Well its been a time of rapid progress for me. Over the last week I’ve appointed my staff team! I now employ (or will within a month or so) a full-time AP, a full-time newly qualified CP, a part-time admin and a part-time techie. The office is all set up, and I’ve bought laptop computers, a digital dictation kit and a printer/copier. I’ve had legal and financial and business advice. I’m in the process of setting up a limited company and trademarks, and I now know what my obligations as an employer will be, and how to keep the books in a way that will allow my accountant to do the payroll and tell me what tax to pay.

I now need to focus on laying out what services I am going to offer, and updating my website and printing some information leaflets to reflect this. In the next month I’m also doing lots of presentations at conferences and meetings, both locally and nationally. I’ve also got lots of court work ongoing, including lots of appearances to give evidence, so it will be quite a busy time!

Importantly, so far I am enjoying it and have no regrets. It feels like breaking out of the restrictions of the NHS has allowed me to be more creative and create a much better quality of working environment and way of doing my psychological business.

Two weeks later: Well, I am now the Director of a Limited Company. I have had a little bit of a complex path to achieve that, as someone else had registered the name I wanted to use at company’s house, however, I managed to negotiate successfully. I now need to get my trademark registered, set up a bank account for the business and get the right employee indemnity insurance, before I officially have employees (who start on 1st September).

The AP post is going to be key in ensuring I can do more, so I am glad to have that in safe hands. The admin seems like a good bet as she has loads of NHS experience and will start of on an ‘as and when required’ basis and grow with us. The newly qualified CP I met with is still considering the post, as I think non-NHS work is still quite anxiety provoking for most people to contemplate.

Its been a bit of a new thing to have to get my head around the business side of things, but I hope that it is the right move in terms of expanding my private work. At least my accountant is going to do all the VAT registration, payroll, PAYE, and tax returns for me.

I’ve made a ‘menu’ of what the business can offer, with prices, and I’ve started to think about who I need to show that to. I’ve also been formally offered an honorary lectureship from a good university and I’m being considered for a visiting fellowship at another. Having academic links will help my access to SPSS and journal articles, give me a few teaching sessions and hopefully ensure I write up papers and bid for research grants.

I now have public liability insurance, employee liability insurance and professional indemnity insurance.

Interestingly, I’ve been approached by some other local NHS-experienced professionals who would like me to manage them within a social enterprise structure. This is another new horizon to consider, as I am not sure I know enough outside of my own area to know how to pitch for work for them…

October 2011: Looking back, I think the idea was scarier than the reality, as I haven’t missed the post I left at all! In fact it has been a remarkably positive experience. I know that it would be much harder without an existing court-work business, but to be honest I was thinking about it and its the best decision I never made. I can’t envisage myself going back to being a salaried employee with so little autonomy and so much burdensome process again, so my career goal has evolved from head of child psychology in an NHS trust to running a psychological business employing as many staff as a typical child psychology department (though maybe with a wider scope than CAMHS as families also contain adults and I think there is potentially a lot of work with parents that currently falls into a service gap).

Its actually still evolving so much that lots of things have changed since I last posted:

I didn’t take on a newly qualified person yet, though I certainly have capacity to employ someone competent to share some of the court work. I reverted to using my NHS secretary in her private time via email. Her knowledge of me and capacity to turn around typing are incomparable really, and we had no need for reception or other admin apart from typing yet. The office is working out really well, its a great working environment in an accessible location, with reception staff who are the right balance of friendly and professional. I’ve done a few appointments there and it has worked well. The colleagues from other health professions are still dithering about whether to join me or just rent a room to share, but are scared of the commitment of a year-long lease (strangely I think £500+VAT per month is a bargain and not much of a gamble at all for a great working environment with security and staffed reception, with endless pens/tea/coffee/chilled water, especially as I can offset it against tax and claim back the VAT). We have a business bank account complete with chequebook and debit card in the company name.

The AP has started and is awesome. I’ve been formally offered the honorary lectureship and visiting fellowship, and I have been made a trustee of a pilot project which is set to have a national roll-out. I’ve presented at the child faculty conference and ACAMH LAC SIG with positive feedback and advance expressions of interest from some key people if we set up some training. I’ve got two potential sources of therapy referrals lined up and we’ve started submitting papers for publication. The only problem is finding time to fit everything in as I’m drowing in requests for (very well paid and interesting) court work!