Extra Help – The Flexible 4-in-1 Franchise Opportunity
Sectors
Location
Greater London, London, Nationwide, North East, North West, South East, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland, East Midlands
Initial Investment
5-10K
Flexible jobs for older workers
What kinds of flexible jobs are out there for older workers? We take a look.
Join Extra Help, the national franchise network that offers comprehensive home-help solutions to those in need.
A Prime Opportunity
Recent studies show that Britain’s general population is ageing. The number of older people is rapidly increasing, with many of them choosing, or being forced to stay in their own homes and live independently. Along with the closure of many care homes across the country and the fact that local authorities are mostly unwilling to provide non-personal care, a huge opportunity exists to offer the assistance elderly people need to make their lives easier and allow them to maintain their dignity and independence.
What’s more, we don’t just help the elderly! Extra Help provides flexible home-help and domestic services to literally anyone who needs them, from new and hard-working parents to time-poor professionals.
Due to the nature of the services we provide, Extra Help was allowed to remain open during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, providing vital, COVID-compliant assistance and companionship to clients across the country.
Straightforward Business Model
Our tried-and-tested business model is straightforward and easy to follow. Clients are charged a flat fee per hour and home-helpers are self-employed, thereby organising their own tax and National Insurance. Your job as a franchise owner is simply to find clients and recruit responsible, caring and honest home-helpers to meet their requirements.
You will receive:
- Regular face-to-face training
- Ongoing telephone support and advice
- Operations Manual
- Generic telephone number with call answering service
- Extra Help web page and email address stationery
- Promotional literature
- Marketing support
- 5000 leaflets to get you started
- We even pay your first year’s health and social care insurance, plus you will receive advice on your administration and systems to help you run your business effectively.
- Ethical and Honest Trading
Extra Help is an open, trustworthy company that abides by trading law. We have undergone the appropriate training and background checks to enable us to receive the following accreditation’s:
British Franchise Association (BFA) Member
NatWest Bank and RBS Approved
What personal qualities do I need?
Extra Help is based on high moral standards and integrity.Our clients are often vulnerable and need reassurance that they’re in the best possible hands. You must have acurrent DBS check (we can do
this for you) and be able to demonstrate a commitment to providing a top quality, consistent and trustworthy service to your clients. You also need to be passionate about helping others and self motivated, with a determination to succeed.
Management experience is useful (but not essential as full training is provided), along with good communication and organisational skills.
What will my role be?
You will be involved in every area of the business.You will manage your administration, organise your marketing, handle incoming telephone enquiries, deal with home-helpers and clients and, of course, be on hand to resolve any problems that may occur.
Your day-to-day responsibilities will include:
- Advertising for home-helpers
- Visiting clients and understanding their requirements and concerns
- Interviewing and reference checking candidates
- Matching clients with suitable home-helpers
- Organising back up support in case of holidays and providing a replacement home-helper if required
Our Franchise Package
At £10,000 + VAT, our package is jam-packed full of valuable benefits, including everything you need to start up and manage a highly rewarding, profitable and successful business.
Franchisees receive a unique, post coded area, covering 100,000 homes; a detailed Operations Manual, comprehensive induction and refresher training sessions; ongoing support from Head Office; a complete, branded stationery pack; telephone number with answer phone service, email address and optimised web page; professionally-designed leaflets and much more!
Modest Monthly Service Fees
Extra Help’s service fees are modest and designed to provide you with every chance of success. Your first 3 months of trading are completely free, with service fees of £200 + VAT only payable from month 4. After your first year, fees increase to £250 + VAT per month, or 10%, whichever is greater, with discounts applicable when you achieve your targets.
You can realistically recoup your original investment within the first year, meaning that, upon completion of your first year in business, you could be well on your way to generating serious profits!
Our franchisees’ figures speak for themselves. Several franchisees are bringing in an astounding £5,500 per month, and others are bringing in up to £4,000 per month, proving that Extra Help is a viable and lucrative business opportunity.
Join Our Family
Our franchise network really is unique, in that we’re like one, big, extended family. Our management team is here to provide you with as much help and guidance as you need to build your own, successful business.
All franchisees enjoy access to a range of mentoring and training services via our Director of operations, Sarah Canny, and Franchise manager and trainer, Denise Cooper, both of whom are also highly experienced franchisees themselves.
Although our franchisees come from a variety of backgrounds, they share one, important value. They are all truly passionate about helping people, including their peers, and are encouraged to support and communicate with each other, through social media, regular, regionalised meet-ups and, of course, our Annual Conference.
CASE STUDY – CATH & CAROL, WIRRAL
Area: Wirral
Length of time trading: 5 years
Number of clients: 240
Monthly billed hours: 2,200
Hi, I’m Carol Godding. Together with my friend, Cath Arnold, I own Extra Help Wirral and have been trading for over five years.
Cath and I originally met in the playground at our children’s school; we became friends and started attending yoga classes together. One day, after a class, we started talking about the idea of starting a business together.
Previously, I’d been self-employed for most of my life, running a retail franchise in the West Midlands; owning a caravan park in Wales, and, more recently, working as a voluntary administrator at my children’s playgroup. Cath had worked as the language director at a grammar school for many years.
What attracted us to franchising?
We both felt it was the right time in our lives to try something new and it was important to find something we both enjoyed. We weren’t looking to make millions but wanted to find a business that was relatively easy to run and would provide us both with an income that would take us up to retirement.
I had once owned a franchise, many years ago, and therefore had some experience, so we decided to look into franchising and discovered Extra Help.
Why Extra Help?
Some of the franchises we looked at felt quite restrictive, whereas Extra Help gives you the flexibility to provide various, different services, rather than being limited to only one. We could see we’d be able to pick and choose the services we wanted to promote and respond
to our target market more effectively. We didn’t feel comfortable with providing personal care and were attracted by the fact that home helpers are self-employed, meaning there would be no PAYE, National Insurance or pensions to manage.
How we got started
We started off with a leaflet drop of 10,000 leaflets and placed adverts in post offices, libraries, coffee shops and the local preschool. We also recruited some home-helpers as enquiries started to come in.
Although we intended to focus on home-help for the elderly, our first client actually needed dog-walking services! We also received several enquiries for cleaning, babysitting and general parents’ help, mainly through friends. Whilst this wasn’t our ideal target market, we had to start somewhere!
How we built our client base
Over the last five years, we’ve made a conscious effort to build relationships with Social Services, GP surgeries and various, local charity organisations, all with the aim of reaching our ideal target market – the elderly. This, coupled with the fact that all the care packages are full in our area, has paid off and led to our success in building our client base. There’s a real demand for reliable companies like ours to help people who don’t need personal care, just a bit of help to keep on top of everyday tasks or some companionship. Companionship is a service that’s constantly in demand, especially since the pandemic, as people have been so lonely and isolated. Some of our clients still haven’t left the house since March 2020!
Most of our clients are elderly or vulnerable in some way – we do have some clients who only require cleaning but they’re mainly clients who’ve been with us since the beginning, or are relatives of our elderly clients. I’m proud to say we no longer have to advertise, as all our new clients come to us!
What’s our work/life balance like?
We’ve been running Extra Help Wirral together since the beginning and it’s been so much easier than if I’d been on my own. We’re extremely busy – it can be quite full-on sometimes – so it’s great to have each other to share the workload and cover for each other.
When we first started, we agreed on how we’d like to split the roles within the business, as office management and admin are my strengths and Cath is more of a people person. However, in reality, it didn’t work out that way, and we both ended up doing a bit of everything, which wasn’t making the most of our individual skill sets. We carried on in this way until last autumn, when we realised we could work far more efficiently if we revisited our original idea of clearly defined roles.
We then made the decision that I’d be office-based and concentrate on dealing with calls, enquiries and admin. Cath spends her time out and about, meeting new clients and matching them up with home-helpers. We find this works so much better for us – our business runs more smoothly and our work/life balance is better.
As we’ve got busier and our client base has grown, we’ve had to put in some measures to ensure we don’t end up working evenings and weekends, and can maintain our work/life balance. For example, we’ve tried to wean clients off of using our mobile numbers and instead, have given them a new, local number that diverts to my mobile. Our office hours are 10 am – 5 pm, Monday to Friday and, outside of these hours, they are diverted to a voicemail message that states our opening hours. The key is to set boundaries, so clients know you’re there for them but also respect your time off.
What’s gone well?
Our turnover is currently over £7,000 per month! We’ve grown the business enough to provide us both with a decent income – Cath is now earning more than she earnt as a teacher, which we’re especially pleased about.
We have an excellent reputation with Social Services, local charities and GP surgeries, to the extent that many of our clients have come to us via them.
We now have 240 clients, serviced by our team of 50 home-helpers.
Our services are so much in demand that we don’t need to advertise and haven’t done for a long time.
By focusing on home-help services for the elderly, we managed to keep going during the pandemic by providing shopping services, meal preparation, checking in on elderly relatives and transport to hospital and doctor appointments. We made sure our home-helpers wore masks; observed strict hygiene rules and socially distanced; adapted our services; and kept most of our clients, who were happy to continue paying our fees.
At the most recent Extra Help Conference, we won more awards than any other territory, including Franchisee of the Year!
What are our challenges?
Until recently, our main challenge was that we had too many clients and not enough homehelpers! Recruitment has been difficult since the pandemic. Although we have 50 homehelpers, we still have a waiting list. However, we’ve just recruited three new home-helpers, so we hope we’re beginning to turn the corner on this. We do want to continue to grow the business and would be busier if we had more staff.
Covid has made a huge impact on our business, even though we didn’t lose many clients. For example, last December, we had seven home-helpers off sick in the same week!
The general rise in the cost of living. However, we haven’t been too affected by this, so far, as many of our clients are elderly or have disabilities and receive certain allowances.
Sometimes, things can and do go wrong, especially when you’re let down by a home-helper, or a client isn’t happy with the services provided to them – it’s the nature of the business. To minimise the risk of this happening, we are very discerning when recruiting our home-helpers and don’t just take on anyone who applies to join us.
Conclusion
Extra Help is an extremely rewarding business and we would recommend it to anyone who isn’t afraid of hard work and genuinely loves to help others. We feel as if we’re doing something really valuable – it’s a very positive business to be involved with.
It’s great to be part of such a friendly and approachable franchise network, but one that’s also extremely professional. We know we have support whenever we need it.