Caremark : From Specialist Nurse to Caremark Wakefield Managing Director
How to use this video
This video features insights from a current franchisee sharing their experience with the Caremark franchise. As you watch, listen for details about daily involvement, support, and challenges as well as successes. If this perspective resonates, the next step is to request more information and speak directly with the franchisor.
About This Video
This Caremark UK case study features Julie Oommen, the managing director of Caremark Wakefield.
Pre-Caremark, Julie worked as a specialist nurse for 20 years, most recently as a specialist nurse in Ophthalmology at Leeds Teaching Hospital, where her work caring for elderly patients was the specific clinical context that prepared her for regulated home-care delivery. She found Caremark through a Facebook ad targeting franchise recruitment and saw the brand as something she could use to make a difference for the elderly population she had been caring for inside the hospital system.
The brand-selection moment Julie describes is similar in shape to other Caremark partner accounts. Her meeting with Kevin Lewis was the deciding factor, and what made it land was Kevin's honesty rather than his sales capability. Julie walked into the meeting confident she could do anything in care because she already knew care; Kevin made her realise that being a franchisee meant taking off the nurse hat and putting on the entrepreneur hat. His openness, honesty, and transparency in setting that expectation directly was what convinced her to join.
On the operating side, Julie is candid about the work-life-balance reality. Her hospital work had been clean: 8:30 to 5, leave the work behind at the end of the day. The franchise business is 24/7, especially for a partner who didn't come in with any business background. The first phase was hard, she had to work very hard to achieve what she wanted to achieve. The growth point that's helped her since is learning to delegate rather than micromanaging staff; that shift is what's made the operating model work for her. Her advice to prospective franchisees is honest: real passion is the precondition; the support from Caremark is given.
Caremark UK is a regulated home-care franchise. The Caremark partner library deliberately spans multiple pre-Caremark backgrounds: chartered accountancy (Farina), care management (Balmers), specialist nursing (Julie), hotel/catering (Charles). That way, prospective partners can identify with the entry path closest to their own.
Hear Julie Oommen of Caremark UK Wakefield describe her career switch: specialist nurse 20 years to managing director, Kevin Lewis honesty, two-week training.