Ian Thomson, a former City-based equities trader, set up his own business with a Walfinch home care franchise in  Welwyn and Bishops Stortford in 2020. After six months he was in profit. This year, his turnover topped £1million.

“The high demand for home care provides a sustainable income – and you have the extra benefit of helping people in your community, which is wonderful and incredibly rewarding,” Ian says.

Ian started his business after a 12-year career in the City of London. “It was exciting, but I left home at 5.30am and did not return until after 6, and with a wife and three young sons, I wanted a better lifestyle,” he says. He had no experience in the care sector but was attracted by its steady demand and sustainability. Then he heard that you could set up a care business with the support of a franchise.

“I discovered the Walfinch home care franchise and liked the sound of its plans. I got on well with the management and decided that the support it offered would help me change career into the home care business.”

Culture shock

Ian says: “The culture shock of moving into the care sector was huge. Walfinch provides a strong business model, initial and ongoing training, and support from a team who have decades of home care experience, which helps you adjust. 

“However, it's very different from the financial sector. Finance can be volatile and if you lose clients' money you may even be sacked, but care is more serious than that – you may be dealing with a life or death situation. That's what makes it meaningful.”

Getting stuck in fast

His early success was partly because of the franchise area in which he started the business. “There are many quite well-off older people around here, and we won a huge number of clients very quickly,” he says. “It was full-on from very early on and I had to get stuck into all aspects of the business, including providing care myself occasionally.”

Now Ian has a team of over 30 carers, and he is devoted to steering the company to greater growth to offer quality care to more people. “In order to make a success of the business I found you needed to recruit a super-competent care manager and you cannot afford to stop marketing for new clients. You also need to keep up recruitment activity to find more carers, but Walfinch supports you with all of those things.”

An attractive sector to swap into

Ian is convinced that home care is a sector that will appeal to more entrepreneurs coming in from other sectors. “I am seeing more people joining the Walfinch franchise who are from outside the home care sector, attracted by the high demand from clients, relatively low cost of entry, the chance to build a stable income and have a career where you can really make a difference,” he says.

“I see that attraction growing because the demand for home care is large and increasing – and you can soon build a thriving and personally rewarding business.”