Good Neighbor Podcast Northport
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of Tuscaloosa and Northport!
Good Neighbor Podcast Northport
Making a Splash: Linda Davis Talks Joyful Swim Lessons for Kids at Goldfish Swim School
Can learning to swim be a joyful adventure for children? Join us on the Good Neighbor Podcast as we chat with Linda Davis, the Assistant General Manager at Goldfish Swim School in Hoover, to discuss their unique approach to swim lessons that blend fun with life-saving skills. Linda sheds light on their perpetual swim lessons tailored for children aged four months to twelve years, emphasizing the importance of play in reducing anxiety and boosting confidence. Designed by a professional swimmer and early childhood educator, these lessons ensure that mastering swimming techniques becomes an enjoyable experience for kids.
Linda also shares her personal journey of finding balance and health, leading to a fulfilling role at Goldfish Swim School. After stepping back from a high-stress job, Linda found a perfect fit with a company that values customer service and excellence. We explore the true value of swim lessons beyond their cost, highlighting the life-saving importance of water safety. Additionally, we discuss how families can integrate these lessons into their school routines, ensuring children have fun and decompressing activities throughout the year. Tune in to discover more about water safety, child development, and the critical role of play in children’s lives. #GNPBirmingham #GoldfishSwimSchool #LindaDavis #HooverAL #SwimLessons #WaterSafety #ChildDevelopment #FunLearning #SwimSchool #SwimmingSkills #PlayBasedLearning #EarlyChildhoodEducation #KidsActivities #WaterConfidence #SwimmingTechniques #CustomerServiceExcellence #HealthyBalance #FamilyActivities #PodcastEpisode #GoodNeighborPodcast
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Patricia Blondheim.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, patricia Blondheim, and today we have good neighbor Linda Davis, and Linda is the Assistant General Manager at Goldfish Swim School in Hoover. Linda, how are you today? I'm doing fantastic. How are you? I'm doing great, thank you. It's a great Monday and this is a great start for my day, because I love the water and I love children, so you've got, you've got it going on for me today. I love children, so you've got, you've got it going on for me today.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely. Some of my loves also.
Speaker 2:Well, tell me about Goldfish Swim School.
Speaker 3:OK, well, goldfish Swim School is a. We offer perpetual swim lessons, which means that we're going to teach your child ages four months with an adult with them all the way up to 12 years old, and we're going to teach them how to stay safe in the water, around water. But we're also going to develop some swim techniques that they are going to actually master if they stay with us until they know every single swim stroke correctly Until you tell us you don't want to do it anymore. So we just keep moving on. We are not a six-week program, an eight-week program, not even a year program. We just keep going on until you tell us that your child's mastered what they need or we're not a fit for you, and that's basically how we do it. So they move at their own pace, based on the skill levels that they get and they master along the way. We assess them once a month. We assess them more often if you'd like us to, but we just look at their skill base and move them through the process, which builds on each other.
Speaker 3:We're also a play-based organization, so I like to tell people how Goldfish got started. It actually was designed by a lady who was going into early childhood and she was a professional swimmer and she started going into the education route, realized she really missed the water. She had lots of people asking her to teach their children how to swim so she decided, hey, I've got something here. So she reached out to a pediatrician to find out what kind of things are appropriate for each age level to learn and she designed some curriculum that is based on each child's level. That is based on each child's level, so the child may not know that they're actually learning to swim because they're. It's all play-based, but it's getting them comfortable in the water, being able to then build on that comfortableness and move forward to actually perfecting strokes.
Speaker 2:Well, linda, I'm so glad that you were talking about that because I just I was listening to a podcast which is where I do most of my major learning, you'll be surprised to know and I was listening to a neurologist and he was talking about different measuring, different states of mind, and and and develop, and and and kind of researching, trying to figure out. You know what the opposites are, you know opposites are, you know like fear, happiness, but he measured anxiety.
Speaker 3:And do you know what the opposite of anxiety is in your brain? Calmness. It's play, play Okay, awesome, awesome, yeah, it's play. Well, that's funny. You said that because, after working with children for so many years, I literally that's how I tell them how to control their brain. I say you got to learn how to. It's like playing video games. You got to learn how to master the brain game, and so I teach them a little bit about the brain game that I do. I can go into that. That might be another day, another time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've lots of kids. They know how to have play dates and they know how to be scheduled and everything, but they don't do what maybe you and I did when we were younger, which is just make play our whole life.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I was not an anxious child. I grew into an anxious adult, absolutely. Is it a mystery to me? It's not a mystery to me anymore, now that a lot of our young people, that is a much larger learning gift that you're giving them besides just being able to be safe in a pool.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. We have some kids that don't even want to walk. We have what's called the dry side, and then there's a glass wall, and then we have the wet side, where the pool is. We have some kids that are screaming and kicking, that don't even want to walk into the room, much less let go of mommy and daddy and get into the water. And then we have the wet side, where the pool is. We have some kids that are screaming and kicking, that don't even want to walk into the room, much less let go of mommy and daddy and get into the water. And so I literally you know I'm new here, but I've noticed just from the years of working with kids and so I literally go up to them and we ease them in, we talk about hey, I'm going to be a mermaid with you next time. Are you going to be a shark today? You're going to be stingray, you know. So we let them again. Let them enter into that play world rather than that swimming lesson world.
Speaker 2:So I guess there are a lot of different things besides. You know we all want to keep our children safe around water, but what are some other reasons that you might want your child to be involved in a swim program, like not just swim classes but a swim program like the one you have?
Speaker 3:Well you said it safety. We know that the number one cause of death of ages birth to four years old is drowning, and so we want to be able to teach them how to stay safe when they're around water, and we actually also provide water safety classes that we go to various schools, communities, churches, home groups. We're actually about to begin one specifically for moms of young children, as well as ones for those that might be entering into the babysitting age. What can they do to help us stop that becoming the number one cause of death for such small children? And I believe you can even read that there's a statistic up to the age of I think it's nine or 10, where it's the third cause of death is drowning. So we are definitely all about safety here. We don't only teach the skills, but the number one thing is we talk about how to be safe around water.
Speaker 2:I had an experience with my son. We were in a pool and the pool was. It was time for the pool to close, I think to be cleaned or something. So everyone was leaving and getting out. My son went in for a toy that he'd left. My encouragement Noah, go get the toy. And he went and got the toy. I had my eyes on him and he must've been tired or something, but I just saw his. He was a functional swimmer. But I just saw his. He was a. He was a functional swimmer, but I just saw his head go down and I waited for two beats before I jumped in with all my clothes on the the. The point is it happens so silently, linda.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely. I have other facilities. I've been in with the training that we get there, unfortunately, have been images of people that you don't even see, that there's a child that is already drowned at the bottom of the pool simply because the amount of people in there, the way the waves are, so absolutely happens right around. And I want to be, I want to tell you that goldfish. That is really what has impressed me so much from being here is the safety, safety, safety, customer service as well as safety.
Speaker 3:I myself, even in the pool, doesn't even go over my head, it's only about four feet in the deepest part. I myself am not even able to go into the water without the lifeguard scanning and making sure there's nobody there. You'll see our lifeguards walk back and forth, back and forth, watching and you wonder why are they doing that when we only have maybe one lesson going on one end of the pool? And the reason is because we have so many children coming in and out of our facility. What if mom on the dry side wasn't watching and a child accidentally sneaked into the wet side and fell into the water on the other end of the pool? So we are constantly seeking and watching to keep all of our members safe around the water. So you're right, it happens very, very fast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and silently. That's what shocked me. Yes, no drama, no cry for help, no splashing nothing. He just disappeared under the water, and so that's another. You know, that's another thing to know about, about water safety and how vital it is for our children. Absolutely, tell our listeners a little bit about your journey. Did you just decide one day you were going to be a swim teacher?
Speaker 3:Not at all, not at all, not at all Although I did. I have a pool in my backyard and I did actually kind of think about it at some points, but I'm like I don't want to deal with all the legalities of all that and promoting my own business, but really honestly, I've worked 30 plus years with kids, teens as well as those that lead kids and teens, and so my passion and my purpose in life is to pour into the younger generation and of course, the older I get, that gap gets a little bit larger. But that's what I've done all my life is just work with that age demographic, and at the last job that I had, I absolutely loved it, but because I loved it so much, I did not know how to take care of myself. I poured in everything and I found pretty soon that my work life balance was way out of whack and I just knew that I could not continue to go at that pace. Unfortunately, I have heart attacks in my family and I was showing symptoms of that. So I knew I needed to walk away and it was probably time for me to do that.
Speaker 3:So last June I resigned from my prior position and I just took some time off to take care of myself, back to that mental health and anxiety and learning to make sure I'm healthy before I go work with anybody else. So I took about seven months off and then I said, if I didn't have something, I was kind of poking around Indeed and other places and networking some and just trying to see, but not in any rush. And around January I said, okay, now I'm going to start looking. So I started putting applications out there and it just didn't seem like a fit or or no. It sounded similar to what I just left. I'm not going to be able to have the work-life balance that I feel like I need, and so, anyway, I was just being patient and my resume was out on Indeed and Goldfish actually reached out to me and said they thought that I might be a good fit for their organizations. So I started to look at Goldfish and the company and some of the way they started and I absolutely got so, so excited. I just feel like, again, their standard is something I want to be a part of. Customer service is high on my list, excellence is high on my list, and so I wanted to be a part of an organization that valued the same thing we like to call the golden experience or the wow customer service. So there's so many different ways we can have a fantastic time as we're swimming, and just the play on words that I kept hearing them say, the swim-rific day that we're going to have at Goldfish today those little play on words to me felt like Disney, and so I've always said in interviews and to my families that I wanted to be a part.
Speaker 3:I absolutely love I hope it's all right for me to say these different things companies, but I absolutely love. I enjoy going to McDonald's but I prefer Chick-fil-A. I enjoy going I mean, I will go to Walmart but I prefer Target. I've gone to Six Flags but I prefer Disney and I, you know not to put any of them down, they all have a place in our world, but for me personally, I just wanted a little more. I wanted a little bit of that magic pixie dust that came and I just felt like Goldfish was that for me so that's why I went ahead and interviewed. I was open and honest with who I am, the gifts that I have, and I just said if you think I'm a fit, I'd love to give it a try.
Speaker 2:Love the pixie dust analogy because I am a sucker for some pixie dust. But people might come in for the pixie dust and have some misconceptions about what it is that you do there. Can you?
Speaker 3:shed some light on that. Most definitely, we are not perfect. We are made up of humans and I have not met a perfect one yet. So we do make mistakes, but I am very thankful that the mistakes that we've made, I feel like, have been addressed fairly.
Speaker 3:So sometimes our misconceptions is our price and, I'll be honest, that was what it was for me. I thought $32.50 for a 30 minute lesson Are you kidding me? I could never afford that. And then, as I started watching them and saw the value of each lesson, I thought back over. Well, not 30 years old, let's see over 20, let's say 20 to 24 years ago I paid about $30 for a 30-minute lesson for piano for my son, minute lesson for piano for my son, and I thought, wait a minute. That was, you know, 20 plus years ago. And this was a skill that, yes, it's helped him in life now and helped him in many different ways, but it was not a life-saving skill. And so I started realizing this is truly an investment for people and the families that we see coming in, many of them are ones that say I don't know how to swim.
Speaker 3:Do you do adult lessons? Do you do teenage lessons? Because they didn't have that opportunity to learn the techniques, and so they recognize. In fact, we've got some lessons going on right now, and a mom said we live at the lake. I'm terrified with my child being at the lake, and I could share stories with that too. Yeah, water is murky, you know. It happens quick, and so she didn't want her children to live in a life vest all the time. So, basically, you know, to me it might sound like a lot of money, but it is truly an investment. And how many times do we stop by Starbucks? Or how many times do we go get the kid a happy meal here and there? So I feel like the misconception is it's not expensive. You can't put a price tag on the value of teaching your child to swim and stay safe.
Speaker 2:That seems like a really reasonable price tag, actually, given that because I'm a business owner, so I've been, I've not worked for anyone for over 30 years, just myself. So my mind's constantly calculating you know prices and margins, and I I mean, I feel like for the facility that you have and the staff that you keep and the number of people that you have per student, absolutely I'm surprised that it is not more than that.
Speaker 3:Well, I appreciate you saying that because I come from a nonprofit world, so this is my actually first for profit business and those are the things that started entering my mind and recognizing from a business perspective, as well as a lot of the parents that say it. You mentioned it Our ratio is four to one. Many of our classes have less than that. We can do private lessons. That would cost a little bit more, but there's so many packages that we have. We also can buy a year membership up front and that would save you some. You can buy a six month membership up front and that can save you some.
Speaker 3:So there are different ways we do. We work to lower the price, but you're absolutely. We always have a lifeguard as well as a deck supervisor on board. All our instructors are lifeguard certified, so we're paying for the certifications for all our employees and as well as we have a instructor and also a floater there. So if we have a child that is fussy and not walking in, either our deck supervisor, who's doing the evaluations, he can hop in, or our floater can hop in and we can pull that child aside, or we can sit beside that child until they feel comfortable enough to be able to continue on with the lesson, but there's no interruption for the other children's lessons because that teacher can stay focused on the remaining three children.
Speaker 2:I love how focused you are on this. Excuse me while I have a frog in my throat. You're really focused in on the kids or what you do. You truly enjoy it, but I know because I've been an educator before you've got to fill your cup somehow. What do you do for fun?
Speaker 3:I absolutely just came back from fun and I'm about to go to fun. I grew up in Hong Kong and so I love to travel, love to travel the world, and I just got back on Monday oh Tuesday, excuse me, tuesday from Portland, oregon, my oldest one he's 29 years old and he's out there, and so I got to go see the mountains and the gorgeous views and the gorges, and we went hiking a lot. I would have loved to have thrown some camping in there. We weren't able to do that, but just spending time outdoors is my love.
Speaker 3:I love walking amongst nature, I love relaxing that way, and I also love being with family, and so actually, after today work, I get off at four o'clock. I'm driving to a mobile to go see my daughter. She's about to open up her brand new first second grade classroom, and so this is her first year of teaching, and so I'm going to help her get her classroom ready. She's moved into a new apartment. She's our last one to finally be that big adult grown up, so I'm going to go spend a little time with her and during this exciting time of her life.
Speaker 2:Oh, how exciting. This is her first classroom.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's her first job. She just got her first teaching job.
Speaker 2:Oh, very excited and so glad to see somebody who is taking on the challenge of teaching, and so kudos to her.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely. I didn't last there. I work with kids, but I started out in teaching and I did not last.
Speaker 2:So what's the one thing that you want our listeners to take away about Goldfish Swim School?
Speaker 3:Well, I want you to. We talked a lot about it, but I want you to understand that we are. We care about you, we care about your child. We want to do the best that we can to serve you and to serve your child, knowing that every customer is different, every child is different, and we're going to try our best to work with you to do that. We are open to feedback. We send out surveys during lessons. We send out emails. We want to hear the feedback because we know that through our feedback we can grow. We know which way we're directed. If we're doing well, if we're not hitting the mark, maybe we think we're doing okay, but from a different perspective, we might be missing the mark. So that's the first thing is that we care about you and we want to work with you. The other thing is, as I mentioned before, it's not just swim lessons, it's about safety, and so we also offer with Goldfish even if you're not even a member, if you don't take swim lessons here, we offer water safety classes.
Speaker 3:I kind of touched on it before, but we will go into the community of any group that would be willing to hear our about 30-minute presentation on how to keep kids safe. The presentation is geared mostly towards younger because we serve four months to 12 years of age. We're geared mostly to the younger children, but we adapt it. We are about to begin one that, like I said before, that will be reaching moms moms group of children with babies, as well as those that are entering into that pre-adolescent and adolescent group. Teenage group of children with babies, as well as those that are entering into that pre-adolescent and adolescent group. Teenage group of becoming a babysitter. So we're going we've got three different types that we would love to do, so those are absolutely free and we would love to be able to be out in the community to as many schools, daycares, churches, block parties, wherever you know. You feel like we could help spread the word of water safety and keep our community safe. That's what we want to be able to be a part of.
Speaker 2:Wonderful. How can our listeners learn more and how can they find Goldfish Swim?
Speaker 3:School. Well, the first thing would be is you can literally pick up the phone and call us. We usually have two people at our front desk and we are busy, so if you don't get us, we have a software that lets us know. Somebody's called, somebody's reached out to us, and we try to follow up with those as soon as possible. But our phone number is 205-922-0300. You can also personally email me, lyndadavis at goldfishss, so that's goldfishswimschool, goldfishsscom. You can email our manager, elainewallace elainewallace at goldfishsscom, or you can go to our website, goldfishswimschoolcom. Slash huber.
Speaker 2:Linda, thank you so much for coming by and sharing this very special place, goldfish Swim School, with us today.
Speaker 3:Can I say one more thing, and I promise it won't go too too long, naturally.
Speaker 3:Please do. Sure, we are running a special right now. It's our back to school special. So with this special I can, if you reach out to me, I can give you more details about that. But it does save you some money. It saves about $115 for actually a total of 14 lessons, plus some goodies that come along with it too. So I wanted to let you know we're running a special right now. We also always, always do free trials, so if you want to come test us out, we can schedule you for that and get you in just to see if we're a fit for you.
Speaker 2:What a wonderful thing to begin school with this wonderful, fun decompressing activity that your kids can do Well the good.
Speaker 3:The good thing is too. I know school can be hectic times. Some people take a break during this time. But if you purchase it now and get it scheduled, you don't have to begin it until October 1st. So as long as you're starting your lessons by October, that gives you a little time to get used to the school routine.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Linda for coming by and sharing Sure. Absolutely Thank you so much for giving us the opportunity.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbirminghamcom. That's gnpbirminghamcom. That's gnpbirminghamcom, or call 205-952-0148.