This week has been one of momentous change for me and the company. My wonderful AP is leaving to start training, and my equally wonderful but less experienced general assistant is stepping into the AP post. We’ve appointed our first admin post, who will function as a multi-purpose office manager, book-keeper, receptionist, IT person, and general helper-out in getting us organised, and my cusp-of qualified CP is submitting her thesis corrections at the end of the week and should soon be HCPC registered. I can’t believe that in a year we’ve grown from being 2 days a week of me plus a self-employed AP to work most of this on a paid-per-hour basis to a company with 4 full-time members of staff.

We are also in the process of moving out of the two rooms in a serviced office block we have been using and into our own self-contained premises. This will be a great change for us and give us more space (4 rooms) and hopefully an improvement in our working environment in simple ways like having our own fridge and microwave, being able to choose our own decor and furniture to exactly suit our needs. We’ll have our own private parking spaces, and be able to decorate and furnish as we wish, and there won’t be the same level of monthly costs as the serviced office block. I’ve enjoyed shopping to kit it out, and I’ve purchased a reception desk, a sofa for people to wait on, a receptionist’s chair, 4 tub chairs and a coffee table and poofe for the therapy room, plus a half circle table and a storage cupboard, then there are 10 stacking chairs for training, 5 large desks with drawers, 5 desk chairs, 4 consultation chairs and a coffee table, two lateral filing cabinets, 2 bookcases and another storage cupboard. I’m getting them delivered today, so I hope they fit! I’ve also got 14 large framed photographs and a massive canvas print to decorate the walls. Just need to buy a fridge, microwave and kettle and we are good to go.

Of course there are a hundred things to organise with solicitors and estate agents and removal companies and internet and phones and post-forwarding. But I hope the admin person can help a lot with that kind of stuff.

On another note, I have also had a rude awakening when it comes to tax. It seems that HMRC consider money ‘earned’ the moment you have done the work, and expect you to pay income tax on all work completed, whereas until I was a limited company I had been declaring the income received (which means that work was invoiced and payment received, which often happens 6-12 months later than the point I did the work). So, there will be a massive tax bill for me this quarter to ‘catch-up’ with payments of tax on money I am yet to actually be paid, which seems a bit contrary. However, thankfully the company is robust enough to survive this, as I had set aside contingency funds from my redundancy pay. On the good side, doing all the accounts has shown me that the company is on a healthy financial trajectory and that I have not taken a significant reduction in income as a result of leaving the NHS. Hooray!

I feel so grateful to be able to earn a living doing something I believe in, with total autonomy and to my own quality standards.