James Woods, Founder and Managing Director at Schools Plus

With our ‘Meet the Client’ interview series, we share the stories behind the businesses we support. In this instalment, we spoke with James Woods, Founder and Managing Director at Schools Plus, a company providing a fully managed lettings service that helps schools across the UK transform their facilities into thriving community hubs and reliable sources of income, all while taking the day-to-day management off their hands.

What inspired you to start the business back in 2004?

‘I’d done a couple of corporate jobs and reached the conclusion that I was unemployable,’ James says. ‘I’d worked in some large corporate organisations, but I decided I wanted to work for a charity. I applied for many different roles… and collected around 500 rejection letters in the process! That’s when I realised it might be better to work for myself. I began brainstorming business ideas and knew I wanted to create something with purpose. Schools felt like the right place to start, simply because they matter. And that’s how Schools Plus was born.’

How have you grown or adapted over the past 12-24 months?

‘The core idea of helping schools make use of their unused facilities still works just as well today as it did 21 years ago,’ James explains. ‘However, almost everything about how we do it has evolved. It has been exciting and rewarding, though it hasn’t been without its challenges. We have a commercial team of about twenty people who handle outreach, sending emails, making calls, and bringing in new work. We also have around 500 people working on the ground in schools. With advances in AI, much of the admin that keeps the business running could soon be automated, and even my own role could be automated at some point. So, while our mission has stayed the same, the way we deliver it is changing quickly.’

What challenges have you faced?

‘Looking back, the COVID pandemic was insane,’ James says. ‘There was no reasonable risk forecast which told us, ‘You’re going to be shut down and your operations will be stopped for an indefinite amount of time.’

‘One professional lesson I have learned – I’m giving you one about the law - is that the law often has to be treated as a business decision rather than a moral or ethical one. When a complex dispute escalates to the point of becoming a legal matter, the outcome is ultimately about pounds and pence, not about who is right or wrong. That was a very bitter pill to swallow the first time I experienced it.’

What’s your best piece of advice for other founders?

‘Don’t do it… but absolutely go for it!’ James laughs. ‘I also picked up a book called Traction by Gino Wickman in 2019, and it felt like finding the holy grail – it showed me exactly how to do my job.’

Why did you choose Harper James?

‘For many years, we worked with another excellent law firm whose focus was mainly on the charity and education sectors, but their approach was simply too gentle for our needs. With the scale of our work, engaging with hundreds of thousands of people each year, issues are bound to come up. I needed lawyers who are direct and pragmatic in their approach. The pricing structure at Harper James also suits us much better. They have been our lawyers for a couple of years now, and the partnership has worked really well for us.’

What’s next for Schools Plus?

‘We see huge opportunities for schools to think bigger and get creative,’ says James. ‘There are projects with real social impact and strong potential to generate revenue. We are experimenting with several ideas right now. Some of them may not work, but when we find the ones that do. We’ll be rolling them out across our network.

One of our favourite examples was a school near Wembley Stadium where we partnered with a drone company. They needed location to fly their drones to do live broadcast footage from above Wembley Stadium for the big events. So, regularly, they book the primary school playground on the weekend and turn it into a miniature aerodrome! It’s really cool 😊and a great way to put an unused space to work in a completely new way.’