Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to create wealth through franchising podcast and Kim Daily TV. I am your host, Kim Daly. I want to educate, motivate, and inspire your business ownership journey by interviewing ceos, leaders, sales coaches, and exceptional franchisees to learn their valuable insights and strategies that we can apply to our own business ownership dreams. Now onto the show.
Welcome back to create wealth through franchising podcast and Kim Daily TV. Today I have a very special guest for you, actually, two guests for you today. Their names are Becky and Tracy. They are longtime franchisees of a company called the British Swim School. So, Becky and Tracy, welcome to the studio of Kim Daily TV.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Thank you, Kim. We're glad to be here.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: So happy to be here. And I think that you're sitting in your office, which looks like it could be a pool area.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Just an office.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: We stay in the office, actually. This is our classroom. We do regional trainings now.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Amazing. So these women have an amazing story to share.
Before we hit record, they literally told me they just signed a new franchise agreement. Like, they're re upping after a ten year agreement with British Swim Scool. So let's dive into the heart of the conversation. So let's start at the beginning, ladies, and let's talk about what problem were you solving for in your life? Like, what led you to think, let's own a business?
[00:01:43] Speaker B: I think it's two different problems. I mean, I can tell you, mine is I worked a long career at IBM. I was done with the corporate world. I was just ready to do something where I was kind of in control of my own schedule and do what I wanted. And then you can tell you, yeah.
[00:01:59] Speaker C: Actually, we're friends because our kids were friends. So we've been friends for about 20 years because our kids brought us together through elementary and high school activities and things like that. But I had a 28 year hospital pharmacy career. So we both decided this is nuts. The hours and the demands and the constraints, and we want to work for ourselves. And so people cocked their heads and said, you're doing what they couldn't believe we were leaving the careers that we had to do this. And it truly was a leap of faith because nobody in this Pittsburgh region was teaching swim lessons on a year round, permanent basis. So we knew that it would be wildly successful. But Pittsburgh's didn't know about it yet. They didn't know what was about to hit them, what was coming.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: Yeah, it's so true what you just said. Like so many people who deviate from the normal path, even though everybody on the normal path, that I meet anyway is like, God, I want to get out. But when people actually say they're getting out and pursuing their own dreams, it's always like our family and friends and colleagues look at us like we just lost our marbles. Like, what happened to Becky and Tracy? They falled off the wagon.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: What are you doing with a swim school?
[00:03:16] Speaker C: Because we looked at a couple other franchise opportunities, and we did realize that anything involving children or pets is very.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: Successful, very long term sustainable. Okay, so let's talk about, like, british swim school. What were the. Because the company has grown so much, right, in all the years, been a part of it. What were some of the qualities of this business or characteristics of this business that were appealing to you? And where I'm coming from with that is when I work with my candidates, oftentimes, no one's coming to me going, oh, yes, sign me up to sell swim lessons. Right. But people are looking for businesses that are home based, low investment, long term sustainable. So what were some of those characteristics that stood out the most to you with this model?
[00:04:05] Speaker B: Well, I'm going to take this one. It was really the business model, and it wasn't like a million dollar investment, like Tracy said. We looked at a couple other franchises. Both of them required us to build something. A million dollars up front. Right. That's a little scary when you're leaving a big know. We buy the franchise, we released some pools. We didn't even have to build a pool at that time. Right. We were very early in the process, like she said, there was no swim schools here. Goldfish was being built in Pittsburgh, but they were about nine months then. You know, we just talked to Rita. I mean, we were actually the first franchise to start from the ground up. So it was before there was a whole lot of background. We went in our first conference, and there were six of us, maybe eight of us, and we just went down to the one in November. There's like 200.
It's really grown like crazy.
It was just really the business model. You can scale it horizontally, you can scale it vertically. There's a lot of room for growth. You can be creative. You can add other venues. Just. It's just a nice model.
[00:05:15] Speaker C: I think one of the things that drew us to it also was the history that the founder, Rita Goldberg, had brought with her, because we hadn't been at it long here in the States. But she started doing this 45 years ago in Manchester, England, hence the british name. There's nothing british about us, but we do have people ask us those crazy questions. Do you swim on the other side of the pool? Things like that. But I liked that she had been doing it for 30 years before she moved to Miami and really started building it up here in the States. So while it was new to most people, it was actually very established. The methodology that we use was tried and trued, and we knew that it would work here.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: Hey, daily Coach fans, if you're loving this episode, please do me a quick favor and leave me a five star rating and a short review. Your feedback fuels my growth and rankings and shows others that this podcast is valuable. Now back to the show.
Okay, so you got in very, very early. You've remained in for a decade. So let's talk about the personal growth journey that you've gone through and maybe even how you've given back to the franchiseor. I'm assuming that being an early adopter, there was a lot of things I's that still had to be dotted and t's that had to be crossed. So let's start with your own personal growth journey, because I love to help people understand when they ask me questions like, can I be successful, or can I make $500,000 in my business? And I sort of turn it around on them and say, I don't know, can you?
When they look at me cross eyed, like, what do you mean? Isn't the franchise supposed to give me this? And I'm like, no. And I know you guys understand what's. Tell me about the journey. So you had a corporate sales background, Tracy? Is that what you were doing?
[00:07:13] Speaker C: Becky did IBM.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I was in hospital.
[00:07:16] Speaker C: Pharmacy.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: Hospital. Oh, so you're a heard. Yeah, I thought so.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Both.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: So you're in sales. So how does that translate to what skills did you take with you? What skills did you had to learn in order to survive for ten years and thrive?
[00:07:35] Speaker C: When we met with the bank, the bank was really interested to find out what our backgrounds were because SBA was attracted to this female owned business. They really were. This agent, it was one of the first SBA loans. She actually was able to get to a women owned business. But she says, it's amazing how many people own car dealerships and then come and say, I'd like a loan to open a restaurant. With no background at all. But Becky and myself and Terry, who has since retired, we all brought something different to the equation. And Becky's the numbers person. She's the finance head, the spreadsheet queen, and the Quickbooks guru.
And then I came from the emergency preparedness end of it. An old Girl scout leader, safety, that type of thing. Terry brought to it as a 60 50 year old woman at the time, a preschool jewer, say gymnastic program for preschool little kids. So they looked at all of us together and said, none of you have swim background, but you're going to be tremendous together.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: I can totally see that.
[00:08:46] Speaker C: That's why we were awarded the small loan that it took to get into our business. We darn a very expensive franchise.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: It's very affordable because you figure you've got to buy the franchise. You buy all your startup materials, but you're leasing pool space. One of the nice things about the business model is some of these swim schools. If you look at the goldfish and the big blue and aquatots, they go in and build a million dollar pool and they have to put all their kids in that one pool. Where this model is, we have pools all over, like in Pittsburgh. We have Pittsburgh surrounded. We have ten locations all around the city, right? And we've got every area. So we kind of come to you and we might be in a hotel, we might be in a retirement facility. We have a community center, we have a fitness center. We just have a number of different facilities. And think of it like a swim school in a box. So that's really what allows us to. It's easy to move. If we have to go somewhere else, we just pull our stuff out, move it somewhere else. So it's a really flexible and scalable business model.
[00:09:45] Speaker C: You keep saying scalable. And by scalable she means if we want to add another day at a facility, we can. If we want to add hours to our current hours, we can. If we want to add additional instructors during the shift, we can. So there's ways to scale this horizontally and vertically that really makes it manageable. And we found out quickly during the pandemic, it was very easy to shut.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: Down, too, and start up. Right. It worked out real well because we shut down here on March 17, 2020, and we were gone for three months. We came back on June 15, 2020. So, I mean, anybody that had paid for March, they were. The rest of the day, they got that June free. And then we just kicked it right back off. And then people came back little bits at a time. We wanted to get started. We didn't want to go too long because, one, we didn't want to help hurt the kids progress, right? Because if they're not coming consistently, it kind of hurts their progress. But, yeah, it was easy to start and stop, so that was good.
[00:10:44] Speaker C: And by going into seven to ten locations. What that means is we lease space on a year round permanent basis. So if anybody, we have convents, we have fitness centers, retirement villages, condominium complexes. Anybody who is willing to lease space to us, we take it on a year round permanent basis and we go into those places and truly don't wear out our welcome either. If a Hyatt hotel is willing to let us swim there, we'll swim there Monday and Wednesday evenings and try to maybe go to a nearby fitness center Tuesday and Thursday to give families a variety and a selection nearby.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: I'm sure it's nice for those businesses as well, because if you're offering a swim lesson and a fitness facility that maybe the parents start hanging out in, they might get the genius idea. Well, while the kids are swimming, maybe I should work out the same thing with the hotels.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: I mean, parents come in from out of town or relatives come in, they say, hey, well, Susie's swimming at the pool. Why don't you stay here? You can watch her swim lessons. You know what I mean? That kind of thing. So we see that too.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: So here's the question I'm dying to ask you. A decade of kids, right? I was a swim instructor back in the day. It's what I did for my summer jobs in high school and college. So I know, like, I would go to the grocery store and I'd be like, you look so familiar. And I would be like. And then I'd be like, oh my gosh, I taught you to swim when you were five years old.
You see all these grown teenagers and you're like, I knew you went. Right. So it's so gratifying teaching people to swim. This is a life skill. Which is why I love the british swim school tagline. Tell the audience what it is.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: Survival of the littlest.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: Survival of the littlest. Oh my gosh. I just want to squeeze it. It's so cute. So you're offering a very important life skill to families. So do you know how many children's lives you've changed over a decade? Could you estimate how many kids have gone through your programs?
[00:12:44] Speaker B: It's probably 10,000 at least. Because we are doing right now, today we have 1200, but we'll peak up to like 1500 in the summertime a week. That's a week.
And then we've been doing that for a long time. So we've been in over 1000 kids for at least five years.
[00:13:03] Speaker C: Yeah, I think March, April, May, we're embarking on our busiest season right now. We will get up to about 1500 swimmers a week. And actually, we have a huge population of adult swimmers because nobody teaches adults around here. Everybody says, call british swim school. We have adaptive swim, many autistic, a lot of special needs in a nearby therapeutic pool with the water at 90 degrees, where we take all special needs. And we have instructors who are trained to work specifically with them. Sometimes Allegheny county brings them to us. We get a lot of third party payers whose kids schools may cover lessons. So it's very rewarding.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: I get rewarding.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: That has to be, like, so amazing now. Okay, so you just decided to re up in your 11th year, so you said it at the beginning of the interview. So if anybody said to you, would you do this again, knowing what you know now, what would you say?
[00:14:06] Speaker B: And we actually started on a project two years ago, but it's actually working now. We're building a pool. We are actually building a pool of.
[00:14:14] Speaker C: Our own as we speak.
[00:14:15] Speaker B: Yeah, we've got a general contractor. They're out there ready to blow the pool out next week. So that's been kind of rewarding. That's really what we're looking for this week because it gives us a little more flexibility, like if we want to do aerobics or we've done some water polo lessons in the past. Right. We want to find another coach and do that again. So there's a lot of things that we can do with our own location now that we have the funds and we're big enough, and it's an area we're not in. There's no pools in that area, so it's just another way you can scale.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: It so you're not competing against yourself or taking any of those leases back. You're going to a whole untapped market and bringing your branding and everything, you know, to that. Oh, my gosh, you guys are amazing. This is awesome.
[00:14:59] Speaker C: Will enable us to have, like, birthday parties, teach lifeguard certification courses. We have people trying to learn how to roll their kayaks.
We have dive in Movies, which is a fundraiser for the Hope Floats foundation, where people come lay on their chase lounges and they can watch a movie on a big screen in the pool, the kids and Disney movies, this standalone. And we're going to be able to move our offices, which is how many square feet and nine employees in the office. We're all going to move it all under one roof at this new pool. So it'll be our flagship location.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Really good things you're looking forward to. So do you see an end in sight to this or are you just feeling like in your 11th year, you're like, hitting your stride?
[00:15:47] Speaker C: Becky's son is an owner with us, and he does everything wet. We're dry. We're pretty dry side of the business, but he's in charge of all the aquatics and he's in his early thirty s, and when we step back, he will run with this. And we have our eyes on a few really solid employees who've been with us for a while that may be able to buy us out or cover for us, and we're sort of grooming a couple of them to move forward. But it's easy.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Why leave?
[00:16:15] Speaker C: We say we want to step back and retire, but to do what it's been easy to do. And you do have flexibility, a lot of flexibility where we can work from wherever if we have our laptops.
So, yeah, it's definitely been very rewarding, for sure. And it really gives you a lot of flexibility. And it has probably surpassed the earnings we were making. That's hard to believe. Yeah, that's hard to believe. But we're earning more than what we were.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: To all those naysayers who were like Tracy and Becky have fallen off the wagon.
A decade of your life goes by. This is what I always say. A decade of your life goes by. You might as well invest it doing something where the reward is yours at the end. And the people who are against you will now be looking at you thinking you're the hero.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: They call us the ogs now. We just went to the conference. I'm like, you're calling us? What? Oh, we're the ogs. We are the old girls.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: That's a term of endearment, though.
At your conference, do they put you on stage? Are you, like, there as the inspiration of what everybody else can build, love.
[00:17:24] Speaker C: And put us on panels to answer questions and share our expertise with all the new franchisees that might just have one pole and 75 swimmers just starting.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: The way we did, right?
[00:17:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And I'm on the franchise advisory board, so I help some of the younger franchise they had kind of divide them up, so I help them get started. Both of us do a lot of reference calls, people looking to purchase a franchise, and kind of, you can almost weed them out on the phone based on what they're talking about.
Well, we don't really want to swim, do anything in the water. I'm like, well, somebody has to do that. It's a swim. Somebody has someone in mind to do.
[00:18:10] Speaker A: Hey, daily coach fans, if you're ready to begin your own journey to find the perfect franchise. Please email me right now at inquire at KimDaily TV. My services are totally free for you. That's inquire at KimDaily TV. Now back to the show.
I mean, your story is so inspiring. This is so fun. I think I could talk to you guys all day. So for those who are listening, this is the million dollar question, right? So you've helped. Let's just say 10,000 swimmers change 10,000 lives in ten years. What a massive accomplishment to that person who's sitting on the sideline thinking, gosh, am I crazy to want to own a business? Everybody around me is talking me down from my dreams. What do you say to that person listening right now?
[00:19:08] Speaker B: Well, I met Rita. The reason we got started and how we found british swim school is I do a lot of. Did a lot of traveling, and I was in Sri Lanka, of all places, with a group, and Rita was in our group. And the last night, we were sitting there, and she's telling me about this swim.
You know, she said to me, build it, and they will come. And I said, okay, let's build it and see if they come. And we did, and they came, and they keep coming. Kids has never been our problem. There's so many kids out there that need lessons.
[00:19:39] Speaker C: And, you know, the whole time she was gone, my lab coat was blowing up at the hospital. She was my phone, her saying, sister, have I found the franchise for us? And then it took her 40 hours to get home from Sri Lanka. And she wrote the business plan the whole way home, coming back, and we were ready to go.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: We literally bought it three months later. So by the time we got the loan and everything, we was a done.
[00:20:02] Speaker C: Deal because we were looking at other franchises.
[00:20:04] Speaker B: We had looked at a few other mean.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: So just by luck, Rita was in your group.
Travel group.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: That's really the grace of God. That's amazing.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: So I didn't really hang out with her too much, but the last night, we were both sick of sri lankan food, so we were sitting at the bar, and it was the typical bar napkin kind of like, I'm like, wow, this sounds great.
[00:20:27] Speaker C: And she lives in fort.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: How do you do this? What's this model? Like, what can you do? And I'm like, man. It was like. And then I got on the plane, and I'm researching what's in Pittsburgh. There's nothing. I'm like, oh, we're doing this. There's no swim schools here.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: That's really fun.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: Find out goldfish was building, but we beat them to market.
[00:20:43] Speaker C: Our competitors are fun. We find that we attend all the same events, events and chamber of commerce meetings, and we all agree there's enough kids to go around. It's really a friendly competition.
And you say, how many we've helped? Eurita always says we'll never know how many we saved because we are a safety and survival entity first, before we will teach propulsion or side breathing or any kind of endurance stroke development. We get everybody first to learn how to independently backfloat. So they call for help, scream, cry, breathe, and it doesn't matter if they're four years old or 14 years old. That's something that we spend months on with some of these toddlers. But we need to know that they can independently roll their shoulders instinctively and come up floating and fall in eight foot of water and be okay. So we're really proud of the safety and survival entity of it. Because when you look at your local ymcas and your high schools and other people that offer programs like this, they don't really focus on that. And that's why we'll never know how many we saved.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: They also don't focus on the special needs. Right. So that's another niche area that we've gone into and they don't do the adults, like we said before. So both of those are areas that we focus pretty hard on.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: What a really special answer. I didn't expect that. So did you actually answer my question of what do you say to the person on the sideline? Because we got distracted with that other better answer. So what's your answer? What do you say to the person on the sideline today?
[00:22:14] Speaker B: You'll never know unless you take the leap.
[00:22:16] Speaker C: You do feel like it's a leap of faith because you don't know, like, am I giving up five weeks vacation and all this seniority and am I giving this up for what? And do it. Don't be afraid.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: You'll never know unless you do it. And the longer you wait, the older you get. Right. And the longer you wait, somebody else might do it before you.
[00:22:37] Speaker C: And never worry about the competition. When we do those prospect calls, I do ask people what's around you. I want to know what is around them. But the next thing I tell them is don't even consider the competition because it is a friendly competition and there are enough kids, they never stop coming.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: Yeah, you know what?
That's a true statement in every single business out there. I talk people down from that competition worry every single day. Once you figure out your own business model and how many kids you want and the scale you want to grow to. Right. You have to know that I always say, let the competition take your overflow. Right. Think from your own abundance first and then realize you're giving the rest to the other people. Right. So it's so well received over here. When I hear you say that you guys are beautiful, I feel like we could do a totally separate interview just on the partnership because I talk people down from partnerships like this all day long. So we don't have time to get into that today. But I'm sure that years, it hasn't always been easy, or maybe it has because I don't.
[00:23:44] Speaker C: Most franchisees are one. We had four big salaries to grow.
[00:23:49] Speaker B: Into because one of the things I wanted to do was have the structure right. Because the aquatics director in this is a very important role. So I wanted to know that going in and kind of make sure we had Terry and now my son's doing it. But make sure that person was invested right. Because in the beginning, it's a lot of work to get started. I mean, there's four of. We're running around. Back then I was teaching swim lessons, right. I was in the water. She was on the.
[00:24:14] Speaker C: You don't want that role to turn over.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: You don't want that role to turn over because it could really halt your growth, your development, because then you have to start all over. So that was an important role. So that's why we kind of defined the structure even before we bought the franchise.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: Yeah. The partnership thing is a whole nother deal, but you guys make it look and sound easy as all people who are successful do. So it's amazing. God bless you. Thank you so much for sharing your inspiring story and being my guest today here on Kim Daily TV.
[00:24:43] Speaker B: All right, Kim, thanks. Good talking with you. Yeah.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: To wrap this up for those followers, for those listeners out there, I want to say, look, today we talked a little bit about partnership. We talked about competition. We talked about building a legacy for your children. Right. That's amazing. Just getting off of the sideline, getting into the game, you're never going to know. It's always going to be a leap of faith. What an amazing, amazing and inspiring episode here on Kim Daily TV. For those of you who are still listening, who are interested to get off the sideline and to get into the game, you know that I want to be your daily coach. Please follow the email on the screen right now or reach directly out to inquire at KimDaily TV. That's inquire at Kimdaily TV. And until next time, my name is Kim Daly and I want to be your daily coach.
You can find more content just like this on my YouTube channel at KimDaily TV. And if you're inspired to take the next step to explore franchises match to you, please email me right now at Inquire at KimDaily TV. That's inquire at KimDaily TV.
