Extra Help – a Helping Hand for Everyone
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.
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.
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 of our franchisees are earning £6000 + per month while others bringing in over £4000+ 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.
Ethical, 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 accreditations:
- bfa Expanding Members
- NatWest Bank and RBS Approved
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, postcoded 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!
Could you be our next franchisee?
Extra Help is always searching for caring and motivated franchisees to join our growing network. If you’re passionate about helping others and think you have what it takes to be an Extra Help franchisee, please click below to contact us.
Extra Help NW Leicestershire celebrates exceptional, first-year results
Sam Bee, owner of Extra Help NW Leicestershire, says it definitely is!
In November 2021, Sam made the decision to buy an Extra Help franchise, having enjoyed a lengthy career in commercial sales. She originally found Extra Help on an online franchise directory and, although she wasn’t specifically looking for a home-help or cleaning franchise, it appealed to her due to her experience with her own parents. Her mum has advanced Alzheimer’s and, when she still lived at home, a lady would visit her, just to sit with her and keep her company with a cup of tea, so Sam’s dad could go out to the shops or do some gardening.
“Extra Help’s ethos really resonated with me - it seemed so relevant and such a wonderful way to help people,” says Sam.
In just over a year, Sam has built a thriving and lucrative home-help business.
- She has over 100 clients, who are looked after by her reliable team of 27 home-helpers, some of whom have worked for Sam right from the start.
- She is currently billing an astonishing 480 hours per month and bringing in a monthly income of over £3,000!
What’s more, as Extra Help is a low-cost franchise, Sam’s outgoings are relatively small.
“Aside from personal expenses, such as my car, the only regular outgoings I have are the monthly franchise fees and local advertising,” she says, “there are no premises to pay for, as I work from home, and all my home-helpers are self-employed.”
Since launching her business, Sam has made a conscious effort to focus her efforts on providing a wide range of home-help services to the elderly, such as shopping, gardening, meal preparation and companionship, rather than just cleaning.
She says: “Clients come and go, so I’m constantly searching for the next opportunity. The cost-of-living crisis has meant I’ve lost a few of my cleaning clients, who see our services as a luxury, but the elderly depend upon us and see it as essential. Plus, they do get help from the government to pay for our services, which means they’re less affected for now.”
As the majority of her business comes through Facebook, Sam constantly monitors her local groups, ready to respond to requests for home-help services immediately. She has also built a great relationship with her local Social Services department, which she admits has taken the best part of a year and only happened by chance.
“It’s hard unless you have a way in!” she says, “Someone who happens to work for the local council in Public Health contacted me about gardening services. I built up a relationship with him and he recommended me to a social worker, who then passed my details to her colleagues.”
Sam now receives regular requests for companionship services via these social workers, which is helping her to achieve and exceed the very high targets she sets for herself. She attributes her success to having a great team in place and admits her biggest challenge is finding and retaining the right staff.
“It’s a skill you can only learn with experience,” she says, “I’ve learned to be very choosy and only take them on if I think they’re exactly the right fit.”
Sam’s achievements certainly haven’t gone unnoticed. At the last Extra Help Conference, Sam was thrilled to win three awards, ‘Highest Achiever – Year 2’, ‘Sales Superstar’ and ‘Most Improved Clients’.
Sam says the key to her success is being extremely driven and setting herself high targets. She advises potential franchisees to be aware of the local competition and prepared to come up against private cleaners and home-helpers, who will inevitably be charging less for their services.
She says: “Clients are paying extra for that peace of mind and a guaranteed, consistent service, even if their home-helper is on holiday or sick. I also emphasise that all of my home-helpers are DBS checked, which provides additional peace of mind, especially when dealing with elderly or vulnerable clients.”
“It’s really about the added value and enhanced service you provide. For example, I always attend the initial visit with the home-helper, to ensure they’re a good fit. Another benefit for the client is, if they don’t get on with their home-helper, they can easily request a different one through me, without any awkwardness!”
Lastly, Sam advises not to go out and do any jobs yourself, but to concentrate on building the right team to do the work.
“If each of my 27 home-helpers does a 2-hour clean, and I earn £5 per hour for each job, that’s £270 for two hours’ work!” she says. “In my mind, this is the only way you’ll earn decent money. I will step in if someone is off sick and I can’t get cover, but this rarely happens. My time is better spent managing the business,” she says.
What Sam loves most about Extra Help is the flexibility of the job and the fact she can work around her other commitments.
“I try to be available for new and existing clients when they need me, but my work/life balance is very important to me. This business has enabled me to do the school run, walk my dogs twice a day and be around for my daughter before and after school, I couldn’t ask for more!” she says.
If Sam’s story has inspired you and you’d like to learn more about owning a rewarding home-help and cleaning franchise, simply click below to learn more:
I've known Claire for 15 years now and all I can say is that she is one inspirational lady. Even when I first knew Claire (our sons grew up together) she was always very driven and passionate about her ventures and has made a real success of herself and her businesses. The difference with Claire is that, even with this drive, passion and dedication and extremely busy life, she always has time to speak to me and share her thoughts, which helps me a lot and something that always value greatly. Claire is an absolute inspiration to me and I would imagine to lots of others. She has single handedly raised her three wonderful children, and has coupled that with managing several businesses at the same time - and still making time for her friends and colleagues, who I know mean a great deal her. Claire has helped me in recent years to believe in myself and is watching me grow my own successful business. It is solely down to her and the help and kindness that Claire has provided and shown that has set me on my own path and I am very proud and grateful to know her.”
Claire has been hugely instrumental in supporting me since I came on board with Extra Help. Claire has tremendous expertise in the field of Franchising and is always ready to act as a mentor to help achieve business success! Claire is quick to recognise, reward and celebrate the achievements of everyone in her business network. I highly recommend Claire!”
I have been working in my Extra Help franchise for a few months now, and am particularly happy with all the helpful and speedy support I get from Claire when I have any queries. It is also fantastic to work in a business where I know I am making a really positive difference to my clients’ lives!
I’ve been in teaching for 25 years. I was lucky. I taught at great schools and for the past 16 years I had a fantastic management job at one of the best schools in the UK. However, with a long time to go until retirement, I felt in need of a change. Teaching has got a lot harder and target driven, and I was working late nights, which was difficult with young children. I wouldn’t find another school where I could enjoy teaching as much as the one I was in- where should I go from there?? I had always encouraged my pupils to step out of their comfort zone and, as a languages teacher, I taught pupils to step into the wider world and experience new cultures. So it was time for me and my mid-life self to practise what I preached! I met Carol through a yoga class, we started having coffee afterwards, and after a while we talked about running a business together. She had run businesses previously and we felt our experience would complement each other’s. We also both have young children, so we thought that working together would suit us well. We looked at several franchises but liked ‘Extra Help’ as soon as we came across it. Its values felt right from the outset and we liked the idea that you could build the business to suit, depending on our area. We can offer a number of different services under the one umbrella. I wanted to be able to keep up some teaching, too, so being able to offer tuition was a positive. We attended a really useful training course in July and then we set up Extra Help Wirral in September. This was certainly out of my comfort zone, it was all new to me- but it felt so right! I quickly settled into meeting potential new staff and new clients and sharing their life experiences. It has been so enriching to meet so many different clients, and we have already been able to make a difference to people’s daily lives. I am learning so much from this new venture. It feels very ‘me’, Extra Help ‘sits right’ for me. It’s not always easy. We have had some challenging cases, but that is part of the learning experience- and I did want to step out of that comfort zone!! Ultimately it is rewarding as we always make that small difference. I am certainly learning to see people differently as I spend time with older people and hear of their life experiences. It’s a real eye-opener and I really am enjoying meeting so many different people. I still teach one day a week so I still get that contact, and I do one-to-one tutoring, which I have always enjoyed. I was nervous about taking that initial step. Excited, but nervous, as it was a leap of faith. But I know that it was the right step to make and I look forward to developing the business along with Carol. We have found that running the business together does work well for us. We can cover each other and look after each other’s children as needed, and we both share the ‘Extra Help’ values, which make the service stand out.
I looked at several different opportunities when looking in to franchising but came back to Extra Help every time. I was immediately excited about the different aspects that the business offered. I am a qualified teacher, and liked the mothers’ help aspect of the business and also having worked with the elderly, I wanted to own a business that supported elderly people by enabling them to remain independent in their own homes. Extra Help offers all that and much much more. The training through Extra Help was fantastic and covered every aspect of setting up and running the business that you need. Sarah and Claire offer on-going help and, although it’s your own business, you feel part of a bigger team. Owning Extra Help Doncaster is exciting and I look forward to the future with my business.
Extra Help - Franchise Interview
The Extra Help Franchise Opportunity
Extra Help Conference
Extra Help Dementia Friends
