Your ability or willingness to take the time to communicate with your customers, your swim lesson parents, can make or break your swim school.  Keep in touch with them via email, and use social media like facebook, twitter, and LinkedIn.  Here’s an example of a recent message I posted on our Swim Lessons Company Facebook [...]

A great New Year’s resolution for swim school owners may be to simply plan better than the year before.   Like Santa Claus, I’m making my list and checking it twice!   So what am I doing right now?  Here’s my first draft of my “To Do’s” for my 2012 Learn-to-Swim season: 1. I email my current [...]

When swim instructors start teaching formal swimming strokes in their learn to swim classes, we often forget how monotonous the repetition involved with mastering a new stroke becomes.  This monotony leads leads to boredom, and boredom leads to uninspired students.   Uninspired students leads to students “going through the motions.”  If your students are “going through [...]

I really enjoy traveling via Amtrak.  Traveling in their View Liner suite is great, and I prefer it any day over flying or a long drive.  But Amtrak is really “missing the boat” on their customer service and their “policies” on their Amtrak Guest Rewards system.  Suddenly they are reminding me of the airlines.  My [...]

I am very excited to update you on the development of my new “Water Smart 101 DVD!”  After presenting this water safety lesson to nearly 10,000 children last year, and over 30,000 children in the past 4 years, I have tweaked it to the point that I can’t wait to share it with you.  We [...]

New customers are great.  But no customer is more important than the ones you have today. So my first tip in this week’s blog is to make sure that you keep your current customers happy!   Never argue with a customer, and always go above and beyond their expectations so they will tell all their friends [...]

What measures can you take to improve your swim school business?  As the unexpected first place San Francisco Forty-Niners Coach Jim Harbaugh said after yesterday’s win:”WE SPEND A LOT OF TIME ASKING QUESTIONS.” Swim school owners must do the same.  What questions should you be asking?  Here are a number of good ones to get [...]

As the American Red Cross raises it’s fees for swim lesson programs and it’s Water Safety Instructor certification, the interest in an alternative swim instructor certification is on the rise.   One of those alternatives is the Swim Lessons University Swimming Instructor training program. Barb Limbo, Aquatic Director for the Rapid City Aquatics Recreation Department in [...]

According to SafeKids Worldwide, 50% – 90% of all drownings and near-drownings in backyard pools would be prevented if a four-sided isolation fence was installed. Amazingly, also according to SafeKids Worldwide, only four states (CA, AZ, FL, and OR) require some type of fencing around residential pools.   FENCING SHOULD BE MANDATORY IN EVERY STATE.   Don’t [...]

Dear Swim Profesor: I hope you can help w/more advice. I”m still a beginner swimmer. My teacher told me I need to work on my kicking, and I’d like to get some fins. Saw some lightweight flippers at Todd & Moore, and then just regular swim fins (I guess). I think I need “short fins” [...]