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.
Christine Kelly, 49, (pictured) from South London, revealed the inspiration behind her franchise Little Kickers
With just £300 from her savings, in 2002 she founded Little Kickers, a franchise kids’ football coaching business, today worth £22 million.
Last week, 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.
The 2020 awards ceremony was a little different to usual, of course, conducted online rather than at a swanky London hotel, but no less glittering for the change of venue, with special guests including Prue Leith, Judy Murray and Specsavers founder Dame Mary Perkins. The judges said this year’s line-up of Aphrodite Award entrants was the most impressive they’d ever seen, while Christine described herself as ‘totally shocked and completely delighted’ to have won.
As millions of us re-evaluate our work-life balance, it seems an especially good time to consider the stories of female entrepreneurs such as Christine, many of whom have given up long, inflexible hours to take back control of their working lives.
‘I didn’t want to be that small disposable cog in a big wheel any more,’ says Christine. ‘I wanted to do something that really relied on my talents and energy but gave me time back with my family, too.’
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.’
Christine (pictured) changed her name to Chris on all publicity material because people were reluctant to send their children to football classes run by someone called Christine
A chance conversation with a pre-school dad who also happened to be an FA-qualified football coach changed all that, however. With his help, Christine set up ‘a little pilot football club’ at Lukas’s nursery, and watched demand hugely outstrip her capacity.
‘We were oversubscribed by 400 per cent, that’s when I realised there was mileage in the idea.’
Over the next 17 years, Christine would sign up 330 franchisees in 34 countries, teaching 65,000 children every week.
Her daughter, Francesca, known as Chessy, arrived in 2003 and proved to be just as sporty as Lukas — she has recently taken up a beach volleyball scholarship at a U.S. university.
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.
‘People were reluctant to send their children to football classes run by someone called Christine. I changed my name to Chris on all of my publicity material, and that solved the problem.
Christine (pictured) advises budding entrepreneurs to think big, revealing her goal was always to build a large-scale international business
‘We also had one competitor who started to phone me with nasty threats, until we had to get the police involved. That side of it was quite unpleasant, but you grit your teeth and get through it.’
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.’