Debra Rose did not set out to build a franchise empire. She just wanted to help elderly people with their feet.
After decades in corporate roles banking, travel, sales, estate agency, Debra retrained as a foot health practitioner in 2011. It started almost by accident. A passing comment to a friend about enjoying her work with elderly clients. A spark. A course. A decision to leave salaried employment and back herself.
Healthy Feet Mobile Clinic grew quickly. And so did the calls — from other foot health practitioners, newly qualified and isolated, lacking the business confidence to fill their diaries. Debra saw the gap and in 2018 she filled it, launching Healthy Feet Franchises: the first home-visiting foot care franchise in the UK.
There was no model to copy. She built it from scratch.
Growing the franchise was harder than she anticipated. In 2020 her business partner resigned. Mid-pandemic. Five franchisees waiting. No room for visible doubt. Debra bought her out, steadied the ship, found new income streams becoming a wholesale equipment agent, building her own website, running her own social media and kept going.
Then she did something that revealed exactly the kind of leader she is. Rather than outsource franchisee training, she spent five months becoming a qualified assessor and writing her own accredited Foot Health Practitioner course. Because if the training was going to bear her name, she was going to own every word of it.
Six franchisees in 2018. Twenty by 2024. Over 17,000 patient appointments a year. A 100% renewal rate from franchisees whose agreements have come up for review. These are not vanity numbers. They are the results of a franchisor who shows up.
The women Debra recruits as franchisees are not typical startup founders. Many are over 50. Many come from healthcare or education. Many have spent years being competent, reliable and overlooked. Her franchise gives them something most employment never did — ownership, flexibility, and the confidence that comes from being genuinely supported.
Forty-five percent of her franchisees are women over 50. That is not a coincidence. It is a philosophy.
And the patients they serve elderly, diabetic, often housebound are just as underserved. Only 5% of foot care in the UK is funded by the NHS. Healthy Feet practitioners go directly into people’s homes, catching problems early, reducing hospital referrals, and treating patients who would otherwise go without.
Debra is not just running a business. She is filling a gap in the healthcare system that nobody else thought to plug, building a workforce of women who needed exactly this opportunity, and delivering care to patients who had nowhere else to turn. That is three problems solved by one woman who simply refused to wait for someone else to act. That is why Debra Rose is our 2025 Novi Start Up Winner of the Year.
✨ Know a woman who is quietly changing the game in her field? The 2026 Novi Awards nominations are open. It is free to nominate and takes less than 5 minutes.
Nominations close 15th June. Don’t wait.
