Over the past 20+ years, we have helped over 1,000 entrepreneurs and business owners create business plans to start and grow their adult day care businesses. On this page, we will first give you some background information with regards to the importance of business planning. We will then go through a senior day care business plan template step-by-step so you can create your plan today.
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A business plan provides a snapshot of your adult daycare business as it stands today, and lays out your growth plan for the next five years. It explains your business goals and your strategy for reaching them. It also includes market research to support your plans.
If you’re looking to start an elderly day care business or grow your existing elderly day care business, you need a business plan. A business plan will help you raise funding, if needed, and plan out the growth of your adult daycare business in order to improve your chances of success. Your business plan is a living document that should be updated annually as your company grows and changes.
With regards to funding, the main sources of funding for an senior day care business are personal savings, credit cards, bank loans and angel investors. With regards to bank loans, banks will want to review your business plan and gain confidence that you will be able to repay your loan and interest. To acquire this confidence, the lender will not only want to confirm that your financials are reasonable, but they will also want to see a professional plan. Such a plan will give them the confidence that you can successfully and professionally operate a business. Personal savings and bank loans are the most common funding paths for elderly daycare businesses.
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If you want to start an adult day care business or expand your current one, you need a business plan. Below we detail what you should include in each section of your business plan for a senior day care center:
Your executive summary provides an introduction to your business plan, but it is normally the last section you write because it provides a summary of each key section of your plan.
The goal of your Executive Summary is to quickly engage the reader. Explain to them the type of adult / senior day care business you are operating and its status. For example, are you a startup, do you have an elderly daycare business that you would like to grow, or are you operating a chain of elderly daycare businesses?
Next, provide an overview of each of the subsequent sections of your plan. For example, give a brief overview of the elderly daycare industry. Discuss the type of elderly daycare business you are operating. Detail your direct competitors. Give an overview of your target customers. Provide a snapshot of your marketing plan. Identify the key members of your team. And offer an overview of your financial plan.
In your company analysis, you will detail the type of senior day care business you are operating.
For example, you might operate one of the following types of adult day care businesses:
In addition to explaining the type of adult day care business you will operate, the Company Analysis section needs to provide background on the business.
Include answers to question such as:
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In your industry analysis, you need to provide an overview of the elderly daycare industry.
While this may seem unnecessary, it serves multiple purposes.
First, researching the elderly daycare industry educates you. It helps you understand the market in which you are operating.
Secondly, market research can improve your strategy, particularly if your research identifies market trends.
The third reason for market research is to prove to readers that you are an expert in your industry. By conducting the research and presenting it in your plan, you achieve just that.
The following questions should be answered in the industry analysis section of your adult day care business plan:
The customer analysis section must detail the customers you serve and/or expect to serve.
The following are examples of customer segments: adults with self-care difficulties, adults with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia, adults with hearing and/or vision difficulties, and adults with ambulatory difficulties.
As you can imagine, the customer segment(s) you choose will have a great impact on the type of elderly daycare business you operate. Clearly, families of adults with Alzheimer’s would respond to different marketing promotions than families of adults with ambulatory difficulties, for example.
Try to break out your target customers in terms of their demographic and psychographic profiles. With regards to demographics, include a discussion of the ages, genders, locations and income levels of the customers you seek to serve. Because most elderly daycare businesses primarily serve customers living in their same city or town, such demographic information is easy to find on government websites.
Psychographic profiles explain the wants and needs of your target customers. The more you can understand and define these needs, the better you will do in attracting and retaining your customers.
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Your competitive analysis should identify the indirect and direct competitors your business faces and then focus on the latter.
Direct competitors are other senior / adult day care centers.
Indirect competitors are other options that customers have to purchase from that aren’t direct competitors. This includes senior living providers, home healthcare agencies, retirement communities, and convalescent centers.
With regards to direct competition, you want to describe the other elderly daycare businesses with which you compete. Most likely, your direct competitors will be elderly daycare businesses located very close to your location.
For each such competitor, provide an overview of their businesses and document their strengths and weaknesses. Unless you once worked at your competitors’ businesses, it will be impossible to know everything about them. But you should be able to find out key things about them such as:
With regards to the last two questions, think about your answers from the customers’ perspective. And don’t be afraid to ask your competitors’ customers what they like most and least about them.
The final part of your competitive analysis section is to document your areas of competitive advantage. For example:
Think about ways you will outperform your competition and document them in this section of your plan.
Traditionally, a marketing plan includes the four P’s: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. For an adult day care business, your marketing plan should include the following:
Product: In the product section, you should reiterate the type of elderly daycare company that you documented in your Company Analysis. Then, detail the specific products you will be offering. For example, in addition to supervision and group activities, will your daycare offer occupational and speech therapy, or other rehabilitation therapies?
Price: Document the prices you will offer and how they compare to your competitors. Essentially in the product and price sub-sections of your marketing plan, you are presenting the adult day care service you offer and the prices.
Place: Place refers to the location of your elderly daycare company. Document your location and mention how the location will impact your success. For example, is your elderly daycare business located near a hospital, or in a residential district? Will you also provide transportation to your daycare? In this section, discuss how your location will provide easy accessibility to your clients.
Promotions: The final part of your elderly daycare marketing plan is the promotions section. Here you will document how you will drive customers to your location(s). The following are some promotional methods you might consider:
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While the earlier sections explained your goals, your operations plan describes how you will meet them. Your operations plan should have two distinct sections as follows.
Everyday short-term processes include all of the tasks involved in running your elderly daycare business, including marketing, planning and executing activities, overseeing therapies, maintaining licensing requirements, and providing care for customers.
Long-term goals are the milestones you hope to achieve. These could include the dates when you expect to serve your 100th family, or when you hope to reach $X in revenue. It could also be when you expect to open an elderly daycare business in a new location.
To demonstrate your elderly daycare business’ ability to succeed, a strong management team is essential. Highlight your key players’ backgrounds, emphasizing those skills and experiences that prove their ability to grow a company.
Ideally you and/or your team members have direct experience in managing elderly daycare businesses. If so, highlight this experience and expertise. But also highlight any experience that you think will help your business succeed.
If your team is lacking, consider assembling an advisory board. An advisory board would include 2 to 8 individuals who would act like mentors to your business. They would help answer questions and provide strategic guidance. If needed, look for advisory board members with experience in nursing care or rehabilitation, or successfully running small businesses.
Your financial plan should include your 5-year financial statement broken out both monthly or quarterly for the first year and then annually. Your financial statements include your income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statements.
Income Statement: an income statement is more commonly called a Profit and Loss statement or P&L. It shows your revenues and then subtracts your costs to show whether you turned a profit or not.
In developing your income statement, you need to devise assumptions. For example, will you provide care for 10 individuals per day, or 20? And will sales grow by 2% or 10% per year? As you can imagine, your choice of assumptions will greatly impact the financial forecasts for your business. As much as possible, conduct research to try to root your assumptions in reality.
Balance Sheets: Balance sheets show your assets and liabilities. While balance sheets can include much information, try to simplify them to the key items you need to know about. For instance, if you spend $50,000 on building out your elderly daycare business, this will not give you immediate profits. Rather it is an asset that will hopefully help you generate profits for years to come. Likewise, if a bank writes you a check for $50,000, you don’t need to pay it back immediately. Rather, that is a liability you will pay back over time.
Cash Flow Statement: Your cash flow statement will help determine how much money you need to start or grow your business, and make sure you never run out of money. What most entrepreneurs and business owners don’t realize is that you can turn a profit but run out of money and go bankrupt.
In developing your Income Statement and Balance Sheets be sure to include several of the key costs needed in starting or growing an elderly daycare business:
Attach your full financial projections in the appendix of your plan along with any supporting documents that make your plan more compelling. For example, you might include your location lease, or an overview of all therapies offered at your facility.
Putting together a business plan for your elderly daycare business is a worthwhile endeavor. If you follow the template above, by the time you are done, you will have an expert senior daycare business plan; download it to PDF to show banks and investors. You will really understand the elderly daycare industry, your competition, and your customers. You will have developed a marketing plan and will really understand what it takes to launch and grow a successful elderly daycare business.
Don’t you wish there was a faster, easier way to finish your Elderly Daycare business plan?
With Growthink’s Ultimate Business Plan Template you can finish your plan in just 8 hours or less!
Click here to finish your Elderly Daycare business plan today.
Since 1999, Growthink has developed business plans for thousands of companies who have gone on to achieve tremendous success.
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