June 27, 2016
Time for You, Understanding the Marketplace is Crucial.
No doubt you’ve read about or perhaps yourself are an ‘entrepreneur’ – someone who has started, run and grown a business. Or, maybe you’re more of the‘mumpreneur’– exiting out of corporate working environments to enter into self-employment or, even a ‘solo-preneur,’ – happy to do majority of the work yourself,with no intentions at present to add in any staff.
Whatever type of ‘preneur you are, a not-so-new- breed that has been lurking behind closed doors, is now starting to take centre stage – welcome the ‘homepreneur’. There are many home-based franchise opportunities in Australia and for those seeking low barrier to entry franchise models, that eliminate the need to open a physical location (complete with overhead costs, time and need for capital in most instances) starting a business at home, is fast becoming a possibility.
Enter Time for You, a premier house cleaning company, which is cleaning homes nationwide and growing their franchise network. General Manager Richard Garraway explains how the model works, “Matching clients with cleaners can all be done online as the software is simple to use. Franchisees receive their own page on the SEO ranked website and control all the content”.
A fundamental part of providing a service that delivers vetted and screened part-time, self-employed cleaners is that the franchisee (and client) get to know them very well. Mr.Garraway says, “everything is better and more efficient if you aren’t chopping and changing cleaners. In some instances, people don’t know who has the keys – this becomes an issue for safety and security”.
This process adds an extra arm to their marketing and Time for You are, “extremely excited to chat to anybody with an interest. It is perfect for mums looking for extra work, as youdon’t have to lug equipment around and it can be done in school hours”.
“People have to weigh it up and say, ‘Can I see myself doing this everyday? Do you want to wake up at 5am (with some other models) and set myself up? You really have to see yourself doing it. The most important thing is potential income – you will only earn it if you are happy doing what you are doing. Otherwise you won’t hit the projections. When you are coming in, understand the system, believe in it, understand the marketplace.”
With “lofty growth goals” for 2016, Time for You has already added a new franchisee in Victoria, released new versions of their app for running the business and also database management that supports the app is fully updated and integrated into the Google suite. “All our franchisees are performing well. Each month for the past three months we’ve broken our record for client signups. February was our best month, and March and April are better again for new client sign ups across the network”, Mr. Garraway advises.
He puts this down to the demand for cleaning services Australia-wide and ease of running a home-based business. “Basically it is just advertising, especially online and in social media. We find them (franchisees) home owners who need their home cleaned and can fit in with cleaning jobs in the morning or cleaning jobs in the afternoon, we can be flexible around other things in their life”.
