Richard Wilson

I have always been a competitive swimmer through club and county level, and that led me into the leisure industry as a lifeguard and a swimming teacher from a young age. I got into the teaching with the council early on, I then went off to uni, came back and that’s when I was introduced to Swimtime through a fellow teacher, who I had worked with previously, called Linda. I met with her husband, Barry, and started doing some cover teaching over in Warrington and Liverpool.

I had been to the Swimtime Teachers conference and some of the franchisees were talking about franchising there and I felt it was going to be beneficial for me. The whole structure of running my own business and scaling my own business, I felt was going to be better, was going to be better as a franchise because I was following a proven model but mainly because of like Barry and Linda at the start. I formed a good connection with them, they had a lot of good contacts within leisure and they just secured the contract for JJB at the time and I felt it was growing rapidly. There were not many other swimming franchises and businesses at the time when I when I bought into the franchise so it was a natural kind of thing for me already working with Swimtime. It made it an easier, far easier, choice.

The fact that no two days are the same, can be both a positive and a challenge. My earliest challenge was getting me out of the water to take the control of the business side of it as well because I always I loved the teaching side of it. Not only do I love the teaching, I also like to deliver a high standard of lessons and I felt that if, I was not doing that, it was handing it over to someone else and trusting them to be able to deliver to my standard, but still having it under my reputation was difficult.

The most rewarding thing about being a franchise business owner is the connections that I have made, the friends I’ve made, all the different people I’ve met over the years I have been within the business.

If you're considering starting your own franchise with Swimtime my advice would be to be prepared to put the effort in at the at the start and you'll reap the rewards further down the line. Try and be consistent with everything you do and set your own high standards, follow them yourself and others will follow them as well. Speak to franchisees who have been in the business a long time and gain knowledge from them because there is there is a lot of things that you do not know at the start. It will make life a whole a whole lot easier using the network to help grow your business, develop your skills and enhance your own business.