You’ve cracked enough backs, navigated enough tangled muscles, or smelt enough feet. You’re sick of other practitioners using your mug in the tea room. You’re over having to share a thin wall with someone who always seems to have noisy patients. Your degrees on the wall are getting a bit dusty and you never thought they looked good in front of that colour paint anyway.
You’re ready to start up your very own practice.
There are six areas you need to consider:
- Financing
- Naming
- Registering
- Insuring
- Employing
- Recording
Step 1: Financing
In the startup phase, many find that their pockets are empty. The money might have been sucked away into a mortgage or children. Or it’s been used on smashed avo and lavish holidays to the Greek islands. No judgement either way.
Don’t worry, I have great news. You won’t need to have that awkward conversation with mum and dad where you embarrassingly motion that you might need some cash.
Regardless of the amount you have, there are options to enable you with the funds you need to get started.
In fact, you can get money really easily if you just look in the right spots. There are some specialist financiers out there who can provide you with what you need to get started.
In particular, you should be looking at:
- Bank of Queensland
- ANZ Bank
- Medfin, who are owned by NAB.
These banks will literally throw money at you.
(Note: not literally. They’re not the Cash Cow from Sunrise… but they will deposit money into an account with your name on it.)
This cash throwing started in the late ‘80s and the early ‘90s when a few South African fellows came out and lobbed here in Australia. They knew they could trust trained professionals and believed the risk of actually losing money to them would be very low. After all, trained professionals should be trusted because of the professionalism and ethics they’ve learnt over their years of training.
My one suggestion is that it might be of value to get a mortgage broker. You can never be too certain that banks are staying honest.
Step 2: Naming
They didn’t name the world’s most renowned sporting brand: Billy Bob’s impressionnant sporty attire for sophistique runner dudes.
No. They just called it Nike.
Unique enough for there to be nothing similar, but simple enough to remember.
Choose a name that will be easy to recall, and one that is easy to spell and pronounce.
You will need to search the Australian Securities and Investment Commissions National Names Index to ensure that the business name you have chosen for your company or trustee company is not already registered in Australia.[1]
You will also need to check that your chosen name is not infringing a registered or pending trade mark. Conduct this search at IP Australia, Australian Trade Mark Online Search System.
Step 3-6: ?
Once you have obtained some finance and named your practice, there are still four more steps to kicking off operations. You need to look into registering, insuring, employing and recording.
Don’t worry – we are not going to leave you high and dry at this crucial point.
Steps 3-6 are all listed in complete detail in our free allied health e-book. This book is a six step guide that will assist allied health professionals in adhering to business requirements and moving in the best directions for financial success.
Ready to keep learning? Download our free e-book now.
