The co-founder of The Travel Franchise, now one of the UK's leading franchise opportunities, lost everything before he built it 

Paul Harrison once sat at his kitchen table eating fish fingers and tinned carrots because it was the only food left in the house. He had not paid his mortgage in months, and to buy a few more days he emptied a whiskey bottle full of coins into the self-service machine at his local Tesco. Two years earlier, he had made half a million pounds. 

Today, Harrison is the co-founder of The Travel Franchise and its consumer brand Not Just Travel, a business approaching one billion pounds in annual turnover and named the world's best lifestyle franchise for two consecutive years. His journey from a Liverpool call centre to one of the UK's most successful franchise networks has become a centrepiece of the company's appeal to career changers, and he shared it in full in a recent interview for prospective franchisees. 

Humble beginnings 

Harrison left school with a single GCSE and fell into a job in the franking machine room of an insurance company, before spending ten years at Barclays, most of it authorising card payments in a call centre. 

"You would put the headset on, plug in, and it would go beep. Card number, merchant number, amount. Fifteen seconds, then the next one. All day," he said. "It was soul-destroying. I used to sit there thinking there has to be more to life than this." 

A round of redundancies gave him a big wake-up call. Watching long-serving colleagues lose their jobs, he realised that loyalty to an employer guaranteed nothing, and that if he did not change course he would spend his whole life in that chair. 

Failure, then a breakthrough 

What followed was not instant success. Over roughly three years, Harrison joined and left six different home-based businesses, blaming each one in turn before accepting the problem was his own lack of commitment. The turning point came when he borrowed the money to join a seventh, gave himself ninety days, and finally did the work. 

Within eighteen months he had made around half a million pounds and become one of the top income earners in Europe. He went on to spot an opportunity in Spanish property, and with two partners signed for a multimillion euro development. He sold 26 apartments in nine weeks. Then Lehman Brothers collapsed, the 2008 credit crunch hit, and the money he was owed disappeared while the costs remained. Harrison came out of it around £500,000 in debt, most of it owed to friends and family. 

"I spent two weeks in bed, not wanting to wake up," he said. "Then I just thought, you have done it once, you can do it again. Get up, come on, let us go." 

Building The Travel Franchise from nothing 

It was during this period that Harrison met his future business partner, Steve Witt, who had invested in the property venture and also lost money in the crash. Witt had bought into a travel franchise years earlier, had been unimpressed by the training and support, and believed the model could be done far better. Harrison had the skills to build and sell it. 

With no money between them and little more than a two-page document to start from, the pair launched The Travel Franchise. Harrison applied the one thing he had spent years learning the hard way: how to attract people with no background in an industry, build their confidence, and train them from scratch. 

That principle still defines the business. Around 98 per cent of the company's franchisees join with no travel experience, and many start part time alongside an existing career. The network now includes former teachers, police officers, nurses and tradespeople who have built successful travel businesses with full training, mentorship and supplier access behind them. 

"The travel side is the easy bit, and we teach you that," Harrison said. "The hard part is taking someone with no business background and helping them become a business owner. That is what we are good at, because I had to learn it myself." 

A proven opportunity 

From two founders with no capital, The Travel Franchise today supports around 850 franchisees and a head office team of roughly 90 people. It has been named the world's best lifestyle franchise two years running, is a previous Great British Entrepreneur Award winner, and has franchisees earning between £300,000 and £400,000 a year, with some passing £1 million in commission. 

The company offers two routes in: a lower-cost Lite package for those who want to build gradually with support, and a flagship Elite package with fuller features, international training retreats and its well-known Money Back Challenge, where franchisees who hit a set target in their first year earn their entire franchise fee back. 

Harrison's advice to anyone weighing up a change reflects his own path. 

"The past does not equal the future. Picture yourself a year, two years, three years down the line. Find a vehicle that can fulfil your dreams, find a mentor who will not only teach you to drive it but get in it with you, and then dream big, because you never know what you can become."