The Detective Project has unearthed evidence that proves crime does play

Given the popularity of detective dramas like Luther and Sherlock, it’s no surprise that many people fancy themselves amateur sleuths. Fortunately The Detective Project, the franchise organising CSI-like parties, provides an opportunity to become just that. However, given that the company has grown to include several franchisees, it may be surprising to hear that founder Jenny Williams never really intended to launch a business. “I had no entrepreneurial aspirations at all,” she says. Instead she was happy working as a police detective at the London Metropolitan Police , although that changed with the birth of her children and her decision to take a career break. “I took a marketing job and it opened my eyes to the world of self-employment,” she says. “I realised that I liked setting my own targets, working my own hours and not being told what to do.” That was the push she needed to leave the force and try launching her own business.

But Williams didn’t know what her new venture would be until she planned her son’s eighth birthday party. “I framed it like a crime scene with a pretend body and told the kids to solve the mystery,” she remembers. “And they loved it.” The children celebrating her son’s birthday weren’t the only ones: the parents really liked the concept too. “That was the lightbulb moment when I realised that this was my thing,” Williams says. Not one to rest on her laurels, she quickly set herself upon the task of making her vision a reality.

Rather than funding the launch with bank loans, the budding entrepreneur bootstrapped the company. “I’m very lucky to have a very understanding husband,” she says. Thanks to the support from him, Williams was able to start out on a modest salary and to invest any revenue back into the company. “I set myself a target of paying myself £15,000 in the first year and when I hit that I thought, ‘okay, what’s next?'” she says. “That really kickstarted my entrepreneurial side.”

To attract customers Williams began doing some low level marketing like building a website and investing in local advertising. But the founder found the best way to promote her business was to rely on word of mouth. “Fortunately it was a quirky company that people didn’t mind spreading the word about,” she laughs.

After three years of providing fun events to both grownups and kids, Williams decided that it was time to grow the business. “I looked at several different models but kept coming back to franchising,” she says. One of the benefits that particularly convinced her was that it would allow her to scale the business rapidly by recruiting franchisees who were enthusiastic entrepreneurs in their own right. “Rather than having to subcontract or take on more staff, I could simply train others to replicate what I was already doing,” she says.

Determined to make the new franchise model as robust as possible, Williams hired two franchise consultants to help her. “It was a really steep learning curve for me because I didn’t know what I didn’t know,” she says. Fortunately the consultants were able to lead her through the franchising process, get the legal documents in order and write the franchise manual. “It was really a matter of getting everything out of my head and onto paper,” says Williams. Once she’d dotted all the Is and crossed every T, the new franchise was launched at the Franchise Show at the ExCel in 2013.