Today we’d like to introduce you to Jim and Jeff Wood.
Jim and Jeff, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Our journey here has taken a lifetime, but in a nutshell: We’re (Jim & Jeff) brothers who grew up on the Erie Canal in a small, rural, upstate NY town. Don’t hold our northern routes against us, we love the south!
From a young age, our parents involved us in many sports and activities, including swimming lessons. By the age of 7 and 8 (we’re a year and a half apart), we realized we had the most fun swimming and committed to it competitively. By age 12, Jeff was giving Michael Phelps a run for his money – posting the fastest time in the country for his age group in the 100 butterfly. Fast-forward a bit. After earning All-America honors and national recognition in high school, we both earned NCAA D1 scholarships for swimming – Jim at St. Bonaventure University and Jeff at the University of Notre Dame.
Fun Fact: Training year-round, 6 days a week for 20 years. Jim and Jeff have each swam over 20,000 miles. The equivalent distance of a trip from Atlanta to Australia… and back again!
After graduating college, we went our separate ways in corporate America and although we feel just as snazzy as the next guy wearing dress clothes, it didn’t take long for us to realize we’re swim suit dudes. One year at Thanksgiving dinner one of us asked (we can’t recall who) why we were spending all this time learning new skills when we had a combined 40 years of competitive swimming experience. That day we committed ourselves to our true passion of spreading our love for swimming and The Swim Revolution was born!
And we haven’t looked back!
Since our lightbulb moment to start The Swim Revolution, we’ve spent 5 years continually improving and optimizing the swim lesson experience for children. We’ve taken the old-fashioned and often crowded forceful and less-than-engaging swim lesson experience and turned it on its head. We’ll tell you more about that soon.
Finally, we aligned ourselves with some amazing individuals of character. We call these people friends, mentors and… Confidence Coaches (swim coaches who are trained to develop confidence in kids)! They know how to bring the fun and deliver a swim lesson your children won’t soon forget. Ask a parent who has had a child at The Swim Revolution – our Confidence Coaches make an impact and their name becomes part of the household dialogue!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Ask any business owner if it has been a smooth ride and I bet you get the same answer 🙂
Our struggles along the way have defined our growth.
We quit our jobs and started the business in May, traveling around Atlanta from 7:00 am to 8:00 pm, 7-days a week and driving anywhere from 50-100 miles a day. It was hard work, but we loved doing it and business was growing! … Then pools closed for the summer like they do and we didn’t have a backup plan. That first year was a humbling year. We made it out through a mix of part-time serving jobs and a healthy (or rather unhealthy) portion of Ramen Noodles and hotdogs.
That struggle forced us to scour the city for alternative indoor pool locations. We were rejected by every single school, local township or hotel pool. Of course, who wants a business running inside their business? We resorted to pleading and were met with amazing kindness with a local family-owned hotel who had previously denied our request.
At that hotel, we grew from teaching 50 to around 400 children on an on-going weekly basis. Another struggle came knocking – We had no more room to grow in that small hotel pool and juggling swim lessons with hotel guests was getting to be a weekly nightmare. We were forced to search for a permanent home, completely our own.
That search led to us taking over the old Vinings Club pool in the Overlook III Building. From there, we hired a super talented team who completed an extensive renovation of the 30-year old pool space. It’s really a beautiful pool now with views of Buckhead and Atlanta from one of the highest points in the city. Our new home has helped us grow from our hotel days to teaching around 1000 children this past summer.
Of course, I could name a hundred other struggles that have helped us grow along the way. But the point is, of course, we’ve had struggles and every struggle has been a blessing in disguise pushing us forward.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about The Swim Revolution – what should we know?
The Swim Revolution is a child-focused learn to swim program for children 6 months and up, centered around 3 guiding principles –
1) Having Fun! 2)Building Confidence! 3)Swimming Safer!
We live by a commitment to revolutionize the swim lesson experience, not just for our students, but also their families.
For students, we offer “purposefully small” classes in a warm (90°), child-friendly environment, fun game-based teaching methods, and hands-on coaching with wildly engaging instructors.
For their families, we offer a state of the art experience, including online skill and progress tracking, total online account management, video training and how-to archives (coming 2017), and easy to navigate policies.
We’re very thankful and proud to have been nominated and selected for our first 2 awards this year:
– Best Swim Lesson in Atlanta, 2016 Red Tricycle Awards
– Best Kids Activity in Smyrna, 2016 Vining’s Lifestyle Magazine
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Constant and Never-ending Improvement
~Tony Robbins
It’s not our lingo, but it’s the defining characteristic in our personal and business lives. It Keeps us moving forward. If you were to ask one of our long-term “Revers,” (what we call our swim families), I’m sure you’d receive the same answer.
Of course, we’re passionate about what we do. We absolutely adore coaching swimming and building confidence in children. Seriously, we have the best jobs in the world – we go to work surrounded by high-fives, smiles, and laughter… I dare anyone to have a bad day in our world.
But it is our constant reinvestment, searching, brainstorming and downright visceral need to improve that keeps us growing and moving forward.
Contact Info:
- Address: 2859 Paces Ferry Road SE, Suite 100, Atlanta, GA 30339″The big glass building in the heart of Vinings”
- Website: www.theswimrevolution.com
- Phone: 404-354-1180
- Email: team@theswimrevolution.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/theswimrevolution
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheSwimRevolution
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-swim-revolution-atlanta
- Other: Google us to check our Google reviews!
