Today we’d like to introduce you to Sydney Bridenstine.
Hi Sydney, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I founded Olive Branch Speech Therapy in the fall of 2015, though it started almost by accident. I’d been a speech-language pathologist in the Nashville public school system for five years when a family I used to babysit for asked if I’d see their child for private speech therapy. I said yes, practicing on the side of my full-time job, and word spread from there — one family told another, and my caseload kept growing.
I’d always dreamed of owning a private practice, but the idea of quitting my job, taking out a loan, and leasing clinic space felt impossibly risky. What changed things was talking to a classmate from graduate school who had started her own practice. She helped me see I didn’t have to do it all at once — I could start with one client and grow from there. That reframe made all the difference.
The practice grew steadily and organically over the next several years. In 2018, I hired my first two contract SLPs to cover my caseload during maternity leave with my second son, and they were such a good fit that they stayed on long-term. By 2019 I had a waitlist and went part-time at my school job. When COVID hit in 2020, we moved entirely to telehealth almost overnight — and around the same time, I was expecting my third son, so I brought on several more contractors to cover my leave. I came back and kept most of them on, which really became the model going forward: as I grew my team, I could shrink my own caseload and spend more time on the business side.
Today, Olive Branch is a fully mobile pediatric speech-language pathology practice serving homes, schools, and daycares across Davidson County and the surrounding suburbs. I’m the sole owner, and we’ve grown to a team of eight amazing SLPs. I also have an incredible patient care coordinator who keeps the day-to-day running smoothly.
The last few years have really been about a shift for me personally — moving out of the therapy room and into a more executive role. I still care deeply about clinical quality, but my focus now is on building a strong team, mentoring newer clinicians, and making sure Olive Branch is set up to keep serving Nashville families well for a long time.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It hasn’t been without its bumps, and I think any small business owner who tells you otherwise probably isn’t telling the whole story.
One of the biggest challenges has been staffing. Because we’re a mobile practice, our therapists are traveling all over Davidson County to see clients in their homes, schools, and daycares — which is a huge part of what makes us special, but it also means the job isn’t for everyone. I’ve gone through stretches where I lost multiple therapists at once and had to scramble to cover caseloads myself while also recruiting and onboarding new clinicians. Those periods stretched me thin, both as a therapist seeing more clients than I wanted to and as a business owner trying to hire quickly without sacrificing quality.
COVID-19 was its own kind of struggle. We pivoted the entire practice to telehealth in March 2020, which was a huge shift for a business built on in-home, hands-on pediatric therapy. At the same time, I was pregnant with my third son, so I was navigating a global crisis, a business model overhaul, and an expanding family all at once.
Growth itself has been a challenge too, just in a quieter way. I came into this with a master’s in speech-language pathology, not business — so moving from “one therapist seeing a handful of clients” to managing a team of contractors meant learning an entirely new skill set from scratch: payroll, contracts, insurance compliance, systems, structure. I invested in filling that gap through several business training programs, and completing Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses program was a turning point for me — it gave me the frameworks and confidence to actually run Olive Branch like a business, not just a caseload that had grown out of control.
And, to be transparent, the ongoing struggle is one a lot of working moms will relate to: figuring out how to build something I’m proud of while still being present for my husband, three boys, and close family with health challenges. I started this practice in part so I could have more control over my schedule, and I’m still constantly recalibrating what that balance looks like as both my family and my business grow.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Olive Branch Speech Therapy is a mobile, pediatric speech therapy practice serving Nashville and Davidson Counties. We provide speech and language therapy and evaluations for children, and we come to them — whether that’s their home, their school, or their daycare — rather than asking families to pack up and travel to us.
That mobile model is really at the heart of what we do and what sets us apart. For a working parent juggling school pickups, siblings, and a packed schedule, driving across town and fighting traffic for a weekly therapy appointment is a real barrier. We remove that barrier. And clinically, there’s a real advantage too — we get to see kids in the environments where they actually communicate, play, and learn, which means our therapy is more naturally woven into their real life rather than confined to a clinic room.
We specialize in pediatric clients, particularly preschool- and elementary-aged children, and we see a wide range of speech and language needs — from articulation and speech sound disorders to language delays to stuttering to augmentative and alternative communication and beyond.
Our mission is simple: cultivating growth in a child’s communication through high-quality, consistent, and individualized services. Everything from how we hire to how we schedule is built around actually being able to deliver on that — consistency and individualization are hard to promise if you’re not intentional about your team and your systems.
What I’m most proud of, brand-wise, is the team we’ve built around that mission. What started as just me, seeing one client on the side of my school job, has grown into a team of eight contract and part-time therapists who share the values I started with — integrity, clear communication, and commitment. We care deeply about relationships, and about easing the very real frustration families feel when their child is struggling to communicate. Helping a child reach their potential, and helping a parent breathe a little easier along the way, is the whole point.
Looking ahead, my vision for Olive Branch is to become a household name across Tennessee for high-quality speech therapy with little to no waitlist — a practice known for treating every child and family with respect, compassion, and encouragement. We’re not there yet, but after 10 years of steady, values-driven growth, I believe we’re building toward exactly that.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
On the business side, Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell has stuck with me — not because it’s a business book in the traditional sense, but because it’s changed how I think about communication and misreading people, which is obviously relevant to both running a team and working with families.
I’ve also found enormous value in a networking group I actually started myself for private practice owners in Middle Tennessee’s speech therapy community, MidTN Speech Link. We share ideas, refer clients to each other, and cheer each other on — the goal was to build a mindset of collaboration over competition, since I think so many small business owners can feel isolated otherwise. It’s been just as valuable for my own growth as it has been for the group.
For staying organized day-to-day, I actually use Claude, the AI assistant, constantly — for everything from drafting staff communications to thinking through business decisions. It’s become a genuine part of how I run the operational side of Olive Branch.
Outside of work, reading is my escape. I use Goodreads to track my reading and challenge myself with a yearly book goal, and I’m part of the most amazing book club that keeps me accountable to actually finishing what I start and pushes me to read outside of my comfort genres. One of my five-star reads this past year was The Book Club for Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick — highly recommend it if you’re looking for an inspiring but relevant historical fiction pick.
Pricing:
- For current pricing for speech and language therapy and evaluation services, please contact us at letstalk@olivebranchspeech.com
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.olivebranchspeech.com
- Instagram: olivebranchspeech
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/olivebranchspeech
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydney-bridenstine-ma-ccc-slp/
