A Tale of Seven Years
Allied Therapy Services turns 7 this month!
Seven years ago, we took our very first referral so that means an organisation, we're eligible for long service leave! (Well, that's if businesses could have that!)
Let's roll back to 2016 when Allied Therapy Services began.
The world sure was a busy place;
The UK had just voted to Brexit the European Union.
Pokémon Go was released and became a worldwide cultural phenomenon.
David Bowie, Prince, and George Michael sadly pass away.
The Summer Olympics were held in Rio De Janeiro.
Donald Trump is elected the 45th President of the United States.
Malcolm Turnbull is narrowly re-elected as Australia's Prime Minister.
The DVD, Blu-Ray and the internet finally killed the video star, when the final videocassette recorder (VCR) is manufactured by Japanese company Funai.
Meanwhile, the number of people globally using mobile devices to access the internet overtakes desktop computers for the very first time...
And it's amidst this digital revolution, Allied Therapy Services began!
We caught up with our Founder, Director and Occupational Therapist, Naomi for a trip down memory lane.
Reflecting back to 2016, what was your reasoning for starting Allied Therapy Services?
Well, that's a good question!
I had a four-month-old and I was starting to think about work options (which was probably a bit silly!).
To be honest, I think the work-life balance thing attracted me to it because I was thinking personally with two kids now, what are the work-life balance opportunities?
And then the more I started thinking about it, the more I got excited about the idea of being able to create my own service. I knew what was good and what good looked like in the industry and I wanted to be able to influence that, so that was the absolute initial idea and thinking that got the ball rolling.
Once the ball started rolling, I realised that the business side of things really clicked with my brain, and I enjoyed it. I'd never done anything business before, but it all started to make sense and I just really loved the building side of things, thinking up ideas and being able to actually execute them.
I enjoyed being able to do things well, and being able to do them with people.
That was probably a reason why we thought about doing a team, as I initially started thinking about doing some private work for my personal flexibility but then I thought, oh, I don't want to work by myself.
Plus, having come from public health, where you work as part of multidisciplinary teams and knowing that that's the best way to provide services. I thought then about creating a team, so I tapped some people on the shoulder. And the rest is history.
Where did Allied Therapy Services start and what services did you start with?
We started in Geelong, and we started with occupational therapy, physiotherapy and speech pathology. Fun fact, we also had a couple of social workers to begin with, because the NDIS had started in Geelong, and we thought about providing support coordination.
We even briefly provided psychology and neuropsychology.
But then very quickly, we realised just to stick with our core business (OT, physio & speech pathology) and what we knew that we could do well.
That's also why we've always stuck with adults as our client base, because we know how to do that really well. If we ever did venture to provide pediatric services, we would need to have an expert on our team to set it up for us.
Can you share some stories about the early days of running Allied Therapy Services?
Many, many, many stories of answering phones and running into laundries to hide from my children so I could take referrals.
Really? Can you explain?
We were living in a house that had a toilet through a laundry and the phone rang (and that ringtone still gives me shivers by the way!)
I walked through the laundry door, shut that door and then through the toilet door and shut that door so that the person who I was taking the referral from couldn't hear my two-year-old calling out to me.
So, lots of those sorts of ones; taking a phone call for a referral in the IKEA car park and another day, taking a call postnatal after having my daughter Harriet and providing someone with a quote for services.
I also remember having our first meeting around our kitchen table with the initial core group of therapists. It was the 'can we actually do this meeting'.
Then there's the real kind of ‘pinch me’ moments, when I've had meetings or we've had lunches and I just kind of go ‘oh my goodness, this is real, we created that’. Those sorts of things.
And just getting excited every time we get a quality person who wants to join our team.
Back in 2016, was there anything that Allied Therapy Services was doing different to others in the therapy space?
At that time, there weren't many team-based services. There are a lot of solo, one therapist practices. There are probably more team-based services now, but the one thing that we have really stuck to is the quality side of things.
So, experienced clinicians, highly skilled clinicians. We're not prepared to just take on anyone and everyone, we are quite rigorous in who we have join our teams and have quite high expectations of the services that we deliver.
We haven't been prepared to grow for the sake of growing, we've been mindful to maintain our quality and our culture.
What would you say is the biggest learning you've had in the last seven years?
So many, so many, things! It's been the most enjoyable journey and it's also been one of the absolute hardest journeys of my entire life.
I decided to have my third and fourth children in amongst it, that was hard.
We had COVID in amongst it.
We have moved houses and built a house amongst it.
My husband decided to study amongst it.
Life doesn't stop because you've got a business, right?
Yes, being a mum running a business with young children, it has its challenges.
Being a small business, you wear every single hat; I've learned about HR, I've learned about ICT, I've learned about legal stuff, I've learned about marketing, I’ve learned about finance, I've learned about everything!
But I enjoy that, I enjoy learning, I enjoy reading, I've enjoyed learning all that.
But I'm so, so grateful.
I've got people who are better at that stuff than me, helping me out now.
And I've enjoyed learning. I've learnt about myself. I've learnt about leadership and I'm still learning about leadership.
What excites you about Allied Therapy Services today?
Our people! I feel that I've had this giant to do list and wishes and just ideas in my mind of what I want Allied Therapy Services to be for a long time but no people resource. I feel we've got those people now; we've got Jane in the Clinical Director role; we've got Anne in the Operations role overseeing our services. We've got our admin setup. I feel like we've got some really good people now and some really good structures.
There's still a little bit more I think we can do foundationally, but I think we're on the kind of precipice of being able to really just explode and really be able to increase the reach of where we can provide our high-quality services in regional and rural Victoria.
Where to next for Allied Therapy Services?
Oh, that's the fun bit!
And that's where I need to contain my brain and contain my ideas, because my brain does explode with ideas. I think that's really one of the things I'm most enjoy; thinking of ideas.
But the main thing next, is building and increasing our services.
We've got great ideas around clinical resources and development and upskilling for our clinicians; being able to really invest and develop them. And we have a real interest in investing and developing our leadership team so that they can be their best, to serve our people.
We're wanting to in the near future, really look at how we can be innovative and contribute to the industry by thinking up even better ways to solve clinical problems that we're having and finding solutions that probably haven't even been thought up yet.
So, probably a bit of research and things like that.
Sky's the limit really!
Awesome Naomi, thanks so much for your time!