PRIVATE PRACTICE SUCCESS STORY
Photo: Kidspeak Speech-Language Therapy Services
She Started a Speech Therapy Practice in 2020. Now It Spans Multiple Locations
Christina Galeano, founder of Kidspeak Speech-Language Therapy Services, built a growing team and expanded across Southern California.
She Started a Speech Therapy Practice in 2020. Now It Spans 5 Locations and a Team of 16. Christina Galeano, founder of Kidspeak Speech-Language Therapy Services, built a growing team and expanded across Southern California.
On a Tuesday afternoon in Southern California, the waiting room at Kids Speak Speech-Language Therapy Services fills with parents and toddlers. Therapists move between rooms. The front desk handles scheduling. Christina Galliano, the founder, is not in a session. She’s working on the business.
Five years ago, that would have been unthinkable.
Today, Christina leads a team of 16 across 5 locations serving families throughout Southern California. She built something that didn’t exist when she launched in January 2020 — a practice with real infrastructure, real leadership, and real staying power.
Her story is not a straight line. It is full of pivots, mistakes, lessons, growth, and resilience. And that is exactly what makes it so powerful.
A career pivot she never regretted
Before becoming a speech-language pathologist, Christina’s first career was in ABA. She loved the work and learned under strong leadership, but once she became a mom, something shifted.
What once felt like the right fit no longer did.
As she explored her next move, she found herself drawn toward communication disorders. She started slowly, taking post-baccalaureate courses while balancing family life, and eventually committed fully to speech-language pathology. It took years, additional schooling, and even having a baby during graduate school, but she never doubted that she had found the right field.
That early clarity mattered. Even before she launched her practice, Christina was already thinking beyond just being a clinician. She was paying attention to what kind of care families needed, what kind of leadership made workplaces thrive, and what kind of life she wanted for herself.
The parent perspective that shaped her practice
One of the most meaningful parts of Christina’s story is that her vision for private practice was shaped not only by her professional experience, but also by her experience as a parent.
Two of her own children received speech therapy. That gave her a firsthand view of what families value when they walk through the doors of a practice.
She knew she wanted parents to feel welcomed, seen, and cared for. She wanted children to feel supported. She wanted the experience to feel warm and personal, not transactional.
That vision became the foundation of Kids Speak — and it still drives every hiring decision, every intake process, and every interaction across all five locations today.
She always knew she wanted a business bigger than herself
Some clinicians want a solo practice. Others know from the beginning that they want to build something larger.
Christina was in the second camp.
Early on, she realized that if her income depended entirely on her being physically present for every session, she would always feel trapped. A doctor’s appointment, a school event, a sick child — any of it could derail everything.
“I realized that if I never showed up, I never got paid,” Christina says. “My income had a ceiling — and that ceiling was me.”
She wanted to build a practice that could support her family without requiring her to do every single thing forever. That vision became even more important when life brought major personal changes, including divorce and the realities of raising three children while running a business.
Private practice was not just a career move. It became a way to build stability, autonomy, and flexibility.
Starting a practice in 2020 was not exactly the plan
Christina launched her practice in January 2020.
Then, just as she was preparing to transition fully, the world shut down because of the pandemic.
Like so many private practice owners, she had to adapt fast. She pieced together opportunities — contracts with an ABA company, telehealth early intervention, and evaluations through collaborative partnerships. Those opportunities brought in income, but they also created an overwhelming workload.
She was working 10- to 12-hour billable days while also trying to run the back end of the business. It was survival mode — and it lasted longer than she expected.
And yet, even in that season, she kept moving.
Eventually, she hired her first CF. Later, she brought on the person who would become her clinical director. Slowly, she began to shift from being a solo provider carrying everything to becoming a true business owner. Today, that team has grown to 16 people across 5 Southern California locations.
The $65,000 wake-up call
One afternoon, Christina sat down to review the numbers and felt her stomach drop.
Revenue should have been coming in. The sessions were happening. The team was working. But the cash flow didn’t match.
After digging in, she found it: $65,000 in insurance claims that had never been submitted.
That kind of problem can make any owner panic. Instead, it became the turning point that forced her to build real financial systems — the kind that now let her see exactly what’s happening across the business at any time.
Once she started tracking key numbers consistently, she could see program capacity, therapist productivity, attendance rates, and referral patterns. She stopped guessing and started leading with clarity.
“Instead of constantly wondering what was happening, I could measure it,” she says. “That changed everything.”
Hard lessons made the business stronger
Christina also faced another challenge many practice owners fear: a lawsuit following a difficult employee situation.
It was emotionally draining, time-consuming, and expensive. But in hindsight, she views it as a painful business lesson that forced her to strengthen how Kids Speak hires, onboards, documents performance, and protects itself.
That experience taught her something many owners learn only after a crisis: growth requires better systems, better documentation, and better safeguards. A team of 16 doesn’t run on goodwill and good intentions. It runs on structure.
What flexibility looks like now
Today, Christina no longer carries her own full caseload. With a clinical director leading day-to-day operations and a team of 16 behind her, she can do something she couldn’t for years: work on the business instead of being buried in it.
More importantly, she can show up for her family in ways she once had to sacrifice.
“I used to work until 10pm after the kids went to bed just to keep up,” she says. “That’s not the life I was building this for.”
Now it is.
That is what flexibility can look like in private practice — not an easier business, not a perfect business, but a business designed to support your life instead of consuming it.
A practice rooted in care
Kids Speak now serves families across 5 Southern California locations, with a particular passion for early intervention and support for young children. With 16 team members and counting, it is one of the region’s growing independent speech-language therapy practices.
But the real story is bigger than the numbers.
It is about what happens when a clinician keeps going through the messy middle. When she learns the business side. When she builds systems instead of relying on willpower. When she refuses to let hard seasons define the future.
Christina did not just build a practice. She built a business that reflects her values, supports her team, serves families well, and gives her more freedom to be present in her own life.
The takeaway
If you are in the messy middle of private practice right now, Christina’s story is proof that it does not have to stay that way.
You do not need to have everything figured out before you move forward. You need vision, you need support, and eventually, you need systems.
Five locations. Sixteen team members. A practice built from scratch during a pandemic, through personal upheaval, and one hard lesson at a time.
That is what building something real actually looks like.
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