Many times people who want to start new business chaff at the idea of having to write a daycare business plan.

The idea of going through a tedious process of documenting the business aspects of something that is really your dream that you want to make come true seems tedious and unnecessary.

After all, you know at a gut level what you want to do so the thought that you have to get that all on paper at a fairly detailed level seems to be a nuisance.

This may have been your reaction when you begin to plan your new daycare business that you want to open and perhaps your banker or someone at the small business association told you that creating a business plan was crucial to getting your daycare out of the dream phase and into the realm of reality.

Reasons to invest in a good daycare business plan:

There are some very good reasons why you should give the process of creating a daycare business plan some serious effort and some patient tender loving care because “business plan really is a major key to your future success in running your day care”.

Running a day care is all about caring for children, when you get a population of several dozen or more children, there is a lot of detail that must be kept track of.

Some of the areas of documentation that must be kept track in day care include:

1. Each child’s profile data including birthday, allergies, medications, nap issues as well as the basic data such as name, address, parents, emergency contact and how long the child has been in your day care.
2. The payment history of each child including when the parents were invoiced and if the child’s account is up to date.
3. Parent information such as place of work, home, work and cell phone numbers, email addresses and family history information such as whether the child is from a single parent home, if the child has lost a parent to death or the result of a divorce. It’s not meddling to learn this information because it is part of the child’s emotional profile.
4. Alternative pick up information so if the child is going to be dropped off at day care by her older brother every Tuesday and Thursday but picked up by Aunt Helen Wednesdays and Friday’s, you know all of that information and have those person’s profile information so you only turn over the children to recognized and trusted adults.

Have you ever heard of someone doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons? Most of us can think of someone who has been guilty of that.

There are a lot of questions you ask yourself when you start the planning for setting up your own daycare center.

You have to spend time on issues like location, financing, market share and licensing. But one fundamental question that maybe more important than all of those things. And that is the question, why are you doing this?

The objective you are looking to achieve in doing all the hard work of starting a daycare center will be a big factor in when or if you consider your hard work to be a success.

In any big operation whether it is starting a business, going on a diet, invading a country or learning a skill, you have to know in advance what your definition of “winning” is so you know when you have arrived and when you can call yourself a success.

And what winning looks like to you when you build your own daycare center will be determined by your reasons for starting one.

There is a moment when in your mind you cross the line between dreaming of running your own daycare center and actually seeing daycare center as a reality in your future.

When you make that transition, all of a sudden, the details of what it will take to both bring a daycare center into existence and to operate it day in and day out and make it a success begin to become a reality to you as well.

One way of putting some organization around your planning is to use the old four Ws and an H system where in you just ask yourself five basic questions about what it will take to start and operate your own daycare center. And those five questions are who, what, when, where and how.

Here are five basic questions about what it will take to start and operate your own daycare center:

1. Who will be your daycare center customers?

In Field of Dreams, the voice told Kevin Costner, “If you build it, they will come.” But you need more specifics before starting your daycare center. So you have to understand where you are going to get your first customers and then how you will continue to build your daycare center by getting new families.

It’s easy to get caught up in the business side of running your own day care. But it’s a good idea to remember the core component of any day care and that is a population of very young children.

You do all you can to prepare your day care so you can provide for the medical, nutritional, educational and social needs of the kids while they are in your care.

But the fact remains that young children are emotional creatures and dealing with emotional issues is part of taking care of them.

Here are the two sides of separation anxiety:

Separation anxiety is a common event that you will face when dealing with a new child entering your day care community. There are actually two sides of separation anxiety.

There is of course the home sickness the child will exhibit when he or she is trying to adapt to the new situation. But there is also a separation anxiety in the parent that surface in a lot of ways.

You may see emotional outbursts from a mom at drop off or it might surface in frequent phone calls to check up on the child or to even talk to their youngster.

Side by side, the work and expense of starting a day care at home compared to setting up a dedicated facility are dramatically different.

Owning and running a full scale retail day care is not everybody’s ambition or calling whereas operating a smaller scale day care right out of your home is much easier to take on and maintain.

But there are some preparations you must do and things to think about when starting a day care at home so when those cars start to pull up to drop of the children for the day, you feel prepared, relaxed and ready to take on this new challenge and carrier.

Here are things you must think about when starting a day care at home:

As with any new business and particularly with one that is centered on young children, you have to think about the legalities and licensing issues of starting a day care out of your home.

While in many ways using a day care as your home based business may seem like a slightly more organized version of professional babysitting, to the state and medical authorities, they have to monitor all day cares to assure that you are able to care for the children and that you are running a clean, sanitary and safe operation to caring for those kiddos.

For anyone who enjoys working with children, starting a day care can be a fulfilling and rewarding career.

Not only will you be doing what you love to do starting a day care, which is caring for the very young, you are making a good living at it.

The size of starting a day care can be as small as hosting a half dozen kids in your home to running a big institution with dozens of kids.

For starting a day care, the size is something you have to decide based on what your objectives are as a small business owner will.

But notice that we used that phrase, “Small business owner”. Starting a day care is a business.

And as long as you see that and don’t think of your new enterprise as a glorified babysitting service, you will take the right steps from the first moment you get the idea in starting a day care all the way along the line until you are a big success in your new business.

Whether it’s going on vacation or building a new business, before you start on any of life’s adventures, you have to know what you must have.

And starting a daycare is a great adventure because there is risk, there is excitement and there is opportunity for great success and victory.

So the very first things you will set about learning are the “must haves” of starting a daycare center.

Once you have that list underway, you can fill in the blanks as you go and before long your day care business will be becoming a reality before your eyes.

The list of “must haves” for starting a daycare may become quite long and complicated. But to get the process started, below are five “must haves” that will make your top ten categories list to start looking into right away.

The list of “must haves” for starting a daycare:

1. You must have a space for starting a daycare

The physical location of your future daycare is going to have a big impact not only on how successful you will be but on how many children you are going to be able to care for and on how life will go on in the facility each day.

Starting a daycare business of your own is a good way of scratching several “itches” all at once.

Starting a daycare can fulfill your need not just for a job but for a career that is really a calling in a lot of ways.

All of us want to do for a living something that is really meaningful and that utilizes the best of our skills and temperaments for the betterment of others.

This is a basic need of all adults to find meaning full employment that not only pays the bills but is something you love to go to do every day of the week.

The other “itch” that owning and starting a day care your own can scratch your deeply rooted desire to work with children for a living. Many of us have that calling in our lives. But not all of the careers that involve children are right for everyone.

You may have wonderful skills in caring for little ones but you are not called to teach nor do you have the education or the skills to work with special needs children or to go into pediatrics.

When you think of a daycare facility, the image of a dedicated building with a hundred or more children frolicking on the playground comes to mind. But while those kinds of facilities are fine, every daycare doesn’t have to fit that mold.

If you have a vision of starting a daycare, it is entirely possible to do so out of your home and run a very successful daycare in that setting as well.

There are some issues for you to take into consideration and some preparations to do for starting a daycare but it is a fine alternative to launching your daycare with a full scale dedicated building with all of that overhead right off the bat.

Here are some advantages of starting a daycare at home:

The primary advantage of starting a daycare in your home is that it is a setting you may already be used to caring for children in. If you already have children daycare age there, much of the child proofing and many of the supplies are on hand.

You must have to expand what you are prepared for by a factor of the number of children you will be taking in. Now, you should not look in starting a daycare with a large amount of children in a home setting.