Our co-founder Antony Holeksa had won his semi-final to be crowned the Slough regional winner.

The Grand Final entailed each regional candidate giving a presentation to a panel of 7 judges followed by a question and answer session.

There were also candidates representing:

Oxford – Andrew Baker and Play2Give, a charity he founded to raise money for the hospitals and clinics that had looked after him and his brain tumour as a child.

Farnborough/Basingstoke – David Adams and his timber merchant company. Going from a forklift driver to the head of a £6.5m enterprise in 4 years!

Reading – Sian Todd and Dance & Cheer 49, a dance and cheerleading school with branches in Boswells, Brentford, Bristol and Wellington.

Deliberations followed whilst the candidates had lunch and listened to business talks and then came the moment of truth.

Would it be Antony, Sian, Andrew or David?

The Grand Final winner, and crowned Thames Valley Haines Watts Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2014, was David Adams representing Farnborough/Basingstoke.

Congratulations David on an inspirational journey and all the other entrepreneurs too.

Antony had a great day and appreciated all the advice provided by the judges and talks. As the regional winner Antony won £250 plus a year’s mentoring from the Slough branch of Haines Watts.

Look out for the official press releases over the next few weeks and here’s to utilising all that Antony learned from the experience.

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Thames Valley Firm Haines Watts, Chartered Accountants, launched its search earlier in the year for their 2014 Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

The competition looks for people under the age of 35 with outstanding business talent throughout the Thames Valley, that have been running for at least a year, and can demonstrate sound financial results.

There are five regions who each select a regional winner, with those winners going forward to the Grand Final to be announced the Haines Watts Thames Valley Young Entrpreneur of the Year.

Antony heard about the competition on Twitter and applied right away, and then never thought anything of it afterwards.

Fast forward a few months and Antony, Emma and little Imogen are driving back from our Bournemouth Dance Break when Antony gets a call to be told he’d been shortlisted to the top three for the region.

A meeting at the Slough office was arranged for last Monday and Antony was required to do a 15 minute presentation to one of the Partners.  It was nerve-wracking, especially as Antony had only received the details of what was expected a couple of days before, but Antony was more than happy to talk about himself for 15 minutes straight

Then began the agonising wait to find out if Antony was to become the Slough regional winner…ok the title of this post may have given away the ending but…yes!  Antony got the call on Friday to say that he was the regional winner for Slough and would be going forward to the Grand Final on Wednesday 5th November in Reading.

Antony will be up against the regional winners from the other Haines Watts offices and all of them will be presenting to a panel made up of partners from each of the offices as well as selected external entrepreneurs.

In addition to any related publicity, each winning business will receive a cash prize of £250 plus a year-long mentoring and support programme from a Partner at Haines Watts.

The winners from the local competitions will go forward to a regional final and a single winner will be announced, receiving a further £500 cash prize.

There will also be a notable business speaker on the day, who will share ideas and experiences with the finalists.

We, and we’re sure all our students too, wish Antony the best of luck.

About LearnToDance

LearnToDance is a Ballroom and Latin American Dance School run by husband and wife team Antony & Emma-Louise Holeksa and has been running since 2006.  Classes for all levels and ages, and personal tuition, take place throughout the week, as well as dance breaks and private events.

The post Antony Holeksa selected as Slough's Young Entrepreneur of the Year appeared first on Learn To Dance.

As many of our dance students know, a while ago Antony invested in a smart watch. Not one of those all-singing, all-dancing (forgive the pun) colour screen, take a photo and talk to it watches but rather a simple but powerful Pebble.

What’s the point of a smart watch you may ask, why not just check your phone?  For most working situations that’s probably true – is it more rude to look at your phone or your watch?  But what if you’re teaching a class full of people and your phone goes off, it could be someone trying to find the class, looking to book lessons, or just your mate calling for a catch up.  That’s where Antony finds it useful, plus it does wonders for battery life!

One of the updates his watch recently received was the ability to track ‘fitness’ using its built in technology and the UP for Pebble app by Jawbone.  All day whilst it’s on his wrist it is tracking the steps he takes as well as providing an estimation of the calories burned.

Coupled with the UP app on his phone, Antony is able to get a daily view broken down by time slots.

Now I’m sure no one is surprised to learn that our dance fitness class FitSteps (created by Natalie Lowe and Ian Waite from Strictly, and Olympic swimmer Mark Foster) is responsible for a large chunk of Antony’s steps over the course of a day.

According to the app Antony did 14,250 steps on Wednesday 22 October (almost a quarter of a marathon!!!), for an estimated 2,895cal burned.  FitSteps accounted for 2,924 of those steps in the morning.

By our calculations that equates to roughly 585 calories for a 45 minute class or 13 calories per minute.  That’s more than cycling, swimming, cross country skiing or professional basketball (according to this summary of calorie burning activities).

It’s estimated that you can burn up to 600 calories in a FitSteps class and it’s so much more enjoyable than going to the gym (unless you like that sort of thing!).

If you’ve not tried our FitSteps classes yet you can book online for a free trial, or go one better and enter our competition to win a month’s FitSteps sessions.

This Sunday (26th October) Learn To Dance students will be taking their exams.  Antony is partnering for 45 dances over 25 exams and we’re looking for your guesses as to how many steps (as measured by the UP app on Antony’s phone) Antony will dance over the approx. 2 hour exam session.

We have students taking Bronze, Silver and Gold exams as well as our kids Rainbow awards and Antony will be dancing both Ballroom and Latin American dances.

You have until 2pm on Sunday 26th October to send us your guesses either via email to info@want-to-dance.co.uk, or via any of our social media channels.  Only one entry per person.  The prize consists of 4 FitSteps sessions to be used by 31st December 2014.

About LearnToDance

LearnToDance is a Ballroom and Latin American Dance School run by husband and wife team Antony & Emma-Louise Holeksa and has been running since 2006.  Classes for all levels and ages, and personal tuition, take place throughout the week, as well as dance breaks and private events.

The post [UPDATED] Footsteps for Fitness with FitSteps appeared first on Learn To Dance.