bed, and I’ll come into their house and help them get breakfast out and get them brushing their teeth once a week. 

32:23

This is pretty basic that we can start with, but I think that the perception as well because OTs do so much is if you’re a psychologist and you refer to an OT for exposure therapy, that’s what you think they do. If you sell wheelchairs and OTs come in to help prescribe wheelchairs, you think that’s all OTs do. If your mother gets a reacher after her hip replacement, you think that’s all OTs do. People tend to think they’re one experience with an OT and that’s exactly what OTs all OTs do. I People tend to think their one experience with an OT. 

Tanner Welsch 32:42

That’s exactly what all OTs do. I love that. I think that’s perfect because I think that applies really to all the rehab professions and I think you nailed it. Yeah, Sarah, this has been great. I’m going to put down in the show notes links to your website, what you offer social, all that fun stuff and really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing a little bit about you and your, your business and career journey. 

Sarah Good 33:07

Thank you very much for having me. It’s been a lovely conversation, nice chatting with you. Enjoy listening to your podcast. Honored to be part of it. 

Outro 33:14

Thank you for listening to the Rehab Rebels podcast. If this podcast was useful, make sure to hit that subscribe button and leave a review. For more information about transitioning to alternative careers, head to rehabrebelsorg or follow us on Instagram at Rehab Rebels podcast. We’ll see you next time.

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