Following years of stress, there’s a spring in Julie Turner’s step as she sets off to work. The busy mother-of-one faced a two-hour commute into London every day to tackle heaps of work at an IT recruitment company, where she slogged away for years without much support.
Julie decided enough was enough and needed to make a drastic change to her work-life balance. This led to her buying a We Love Pets dog walking franchise in West Berkshire in 2014. Just one year later her branch won the title of Small Business of the Year at the West Berkshire Business Awards.
We Love Pets was founded in 2008 to meet the need of busy pet owners, by providing dog walking and pet sitting services. The business has grown to 16 franchises across the South West and South East. The franchise network enables animal lovers to run their own business and enjoy a better work-life balance.
Franchisees and their teams look after family dogs, cats and other pets. Previous customers have included snakes, lizards and donkeys.
Julie now enjoys the flexibility of working from home and taking care of her son. She manages a great team whilst enjoying the support from experts in the head office team. There are financial rewards too, as Julie turns over about £7,000 per month.
Her commute now involves going down to the kitchen to make a coffee before she starts work in her home office. She now deals with invoicing, emails, customer enquiries and staff hours, taking breaks when she wants to and meeting with her team regularly. The support from other franchisees is invaluable and they work together to face challenges together.
Julie says “The business fits in with my lifestyle and it’s great to have the flexibility to work from home. I used to commute to London and now I only commute to the home office and to meet staff – it’s heaven”.
Company Director Joanne White says, “we’re delighted with the success of the Newbury branch, her branch really has complemented our ethos to looking after people and pets. We look forward to expanding across the UK and are looking for like-minded people who want to move away from office/corporate stress to run their own businesses”.