Tell us about your role at Home Instead
As a business development consultant, my role is primarily to support a portfolio of owners to grow their businesses. I have the relationship between our franchise owners and the National Office team, coordinating support and guidance from all the various areas of the business such as marketing, HR and finance. My role is primarily about supporting owners with commercials, PNL, planning, team growth and leadership development.
What multi-unit opportunities are there at Home Instead?
At Home Instead we recognise that some owners who start with a single territory are ambitious and want to grow their business and this is possible by expanding into new locations. For those owners in the network, we are able to give multi-unit opportunities, which enables them to expand their business and to take on new challenges and opportunities.
From a National Office perspective, it enables us to work with those owners who have the leadership skills and the growth mind-set, and we can then provide the right support and the right structures for them to be able to really fulfil their dreams with us. I think that’s why it works well.
What advice would you give to owners looking to expand into multi-unit ownership?
If a franchisee wants to consider taking on another territory, the first thing would be to have an honest thought process, alongside any business partners of course. You need to think about whether you really want to opt for that additional challenge. It’s a fantastic opportunity, but it is also another level of challenge.
So, some real honesty about mindset and where you visualise the business. From a National Office perspective, we have several criteria that we would work through with an owner during that conversation. Real headline things would be their mindset for growth, leadership for themselves and within the business.
How does Home Instead work with owners as they take on additional territories?
We’ve developed a multi-unit strategy at Home Instead, as we recognised that it is a real journey for an owner to go from one territory to two territories and then potentially multiple territories. So, we’ve developed our support at National Office to work with owners on that journey. It really evolves with an owner as they acquire more territories.
There isn’t a single blueprint, it’s more of an organic relationship, and we’re working with owners all of the time to evolve what that looks like. This enables us to ensure we’re providing the best support that we can to owners as they grow into multiple unit ownership, on top of the obvious benefits of having more than one territory, which is the ability to grow revenue and earnings.
What are the benefits of multi-unit ownership?
There are a couple of other real benefits to having more than one territory beyond being able to provide quality care to even more older people. One is the additional opportunity for you as an owner to grow yourself and your personal experience. But also, those within your team to have the opportunity to expand beyond one territory and take on more challenging roles. It also brings some opportunities for centralisation, which can help consolidate processes and efficiencies within the business. So, there are some great opportunities outside of just the earning potential.
What challenges can owners face when they expand into multi-unit ownership?
When moving into multi-unit franchise ownership, it’s a little bit like going from one child to two children. There’s a real challenge in terms of taking on number two; sometimes number three and number four might be a little bit easier because you’ve got the experience.
That’s the first challenge that a lot of people face. Secondly, territories can be different. The demographics in two territories, even if they’re neighbouring, can be very different, and that can pose some real different challenges and opportunities. A third challenge is about leadership in the existing territory, so it’s essential that strong leadership is there so that when an owner is focusing on a second territory, their existing business continues to grow and perform. Probably the fourth thing to point out is around funding, just literally getting access to the funding required for a second territory. So those are the four challenges that I would pick up. But of course, as with all the franchisees in our network, we work with our owners and support them to take those challenges head on.
What support does Home Instead provide owners when they expand into multi-unit ownership?
When an owner takes on an additional unit, the support becomes a little bit more strategic. So, it’s focused a lot more on the leadership of the owner and leadership development within their teams. We also talk quite a lot about centralisation opportunities. We’re not driving people towards centralisation, but there are opportunities there in the right territories. If it makes commercial sense, we’ve also developed a structure to support that.
What we try to achieve is to give owners the ability to still be innovative and entrepreneurial within their own businesses, but within a framework of consistency across the network. We work with owners on what that strategy and structure looks like for them as a multi-unit owner. So, it becomes a bit more strategic, closely working with the owner on how they’re going to develop that business.