BILINGUASING

I was a customer of BilinguaSing, attending local Spanish classes with my daughter from the age of 8 months old. I had picked up a leaflet at a Mothercare pregnancy type event & made sure I kept hold of it, knowing that I wanted to attend classes when the time was right. I had studied Spanish up to A level and sometimes wished I continued those studies at Uni. I thought it was such a lovely concept to bring a baby/small child to a class which includes another language.

I loved attending the baby/toddler classes whilst on maternity leave and considered whether this could be a career change for me. I needed to go back to my old job (a HR Manager in a retail store) initially but kept the franchise idea firmly in my mind. I decided to proceed and resigned from my old job after a year or so. I always thought I’d teach post graduate students later in my career; instead, I have changed career and now teach young children!

I knew the class format having attended as a customer and was able to frequently ask the franchisee questions. I got loads of information and advice from them as someone that had already ‘been there and done it’ and who had learned from mistakes that they had made in year 1. I also had conversations with the franchisor and was able to read the franchise documentation that was available. I didn’t really investigate ‘franchising’ or ‘self employment’ per se.

I wanted a change in my work life; I’d been in HR for nearly 20 years, 14 of those in retail. I also needed something more work/life friendly now that I had a child and wanted family time at the weekend. At the end of the day, I knew I could go back into HR if I needed to in future.

It was a nervy experience walking away from what I knew, a guaranteed salary, employment benefits etc. I was ready for the challenge and was looking forward to that. I also knew the benefits would be exactly what I was looking for. But I’d taken time to consider it as an option so decided that I just needed to take the plunge…

We knew that we had some savings to fall back on if necessary, so I didn’t need to borrow any money. I knew that financially we would have to make savings so we did things like change our phone contracts, tv subscription, shop differently, not make extravagant or unnecessary purchases. Things that were a ‘nice to have’ I didn’t have, like buying new clothes and calling in at a coffee shop for a drink and a cake! For my birthday I asked for money which I used to buy a new laptop to use for work.

I read through all the terms and conditions and made a list of questions. The franchisor was really patient with me and helped to answer all the questions verbally and in writing. I did speak to a solicitor briefly – they didn’t charge me as it was a short telephone call after I’d sent them my franchise agreement. I would advise people to look for a solicitor in advance and check their charges so you can possibly have a chat with them in advance about franchise contracts and things to look out for, terminology etc.

If I had known everything beforehand I’d have probably felt a bit too scared to make the leap; I considered the opportunity beforehand and asked all the questions that I felt I needed so I think I did what I could at the time to feel prepared and informed.

Franchising is a good option for anyone looking for the opportunity to do something different and work to your own deadlines.

I have come from a corporate background so I am used to doing many things that being part of a franchise brings too; whilst you can run your day to day working life as you wish, you still have to be mindful that you are under a franchise umbrella and that means that what you do ultimately reflects on the franchise itself too.

You have to be prepared for the financial side of self-employment, a likely drop in income at first, being responsible for your tax return and having the right documents in place, engaging with social media and marketing.

Being self-employed means you control your working life and how this fits in with your family life. I’d imagine that this is a huge motivator for most people that change careers to be a franchisee/self-employed. It has certainly made a huge difference for me. Even through the pandemic, whilst this was a scary time for many reasons, I was in control of what I could do and when, not a corporate entity.

Hopefully most franchisors will be supportive, just like mine were. I had clear instructions as to what I needed to do and when in order to get myself set up (like a DBS check, Insurance and so on) and a training weekend to learn about the business and how to run a class (I was in the lucky position that I’d attended classes so knew what it looked like from the customer perspective).

In our franchise, we have a buddy system, and this was useful as you could chat things through with your buddy and usually find that they’ve experienced similar things and understand how they overcame certain hurdles.