Few people see home carers as entrepreneur material – but Sarah Wickham disproves that.
“I fell in love with the care business when I started work as a carer over 25 years ago,” says Sarah. “I decided to make care my career, but on day one I never imagined I would end up running my own business with over 200 carers, 150 clients and three local offices.”
Now, as a franchisee with home care provider Walfinch, her home care business has branches in Stowmarket, Saxmundham and Norwich, and is on target to achieve a £3m turnover this year.
How did Sarah get to here?
Sarah worked as a career, and then moved on to manage a local office for a national care company. “They told me to run it as if it was my own business, so I did, and we won their branch of the year award 14 years running,” Sarah says.
When the company was taken over, Sarah took a job managing a smaller domiciliary care agency. “I soon realised that if the agency owner could do this, so could I,” says Sarah, and began thinking about running her own business. “I decided a home care franchise would provide a combination of business ownership and being part of something bigger – and I'd get more business education and support,” she says. She became the first Walfinch home care franchisee in 2019.
Good care and good business
Walfinch helped her develop her business skills. She says: “Walfinch has provided me with the extra education I needed to run and grow the business successfully. It has strengthened my knowledge about accounts, knowing how to balance the money going in and out and the importance of prioritising payroll – because you can't run a successful care business without putting your carers first.”
She has also developed her entrepreneurial ambitions. “As a carer I used to look at care agency owners and realised that success was about rolling up your sleeves and showing 100% commitment to business growth, so that more people can get better care,” she says.
Sarah is now spending more time working on her business rather than in it. “I appointed an operations director last year to look after the day-to-day operations, because I found that I needed more time for creative thinking and business strategy. Now I have the structure in place to enable my business to deliver the high level of care that we all want, while I have more space and freedom to make better strategy decisions.”
A message to carers
“Many people, carers or otherwise, are prevented from starting and growing their own businesses by a lack of self-belief. They cannot see themselves as successful business owners, even though they could do it.
“But a franchise like Walfinch gives you that self-belief and backs it up with education, coaching and support. I'd like more people to know that they can do what I have done!”
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