Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

Small Business Failure Rate 50% – Create a Time Line Before Launch a Aging Life or Geriatric Care Management Agency

 

 

WHAT STARTS FIRST IN A STARTUP?

Wondering what you have to do to get a new aging life or geriatric care management business started? What should you do first? What next? A startup timeline tells you the steps you need to take when starting a new care management business.

YOU NEED A TIMELINE
A care management business start-up timeline is meant to remind you of the tasks you may have to perform when starting your business. – before you open your doors

Not every care management business will have to complete each step. For instance, you may decide to get a NACCM credential instead of an NASW credential or no credential at all

MORE THAN HALF OF STARTUPS FAIL IN FIRST TWO YEARS

According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), only 66 percent of small businesses will survive their first two years.

Opening a care management business takes, in aging, what we call executive skills. You have to have a

timeline with a logical order to open any business. What do you do first, second????

Do you have a timeline to open your geriatric care man agent business? You know you have to purchase client software, market, rent an office, get forms, get a website, create a brand, get a marketing database- but in what order.

Learn How to Create Your Timeline to Open plus all the Business Skills you Need to Open Your New GCM Business

Sign up for my New On-Line GCM Business Class at a very low introductory Price of $450

Skills you will learn

  • GCM marketing survey skills to pinpoint your area’s upper 10% clients and 3rd-party referrals to market to, to make your business profitable
  • GCM competitive analysis skills to set the fee per hour your market will bear for your services and to gather information from each, to position your services vs your competition’s so clients will choose you
  • GCM timeline skills to identify and list (in a manageable, doable order), major tasks to complete before you open your business
  • GCM organizational design skills to create your business flow chart and job descriptions, and outline how power flows down your staff to deliver gold standard care to clients
  • GCM business planning skills to write a 13-part business plan to create a blueprint of measurable goals for your business’s financial success
  • GCM marketing skills to create a marketing plan to develop lead sources, conduct lead generation, launch social media, and conduct content marketing to gain new customers
  • GCM sales skills to position your agency to sell your menu of services
    through benefits to 3rd parties and clients though cold calling, 1-1 sales meetings, and inquiries, by knowing how to close the sale and sign the contract
  • GCM ALCA billing skills to develop a billing system that allows you to bill 85% of your time, control your cash flow, invoice promptly to make a profit
  • GCM financial forecasting skills to develop a 3-year financial forecast Excel spreadsheet to track your basic profit and expenses, and to track the number of clients and billable hours needed to break even make a profit, pay back loans, hire new staff, and take a salary yourself

Taught through Blackboard CourseSites

  • Self-paced course
  • Tech support
  • 10 video PowerPoints
  • 10 video intros to modules
  • 1-1 coaching with Cathy Cress
  • Chat room
  • Templates to follow with each module
  • Pre-test
  • Post-test
  • Bibliography
  • Assignments with each module graded by Cathy Cress
  • Facebook group to interact with other students, Cathy Cress and 25 other ALCA GCMs who have already purchased the manual
  • Signed contract must be completed before purchase

 

 

 

If you Are A Start-Up Geriatric Care Management Agency – Do You Have Business Skills?

You chose to Start A Business

You need clinical skills to start and run an aging life or geriatric care management agency but you must have business skills as well- It IS A Business.

 

Geriatric care managers need to understand revenue- how they make money to be financially to make a profit. Revenue does come from billing – but poor billing is very unprofitable billing. Money-losing billing is anything less than 85% of your client’s time. When you bill less than 85% you actually start losing money. Revenue is the high tide of money and is calculated by the number of clients you serve, new clients per month, number of clients canceling service. % of the time billed (the goal is 85%) and what you charge for travel time.

Competition Survey Mandatory To Start A Business

You need to know how to do a competition survey to measure whether you have too much competition and what your competitors offer so you can offer more and be chosen. You should also identify and survey other direct GCM competitors like the non-profit area agency on aging which may have a GCM arm or for-profits like accountants or elder law attorneys who include geriatric care management in their service mix.

Do You Understand Branding?

You need to know branding. Aging life or geriatric care manager must use different branding and a  marketing approach that messages hyper-attention to seamless care to attract these top 10% concierge clients who can afford your services long term.

Do You Have a Marketing Strategy?

Marketing Strategy Business concept. The meeting at the white office table

Marketing your existing or new Aging Life or GCM business is vital to growth, but where you spend your marketing dollars? What marketing tactics make the most sense for you? Where will you reach your concierge client base best?

This is where your marketing strategy comes into play. Before the business can start generating large revenue, a concierge marketing strategy and sales techniques must be in place.

Your marketing message must be communicated to the concierge customer. You need to how to write a business plan, use social media to attract customers, how to do 1-1 marketing to third parties-

FREE Webinar

LEARN HOW TO MARKET LIKE YOUR BUSINESS DEPENDED ON IT 

January 23 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm PST

The busiest season for care managers is January & February after as adult children have just visited for the holiday and seeing their elderly parents skating on very thin aging ice

Learn care management marketing so you can:

Capture those desperate clients in January after the festive fright-

Develop strategic marketing that brings more customers,

Understand branding         

Develop a positioning strategy so the caller chooses you

Understand lead generation in care management

Get the best marketing software  

Create a 5 Star Marketing Plan for the top 10% of seniors who can afford you.

Click Here To Register 

FIND OUT MORE 

THIS FREE  WEBINAR  FROM 2 PM – 3 PM PST January 23, 2020

SIGN UP NOW  

 

How to Get a Big Bang From Care Management Speaker’s Bureau

To succeed in

Closed yellow tool box on a white surface with text “MARKETING TOOLS”. Isolated. 3D Illustration

Geriatric Care Management or ALCA you need to do 4 things

  1. Provide an excellent gold standard service
  2. Understand the inquiry and sales process
  3. Use Good PR
  4. Use the web smartly

PR or Public relations is a key marketing strategy for Geriatric care managers. What is it? Just what is says-

Marketing Strategy Business concept. The meeting at the white office table

building relationships between you and your GCM customers? It is also FREE stories about you and your agency for your agency, saving you lots of money.

Why PR? Because it is free, believable, gives you credibility and stature, helps build your business, gives you authority, read by a lot of people /customers and remembered.

There are paid marketing -the web, newspapers, sponsorships, etc. But if you do free PR you should put a Speakers Bureau in your Marketing /PR Toolbox.

One of the best PR tools you can use from your toolbox is a speaker’s bureau.

What is a Speakers Bureau in geriatric care management or Aging Life Business? Why has one? There are two marketing groups you have to attract- third parties like Elder law attorneys who can refer clients to you. The other is adult children and this group is hard to pinpoint. A speakers bureau gives the perfect PR tool to reach adult children a hard group to directly market to.

The Speaker’s Bureau is a series of ” Hot Topics” presented at women’s clubs, services clubs like the Rotary, family councils of facilities, etc. to draw potential clients like adult children or older clients

You create 4 Hot Topics, like “Mom Loved you Best-“ Working with Siblings over older Parent Care., “The Dutiful Daughter- How women can take care of themselves while being a caregiver.” ” Parent-Sweetheart Scams  – How to understand the undue influence and protect your aging parent from being scammed”

Tasha Beauchamp, an Aging life Care Webmaster, Research Scientist owner of Elder Pages Online, LLC  had this tip in an ALCA blog yesterday about in-person presentations 

“You provide enough information to demonstrate your expertise, but as someone mentioned already, not enough detail that you are giving away the store.  One way to get an insight into what people are interested in is to look at the top eldercare-related searches on Google. These were compiled by the Pew Internet Project:”

  • Dementia and memory loss
  • Long-term care options
  • Paying for care
  • Handling the stress of caregiving”
  • Other ideas from other Aging Life  members include were
  • Hospice & Palliative Care
  • Dementia Care
  • Beauchamp pointed out that dementia is the number 1 feared disease only behind cancer

Newsletters and Content Marketing Tools for Elder Care Professionals

Everything is done ahead for the speaker- methods to make the calls, the speech, the handouts, the timeframe. This is a  really effective marketing tool that your ALCA or GCM agency uses to draw a future bank of customers.

Sign Up for My Newest Free Webinar 

5 Critical Steps to Start and Run a GCM/ALCA Business

 THIS WEBINAR BEGINS: Tuesday, October 22  at 2 PM PST Ends 3:15 PM PST

 Learn how to transform your GCM entrepreneurial dream into a money-making business with 5 profit driven steps!

 

 

 

Find out more in the YouTube from My Geriatric Care 1 Channel.

 

 

 

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