ENTREPRENEURSHIP: Starting Your Own Day Care Centre

Do you love children? Do you have passion for looking after kids? Are you interested in starting a daycare center? Do you need a sample daycare business plan template that will help you to launch your own childcare center?

Now despite the current economy, daycare businesses can be very lucrative. This is because times are changing. The economy in Lagos is getting tougher and parents are getting wiser. In this present time; being a stay at home mother in Lagos is no longer feasible.

Current economic trend now demands that both parents need to work and jointly contribute financially to the welfare of the kids. Now who takes care of the kids while the mom and dad is away?

So rather than parents expending most of their income on paying a babysitter, they have resorted to taking their children to a daycare center.

A day care center provides a temporary but secure place, where children aged between five months and eight years can be cared for while their parents study, attend appointments or carry out other tasks.

Aside taking care of children on behalf of their parents daily, a daycare center may also provide basic tutoring and educational activities to these kids. Babies interact with one another and develop the ability to express themselves at a tender age, through the supervision of a qualified attendant.

Apart from the fact that running a daycare business is very lucrative, as a daycare business owner, you are in control of how much money you make on a daily or monthly basis; you are in control of your time and you also decide what kind of client to take in. In this business, you will truly be your own boss.

Daycare centers can be started with very little overhead and you can also start this business from home to cut startup cost. The major expenses involved in starting an in-home daycare center are licensing, insurance, advertising, and food.

Setting up a childcare center is definitely one of the easiest things to do because there is a lot of information at your disposal and it doesn’t require any special skill. The internet is filled with websites dedicated to helping potential daycare business owners open their businesses and run them successfully. The equipment you need is readily available anywhere.

For those who are already parents, daycare business is perfect for you because it makes it possible for you to stay home with your own children and still earn an income.

STARTING A DAYCARE CENTER – SAMPLE BUSINESS PLAN TEMPLATE

1. Learn everything you can about the Daycare business
2. Write a business plan
3. Get a location with childcare safety in mind
4. Choose a good name for your business
5. Get a business insurance
6. Equip your childcare center
7. Hire employees for your childcare Center
8. Advertise your daycare center

The learning environment of a childcare center should provide a rich assortment of materials and equipment for children to develop cognitively, social and physically. Below is a list of playground equipment needed to establish a daycare center:

Swings
Plastic slide
Rocking toy
Toy car
Electric train
Ball pool
Bicycles
Spring horse
Toy house
Toy game
Merry go round
Seesaw
Building blocks

 CHALLENGES OF STARTING A DAYCARE BUSINESS

Running a childcare center or business can be rewarding. But there are lots of challenges that even the best childcare centers experience. Below are some of those challenges:

One thing with running a daycare center is that if one child comes in with an infection, then there is high possibility that other children in the daycare may get infected too; and this is not good for business at all. So the best action to take is to identify such a child and isolate such individual as soon as possible.

b. This business is not capital intensive, but it is management intensive and can lead to fatigue on your part. Handling quite a number of children is a herculean task and if you are not up for it, you will give up too soon.

You will also have to prepare yourself for legal issues that may arise as you run your business. One thing I have learned in business is that sh*t happens and happens fast. A child may be involved in an accident or even die while under your custody.

So you have to get a good attorney and a good insurance policy long before these things happen.

g. You would also have to deal with the security challenges involved with running a daycare business; so as to avoid the kids under your custody falling prey to criminals, kidnappers and child traffickers.

h. Another challenge you will face is to find employees that are health conscious, take good care of their personal hygiene and love children. Just as I pointed out earlier, running a childcare is not about the money, it is all about the passion and such passion must reflect in your employees.

-(Source: www.mytopbusinessideas.com)