When I opened my first childcare in 2006, I had no idea at the time that I would one day be looking at a six figure income with employees and several sites. Offerings that were not being offered in my service area by anyone are now a few of the things that help set us apart from the rest. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of what my little childcare has become, but my first “mistake” in business, was not even considering how business may GROW!
Mistake number two, was underestimating what and how much I really do on a given day. If you want to sharpen your skills and become a Childcare Ninja, the first rule is to STOP!!!! letting others think of you as “the babysitter”! Sure, you love your work and part of your day involves hands on work (play) with children, but your day also involves a truckload (add your own adjective 😉 ) of other work, that parents never see. In fact, I’m willing to bet you don’t even realize how much “other work” you actually do as a childcare professional.
After years of running my childcare by basically the “seat of my pants” and doing everything myself, it became quite obvious that if I was going to keep growing this business, I was going to have to find a better way of growing. After two sites with additional offerings and a third site in the horizon, I was becoming exhausted instead of excited about going into work each day. There was no way I could keep going like this. It was at this point that I began to really seek ways to run my childcare business smarter.
That is where this exercise comes in to play. What exercise you ask? “business mapping”. Some of you may be familiar with business mapping and some of you may be saying, oh brother, here we go. Might I encourage you to hear me out though. Sitting down and doing this exercise is the start of what helped me go from being exhausted to being excited about my childcare business all over again! If you’re already familiar with what business mapping is, click here to go ahead and create a business map for your childcare so that you can begin understanding what running your little childcare really looks like. For those of you who aren’t sure what business mapping is, let me explain.
First of all business mapping is just the beginning. It will help you see what it takes for you to open and close your door to your families each day. In order for you to grow, you must first understand where you are. Much like a map you need a starting point. By the end of your business mapping exercise you will know exactly what you’re doing, so that you can begin to plan what is working, not working, and what you can continue to do yourself, what you may need to hand off to some lovely little helper and finally, give you an idea of what else you can take on. You can then create systems that help you reach your goals. So, let’s get started!
After you have downloaded our business mapping FREEBIE (who doesn’t love a freebie 🙂 ), find a quiet place, turn on some soft music, grab a cup of coffee (insert your favorite drink here) and review the sample business map provided. This sample is designed specifically for childcares and while there are still a lot of things not mentioned on this sample that you may do, please remember this is just to get your mind flowing. Once you start filling in your own, you will definitely begin to see why you are not just the babysitter. So, enjoy this exercise and let us know how it helps you bring more clarity to your childcare business, we’d love to #shareyourjourney!
Why Childcare Ninjas Exist? In my search for ideas to better grow my business, I realized that most business information and ideas are targeted toward other types of businesses and what’s more is that, the groups, organizations etc. that are reaching the childcare industry tend to offer advice that is wonderful for large centers but it seems like (or at least what I felt) the small-mid size childcare professional was either on their own or had to figure out how to adjust the advice to work for them. For this reason, I’ve created this community – Childcare Ninjas! We are an army of childcare professionals with ninja sharp skills, caring for kids with 100% love who are sharing skills to go from exhausted to excited in our childcare businesses again! Interested in becoming a part of the community, click here!