Nov. 20, 2025

This piece is sponsored by Central Bank.

The first month as a new business owner is now behind Allie Oplinger – and so far, the decision to become her own boss appears to be a good one.

“It’s been really positive,” said Oplinger, who opened Thrive & Co. luxury wellness medical clinic in October.

“I am lucky in that I grew up here and have a lot of family and friends here, and that’s the whole reason I started this. It’s the support I received from them that made me think I’ve got to do this and start leaning on my resources.”

Oplinger is a Sioux Falls native whose love of synchronized swimming led her to college in Arizona and a passion for health and wellness. After considering medical school, she gravitated to the flexibility of being a physician assistant, which allows her to practice various kinds of medicine.

“I missed being close to family, so I came home to attend PA school at USD and started working as a physician’s assistant,” Oplinger said.

Her early career years exposed her to everything from orthopedics to serving inside the South Dakota State Penitentiary to most recently providing medical care in a for-profit clinic.

“I started to think about what it would look like to run my own clinic,” she said.

“Thrive & Co. really captures the definition of what I’ve designed. My vision extends to all aspects of patients’ lives, from how they view themselves on the outside to how they feel on the inside. I want them to be the healthiest version of themselves 10, 20, 30 years down the road.”

Her clinic specializes in hormone optimization because “hormones play a huge role in our health,” she said. “If they’re out of balance, a lot of things can go haywire in the body.”

She sees men and women of all ages and also offers medical weight loss, peptide therapy and IV therapy.

“I want people to feel welcome and listened to. I’ve had friends who have had to go in three times to a doctor before they actually listened and figured something out. So I do a deep dive to figure out what they’re experiencing and what could have caused it,” Oplinger said. “And then I have a lot of tools in my toolbox that are case-by-case dependent.”

One tool she herself needed as a new small-business owner, though, was a banking partner.

Thanks to strong relationships at Central Bank, Oplinger reached out to get connected with the services she needed.

“I used my own savings for a lot of startup costs, but it was helpful to be able to also set up a line of credit tied to a credit card at Central Bank, along with my business checking account and my business insurance,” she said.

She found an office at 7520 S. Grand Arbor Court that essentially was move-in ready, “so I didn’t need to build it out, but I needed a lot of furniture, equipment and supplies,” she said.

“There were a lot of things I knew nothing about, and Central Bank took care of it.”

Central Bank and Central Insure regularly work with small-business owners at all stages of the entrepreneurship journey, said Haliee Anderson, vice president, commercial banking officer.

“When you first meet with us as a new business owner, we’ll look at your business plan and financial projections and see where we might be able to add value,” she said. “And if you don’t have a business plan put together, we’ll point you to resources in the community that can help.”

For a client like Oplinger, “a business credit card makes sense,” Anderson said. “Sometimes, she’ll work with a pharmacy that only accepts a credit card, and because we’re in a position to make decisions locally, it allows us to be flexible with small businesses when it comes to looking at a credit limit, for example.”

Business credit card holders also have access to data analysis and expense reporting that give added operational efficiency.

Oplinger connected further with Central Bank at a recent event offering cybersecurity training in partnership with Eide Bailly LLP and SEAM.

“I’d done training in other jobs, but this was helpful because I didn’t know a lot about how AI implementation can be potentially hacked, so it was just good to learn about the levels of protection that are available, especially in a clinical setting,” she said.

“You have very sensitive data and patient information, so you definitely need to have safeguards in place. I’m a one-woman show for now, but if I add staff, it was good to see what that would look like for protecting personal and business information, as well as patient information, which is most important.”

The relationship with Central Bank even has helped raise awareness for her with prospective patients, she added.

“They’ve been really supportive,” Oplinger said.

“It’s helped me spread the word organically through word of mouth and meet people who already have become patients. I’ve really utilized all my buckets of resources, and it’s exciting to be getting started. The more we can do on the preventative side to optimize health and wellness, the longer we will live a healthy life. I’m trying to become an avenue to provide education and give people tools so they can truly feel better.”

To learn more

To schedule a consultation with Allie Oplinger, visit thriveandco.clinic.

Find Thrive & Co. at:

7520 S. Grand Arbor Court, Suite 135
info@thriveandco.clinic
605-405-8747

For personalized support with your business banking needs, reach out to Haliee Anderson at Central Bank:

4900 S. Western Ave.
handerson@mycentral.bank
605-977-0221

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Central Insure | Not a Deposit. Not FDIC Insured. Not insured by any Federal Government Agency. Not guaranteed by the bank. May go down in value.