Peter Tourian traded in his gun as a detention officer for a small-business venture that serves aging baby boomers. Tourian leveraged assistance, including seminars, from the International Franchise Association to learn how to franchise his Synergy HomeCare business.
He has set his sights on an unusual market, considering his jailhouse résumé: aging baby boomers who want to live independently, but need help with day-to-day activities. In 2002, Tourian founded Synergy HomeCare, hiring about 100 employees in the 1st year to provide ‘caregiver-for-hire’ services, helping elderly or incapacitated people cook meals, make beds, take showers, occupy their minds with crafts or card games.
Why target boomers? ‘The reason is the demand, plain and simple,’ he says. The Department of Labor predicts that the number of home health aides will jump about 55% between 2002 and 2012, fueled by the aging of 76 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964. ‘It’s the birth of this industry.’
Showing, perhaps, some of the boldness that helped him storm the jailyard during the riot, Tourian decided to franchise within the 1st year of business. ‘I saw the growth and thought, wow, this isn’t stopping,’ he says. ‘Franchising is the best way to expand fast, and penetrate the market on a larger scale.’
The process of creating a franchise took more than a year, with Tourian using the services of a franchise attorney and attending seminars sponsored by the International Franchise Association, to learn more about what needed to be done. The tough part for any new franchise, he discovered, is selling the 1st office, especially if your business model is unproven. But by last year — the 1st year of the Synergy HomeCare franchise — he had sold 7 offices, many to practitioners in the medical industry familiar with the needs of the aging population. He’s currently drafting the sale of five more franchises, and expects to sell up to 300 in the next 5 years.
More about Synergy HomeCare Franchising (including Tourian’s interview)
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