Facilitating Communication

Member Spotlight on Nancy Sims

An Interview with a Speech Language Pathologist  

Speech difficulties are more common than you might think. It’s thanks to Speech Language Pathologists like Nancy Sims that speech impediments can be remedied at a young age. Because her patients can be as young as 15 months, she has to be adaptable and constantly adjusting to what her patient needs and how to best improve language skills.

Nancy is a member at our Louisville office, and has been working with us for over 4 years now, providing speech therapy to children of all ages to give them the skills to communicate for the rest of their lives. We sat down to talk with Nancy about her business and her time with Office Evolution.

To stay up-to-date on our most recent business tips, follow us on https://www.youtube.com/user/officeevolution. 

Meet Nancy Sims

My name is Nancy Sims and I am a certified Speech Language Pathologist and I have here a pediatric private practice. So I work with children as young as 15-16 months, that’s the youngest, up until teenagers right now. I have a background where I’ve worked in a lot of different clinical settings with adult neurogenic disorders. I’ve worked in rehab centers where I’ve worked with people post-stroke, adults and children.

How Did You Find Your Niche?

We all start out with the same training, basic training in graduate school. From there, the settings that we gravitate to or work in is where we hone our skills and build our expertise with those particular populations because the field is so broad. For me, since I’ve worked with so many different populations and have a lot of in-depth experiences across settings, I decided when I started my private practice to focus on pediatrics, partly because I just love to work with the kids. In doing so, I have spent a lot of time doing a lot of continuing education beyond what my requirements are within my field. Somehow the combination between my level of expertise over the years and my love of these little kids and how I relate to them and their families seems to be setting me apart from others that do the same thing that I do. I have a lot of success with children loving to come.

What is Your Favorite Tool?

I love Legos. If I were starting a career and I could figure out how to be an engineer and work with Legos, I think that would be so fun. I have a lot of little boys. I have more Legos in here hidden and tucked away in different sections. Mostly little boys that come in, I’ll say, “Do you like Legos?” And they’re driven by Star Wars Legos or Superman Legos or Ninjago, I can’t even say it. And we build Legos while we do really tedious speech tasks. Legos are some of my favorites. 

What Leads to Success in Your Field?

The field is pretty… kids who can’t speak, can’t speak. It’s like if someone can’t ride their bike, they can’t ride their bike. The foundations as to why children are having communication difficulty, some children have difficulty forming the speech sounds so they aren’t easily understood by others. Some children have the competency of their consonances and vowels and can put those sounds together efficiently and be well understood, but they don’t have strong language skills. Maybe the nuances and the difference that makes someone really successful at it is that they can think outside the box and second-to-second find something that works for that little one who comes in here crying, sensory overload, and has behavior issues. Then yet somehow, out of the box, you have to think on your toes to think, “What can I do to get them to be interested in what I’m doing?” And then when they’re interested in what I’m doing, then they might imitate me. From that imitation, I can then work on building the skills that I want to build. So I go to a toy store and look at toys completely different than other consumers.

What are Your Best Business Tips?

Business Tip #1- Remember Who You’re Serving

I think that first thing is to remember who you’re serving. My clients are children and their families, and when I have to speak to them through my website, through advertising, through any literature where I’m trying to respond to their first question, I have to remind myself what their world is like and what they’re looking for. 

Business Tip #2- Be a Student of Your Craft

Second one is be a student of your craft and make sure you strive to learn everything you could and can about the particular topic. 

Business Tip #3- Meet Your Clients’ Needs

The third I think is just be ever vigilant in making sure that you meet your clients’ needs and respond to phone calls. I mean the basic human social courtesies of returning phone calls and getting back to people when you say you will and doing what you say you’re going to do.

What Has Been Your Experience With Office Evolution?

Office Evolution has been great. I’m going on 4.5 years here and, for a private, single person business, it is fantastic because I have a waiting room that is so lovely and professional, where my clients are greeted by the front office manager, Beth, and I get the assistance of reception help by being told they are here waiting for me. And the phone service, getting phone call recordings in an email if I can’t answer the phone. I’m in therapy all day, so when someone tries to reach me, it goes to a personal recording that then goes and I get that message both on my phone and my email, which is great if I’m at home or not in the office. Everything about the staff, the professionalism, the location, my physical space in my own room is beautiful, and I love how professional and warm it is. For me, I’m the only provider I think in this building with children, and there’s been a beautiful support to me as a provider of children. While my clients are certainly very respectful of the fact that this is a multiuse space with a lot of different professions. So it’s been nothing but fantastic for me. 

For more information about Nancy Sims, visit her website at: https://www.nancysims.net/

To rent an office space at Office Evolution or to learn more about how we can help you grow your business, visit our website at https://www.officeevolution.com/locations/louisville/office-space or call 720-897-1799.