Start a non-medical home care agency
State licensing or registration completed where your state requires it, caregivers recruited, screened, and hired as W-2 employees, hourly rates set to cover the payroll burden and the unbilled time, private-pay clients signed with written service agreements, and 15 clients scheduled with reliable coverage.
Free preview: 4 of 25 steps
Work through them in the real run view, exactly as a buyer does. No account, no payment, nothing saved.
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- Your own copy — keep it forever
- Gets better over time — free updates included
- Run it on web and mobile
- Invite a partner to go through it with you — you share the same progress
- Make it your own — a private copy you can edit to fit your situation
- The playbook's community — ask questions, get additions, and see how other buyers improve it, right on the step
Who it's for
Nurses, caregivers, and organizers with $10,000–$40,000 who want a staffed, private-pay agency in their own city, including first-time founders who have never run payroll or faced a state licensing board. It fits the solo owner-operator who will sell, schedule, and cover shifts in the first year — not someone buying an established book of business and not an absentee investor.
About this playbook
This guide takes you from your first conversation with a family that already pays for care to a staffed agency with fifteen scheduled clients and a day-90 decision you agreed on before you opened. You prove the demand and the price before you spend real money, run the break-even and scenario arithmetic that set your cash reserve, and answer the licensing question the way your own state answers it — some states license non-medical home care, some register it, and some barely touch it, and the difference reshapes the whole capital plan. You will cost the employed hour with the full payroll burden — employer FICA, unemployment, workers' compensation, and the unbilled time between clients — so a $35 bill rate and an $18 wage never masquerade as a $17 margin. The path covers private-pay and long-term-care insurance billing only, and it ends ninety days after your first client, when you read your real numbers against the plan and act on the verdict you wrote in advance. It does not cover Medicaid waiver billing, Medicare, nursing or therapy services, or buying a franchise.
What you'll do, step by stepFree preview
Only a sample is open: 4 of 25 steps can be read in full. The rest unlock when you buy.
Phase 1: Prove the demand before you spend
3 stepsPhase 2: Price the billable hour honestly
3 stepsPhase 3: Run the numbers that make the decision
4 stepsPhase 4: Get the company, the license, and the coverage
3 stepsPhase 5: Line up the money that covers payroll
3 stepsPhase 6: Find the first clients and sign them
3 stepsPhase 7: Hire caregivers and run the week
3 stepsPhase 8: Read the real numbers at day 90
3 steps
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What you need first
You can put $10,000–$40,000 at risk, you have a home city where you will operate, and you can take calls on evenings and weekends, because caregiver gaps do not respect office hours. No nursing license or healthcare degree is needed for non-medical companion and personal care, and no prior business experience is assumed.
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