From One Saturday Class to 20+ Locations: How Tots United Is Scaling Without Losing Its Values
There’s a point in business where growth can start to feel like the goal in itself.
More locations.
More coaches.
More customers.
More territories.
But the businesses that scale well usually have something else underneath all of that. They know what they’re protecting while they grow.
That really came through in my conversation with Ajay Singh and Yousif Ahmed, founders of Tots United, a children’s sports academy delivering football and gymnastics classes across the west of Scotland.
Tots United started because Ajay and Yousif spotted a gap in their own community.
There simply wasn’t enough high-quality sports provision for really young children.
So they started with one Saturday morning class.
Within six months, they’d grown to four locations.
Today, they’re operating across 20+ locations, with a coaching team of around 25–30 people, three franchisees and plans that are stretching well beyond Scotland.
That’s some serious growth.
But what’s interesting is how they’ve done it.
Build The Thing You Wish You’d Had
Both Ajay and Yousif grew up playing football at a high level.
Rather than simply asking what kind of children’s football business they could create, they went back to their own experience.
What would they have wanted when they were younger?
What kind of coaching environment would’ve helped them?
What was missing?
That thinking became the foundation for Tots United.
“We built the platform of Tots United with all the kind of stuff that we wish we had when we were younger.”
And crucially, they weren’t interested in creating an environment focused on finding the next Cristiano Ronaldo.
The whole ethos is much more nurturing than that.
It’s about getting children moving, helping them enjoy sport, giving them confidence and creating an experience they genuinely want to come back to.
That’s probably one of the reasons families stay for so long.
Ajay talked about children starting at 18 months and still being there years later.
He’s watched children go from clinging onto Mum or Grandparents at the start of a session to giving teammates high fives and throwing themselves into activities with confidence.
That’s the real product.
Football and gymnastics might be what’s on the timetable, but confidence, movement and belonging are what families are buying into.
Growing The Team Around The Values
One of the biggest headaches I hear from class providers is recruitment.
How do you find the right people?
How do you keep quality high?
How do you make sure someone else can deliver the experience in the way you would?
Tots United currently has around 25–30 coaches and wants to grow that to 50.
Ajay says recruitment hasn’t been as difficult as people might expect, and a big reason for that is the culture they’ve built around the programme.
“We’re not a competitive sports club, elitist, the next Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi.”
People know what Tots United stands for.
Ajay’s background as a PE teacher has helped too. Some of the coaches are people he actually taught, who’ve now followed him into the coaching programme.
That gives the business a really interesting talent pipeline.
They’re not just recruiting for vacancies.
They’re creating a group of people who understand the philosophy, enjoy the programme and want to stay part of what’s being built.
For Tots United, that means:
- Coaches are aligned with the nurturing, inclusive approach
- People can grow their responsibilities over time
- Strong performers can eventually step into franchise ownership
- The culture is being passed through the team, not just dictated from the top
- Recruitment becomes part of the long-term growth strategy rather than a constant emergency
That last point matters.
If you want to scale, your future leaders might already be inside your business.
Franchising From The Inside Out
Ajay and Yousif started looking seriously at franchising in summer 2024.
Within around four weeks of announcing the opportunity, they’d signed their first franchisee.
But they haven’t taken the “sell as many territories as possible” route.
Their franchisees have come from inside the existing coaching team.
They already know the Tots United methodology.
They know the families.
They understand the values.
And they’ve already shown they can deliver the standard expected.
Yousif put it really simply:
“Quality is at the heart of everything.”
Their first franchisee, Gary, has grown across three locations, and his success gave Ajay and Yousif confidence that the model was working before they opened the opportunity further.
“We always said his success is our success.”
I love that because it’s such an important mindset shift in franchising.
A franchise isn’t successful because you sold it.
It’s successful because the person who bought into your model is building a thriving business with it.
Let Your Customers Tell You What Comes Next
Tots United started as football.
Now they’ve introduced gymnastics too.
Why?
Parents asked.
Families were enjoying the football programme and wanted to know whether Tots United could offer something else with the same ethos.
Rather than jumping randomly into another activity, Ajay and Yousif looked at what could complement football and decided gymnastics made sense.
It develops different physical skills, but the two sports work really well together.
They then brought in specialist gymnastics coaches, including people who’ve competed at high levels, but kept the Tots United philosophy at the centre.
The traditional gymnastics environment can be strict and highly disciplined.
Tots United wanted something different.
“We just don’t have that strict approach. It’s much more fluid and flexible and it’s all about fun, engaging, inclusive.”
That ability to expand the offer without changing the values behind it is another really useful scaling lesson.
The new product doesn’t have to feel like a different business.
It should feel like another expression of the same brand.
One Class To Something Much Bigger
The growth story so far is impressive enough.
Tots United has:
- Grown from one class to 20+ locations
- Built a 25–30 strong coaching team
- Introduced both football and gymnastics
- Created three franchise businesses from within its own team
- Secured an international trademark in the US
- Started developing relationships that could open the door to international expansion
And that last part is where things get particularly interesting.
Ajay and Yousif recently travelled to Miami, partly around the World Cup, but more importantly to start laying foundations for potential international growth.
They’d already secured the Tots United trademark in the US.
From there, they started reaching out, making connections and having conversations.
One of those conversations is now developing with an organisation that serves around 15,000 children, and they’ve been invited back to explore what a partnership could look like.
They don’t know exactly where it’ll lead yet.
And that’s okay.
Sometimes growth starts because you put yourself in the room before you know exactly what the opportunity is going to become.
Scale The Standards, Not Just The Numbers
What stands out most about Ajay and Yousif is that they’re clearly ambitious.
They’re talking about 50 coaches.
More locations.
More franchises.
International opportunities.
But they’re also very clear that the business doesn’t grow at the expense of the experience.
They’re not chasing franchise targets for the sake of saying they’ve got more franchisees.
They want the right people.
They want quality.
They want children to walk into a session and feel the same Tots United ethos wherever that class is happening.
That’s the bit that matters.
Because you can grow the numbers quickly.
The harder part is scaling what made people love you in the first place.
And from one Saturday morning class to 20+ locations across Scotland, Tots United is proving that you can be ambitious without losing sight of that.
Watch the Full Interview
In our full conversation, Ajay and Yousif share how Tots United grew from one local football class into a multi-location sports business, how they’re building their coaching team, why they’ve developed franchisees from within and what’s happening behind the scenes as they explore international growth.
👉 Watch Ajay and Yousif’s full finalist interview here.
And if you’re thinking about what growth could look like in your own business, come and join us at The Class Business Live on Saturday 10 October 2026.
We’ll be getting into the real conversations behind scaling, teams, franchising, partnerships and building something that can grow beyond you, alongside loads of opportunities to connect with other providers who are doing exactly that.
The Class Business Live runs from 9:00am–3:00pm at the National Conference Centre in Solihull, before The Class Business Awards & Afterparty kicks off at 6:00pm. You can secure your tickets here!
