The Franchise Journey
Most franchise processes have two goals running in parallel: making sure you’re prepared to open a successful agency, and making sure Butterfly is awarding the right territory to the right person. Every step below serves one of those two goals. Some steps move quickly. A few take deliberate time, the FDD review, the training program, the pre-launch period. The ones that take longer are the ones where shortcuts show up later as problems.
1
Typically scheduled within 2–3 business days of your inquiry.
Step 1
Discovery & First Conversation
What Happens
You reach out through our franchise inquiry form or contact our franchise development team directly. We schedule an initial call, typically within a few business days, to walk you through the Butterfly model, answer your questions, and learn about your background, goals, and target market.
This call isn't a sales pitch. It's a working conversation. We'll ask you real questions about what draws you to this market, what your operational background looks like, and what you're hoping to build. We expect you to come with real questions too, about the financials, the support structure, the caregiver recruitment reality, the timeline. The harder the better.
If there's a fit on both sides, we move to the FDD. If there isn't, we'll tell you directly rather than wasting your time.
What To Bring
Your target market area, a sense of your available investment range, and every question you've been holding since you started researching.
2
FDD review period is 14 days minimum by law. Most candidates take 2–4 weeks. Take the time you need.
Step 2
Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) Review
What Happens
You receive the Butterfly Home Care Franchise Disclosure Document, a legal document required by the FTC that covers every material aspect of the franchise relationship. This includes fees and obligations, financial performance data from existing Butterfly agencies, franchisee contact information, litigation history, and the full franchise agreement.
Read it thoroughly. Every page. We strongly recommend working through it with a franchise attorney, not because anything in it is hidden, but because the FDD is a detailed legal document and the people who enter franchise agreements they don't fully understand are the ones who have problems later.
The FDD also gives you something most prospects underuse: the list of existing Butterfly franchisees. Call them. Ask them what the first 90 days actually looked like, what support they used most, what they wish they'd known. We encourage this — franchisees who do their due diligence properly make better owners.
3
Review typically completed within 1–2 weeks of application submission.
Step 3
Application & Qualification
What Happens
You complete a formal franchise application covering your professional background, business experience, and financial position. We review it to evaluate mutual fit, financial qualification matters, but it's not the only thing we look at. We're evaluating whether your background and values align with what it actually takes to run a Butterfly agency well.
What We Evaluate
- Financial qualification — liquid capital and net worth sufficient to cover the investment and sustain the business through the ramp period.
- Background and relevant experience — operations, management, healthcare, or service industry experience all translate well.
- Leadership capacity — home care agencies live or die by how they're led.
- Values alignment — do you understand who Butterfly serves and why it matters, or are you primarily evaluating a return on investment?
4
Scheduled after application approval, typically within 2–4 weeks.
Step 4
Discovery Day
What Happens
Qualified candidates are invited to Discovery Day at Butterfly Home Care headquarters in Sterling, Virginia. You meet the leadership team, see the operational systems firsthand, walk through how the care model actually works in practice, and spend real time with the people you'll be working with for the next several years.
This is where the business relationship becomes real. You've read the FDD, you've had a Discovery Call, Discovery Day is where you evaluate whether you trust the people behind the brand. That's a legitimate thing to evaluate, and we take it seriously on both sides. We're assessing whether you're the right operator for your market. You're assessing whether we're the right partner for your investment. Both assessments matter.
Come prepared. The franchisees who get the most out of Discovery Day are the ones who arrive with specific questions, about how agencies actually operate, about what the hardest part of year one was, about what corporate support looks like when something goes wrong. We'd rather answer hard questions on Discovery Day than have them surface six months after you open.
5
Agreement signing typically occurs within 1–2 weeks of Discovery Day.
Step 5
Franchise Agreement & Territory Award
What Happens
If both sides decide to move forward after Discovery Day, you sign the Franchise Agreement and your territory is officially awarded. From this point, your market is exclusively yours, no other Butterfly franchise operates within it, and the referral relationships and client base you build there belong to your agency.
The Franchise Agreement is a detailed legal document. Review it with a franchise attorney before signing, the same attorney who reviewed your FDD. Understand your obligations fully. Butterfly's obligations to you are also documented in the agreement, hold us to them the same way we'll hold you to yours.
6
Typically 2–4 weeks.
Step 6
Comprehensive Training
What Happens
You complete Butterfly's full franchisee training program at headquarters in Sterling, Virginia. This is the most operationally dense part of the process, and the most important investment we make in your success before you open.
What Training Covers
- Care operations: Client intake using Butterfly's three-step process, individualized care plan development, caregiver matching against personal criteria alongside clinical requirements, scheduling and care coordination, supervision protocols, and quality oversight. You leave knowing how to run a care operation, not just describe one.
- The Butterfly Certified Caregiver program: You don't just receive the curriculum, you learn how to deliver it. How to train caregivers on positive behavior support, de-escalation, non-verbal communication strategies, seizure response, and safe transfers. How to assess whether a caregiver has genuinely absorbed the training before you assign them to a client.
- Medicaid Waiver Enrollment and Billing: State-specific guidance on waiver program enrollment, authorization processes, billing procedures, and compliance requirements for your market. Virginia franchisees work with CCC+ and DD Waivers. Georgia franchisees work with NOW and COMP. Other markets have their own structures, you leave training knowing yours.
- Referral development: Home care referrals come from specific places, physicians, hospital discharge planners, therapists, school districts, disability service organizations, and community networks. Training covers how to build these relationships, what each referral source needs to feel confident sending families to your agency, and how to sustain those relationships over time.
- Financial management and Reporting: Revenue tracking, payroll management, billing cycles, royalty reporting, and the financial rhythms of a home care agency through the ramp period and into stability.
7
Typically 4–8 weeks depending on market and state licensing requirements.
Step 7
Territory Setup & Pre-Launch
What Happens
With training complete, you set up your local operation, office space, technology systems, licensing and insurance requirements specific to your state, and your initial caregiver team. The Butterfly support team is actively involved throughout.
The pre-launch period is where your first clients come from.
Referral development starts here, not on opening day. Franchisees who invest in outreach during pre-launch open with a pipeline. Franchisees who wait until they're officially open start from a blank slate. The difference between those two positions at day 30 is significant, and it compounds through the first six months.
Pre-launch outreach covers: introductions to local physicians and specialist practices, meetings with hospital discharge planning teams, outreach to therapists and school districts serving families with autism and IDD, connections with disability service organizations and waiver case managers, and community awareness through local channels and your grand opening event.
None of this requires clients yet. It requires showing up, being clear about what Butterfly offers and who it serves, and making it easy for referral sources to send families your way when the time comes.
8
Typically week 21–24 from initial inquiry.
Step 8
Grand Opening
What Happens
You officially open your Butterfly Home Care agency. The grand opening event introduces your agency to local referral sources, community organizations, and potential clients, and because you've spent the pre-launch period building those relationships, the people in the room already know who you are.
Your first clients are typically in intake or already scheduled by opening day. Your caregiver team is trained, certified, and assigned. Your referral sources are warm. You open with momentum built over the previous two months, not from a cold start on day one.
9
Typically week 21–24 from initial inquiry.
Step 9
Ongoing Operations & Growth
What Happens
This is where the real work, and the real reward, begins. The Butterfly support structure that was active during training and launch doesn't step back after you open. It shifts to match where you are in the growth curve.
In the first year the focus is client census growth, caregiver retention, referral relationship development, and operational stability. Regular check-ins with your support team look at each of these specifically, not just a general performance review, but a working session on what's building and what needs attention.
As your agency stabilizes, the conversation shifts to efficiency, quality maintenance, and expansion planning. The peer network becomes more valuable as you have more operational experience to bring to it and more specific questions to ask. Advanced training covers leadership development as your team grows beyond the initial caregiver pool.
When expansion is on the table, whether growing your service area or opening an additional territory, Butterfly provides a structured evaluation framework. The franchisees who expand successfully are almost always the ones who built deep in their first territory before going wide. We'll tell you honestly when you're ready and when you're not.