grow my business

August 1st (this Friday!) will mark my childcare agency’s One Year Anniversary!

To celebrate, I joined the Chamber of Commerce yesterday! This comes with free advertising in the local paper, among other spectacular things. (Tallahassee’s Chamber is pretty awesome.)

Tomorrow, on the eve of the anniversary, about a dozen of my sitters and I are going out to a wine bar. We’ve made reservations, and are going to have a night where WE’RE the ones going out instead of babysitting while others do!! :)

Wanted to write an entry about something I did earlier this year.

I stopped accepting new clients, and started a waiting list. It was a temporary hold, and the waiting list got long (about 100-150), and in the end some of them went to competitors.

But, I was growing too fast, and if I hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t have been able to keep up. Then, the quality of service would decrease.

Sometimes it’s okay to put the brakes on, if it means staying afloat, maintaining quality, and future success and growth.

The key is communicating to those around you—and I’ve more than recovered in the three months since the hold has been lifted. And best of all? I’ve not only grown a bit, but have been able to KEEP UP with the growth!

I was hoping to see growth for Seminole Sitters by training the sitter who’s moving to Atlanta in a year to run a branch of the childcare agency there.

Unfortunately, life got in the way and circumstances in her path are going to prevent her from a full commitment, and I need to say I’m very happy that she spoke up now instead of down the road, after I’d have invested hundreds of hours into training and preparing her.

Another sitter has volunteered to help with some of the administrative stuff, so that still frees me up to focus on other things, but “other things” is not growing my business to another region.

I don’t know how long this hold on growth will last, but I can’t force growth. You can’t make your child grow another few inches (and who’d do that anyway?) and there’s no way I’m going to force the agency to grow when it’s obviously just bad timing.

We’ll see what God has in store.

So with the goal in mind of growing my childcare agency, I put a positive twist on what could have been a tragic loss. One my best childcare providers is attaining her Master’s in Special Ed next year and relocating to Atlanta, which is about 4-5 hours from me.

I spoke openly with her (a very savvy, smart, and down-to-earth young lady) about the potential of an Atlanta branch of the agency. She loved the idea, and now we have 12 months to familiarize her with all the behind-the-scenes of the business.

I have a step-by-step plan for having her take on more and more administrative responsibility. This is freeing up more time for me, and I think I should be spending it growing the business in another direction. Perhaps advertising? I’ve never had to pay for advertising, because word-of-mouth in this “little big town” has been wonderful.

I once wondered…at what point can I consider the goal of “growing my business” as accomplished. My hope is that it will continue to grow unceasingly, but at a rate that is manageable. I think now I’ll consider it accomplished when there’s a branch of Seminole Sitters in Atlanta. Then I’ll set the goal again. :)