Lewis Scott

I joined Swimtime as a franchisee in April 2022 after my friend and colleague, Heather, approached me to join her in a business partnership to purchase Swimtime Edinburgh.

I had been working for a local swim school part time whilst also working in a restaurant kitchen. I already knew Heather and she had been teaching for Swimtime Scotland for awhile so she introduced me and I started teaching for them as well. I gradually built up my pool time with them before becoming a franchisee.

When Heather approached me about going into partnership with her, it was something I’d already been thinking about and I imagined I’d probably end up going down that road eventually so I thought, “While the opportunity is there why not just do it now?”

I didn’t even think that hard about whether setting up my own business over starting a franchise would be better because the franchising opportunity came to me. I wasn’t particularly thinking about starting a business so looking at alternatives to franchising wasn’t even a factor.

For me our biggest achievement so far was winning the Personal Development award at the annual franchisee conference after only having been in the business for seven months. I believe it was largely down to having overcome some of my personal challenges so that really meant a lot to me.

Heather and I have visions of building our programme in Edinburgh and potentially expanding into other areas together, but personally I am currently training to become an aquatic tutor so that I will also be able to train other people in becoming swimming teachers. This will help us to grow our business even more but also benefits the swimming industry as a whole.

If you’re considering starting a business of your own, have a serious look at franchising. It’s not for everybody but there are a lot of benefits that make starting out a lot easier than trying to do everything by yourself. Heather and I weren’t “business people” in the beginning and many people looking to start out may be in a similar situation. Franchising takes a lot of the initial pressure away because you have people to support you and help you learn the things you need to know to be successful.