The senior home care industry is currently booming, and set to explode in the coming years. In just a few short years, over 35% of the world’s population will be over 55 years old. “Baby boomers” are aging and as their nickname should make obvious, there are definitely a lot of them out there! This makes a senior home care business a great startup opportunity for those who have patience, kindness, and an entrepreneurial spirit.
It’s not just a lucrative business, this industry has a low barrier to entry and much like the heavily-overloaded storage business, senior care is virtually recession proof. As we age, we become less mobile, there’s just no getting around that reality. With their middle age and younger children being busy with work or living far away, this aging populace needs to hire someone to help them with their day-to-day needs such as cleaning, cooking, shopping, errands, helping with bills, and much more.
Let’s take a closer look at what makes a senior home care business attractive to entrepreneurs.
Few required skills.
Most of us would think a great deal of certifications, up to and including a nursing degree, would be a requirement for starting a business in this field. In fact, kindness, caring and reliability are all the skills you’ll require.
In some cases, a strong back, good organisational skills, and first aid training would be a bonus, but a willingness to help and some basic life skills are all that’s needed to enter the senior home care industry.
Most people have everything they need already.
It might blow your mind, but transportation, a smartphone, and perhaps a home PC are all the tools you’ll need to provide care for seniors in their homes. Advertising costs can vary, but Craigslist and Kijiji will likely draw in most of your initial customers until word of mouth takes over.
Business cards and other promotional materials you may hand out can be made in Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, or by Googling for free online tools that will help you to design your printed materials before printing them at home or at your local office supply store.
The pay is better than average.
The minimum wage varies from country to country but is currently just $7.25 in the United States. Pretty dismal if you’re working a low end job, but all the more reason to start your own senior home care service business. The current average for a non-medical home care provider is $25/hr, with minimum set at $18/hr and a sliding scale up to $40/hr in large urban areas.
Where you live will affect how much you can charge, but you can also cater your price-per-customer to each client’s specific individual needs and the time/expenses required to service them. This can easily equate to $50,000/yr if you charge the average per hour rate — much more if you grow and expand the business to include employees that will allow you to take on more customers.
Turn-key business idea destined for success.
I would argue that for most who’re looking to jump straight out of the rat race into a business of their own design would have a hard time failing to execute this idea. A low barrier to entry, limitless growth potential, and the simple reality that this is a definite need that will always need to be filled means that anyone with kindness, compassion, and the will to succeed can build a successful senior home care business in virtually any developed country on the planet.
Main Image Credit: Pantagraph.com
