Mary Talbert: Weathering the storms and building up a business

Published 2:37 pm Monday, February 7, 2022

When Mary Talbert opened Talbert’s Medical Billing at her home in 1992, she had a chair, a desk, a home phone and a fax machine.

Today, the 60-year-old Lake Charles native owns a four-suite office in Moss Bluff and has up to 15 employees. She described it as a one-stop-shop for 20 companies in Louisiana, most being based outside Lake Charles.

“We also send out statements to collect revenue and do consulting for businesses and do credentialing to get them in the network with insurance companies,” she said.

Talbert’s Medical Billing deals with any spectrum of the medical field, but it specializes in behavioral health billing. She said the growing opioid crisis has led to a rise in behavioral health facilities, detox, residential treatment and intensive outpatient treatment.

Talbert said the idea for starting a business was spearheaded after a divorce pushed her to provide for her daughter, Shauntel Ceasar, and her son, Rodney Williams Jr. She was inspired after hearing her church pastor discuss people wanting jobs to earn a good living wage, but not having anything to offer when applying. Talbert was a high school graduate, but she knew she needed more. She enrolled at Sowela Technical Community College and after earning a computer applications degree was hired to do non-emergency transportation billing.

“I thought, I’m doing this for someone else,” she said. “I can do this for myself.”

Talbert began doing her own billing out of her home while continuing to work at other jobs. As her business began to grow, she attended a seminar at the Lake Charles Civic Center and met Donna Little, director of the McNeese State University Small Business Development Center. The two talked about the SEED Center’s business incubator.

“(Little) said I would be a good fit for them,” she said. “I reached out to them, and they put me in there.”

Talbert said the help she received during the roughly three years at the business incubator was invaluable. After leaving the incubator, she intended to shut down her business.

“That’s what I thought, but God said differently,” she said. “Companies kept calling me, and before I knew it, I had to get out of my home because I began to grow again.”

Talbert said she purchased her Moss Bluff office four years ago and paid it off last year.

When Talbert purchased new laptops as a Christmas gift for her employees, she had no clue how much they would be used during the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of Hurricanes Laura and Delta. The storms knocked down fifteen trees near her home, but it was spared from major damage.

The hurricanes forced her staff to move around because their homes were damaged, Talbert said. Her office needed a new roof and new air conditioning system. With companies outside Southwest Louisiana still needing to keep their money going, Talbert moved roughly 15 computers, servers and a large printer to her home office. A Generac that her husband, Jasper, ordered right before Hurricane Laura and was installed two weeks after its landfall helped power the equipment.

“We had computers lined up everywhere,” she said. “My bookkeeper was in my den. We were really tired.”

Despite the hardships from the hurricanes, the company never lost step.

“I couldn’t tell the companies in Monroe, Shreveport and Baton Rouge that we’re down, and they couldn’t find another billing company that quick,” Talbert said.

The damage from the 2020 hurricanes was challenging, but the winter storm last February dealt an even larger blow to Talbert’s business. Below-freezing temperatures burst pipes and flooded the building, she said. Jasper and his son, Kontahlee Talbert, found water rising up in three of the four suites.

“They called me and were scared to tell me,” she said. “I just broke down crying.”

The building had to be gutted, and new flooring was installed. Talbert credited Jasper, who retired as a plant operator shortly before Hurricane Laura, with keeping the business going despite the weather-related hardships and the death of her mother, Irma Dunning, April 3. Talbert returned to her repaired office last July.

“I couldn’t have done it without him,” she said.

As a business owner, Talbert said she understands how important being motivated is.

“Everything isn’t always peaches and cream,” she said. “There’s ups and downs, and you have to weather the storm.”

Talbert spent two years teaching billing and coding at Sowela, but she left as her business continued to grow. Before Hurricane Laura, she was working to open her own billing and coding school. Those plans are likely on hold until next year, she said.

“When my students leave me, everybody’s going to want them,” Talbert said.

Talbert said her employees, all women, are extremely hardworking. She said medical billing is one of the more stressful occupations.

“It’s not the amount of companies; it’s how large they are and the kind of money they bring in,” she said. “You’re handling other people’s revenue. They’re depending on you. If they make a mistake they want you to fix it.”

Despite the stressful working environment, Talbert said there’s an excitement in seeing a company’s money come in. She said she does her best to take care of her staff.

“I never wanted to be the kind of employee where all money comes to me,” she said. “I want to let them know we are women of integrity.”