Thank You From Lotus Speech & Wellness

Over a year ago, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Caitlin and I decided to start a private speech therapy practice. This past year has been full of challenges, both exciting and frustrating, as we started a business from square one. Caitlin and I have an amazing partnership, but we could not have done this alone. We are so grateful for all of the support we’ve had from so many people and organizations as we developed Lotus Speech & Wellness. As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, we wanted to take this opportunity to publicly thank and acknowledge, in no particular order, some of the many people and organizations who helped our dream become a reality. And if you are an SLP reading this who has been on the fence about starting your own private speech therapy practice, maybe some of these people and/or organizations may help!

We are grateful for these organizations who’ve supported our business

• Rhizome Marketing designed our beautiful logo. Kate Thomas thoughtfully integrated the key concepts of our business to create our iconic design with its soothing color. Truly, having a logo felt like the first big step to making Lotus Speech & Wellness feel real! Thank you Kate!
• CEI Women’s Business Center is a “home for women who want to start or grow their own business.” They have free business advisors, online webinars, and other resources to help women in Maine be successful in business. A special shout-out to our advisor Lorri Brown!
• PretiFlaherty‘s Launchpad program provided us with affordable legal services to officially form our business and get our LLC and Tax ID. Special thanks to our wonderful, super-responsive attorney Mariana Baron!
• Barbee Business Services has been a wonderful resource. Thank you Kitty for the long conversations and for patiently answering all of our questions!
• We would like to acknowledge the wonderful non-profit organization LoveYourBrain. LoveYourBrain offers research-based yoga and mindfulness programs for people with brain injury. They also offer trainings for yoga teachers and healthcare professionals. LoveYourBrain inspired us to integrate yoga and mindfulness into our work as SLPs.
• We chose to use Ribbon Experiences for our online yoga scheduling and registration platform. They were so accessible and helpful when we were just getting started; we’d highly recommend them!
• We would like to thank the photographers who have contributed to Unsplash, a resource for freely-usable images.

We are grateful for these people who’ve supported our business

• Thank you to John Nolan from the bands Folk Physics and The Ballroom Thieves. He generously let us use a selection from his song “Hungry Mother” from the album “By Way Of” in the introduction of our on-demand yoga videos. Check out his music online or on Spotify, it’s amazing!
• We are so grateful for the support and camaraderie of our fellow private practice owners. There are too many to list here, but a few we’d like to acknowledge are: Erica Rodas of Rubia, Katie Wadland of Healthy Aging PT, Alina Carter of Mindful Memory Care, Alisha Gagnon of The SLP by the Sea, and Danielle Hyde of Neuro Connections.
• We would like to thank our amazing, lifelong SLP-friends from the MGH Institute of Health Professions. You know who you are and we love you so much!
• Thank you to everyone who has participated in our speech therapy services and yoga offerings, we so appreciate you helping our business grow. And thank you to those of you who have invited us to speak for your organization or support group, it was our pleasure and helped us expand our community.
• Last but certainly not least, we would like to thank our husbands. Dave and Tristan, you always believed in us and supported us, we love you very much! And Tristan, thank you for your help with building our website, we appreciated your expertise! (Check out Tristan’s other awesome projects with Gromaine, Maine Grain Alliance, and O’Maine Studios)

Thank you again from Lotus Speech & Wellness! Thank you for supporting us, and for supporing women-owned businesses. We hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday with your families.