I was made redundant shortly after my 50th birthday and my partner had been made redundant the year before. Redundancy and midlife adjustments were, thankfully in our case, accompanied by good health, a great relationship, optimism and no pandemic!
We knew we wanted to work for ourselves and we took an objective look at our skillset and our priorities. Our skillset suited franchising because we had years of experience expanding (other peoples’) businesses in different locations.
Low risk strategy
We had no intention of starting something brand new because we didn’t feel we had the money to risk or the years to waste getting anything wrong.
We wanted something safe and something with purpose. We were going to invest all our time. We needed to avoid hiccups, so we wanted a recession proof business.
If we were looking now, we’d be looking for a business that grew in the pandemic.
The Value of experience
I think we were fuelled by the fact that our redundancies were age related, because the clarity around the Seniors Helping Seniors notion of valuing experience, intrigued us. Something so simple struck us deeply.
Seniors Helping Seniors owes its success to its policy of employing experienced carers. We call our carers ‘experts by experience’. We employ people who are uniquely suited to provide the elderly care services that does not involve lifting and any of the services labelled ‘personal care’. In an ageing society, there is no shortage of experienced candidates.
Enquiries for our type of care increase daily and we employ carers continuously.
Partnership
Business people are joining as franchise partners because our business model is honourable, crystal clear, easy to manage, affordable, sustainable and successful.
Our franchisees run independently but they have our 24/7 support. Every office is growing well and they all give the Seniors Helping Seniors franchise 5 stars.
Our UK partners say our approach is like a breath of fresh air. They also say the phone started to ring with enquiries on the day we said it would, which proves being trained by people who have hands-on-experience works.
The Pandemic
The pandemic has provided more enquiries for homecare because people are scared. They want to stay safe. They want to stay at home. They don’t want to need to go to hospital and they want to avoid loneliness while they shield. The demographic of our carers and our same carer policies helped every office during the pandemic and we have very proudly maintained 100% safety record.
Seniors Helping Seniors is among the businesses that are integral to the health and growth of the economy.
Change
Everybody has a path. Redundancy gave us the chance to find ours. The pandemic has caused many people to re-evaluate.
We are profoundly shifting the future of ageing in two ways: the success of the care we provide and the benefits of working later in life.
Who wouldn’t want to make their living doing this every day?
Our clients love the services our carers work because they want to and they get paid well and our business processes are fair and honourable. We win awards, constant praise and even the BBC did a feature on our unique position.
Championing others
We could not have done this without recognising the value of experience. People with local experience of caring for people with dementia and other conditions and people with management experience and the ambition to own their own business.
We reduced our management fee to help people get started in the South East and East UK before Christmas to help satisfy demand.
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