Tips for Starting A Residential Care Home for the Elderly

If you’re looking to start a new business venture this year and want to make a positive impact on your local elderly community, consider starting a residential care home. Residential care homes provide a supportive community for the elderly to live and thrive in their older years in a structured way.

This type of business is perfect for those individuals who may need extra help with personal care but don’t require round-the-clock medical assistance.

Here are some tips for entrepreneurs who are considering getting into the care home business.

How does a care home differ from a nursing home?

It’s important to first note the differences between a residential care home and a nursing home. At a care home, the residents will have all the perks of living independently (without being alone), but with the added support of housekeeping, medication management, and 24/7 staff on call to help in case there’s an emergency. Staff can also provide any necessary assistance with doing regular errands/chores, eating, bathing, or using the toilet. Residents will also get to participate in social events and activities with others who live in the home.

Conversely, a nursing home is for those who require specialized medical assistance and cannot take care of themselves or live independently any of the time. Both types of facilities will require quality care home supplies to operate effectively. Now that you know the difference, here are some things to consider before starting your own care home for the elderly.

Assess the Demand in Your Local Market to Ensure there are Enough Potential Patients and You Can Turn a Profit

Before starting a residential care home, you need to consider the local demand for that type of facility. Is there a high population of seniors in the area? How many care homes are within the area, and what are their capacities? How many new clients can you possibly bring into the facility every month and year? Determine the need for another facility in your local area to ensure that there are older people who could benefit from a care home. 

Check Out the Competition to See Where the Market Falls Short and Your Center Can Grow

Now it may sound strange to refer to other care homes as competition, but it’s important to assess other care homes that are in your area to see what they are offering and where they fall short. If an older adult is considering moving into a care home, you want them to choose yours. Find out what types of services your competitors are offering, and how the quality of life is. Determine whether you think you could provide a higher standard of living, or potentially look at another area where the demand is higher, and the competition is lower.

Create a Business Plan with a Robust Marketing Strategy and Comprehensive Financial Projections for Outside Funding

As with any business, you need a business plan to ensure you stay organized and on track. If you’re going to use the plan for yourself, then it doesn’t need to contain 100 pages. The business plan should include your chosen location, how you’re going to fund the initial start-up costs, a marketing strategy, branding, potential suppliers, etc. 

However, if you’re applying for any loans or try to secure an investment to finance your care home, you’ll need to provide a polished business plan to have your loan or investment funds approved. In most cases, you will need to have a complete outline for how you plan to start, scale, and maintain your care center.

How to Start Moving Forward

You will also need to meet a range of criteria to be fit to operate a care home. The requirements will include capability, financial standing, qualifications, physical and mental health, and more. Each state has its own requirements to meet.

On top of that, once you open your home, you must meet a range of quality and safety standards regarding resident care, on-site equipment, and staffing. There is a lot to deal with logistically to start up and maintain your care home, but the positive impact you will have on the lives of the elderly in your community is worth it.

Leveling Up Your Small Business

Running a small business is notoriously challenging. It takes commitment and a lot of hard work to get off the ground, and from there, the difficulties multiply. For most small enterprises, finding their feet in the middle-ground of the marketplace is a significant achievement, especially when we consider the statistics. 

Failure rates for small businesses are staggering:

• 20% fail in their first year.

• 30% fail in their second year.

• 50% fail within five years.

• 70% fail within ten years.

These failures are down to a myriad of reasons. Many become owner dependent, leading to a poor delegation of tasks or burn out. Other businesses fail to budget efficiently and go bust. The list of challenges facing small businesses is endless, and so, failure is common.

It’s important to note that amongst the failures, there are even more successes. Small businesses can thrive. Adaptability is critical, and stagnation should be avoided at all costs. Small business owners can’t afford to get comfortable and should frequently consider the possibility of pushing their company to the next level. 

With this in mind, here are 10 ways of leveling up your small business.

Expand your client base

Many small businesses fall into the trap of relying on a small core customer base. Although these clients should be valued, they shouldn’t be relied on. A more extensive customer base is the first step in leveling up a business. More customers mean more sales, reach, recognition, and opportunity for growth. 

Establish your target market and reach them through your marketing channels.

Get analytical

Analytics can be used to spot strengths, weaknesses, problems, and opportunities in businesses. Data should be at the forefront of all decision making, whether it’s to do with social media posting or major investment. 

If your business is ignoring the data, you’re in danger of falling behind. Use analytics when and where possible. 

Install cybersecurity

More and more of our data and information is stored on computer programs, mobile apps, and the cloud. This makes them highly vulnerable to cyber theft.

Small business owners may not be aware that they are potential targets of cybercriminals. Fortunately, there is reliable technology available that helps prevent cyber theft. Protect yourself, your businesses, and your customers by taking responsibility for your company’s cybersecurity.

Use social media the right way

Social media has come a long way in business. It is a crucial marketing tool and an essential communication vessel. All companies should have a content calendar that is well organized and managed. Quality content is a must. Posts should be varied, and hard selling should be avoided.

Don’t ignore the phone

In the social media age, people are ignoring a useful phone-based marketing avenue - phone calls, SMS messaging, and voicemails. These are direct marketing tools that have a high rate of engagement. However, this straightforward approach must be made professionally.

Services like Call Cowboy Business Dialing Platform provide packages that help streamline direct communication systems like calls, messaging, and voicemails in a professional and organized way.

Time management

Many small businesses are run by one or two people. With heavy workloads, they tend to focus on the areas where they are most proficient. Being more diligent with time management can help to get on top of all aspects of the business. 

The 60/20/20 principle recommends allocating 60% of your time to core tasks, 20% to planning, and 20% to strategizing. This forces your hand to look beyond the everyday struggle and allows for future thinking.

Delegate

A trait of a good leader is that they trust in their subordinates and delegate specific tasks to them. Many businesses over-rely on owners or managers, spreading them too thin. This is detrimental to an organization. Owners or managers should consider delegating responsibility to other employees. 

If there aren’t enough employees, perhaps it’s time to take on some new ones.

Get customer feedback

Nothing can help you level up your business, like getting feedback from your customers. Remember that 100 percent of your sales are to your customers, so their opinion is important. Create an online survey, an e-mail campaign, or simply ask for their two cents. Take their views on board and consider acting on them.

Set bigger goals

Something that holds many small businesses back is a tendency to settle for where they are. If your goals are small and don’t involve growth, then a lack of growth is inevitable. 

Ask for help

Running a small business is challenging enough; don’t make it harder by taking all decisions on your own. Join a local business network, reach out to friends and family, seek advice from consultants, or approach companies that inspire you. There are experts out there who are happy to talk and give you advice for free. You might be surprised at who’s willing to talk to you.

3 Practical Ways to Reduce Your Startup Costs

By: Rosana Beechum

Technically, anyone can become an entrepreneur if they have a good enough idea to capitalize on. However, what most upcoming entrepreneurs do not often have is a perfect budget to begin a venture. That, however, is a common issue, but it can be handled with a few cost reduction strategies.

Opt for Equipment Financing Instead of Buying

There are a number of complicated and variable definitions of equipment financing services, depending on the kind of equipment, business, and finance company in question. However, the core idea can be simplified in one sentence; equipment financing services provide you with the funds to buy business assets you need, but seeing as the same assets are also the collateral, the loan company has a legal right to repossess the same assets if you fail to make agreed-upon payments in time.

Charter Capital is a family-owned financing business that has been providing equipment financing services to startups of all sizes for more than 42 years at this point. The best part is that to qualify for equipment leases and loans up to $150,000, no financial information from the borrowing business or individual is deemed necessary at Charter Capital.

Whether you need a bunch of high-end computers for an office or expensive machinery to start a construction business, equipment financing services can reduce the initial costs of the business set up by a huge margin, and at minimum risk.

You May Not Need a Big Office

When a company is just starting out, they have the perfect opportunity to make most of the connected, digital world in which business is conducted today. Instead of renting a big office space right away, you can rent out a much smaller space to be used only for receiving and entertaining offline clients. Everything else can be conducted digitally in a virtual office environment.

Certain businesses are not as conducive to a setup like that, of course, but if this is a feasible option for the industry you are in, it will save you a great deal of money. You can always upgrade later if required.

Hire Freelancers

Contractual workers and freelancers are often the perfect types of workers to start a business venture with, be it online or offline. Go through the following points to understand how they help you to save money upfront.

·       Freelancers are not on the payroll; when there isn’t work, you don’t need to hire them

·       You will only have to pay the people you need for every specific job

·       Not having that permanent employer status helps you to avoid certain responsibilities that employers cannot such as taxes and benefits

Any startup will probably still need at least a few permanent staff on the payroll but keep the numbers to a minimum during the first few years.

A time will come in the near future when you won’t really need to think about cost reduction as much, but at no point of time will the concept of cost-efficiency ever become invalid, irrespective of how big the company is. This is actually the reason why most of these tips will be valid even in the future.