2nd Career

SECRET TO BECOMING A MIDLIFE MILLIONAIRE

January 21, 2021 | by admin | Leave a comment

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Secret to becoming a midlife millionaire: It’s not as impossible as you think, says the brilliant winner of the Mumpreneur of the Year award, who shares her insider tips to making it big.

  • Christine Kelly, 49, from South London, has won the Daily Mail’s Aphrodite Award
  • She founded franchise Little Kickers in 2002 with just £300 from her savings 
  • Reveals her son inspired the football coaching business today worth £22 million

Most mums have been there. Your toddler is having a meltdown at a pre-school activity. Instead of sitting down nicely and shaking the maracas, he’s off round the village hall, kicking the door and climbing on the chairs. Awkward.

For Christine Kelly, it was a similar afternoon of pre-school embarrassment 18 years ago that drove her finally to start her own business.  ‘My two-year-old didn’t want to sit in a circle at a music class,’ she says. ‘He was really badly behaved! What he loved was kicking a ball, not trying to sing.’

Her attempts to find a football club for Lukas drew a blank, however — back then, such groups for pre-schoolers didn’t exist. So Christine, a former City risk manager, set up one herself.   With just £300 from her savings, in 2002 she founded Little Kickers, a franchise kids’ football coaching business, today worth £22 million.

Last year, that outstanding success was recognised at the NatWest Everywoman Awards, where Christine, 49, became the sixth winner of the Daily Mail’s Aphrodite Award, for women who have launched a business while their children are under 12.

As millions of us re-evaluate our work-life balance, it seems an especially good time to consider the stories of entrepreneurs such as Christine, many of whom have given up long, inflexible hours to take back control of their working lives.

Christine had just lost her job when she founded Little Kickers. Formerly with the bank JP Morgan, she had taken a role with U.S. giant Enron, only to be made redundant when the corporation filed for bankruptcy in 2001.   After years of 12-hour days in the office, she was suddenly at home in South London all day with her son, Lukas.

‘Working in the City and having any semblance of family life wasn’t really compatible,’ she says. ‘When I lost that job, I had all this freedom and it was lovely, but I didn’t expect to take more than a few months out.’

Over the next 17 years, Christine would sign up 330 franchisees in 34 countries, teaching 65,000 children every week.   Determination has been key. Indeed, one of Christine’s top takeaways from those early years is not to lose heart when others don’t believe in you.

She re-mortgaged twice to take sole control of the business, and was quick to adapt the franchise to different cultures around the world as she expanded.

But perhaps her greatest tip for budding entrepreneurs is to think big: ‘I always wanted to build a large-scale international business. If I thought I’d only get to five or six franchises, I wouldn’t have bothered. At times it’s been really tough. But it’s also been the most amazing experience, and I did it all with my kids in tow.’

Her message for women who want to change their working lives in 2021?

‘If you do the best you can with integrity, you won’t go far wrong.’

Christine’s seven vital lessons to success

1 Really know your stuff. When you first launch a business, it’s inevitable that you fumble about in the dark a bit. But once you’ve found something you do well, stick at it and become the absolute expert in that field.

We dabbled with other activities — multisports, rugby, dance — but soon realised football was our specialist subject and it would be wrong to diversify. That was a big step to becoming the world’s largest provider of pre-school football.

2 No, you don’t need lots of money. I started my business with just £300. If you have an e-commerce business that works well online, it’s easy to test the waters very cheaply. But you do need to understand money. Developing a solid financial model is boring, but crucial.

3 Be a visionary! You’ve found your specialist subject — now find ways to make your business stand out from the crowd. I try to have 20 new ideas a week, and then let my team shoot down the terrible ones. Any good ideas get actioned.

4 But don’t get carried away by your own ‘genius’. At one point, I tried to set up football classes in supermarket car parks so parents could drop off their kids to play while they did the shopping. It was a terrible idea for all sorts of reasons. That taught me to really think through the practical details before trying something new.

5 Be bold. I’m a big fan of taking risks. I think you get the best outcome from throwing a bit of caution to the wind and not getting stuck in a rut. A good way to calculate risk is to ask yourself, ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ If you’re OK with the worst case scenario, do it.

6 Don’t think you have to please all the people all the time. You can try your absolute hardest to do the right thing, but sometimes even that isn’t enough for everyone. Often it’s best to trust your gut instincts, on people as well as on strategy.

7 Know what success looks like for you. It might be becoming a multi-millionaire; it might be founding a socially responsible venture where profit isn’t the main goal; it might well be carving out more time to spend with your family.

Whatever it is, reminding yourself why you started in the first place is the best motivation. Good luck!

By ALISON ROBERTS FOR THE DAILY MAIL – PUBLISHED: