Researching the ABCs of Child-Care Business

Q: We plan on starting an independent child-care center for 50 children, from ages 2 to 10, either in Riverside or Orange county. We do not have any experience with the business and need to know whom to contact for information on licensing, certification, insurance, training, employee salaries, educational materials and start-up capital.

--Kim Le, Corona

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A: Given your lack of experience, you need to evaluate why you’ve chosen this field and really be certain that this is the right industry for you. Do some research into the child-care business and make sure that your strengths, talents and expectations fit the hours, time commitment, profit margins and relational skills needed to make a go of this kind of business.

Ask yourself questions such as: How much and how quickly will you be depending on this endeavor to provide any type of living income? Will you be working in and running the child-care center, or will you continue to work somewhere else and hire staff to run the facility? How will you define success in the first year of operations? Where will your customers come from? What type of competition exists and how will your facility differentiate itself from the mass of other similar businesses?

A person with a strong business and entrepreneurial background will look at all these things as mere temporary obstacles to overcome, understand her own limitations, and go about finding someone to hire or otherwise induce to help overcome each obstacle. Someone with no business experience will probably see these things as insurmountable.

Either way, success will require that you get substantial outside expertise, and quickly. You might want to consider partnering with someone who has the required experience but lacks whatever skill set you bring to the table. Assuming that you can delineate a clear division of talent and responsibility, this might be the quickest way to get the ball rolling, although you have to understand that business partnerships can quickly go sour. Think very carefully before you go down this path.

Another idea might be to hire someone with the requisite experience who can help you get started. Perhaps this person could be “incentivized” with a promise of a share of profit or partial ownership of the enterprise down the road. Again, you need to choose such a person very carefully, hiring him or her as much for compatibility with you as for expertise.

The last and least attractive--and, no doubt, most expensive--possibility is to hire a consultant to put together a point-by-point development plan for this business that you could then execute. Or try to develop such a plan yourself, listing everything that must be done to fully and successfully implement the plan. The more precise the list of tasks, the better.

Make sure you place a set of initials and a time frame next to each identified task or area of responsibility, filling in your own initials next to the items you know you can handle on your own and another set of initials next to those items that require outside expertise. When the plan is done, you can look at the list and get a strong indication of what you can handle and what will require help from someone else.

--John Delmatoff, Pathfinder

Coaching, Diamond Bar

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If you have a question about how to start or operate a small business, mail it to Karen E. Klein, Los Angeles Times, 1333 S. Mayflower Ave., Suite 100, Monrovia, CA 91016, or e-mail it to kklein6349@aol.com. Include your name, address and telephone number. This column is designed to answer questions of general interest. It should not be construed as legal advice.