GETTING TO KNOW YOUR BOD

As you reflect on your swim school career to date, what is one opportunity you took that had the biggest impact on your business?

Tracy Koleber, Nitro Swimming: The biggest impact was selecting a software platform to manage our swim school way back in 2009, second was moving from sessions to perpetual lesson enrollment, and third was knowing when to listen to opinions of others and when to listen to our own gut.

Buffy Folise, Chicago Swim School: When Rob and I were growing out of the apartment complex pool due to high enrollment, we sent an email out to all our customers asking if they knew anyone that would be able to help us out. Surprisingly, one of our customers happened to be building a strip mall down the street from our pool where we would fit. Taking a risk and asking for help from our customers opened the opportunity for us to build one swim school and then open a second location down the road!

David Gorman, Swim-in Zone: Definitely developing people and taking chances on them has impacted our business the most. People are far more irreplaceable than pools. Since so few wake up and say “I want to work in a swim school” or “I want to teach swimming” we have to create our own. To bridge knowledge, work values, selfawareness, good judgment and critical thinking is more than just leading; it is creating better human beings. There is also the fact that every human comes with problems. Sometimes we decided to help someone with serious issues like addiction or give a second chance to someone who stole very modestly from us. Sometimes they grew from it and a lot of times they did not. Still, we made the right choice and simply grew wiser to help the next person. We also helped ourselves because we learned that not everything works and we have to play the long game for the team and the business’ benefit. While it is indeed our business, it is far from being just about us as owners.

Davina Lopez, Davina’s Swim House: At the beginning of my career making the leap from backyard to building my first pool to make it an all year round venture. I never looked back and this move created the foundation to keep moving the business forward. As my business grew, learning from others and the associations that the right person in the right seat also makes an incredible impact on your business and from letting go of myself running the whole business to hiring proper management and letting go has also allowed for much more growth, development and further expansion.

Debbie Sayers, DolFUN SWIM Academy: I came away from one of our association conferences with the challenge for us to look at our organization, and ask: Do we have a gorilla in the organization? Do we need to free up their future? Asking these hard questions and acting on them created the greatest opportunity. Allowing this to come to be, gave our team members the space to step up and into fulfilling many of the responsibilities that were needed which also gave them more room to learn and grow. This was a turning point and had a great impact on our business. One of these individuals was a part-time teacher who moved into becoming our new Lead Aquatic Educator and now our company Director. With her leadership, we put the right people in the right seat on the bus. Five years later, our business has now doubled with the number of children we serve in one of our pools with the same number of employees on the team. This reinforces, once again, to face any fear of the unknown and move forward against what may appear to be all odds.

Ann Marie Sunderhaus, Hubbard Family Swim School: Recently, hiring an EOS consultant. It has been great for our business structure. We have grown from one location to 4 locations and are a family run business with four family members on the executive team. The EOS system and coach has helped us continue to grow our business and align our staff meetings. It has been a great addition to our already existing structure.

Melissa Taylor, Small Fish Big Fish Swim School: The biggest and most impactful thing I did was taking the leap and building my own facility straight from me driving to teach lessons in peoples backyard pools. Being able to hire a team and not doing it all myself. Having control of the surroundings and the water for children’s optimal learning. Creating a state of the art year round swim school changed everything. I would have never had that idea if it wasn’t for attending my first USSSA conference in San Diego in 2009 and getting to know all of you.