Business in Profile
CAREFORKIDS.COM.AU - Roxanne Elliott
CareforKids.com.au is Australia's leading and only country-wide on-line service that matches parents with care providers from individual nannies and babysitters to family day care services, child care centres and Out Of School Hours services. We also provide a corporate service to companies who want to offer child care solutions to their employees. We started just three years ago and are based in O'Connell St in Sydney's CBD. There are five full time permanent staff, but we also have various freelancers who work with us.
Why did you start your business?
After I had my little girl (now 5) I found it unbelievably hard and stressful to find the child care I needed. I saw a huge lack of easy to access information and services that would help busy parents to find quality child care for their children. Everything was so disparate with no central point of reference for child care across the country. The majority of Australian parents now has access to the web, either at home or at work and as I was from an IT background, I set about creating an online service, accessible to everyone that would make the search for child care easier and less stressful.
Has starting your own business lived up to expectations?
Absolutely. Although I was fairly realistic in terms of how much work it would entail! Our business, being online and a complicated database and search engine needs constant updating and was unbelievably time consuming to set up the database in the first place. But it's really been worth it.
What have you enjoyed the most about running your own business?
I love the fact that not only have we built up a successful business, but we've also really helped other parents and have provided, and continue to provide and invaluable service for parents searching for child care
What is the biggest challenge for you in running your own business?
Our biggest challenge with CareforKids.com.au has been education it was such a new concept bringing information on all types of child care online and under the one umbrella so the challenge has been educating people about CareforKids.com.au and explaining what it was all about. Some things are very innovative like our online babysitting booking service and child care vacancy alert we also offer a number of different services for large companies, agencies, child care providers and to government so this has been a major challenge
How do you manage the juggle of running your own business with family?
My husband is also my business partner and we share a lot of the parenting duties as well as the business side of things, which really helps. We can both be flexible. We've also had great child care! I found it quite hard in the beginning, given the huge demands on time and energy of setting up a business and being a parent. It can be quite overwhelming at times, but it's much easier now.
Do you have a favourite networking opportunity or event?
We do a lot of networking day to day with associations, government, child care professionals which is a great help on an ongoing basis.
Do you have any advice for anyone out there who may be thinking about starting their own business?
I would say just to make sure that you have really thought things through, research the market, get advice from professionals as you can't do everything yourself, put a proper business plan together and set yourself some realistic objectives.
For more information about CareforKids.com.au ...click here
