Rachel Ray is founder of Bright & Beautiful http://www.brightandbeautifulhome.com an
award-winning concept in professional domestic cleaning services, providing
eco-friendly cleaning, tidying, laundry and ironing; with the highest standards
of security and service.
Please tell us what
is a typical business day for you?
Like many business
owners there really isn’t a typical day but the week will usually include a
number of days spent at our Bright & Beautiful Head Office in Altrincham.
From here we run the Bright & Beautiful domestic housekeeping franchise network
which provides eco’friendly cleaning, tidying, laundry and ironing and
now has more than 50 franchises nationally, employing 460 people.
We
have a fabulous team of women there, from Sue our Franchise Director, who has over 20 years of franchise experience, to
Julie, our Quality Manager who was our very first Professional Housekeeper and
now passionately upholds our exceptional service standards and ethics
nationwide.. Something that I’ve been
very strict with myself about is not letting work overwhelm me and that’s something
that our franchisees also really appreciate about our culture. I’m a great believer in that when you are
happy, healthy and rested you are more productive at work so I will always make
time for family activities, a lunch with friends or a trip to the gym. This has
been easier to achieve as the business has been more established and as I have
developed a Franchise Support Team at Head Office. They focus on helping
franchisees develop their businesses and visit them around the UK.
A priority of mine is running
Discovery Sessions in London and Manchester every month, which are taster
sessions for people who are enquiring about our franchise opportunity. I also
present sessions at our conferences and workshops which we run quarterly.
Technology has made life a lot
easier of course and I will always have my phone with me to check emails and be
available to the team during the day. There is definitely a fine line between
letting technology become too invasive but I believe it really has
revolutionized the way working parents in particular can manage their work and
home commitments.
What
made you start the business and how did you get started?
I was a business consultant for 15 years, managing a team of 60 and
working in London and Australia. In 2007 I took a career break to have a family
and when the time came to return to the corporate world decided I wanted to
strike out on my own. Having researched different opportunities - and
also having come to hate cleaning and ironing while I was on maternity leave! -
I found that there was a real gap in the market for an ethical, professional
and family friendly homecare business that was designed for busy people.
The opportunity arose when my husband Rob, who ran a property
maintenance business, was asked if he provided cleaning. Rob said yes and I
visited the client to create the quote. With the help of my friend Julie and a
budget of £200 to cover Julie's wages, uniform and cleaning materials, Bright
& Beautiful was born!
I invested everything I had and learnt everything I could about
maximising a business, from marketing to web design and my strategy from day
one was to grow Bright & Beautiful nationally. Today we have a highly
successful business model that is based around a franchise system that trains people
to manage a team of specialist professional housekeepers.
What
would you say has been your greatest accomplishment in the business world to
date?
It
would have to be helping more than 50 other women and men to start up and run
their own businesses that are now employing more than 460 people around the UK.
So many of our franchisees had climbed the corporate ladder in their previous
roles but had got to a point where the big salary and big office just weren’t
doing it for them any-more. Since setting up Bright & Beautiful I have met thousands of women who have come to
feel the same, sharing our stories of frustration and exhaustion. They inspired
me to create, both for myself and for others across the country, a smart,
profitable and ethical business opportunity that allows us to have a good
career but working from home being in
charge of our diaries.
We now attract people from range
of backgrounds - current franchisees range from lawyers and teachers to
marketeers and policeofficers - all of whom want a profitable career that they
can run from home. By joining an already established and successful business
team they are able to focus on running and growing their business without
having the stress of the things that starting your own business can entail -
setting up a website, finances, H&S, legal issues etc.
Importantly
we as a business are also committed to supporting underprivileged women, both
in the UK and overseas and I’m really proud of that. The business donates at
least 10% of its profits to charity, working with Compassion International and
other charities and to date has sponsored ten children and supplied equipment
to over 40 families to enable them to set up their own micro-businesses. We are
also working towards launching a school in Rwanda, using profits from the business, which will make an enormous
difference to the amazing children and families we have met in that remarkable
country.
What has been your biggest
challenge in business so far?
It was a big
risk, especially with two small children, to walk away from a well paid job to
start Bright & Beautiful but, having worked in a corporate world for 15
years I knew I had to make this work.
We also launched
right as the recession was starting to bite in 2007 and there was a real risk
that services considered a luxury i.e. a cleaner would be affected. But we also
knew, from our research and talking to other mums, that a difficult economy
would actually work in our favour because of its effect on the labour market.
As more women were having to go back to work and people were working longer
hours, so their free time became ever more precious and they didn't want to
spend it doing cleaning and laundry.
What are your future
plans for the business?
The domestic housekeeping sector is a growing
one with a million more people today using a cleaner than ten years ago. While
many companies have sprung up to meet this demand, what we offer is a real
point of difference to clients, franchisees and housekeepers through the
quality of our service and the ongoing training.
Bright
& Beautiful has plans and an infrastructure in place to enable us to grow
nationally in all regions, and aim to double the size of the business within
the next 3 years. We currently receive over 100 enquiries per month from people
interested in franchise opportunities; a figure that has doubled since 2014.
We’re committed to remaining as eco friendly as possible and are continually
looking for new and better ways to improve that - from car sharing to using
non-toxic products. We are also growing our range of services to meet client
demand to include a number of specialist home care services such as the care of
antiques and woods; an ironing school and five star hotel standard laundry and
bed-making. I am also spearheading a move to raise standards in the largely
unregulated £4.7bn domestic cleaning industry, with many agencies and employers
offering workers no holiday or maternity pay and little quality control.
If you had to do
it all over again, what would you do differently?
Not much really! I’m
a great believer in learning from your mistakes and the beauty of what we do is
that as a franchisor, whenever we’ve done anything that hasn’t worked, we’re
able to absorb that into our franchise training. So whenever a franchisee comes to us with a
problem or an issue, chances are we’ve faced and dealt with it ourselves in the
past.
Why is it so
important to inspire young women in particular to follow their dreams?
The world today holds so
many possibilities and what I really love is that it is more widely recognised
that a degree and academic success aren’t the be all and end all when it comes
to having a great career. Creativity,
energy and positivity go a huge way in making dreams come true! I also meet a lot of young people who are
very practical and pragmatic about achieving their dream, so they may be
working in a job that pays their rent and bills while at the same time sowing
the seeds of their own business or learning how to progress to the next level
of what they want to do.
And I also think it is
important to recognise that dreams don’t die as you get older. I’ve always been
committed to training and developing the talent within our business and that’s
not just women and girls who are starting out in their careers but also older
women who may have had a family or a challenging career and want to find a
balance between having a career and a family or personal life. We talk to women every day who had wanted to
run their own business for years and are so excited to finally be making that
dream a reality.
What advice would you
give to somebody who wants to start a business in your industry?
I’d say to anyone
looking to start their own business within the franchise industry to find
something you think fills a gap in the market and can get really passionate about. It always makes me
smile because people think I must love cleaning and ironing but I’m just the
opposite – I started Bright & Beautiful because I didn’t enjoy doing it but
couldn’t find a professional, ethical and eco-friendly housekeeping company
that I could employ. I’d also advise people to talk to as many people running
their own businesses as they can to really appreciate the building blocks of
running a business. You really need not to be daunted by learning about
everything from running your accounts and managing HR to marketing and social
media.
What or who inspires
you in business and why?
I’d really have to
say it is the women I work with here at Bright & Beautiful. From our Head
Office team who are so dedicated and supportive, our brilliant franchisees and our Professional
Housekeepers who take such a pride in their work. Whenever I meet with and talk
to them, at training sessions, at our annual conference or just on the phone, I
continue to be really inspired by their personal stories and journeys and very
proud to be working with them.
What is
your favourite inspirational quote?
I love Henry Ford’s
quote: “Quality means doing it right when no-one is looking.” If you’re going
to start a business you need to be as dedicated as he was to getting it right,
otherwise what’s the point?
T: 0161 929 9175
@BBHousekeeping
https://www.facebook.com/BrightandBeautifulHome
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