Tina Byatt (50) bought her green-field territory, We Love Pets covering branches in Clevedon, Portishead, Nailsea, Backwell, Yatton and Congresbury, in June 2023, which she now runs with nine members of staff, including husband James, daughter Jennifer and with occasional help from her two sons Owen and Fraser, and sister and brother-in-law, Sarah and Gary.

Alongside a fierce determination and an unstoppable work ethic, one of the secrets behind Tina’s success, is her previous history of working at the headquarters of two national franchise organisations, Puddle Ducks and Stagecoach Performing Arts.

At Puddle Ducks Tina held the position of Technical Development Manager, developing swim teaching material used nationwide across all franchisees, and working as a swim teacher tutor, to help create a wider swim teaching team across the network, plus offering technical support to all franchisees, ensuring they were running their businesses in line with the standards set by the franchisor.

At Stagecoach she was in a role supporting the brand’s German franchisees, allowing her to use her beloved German language skills that she developed at school and beyond.

This experience of working for both organisations taught her what was required from her as a franchisee and equally, what she could expect in the way of support from her franchisor.

Tina explains: “The value, for me, of buying a franchise, was all the support I knew I would get and the experience of staff at head office; add in a professionally developed website, fully functioning IT systems and Google marketing all done for me, and it is worth every penny of the franchise fee I pay.”

She continued: “All too often people buy franchises thinking all the work is going to be done for them, which is not the case. You must really put the time in and give it 100%, but if you work hard and have the support of your franchisor and family, you can succeed far faster than doing it alone.”

Despite having worked in children’s activities before, Tina knew if she was going to buy a franchise it would be in the pet care sector and says when checking out the competition, We Love Pets stood out for some very particular reasons: “I’m an animal lover and wanted to buy into a sustainable, reliable, professional business that I could be proud of and where I could build a large team. We Love Pets stood out from the competition because of their excellent support, strong stance on pet welfare and their broad range of services. Experience has taught me that you need to be able to offer your clients a broad range of services to build and maintain a robust business.”

12 months into her We Love Pets journey and Tina employs nine members of staff; she explained how she has achieved such impressive growth: “I knew that to make a big success of a franchise like We Love Pets you need to build a team from day one, so that’s what I did. I started recruiting as soon as I opened, and I haven’t stopped since. My daughter Jennifer was my first member of staff and should take much of the credit for helping me to get the business to where it is today, and although my husband James’ name isn’t on the paperwork, he is every bit as involved as I am too.”

In January 2024, James was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, something the family are tackling together, one day at a time.

Tina says: “Working has been great for me over the past few months, giving me something to focus on and driving me forwards during some dark days. James is not only my husband but also my best friend; in my previous roles he has taken on a lot of the childcare responsibilities so I could pursue my career and he’s an integral part of We Love Pets too. We may not know what the immediate future looks like, but I do know that I wouldn’t be where I am today without his love and support and any success I am celebrating today is as a result of our teamwork.”

Ryan White, managing director of We Love Pets responded: “Having a franchisee like Tina, with such a huge background in franchising, has been incredible. She’s written her own masterclass in being a successful franchisee, that the rest of our network is learning from daily. It is testament to her determination and dedication that despite the issues James is facing with his health, Tina hasn’t taken her eye off the ball and is still doing an incredible job; we are so proud of her. We send them all our love and very best wishes and look forward to celebrating more successes with them over the next 12 months.”

To find out more please visit the We Love Pets franchise [1] opportunity