Taking a senior care business from private to franchise
Jerod and Dustin started their senior care business, A Place At Home, back in 2012. They were originally motivated to take care of their grandparents and great grandparents. While they always thought they would eventually scale their business, when they first started, they weren’t too sure what that would look like. They just knew they wanted to help others.
And A Place At Home grew, their clients kept asking for more services. So they continued adding more services. Any thought of scaling continued turning based on natural expansion. Eventually, they needed to come up with a Business Plan Proforma (covering their earnings, without certain nonrecurring expenses). It was time to be a little more deliberate about the company, rather than constantly adjusting to everyone’s needs as they developed.
Jerod had gone to business colleges, starting back in 2003. His first impressions of franchising were found therein. Unfortunately, his impression of the idea was that he would lose control of locations run by franchisees—as opposed to opening more units personally. Nevertheless, he wasn’t receiving a great deal of positive information about franchising or franchises. This remained a consistent line of thinking in the eyes of the university later in life when completing his MBA. But he found himself thinking about validity of franchising and the benefits it had, after growing A Place At Home with Dustin.
Jerod saw other business owners franchising their businesses. And I can tell you, throughout the US, that remains the case. Jerod and Dustin figured they could, too! Jerod just needed to make certain that they were doing it differently than everybody else in the senior care industry—which had a lot of players in it already. So he got to work researching about franchising and solidifying their core differentiators.
Current Roles and Needs
A Place At Home had a couple of locations open, had managers in place. Of course, getting those in place comes with some concern. For instance, on a Friday evening when ready to go home for the day, if you receive a call for a new client, and your manager was about to go home for the weekend, an hourly manager likely wouldn’t be as apt to stay any longer or work through the weekend signing and staffing the new client. However, an owner (or franchisee) would have much more stake in the game. When that’s the case, staying longer for a new client is all about securing a new income stream, and in their case, making sure a senior received the care they needed, when they needed it. Ideally, this meant people in such a role would not be turning down business on Friday nights.
Jerod was able to see that additional units or locations would be in better hands if they had franchisees with stake in the game who cared about the quality of service provided and the satisfaction of their staff. Now that they had a better idea of how franchisees would be involved, they would need to solidify their policies and procedures. This required them taking a step back so they could have more time to prepare everything.
A Place At Home was already profitable. They were already growing. But they needed to find out how they would remain profitable without them directly running the business. So they had to remove themselves from day-to-day operations and work towards releasing some control of their current units.
This portion required some help, and good systems were essential. Senior care is super competitive and having ideal systems in place could help them push the envelope. To accomplish this, they researched many different operational systems to see what best fit their style of management and leadership. This allowed them to narrow in on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), key roles, tasks, and specific numbers for all of their franchisees to follow. They also had to come up with a solid vision on growth, which they did.
Market Analysis
Now that they were looking into growing their business, this required a market analysis. They needed to look at which markets their business would do well and which ones it wouldn’t. And they needed to figure out how well their services would perform in the various markets where they could start offering franchise units.
They also had to factor in the senior-care franchising market. As mentioned before, this industry is competitive. They needed to see what they were going up against. Also, they needed to make sure they were remaining competitive in terms of royalties, fees, territory sizzes, education, and other factors that their competitors were offering.
Again, discussing this with multiple experts is essential. Beyond discussion, there are plenty of folks who can do market analysis for you. You don’t need to do this alone. Jerod and Dustin had the right people involved, and this helped them secure the future they wanted.
Read the entire story on A Place At Home in chapter 10 of my WSJ bestselling book “Real Freedom”