ABOUT ME
From as early as I can remember swimming has been a part of my life and it has always created positive memories and given me opportunities beyond what I could have ever imagined. At just 6 months old my parents placed me in swim lessons. Looking back now I have so many positive memories that surrounded swimming and being around the water. Little did I know, this positive exposure to water at a young age would provide so many opportunities for me in my future.
Fast forwarding to high school where I joined the swim team I soon learned that was too boring and monotonous for me and it actually took the fun out of swimming. Upon graduating high school I went to college to study business but after a few months I quickly realized that wasn’t for me. This led to an impulsive and courageous decision to leave everything I knew in Michigan and move to Florida. With only $2,000.00 in my pocket and a truck I drove down to Florida hoping that somehow that would lead me to my next step. Thankfully, although it hasn’t always been easy I have made it here and it has been a huge blessing to me all along the way. Upon arriving in Florida, one of the first jobs I landed was a soccer coach position at the YMCA. While working there I realized that they needed assistance in other areas and that I could help fill in those gaps. One of their most understaffed departments was in aquatics and more specifically lifeguards. As a result, I applied and got the position but yet again I quickly felt bored and out of my element. This led to another interesting discovery: they also needed assistance in teaching swim lessons. As you can probably guess, I helped here too and as it turned out I was so good at this that parents began to ask me to teach their children privately. Not knowing at the time that this would be a conflict of interest for the YMCA, I agreed and started teaching these clients privately on the side in order to bring extra income. However, when the YMCA caught wind of what I was doing they quickly terminated my employment.
After leaving the YMCA, I started working for a locally owned company called Storytime Soccer. Here I was able to teach kids how to play soccer using educational and creative stories. I worked in this position for a few years and during that time I was able to hone my communication skills with children and began to see this was the area I wanted to continue to work in. Once again, while still working there I decided to start teaching swim lessons on the side. This time there wasn’t a conflict of interest and so I didn’t incur any issues teaching swim lessons on the side. As time went on my swim lesson side gig turned into about 20 lessons a week. Interestingly enough, one of my clients turned out to be very affluent and prominent in the business world. He was the CEO and Co-Founder of HotelPlanner. Due to his business success, he could see the passion and talent I had and urged me to start my own business teaching swim lessons. It wasn’t long after this that I gathered the courage to jump out and start my own business. From then to now so much has changed and I am so thankful I took his advice and made the leap to start my own business.
Today, almost 4 years later we have 5 physical locations that we teach swim lessons at. In addition, we have taught well over 2,000 students. Beyond that, we have 689,000 followers on TikTok that watch our How-To videos daily. Since the beginning of my business I have slowly begun to realize that we can’t teach everyone and thus our online courses were created. This allows parents across the globe to affordably teach their children the life-saving skill of swimming from the comfort of their own home.
