Complementary Businesses You Can Operate

Around-the-clock baby-sitting services, in addition to your regular day care center, can add tremendous and immediate cash-flow profits to your business, but correspondingly increase your payroll for qualified personnel. Such services would enable the parents to drop their children off in the evening, and leave them around the clock or over the weekend. There will generally be no need for any planned program because these children will be sleeping during most of the time they're in your care.

As you establish the image and reputation of your day care center, the parents in your area will be much more inclined to leave their children with you for baby-sitting duties. And because you are considered tops in the area of responsibility , you'll be able to charge the very top rate of the baby-sitting fee structure. Keep current with fees charged by other quality businesses similar to yours.

The demand for unplanned or emergency baby-sitting services is very large. Not too many day care centers are aware of this potential for extra profits yet, but the ones that are find that their incomes can increase by 30 percent or more! We certainly recommend consideration of this idea for anyone involved in a day care service.

Another area that could mean enhanced profits for you is bus or van pick-up service for the children. Of course, this would increase your operating costs (and consequently your fees) but the convenience of pick-up is gaining in popularity. You'll need a custodian for indoor and outdoor cleanup, and if you have access to a bus or van, he could be assigned additional duties as the driver. Some day care centers offering pick-up service for their children contract with local transportation services to provide this service. Be certain of the driving experience of your driver if you contract for this transportation service.

Marketing Your Business

Most day care centers open with very little fanfare or advertising. Generally, even without advertising most are reporting 90 percent capacity enrollment within six months.

With grand opening fanfare, and a strong advertising campaign, you should be able to be at 90 percent capacity within your first six weeks. In an area where a severe shortage of day care facilities exists, and with the right advertising and promotion, even sooner.

Your first step should be the door-to-door, hand-out distribution of a quality informative brochure. To save on costs, you can hire students attending advertising classes in your area colleges or even a free-lance advertising copywriter to help you with the design and writing of this brochure. However, the bottom line should be that you have a good commercial printer do the printing on the best paper you can afford. All of this has to do with the image you want to create, and the quality of the service the "buyers" feel they're getting for the prices you are charging. Don't skimp on your brochure - you're aiming at people looking for the best place for their children.

You should place at least a two-column by four-inch grand opening display ad in your local newspapers. At the same time, you should place similar ads in the local magazines and other publications catering to the working mother. Send along a group picture of your staff, and a story about your services with your advertising order. Phone the editors at your local newspapers, radio and TV stations and invite them out to your grand opening.

Be sure to place a "service information" ad in the yellow pages of your telephone directory. This should be the largest size you can afford. And remember that you need to make contact for a yellow page ad well in advance of the release date of the directory.

After your grand opening, and until you attain full capacity, continue to hand out your brochures at the entrances to the office buildings which house companies employing working mothers. Continue to run ads in your local newspaper, although these ads needn't be quite as large or run as regularly as the grand opening ads. Run an ad in the classified section describing your baby-sitting services.

At your grand opening, offer free refreshments for everyone. Coffee and punch for the adults, with juice for the children, and cookies for everyone. You should have members of your staff circulating among the parents to answer any questions and hand out brochures about the center.

You can begin small, and expand in stages with your profits. However, you must draw up a long-range plan detailing exactly what you intend to do, and each milestone you'll have to pass before proceeding to your next goal. In this way, you can succeed and attain not only the ultimate business, but also the kind of profits planned at the start.

The basic, and bottom line secret to success with your own day care center will be your ability to hold your costs in line while achieving maximum capacity enrollment. You've got the plan, and my best wishes for success!