Heather Ratcliffe
West Midlands
“Heather Ratcliffe”Franchise partner for Swimtime West Midlands.
Heather became a swim teacher at a young age. Having worked with Swimtime as a teacher, Heather took the decision to become a business owner with Swimtime, aged just 22. Over the years, Heather has built a great business in the West Midlands, serving local communities, providing quality swimming lessons to children and adults of all ages and abilities. Heather now has her Swimtime family as well as a family of her own, juggling the demands of being a parent and running a successful business.
For five years before I started my own Swimtime franchise I was working for Swimtime. I was teaching swimming every day of the week and later took on an administration role in the local area office.
In 2011 I had an opportunity to buy a Swimtime franchise and continue to grow the business in my area. I knew that ongoing support from Central Office would be offered and with that in mind felt this was a fantastic exciting challenge to take.
Each day is different and generally involves answering emails and phone calls for new and existing clients, planning and organising new courses, looking for sites and recruiting teachers. Most importantly I like to have contact with swimming teachers and club managers to ensure the swim programmes are running to the highest possible standards.
My biggest challenge was in the first three months of taking on the franchise, I lost three venues which meant quickly having to find new pools to transfer swimming programmes to. I am now proud to say that I have a busy swim programme and have built up Swimtime’s reputation in the Midlands region.
My future plans are to continue to grow my franchise so that I can have a bright and comfortable future.
If you are thinking of buying a franchise, you must be passionate about the business, be self-motivated and willing to work seven days a week to see results.