juggle parenthood<\/a> with the long hours and night shifts that are all part of being a nurse. <\/p>\n\u201cOne of the lows of being a nurse is that you are so busy, and it\u2019s really difficult to incorporate family life into that,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if you go into something a bit more community-based, if you factor in your travel, you\u2019re looking at being out from eight until six, and it just doesn\u2019t fit in with being able to drop off and pick up the kids, and coordinate things around them. People do make it work, but I wanted to do something where I could work for myself,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n
A friend and fellow nurse in London planned to change careers into property, and invited Melissa to join her on a training course. She then moved back from London to Lincoln where she grew up, and with a \u00a35,000 loan from her mother, she set up her own property rentals, focusing on serviced accommodation.<\/p>\n
By chance at a networking event in 2022, she met the previous local franchisees of Pass the Keys, an Airbnb management agency which takes care of all aspects of renting out a property through Airbnb and other sites.<\/p>\n
A franchisee is a person that purchases the right \u2013 or a franchise \u2013 to operate a branch of an existing company.<\/p>\n
They were looking for someone to take over the Lincoln franchise \u2013 and with what she had made in her previous business, Melissa was able to afford the \u00a312,000 startup and training cost.<\/p>\n
She started her Pass the Keys Lincoln franchise with nine properties, which has since grown to 35. <\/p>\n
The corporate side of her portfolio includes 14 properties owned by a large Lincoln property developer, which is a mix of three three-bedroom houses plus an apartment block. <\/p>\n
Designed to look modern and neutral, these are popular with corporate travellers and she also has a series of holiday lets too.<\/p>\n
Acting as a property manager and guest liaison for the owners, Melissa oversees everything from marketing to bookings and guest queries, to cleaning and maintenance. <\/p>\n
She\u2019s slowly been building a part-time team \u2013 an operations coordinator to schedule cleaners, and a guest support team of four people who are based in Kenya, but answer queries remotely. <\/p>\n
The former Lincoln franchise owner also helps with sales, and a new part-time person is starting in July, to help Clee focus on growing her property portfolio.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main thing is that it\u2019s flexible around me and the girls,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
After spending the past three years learning and developing the business, Melissa now feels she\u2019s reached a turning point where everything is looking up. <\/p>\n
Financially, things are looking promising for Clee. She\u2019s finally paid off the \u00a320,000 loan she took out to be able to acquire more properties and market them effectively, and also to give her some financial security to stop doing casual nursing shifts, and go all in on her business.<\/p>\n
After all her business expenses are paid, Clee estimates she can take home around half of the \u00a3109,000 revenue her franchise brought in last year. <\/p>\n
Those expenses include staff wages, plus a 3.5 percent yearly franchise fee she must pay to Pass the Keys, and a \u00a31,400 compulsory monthly marketing spend. She uses this on social media advertising, letterbox marketing, and a sponsorship with Lincoln City Football Club. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s so much more room for growth. We have so many more properties that we could take on \u2013 I think we could easily kind of get to 60-plus properties in the next couple of years. There\u2019s such a big market for it in Lincoln, so I think financially, it could be much more profitable,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also her ambition to embed social purpose within her business. She is running a networking event to support the YMCA in Lincoln, and her long-term goal is to develop sustainable holiday lets in Uganda to create local business and employment opportunities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Uganda, it felt like it was really saturated there with aid, and I felt like the thing that was missing was people wanted to help themselves to build something they could put their own work into and sustain \u2013 so that is an ambition of mine,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to find more ways of giving back so the business feels more purposeful.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Being a children\u2019s nurse was what Melissa Clee always aspired to be when she was growing up. Qualifying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[178],"tags":[79,18,236,19,17,38117,2973],"class_list":["post-504859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-business","tag-eire","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-nursing","tag-parenting"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116645663029208714","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}