04 - Diversification, with Stephen Brown - JB Sport & Education

In this episode of Playbook for Success, host Mark Rasche, with podcast producer Mike Roberts sit down with Steve Brown, co-founder of JB Sports and Education, to discuss the incredible journey of building a thriving business in the world of sports coaching, education, and community development. Steve shares the secrets behind his company's impressive growth from a small football coaching operation to a multi-faceted business that touches everything from school PE services and swimming academies to training programs and community sports initiatives.

Key highlights include:

• How JB Sports and Education diversified into five key areas to future-proof the business
• The importance of quality, trust, and relationships in business growth
• Building a strong team culture and retaining top talent in the sports and education sector
• Strategic insights for business owners looking to diversify their revenue streams

If you’re ready to learn how to scale your business, safeguard against market changes, and empower your team, this episode is packed with practical lessons from the front lines.

Edited by Mike at Making Digital Real

Transcript

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Welcome to Playbook for Success, the ultimate podcast for professionals in the world of children's activities, play, childcare, sports, leisure and beyond. Hosted by industry veteran Mark Rasche and digital marketing expert Mike Roberts, this podcast is your go to resource for invaluable insights, strategies and stories from inspiring leaders in these dynamic sectors. Join us as we sit down with experts, entrepreneurs and innovators to uncover the secrets to success, navigate through failures and glean essential learnings from their journeys. Whether you're seeking to get to the next level, build a thriving business, achieve your ambitions or strike the perfect balance between work and life, among many other things, Playbook for Success is your roadmap to excellence. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Playbook for Success. As always, my name is Mike Roberts and the main host is here with me. Mark, how are you doing, Mark? Good, mate, yourself? Yeah, really good. Looking forward to today's episode, actually. We have a brilliant guest talking about diversification and everything in between. Steve Brown from JB Sports and Education. Good to have you with us, Steve. Thank you. Looking forward to it. Good stuff. I'm going to hand straight over to the main man with the main questions. So over to you, Mark. Thanks, Mike. So obviously, Steve, we've known each other for quite a time. We just want to give an introduction to the business. You know how you started. You know a bit about the journey and where you're at. Yeah, of course. Yeah, no problem. So I guess I'll start with myself. Back to leaving education. I went to work for a sports coaching company back when I was leaving college. So around 21, coached in primary schools for a year before moving on to working as a supply teacher, where I started to work in numerous secondary schools only at the age of 20, 22 at that point. So a 22 year old working in secondary schools as a supply teacher is quite a tough gig, but taught me a lot about behaviour management, working with students. And I always knew that PE was my driver, really. I went on to work at a local grammar school for a period of time in support staff capacity. But in the background, there was always the company that we were setting up, which was JB Sports Coaching back then, where we started myself and Ollie, who I run the business with, simply running after school football clubs at the time. So that's where we started 15 years ago. And then we have just grown since then and we've diversified. And over that period, there's been steady growth, which has helped us to where we are today. So from football coaching, we soon realised that we love working in sport and PE, but we didn't just need to focus on football. For us, we wanted to work in other sports. So then we started delivering different after school clubs. But for us, the key was both myself and Ollie had full time employment. And over the years, our employers were great and we went part time business, part time employed. So we didn't have that risk of jumping in with two feet. So we were able to grow organically and we've grown to the point now where we've got 40 staff members. We work with around 20,000 individuals a week and we've got five different strands to our company. So obviously there's lots to talk about between that first part and where we are now. But that's a little part of the journey. Yeah. And as I kind of said to you before, I think, you know, one of your superpowers as a business is how you're diversified. Because, you know, you do a lot of stuff that other sports coaching businesses do. But also you do a hell of a lot of stuff that maybe others don't. Do you want to just tell us a bit about, you know, why you're diversified and what you do? So we had a long period of time, probably five to six years, where due to the sports premium, we managed to work in a lot of schools. So we're currently working in 65 schools a week and work with others on different services that we provide. But for a lot of years, we were really reliant upon sports premium, which is fantastic. But at the same time, we were always worried about what may happen should funding change. And that's where we worked with Mark quite heavily on thinking, right, what are the next steps? So our company now has our school services. So within our school services, we have got numerous services that we provide. So obviously curriculum support, we offer deep dive support for schools, enrichment support for schools. Obviously, PPA cover, which is where we started as well. But there's lots of PE services that we can provide schools. We've also got swimming as a separate entity in our business. So we provide swimming lessons at local leisure pools that we rent. We also have swim at school service where we take pop up pools into schools. But then we also have private swimming as well. So we have evening swimming academies. We run holiday swimming courses. So we have swimming as a separate entity, which is almost now a business within itself. Same as the schools. Holidays are large for us. So we have nine different holiday venues where we provide multi sport and activity camps. We also run specialist holiday sports. So we had a cricket, a cricket two day camp in the summer, which was really, really popular. And we're looking to go run some more cricket and football specific camps in the future. But holidays are really large for us. Having nine different venues allows a lot of children to attend during those holiday periods. And again, holidays is a standalone business in itself of the income that that generates. We also have training. So we run our BTEC course in line with a local college. So we're partners with our local college to run our BTEC level three course for 16 to 18 year olds. And then we realised that training is another area that we can. We've got a lot of skills in our staff force so we can really utilise them. So one of our staff members has always been involved in training through swim teaching. So we've now devised an offer where we have swim qualifications that we provide, as well as first aid qualifications that we provide. And now we're also doing 11 to 16 year old sports leaders courses as well. So training is an area where it has allowed us again to create another business inside of the whole business. But schools, for example, come to us for PE in school, swimming. They now need us for training because we provide their first aid training as well. And where schools are seeing is that we can provide a lot of solutions for them. And we're trusted in the school and there's the know, like and trust. So it's really helping. I think last year on first aid alone, we engaged, I believe it was 90 different schools, which is incredible. And that's allowed us then to put our offer out to other schools that don't use for PE, where maybe they will do in the future. So, again, training is a separate entity. And then lastly, we've got community, which is our charity. I see I see that we've created where we offer the community different social and sporting activities. We run a netball course for for adults. We have netball for 11, 16 year olds. We run a football academy and we're looking to extend that into different areas within Lincolnshire. So it's the five areas there, school, swim, holidays, training and community. And we've really been keen to do that. So if one funding area drops, we've got others that can prop the company up and just future proof us. And we've worked really hard with Mark on that for the last five years. As I said, I think it's your superpower and you've done amazing things with that, you know, and not just diversified into other areas, but diversified within existing areas. And, you know, a great example. And like you said, that's why you do it, because, you know, if any, you know, government funding or whatever changes and with a change of government and different ideas and there does seem to be a bit of a tightening of the public purse strings. You just never know what's what's going to happen. So you can make hay while the sun shines, but you've also got something else. Definitely. And we've always been so mindful of it. And I know my own peace of mind now as a business owner to what it was five years ago is so much better because I do know that we're set up and we're ready for things to change in each one of those areas that I've mentioned, each one of our five pillars, that if one does drop, we can supplement it with increasing and growing the others. And that's now mine and Ollie. It's our aim to make sure that we're growing all areas, not just one. Yeah, because that must be a worry if, you know, you're a typical sports coaching company that relies heavily on school sports premium. You know, they only give you a six month's notice, maybe a year's notice at most. It's renewed year to year. And then suddenly if they stop that, then what does most sports coaching companies do? Yeah, I know. That's the concern, isn't it? That is the concern. One of the things I wanted to kind of get into is how did you decide which new revenue streams you would develop or go into or those sort of things? How did you decide swimming and training and all these other different things? Schools was our first area that with the market we entered because we went in with our school clubs. Closely followed by that was holidays. So at the same time we did our football holiday camps. Then we soon moved into multi-sport holiday camps and we realised that there was clearly a market. But that was 15 years ago. And back then, I don't think there was as much competition. We used to get silly numbers really when we were starting out for our football clubs. We've realised with the holidays there is obviously a need to provide high quality provision during those holiday times. But we've just decided to slowly grow that and obviously get a management team in there as well to support that. Swimming was natural because that was Ollie's background. So I came from education working in the grammar school and the supply teaching. Ollie worked in leisure. So he was a swimming teacher and a lifeguard whilst running this business. So he had that knowledge and that expertise in swimming. We looked at our local competitors and what they were providing the schools for their swimming. And we just felt that we could do a better job. So we just started out by simply contacting local pools that we thought we could rent. And letting our customers, which would be our schools, know that we provided swimming. Because they liked what we provided them for after school clubs and PE and they started to gain that trust, they soon moved over. And it also gave the other local swimming providers some competition, which I think is really important. Even for us, we like competition because it makes you improve your practices. I think that's happened. So that's why we got into swimming. And that's obviously evolved throughout the years as well with the pop-up pool schemes and things now. But we've got that expertise from Ollie. Training. We got into training with the BTEC first because we're really passionate about the skills of the local people. When we were employing, we didn't feel like they were coming into the sector with enough experience. So we're really passionate about getting these students, 16 to 18 year olds, who wanted to work in sport education, out into the schools and actually experiencing it on a weekly basis. So we decided to work with a provider to allow us to deliver that BTEC in-house, which we were successful at probably six years ago now that we've been running. But our niche is that our students go out into our partner primary schools. They work with our staff members. So they are students, but they're also treated like staff members as well. And they're out with us and the same expectations that we have on staff. We have that with our pupils. So by the time they're 18, if they've been into a school twice a week for two years, the soft skills and the knowledge of the sector and the knowledge of how to deliver lessons and how to act when they're within education is is fantastic. And they leave with such experience. That's why we got into training. But like with everything, once you get into something, you soon realise that there's other areas that you can you can delve into. So with first aid and we have a staff member, Emily, who's fantastic at it. So we decided we can offer the first aid, even though it's not linked to sport. People need first aid, whether you're working in sport or whatever it may be. And schools definitely need, obviously, their first aid provision sorted. So Emily was the reason why we got into first aid. And then it's just grown, grown from there. And then lastly, community, obviously, that's something that we've always been passionate about, getting children active locally. We've got our football academy that's been there again for around 14 years now. And that's just something that we want to keep running and giving children the opportunity to come and play football with us. No pressure, because I appreciate that sometimes the Sunday football can get quite political at times, we may say, and they've got to get in the team. And there's the rejection where you don't get that with our community events. It's just a turn up and play and enjoy sport and enjoy being physically active. We're doing that in football and in netball and looking to do different areas as well. I think that's brilliant. I think the key words you kind of use there, you know, future proof in the business, because I'm talking about being a trusted supplier for these schools and these parents. And as the market changes, evolves over the years, you can adapt to that. What would you say have been your main learnings? What would you say is your approach to this sort of stuff? Because obviously, I know you, I could say, I think, what I... Approach to a new area and diversify. Yeah, to diversifying. And also what would be your main learnings and tips that you would pass on to somebody else who wanted to diversify their business in any sector? So I'll say, firstly, it's knowledge of the area that you're moving into. So we've had a lot of knowledge in all areas, swimming, holidays, training, community. We've understood that sector before making the leap. I think that's really important that you really understand what you're doing. You don't want to be in charge of a 16-year-old's post-16 education if you don't understand that area. You're not going to provide in those best outcomes from the get-go. So I think really understanding the sector that you're going into, having that skills and expertise around you. So training, I cannot deliver a first aid course, but I had somebody within the company who was extremely knowledgeable and I trusted them wholeheartedly with running those first aid courses. So ensuring that the people around you have the knowledge. It doesn't necessarily have to be yourself. It's those people around you that you're going to entrust in providing that service are the best that they could be is really huge. I wouldn't feel confident if the people around me at the hierarchy of the business weren't capable of doing it. And I guess that would take me on to say in the learning from it, there will have been points where we've potentially questioned some of the people who are delivering certain areas of the company for you. So as you grow, you can't put all of your attention on that one area. You have to spread that attention. And sometimes you may find, especially in the early stages of diversifying that, the appointments on who are leading each area, they're key. One of the things I was trying to tease out to you, I've had the great pleasure of helping you guys achieve some of your potential so far. But again, what's your approach? Do you recommend just trying loads of different stuff or do you focus more on quality and trying to get things right? Yeah, definitely quality first. We never dive in at the deep end and take too much on. So if I use swimming, for example, when we started swimming, we started with one morning a week of swimming where we got schools in. There was opportunities for us to go much larger than that, but that is when, unfortunately, I think that's where the quality drops. So quality assurance is key in making sure that we go slow and steady to begin with and then look to evolve and grow. It doesn't have to be each year. It could be three months, six months, 12 months. But we do like to start small, focus on the quality. Once the quality is where we want it to be, that's when we can look to grow. Yeah, that was one of the things I was trying to get out to you because obviously I know you guys and I know you'd rather not do something than do it to a really, really high level because, like you said, you're trusting staff to do it and so on and so forth, and you're better off growing really slowly with a new product and making sure it's right before trying to scale it into an existing market and damaging relationships with schools and parents. And I think you've done that. First Aid is a great example of that. You've had to kind of hold that back to a certain extent, and now you're in 90 schools delivering First Aid courses. But it only comes if you deliver the quality, doesn't it, to start with? Yeah, it's all about quality. And sometimes our sector gets tarred a little bit when that quality is diminished, and, yeah, the quality is what you need. And ensuring quality is a staff force and a management team that have your standards as well. So me and Olly have always had extremely high standards on everything that we do, and it's making sure that that next tier below you are the same opinion and you're all on the same hymn sheet and you want the same standards across the company. Yeah, come on to that next bit because obviously there's loads of lessons there in the diversification and how to build, you know, because when I first met you guys, you were relatively small, just you and Olly and a bit of support, and now, like you said, you're 40, 50 staff, nearly 65, 90 schools, all these divisions and so on and so forth. So, you know, one of the cornerstones, I think, that's enabled you to do that is the kind of the team you've built and the culture you've built in that team. And, you know, because like you talked about, you can't go and deliver this stuff yourself anymore, so you have to rely on a team of people who are managed by other people and you've got a structure in place. So what would you say are the main, you know, things you could teach other people about building a team and a culture? How have you done that and why and all those sorts of things? Yeah, it seems a long time ago that it was just myself and Olly. Aged a lot, been through a lot, but the first step I still think is the hardest step, the first step of saying, right, I'm going to relinquish control and I'm going to allow this staff member to have their own schools. That first step for me was horrible, because we probably are deep down control freaks in a way, but you have to do it and you have to ensure that you're empowering your staff members that they can go and do a good job. Recruitment is so important. I think back when we started, when we were younger, we made a few mistakes on recruitment and it was a case of, yeah, they want to get that job. They've done their university degree. They're ready. They're not. We found that people, it has to be a process, an induction process where they're shadowing, they're seeing how your company operates. Your management team are being able to quality assure on a very regular basis. And there needs to be a good six month plan in place for any new staff member to make sure that they are hitting the levels that you want as a company. Quality assurance is key. And it only takes one staff member to perform poorly in a certain area and that's your reputation, unfortunately, potentially in that local geographical area, ruined. So quality assurance and a big thorough induction process is the thing that stands out to me as the most important as you're trying to allow other people in the company to go out and represent you. Yeah. The other thing that I think might be interesting for you to help a few others on or might be able to pass on the benefit of your experiences, as you scale a team, how do you maintain a really good culture? Because when it's just you, Oli, Dave and a couple of coaches, it's easier to maintain a great culture when you've got... Yeah. And also the way that we work is difficult, isn't it? Because staff members have their schools or their locations and they're on their own, really. And they sometimes build relationships with schools and staff. And we did find that in the early days. So we've explored lots of different avenues. We set aside Mondays of every holiday as a staff training day, where staff members every six weeks will be together as a whole team. We get CPD, but one of the main benefits of those days is that the staff force are actually coming together at least every six weeks, which is really beneficial and helps. We have appointed SSOs, which are staff support officers. So they are there to ensure that, number one, staff get all the help that they need, whether that be ordering new kit, whether it be an issue with a HR system, whatever it may be, a staff support officer is there. And we've entrusted them to work on staff culture. So what do staff members want? At the training day on Monday, there was conversations in groups about what staff members actually want to do. And a lot of it was social. They want to see people socially. So Sam, our SSO, is planning this year's worth of events of what we're going to do. Last year, we did the three peaks in honour of Dylan, a staff member who unfortunately lost his battle to leukemia back in 2022. We decided to do the three peaks, raise some money for Teenage Cancer Trust. And there was that, which was a huge benefit. And the family really appreciated everything we did. But we found the staff force as well, coming together and doing something like that. We went on training walks. I think there was a good six month period where we were all socialising outside of work because of that event. So we're looking to hold probably one of those a year now because we found that they were really key. But we just want to allow staff the opportunity to socialise together. Some people don't necessarily want to do that. They don't want to socialise. But having that option there is really important. So we see each other every six weeks. There's always something in the diary for a social event. And we like the idea of charity events and something physical that can really bring the staff force together as well. You know how I work, Steve, because with the other episodes that we've done, with the Playbook for Success, I'm the guy who's really into digital marketing, podcasting, all of that cool stuff. So I'm just wondering what your love-hate relationship has been with digital marketing content and having to get in front of a screen to boost your presence. What's been your take on that? Between me and Ollie, I would say I'm more digitally savvy. So I've had to kind of take on the role. But I haven't got any expertise per se. That's not a Harry Bar against Ollie though, is it? True, yeah, true. Very true. But I wouldn't say, again, I've got real expertise in that area. So what I have done over the last two years is I've decided to use other staff members within the staff force who really enjoy the digital side of the company, marketing elements of the company, and I've been able to pass on that responsibility to them because even though I do have more of an interest, I'm not a specialist and we've got to a scale and a size now where we really do have to focus on our digital presence, our marketing structure. So, yeah, I've managed to delegate in-house on that. Yeah, because your reputation is huge in the Lincolnshire area, isn't it? Yes, yeah, yeah. And is that looking to branch out or are you sticking to that area? What's the future looking like? No, for us, Lincolnshire is our area. We don't have any plans at this point to go further than our county. So we will be staying local. We want to continue to grow that presence locally. And training is the area that we feel is the next area for growth. We have just started to provide mental health first aid, which is going to be online. So there's potential 12 months down the line that we may be able to access that from different parts of the country, but currently it's just Lincolnshire. Yeah, I think that's a really good lesson in itself as well, not trying to overstretch yourself. And lots of times people develop something and they target global domination as a tactic. And it's not always an easy thing to do when, like you said, you've got 65, 90 schools and thousands of parents that you're already working with. So it's sometimes easier just to develop a new product or service for them. I've just got kind of one last question. Just playing devil's advocate, say you're listening to this and thinking, why should I invest this time and effort in my team and doing nice things for them? Because they're just staff and they're just there to do a job. But have you actually noticed any tangible benefits? You do stuff because you're nice people. I know Oli would jokingly say he's not a nice person, but he is a really nice person, really, just pretend he's not. Yeah, true, very true. You've got him there, perfect. Yeah, but what would you say are the tangible benefits from a business sense of actually investing in the staff and building a great culture and doing all these lovely things and stuff like that? I'd say staff turnover. In our sector, there is a high churn of staff for various different reasons that I'm sure we're all fairly familiar with. But if we look at our management team, we've got Dave, who's been with the company for 13 years. We've got two other members of the curriculum management team who's been with us for 10 years plus. And we were just looking actually on our Bright HR system the other day that there's so many staff members who are higher up in the company that have been with us for more than five years. And I think that is down to us building that culture and investing in staff. And that's extremely rare in this sector, just to say to people who are not aware. There's a lot of churn in this sector, and it's a really, really challenging thing that a lot of people see this sector as a young person's job because... We've employed some new staff, and on the training day the other day, one of the first things that one of the new staff members said is they really liked the varying ages that we have. I think our oldest staff member now is 60, and we've got apprentices, and there's so much knowledge there to share. But I think what we've built is a culture that people can stay within the company and grow within the company. Like I've mentioned our management team, and we've got mid-management. And genuinely, if people do do a really good job... I guess that's one of the benefits of diversifying and growing the business. You're creating opportunities in middle management and to run a sector of the business. I think it's also easy not to do those things.