Interview with Dr. Reina Olivera

Personal Journey

So what has inspired you to become a caregiver, to be an occupational therapist?

So, really, my story started when I was three. I was that three-year-old who knew I wanted to be a pediatrician. You can even ask my mom; I was dead set on my profession. And I went through school up until college with that implant. Like that was my plan. And then I had a really hard time in undergrad, like, a really hard time. I could not pass organic chemistry, and I was like, “Well, clearly like this is not going the way that I had planned.” So I graduated from college and started to apply to PA schools 'cause I was like, “I'm not gonna get into medical school, let me try something that's similar.”

I applied to PA school three times and didn't get in. I had to revisit my whole career plan. I kept thinking, “How can I get into the hospital?” I knew I just wanted to be a hospital employee, so I went to school after that to become an EMT. I think people think EMT, and they automatically think of a firefighter. I didn't go that route. I didn't go paramedic. I went for EMT just to set foot in the hospital. I started getting that experience, and then seeing kind of where that took me. So I worked for a while as an ER tech, I worked as a medical assistant, and I worked in a private ambulance company as well. So, three jobs all within EMT, and then I started exploring other healthcare professions- and that's when I learned about occupational therapy. So it’s a long story, but I feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be. I think that being in the ER, I noticed that physicians just weren't really happy with their jobs after all that schooling. It seemed they kind of were in it because they had to be by that point. I ended up working primarily, in the beginning, as a pediatric OT, and I felt like that was still fulfilling my little girl dreams.

How did that wrap into starting your own online business and getting into the entrepreneurial world with “Taking OTs Online?”

Yeah, good question. So, I stayed an OT generalist from when I graduated with my master's. I knew I wanted to go on to my doctorate, whether it was for that title of doctor that was still in me, or just the inner achiever that's always wanting to reach for the next thing. So I went back to school immediately after my master's from my doctorate. At the time, I was working in a pediatric clinic where parents were like, "Hey, Reyna, my kid is doing awesome with you, but I can't get them to do that at home." So my doctoral studies were all around the topic of how we can get better parent carry-over in the clinic.

At the time, I was trying to decide which route to take. It was either going to be home health, where I could go into the family home and see what the dynamic was like and make suggestions there, or do it the same way, but be in telehealth. This was all pre-pandemic, when telehealth wasn't cool and no one knew about it. I love technology, and I didn't really want to go into people's houses. I didn't want to deal with things like dogs, or messes, or hoarding, or whatever other things come from that. So, I decided to go to telehealth route. And then I got pregnant with my first daughter at the time, and I realized I didn't really want to be working the evening shift that I was working in that clinic. But I was still in my doctoral studies, so my faculty advisor said, "Why don't you just do telehealth on your own from evaluation to discharge without the clinic as the middle person, just as a stand-alone service delivery model?" So that's what I did. Quit that job.

I still pursued my doctoral studies and did a case study on a family of a child with autism. At the time, he was six. I evaluated him, did a treatment plan with the parents, all through telehealth. That's when I realized that I could do this on my own as a business. So when I graduated with my doctorate, I started my own telehealth private practice. That was late summer, 2019. By then, I was getting more OTs asking me what telehealth was, and then I was getting parents wanting to have me treat their children because the name of my business was formerly Telehealth OT Services. So when people were Googling, they were finding me and calling me with questions like, “What's telehealth? Are you hiring?” I was getting more OTs than anything. So I thought, “No one knows about this! The least I can do is take my capstone and everything I learned about telehealth and put it into a book, put it into a course, and share this information with my colleagues,” right?

So, my book got conveniently published on March 13th of 2020, and I had to fast forward my course because everyone needed it all of a sudden. I humbly say I helped clinics from closing their doors so that they could transition to telehealth because of the knowledge that I shared. So, I shut down my private practice to help everybody else keep their huge clinics alive and just serve the community. That turned into a huge business for me, disseminating my telehealth information. Then fast forward to 2021. After everyone forcefully became a telehealth expert, people started asking me, “Well, hey, I'm a specialist in feeding. How can I create a course on feeding?” So then I switched gears again and started to meet that need within the OT community. People wanting to share their information and create their own streams of income online in the ways that I had through memberships, courses, coaching programs, consulting packages, and all the things.

I think that timing has to be serendipitous!

It is ridiculous. It's literally where I was meant to be, and I could have just shut down and said, like, “I'm not ready for this!” But I was ready, and it was where I was meant to be. And so, I just took it and ran!

Can you describe a defining moment in your caregiving journey that has reinforced your passion for this work?

I think right now what I feel the most is that, you know, I'm an OT. I'm licensed, but I don't treat clinically. I don't do what I went to school for traditionally. But I get to remind myself that the impact that I'm making is like a ripple effect. Every life that I'm touching- they're touching 10 more people's lives around them with the knowledge that I'm sharing. From the telehealth days through now, I'm helping people create courses so that they can impact their course takers, or coaching programs so that they can coach their people. The ripple effect is massive, and I think that's what drives me to continue to do what I do. Because I'm not just impacting my clients directly, I'm impacting their clients too.

Care Recipient

Who do you care for and what are their conditions or situations? It can be demographic or individual; I know that you're not providing occupational therapy in a traditional sense right now.

That's okay. I can still speak to this. So, most of my clients are occupational therapy professionals, either OTs or OTAs, and they are either aspiring business owners or business owners who want to add an online revenue stream. As far as age and demographics, I mean from my free community to my paid community, it's a global reach. I have had clients in Australia and Canada, and I've spoken to people in Pakistan and India. They're literally everywhere, and it's amazing to see. I just had a lady from India join my free challenge that I'm running next week. Sometimes, I’ll get a little subset of people where they're all from Pennsylvania, or they're all from Massachusetts, but really, they're from everywhere.

The age ranges vary, I would probably say I've had some new grads, too. So, as early as around 23 or 24, all the way up to 60. It's a really big range because the new grads are like, “I don't want to even go into the environment that's going to cause the burnout, so I’m going to be innovative and just do things differently from the get-go.” But then the experienced therapists have the mindset of, “I have so much knowledge to share. I definitely need to get myself out there.” There’s a big range of ages and backgrounds, but it’s primarily women. There is a sprinkling of men, but that's just the way the OT profession is.

How is your relationship with these women influenced your approach to how you teach them, or influenced your day-to-day life?

You know, I still bring in my OT skills into this. I think once you’re an OT, you’re an OT forever, and you can't just like take it off. I still bring the analytics of breaking down activities, as well as business and marketing. I still bring a lot of the mental health components as they present themselves in business, like through impostor syndrome or through analysis paralysis. There are still so many of those OT components that I bring into this, which is a beautiful thing. But at the end of the day, I think that the biggest takeaway from all of this is that we all need each other to rise as a profession. I think that, yeah, I'm one of the leaders in thinking outside the box and getting outside of traditional practice, but I think we all need to work together to be louder and just show people who we are, because a lot of people still don't know what OTs are. I think that through this online reach, we can just have a bigger impact in our profession. Also, from a client service perspective, everyone just wants to be heard. Just because these OTs have the same skills that I do, that doesn't mean that they're not human beings. They still need someone to hear them, and they still need to be supported. I get to be that person for them, and it's a beautiful thing.

Do you have a particularly impactful story from when you've been working or teaching that highlights this journey for you and the role that you've played in impacting their lives?

The story that comes to mind is, in some ways, pretty unique, but in other ways, more common than I would like to see. It's of a client who was dealing with a tough legal situation. She wanted to start another business, but because she was in this legal situation, she was very limited in what she could do, like formally as a business. We had to kind of get creative as to how we pushed through those limitations and not let that be a barrier for her. Because she was in the middle of an ugly divorce, and starting a business would mean that she would have to give a chunk of that to her ex. We were able to get creative, and now she's on the other side of things, creating digital products, thriving in her online business, and has been able to push through that tough time.

I think the reason why I say it's more common, I mean, aside from divorce rates, is because a lot of my clients are almost always coming to me when they're dealing with very difficult situations in their lives. It could be a recent diagnosis, or a disability, or they just had a kid and are not working as much. Just some kind of big change or big new circumstance in their lives. So, now they're adding a stream of income that's going to help them personally and professionally. That story is just one that closely represents the essence of what we're doing and how impactful it is for people's personal lives and professional lives.

Achievements and Contributions

What would you consider some of your most notable achievements in your caregiving career? This can be anything from receiving an accolade at your child's school to an award from a major publication.

Okay, I need to go personal here first because I think that my personal journey has really impacted a lot of my professional journey, as I mentioned earlier, with giving birth to my first daughter. So, the first mention goes to birthing three children because we can’t move past this conversation without acknowledging that it’s a number one achievement, birthing three children and keeping them alive.

Aside from that, I would say my doctorate. That was a lot of hard work and perseverance, and when I was in doctoral school, I was told, “Don't get married. Don't move. Don't switch jobs, and don't get pregnant.” I literally did all of that while I was going to school, but everything worked out well. I've also written articles for different companies. I started my own business, which is also huge, and I pivoted in that business.

Well, I also would like to touch on your book, “Telehealth OT, a Guide to Teach OT, Occupational Therapists About Telehealth.” How did it feel publishing that?

It was crazy, everything just happened so fast! It was in the blink of an eye. I'm writing a book, and three months later, it's getting published because there was this huge need, and I was just dumping all of my knowledge into it. I'm actually in the process of writing another book that's more aligned with what I'm doing now, and that one feels like a little bit more of a challenge. I don't know why, probably because there's not this huge necessity or this huge urgency for me to publish that. The first book was like, “You have to do this, right now, or else.” So it was just filling this need, this void, and the book is: I don't even promote it, and it still gets sold around the world. I still get told, you know, five years later, that the book helped so many people. So I, yeah, I kind of minimize it, and I forget to talk about it. The way I think of it is, “Oh, the least I could do was write a book. The least I could have done was write a book.” I recognize that it's definitely a big to-do, but I forget to talk about it.

So, would you consider that a notable challenge that you faced in your career? Or do you have another noteworthy challenge that you’ve faced in the journey to become a doctor of occupational therapy, an author, and a business owner? What sort of challenges have you encountered and how have you overcome them?

I think probably some of the similar challenges my clients face. I'm not exempt from any of those by any means. You know, fear, a lot of fear. Most people have a fear of failure, but some people have a fear of success. I'm on the latter. I don't so much worry about this as much anymore, but I was always thinking, “Oh my God, if I get like a thousand clients through the door what am I gonna do? I can't even put an offer out there, because it's gonna do so well that that the internet's gonna crash,” or something like that. I was very much in that mindset.

Dodging the impostor syndrome fear, and the fear of someone saying something, or like the trolls on the internet coming at me, which I've had happen. You know, I work through those things on the daily, I really do. I still get coached. I have multiple business coaches who have helped me through all of this. I was just on a call this morning with a coach, and she had to help me through my own mind, navigating things that are going on, and it's very normal.

I remember listening to Grant Cardone, who was a big online business guru. He was on a TED Talk-style stage, and he said, “The fear never really goes away.” When you hear this guy, who's like a multi-millionaire, still talking about how the fear never goes away, but we're just going to push through it anyway, it gives you perspective. So, some of it I tell myself, “I'm just going to push through it, and we're just going to do it anyway.” And then some of it, I'm actually getting coaching for, and getting support from friends who are business owners.

It's curious that you compare that. Do you experience a lot of your clients also going through this? Not necessarily with fear of success, but with impostor syndrome regarding the work that they're doing. Or do you find that this is very common with your clients?

Yes, it's very common. Everyone says they haven't, but impostor syndrome is very common. There's definitely a lack of confidence from a lot of my clients, not all of them, but there's a lot of risk aversion, too. Risks like starting a business and being liable in any way, or the possibility of something like losing a license if you're out there saying something wrong. There's a lot of fear in different ways that show up. But we get to work through all of those things together and rise above it for the sake of the people whom we are impacting, and for the sake of our profession at large.

Honestly, it probably has a lot to do with the fact that occupational therapy and physical therapy are women-dominated fields. So, you do tend to butt up against that. It's generational. It's very societal. It's a lot of how we were raised, and I feel like I didn't even come to my mind until last year with my most recent coach that I'm working with. I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is such a good point.” It’s the way that it's ingrained in us from our great grandparents, our grandparents, our parents: the female role versus the male role, and what the expectations are. So for us as women to show up and say, “I’m a business owner, and I'm gonna change your life,” challenges that. We're supposed to be sitting down somewhere, right? Not being loud. A lot has changed over time, but there's still very much this thought of, "Oh, should I?"

Vision and Legacy

What do you hope to achieve in your caregiving career moving forward?

I have a very big vision to help 10,000 OTs or OTAs create an online revenue stream. It doesn't mean that-- anyway, I don't need to explain it. I was going to kind of downplay it, but no. I want to have 10,000 OTs come through and say, “I built something that is bringing me income and changing my life.”

I think that is an amazing milestone to launch, and from what I can see, you're close to that 10,000 mark.

I have a 7,000-person Facebook group and an online community. And then I probably have like 8,000 people on my email list. We’ve made a really big community for the people who are already online or interested in going online, and so it's growing. I've spoken at different conferences, and I am just really trying to get the word out. Other people are speaking on my behalf and sharing this movement, too. This work that we're doing with taking OTs online- I just want everyone to know.

How would you like to be remembered as a caregiver?

I want to be remembered as the OT who changed the way that we serve our clients. To step out of the traditional model and into a world of opportunities to impact more people. I was actually just talking to someone who has a clinic in New Mexico. She was concerned with wanting to build an online revenue stream there, because the clientele is mostly of lower socioeconomic status. So, she would’ve had to build a very low-cost structure, and I said, “If this is online, you're not limited to New Mexico. We have to think bigger!” I think that we're not taught to think bigger in some ways. Yes, the way that we're helping people adapt their lives and occupations and their activities is great, but there's so much more. I want what I think is even bigger. I want to be known as the OT who just helps people have an even bigger vision for how we can impact the world.

Aside from the OT profession, I'm also passionate about empowering young women. Especially because I'm a mom of three girls, and the profession is mainly women-led. So it's a huge vision to empower young women who want to be entrepreneurs. Again, to think bigger, to realize that they can leverage online work to help so many more people than their local proximity. So yeah, even bigger than OT, there's that too. It goes back to the micro and macro levels. You wanna help your patients and your community, of course, but you also want to help yourself and make yourself see all of the things that you can achieve in the world. It's definitely something I think we have to re-teach ourselves.

What advice would you give to new OTs that are entering the field?

My advice is: don’t take no for an answer. Not to bash any of my prior professors, but I feel like I was told no a lot. I was told things like: Don't start a business right out of school. Don't go into home health right out of school. Don't go into travel right out of school. And while I get all of that, I also think that there is a percentage of people who can handle those things. So, if you feel that you are a person who can handle those things, don’t be limited by anyone telling you no. Just believe in yourself.

Final Thoughts

Is there anything else that you'd like to share that hasn't been covered in this interview, or anything that you'd like to promote here?

I think my final words, and I just did an Instagram live on this, are that healthcare is changing. There's nothing that, not nothing, I don't want the advocacy people to come at me. I know we can advocate for policy change and all that- I’m totally for it. However, healthcare is changing. What I'm seeing and hearing from people, both out in the field and online, is that people are getting pay cuts, and they're getting fired. It's not COVID-related. And the reimbursement rates are going in the opposite direction from where they should be. From my perspective, do not wait for a particular circumstance to force you into looking at alternative options to generate income. It starts now. It doesn't start when you get fired or as a reactive approach. Take a proactive approach as OTs.

We want our patients to take a proactive approach to live healthy lives and take care of their nutrition, exercise, and their wellness to prevent certain conditions, right? For example, don't smoke and don't eat fried food all the time or whatever it is, right? We want to prevent certain conditions if we can. The same goes for this. We can prevent that chaotic feeling of, "Oh my gosh, I got fired, I have no money,” by setting ourselves up for the “just in case” and building another start: a remedy stream.