Blossom Home Care Ltd is a provider of premium personalised care to the elderly and other adults with home care requirements. In January 2016, owners John and Fiona Leggott welcomed a new deputy manager, Carri Walters, into their company. Six years later, Carri is one of their most trusted colleagues, having occupied a series of senior positions, helped start-up the company franchising system and now runs her own Blossom Home Care franchise in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. Speaking to The Leaders Council, Carri shares the story of how it all happened.
When Carri first joined Blossom Home Care, the business had one office, based in the North Yorkshire town of Northallerton. After Carri rose to the position of registered manager within Northallerton, Blossom opened its second office in nearby Tadcaster, after which Carri became a development manager and sought to recruit registered managers into the original Northallerton premises. During this time, she held dual registration over both of Blossom’s offices.
Following the opening of the second office, Carri and the owners John and Fiona Leggott opened discussions about potentially franchising the business to roll-out the company brand further. Offering to take on the role of helping facilitate the opening of more franchises, Carri became franchising manager, balancing that position with her registration at Northallerton and relinquishing her management at Tadcaster to allow her to work both roles.
Mere weeks after these changes had been made, March 2020 arrived, and Blossom was forced to navigate the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. In spite of all the issues thrown at them around operating under social restrictions, Blossom’s franchising endeavour boomed, with four being established to the point of full operation within six months.
Looking back on that point in time, a reflective Carri said: “It has been an interesting and very rewarding journey. Going from a deputy manager to being a registered manager then holding a dual registration over two of the Blossom Home Care offices for our owners. They’ve obviously since gone into the franchising side of things which I’ve followed them into and that started around the time when Covid broke.
“As it is, we did surprisingly well with the franchising. In the first six-to-eight months we’d got four offices and we had them up and running fully.”
With the boom in franchising, the next step for Carri was to give up her role as development manager. She remained in charge of the management around starting up new franchises and would balance this responsibility with another new role as she joined the Blossom Home Care Ltd board as a director. In this position, her duty was helping oversee operations in the two original offices based in Northallerton and Tadcaster. However, for Carri herself, her ambitions for the business were still not fully satisfied.
“Even though I was a director at Blossom Home Care Ltd at that point and still am today, it wasn’t something that I could say was my own business”, Carri explained.
“What I wanted to do next was to have a piece of Blossom that would actually be mine and could truly call my own. I think that’s what spurred me on with my next idea, which was to open a franchise of my own to keep pushing out the good brand of Blossom around the UK. Now, I have my own franchise in neighbouring Harrogate.”
The Harrogate premises is one of eight existing Blossom franchises, six of which are fully operational and two of which are yet to fully launch. By her own admission, however, Carri could not have made her own franchise a reality without the support of the Leggotts and her own partner. In her own words, it simply would’ve been impossible to direct the two original offices, manage the launch of new franchises, and run her own franchise simultaneously.
“Without the support of John, Fiona and my partner, I couldn’t have done it. I didn’t want to resign from my director role. I wanted to keep doing it. But, I would never have been able to do that and focus on the franchising side plus my own franchise.
“My partner even went to the lengths of quitting his job and taking on one of the office roles associated with my directorship, working alongside a registered manager. That enabled us to take the plunge and purchase the territory in Harrogate for my franchise. We’ve now got that up and running and my partner works in our other office day-to-day with my intermittent input alongside the registered manager he works with.
“I can also continue working on the wider franchise management side alongside John and Fiona to being in more franchisees, train them up and roll-out the brand. There are loads of enquiries coming through all the time and John and Fiona are always meeting with people either face-to-face or via video link, it’s all go all of the time! John and Fiona’s support has been phenomenal through this in letting me have the time out to dedicate to my franchise when needed. We’ve worked together for so long now there’s that understanding that I do what I do for my franchise, and I do what I need to do for them too.
“Since I’m doing my other job while running my own individual franchise, I guess you could say I’m getting the best of both worlds!”
While recent years have proven to be a rollercoaster ride for Carri and her career, she has no intentions of stopping yet and is even eyeing up the prospect of further expansion.
“The experiences I’ve had have really helped me in my new role and balancing my responsibilities. It has been a rollercoaster of a ride but it’s a good job that I like rollercoasters! Everyone is learning every day and I’ve picked up a lot along the way too.
“The territory that I’ve purchased in Harrogate is big enough for more than one office. So, hopefully in 12-to-18 months we can look at another office being opened and maybe even a third in three years’ time, so I am looking to expand my territory in the business even more.”
The full interview with Carri Walters on The Leaders Council Podcast can be accessed below.
Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash
