Equipping Your Practice As Cheaply As Possible

Where Are You Working From?

If you are sharing a practice or hiring a time slot at an existing practice or clinic, most of the equipment you require should be available through the room hire. This will keep your initial equipment costs low as the only extras will be your phone, business stationery and general office supplies. However, if you’re working from your own home, rented rooms, or even in a mobile capacity, whilst your initial equipment set up costs will be greater with a bit of careful planning these can be kept to a minimum.

Equipment – Five Golden Rules

Whichever way you decide to work, any equipment which you purchase should be evaluated for:

• efficiency
• ease of transportation
• multi-purpose use
• durability
• its importance to your work.

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How efficiently can your equipment be used?

Even if you usually work from home, there will still be occasions when you need to work at other locations, for example, attending meetings or for training purposes. Therefore it is always a good idea to ensure that whatever equipment you buy can be used flexibly. This might mean that if you keep all your client records or training notes on computer that you invest in a laptop computer rather than a stand alone version, so that no matter where you are working you can always have your notes with you. Similarly, to keep costs down and to ensure you can work flexibly you might decide it’s more efficient to use your mobile phone as the main number for your business, or to buy a folding massage couch so that you can restore a room in your house back to its original purpose at the end of the working day.

Keep flexibility in mind if you are sharing a room with a colleague, or hiring your room out during the time you are not using it. For what suits you may not suit others. Therefore make sure that all your equipment is as adjustable as possible. This may mean that you spend more initially on some equipment such as a massage couch, in order to get one which you can adjust to different heights. However, you may be able to save on other equipment by being able to double up on the uses you can put it to, for example, using a small table which has extendable legs as a coffee table when you are working with your clients, and then extending it to become a desk for writing up notes.

Make sure your equipment is as versatile as possible both for ease of use and for quick transformations of rooms. A room divider on castors can be easily pushed against a wall to open out the room and increase the working space, folding chairs for extra visitors can be brought out when needed. This can be of particular importance if you practise more than one therapy, or share rooms, and frequently have to rearrange the room to suit your needs.

Make your equipment work for you as much as possible. If you teach yoga or relaxation you could consider buying chairs where the chair pads are in one piece and removable and therefore can become floor mats for your students to lie down on. If you are sharing your room with another therapist you will both need space to keep your documents or products safe and secure, and therefore you might choose to buy two small lockable filing cabinets which could stack one on top of the other, rather than one large one.