We are discussing the biggest challenges that are currently holding back the field of speech language pathology.
We present the issues with facts and invite you to be part of joining our movement to make things better one conversation at a time.
Let's fix SLP
Great welcome back fearless fixers. This is Jeanette. Oh boy. Hey, do we have do we have an episode today? What is even happening? So quick, like TLDR too long didn't read. We've been. We've been around since September. We've grown substantially in the last week and a half. We have been answering at this point, I think 1000s of messages and responding to 1000s of comments. And at last look, we have over 800 emails that we have not been able to open yet. So the question Megan, and I have arrived that right now is where do we go from here? Yeah, what comes next? Where do we go from here? I'm gonna age myself. But if you follow us on social, especially Instagram, I take my job as our music manager very seriously. Though this song, where do we go from here from the movie Aveda with Madonna, again, I am aging myself deeply.
Where do we go from he? This isn't who we intended to be.
like kept coming to mind. But I'm like, that's not really it. But that that's the song that stuck in my head is Madonna singing, Where do we go from here? This isn't where we intended to be. Although this is really cool. So we have a lot we want to talk about today. A lot of things that we do a lot of things that come up. And Megan and I have spent a lot of time kind of brainstorming what needs to happen next. So Megan, do you want to do you want to give everybody a rundown of what you and I have been going through and
and why we're I mean, this is like this is a situation where that phrase like careful what you ask for is like coming to mind. Because I think when we started this like this was what we really wanted was to have a really, really big conversation about the CCC and about a lot of issues in the field. A lot of which tie back to the CCC but and now we're here like we're having a really big conversation and it gets bigger and bigger every day. And I think it's just becoming a little bit more than the two of us can manage. And like I'm operating on about three hours of sleep from working on this last night. And I think between the two of us, we have put about 1000 hours into this project. Since we started it
you know, I don't know I'm fine. All I know is I haven't put my phone down in a week and a half. And I've been going to bed around 1am and getting a you know, early to get my kids to school. So I don't know, I it feels like each. But maybe that.
Yeah, it's I mean, it is a lot of work. And it's a labor of love. And it's something we're both really passionate about. But I think we've been having a lot of conversations about how to make this sustainable, and how to make sure that the future of this conversation doesn't just come down to me and you because you and I are not single handedly going to fix everything. And you and I have blind spots. Like we have ideas, we have solutions, but like it's gonna take all SLPs coming together with all of the perspectives to really solve these issues. And obviously, I think the first and most important step is to embrace our autonomy and get ourselves disentangle from the CCC because not only does that kind of resolve that frustration point for SLPs but it opens the door for all of us to feel empowered, and autonomous and like all of the other issues are much more interesting and much more meaningful to SLPs and if we can get past the CCC, we can really make some huge strides to fix SLP. So I think one thing we want to do do is just let everybody know, like what we know that we don't want to do, or like things that we've kind of crossed off the list as far as what we think fix SLP? Or where we think this conversation should go.
Yeah. And, and we've been trying to create a vision to so we know what we don't want to do. What is it exactly that we want to do? Because I think what we wanted to do, we've already achieved we wanted to start a big conversation about how to fix SLP and could have never imagined and, again, because we're so busy, I'm sitting in a Starbucks right now doing this been running around all morning jobs and kids and all the things. I haven't even looked at our numbers today. But we're probably quickly approaching 45,000 followers. If we're not there yet. I bet we'll be there by tonight. Man, like what a big conversation. So check, we did it. Yeah, should be handed it to us. This was not because of us. So now now we need to think bigger, and we need to dream more. Because in the song that I picked it. How do you breathe without dreams? We can't breathe life into this unless we have dreams, right? So we need we know what we're dreaming of. And even our thoughts and directions are slightly different. But we're not here to serve ourselves. We're here to serve this field as a whole. So yeah, we that's, that's we're gonna start talking about this. So what are some things we don't want to do? Megan, I think we both agree on a couple of things that we know probably where we're not headed.
Yeah, and we'll just touch on some things that have been brought up over and over. And one of them is a union. And this idea of a national union. And we consistently say that that's something that we're not interested in. And if anyone is interested in creating a local union, that's great. Like, that's, that's the power of unions. And also the complexity of them, is they're hyper, hyper local. So they're local to like, state regulation, even local, just to like facility regulations. And there's a lot of ties that kind of end up happening, like the example we keep bringing up is that if you have a union and like an education setting, generally, there's never enough SLPs to form a union and have the negotiating power that the union needs. And so what often happens is SLPs get attached with teachers. And then you're kind of like comparing apples to oranges, and you're trying to negotiate on behalf of teachers and SLPs. And so a common thing that happens is teachers will negotiate for a higher salary if they're certified. And then, because SLPs are in that union, then it becomes that the SLP has to be certified, and then boom, like you're paying, you're stuck paying for the ASHA certification just to prove that you're worthy enough to get a salary. That's good enough. And that's just some of the challenges with unions forming a national union, that's just not something we're interested in, again, because the way that unions work, and the really powerful unions generally do best when they're hyper localized, because there's so many different regulations across different states. And I think the energy that would be put into that would be better spent, just going into the individual regulations and changing those to get Asha in the CCC out of those state regulations. And we're gonna get a lot further with that kind of effort. Their
thing that we are very aware of, is accessibility and money. Really, really good union often cost a decent lot. And that starts to create an accessibility issue for SLPs, who already aren't making enough money. And so, to us, that idea of trying to create this really strong union that is then going to cost more money and costs more money for a long time before any of this is on done, like people are still gonna have to be paying for their state license and the PCC and if, if they're in a state where they need some kind of education certificate or credential like that is just one more payment on top of all the other payments, and we really want to avoid that. And as we get further into this episode, you'll hear we're going to talk about money and the things we've been thinking of and coming up with to try to keep this accessible that isn't going to cost SLP hundreds of dollars. Yeah,
just for an example. My friend is a nurse in Montana and she in order to join her nurse In Union, she has to join the state association. And those annual fees are $753. And so that's just one example of the cost of unions and like, yeah, she probably gets, you know, bang for her buck there. But like Jeannette saying, We, if we don't address the core legislation issues, then you're going to be ending up paying 750 for the Union and 250 for the CCC and your state license and the interstate compact, and all of these things are going to layer up and add up. So we want to take a different approach. Another option that people have been throwing out is creating an alternative National Association. And this one's interesting to me, because I think the reason that membership associations have so much clout and so much like, I don't know, power in our, in our different professions is just because of their historical significance. A lot of these associations have just been around for a really long time. And I just I wonder, as our generations evolve, and how the way we do things evolves, if we're maybe going to move away from national associations, and really hyper focus on state associations and state issues. Or, or associations maybe take on a different role. Like I always think of APTA like they are they their core mission is really advocacy. And they do some of the other things like defining scope of practice. And I don't know, like having the ethics board and some of the more traditional things, but they're really all about advocacy. So one thing I've been thinking a lot about lately is like, Okay, if it's advocacy that we need, do we do we have to be kind of locked in to this sort of older institutional model of advocacy? Or are there different ways that we can do this that we just haven't tried yet? And maybe that there would be a little bit more gritty and a little bit more grassroots and be more inclusive and more accessible than these sort of large historical institutional bureaucratic organizations?
Yeah, and I think I really respect audiologist. And we were having just a legacy audiologists on next week. We are so excited to talk to her
if you want to if you want the T on all thing yeah, getting out.
I, I don't I want to give her age because she told me how old she was. But I don't know. I didn't have basically she's just a badass globally lived.
Yeah, lived enough life and done enough things to be a total badass. Yeah. And she.
She's amazing. So hopefully, we'll get more from her next week. But I look at this model that I audiology has taken on where they have fought Asha, and have been fighting Asha. I don't know, for 30 years, they've come up with alternative associations alternative to an alternative accreditation body, they are still embroiled in lawsuits with ASHA and this crap because it worked out. Because Ash is so powerful and they have so much money. I don't know. Because
I think no, because instead of focusing on the legislation, and getting the CCC out of audiology legislation, because they have the exact same problem we do, they focused on all these alternatives. And so like you can build an alternative, ABC 123. But if the legislation is still there, it doesn't matter. So again, that gets back to like, do we want to be an association, an alternative Association, or do we want to focus on getting the legislation fixed?
Yeah, that's it thing go right there. And, and so yeah, I don't think although I love what they did, I'm on take on NASA. Like I'm here for it. I don't think that's the answer that we all want. I don't think I don't think that none of us want to spend the next 40 years fighting Asha. Right, like let's move this along a little more quickly. Which then leads to the next point, Megan, I think I clicked away. Oh, which is what getting rid of Asha. Should we just get rid of them?
Yeah, first of all, I don't think we can get rid of Asha. This is not an anti Asha movement at all. It's a freedom of choice movement. And I think if SLPs had the freedom of choice They wouldn't support Asha. So Asha can keep Asha Ng, we can, like the power that SLPs have is in having an impact on their budget. And so the smaller the budget they have, then the less influence they can have over SLPs. But it really again comes down to the legislation, they have worked so hard for decades to fight state licensing boards. And then when they when they couldn't fight the state licensing boards anymore, and they saw the writing in the sand writing on the wall, what does that phrase writing on the wall, then they were like, Okay, we're gonna partner with state associations. And we're literally going to write the regulation for them. So all they have to do is copy and paste that they need the CCC and then someone that the state licensing board was smart enough to be like, or equivalent, like they added that little CCC or equivalent language. So now we're just in a hot mess where we have Asha involved in every single piece of legislation. And so I don't think it's about getting rid of Asha, I think it's about getting rid of ashes influence over legislation. And
there are certainly people who don't want to leave Asha, who are going to try to work to change Asheville from within, and we are here for that, too. I think all of these ideas working together is ultimately going to take us all to where we want to be. So there's choice there's autonomy, that you want to be a part of it. Cool. That's great. But there needs to be changed from within to. I don't I mean, yeah, there are some people who love Asha, they speak up on our socials all the time, who want to say that in it exactly how it is. Let them do that. They won't be around. Practice practicing much longer, I don't think but yeah, you know, it, there needs to be changes from within to, that's not going to be our approach. But we do recognize, we need to take away their power that's going to come from taking away some of their money. And then there needs to be warriors from within, holding them accountable, you know, looking at what, what your rights are as members and holding them accountable to that. So actually, to say, I should need three reforms, not or, or really think what they're doing. And then just like ACTA, take a bigger advocacy approach, which keeps circling back to clinicians need advocacy, because we all need advocacy to make these changes. And hopefully, some of that is going to come from access. So we can't have them go away. We didn't even change their role. Just
like an analogy. And a way to think about this is like our profession operates in the United States, which is a democracy. And in a democracy, you have lots of checks and balances of power, or at least that's the that's always the goal, right? Like the President doesn't have all the power, the Supreme Court doesn't have all the power of the Senate doesn't have all the power, the house doesn't have all the power, like we have all these different entities, kind of checking each other in different processes. And right now, ASHA has all the power, like, there's no checks and balances. And we're getting all these comments like, well, am I going to be reported to the ethics board? If I dropped my CCC? Is there going to be some sort of audit? Is somebody going to come after me? Like all this fear
of Asha? It's gonna be on my permanent record. I
was gonna be on my Yeah, like, that is a legit question. Yeah, which, which just speaks to this perception of power. And Asha is not a regulatory body. They do not have power over SLPs. They are part of this checks and balance system that includes SLPs as professionals, consumers that need to speak up about things that SLPs are doing that are not okay. It includes state licensing boards, it includes our state legislators, it includes, you know, like Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, there's so many entities involved in when we work together. That's where things can really blossom and flourish. And that's, I mean, I know there's, if there's any PTS listening to this, I'm sure they're like PT and APTA isn't perfect, but they are a better model for how that works. For example, they have consumers on their board of directors, which Asha does not have Asha mostly has academic SLPs on their board of directors. And so that's how we end up with like, neuro divergent thought being like this crazy thing that SLP is just now beginning to consider because we don't have people with disabilities having a voice in our national association or, you know, interstate associations, or anywhere like there's just there's just needs to be more of a conversation and more of a balance of power across a lot of different spectrums.
Yeah. And so the last thing that we're going to touch on real quick, and maybe we might even transfer this to another section of this talk is a class action lawsuit. Do we want that?
Yeah. And I, I just continue to encourage everyone to go back and listen to episode four, I put a lot of time into researching the history of class action lawsuits, both with ASHA and with other similar organizations in the history of those cases is really not clear cut. And I think when we're in a position where we know we're right, and we feel like we're being wronged and we know that, like, if we could just have a class action lawsuit, that we would get our way and like everybody would see who's right and who's wrong. And the reality is that the justice system in the United States is not that clean. There's a lot of reliance on precedents and the precedents changes, precedent changes over time with different cases. And so in that episode, we talk about some of the cases that have been lost, where I think we as SLPs would look at it and be like, Oh, my God, like that's, that's art. That's the exact same situation. And they did pursue a class action lawsuit, and they lost. And unfortunately, what that means for them is like, kind of game over like, not only have you maxed out your legal options at that point, because now there's a precedent for your specific case, you have also probably spent a huge amount of money in counsel and legal fees, because no matter you know, everybody's like, Oh, you can do it on a contingency basis. But that's not it's, again, it's just not that clear, cut and clean. So you're gonna spend a lot of money, you're gonna destroy all of your relationships, like we continue to be very open to a conversation with Asha. You know, they have not engaged in that invitation at all. But I think when you when you have that antagonistic will, are not antagonistic or antagonistic, angry, sort of, like, vengeful sort of approach. Like, yeah, it feels good, because, like, I think a lot of us are just so frustrated, and so angry, and we want some vindication. But I think the sweetest vindication we will ever experience is knowing that we were part of a movement to remove Asha from state legislation. And ultimately, that's a much faster process. That's a much more affordable process. It's it fits within the legal confines of our system and a very clean cut way. You know, you don't have you're not going to go to a state licensing board or go to your state legislator and be like, we want to get the CCC out of Medicaid or the state licensing board requirements, you're not going to have a judge sitting there. And determining yes or no, and that's a final decision. There's no judge involved, you have, you know, the whole bureaucratic legislative process, which takes time, but ultimately, you you have you stand a much better chance of making that happen, then really kind of a crapshoot class action lawsuit that comes with all of the risks that I just talked about. And again, go check out episode four of the podcast to learn more.
What we're not saying and then you can cut this out. If this doesn't make sense. Or if I say this in a wrong way. We're not saying that there's not a lawsuit. There are definitely things that have been brought to our attention that Megan and I have taken actions on that we haven't even talked about yet publicly, because we have consulted with a lawyer who has said, Keep your mouth shut right now. Right? Like, there may be lawsuits here that we haven't been able to even think about yet. Because we need resources. So the two big words that keep coming up here are advocacy, and resources. clinicians need advocacy and resources to make something happen. Megan and I have started to advocate we see we're right now we're going to talk about some of the successes that we've seen so far. One of the biggest successes is, again, I haven't looked at the numbers. I know for sure. We have over 42,000 followers on Instagram and Facebook. That is a success. I mean, if you we started this platform on September 25 We haven't even been around that long. So I say this is a viral movement, right? I think we can finally claim that like, I remember asking Megan very like the very first week, at what point are we viral? I think this is it. I think we think we approached viral the last week. But that the success, and that's the first step. But that's not the end, going viral is not the goal. making significant changes the goal, but it is the success, that we have so many people next to us now who are ready to partner with us in making this sustainable for advocacy and resources. So what else have we done, Megan,
I'm humble is ablaze with I mean, I have, I just hear like the notifications going off all day long, there's so many conversations going on in there. And again, bumble is our free community resource that you can join, if you go to fix slp.com. And then it's organized by state so you can meet other SLPs in your state. And just a huge shout out to the SLP is in North Carolina, in Michigan. So both of them are working to get the CCC out of Medicaid regulations. And they're both doing it with different approaches. Because they're every state is going to be different. Every process every legislator contact name and information is going to be different. And so like Michigan took an approach of starting a petition. So they're trying to get some numbers, to show legislators that this is not just about SLPs not wanting to pay for a certification, but it's about protecting consumers and ensuring that they have excellent access to a wide range of licensed SLPs. North Carolina is making a huge amount of progress, they got the names and contact information of the people that are kind of in charge of petitioning to change that regulation. And so they've got a lot of people involved doing that. And just what I'm really excited to see is like when we first started having these conversations, I was getting a lot of private messages like oh my god, I'm so glad you're talking about this, like, for one reason or another, like they didn't take a statistics course, or they moved here from another country or whatever. Like they couldn't get the CCC. And they've been living with so much shame and embarrassment and like not wanting to talk about it. And now we're seeing people like proudly say like, I haven't had the CCC for years. And I just I just feel this sort of seismic shift away from living in fear and living like we're just like these quiet little mice that like are lemmings or something that's just like, follow ash around and like do whatever and like, don't think like we just don't, we weren't thinking for ourselves. And now there's this huge shift towards critical thinking to really questioning what is going on here. And my favorite part about it is like, it's not just that we're like, it's not about the rates. I know that Asha had their live event and I wasn't able to be there. But I'm excited to watch the recording, because it sounds like the CEO was basically like, oh, you know, we understand that the $25 increase is a burden. And like, No, it's not about it's not about the $25. It's about being coerced and about being oppressed.
Yeah. And I think we didn't have this on our list. But another big win is that we have seen a huge shift in the language that speech pathologists are using to advocate for themselves. In September, there was zero language it was I hate Asha, they don't get it. But I think maybe arguably, one of the biggest successes out of this platform so far, is giving people the language to say what's wrong. And to say, these are the reasons why I don't want my CCC or these are the reasons why I want change, or these are the reasons why whatever we're start and you know what I think the language is going to keep evolving, more things are going to come up, more issues are going to come to light. And we're going to help form that language as we put it out there in our content, that that people can advocate for themselves a little better now, because we have a universal language that specifically identifies the problems that we're dealing with. I think that's a huge success. I also want to shout out, is it our Arkansas, another when Arkansas had some it wasn't so much their regulations? I think there was an issue with the application or like the regulation said one thing and then Medicaid application said something else. And so they they got together and They had a grassroots campaign and Medicaid has agreed to clean up that language. So it is consistent with what the regulation actually said. So that's a little easier of a win. I, Alaska has something similar going on where the regulation says one thing, but the paperwork has never been cleaned up. We have found a couple instances of that across the US where your state needs to clean stuff up. But because the regulation has already been set to exclude the CCC, that cleanup is going to be a lot easier. So that's another one. So we didn't have our on our list. Oh, and I guess you have increased awareness and knowledge of the facts. I guess I skipped ahead. That is the language. Sorry, I can't, I can't think critically.
mean either. Alright. Today,
we're tired. We're tired? or tired. Okay. So we we know what we don't want to do. We know what we've seen. happen that has gone well. So the next big question that we're really grappling with, is what we see for the future of fix SLP because we have said, we are in this for the long run. This was never a game to us. It was never something that we again, that we wanted to go viral and be rich and famous, like,
the guy on LinkedIn is like, is this just a way to get attention and sell T shirts? Yeah, little girls, this just to get attention. For
this disclosure, we make three to $5 on each t shirt, depending on where you live, because shipping is included. Right? For sure. This is just for attention and $3 from a t shirt. Absolutely. That's why we're doing this. Um, but you know, Megan, and I had to agree, I think beginning are we in it for the long run? Are we consistently going to put out a podcast, you know, when things get hard? When life happens? Are we going to stick with this are we going to keep going and we agreed with each other upfront that this is something we cared enough about to go all in. And I can't wait to share a story with you about how hard I've gone. But I can't talk about that yet, either. But I assure you I am all freaking into this now. Like I like changing decisions have been made.
So it's just like, I just wanted to talk about like, we both have jobs, we both have families, we both have like this, this platform at this point is a full time job that we are doing on top of everything else we're doing, and that's not sustainable. And that's where there's
no finish line at all. Okay,
I was just gonna say that's where we've really just been having a lot of conversations about how can we do this without burning out, fizzling out because that's exactly what Asha is waiting for. And that's what we don't want to have happen.
So you saw me, this is like a great example of how this, how we've been managing it. You saw me, I put a story up maybe a week ago of me with my like little eye patches. And this morning, my husband actually said to me, I've never seen you wear those before. Does this actually do anything for you? But I have been so tired and my eyes, I get back burner eyes. My eyes have been so puffy this morning, I looked like I was punched in the face. And I generally eat anti inflammatory. So I was like, yeah, actually, they still look horrible, but they look better after I take these days off. So like we're in, we're in, we're doing the thing, and we're doing this and it's taking a toll. It's a week and a half of going hard has really I think taken a toll on both of us. And I want to be clear, we're not complaining, this is not a complaint. We're just trying to be very transparent about what this looks like for us. So all of you can help answer the question, where do we go from here? We have ideas. But we don't know for sure. So the first thing Oh, go ahead.
I mean, again, just to be fully transparent with everybody, like we need a revenue stream, because we need a team of people. And we need to grow this and Jeanette and I have a vision of having, you know, like regional type, lobbying efforts and access to resources by state. We want to have a larger team going forward. And to do that, again, we need a revenue source. And so we've talked about like, Okay, do we put information behind the paywall, and that doesn't really feel great to either one of us and it kind of goes against everything that we've done so far. And so I think And the idea that we're most excited about at this point is a sustaining partner program. And so if you find the work that we're doing meaningful, if you want us to keep going, and if you share a vision of building fix SLP into sort of, like, we're not going to be an alternative membership association, that's not what we're doing. I think we've kind of discussed the term of like an advocacy lobbying firm, or I don't know that we have a label yet for what we are.
We came up with that you guys literally 45 minutes ago, baby, but that those words came out of my mouth. Because I, Megan has been in it too. But I've been answering the vast majority of social media comments and questions like I have gotten hard, okay, I, when I say I am in, man, and my hours
and hours and hours and hours and hours, and hours, at
this point, I might be an addict, like, I'm addicted to my phone. My kids don't know me without I mean. So anyway, all of that to say, like, advocacy and resources are the words that keep resounding and I said, this is almost like a firm, we need to hire lawyers and potentially down the road lobbyists. We're we're not a membership club, we're not a membership association, people aren't subscribing and renewing. But like a firm with resources that we can give to people for free, that we will partner with you for free, but not free. Like we just came up with this ourselves because y'all know we're not vegan $500,000 a piece that our clinical jobs like that's not happening, when neither one of us have been given like, we've not we've not what's the word a windfall? Is that what it is when you like this? Like? Is that the word? Where do you get your money from somewhere? Is that though? Yeah. Okay, yeah, we don't have that. Okay, well, you should pay our bill. But but three, because we have the sustaining partners, almost like people who support radio programs, or I don't know, what's, what's the one with the dogs and the cat? A, II E, da? Yeah, yeah. Or, you know, I come from a religious background where people support like, missions overseas and support, you know, like, those kinds of that kind of what we're thinking is that we have these sustaining partners, who give you a little bit of month, there are a lot of machines that make it possible for us to do these things for state and region. And, and big hospital systems and big school districts. And, you know, these are all dreams. But we can't fly without wings, we need the resources. And we can't breathe without dreams, right? So we need to dream together. And then we need the resources. So we can why and make this happen. Because we're super motivated.
And I can see that going away. I keep thinking of the phrase, a rising tide lifts all ships, I think I have that right. In. That's how I see this sustaining Partners Program. So like, if you believe in the work we do, but you're not really in a financial situation, that you can support us, you can still benefit from our work because there are SLPs who are in a financial situation to be able to pledge $5 a month, or $10 a month or $20 a month, we're gonna have options. And if, if enough of us are doing that, and if enough of us believe in the cause of fix SLP then we can grow. And we can make sure that we are serving all SLPs. Regardless of if you have the capacity to get past a paywall, like we want to avoid paywalls at all costs. And so
any, and here it is, this is some of you. We're going to we're trying to like, answer the questions before they come. The next question is going to be why don't you become a 501? C three? Yeah, well, I'll tell you why we're not going to become a 501 C three, because I just went through this process last year. Many of you may not have put together or maybe you have or maybe you have no idea and you can hit Google and figure it out. But there was a situation a year ago is a year and a half ago, that seem a year ago, a little over a year ago, where a bunch of our business owners and leaders in the field were challenged legally by another company in the field. And I didn't know any of these women, but I went on social media to get this advocacy you guys in me like the doing this kind of stuff for people is what drives me and that's part of my personality. But I thought this is so wrong that these women who have like, supported our communities and and supported our online platform then and helps people with resources are having to, like look at potentially have a legal battle, just to do what they've been doing. So I did a fundraiser for them and raised multiple 1000s. I just want
to clarify, this is a group of business owners that that publicly voiced concerns about, yes, a certification product that was costing over $8,000. And the marketing language appeared like it was to replace an SLP grad school program. Yeah,
so I didn't know how to spell direct, we wanted to be with that. But the point is that I raised multiple 1000s of dollars. And what I did was, you know, I paid the women who needed the money, but there was, there were some issues. First, I wanted people to be able, who had donated to be able to write off their donation for their taxes, because some people gave up quite a bit of money. So I wanted them to have that ability to do that. The other thing is, I wanted to protect the money. In case someone came after me and tried to sue me for it, but also it's not my money. So I wanted to tie it up in an entity that was separate from me genetics bank account, and my finances because this money wasn't raised. For me, it was raised for legal purposes for speech pathologist. So I, I hired a lawyer and went on a journey to turn this into the med SLP Advocacy Fund to turn it into a 501 C three. And I got letters from the IRS that my lawyer had never seen before, I spent months and months and months, fighting the IRS with very crappy language. Again, I had a lawyer, and I just wasn't winning. And the reason I wasn't going to win, is because when you set up a 501, C, three, you and this may not be the exact word, but the IRS has groups of protected people. So children are protected people. People with disabilities are protected. People, minorities are protected as they all should be. And so it's much easier to get a 501 C three, when your work benefits. Those groups of people like Girl Scout, like Boy Scouts, like, like this was one of the arguments Well, a girl softball league can easily become a 501 C three. And that's because it's children, you can have two groups of softball league one that's all children and follow the same rules and regulations and everything and have adult and the one for children will be approved and the one for adults will not be. And so the situation here is that with 200,000 speech pathologist, some of whom are protected, not all, we aren't doing work for a protected group of people, and the general public in the United States. Even though our work as a speech language pathologist benefits people, the direct work of fixed SLP isn't benefiting those people. And so we will never be approved as a 501 C three, because our work is to directly benefit the speech language pathologists, and we are not a protected group. I hope that makes sense. I hope that wasn't too long winded. But this is exactly why and we don't want to spend the money of our sustaining partners, fighting the IRS for the next two years, trying to become a 501 C three, when we could just do it. The way we envision and maybe down the road, it changes but the way we're starting we would never win.
Well, and yeah, so there's there's the logistical aspect of it. And then I think, too, there's, there's been this sort of I don't know i i personally think it's sort of a misconception. And my friend always likes to say that. IRS is a are not nonprofit is an IRS status. It is not a business model. And I think there's a perception that nonprofit status means that like I don't know, there is the there's this altruism to it and there's no profit being made. And that's just not true. So, you know, everybody's talking about the C suite salaries of the ASHA executives and you know, they're hundreds of 1000s of dollars. I think the CEO has 700 something and then they they get like other bonuses, and it kind of adds up to somewhere around 900,000 a year. And so like, the perception that a nonprofit is somehow better or there's less risk of like, I don't know, individuals taking advantage of it, I just, I don't perceive that as the reality of nonprofits, I think there is the benefit, that donations can be written off. And that's something that we wouldn't be able to accomplish with a 501 C three. But there's so many legal entanglements with nonprofits that we would be spending so much of our time and money trying to manage. And again, because we're not trying to be an alternative Association, which assha is not a 501, C three, it's a 501, C six, like there's just different categories of these nonprofits. And yeah,
we're trying to get a firm. If someone has a better thing, throw it out to us. But as of the last hour, a firm is when we are trying to be an ad, a firm that provides advocacy and resources for free to the clinicians who need it in our field. So we can change the face of speech language pathology, and help people get the things done that they want to do, which include, because we hear you, we're not Asha, we're not shutting you down. You guys want smaller caseload cats? You guys want to get rid of these contract therapy companies who have used the hell out of us, right? You guys want? What was the other thing I said, Megan, when we were talking through it,
I'm sorry. reimbursement rates,
reimbursement rates, right. Those are like the three big things that come up over and over and over again, Megan, and Jeanette can't change that. Fix. SLP can't change that today. But if we can start a firm, where we have more than one lawyer employed, if we can have a firm, where we have step by step resources, where we can partner with you, like, Oh, we did this in California, or we helped, or we partnered with you people in California. And now North Dakota wants to do it, we have the package of like, step by step, these are the general direction that you guys need to go that we can help with, you know, we have the professional connection, we have the people in Congress, I don't know, you guys, the sky's the limit. But we cannot fly without waiting. We have to have resources. To do all of this, we can make social media titles all day long. But we need, we need our time freed up to dedicate to this. And that's going to mean leaving our jobs, or modifying our jobs or changing how we work. So we can dedicate ourselves to this. So you can have the resources because we can't keep staying up all night to fix SLP it's just not gonna happen. You guys know we're gonna burn hours to hotel room, like one of us is gonna post Megan to the hospital for like, what is it when singers and actors end up in the hospital because they're just so tired. There's a word for it,
I don't know that my work today is not
there. My two, I mean, I fell, I'm sorry, selling the t shirt for attention, the three to $5 We're getting off of that, if it's not going to help us create the resources we need. The three to $5 for that was to help pay for the platform that we're hosting our website on now.
Even that three to $5, that's gonna go to paying, you know, my administrative assistant for my company, to process all of those orders. And like, that's the thing that I'm struggling right now is all of the resources that are being pulled away from, you know, my income stream for my company, in order to focus on this. And I think we're both just trying to Yeah, again, just the how can we make this sustainable? How can we ensure that we're here for the long term?
So the idea is we test out just a quick recap, is we thought about doing a course but we don't want to sell you a course. There's so many courses out there. That's a one time thing we'd have to keep producing courses. We're not a course company. This isn't an educational subscription based CEU service. That's not what we're doing here. So we're not creating courses. We thought about a sustainability partnership program where if you are a sustaining partner, we have extra resources, but we don't like that because we want everyone to have access to what we produce for free. We know that we need a lawyer. That's the first thing we need because we do have all these ideas As the you guys, we get so many people messaging us that says, Hey, I've been looking at their finances. What do you think about this? Listen, we need we need a tax attorney. We can't. We can't give an opinion. We are Janette and Megan speech language pathologists, we
don't know that I don't even do my own taxes. Yeah. Right. Like I you,
if you've listened for any length of time, you know that I turned numbers upside down and can add like, so, you know, we need an attorney who very specifically has information on healthcare, specifically, maybe PT, OT, speech, we need it, we do not need your brothers brothers, sisters cousin, to give us pro bono work, we need to hire an attorney. And that is the first thing we would like to do with this, quote, firm. As it is, that might change another out, we might go through and edit this all out before we change the name. But
as of right, that's the other thing that we want to say too, is like, the reason we chose the freeze sustaining partner is this is a partnership with all SLPs. So we are not here to do anything on behalf of SLPs without SLPs. Right. And so, you know, I think as a profession, we've had enough of like somebody else speaking for us, us not being allowed at the table not even being allowed in the room. Not
being allowed to talk on the platform period. Yeah,
yeah. Not heard not being taken seriously. Yeah, so we're not into that model at all. Okay,
so here's where at, here's where we are at right now, we need to start having a conversation, we need to hire a lawyer. And we need, we need to know what we're all dreaming for. So what we're going to do is we are going to open this sustaining Partners Program, we would love to see 5000 People donate a minimum of $5 a month. And what we can commit to you at this point is, if we can do that by June 1, our very first step will be to hire a qualified lawyer, not on contingency, not pro bono, we will hire a qualified lawyer with the ability to do things in multiple states. So that might be a firm, our firm might hire another firm, with people who have passed the bar in multiple states, we need me to partner with legal to start any of that, right. So what we need is 5000, sustaining partners at $5 a month or more, to be able to do that. And what that's going to do, it's going to allow us to hire someone, and it will allow at least one of us to turn this into something that we can spend time on instead of our other jobs might be both of us. But we do need to start answering 800 emails, and neither one of us have the capacity to do that. without dying, and quite honestly, we have talked about hiring an administrative assistant, we in fact, we had the posting ready and we just decided we're going to pull that we're going to slow down a bit, we need to make sure that we have again, the resources to help all of you. So we are asking now that you partner with us to make this happen. We've said from the beginning, Megan and Jeanette cannot fix SLP alone. We are here to walk with you side by side and figure this out. For advocacy. We're here to work with you to try to help provide those resources. But we don't have the resources to do that without you. Yep.
And, again, the minimum is $5 a month. So just pledge it's a total pledge what you can situation. And there is no gatekeeping there's no shame, there's no judgment. It's just like we all know that people can give what they can give. And that's fantastic. And like we said, if we can all pull together, we can all help each other out. And we're all in different positions financially to be able to, to pull that money. But our pledge to you in return is to be excellent stewards of that money and to partner with you to provide the advocacy resources that have been so desperately needed in this field for decades.
You don't have to give up your 50 fee to do that either. We know a lot of you are in a position where you can't or don't want to. But this isn't an either or situation. Again, I said earlier, there are going to be people who remain a national who want to change it from within and so you can do all of it or some of it it or none of it or walk away from us. And that's fine. This isn't an either or that camp, this camp, this is a, we all need resources. We all need advocacy, we need a lawyer, we start here. Kind of you want to jump in
the other thing that we're going to offer, as we've kind of been thinking about how do we continue the conversation? How do we make sure that we're staying engaged, that we're not acting without on behalf of SLPs? Without SLPs? is we're gonna start weekly zoom events. And so Janette and I will both be there, oh, you're smiling. What
are what are we calling?
I feel like you should get to announce it can since you came up with it.
We're gonna call him construction zones? What? Yeah, a little bit, we're gonna have construction zones, construction zone hours on Zoom. Where your voice will be heard, you know, it can be like these town halls that ASHA has been having, but where you're turned off, but that's not everybody. I mean, if 900,000 of you join, perhaps everyone won't be heard in an hour, but it will be a place for your questions to be answered. Because that's another thing that we really, as time goes on, I cannot stay up until 1am, every night answering questions on social media. So what you might see is me responding by saying, hey, check out our resources on our website, or post or join us on our construction zone hours. Here's the link to sign up so you can get your questions answered. Because I personally can't keep going like that. Yeah.
The other thing that we're doing is in the reason I've stayed up so late, is, we're redoing the website. So a lot of the information is going to be more organized, more easily accessible, we're going to have free access to PDF downloads, that it'll be easier to share with employers and colleagues. We're going to have the podcast more organized on there. And access to state regulations really super organized. And so if you sign up for our email list, we promised to send you updates, including invitations to these construction zone hours where you can join us and keep the conversation going.
Yeah, so we're excited. We're excited to see where Let's go. And we're also open to the fact that maybe none of you care. You don't want to partner with us, in which case, we will close the construction zone and checkout. I mean, that is not Yeah, we want to happen.
We want to happen. But we need we need support. And we all have to do this together. And we want to be very transparent that that's going to take a revenue stream. And our goal is to do that as sustainably and ethically and as collaboratively as possible.
Yeah, I'm excited for it. And I am personally here for this meeting. Yep. Wait, there's a question that we need to head off here. What about gift butter?
Oh, yeah. So what is your butter? And
what what's happening to that? What about the people who have given on there so far? What Tell me about that?
Okay, so give butter, it has been our one time donation platform. And so a huge thank you to everyone who has contributed, I think there's a little over $3,000 in that fund. So that is what is helping us cover a lot of our costs to get this website going. We've been paying out of pocket for a lot of things like podcast hosting, and email hosting, and all of the different tools that are involved like zoom accounts and transcription services. Those are all monthly recurring fees for us that we've been paying out of pocket. So that money will go towards just really helping us secure our place as kind of a affirm or like, like whatever we're trying to do. But we are going to shut down the one time donation and then we're going to open up the sustaining Partners Program, which you can find at success lp.com And I'm gonna work really hard to get that website live. By the time this episode goes live. If it's if it hasn't transitioned over it will within the next week, so keep an eye out for that.
Yeah, so thank you for all that. There was. Oh, what I do I did. I talked about that med SLP Advocacy Fund earlier. I want to be completely clear. That fund has absolutely nothing to do with fix FLP there, there were worse The rules as I was trying to turn it into a 501, C three, there's some bilott surrounding it now, and that is completely separate. It has nothing to do with this. It isn't its own account, just so people don't think that I'm using that money to help fund this that there is absolutely no crossover, it is being protected. It is not my money to spend there, you know, there's oversight with that money now. And it does not cross into this. So I didn't say that earlier, when I was talking about the pursuit of the 501 C three, it's completely separate.
Okay, so in summary, we're gonna launch our sustaining partner program, you can support fixed SLP for as little as $5 a month. And in exchange, we will continue to partner with the field and work to establish and advocacy firm and grow our team so that you know, the gaps and advocacy and resources that have been here for so long are going to start to get filled in we're gonna have the tools and resources we need to fix this LP and make this a really great profession to be a part of. I mean, it already is, but we're gonna make it even better.
That's right. All right, here we go, guys. We will see you next week. Thanks for fixing it. Bye
