Partner Article

Recruitment consultant to weight loss consultant

My name is Paul Cole and until last year I was the Office Manager of a recruitment business in Newcastle. I’ve always worked hard and spent 10 years with this business and thought I would never leave.

My life started to change in 2012 when after attending my local Slimming World group I had lost 5 stone in weight, I was more confident, had made loads of new friends and was so pleased with my weight loss I wanted to spread the word to as many people as I could.

I attended an opportunities event with Slimming World to find out what it would take to become a weight loss consultant with them. I was impressed with the professionalism of the organisation and decided that I would like to go to interview. I attended and interview a week or so later, was successful and my journey had begun as a self employed franchisee, I intended to run my franchise in conjunction with my full time job, and that’s just what I did. I went off to head office and went through my training and came back to carry out my promotion to open my first group in Pelaw, Gateshead in May 2012.

I’ve managed businesses most of my life, this was different, the company actually cared about their franchisees, and although I was self employed the support and care from the local management team was second to none. By September the same year I had reduced my hours in my full time job to add a further session to my group and by January 2013 I had further reduced my hours to open a morning group in the same venue in Pelaw.

I loved what I was doing, seeing people losing weight with our unique Food Optimising plan and group support, I didn’t want to do anything else. I left my full time job in March of 2013 and have never looked back. I’ve just been successful in securing a promotion and now work as a Team Developer as well as a Consultant.

I never thought that at 47 I would be self employed, enjoying totally flexible working hours and actually doing a job that I love and get immense satisfaction from.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Paul Cole .