How Carly Gained the Confidence to Find Balance and Transition into Private Practice
In this episode of the Learn With Less® podcast, Ayelet sits down with pediatric speech-language pathologist, parent educator, Learn With Less® facilitator, mother, and founder of Kidnection LLC, Carly Dorfman. Carly is based in Parkland, Florida, and serves families in her private practice both within therapy, as well as in the community with family enrichment classes for infant and toddler families, in a “caregiver & me” setting.
Her experiences as a speech-language pathologist (and a mom!) makes her an incredible resources for parents and caregivers in her community searching for high-quality, evidence based resources to help them connect with their babies and toddlers, and support early learning and development.
Not familiar with the term, “caregiver & me” classes? We use it as a more inclusive term instead of “mommy & me” classes. Our classes are open – and meant for – ALL parents and caregivers: not just moms… but also dads, non-binary folks, grandparents, foster parents, babysitters, and other amazing grownups who care for tiny humans. We’re going to play the “search term” game here (so you can find this great content more easily!) and help shift the conversation from “mommy & me” classes to “caregiver & me” classes… to do our part to shape the more inclusive world we’d like to live in.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Carly’s educational and professional background, and how she came to do the work she’s doing today
- How and why she made the transition from steady, full time work as a speech-language pathologist to business owner in her own private practice
- The various “hats” she wears (speech-language pathologist, parent educator, mom, etc) and why all these roles actually create MORE balance in her life
- What COVID had to do with the shifts Carly has made in her life
- How she gained confidence in herself to move forward with her big dream of running community-based classes for families and becoming a go-to early intervention resource in her community for new parents and caregivers
- Why leading Learn With Less® “caregiver & me” classes speaks to her soul and reinforces the work she was already doing as a therapist, allowing her to create additional impact on families and on her own bottom line
Helpful Resources Related to This Episode
Learn With Less® podcast episode: Enrich Your Practice as a Parent Educator, with Sara Moreno
Learn With Less® podcast episode: Educating Parents to be Their Child’s First Teacher, with Rachel Kammeyer
Learn With Less® podcast episode: How to Impact Your Community With Parent Education and Parent Coaching Skills, with Laurel Smith
Learn With Less® podcast episode: How Lesley Took Her Existing Skills as an Educator, and Started Serving Infant/Toddler Families In a Holistic, Meaningful Way
Learn With Less® podcast episode: How to Use Your Skills as an Educator or Therapist to Serve Families Holistically as a Parent Educator, with Allie Glazer
Learn With Less® Bundle: get our favorite infant and toddler development resources (save 70%)! Discover how to support & connect with your tiny human, without having to buy a single toy.
Learn With Less® Facilitator Training & Certification Program: Use your existing skills as an educator or therapist to serve families holistically with a high quality program that will provide lasting impact! Apply now to become a licensed facilitator Learn With Less®.
Learn With Less® “Caregiver & Me” Classes: the magic of Learn With Less® lies in the communal aspect of coming together with our resources, in community with other families. Join us for a virtual or in-person class led by a licensed facilitator near you!
Connect With Us
Carly: Website / Instagram / Facebook
Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest
Text Transcript of the Episode
Ayelet: Before we get started today, I want to just let you know that we will be speaking a lot today about the Learn With Less® facilitator training & certification program. If you are an educator or therapist interested in becoming a licensed learn with less facilitator and integrating “caregiver & me” classes into your offerings or practice, you are invited to apply now at learnwithless.com/certification. If you’re actually listening to this on or around the day this episode airs on October 11, 2021, I recommend you get your application in today, as we’ll be leading a live Q&A roundtable event this Friday the 15th, for accepted applicants! Just head over to learnwithless.com/certification and submit your application today.
If you are a parent or caregiver interested in learning more about resources to help you feel confident you can support and connect with your tiny humans, we would love you to start by downloading my free infant/toddler development blueprint, over at learnwithless.com/blueprint, today!
Ayelet: Welcome, Carly – Welcome to the Learn With Less® podcast! I’m so happy to speak to you today and have you here to chat about all things Learn With Less®. You have been a big part of the Learn With Less® Facilitator Training and Certification Program over the last year, almost a year. It’s been almost a year since you joined. And you have… you have made some serious progress, you have made some changes in your life since joining us in the program and deciding that you wanted to start leading Learn With Less® “caregiver & me” classes, and all different kinds of things. So I’d love to chat with you all about that today, and I’m just very happy that you’re here!
Carly: I’m so happy I’m here! I told Ayelet I’ve been waiting for my turn to do the podcast. I know there’s a few other facilitators who have done it, previously. And I’m so excited that I’m at this point where I’ve taken the course, I’ve led the classes, and now I’m here to talk about it.
Ayelet: Yeah, well, and it has been a real evolution for you, both just logistically and as well as, like, mindset stuff. So I’m very happy to have you here, in this space. And I have grown to really love to feature all of you because Learn With Less® has really, as you know, it started with me doing all of these things. But now I get to pass the baton and that is extremely gratifying – and is work that I absolutely love and could never have even foreseen how much I would love doing this. And to see you where you are today and moving forward every day is pretty phenomenal. So let’s get into it! Carly, will you tell us a little bit about you, where you are in the world, your pronouns, a bit about your professional background, and how you got into sort of doing the work that you’re doing these days?
Carly: Sure! So, I am Carly, she/her, I live in Parkland, Florida, and I am a speech-language pathologist by trade, and I’m a mom of two kids. I have a four year old daughter and a two year old son, and I am also a parent educator. So I’ve been working as an SLP for almost 10 years. And throughout my career. I’ve worked in lots of different settings. I started out in private practice, moved into the schools did a little stint with adults went back into a private practice and just recently started my own business. So…
Ayelet: Chills, yes!
Carly: Yeah, it’s it’s a lot – it’s a lot to say! Just saying it out loud is like, wow, what have I done?! And so, I’ve always had a passion for working with children. Even prior to my career as a speech pathologist. I was a camp counselor and babysitter, I was a nanny when I was in grad school. So, working with kids was always a part of my life. And what I realized when I started working as a speech therapist with children is that every child comes with an adult, there’s always a caregiver involved. And when, you know, I’m doing my work with the child, there’s always a conversation to be had with those adults about what I’m working on with the kid, the progress the child’s making, answering all the questions that they have. And so as much as I wanted to stay away from working with adults, professionally as a speech therapist, I realized that in working with kids, you’re also in a way working with adults as well, for sure. Yeah. So you know, that’s sort of what drew me to more of the parent educator, part of my “hat.” You know, we all wear many hats. One of those is parent educator. And where I lived for a long time was just being a parent educator about what I was doing as a speech therapist, and then more things came.
Ayelet: Tell us about those things, Carly?
Carly: Oh, I would say like I said, it was about a year ago when I discovered Learn With Less®, but this idea of parent education and classes and wanting to teach and share information really stemmed out of COVID which for a lot of people out there, you know, COVID had hidden blessings in it – although it’s a terrible, you know, situation for many people. It’s just… sparked some ideas in my head. So I was actually talking with one of my best friends who lives in Canada. And she said to me, you know, like, we’re both home with our kids, right? Going kind of crazy in COVID land. And when we were in lockdown, that’s what I’m referring to. Yeah, yeah.
This idea was planted where she said to me, oh, there’s this speech therapist in Toronto, and she does “mommy and me,” and maybe you could do that! And she, at the time during COVID, was leading… She was working in the entertainment industry doing like parties and events, and she decided, oh, I’m going to do “mommy and me” workout classes. So she was like, Oh, you can do something like that, speech therapy. And I was like, okay… so the seed was planted, I would like write random notes on random napkins and sheets of paper. And I was just disorganized about it all. And then I think it must have been just a Google search that led me to you, like, speech therapy, mommy and me, how to… I was at a loss, like, I’m the type B SLP. Like, I mess with my organization and my thoughts. You know, they’re all in here. But getting them out is always been a challenge for me.
Ayelet: There’s a lot of us in the program, actually.
Carly: Yeah! But… when I found your program, and I watched the video, there was a training. I said to my husband, I think it was late at night too. I was watching it in bed. And I, like, woke my husband up and I was like, she’s talking to me!!! She’s speaking to my soul. I have to know more. And I was just it was like, this is, this is it. This is what I’ve been looking for! Something that just takes everything that’s been in my head and organizes it in a way that I can make sense, I can learn, because the – the training modules, there was a lot in there that I didn’t know, that I needed to know, you know, prior to leading the classes, even things about how to collect payments, and you know, what to charge and how to get the word out all of that stuff. I had no idea! So, I found your program, we had so many amazing conversations, I think I cried…
Ayelet: I will not confirm or deny.
Carly: And once I signed up for the program and started listening to the modules and taking my notes and just learning from you and having conversations with you, I was like, this I have to, like this was like my calling almost, I have to do this! And in my community as well. There’s there’s so many young families where I live and no programming, none! And everyone, everyone, a lot of people that I know go into the neighboring communities for classes for their children and for services for their children. So I was like, yeah, we need this here.
Ayelet: Tell tell us more about the community. Is it is it small, it’s not rural. Is it suburban? Is it close to a large city, like what’s what’s the deal?
Carly: So, Parkland is, it’s very residential. Not a lot of businesses within Parkland or like shopping centers or anything like that. It’s mostly residential. I don’t know the population size, but it’s pretty average. It’s not small. It’s not big, very suburbia. And so the next biggest city, I would say is Boca Raton, Florida is nearby. Fort Lauderdale, Florida is not too far. So Miami is about 45 minutes to an hour from where I live. So we’re kind of, we’re like in this little northwest pocket of South Florida. And if you go any more West, you’re in the Everglades.
So we’re, so it’s a pretty new city, they’re doing a lot of new construction in the area. So lots of new families coming in. And it’s a very tight knit community. I don’t know if you remember this a few years ago, there was a shooting at our high school. So since that happened, you know, the community just got together and we’re very close, very tight. There’s kind of like one of everything. There’s just one, you know, one grocery store, there’s one gas station, you know, one or two restaurants one ice cream shop.
Ayelet: And one “caregiver and me” parent educator speech therapist, now!
Carly: Yeah, exactly. So I am that. And I am so happy to be bringing that to my community. And you know, so far the feedback has been amazing. And I’m so grateful that I found the program when I did and I’m offering the classes now when I’m offering them and that it’s all, it’s all happening.
Ayelet: Well, I mean, you made it happen, number one, but I want to go back for just a second and ask you a little bit about, yes, there’s the fact that the Learn With Less® program puts it all into this clear, step by step, plug and play sort of ready made business in a box type idea, but I’m sure there was something also about the actual philosophy of the curriculum that resonated with you, too, and I would love to hear a little bit about what that was for you, and why you also like whether you could imagine that that was something that your community would resonate with. So tell us about that.
Carly: It mostly resonated with me on a personal level, as a mother and a caregiver to my two children, the philosophy of learning with less that you don’t need a single toy, and that you are your child’s best educator. And that, you know, you can use whatever you have at home to create these beautiful opportunities for growth and development of your child… is what drew me to the program the most.
I have a ton of toys sitting over there, in a bucket, taking over my living room – an exploding bucket taking over my living room, and my kids are more interested in what’s going on in the kitchen and what I’m doing. You know, they want to copy me and take all of my stuff and do what I’m doing and pretend to be mommy and you know, all of that. So I totally related to that aspect of the program.
And in my own speech therapy practice, I use a lot of this same philosophy that we can create your communication opportunities, and I can support your child’s language and development through the routines that are already happening in your daily life. We don’t need the special tools and bag of tricks, like what’s real for you what’s really happening and create opportunities there and around that.
Ayelet: Beautiful, I love that. Okay, so there was the actual programmatic function of getting yourself through from where you were to this other side of having this, you know, way to holistically serve families and create more of like a parent education presence in your community. And also there was a philosophy resonance as well, that you felt, like Learn With Less® was clearly something that you were already utilizing in theory, and this was bring it all together. So tell us, what did life look like when you started the program?
I mean, I remember you, Carly, actually, number one, you you have two small children, as you said, and you were in a full time job, and you actually were the first person to complete the entire training program in six weeks. And then not only that, but then also get your demo done and host a class. And then very quickly after host a whole series of paid classes, because you went through this program, you got it done, you did the demo, you then were able to like fill a whole class series of people who wanted to pay for your class, really by word of mouth. And I’d love to hear more about that if you’re willing to share here. And then… and then you…
Carly: And then radio silence!
Ayelet: And then radio silence, right. So let’s talk a little bit about that. Because after you made money, you actually made money from this program, right? You started to like recuperate the cost of investment, and you knew you could do it. Let’s hear a little bit about that. What happened in your own head when you realize that this was, like, real?
Carly: Yeah, so like you said, I was… what I found the class and I was going through the modules, I was doing them on the weekends, I would do them during my son’s nap. And that was like my Learn With Less® time, my husband would take my daughter and I had like, I was like, in school, you know, I was very motivated and focused on getting the information because I was like, so hungry for it. I needed, I needed to know more and more and more and more, I would even listen to your podcasts while I was waiting for the next module to come out. I would listen to the podcast, like on my way to work. And I was just so invested and I wanted to… and that’s that’s how I am – I love to learn. And I’m like a lifelong learner. I just I, my dad always said, if you could just stay in school forever, you would. Like, I just love learning.
So I was very motivated to get the information and to learn how to do this thing. And then I, yeah, and then I was like, I have to do my demo. And I got, you know, my two friends together. And they had babies around the same age. Like I think they were six or seven months at the time. And I wanted their honest feedback, too, about like, what do you think? Like, can I do this? And that went amazing. Yeah, and then those same friends told their friends or friends of friends, the friends and again because of COVID we had this national virtual “caregiver & me” class. And it was amazing! And it was so nice for the people that were in the class to get to know each other. And for people who lived on opposite sides of the country to have this quality time together with their babies and get to see each other once a week… because as moms we’re always go go go go go, you know. And so even to pick up the phone like to talk to a friend we forget. And like weeks go by, right? So this was like, designated time where we all stopped. And I got to really realize that this is what I need to be doing and how much it filled my soul. And I loved it. And I was working full time, but I was doing the classes on the weekends during my son’s nap. And thank God for that.
And I think it was… I had a four class series, and I had, you know, five to six families each time and people who signed up for all four, and you know, if they didn’t get to see it, and they got to watch the recordings, and we were, you know, it was great. And so then when the series was over, I said, that was a lot to be working full time, and do my classes and have time for my kids and my husband and myself. Yeah. And so I said, you know, this is not going anywhere. And when the time is right, I will be able to go back into offering my classes, but that time wasn’t right then. Yeah, that was I think back in April. And then, you know, I went back to working my nine to five, I had felt the tug to want to be doing more classes, I got to be doing these classes, and my community needs me! Like, I really felt that! And I had all of these ideas in my head.
Again, I would start writing on my napkins and writing in my phone and writing on random places, all of the people that I wanted to contact to let them know I’m offering these classes and I just kept a running list and the list kept on getting longer. And so now we’re in the end of July. Summer at my previous job is like the busiest time where all the kids are coming because it’s summer and they had time off from school. And so it’s so crazy.
And that last week of July, I get COVID. I locked myself in my bedroom and my husband was taking care of the kids and I had nothing to do but ruminate on my thoughts. And the loudest thought in my head is, “you need to… you need to do these classes. You need to follow your heart and your dream of running your own business and being your own boss and creating your own schedule and everything that comes along with that.” And so because I had nothing else to do, I started checking names off that list. I couldn’t go to work but I still had my job technically… but I was stuck. So I’m like what do I have to lose? I started reaching out to all the people on that list. Wow. And as I was going through, I was getting like all the “yeses.”
Ayelet: What were you saying to people, just local others like service providers in your community?
Carly: I reached out to a few preschools in my community I reached out to like the local community center, I reached out to like indoor play space kind of facility that has classes. And friends, you know, like people that are sort of in my industry but not speech therapists but they’re, you know, I have a friend that I went to college with… she does art classes for kids in Miami. I have another friend who does the dance classes for kids yoga classes, you know people who offer services to families but not exactly what I did. Yeah.
And then… my daughter also tested positive, so then my extension of not going back to work just got even longer, and my husband and my son ended up leaving and going staying somewhere else, so it was just me and my daughter. Oh my gosh, thank god both of us were pretty much okay. She was sick for a few days but mostly she was okay, and that was it. So once that was happening I decided: if this is happening to my family, I need to make something good come out of it. I can’t go back to my life how it was.
And so I decided to leave my job, start my business, start offering those classes and setting dates and getting the word out there and making it happen. And I… so that was like mid August, and my kids had a little break from school, so I left my job. I had like two weeks with my kids where we were just home and I got to enjoy them and experience what life was like and just that stress of that go go go go go was gone. And I just had this whole mind shift of, I need to be living my best, happiest, most fulfilling life. Life is short.
Again, COVID made me realize that, why… what are we doing here? What are we doing here if we’re not making the most of this life that we’ve been given? And so. I was home with my kids, and then we went to go visit our family in Canada for two weeks. We haven’t been able to go see them for two years, and while I was there was when things really started happening. My brother-in-law got my website going for me, I was on the phone booking private clients, I set dates for my classes, and I started promoting them so that when I came back, boom, ready to go.
Ayelet: And so you had private speech language therapy clients, and you had groups of classes that you were planning, just to clarify for everybody, right? This is like… you hit the ground running. And I will say like, it’s so interesting, I love hearing your perspective, Carly, because of course, we have lots of people in the program who do also work full time and are also doing these classes. Sometimes people are working full time for themselves in their own practice. And sometimes they’re working full time job, say in the schools or for another private practice or for you know, in lots of different settings.
But in your case, you just felt like you did not want to divide your attention. And you, again, have a lot of things going on right? There was COVID… there, in general, there are two small children in your home, you have a partner, you have a full time job, you had all these things, and you knew you wanted to pursue this dream. And this idea of being a real… doing your own thing, being a business owner, having your own access to parent education offerings, as well, and you know, being your own private practice. Yeah, but in your case, you needed to get there in your own way.
Carly: Yeah. Yeah, it was a journey, like yes.
Ayelet: And we had many conversations over the months leading up to it.
Carly: And it was… it was a lot in my own head! I tried offering the class… So I tried the class series while I was working my full time job. Yeah, it didn’t work for me in the big scheme of things. But it doesn’t mean that it couldn’t work for someone else.
Ayelet: You know, yourself. And yeah, and they know themselves. And that’s, that’s the best part, right? Is that you have your own way of doing it, and that’s so great!
Carly: And so during that, like radio silence time, from when, it was like April till now, right, a few months back, yeah. When I, you know, was just in the grind of work and kids, and I just didn’t see… the, there was just no space. I had to make space because again, I wanted to be doing this. And so I made the leap, and yeah, I’m so much happier.
Ayelet: Yeah, I think what’s really intriguing to me about like, your story, specifically, is that you identified, way before you had the actual mental and physical and whatever space in your life, that this was something you really wanted to do. And there was like, a, I’m gonna do it now and see if it fits right now. And also, I’m gonna, I’m gonna make the space for it when I can.
But I don’t think everybody would have jumped in when you did, right? I think sometimes people would, many people would be more conservative about like, well, this is a someday plan. Right? But you, what was it about you that made it so that you knew that this was someday, but really just on the horizon? Like, how could you see that about yourself?
Carly: So I think I always wanted my own business. Yeah, I had, my brother went to speech therapy when he was a kid. And I don’t even know how the idea popped into my head that I’m going to be a speech therapist! I discovered that I think I could really like this, but I don’t really even still know what it is, but I’m going to apply. And so in my master’s degree for Speech Language Pathology, I discovered if you’re a speech language pathologist, you can work for yourself, you can have your own business, and you can make your own hours. And that sounded great. That part of the of the career also, was very appealing to me, because that’s what I wanted. I wanted, and I was 21 years old, but I knew I wanted a family and I wanted to be able to have time for my kids and still work. So that was always in my head from the minute that I started my career 10 years ago.
Ayelet: So you identified that as a clear potential trajectory. Yeah, even then.
Carly: Yeah. And then, and so like I told you in our initial conversations, it was always this dream of mine. And over the course of these 10 years, I don’t know if I ever thought that I would get to this point. And I even said in interviews, you know, they asked you like, Where do you see yourself and I would always say, like, I see myself running my own private practice. And I just kept putting that out into the universe. And and here we are, yeah. So, I just I manifested it, I guess, I don’t know. It just was something I always wanted. And after just working in an environment where it was like therapy, therapy, therapy, therapy all day long, I knew that when it came to private practice, I wanted a more diverse offering for myself and for the community.
So the Learn With Less® classes helped me to not feel that burnout of just one-on-one therapy all day. And it’s just something fun, and it also helps to build that community, and to position myself in the community as the speech language pathologist that you can come to with any kinds of questions about any area of development – it doesn’t only have to be speech, and that’s something else that I love about the class. And I forgot to mention that, that in my previous job, we worked in a in a facility that treated we had OTs, and teachers, and audiologists, and all kinds of professionals touching on the four areas of development that the Learn With Less® program touches on. And so that also spoke to my soul, that that’s how we have to look at things, you know?
Ayelet: Right, holistically, right!
Carly: Exactly.
Ayelet: Well, I actually, I just pulled up an Instagram post that you made, which I think is such a great example of the way that you’ve been able to not only… Learn With Less® clearly has helped you sort of see the whole picture. But now that you’ve stepped into that part of yourself, now you get to help other people, as in your potential clients see that whole picture too.
And so you just recently put up a testimonial on Instagram, it reads, “my son is already talking so much more, he started putting two words together after attending only one class, Carly is awesome. She makes learning so fun for all of us.” So that’s the image on this social media post. And then you wrote in the description part of it, what you wrote was, “Messages like these make all the long days and late nights worthwhile. I love what I do. And it shows in my private Speech Language sessions, and my group ‘caregiver & me’ classes. You can read more about me and my philosophy on my website,” and so on, and so on.
But I think that… that right there, is such an interesting and amazing example of how that encapsulates all of it, right, you linked all of the things that your clients want and need and struggle with and are challenged by every single day… to all of the things that you offer, and the human and the kind of business that you are in both your private therapy sessions, as well as your group family enrichment style sessions, that all of your offerings help to solve this problem or help to share this knowledge. And I just, I wanted to bring that up. Because I think, just that, is such an interesting example of how you have grown to see yourself. Because you, you knew that that’s what you wanted. But.. until maybe just a month ago, even, you wouldn’t have been able to use the language to do it yourself. So, great work. Like, I’m just amazed by you. I love it.
Carly: What’s so interesting is I remember when I was putting my business ideas together thinking that, Oh, these classes are a great way to get private clients, but the opposite is actually happening. Yes. And that the private clients are coming more word of mouth. And I’m letting those clients know, whether it’s the child that I’m working with directly who is under three, or they have a younger baby at home, “by the way, I’m also leading these classes in the community. And I would love for you to join in, I think it would just be a great way for you to you know, get out and meet other families. And it’s not therapy, but it’s… I’m still there, and it still geared towards supporting your child’s development.” So yes, I that has been very interesting. I didn’t expect that.
Ayelet: Right? Because it is – it’s this, I like to call it cross pollination. It’s like a cross pollination effect, right. All of the licensees, all of the Learn With Less® facilitators do have some kind of background, educational, professional background in some field related to early child development. So again, you know, we have speech therapists, we have occupational therapists and physical therapists, we have many early childhood educators, we have social workers, we have all kinds of people with this sort of knowledge. And then all of those people come together under this philosophy and within this framework, and then we all disseminate and do the things that we do all over the world.
But you and your knowledge, I mean, you are a speech and language pathologist, primarily. But also now, you get to offer this other service to families that goes both ways. Like you said, the classes can develop word of mouth for your classes, and also for your therapy practice, and vice versa. Your therapy practice also gives those wonderful clients, you have now an additional way to serve them, other members of their family, other members of their community, and so on and so forth. And it just builds from there. So it’s, I mean, how incredible! that is so special.
And it positions you to create this huge social, human and reflexive impact for yourself and your own family in how you’re able to support your own income, but also how you’re able to serve your community. And as you said earlier, you’re now basically the go to person in your community for speech and language pathology, any kind of early intervention kind of stuff. And these classes, and obviously, if you have more people requesting that you do more virtual classes, you’ll do that, too. And I know you’re exploring teletherapy, as well, for your speech therapy practice.
Carly: Exactly – I’m exploring so many different avenues of this field. And you know, just being a business owner now, and leading the classes that… I never even knew was possible, I had this dream, but the reality of that dream is, it’s actually better. It’s better because part of the dream was never like, Oh, I want to drop my kids off and pick them up from school. By virtue of having more time, I now can drop my kids off at school and pick them up from school, which I was never able to do before, which fills all of my buckets, you know, all my buckets are filled. And it’s just such a good feeling!
Ayelet: In a way that they are not overwhelmingly full, like earlier.
Carly: Evenly full, right. Each one is is perfectly just balance, there’s just more balance. The other the other great thing, speaking of balance, is like balancing my schedule, where a lot of my private clients want afternoon times, and my mornings are very open, which is now full with leading classes, different days of the week, throughout the community. So just logistically, as well. It’s just working great.
Ayelet: That’s fantastic. I mean, that’s so great. I think a lot of therapists who are private practice owners tend to have that issue of like, how do I fill slots that are different times of the day without overwhelming myself at this other part of the day? And you now have… Wow, that’s awesome. That’s pretty cool. That’s way cool. So what would you say to somebody who knows that they want to do something like this, who knows that they need their bucket filled – all of their buckets. And regardless of whether it’s about having to shift into a totally full time, private practice, or even keeping their nine to five, or their day job, or whatever their life looks like, who knows that they’re like, not quite ready to commit, to fully commit, to fully step into that new identity, to that transition, but knows that this is something that they want to do for themselves? Like, what would you say to a person like that?
Carly: So, I would say that they should definitely sign up for the [Learn With Less® Facilitator Training & Certification] course and take the modules and get the information and figure out how having that information can support them in the spot that they’re in at that moment. And then once they have completed the course, and they have the curriculum, finding a way that it fits in with their life and their schedule, even if it’s just like a pop up class once a month, you know, and that might be, that might work for them.
There’s so many different things that you can do with this program. It’s not, you know, it doesn’t have to be, oh, I’m doing classes every day and that’s all I do… Yeah, it’d be, you can do them in person, you can do them virtually, we have so many resources now for the virtual classes, that it made it very easy to just hop in and do that – that’s how I started it was virtually You know, there’s just so many options that even if you have a dream of what it might look like in the future, and you’re not there yet, still doing it in a small way is so rewarding and fulfilling. And it helps you take those baby steps to get to where you really want to be.
Ayelet: Yeah, awesome. I would be curious to hear also, because of course, we have the actual training program, these sort of modules that you move through, and also a community aspect – actually, calls that we do together, you know, an entire professional community hosted currently on a Facebook group, that allows people to discuss and share their own vision, and ask what has worked for them and not worked for them, and share freakout moments and all of those kinds of things. What are the pieces for you that have been most helpful, most fulfilling?
Carly: So the Learn With Less® community and the facilitators that are licensed and the facilitators that are in the program right now, we’re all like-minded. You know, we all believe in this philosophy. And because of that, I don’t know if any of us have met each other in person, but we all feel like we can go to each other with anything and having that community, especially for me who’s just getting started, having a community of people to reach out to who have done it before and who could give me advice has been invaluable, priceless. You know, you can’t… you can’t put a price tag on that.
Having you, Ayelet, as a resource has also been amazing. Like you’ve been such a mentor to me, and I’m so grateful for that now that I’m in this position that I’m in, in the program and leading the classes, you know, being able to give back is rewarding for me to help facilitators and other people who are in the program right now to understand, you know, how have I shifted some of the activities to make them COVID friendly? How have I set up my virtual classes? How did you market yourself, you know, what is your strategy for this? So I just being able to bounce ideas, you know, I wrote an email and before I sent it, you know, I, it’s just me, you know, who am I gonna ask for help? So I write an email, and I posted in the group or I send it to you, and then you get amazing feedback. And you just feel more confident in presenting yourself and presenting your information to the community, because we have each other to bounce those ideas off of.
Ayelet: Yeah, it’s awesome. It’s been really, really cool to see everybody work together like that – very collaborative.
Carly: Even you know, a lot of us are in similar fields. So we’ve created friendships outside of just running classes, but like, Rachel just had a baby! And we’re all so excited for her. And you know, so many life milestones that happened, that we’re so excited to share with each other. So that’s amazing.
Ayelet: Carly, where can people find you, and take your classes, and learn from you, and play with you?
Carly: So I am in Parkland, Florida, that small little speck in Broward County. I lead classes here in the community at Liberty Park, and I’m going to be offering lots of other classes coming up soon, you can read all about where I’m at and what I’m doing on my website, Kidnection.co and on Instagram, Kidnectionco, and Facebook, Kidnection LLC.
Ayelet: We’ll link to all of them in the show notes for the episode. So… thank you so much for all of your time today and for sharing with us your experiences and all of the incredible shifts you’ve made to your life and your business. We’re so happy for you!
Carly: I couldn’t have done it without you and this program. Really, really you thank you for having me, and looking forward to the future!
Ayelet: Me too.
