Duration: 12m 48s
A lot of the franchisees that we hear from on our Meet the Family series have been with Right at Home for years – some even since the very beginning! But our conversation with TJ Henley was an amazing opportunity to check in with one of our newest franchisees. TJ and his wife Wendy purchased their Colorado Springs office in August of 2025.
On one hand, TJ and Wendy are just getting started with Right at Home. On the other hand, TJ refers to the path that led them here as “kind of a life journey.”
As TJ explains, “My wife and I have kind of been serial entrepreneurs over the years. We had a mortgage company that we sold about five years ago, and then I just kind of fell into financial advisory work for a firm for about four and a half years before this opportunity to work with Right at Home came along.”
The choice to seize that opportunity was a very personal one.
A Personal Mission
“My grandmother, my aunt and my mother in law all had experiences where they needed some type of assistance as they aged,” says TJ. “And we had two pretty good experiences. One was with the VA with my grandmother. One was with a memory care facility for my aunt.”
TJ and Wendy had seen firsthand the powerful impact assistance can make on quality of life for aging adults. So the Henleys had an underlying appreciation for the tremendous value of home care long before joining the Right at Home family.
But they had also seen the other side of the coin. “We had one not so great experience with a private caregiver for my mother in law,” says TJ “And it didn’t go well because we just didn’t have that accountability of an agency to work with, and it just didn’t end in a really good situation with her.”
So naturally, when TJ and Wendy discovered Right at Home, they saw an agency that filled in the missing pieces of the private caregiver puzzle. Right at Home stresses accountability at every level, something that really appealed to the Henleys.
Entrepreneurial Motivation
Naturally, another thing that appealed to the Henleys about Right at Home was its proven model for profitability.
“I had a friend who had been doing this for about 13 years,” TJ tells us. “And financially, he was doing very well with it. And I was very intrigued, because my wife and I have always wanted to be involved with businesses that served a purpose other than just making money.”
It also helped that the Henleys were purchasing a franchise that was already fully operational. “Getting started, right out of the gate, it was nice to have clients,” says TJ. “It was nice to have things to focus on that were already up and running.”
Purpose Beyond Profit
But it was always about more than profit for the Henleys. “When we saw this field,” TJ says, “we saw an opportunity to do what we love, and to serve people. Man, it really spoke to us.”
It didn’t take long for TJ and Wendy to truly see the impact that Right at Home franchisees can have on the communities they serve. Just two weeks into their ownership journey, TJ recalls, a husband reached out in search of 24/7 home care for his wife, who was struggling with rapidly advancing dementia.
“We didn’t know if we could really support the level of care that she needed, but our team rallied,” TJ recalls. “We got the caregivers in place, and she became a client that we all knew very, very well. I mean, our caregivers really care about her and her family.”
After four months, the client transitioned to a memory care facility, but TJ expresses gratitude for the positive impact his team could make during a difficult stage of life. With Right at Home, the Henleys are living out their greatest ambition, leveraging entrepreneurship as a vehicle for improving lives.
Trusting the Process
TJ also acknowledges that Right at Home provides a well-proven blueprint for success and amazing support resources to help you build off of that blueprint.
“I would say trust the process, especially early on,” says TJ. “Really embrace the fact that you’re paying as a franchisee. You’re paying for someone to help show you the ropes and get you the manuals, and get you compliant and keep you compliant.”
After all, you’ll already have plenty of work on your hands without having to reinvent the wheel.
“In a very short timeframe, there’s a lot to opening a business,” says TJ. “Whether it’s your bank accounts and your LLCs and your CPAs or all of the grunt work that you do behind the scenes.”
TJ spotlights the incredible resources that come with Right at Home franchise ownership including a ready-made website, inbuilt marketing, and Right Start business coaching. And he explains just how valuable this support is when you’re focusing on building out the operational side of your business.
Thanks to Right at Home’s uniquely engaged corporate support structure, “I could really focus more on caregiver retention and caregiver recruitment,” recalls TJ. “I could focus on other components of the business, because there were just a lot of things that were already in place.”
So what is TJ’s biggest takeaway from his first year of franchise ownership with Right at Home?
“Don’t be afraid to reach out,” he advises. “You are not by yourself in this.”