LESSON 2 of 2: FROM PURPOSE TO A RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS MODEL

Start With the Person or Population

Before choosing services, begin with the people.

Ask:

Who am I actually designing this for?

A business may serve individuals, families, children, adults, caregivers, professionals, organizations, schools, healthcare providers, government systems, employers, or another defined population.

The more clearly you understand who the business is designed to serve, the easier it becomes to evaluate whether the service model actually fits their needs.

Identify the Need Before the Service

Entrepreneurs often begin by deciding what they want to sell.

Orientation asks another question first:

What need am I responding to?

For example, instead of beginning with:

“I want to start a staffing company.”

you might first identify:

“Organizations in this environment are struggling to maintain a prepared and reliable workforce.”

Instead of beginning with:

“I want to open a care agency.”

you might first identify:

“Families in this population are having difficulty accessing consistent support.”

The service is a response to the need.

Understanding the need helps you determine whether the service you imagined is actually the right design.

Who Receives the Service and Who Pays for It?

In many businesses, the customer, the person receiving the service, and the person paying for the service are the same person.

In care-centered industries, they may be different.

For example, a service may involve an individual receiving support, a family helping make decisions, an agency purchasing staffing, an employer purchasing training, a school contracting for services, an insurance or payer system, or a government program authorizing and paying for an eligible service.

This means you may need to understand several different perspectives.

Ask: Who receives the service? Who makes the purchasing or authorization decision? Who pays? Who establishes requirements? Who evaluates whether the service is being delivered properly?

A responsible business model understands these relationships before building its systems.

Understand Your Scope

Your business model must clearly identify what you are qualified and authorized to provide.

Some business activities can begin with ordinary business registration and appropriate general business requirements.

Other activities may require additional licenses, professional credentials, certifications, permits, contracts, provider approvals, background-clearance requirements, insurance, training, supervision, documentation, inspections, or regulatory compliance.

Do not assume that forming an LLC gives you authority to provide a regulated service.

A business entity and permission to perform a particular regulated activity are not the same thing.

Before offering a care-centered service, identify the agencies, boards, payers, contracts, professional standards, and other authorities that may apply.

Think About the Workforce

If other people will help deliver your service, workforce design becomes part of business design.

Consider:

What roles will be needed? What qualifications will those roles require? Which positions require credentials or licenses? What training is required? Who provides supervision? How will employees or contractors be onboarded? How will expectations be communicated? How will documentation be managed? What happens when performance or capacity changes? How will the business maintain sufficient staffing?

A service cannot be stronger than the systems supporting the people responsible for delivering it.

Think About Operations

Every business needs operational systems.

Depending on the business, these may include scheduling, intake, customer communication, service documentation, billing, payroll, recordkeeping, quality review, training, staffing, safety, complaints, incident response, technology, purchasing, privacy, and financial management.

You do not have to build every system on the first day.

You do need to identify which systems must exist before the business can responsibly operate.

Think About Sustainability

Purpose and sustainability should not compete with each other.

A business that cannot sustain its operations may eventually lose the capacity to fulfill its purpose.

Sustainability requires understanding what it costs to operate, how revenue will be generated, how people will be compensated, what resources are required, what risks must be managed, and what level of growth the current systems can support.

Revenue is not the opposite of purpose.

For a business, responsible revenue can create capacity.

The goal is to develop a financial model that supports the business without abandoning the purpose it was designed to fulfill.

Carepreneurship™ Means More Than Starting a Care Business

Carepreneurship™ combines entrepreneurship with responsibility for care-centered people, services, systems, or workforce environments.

A Carepreneur should be prepared to ask:

Am I qualified to provide what I am offering?

Do I understand the systems connected to this service?

What regulations or professional requirements apply?

What workforce will I need?

What capacity will the business need before accepting responsibility for others?

How will I protect the people connected to the service?

How will the business sustain the work responsibly?

Carepreneurship™ is not simply opening a business in the care industry.

It is learning to build with purpose, responsibility, capacity, and stewardship.

From Purpose to Design

Your business does not need to have every answer today.

This course is helping you identify the questions that must be answered.

The goal is to move from:

“I have an idea.”

to:

“I understand what I am designing.”

Then from:

“I want to help.”

to:

“I understand the responsibility connected to helping.”

And eventually from:

“I started a business.”

to:

“I built a business with the capacity and systems to operate on purpose.”