After much thought the dream has formed. You’ve thought about the pros and the cons and you’ve thought about what you want to accomplish. You’ve decided to build an independent care professional practice because you’re qualified and have the experience needed to pursue your dream.

Where Do I Start?

The first step is to create a business plan. This sounds so daunting but if you follow the steps involved then you will find it is not as daunting. The hardest part is doing the research and finding the information that backs up what you’ll be proposing in your business plan.

Many small business owners do not think that they have to create a business plan if they are going to self-fund their business, but this is a common misperception. A business plan is much more than a tool to seek funding; it is a roadmap for your business. In addition, a business plan is not a one-time tool that is created from the outset of your business and then goes in the file for archival purposes. It is a living document that changes as you change your mind or develop new ideas for your business. At a minimum, you should review your business plan at least once per year.

What is a Marketing Plan?

A marketing plan is a sibling of the business plan. Most small businesses will not need to create a separate marketing plan, but they will, instead, incorporate the details of the marketing plan inside the business plan.

Discovering how many prospective clients are in your area, how much of an area you want to serve, what methods you will use to reach the prospective clients and how much you will spend on the marketing efforts is all part of the marketing plan.

What Tools Are at My Disposal?

The Small Business Administration is your best friend when you’re creating a business plan. They have templates and instructions and various guides available that will help you formulate your ideas for your business into a cogent outline. I recently took a great business plan template and formatted it for use by care professionals. You will find the template following this article. It will help you lay out your plans with your existing decisions and figure out where clarification is needed in your plan.

The Basics

There are the typical items required such as mission statement, business overview, company type, ownership and other general business information. The substance will be in determining what services will be offered and if the company will offer the services in a phased manner then determination of the order of the services offered is important. Additionally, determining whom is the market being served and if there is an adequate market to serve. Planning how the startup will be funded and creating projections for cash flow is fundamental.

Market Research

Care professionals have an abundant amount of information available to them to prepare the market information about numbers available to be served. The first determination would be which demographic the care professional would like to serve. This article will represent the market research tools available to a care professional that is opting to serve the geriatric demographic. The best resource available is the US government’s census statistics. These statistics are made available in a database on the Internet. This database offers search tools that let you narrow down to the locale you plan on serving. The tool can be found at:

You can enter your city, county or zip and the system will pull up a basic fact sheet. Then next to the General Characteristics is a link to Show More. That link will open up into a full research of the demographics of your selected region. Not only does it show you the specific age breakdown for your location, but it also shows you the number of householders that are 65 or older if you scroll down to the Households by Type section.

These statistics are invaluable as they give you a total amount of prospective clients in certain locations that you’re considering serving. Comparing this information to other information should make it very clear to you if there are plenty of clients in your area to serve.

Competitors

It’s very important to find out how many competitors are already in your local area and are serving the same demographic that you’re planning to serve. Using this information with the number of prospective clients will help you make a sound decision. You might find that you want to alter the demographic that you will be serving if the numbers are not going to support your business.

In addition to finding the number of competitors in your local area you will also want to find out what services they offer. Often, the Internet can be a good source of information. You can review the information that they have on their practice web sites. Additionally, you can put their name into Google to learn more about their reputation and their work in your area. Remember that it is valuable to connect with other care managers in your area so you may want to start meeting them and building a relationship during your business planning phase. Even if you are competing in the same area, most care managers create amicable relationships with their competitors. This relationship may open up an opportunity for mentorship or for referrals for clients that meet the qualifications of the respective care professional.

Services

After doing your research, you’ll be able to determine which services you want to offer in your area. Defining the services and listing details of how the services will be offered, and for what price, will set the road map for your practice operations.

Operations & Staffing

After you’ve decided which services you will offer, you will be able to layout the operations involved in offering the services and decide if you will need to bring on additional staff from the start. You may find that you will need an administrative assistant to help you organize your paperwork. Most practices start with one care professional and grow into additional employees as needed. These determinations should be discussed in your business plan.

Pulling it All Together

Even though the work involved is substantial, it is worth the time and effort to create a full business plan. If your practice is going to request outside funding to help launch the business, then a business plan is a basic requirement for those discussions. Even if you’re not going after funding, you will still want to prepare a business plan so that you can pull everything together and make informed decisions. This process works as a roadmap throughout your practice’s growth so that you can renew your desired growth steps.

Utilities To Help With the Planning

One of the best web sites available for business planners is the Small Business Administration web site, www.sba.gov. This site offers advice, rules and templates for setting up your business.

Another good tool is the software made by Palo Alto Software called Business Plan Pro. The software can be purchased from the company at www.paloalto.com. While you’re there, check out the companion product, Marketing Plan Pro. These products are designed to ask you questions and step you through the process of creating your plans. You will still have to do the research and the planning work but these applications will make sure that you don’t overlook any of the vital information that you need to gather.

Two additional resources that allow you to research your planning needs are www.bplans.com and www.mplans.com. These sites have gathered information that will help you create your business and marketing plans and provide easy to understand tips and tricks.

Last, and certainly not least, is the Startup Nation. You may have listened to the Startup Nation radio show on one of your local talk radio stations or may be familiar with it in some other way. They have a web site that provides invaluable information for the creation of a new business idea and the steps involved in making it a success. The web site can be found at www.startupnation.com.

We Have a Plan

Once you have a plan or a roadmap for your business idea and you’ve pulled it all together, you will be able to act on the decisions in an organized fashion. Reviewing your business plan on a regular basis will help you stay on track and make adjustments to things that are not going as you planned or to add new ideas to your business. Business is a constantly shifting endeavor, but having a basic idea of the direction that you want to go makes decision making easier.