Are You Ready to Start a Child Care Business?
Before you decide to start a child care business for yourself, you should make a careful and honest assessment of your strengths and weaknesses as a potential business owner. Starting a business is hard work and requires a lot of responsibility. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Are you a self-starter?
- Do you have the knowledge and experience to run a child care business?
- Do you know where to get the required training you need?
- Can you work comfortably with government regulations and license requirements?
- How well do you get along with children and parents with different personalities and from different backgrounds?
- How good are you at making decisions?
- Do you have the physical and emotional stamina to run a child care business?
- How well do you plan and organize?
- Is your drive strong enough to maintain your motivation over the long haul?
- Do you have any money to start your business?
- How much risk are you willing to take and what would a loss or failure mean to you and your family?
- Are you resourceful and creative?
- Do you have a positive attitude even when things don’t go as planned?
- Do you have your family’s support to start your business?
Don’t be too discouraged if you weren’t able to answer all the questions the way you thought you should. You now have a better idea of your business skills and knowledge and can find out ways to improve them. Please contact CPC-ACCR staff at 212-941-0030 ext. 160 (Mr. Kevin Tam) or visit https://www.childcarecpc.org for more information.
Checklist For Starting A Child Care Business:
Once you’ve made the decision to start a child care business there are steps you must take to gather the information you need to get started.
Below is a checklist that will assist you in your endeavor.
Step 1-Assess your readiness to start a child care business.
Go to the tool—Are you Ready to Start a Child Care Business? This short questionnaire can help you assess your strengths and weaknesses as a potential business owner and or a child care provider.
Step 2-Check out the licensing requirements.
It will be important for you to research NY state’s and NYC DOHMH’s requirements before you get too far in your planning, to determine any state and city specific regulations
Step 3-Define your business goals and establish your mission. Go to the tool—Center Business Plan. Among other topics you want to be able to discuss the following:
Why are you starting a child care business?
What do you want to accomplish?
What is your target market and why?
Location research including possible competition.
Step 4-Define what makes your child care center unique.
By utilizing the tool—Promoting Benefits of your child care —you will be able to articulate not just the features of your child care (hours, the age of children served, etc.) but also what benefits children and their parents will receive for using your child care program.
Step 5-Establish your business structure.
You need to determine how you want to structure your child care business. You may want to have a discussion with your tax accountant to see which structure will work best for you.
Step 6-Get an employer identification number (EIN) from the IRS at www.irs.gov.
Step 7- Establish a business name and register the name with NY State’s Secretary of State’s Office.
You will want to first check with the Secretary of State’s Office to make sure the name you want is available before spending resources submitting the paperwork.
Step 8-Assess your insurance needs.
Step 9-Develop a Business and Marketing Plan. We have two tools that will support your efforts.
Center Business Plan
Developing a Marketing Plan
Although this may take time and effort, by articulating your goals and how you will accomplish them, you are developing a plan for starting your own business!
Step 10-Get connected with your local child care resource and referral agency such as CPC-Asian Child Care Resource & Referral at www.childcarecpc.org.
CPC-ACCR will refer parents to your program and offers training and other services for child care programs.
Disclaimer
Printed materials provided on this post/blog do not constitute legal, accounting, tax or finance advice or any other professional services for individual readers. Readers seeking professional advice about specific aspects of their business should consult a qualified professional.
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