Impacting Families & Disrupting the System as a Solo Practitioner (Season 2 Ep. 10)
We’re really excited to welcome our very first ever interview with a Lucy lab graduate! Her name is Brenda Chilstrom. She's a 30 year Pediatric Occupational Therapist with a focus on food therapy with her company, That Makes Sense OT. You’ll hear from a founder who is in the day-to-day transformation of the natural evolution of her business. She is along for the ride as she is growing her business based on her market demand and also her personal growth strategy. We get an up, close and personal view of what we like to call “the muddy middle.” Brenda and Jess chat about her natural evolution of niching down to a specific service type and how she chose to do that. We also chat about the many problems that exist in the traditional occupational therapy practice model. Brenda shares how after 15 years of being in private practice where she never needed or had a website and how that has all changed because she is pivoting her business. She's changing the game for families who cannot access traditional feeding therapy for their children. Specifically, what we love about Brenda is her humbleness, and her dedication to this evolution. Her business has changed a lot in 30 years and she's evolved right along with it step by step! We know you're really going to enjoy this episode.
What can you expect from this episode:
[4:42- 13:55] Brenda starts us off with what it means to be a pediatric occupational therapist, how she got into that field and what made her niche down to food. She has over 15 years of private practice experience and over 30 years working with kids with special needs. She shares about what’s been new to her as an entrepreneur, such as figuring out how to market your business. Brenda also tells us how she found her product market fit.
[14:42- 20:58] We hear more about what Brenda’s failing forward moments were in her early stages. She dives into what she has learned the most in the last couple of years and the reasons why she decided to start with Her Brand & Co. programs, The Lucy Lab and Marketing Mastermind. Brenda talks about how she grew her six figure business without using a website for 15 years and her experience of branching out into the online world. She also shares how COVID impacted her way of providing services.
[21:10 -26:12] Brenda talks to us about the intrinsic issues with the OT model and how that inspired this next stage of her business. She shines a huge light on what she hears from parents about their struggles to access care for their children.
[30:07- 36:07] We get more details about Brenda’s new offer and how she is looking to create it. She walks us through her plan for building a video library for children and parents about food and how to get more peaceful mealtimes. Brenda also shares how she is testing and validating her offer.
[36:16 -44:38] Brenda closes the episode by sharing one of her success stories and her big bold vision to democratize access to life changing therapy as it pertains to food. She tells us the impact her solution could potentially have as a disrupter in the OT space.
Check out the recommended resources in this episode:
Her Brand & Co. Marketing Accelerator: The Lucy Lab
Her Brand & Co. Marketing Mastermind
Where can you find Brenda and That Makes Sense OT :
Twitter TMS_OT