If you’re a business-minded individual who is also passionate about personal fulfilment through your business endeavours, you may have been looking for a home care business for sale. The industry is truly rewarding and is so broad in terms of all the various types of services that you can offer. So why choose an elder care business for sale and how should you get started? Let’s find out.
Why buy an elder care business?
- Growing demand: over 950,000 people in the UK receive domiciliary care and this number is only expected to grow with an increasingly ageing population.
- Profitability: there is certainly room to make a profit if you enter this industry because of increased demand for its services.
- Rewards: you’ll not only enjoy substantial financial rewards, but you’ll also be able to feel a personal sense of achievement and satisfaction due to the nature of this business.
How to start an elder care business
If you’re wondering how to start an elder care business in the UK, we’ve outlined some of the most important steps you need to follow.
- Start out by defining your services: the elder care business is quite broad and can range from offering personal assistance, grocery shopping, running errands, administering medication, companionship care and so much more. While you are not required to have medical knowledge when you provide these services, it is, however, important to define what services you will be offering your clients.
- Choose your legal structure: there are two main routes to follow with an elder care business. One is to start from scratch while the other is to consider elder care franchise opportunities. The number of advantages of elder care franchising is huge and while we won’t go into all the details, you can rest assured that you’ll be working with a proven and profitable business model to help your business grow.
- Create a business plan: next up, you need to create a business plan. This will contain an executive summary, income and revenue projections over the short, medium and long term, your marketing strategy, hiring strategy and more. However, all this is taken care of for you if you choose to go the franchise route.
- Register with the CQC: it’s now time to register the business and the business’ manager with the Care Quality Commission (CQC). This is a regulatory requirement that must be followed.
- Get insurance: to protect your business from any mishaps or accidents that may occur in the course of doing business and providing elderly care services, getting the right insurance is an important component of your business. Do so before you start service provision to ensure that you are covered for all eventualities.
- Set your rates: this step can be skipped if you are planning on pursuing elder care franchise opportunities. However, if you’re starting on your own, this is something that you’ll need to factor in and will require some serious calculations on your part. Consider how much your competitors are charging, whether you can beat their prices, and if so, at what expense? You also need to calculate your fixed and variable costs and then work out how your projected income will cover these costs while leaving you with a profit.
- Do your marketing: marketing is a critical factor in ensuring your business’ name gets out there and becomes a recognisable brand. It takes consistent efforts to ensure that you’re top of mind with your customers. Marketing will entail creating a website for your business, social media marketing and constant monitoring, pamphlets and flyers, other types of advertising and more. Once again, with a franchise, this is a cost and effort you don’t need to factor in because the franchisor’s brand is already established and the franchisor will have a special budget allocated to marketing as well as resources to ensure that all franchisees benefit equally from it.
- Hire employees: whether you start out on your own or you purchase a franchise, you’ll need to hire staff who’ll take care of the actual work. Here, you will need to ensure your staff has background checks and are thoroughly vetted to make certain that they will be able to provide the service in question to the highest quality industry standards.
- Find customers: you’re almost there! Now, it’s time to find your customers. This is where your marketing plan in your business plan comes in handy, as well as your previous marketing efforts. Luckily, with a franchise, your customers are already waiting for you. You just need to take the step in that direction.
- Provide the service: finally, it’s time to provide the service. This is going to be an ongoing and continuous activity and whether you choose a senior home care business for sale or a franchise opportunity with one of the best known brands in the industry, adhering to and providing high quality service standards will help maintain your strong business reputation and ensure you get more clients further down the road.
Start an elder care business today
Purchasing a care business for sale can offer many rewards and is something you should give strong consideration to. As an extension of this, franchising could be just the step you need to take in the right direction to ensure you start your own business with the right levels of support.
