Looking for ways to fill gaps in her community and provide services she herself is looking for as a parent is core to what drives Nora Farhat, which is why she was attracted to British Swim School while looking for lessons for her children and noticing the lack of swim schools in the Metro Detroit area.
After 20 years of “working really hard for other people” in the automotive and healthcare industries across the globe—including Abu Dhabi, Colombia, Venezuela and Dubai—Farhat and her husband opened a British Swim School in 2015 and closed out the first year with about $130,000 in revenue.
Nora Farhat became a franchisee in 2015 when she opened her first British Swim School in the Metro Detroit area. Now, she owns two BSS locations, a Mathnasium center and a Pool Scouts franchise.
“I’m a big believer in building up the business,” Farhat said. “I know some people when they hit the market in any type of franchise, they buy six territories. We’re not that way. We’re very aware if it’s a really good business, it grows organically.”
Since opening a second location in 2019, the couple closed out last year at about $1.5 million and is up 70 percent year-over-year in 2022. But “that first year was phenomenal, and for that moment it was great,” she said.
Buzz Franchise Brands bought British Swim School in 2019 when founder Rita Goldberg exited the business after 30 years. Buzz also owns Pool Scouts and Home Clean Heroes.
The initial challenge for Farhat when first becoming a franchise owner was learning that the responsibility for operations fell 100 percent to the local owner.
“Even though there’s corporate support and infrastructure, it’s your business, and you will only fail or succeed based on what you do with it,” Farhat said, adding that the franchisor “doesn’t own my location. They are support and an excellent tool, but the biggest misconception in franchising is that someone will come in and fix it for you.”
Wanting to diversify, Farhat again started looking for something her own children needed and discovered Mathnasium, a math tutoring franchise with more than 1,000 centers. Farhat was taking her kids to a tutor far from her home and thought, “If I know this is a strong need for me, other parents would agree, and I thought the program was phenomenal,” she said, and opened a location in Detroit.
Since BSS and Mathnasium are both childhood education programs, Farhat cross promotes her concepts to parents needing both services.
Founded in 2016 and based in Virginia, the initial investment for a Pool Scouts franchise ranges from $80,400 to $133,300. Buzz Franchise Brands, the parent company of Pool Scouts, also owns residential cleaning franchise Home Clean Heroes and swim instruction franchise British Swim School.
This year, Farhat opened a Pool Scouts franchise—her second investment under the Buzz Franchise Brands umbrella after BSS—because of her own struggles trying to find a reliable pool cleaning company for her British Swim School locations.
While Pool Scouts is primarily a residential pool cleaning business, there is flexibility for a small amount of commercial work, which was “an easy connection for us,” she said.
Pool Scouts is based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and has more than 100 territories across 15 states. The brand saw a 74 percent spike in same-store revenue in 2020 as homeowners spent more time in pools.
Farhat’s husband is “always unofficially recruited to work with me,” she laughed. He leads the water aquatics side of their BSS business and went through the Pool Scouts training program to learn pool cleaning, which Farhat thinks is a testament to the upside of family dynamics in business.
“I used to have moments when I feel like oh, I should be doing this with my child instead of work. But then I realized I’m the issue because the perspective is wrong,” she said. “The reality is, my kids are benefiting from watching me and my husband work hard…I love they recognize we roll up our sleeves and work hard for what we have.”
As for the future, Farhat is always open to investing in other brands or concepts, as long as she sees a need for it in her community.
“I don’t believe in motivation, but I believe you keep going when you don’t feel motivated,” Farhat added. “That’s the difference between success and failure. If you’re looking for excuses to opt out or not do something, you will always find something. You don’t have to see the big picture to work towards it in small ways.”
Related: Buzz Brands Prove Attractive for PE Firm FranBridge