Lindsey was ready to take her swim coaching business to the next level. That’s when the covid pandemic forced closures and stopped her progress in its tracks. “I’m not one to sit back and wait for things to happen,” she says convincingly. “If I get an idea in my head, I’ll just go with it. That’s what we did with Endless Pools.”
Her resourcefulness has created new opportunities, even as business restrictions continue. She’s now doing what she loves from her backyard Performance pool while bringing in income once again. And her clients? “They absolutely love it!”
When the 2020 lockdown halted Coach Lindsey’s plans for a commercial “swim gym,” she turned to Endless Pools for a solution. With her backyard swimming pool, she says, “It’s very handy, just having it here rather than traveling to another pool.” And for her swimmers, “It’s such a personal service now … the progression is fantastic!”
A SOLID SWIM-COACHING FOUNDATION
An avid swimmer since childhood, Lindsey became a lifeguard and swim teacher in her teens. “I started my own business, Lindsey’s Learn to Swim, back in 2007,” she recalls. “I was pregnant with my first child back then, so I was setting up a business and going to become a mum at the same time!” she says with a laugh. “It worked out really well.
“It started out one night a week, just as a hobby – something I did just because I enjoyed it.” One night became two, and “the business just kept on growing. Eventually it wasn’t just me that was doing the teaching, so we rebranded as Super Swim Academy.”
By 2019, she recalls, “My main plan was that I was going to set up a swim gym” using Endless Pools Commercial models. She recalls plotting, “I’m going to get maybe three pools and put them into a commercial unit that focuses on fitness, rehabilitation, long-term swim benefits to people that have injuries, and then a triathlete pool.
“I set up the business plan, and the wheels were in motion. Everything was going really well until covid,” she recounts. “The swimming just stopped. I didn’t have a business anymore. That’s why we looked into other options.”
Her backyard Endless Pools Performance pool is a hit with Coach Lindsey’s swimmers. “They absolutely love it,” she’s found. “You’re breathing fresh air instead of ventilated air, which is one of the [covid] restrictions that some [indoor] pools have found.” Another perk of her pool: the beautiful "under the sea" mural painted by her sister, Jenny Prior.
THE COACH-FROM-HOME SOLUTION
“I didn’t want to give up on it,” Lindsey now says of her dream of opening a swim gym. “I loved the concept of it. I thought, ‘Let me see if I can make this work on a smaller scale. Maybe only buy one pool, then eventually, the bigger dream could happen.
“By then, the government had announced Bounce Back Loans to businesses to help them come back from the closures. I thought, ‘Right, I’m just going to go for it.’ I just had to go with my gut. The coronavirus has taken away so much of our businesses, but I wanted to come away thinking I still have the opportunity to do what I love.”
“I have a four-meter by four-meter square space,” Lindsey notes. She consulted with her local Endless Pools dealer, Executive Pool & Leisure, who confirmed that she had just enough room for the pool and one swim coach outside of it.
“The only alteration was that one side of the coping, they had to cut off at an angle so the door would open. You can’t even tell! It looks like it was supposed to be like that.”
Her small backyard pool and at-home coaching business have been win-wins all around! “It’s nice, it’s cozy, it’s got a good feel to it. You just wake up and you go into work just outside your back door. It’s very handy, just having it here rather than traveling to another pool.”
The location gives Lindsey “full control” and complete scheduling freedom. “It’s just easy to be able to offer so much more to people than before. You’d always have to then account for other people that might be in the pool.”
Coaching out of public pools had drawbacks for Coach Lindsey and her swimmers. Fortunately, an Endless Pools Performance model was in her budget! Now she enjoys coaching from home, and the backyard pool also works for family fun!
THE MAGIC IS IN THE CURRENT
Of course, what makes Coach Lindsey’s Performance pool such a score isn’t just the size or the convenience. It’s the adjustable Endless Pools swim current. From her first test swim with “my three boys and my partner, Claire … We all loved it. I thought, ‘Yeah this is it!’”
With her up-close view of her swimmers, “It’s such a personal service now … the progression is just fantastic – what people can do in such a short space of time,” she enthuses. “I’ve always loved teaching one-to-one because you can just go directly to their needs and help them the best that you can.”
In her Endless Pools Performance model, her swimmers have two underwater mirrors, “the angled mirror and the floor mirror. They can see what they’re doing. And I can do video analysis from outside the pool, so they’re getting two-way feedback. You can quickly identify [issues] and then [the swimmer] can see, ‘I’m not looking in the right place [or] my legs aren’t coming back together.’ They can improve so much more quickly.”
It also works as a complement to coaching open-water swimming. “People can come in the pool, and it’ll help them with their stroke technique,” she says. “Then we can put that in place in the sea.” Many triathletes and marathon swimmers use the Endless Pools current for stroke refinement, and they find that those skills make them more efficient in open water.
“When you’re teaching one to one,” Coach Lindsey acknowledges, “your costs have to be a little bit higher. It’s not going to be everybody’s cup of tea. But when we go back to the pool that we were hiring before, we’ll have that option as well. So, we’re not going to exclusively do one-to-one.”
LINDSEY’S DREAM POOL
Lindsey still plans to open her swim gym. She sees her backyard Endless Pools set-up as the first step in something bigger.
“I’m going to do this for a good year to get a good established business model to prove to future investors or the bank that this actually does work and is effective.”
She also does aquatic aerobics in her pool. “I put my music on. I used to do that before covid came as well, putting three people in the pool and doing small ‘aqua-fit’ groups. That’s something I’m going to be starting as well. You can see how happy it makes them! And now we have the added bonus of being out in the sunshine. It’s so nice!
“I absolutely love the pool. I can’t get over how much it adds to what I can do.” It’s been even better with the unusually fair weather she’s had in North Yorkshire lately. “I feel like I’m on holiday because I’m in the swimming pool and the sun’s shining! It’s like a dream come true.”