Do it yourself

TAKING ON A FRANCHISE

Georgia Howard-Vyse has a BTec National diploma in nursery nursing and is a qualified playworker. Since leaving college she has worked as a nanny, organised after-school clubs and run a holiday playscheme for children with special needs. After returning from travelling around Australia and New Zealand she moved down from Yorkshire to Cambridgeshire, where she now runs the East Anglian branch of EezofMinders. The company arranges emergency and part-time childcare placements.

Georgia says, 'I felt that a nanny agency would be a good way to combine running a business and still working with children. Since I was new to the area I didn't feel I had the local knowledge or contacts to start by myself, so I looked into buying a franchise and met Kevin, who had started EezofMinders initially just to provide emergency and short-term nanny cover. I found it very easy to work with Kevin. He was already successfully operating in Surrey, so he provided the commercial expertise and had already designed the paperwork and the advertising to launch the business.