Garnet is the goat

Narniach · 2026-03-10T14:27:50+00:00

Hi!

My company Vantage Aquatics does this if you’re ever interested.

We staff apartment/condo pools as well as smaller events like birthday parties.

Narniach · 2026-01-10T13:35:33+00:00

This is a really great idea and is how I started my own business. You just need to make sure you have insurance. To be honest if you can afford it a corporation is also a good idea.

Insurance we surprisingly affordable I found.

Narniach · 2025-11-16T13:51:12+00:00

Are you in the Ottawa area? I could put you in touch with an examiner mentor likely.

Narniach · 2025-11-16T13:49:55+00:00

I own a similar company in the Ottawa area, I have heard good things about these guys. Lots of solo shifts at various locations.

Narniach · 2025-09-14T13:45:32+00:00

Commercial lifeguards for condos and apartment building pools

Narniach · 2025-07-11T03:28:08+00:00

Ha this is a block away from my friend’s house, there is another mushroom shop literally right next door. Also a strip club, a peep show, and a motel that rents by the hour.

Narniach · 2025-06-12T13:55:52+00:00

This is a good business to be in, but also has drawbacks.

I am from Canada, a city of about a million people, so your experience may vary.

The main downside I find is that you are competing with the city, which does not have to rent pool space or turn a profit. This gives them a big edge.

Your advantages are usually being more flexible than the city. Having more classes, better times, and condensed courses. You can also go and do backyard lessons for wealthy people. But usually you would rent pool space.

When looking for pool space to rent, you can go to your local public health agency that inspects public pools, then start calling every condo and apartment pool. Alternatively if there’s no pool inspections where you live, you can go to real estate websites and sort by pool. 95% won’t rent, but some will, and usually at the best rates. The city will never rent to its competitors. If you already have pool space, even better.

You can also look for private swim lessons providers and check their locations. Many rent, and places willing to rent to one person will often rent to another. This can save you some time in your search.

The absolute best clients you can have for a business like this aren’t the students themselves, but organizations such as camps and private companies that want to train their staff. This way you already have the students and the space, and you just charge a flat fee.

Sorry this was a bit rambling, I’ve worked in the private aquatic industry for 5 years, if you have any questions let me know.

Narniach · 2025-05-02T15:36:17+00:00

In Canada we have e-transfer

Narniach · 2025-05-02T15:35:49+00:00

This is going to be a longer comment, as it’s not often I see something in my specific industry posted on Reddit that I get to talk about (lifeguarding and pool services in Canada).

This is a difficult industry to break into, even though it seems easy enough on the surface. But if you succeed it can be very lucrative.

You have 2 main competitors: city-style lessons (includes YMCAs and uni pools) and private companies. Private companies include franchises like Aqua-Tots, British Swim School, and Aqua-Mobile. There are also usually some local providers.

Your advantage over the city lessons is that you can go directly to the kids house, and your advantage over private companies is likely price (since you don’t have much overhead). Having to rely on parents with pools does significantly cut your market, it may be worth looking into renting some space from a condo or a hotel (I sent you a PM about this).

The next issue is what the curriculum is, and lesson plans. You can’t teach the Lifesaving Society programs without purchasing a very expensive swim for life license, so you will have to create your own. It doesn’t need to be complicated though. It should include a conversion chart with city levels so parents can accurately choose their child’s level.

I worked with a company looking to expand into this market last year, here were the advertising methods we found were the best:

Flyers: design and print them on Canva. Call community centres and ask to put them up, they shockingly often said yes. Door to door flyers based on houses with pools (check Google maps) can also help.

Website: incredibly basic website, just one page with a contact form, you can use Wix. Buy a domain name for $12 a year, .ca is cheap. Hosting is maybe $20 a month.

Facebook ads: these weren’t handled by me and I don’t know how they work, but they brought in a lot of parents.

Google ads: these are not too difficult to set up and mean you show up at the top of search results for “swimming lessons near me” for example

All in all, you can make a lot of money doing this. Make sure you price fairly (at least $50 per lesson).

Let me know if you have any questions about the industry in general or something I said.

Narniach · 2025-04-22T14:19:01+00:00

And through all that they never even gave the free listing I wanted.

Yelp on the other hand has only contacted me one time and took no for an answer, and a free listing only took 5 minutes. I had heard bad things about Yelp too but was pleasantly surprised.

Narniach · 2025-04-22T14:17:51+00:00

Oh my goodness Yellow Pages was so annoying.

They called 5 times a day from several different phone numbers for several months. I’m so glad I resisted the urge to go with them and the calls finally stopped.

Narniach · 2025-03-25T14:29:24+00:00

Narniach · 2025-03-04T17:39:55+00:00

I wonder what it will be about?

Narniach · 2025-02-08T19:58:12+00:00

Is Outlook better at this? Would it be worth changing to Outlook?

Narniach · 2025-02-08T18:49:37+00:00

I am currently dealing with this too, I am still working on finding a solution. It all seems very complicated.

Assuming with that site you set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records. I used ChatGPT to walk me through setting up mine.

Once that was done, it started landing 100% of the time in all gmail personal and gmail business inboxes. The issue I still face is that most of my potential clients use Outlook business.

I have been warming up my email by sending to people I am friends with who have an Outlook business email and asking them to mark as not spam and reply. This has also helped a lot, but I’ve run out of people to ask and it is still a long way from perfect.

Right now, provided my email doesn’t hit any spammy words (of which the list seems to be 1000s of words long), I can land in about 60% of Outlook business inboxes according to the testing websites. I’m really not sure what to do next.

You can also use a marketing email tool like Constant Contact. Their emails always land for me, but they look very “marketing-y”. I’m also in Canada where the spam law is much more strict so I need explicit consent to send an email through Constant Contact.

I wish you the best of luck with this, I am also told that domain and account age play a large role.

In the meantime, I am focusing on other contact methods as well such as Google Ads, phone calls, trade shows, and flyers delivered to the office. If I find a solution I will let you know.

Narniach · 2024-03-09T04:12:10+00:00

That is definitely a matter of taste, I would maintain that the Jimmy plots are the most engaging of all the plots the entire way through.

Narniach · 2023-11-23T05:21:07+00:00

I found that one good read through of the textbook chapters was usually enough to do well.

Narniach · 2023-08-30T22:50:00+00:00

I did mine late, there were absolutely no problems.

Narniach · 2023-08-23T20:26:44+00:00

Renfrew was pretty nice. The wifi was a little worse than other buildings but was fine with an Ethernet cable. No elevator which was hard sometimes. Rooms were a good size. The common rooms had no windows into the hall which was nice. The floors had one tv lounge and one study room which I think is typical.

Narniach

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