Dog food or baby swimming? Now there’s a question that’s probably not that hard to answer. Despite having had a highly successful career in pet food manufacture, in 2005 Marie Smith made the decision that seeing babies glide through water had to be more exciting than staring at tins of Pedigree. So she took full advantage of a generous offer of redundancy and set up Water Babies Nottingham.

Originally trained as a chemist, Marie was introduced to baby swimming through taking both her children to Water Babies classes in Yorkshire – clocking up an amazing 160 lessons in the process. ‘If you were to tell me five years ago that I’d have re-trained as a baby swimming instructor and be running my own company, I’d have happily bet against it,’ says Marie. ‘But swimming with the kids became such a huge part of our lives and seeing just how much they benefited from it in so many ways convinced me I should grab the opportunity to get involved when it arose.’

Since starting, Marie's has become a truly family business, with husband Martin joining her in the office and at the side of the pool (we've still to persuade him to actually enter the water in a teaching capacity!) Then let's not forget Marie's mum and dad, John and Sue - invaluable (if unofficial) members of the team.

Marie is now joined in the office by Linda Ross, who keeps everything running smoothly. In the pool, Marie has a veritable bevvy of fabulous instructors.

Awaiting dates