Terri Vince

I started off as a lifeguard at the local leisure centre so teaching swimming was never part of my plan, but one day I was lifeguarding and there was a child that has autism that was struggling  in his lesson and the teacher, nor his parents, could get him to join in. Our manager came over and asked me if I was able to help because I had experience working with children with disabilities and special needs, so I climbed down, took my socks and shoes off and walked in the pool fully dressed in my lifeguard gear and assisted this child in his lesson. I was in the pool for about 20 minutes with him, working with the teacher to assist the lesson and it made me realize this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I really enjoyed working with children and swimming teaching then really piqued my interest, so, I became qualified.

Once I became qualified I worked at multiple leisure centres and private swim schools, working any shifts I could and, during that time, I felt ‘they are not doing it right’ and the way that swim teachers were treated seemed pretty poor in comparison to the other staff. We were not really classed as part of the team and that really annoyed me. I organized my classes, I made a lot of effort, I bought a lot my own toys and equipment with my own money to really try and build the best experience for the swimmers, so, I decided to leave the leisure centres and start my own swim school. I was doing that for about six months when the pool I was hiring priced me out, they put their prices up so high I could no longer afford to work or run the summer school there. I was looking around for other pools and I found the Croydon pool which was run by Swimtime under franchisee Keri. I called Keri wanting to hire the pool but the answer was no, if I wanted to be in that venue I had to work for Swimtime. It was taking a pay cut and it was taking a risk but I told Keri my intentions of wanting to run my own swim school. So, I started teaching for Swimtime, brought my program over, built it up further and then, three months in, I requested a meeting with Keri and that conversation ended in him proposing that I to buy the Surrey territory. I was bit taken aback, I was not quite expecting that, so I drove home as fast as I could, told Andrew about it and asked him to join me doing it.

Recruitment has been a big challenge but I feel I have now mastered this and our trainee program has been the best way that we have pooled swim teachers. It takes time to get good teachers and I am very picky about who joins our team; I do not just want someone who has got the piece of paper that says they are qualified, I want the right person and sometimes the right person does not have the qualification yet. I love watching people fall in love with swim teaching because that is what happened to me. We have managed to build teams through our trainee program and we have top quality teachers now.

Quality has always been the forefront of what we do; if our product is good then I believe this is what people look for and my business will grow.

I also love watching the swimmers grow; one of my swimmers joined us when he was four and he is going to secondary school next year so I’ve known him for some time and been part of his growth and development and that is really special for me.

Running a Swimtime franchise gives us the freedom and flexibility to be able to work from home, to do things we want to build our swimming programmes and, ultimately, our business. The sky's the limit and you can grow as quickly as you want or you can take your time if you need. I would say you get out what you put in.

To anybody considering starting a swimming franchise I would say go for it and do it the way that makes sense to you. The other thing I would say is, it does not matter if you do not know it all because you will learn it as you go along, ask a lot of questions; it makes you so much more aware of how things work and how other people see things and that is the journey.