Michelle Reade is a highly experienced franchise professional with over 17 years of success in developing people, growing businesses, and building high-performing franchise networks.

With a strong background in both strategic leadership and hands-on coaching, Michelle has supported hundreds of franchise owners to launch, grow, and scale profitable businesses. She is known for her ability to combine commercial insight with people development, helping franchisees build confidence, improve performance, and achieve sustainable, measurable results.

During her 15-year career with Slimming World, Michelle held senior leadership roles including Senior Development Manager, where she oversaw the growth and performance of 850 groups across multiple districts. She recruited and developed over 400 franchisees, led high-performing regional teams, and played a key role in delivering large-scale growth initiatives. Her impact was recognised nationally for driving service excellence and community engagement.

Michelle has a proven track record of delivering exceptional results, including achieving over 90% growth in both paying members and new member recruitment, increasing revenue across franchise networks, and successfully launching new territories. She also led the rapid transition to online service delivery during the pandemic, training more than 3,500 franchisees to adapt and thrive in a changing market.

More recently, Michelle spent two years within the care sector, supporting franchisees across the full business lifecycle from recruitment and onboarding through to growth, development, and exit. She played a key role in developing franchisee portfolios, delivering new franchisee training, and helping business owners build sustainable, community-focused services.

Now running her own coaching, training and events business, Michelle works with business owners and franchise networks to unlock growth, strengthen performance, and build confident, capable leaders. Her approach is practical, people-focused, and rooted in real-world experience.

As a consultant with The Franchising Centre, Michelle brings deep industry expertise, commercial insight, and a genuine passion for helping franchise businesses succeed. She is committed to empowering franchise owners to build thriving, profitable businesses while creating supportive communities where people and businesses grow together.