Setting up a healthcare business
What a time to be starting a business! In the midst of a global pandemic, and while, arguably broke, it seems like a crazy idea.
I am a chiropractor and rehabilitation specialist so I have spent the past 5 years learning about the body, medical conditions, how to perform manual therapy, and how to rehabilitate clients.
I have plenty of knowledge and experience helping clients from being bent over in agony to getting back to their normal day-to-day lives! What I know less about though, is business. I feel that starting out my business I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing, and there seem to be more barriers to getting started than I realised.
I have been helping my friends and family out with their aches and pains on the side while working another job in the hospitality industry just to earn some money, but I knew that I had to actually launch the business so people would know about me! I want the business to grow by word of mouth and reputation, I want to make sure I do a good job for every client, but you have to start somewhere and I didn’t really know where.
“I have been helping my friends and family out with their aches and pains on the side while working another job in the hospitality industry just to earn some money”
The first problem wasn’t anything business-related, it was me. I am an incessant planner. I love to have things organised and ensure everything is done ‘by the book’ and unfortunately, I started to suffer with what I call ‘analysis paralysis’. I made lists and read articles about how to launch a business, but with healthcare, it seemed lots of the points didn’t make sense to my industry as I don’t necessarily need lots of supplies and so on. The more I read, the more I didn’t actually DO anything. I definitely feel anxious to not make a mistake, however I also feel like I’m going to make loads anyway so why not just get on with it?
There seemed to be so many steps to take that I didn’t know where to start, but I found a good document from the government website about starting and running a business from home (accessed here). I knew I wanted to run my business from home because I was lucky enough that my parents had a garage that we were using as a home gym space. I thought this would be a perfect place to get started from and there would be added benefits such as low overheads (no rent, not worrying about the electricity bills, etc!) and no commute either. My parents thought this was a good idea too so it felt like the perfect starting opportunity.
However, I didn’t know until I read the document above that the council needed to know about your business in case the property needed valuation or any planning permission was required. At this point, my research came in useful as I had to ask my Dad to contact the council before I could really start advertising. Unfortunately, as always happens, delays were everywhere. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with phone calls to the council, emails getting lost, and ultimately the valuation office saying that we had to tell them that we were starting using the garage as business premises before they would value it. Business rates are something that I didn’t know much about but I knew that they would eat into any money made from the business, so if the property was valued at over £12,000, I would be, to put it politely ‘screwed’. However, eventually after weeks of delays, after a final phone call back to the council, it was concluded that because we were not changing the use of the garage (ie it wasn’t being converted and could still be used as a garage), then it didn’t require valuation and that we were green to go ahead!
I had started a social media page in summer 2020 when I left my previous chiropractic job and started to post about exercise, rehabilitation and common myths surrounding aches and pains. I hoped that I could use this as advertising for my business and contact potential clients. However, I found that I was getting connected with healthcare professionals like me, but not potential clients. This was another confusing thing for me as I didn’t know how to get more visibility in the local area rather than chiropractors, physiotherapists and osteopaths from across the UK and the world!
I had a consultation with Elwyn Davies from PixelHaze Academy which helped answer some of my business-related questions and suggest a few lines of focus and direction with launching the business. I would definitely recommend getting someone with a business mind on side as you are launching a business, especially if, like me, you’re not the most business-minded!
The next plan was to get the neighbours on-side. Of course, I didn’t want to annoy my neighbours if I had clients parking in front of their driveways or anything! I thought it best to explain to them about my business and subtly also do a bit of advertising. I already had business cards, so thought it could potentially be an opportunity to start getting my name out there in the local community. I knocked on the doors of my neighbours and gave them all business cards while apologising in advance if there were any problems with parking (as it’s quite a busy street). I was really nervous about it but some of the neighbours were lovely and I had some nice conversations about what I do and how I can help people. It’s the first step forwards, so no overnight success, but excited to keep moving forwards.
“I would definitely recommend getting someone with a business mind on side as you are launching a business, especially if, like me, you’re not the most business-minded!”
In the next month, I’m hoping to get some advertising going and take on some new clients so I can do what I’m best at (ie not business!). However, I’m hoping also to learn more about running my business and while I have the time and I’m not busy, keep up my social media profile writing new posts and blogs.
Looking forward to the next month!
