After 25 years as a global brand director in the pharmaceutical industry, Ian took on a franchise to start his own adult home care business. Here’s what he told us…
Name
Ian Lintott
Old Position
Pharmaceutical
New Career
Managing director and owner of care franchise
Can you tell us about your current role?
I’m the managing director and owner of Visiting Angels, Cambridgeshire. We provide adult home care ranging from companionship to more complex care. It’s a franchise that came over from the US, in 2017. I joined early in 2020, just at the outbreak of Covid.
I pretty much built the company in Cambridgeshire from scratch, and we now employ 50 people at the quality end of the care spectrum.
Can you tell us about your previous role?
I spent 25 wonderful years working for three of the biggest pharmaceutical groups on the planet, Roche, Novartis and AZ. I started as a sales rep and rose to senior global brand director with Astra Zeneca. During that time, I lived in Switzerland for six years.
My wife is an only child, and both her parents were ill, so we weren’t going anywhere. That’s when I started to look for other opportunities.
What made you decide to change careers?
My wife also worked in the pharmaceuticals industry. For me to move on in my career, I really needed to move country, and I was offered good jobs in Japan the US. But my wife’s parents were ill. My father-in-law had suffered a stroke and my mother-in-law had dementia. It was a double whammy that they both needed home care.
How did you choose your new career path?
I was looking at everything from running a fish and chip shop to business consulting. I went to the National Franchise Show in Birmingham and sat in on Visiting Angels’ presentation.
They just drew me in against a background of shockingly bad care that I had recently witnessed. There was no adequate provision of care for people who’ve worked all their lives and deserve a quality level of care, when they need it most. I saw a gap in the market.
How did you go about building your new career?
At one point, there was me and one other person in an office in Huntingdon. It has been a struggle to build the business from nothing, and starting during Covid was a big mistake in hindsight.
We’re in the top 20 out of 1,020 care companies in East of England, and the only one in Cambridgeshire. We have also won several Visiting Angels awards, including Angel of the Year, and an Outstanding International Award.
I pretty much built the company from scratch. Obviously with the pharma integrated solutions experience, we were constantly breaking new ground, so a mindset of research it yourself and fix it yourself was developed. There was no one to say, ‘here’s one we prepared earlier’. That pharma experience really helped.
How hard was it to make that change?
I’d moved from one of the richest industries on the planet to one of the poorest. All written documentation in the pharma industry was perfect but in the care sector, it’s all garbage in comparison.
For example, the one regulated activity that we have is personal care, so we are registered and inspected by the Care Quality Commission. Nowhere, to this point now, have I found any training materials, anywhere, on how to deliver personal care. You learn it by osmosis. There’s no instruction on how you give a bed bath or how you assist someone in the shower.
Basically, I’ve spent the last four years building the business for myself, making lots of mistakes, and having lots of regrets.
What transferable skills did you find you had?
Before I joined the pharma industry, I’d done a lot of business courses – BTECs, HNDs and I learned a lot about business in the pharmaceutical industry. I did an MBA (Master of Business Administration) and learned a lot about corporate finance, management accounts, and HR strategy. Marketing and digital marketing was something I became passionate about. I had this education in business.
What are your feelings now about your new career path?
I’ve set my mind on making it a success and I have. But there have been times when I’ve hated it, and hated the franchisor, thinking ‘You’ve sold me a dud.’ However, running your own business, you take responsibility, you cannot blame others. The buck really does stop with you!
People tell me that what I’ve done is actually pretty good, and my wife is very proud of me. The big difference for me in being your own boss of a home care franchise is that every day I can turn up as me. In the pharma industry, I would turn up at meetings and try to be the senior brand director that everybody wanted me to be – fit their culture, fit their thinking, fit their communication style.
I sleep better at night because I’m not trying to be something I’m not.
What would you say to other people who are thinking of making a change?
Moving into the corporate world and running a small business, not everything is what it seems. You have to build from scratch your own support network of trusted employees and suppliers.
I’ve realised that if you set your mind to something, you’ll probably achieve it. It has been a struggle but the success is more enjoyable because you’ve had a tough journey.
Time spent on due diligence is never wasted. I should have done more research, and I should have challenged more. I was very green and naïve.
