Frequently asked questions

It starts with a 20 minute discovery call. I will ask about your business, your challenges and what you are trying to achieve. From there I will recommend the engagement model that fits your situation and a clear next step.

It depends on the nature of the work, the complexity and how long you will need support. If you have specific questions and want a sounding board, advisory is usually right. If there is a defined problem to solve with a clear scope, a project makes sense. If you need someone carrying context about your business and contributing strategic input on an ongoing basis, that is retainer territory. I will recommend what I think fits on the discovery call, but the decision is always yours.

Advisory is reactive. You bring the questions, I help you think through them. Sessions are standalone and I prepare based on what you share beforehand. A retainer is an ongoing relationship where I carry context about your business between conversations, flag things proactively and contribute to decisions and delivery over time.

Advisory clients who find themselves needing input between sessions, or bringing complex operational questions that require deeper involvement, are often better served by a retainer.

Yes. Once we have spoken and there is a fit, I can put you in touch with clients who have agreed to talk about working with me. I do not publish a client list, and nothing about one client is shared with another. The case studies show the kind of work and results to expect.

Read the case studies

Yes. I am happy to sign a non-disclosure agreement before you share anything, and my standard terms already treat what you share as confidential. If your organisation uses its own NDA, send it through before the discovery call.

Yes. I respond to requests for quotation and tenders, work to supplier codes of conduct and invoice against your purchase orders. Smaller pieces of work run under my standard terms, and where you prefer a formal consulting agreement, mine or yours, I am happy to sign one.

Read the standard terms

My primary deliverable is clear, actionable strategic advice. Depending on the engagement, that may also include pricing models, operational frameworks, policy documentation, service design blueprints, recruitment systems or strategic roadmaps. I keep written outputs concise. If the answer fits on one page, it goes on one page.

Against what the work was for, agreed before it starts. A project quote names the decision it supports and what you will receive, and larger projects end with a findings workshop and an implementation roadmap setting out priorities, owners and timing. In advisory, the actions in each written summary are where the next session starts.

Advisory sessions are $360 + GST for 60 minutes and $200 + GST for 30 minutes. Consulting is $300 + GST per hour. Retainers run in three tiers from $1,500 to $5,500 + GST per month depending on the level of involvement. Projects are scoped and quoted individually after a discovery call. Everything runs month to month, with no lock-in contract.

Yes. For a scoped project I provide a written proposal with the stages, deliverables, timeframe and fee, set out so it can support a capability grant or commissioning application. Most engagements start with a discovery call.

I have built and scaled in this sector. I co-founded a national Allied Health provider and grew it to 300+ clinicians and $15m+ in revenue. Along the way I navigated every challenge my clients face: NDIS pricing changes, workforce shortages, compliance pressure, cash flow and reform uncertainty. I have also worked with more than 130 providers, which means real-time pattern-matching on what is working across the sector. That combination of founder experience and current perspective is hard to replicate.

No. Coaching is its own discipline, and a good coach works on you: they ask sharp questions, build your confidence in your own judgement and hold you to what you said you would do. I work on the business. You bring the problems and I help you solve them, which means the analysis is mine to do. You get an answer with the reasoning behind it and a written summary afterwards with the actions and the resources.

Clients on a regular rhythm do get some of what a coach offers, because a standing fortnightly or monthly session creates its own accountability. That is a by-product of the work rather than the thing you are paying for.

How advisory sessions work

I may work with providers who operate in overlapping markets. I manage this through strict confidentiality. Nothing shared with me by one client is ever disclosed to another. If I felt a genuine conflict of interest existed, I would raise it with you directly.

No. You are paying for honest, independent analysis. I will challenge your assumptions when I think you are heading in the wrong direction, and I will back up my perspective with evidence. I am direct without being blunt, but my job is to help you make better decisions, and that sometimes means saying things that are uncomfortable.

Yes. I work across both NDIS and Aged Care regulatory environments and track reforms closely. This includes Support at Home pricing and service model design, NDIS registration and verification requirements, clinical governance under the Aged Care Act 2024, associated provider obligations and workforce planning under new regulatory models. I translate policy into operational decisions.

Both. Fit depends on what you want the business to do next: grow, run better, restructure or change hands. My clients range from founders building their first team through to large national not-for-profits. Advisory is built for ambitious owners. Senior experience, booked an hour at a time. A retainer or a scoped project makes sense once there is enough at stake to justify it.

The disciplines that carry most community, NDIS and Aged Care work: occupational therapy, speech pathology, physiotherapy, psychology, positive behaviour support, exercise physiology, dietetics, social work, counselling, podiatry and music therapy. Most of my clients run multidisciplinary teams.

I am a Physiotherapist by background, but I have spent most of my career leading multidisciplinary teams. In the business I co-founded, physiotherapy was one of the smaller disciplines, and much of my time went on speech pathologists, occupational therapists, psychologists and behaviour support practitioners.

Yes. I work with public sector, not-for-profit and Primary Health Network teams who need independent insight into how Allied Health, NDIS and Aged Care systems operate at the provider level. This includes reform and commissioning projects, feasibility assessments, workforce analysis and program design.

Both are pathways to becoming a registered NDIS provider. Verification is the lighter pathway, involving a self-assessment and a desktop review, and it is available for lower-risk support types. Certification requires a full audit against the NDIS Practice Standards by an approved quality auditor. Which one applies is determined by the supports you deliver rather than by your size, so the scope you register for decides the cost of everything that follows.

Registration is mandatory today for Specialist Disability Accommodation, Plan Management, Specialist Behaviour Support and any provider using regulated restrictive practices. It is also mandatory for anyone serving NDIA managed participants, whatever the support. Supported Independent Living and platform providers joined that list from July 2026. Support Coordination has been identified for mandatory registration and no date has been announced.

Most Allied Health remains optional, which in practice limits unregistered providers to self managed and plan managed participants.

The direction of travel is a risk proportionate model with Advanced, General and Self directed categories. The Government's preferred position in the May 2026 supplementary impact analysis is to make registration mandatory for the Advanced category first, commencing 1 July 2027 once amendments to the NDIS Act are in place, then stage the rollout over four years. Therapy delivered one to one sits in the General category under the Taskforce design, which is not in the first mandatory tranche. Unregistered providers should treat the cost and timing of a future General category obligation as a live planning assumption rather than a settled one.

How I work with NDIS providers

More than salary, and the gap is where most margin surprises start. A fully loaded cost adds superannuation, leave, workers compensation, supervision, equipment, software and the non-billable time built into the role. Most providers are running on thinner margins than they think because the indirect time never makes it into the calculation.

Model it with the margin calculator

Yes, by working as an associated provider under a registered provider rather than holding registration yourself. The registered provider remains accountable for the quality and safety of what you deliver, which means most of what you will be asked to hold comes from their agreement rather than from the legislation. The trade is a lower entry cost against less control over price and referral flow.

Watch the Support at Home session

Possibly, and it is worth establishing rather than assuming. State revenue offices have applied the relevant contract provisions to healthcare practices, and the relief extended to general practice does not extend to Allied Health. Exposure is state specific, it can be assessed retrospectively, and a buyer's advisers will find it at due diligence. Any practice with contractors across a border needs the position quantified per jurisdiction.

Less than you probably have. Payer mix concentration is the first thing worth measuring on any Allied Health business, because a provider heavily weighted to one stream has its margin set by a pricing decision it does not participate in. The useful exercise is splitting revenue by payer, then asking what happens to the business if the largest one moves against you.

See the funding environments

Melbourne. I work nationally via video and phone, and travel for onsite engagements where the scope warrants it.

Advisory sessions can usually be booked within a week. Retainers and projects typically begin within two to four weeks depending on scope and my current capacity. If I do not have availability, I will tell you upfront.

Book a discovery call. I will help you work out what the real challenge is and whether working together makes sense. You do not need to arrive with anything prepared. Just come ready to talk honestly about where your business is at.