urSwim founder Marina Mentzel talks about diving into a new industry – and making a splash.
When Marina Mentzel graduated from law school over a decade ago, the ambitious young lawyer had big plans for a career in the financial industry.
“I had gone to law school, had every intention that I'd be practicing law on Wall Street, and quickly discovered that path was not for me and I needed to pivot,” recalls Mentzel, founder and CEO of urSwim, a company that provides swim instruction and aquatics management services for private clients and commercial facilities.
Instead, Mentzel turned to entrepreneurship, hitting the books and researching business ideas that would allow her to tackle real-world problems and offer solutions that would positively impact the community around her. Ultimately, Mentzel settled on building a company whose business model could help families prevent an all-too-common tragedy – while simultaneously allowing her to scale into new geographic areas across the country.
Jumping in at the deep end
In 2013, Mentzel launched urSwim as a small local business empowering families through youth swimming instruction – a service that felt deeply important to the former competitive swimmer, who knew water safety was overlooked too often by families with young children.
“Drowning is the leading cause of death for children under the age of four and the second leading cause of death for children under the age of 12. So, there is a need for swim instruction, just period,” Mentzel says.
After identifying the need for swimming lessons that would allow kids to stay safe while enjoying summer activities in the pool with friends and family, Mentzel got to work laying the foundation for her business – something she says her legal background came in handy for. With an emphasis on ensuring clients and instructors had the resources they needed to meet their goals, Mentzel quickly hit the ground running as a new small business owner.
“All that education, all the trials and tribulations that came with going through that process, for me, was just an added benefit when I started to become an entrepreneur,” Mentzel says.
urSwim’s emphasis on meeting the community’s needs while ensuring instructors were properly supported eventually paid off, allowing the brand to land thousands of clients across Long Island, New York, in the years that followed. Still, by 2022, Mentzel knew she wanted more from entrepreneurship – she wanted to grow.
Making an impact through franchising
“I had been an operator for about 10 years and knew that I wanted to scale. And when thinking through how to best scale and grow the brand, for me, franchising was it,” Mentzel recalls.
When it came to mastering the fundamentals of franchising success, Mentzel’s business acumen and legal prowess came into play again, this time allowing her to adapt the brand for franchising.
“I wanted this to be a nimble business model. I wanted to scale effectively, efficiently. And also, I know that some of these brick-and-mortars are never going to be able to tap into areas that our business model can, (where) there is still such a need,” Mentzel says, noting that urSwim’s at-home swim instruction and lifeguard training and services at commercial facilities has allowed the company to expand in ways it couldn’t have otherwise.
Beyond solving an important need in the community, though, Mentzel was also determined to correct existing problems in the swim instruction industry – particularly the fragmentation that often prevented kids from getting the swimming lessons they needed to stay safe in the water.
“The need for lifeguards is not going anywhere. It's a $9 billion industry. And frankly, it's been pretty fragmented. In the last 30 years, our space, at the industry level, has been extremely fragmented, quite a bit antiquated. A lot of us are still, as operators, catching up on methods, procedures, technology, all the things that we can integrate in our brand. And that's something that I was extremely intentional about when thinking through, sort of, OK, this is what will be sold to the franchisee,” Mentzel says.
In addition to offering personalized services like swim lessons for children and adults (available either at home and at indoor commercial pools), the company also offers lifeguard certification and lifeguard rental services alongside swimming pool management – offerings that helped fill a gap for commercial facilities and made swimming safer for clients.
After operating three corporate locations around New York, Mentzel focused on laying a rock-solid foundation for urSwim before franchising the brand in 2022, selling its first franchise unit the following year. Beyond expanding the brand’s reach and impact, she says the franchising model has also allowed her to regain some control over her work-life balance as a mother, wife and entrepreneur.
“It's helped me balance my lifestyle. With having young children, it's been such a benefit to my family and my household and honestly, I'm just super excited to continue chugging along,” Mentzel says.
Transforming lives – and saving some, too
With locations scattered across New York and Connecticut, urSwim might just be getting started as an emerging franchise brand, but it’s already established itself as a small-but-mighty presence in the franchising space due to Mentzel’s growth-oriented franchisor mindset and commitment to offering impactful solutions for customers.
“One of our consumer products is, if you have a pool in your backyard, we will send the instructor to your location. To me, that's such an incredible delivery of service, because one in 10 homes in the U.S. has a pool. So the demand is there. And two, 75% of all drownings in the U.S. happen in people's very own backyard pools,” Mentzel says.
Part of the successful delivery of those services relies on making smart choices about the brand’s management team, business partners and franchisees – including identifying ways to support franchisees as business owners.
“It's making sure that we are living to our core values of what we stand for as a business. So again, our core offerings are swim instruction, education and lifeguard staffing. So we want to paint a path and a roadmap for our franchisees that they will be able to achieve financial milestones and penetrate their respective geographic areas,” Mentzel says.
Mentzel is also selective about the franchisees she brings on board at urSwim. Among franchisee candidates, she’s always on the lookout for aspiring business leaders with a passion for education, an interest in swimming and a commitment to providing an excellent client experience. In exchange, the brand offers franchisees access to resources, tools and relationships to thrive, including a pre-opening training program, continued on-site support and assistance with brand development.
“For me, success is (when) my franchisees are able to deliver a great product and ultimately are able to provide themselves with financial freedom, whatever that means to them,” Mentzel says.
Beyond financial success, Mentzel points out that urSwim also offers franchisees a way to make an impact on communities in need of swimming education – especially in locations where those resources might not have existed otherwise.
“Recently, through my staff chain, I got a text message of a client of ours in Connecticut that shared a story about her young daughter, while they were on vacation in Mexico, helping save another little girl out in the ocean. And (they) gave credit to the incredible work that was done in Connecticut. I could not have done that if I was not able to scale this way,” Mentzel says.
As an emerging franchisor, Mentzel says sustainable growth, rather than rapid scaling, is particularly important – especially when it comes to learning how to build the right team, acquire the right skills and identify ways to support clients and franchisees in the most effective ways possible.
“For me, it's about delivering impact to the communities we serve. And it's also about reaping a financial reward along the way,” Mentzel says.
With locations scattered across New York and Connecticut, urSwim might just be getting started as an emerging franchise brand, but it’s already established itself as a small-but-mighty presence in the franchising space due to Mentzel’s growth-oriented franchisor mindset and commitment to offering impactful solutions for customers.
“One of our consumer products is, if you have a pool in your backyard, we will send the instructor to your location. To me, that's such an incredible delivery of service, because one in 10 homes in the U.S. has a pool. So the demand is there. And two, 75% of all drownings in the U.S. happen in people's very own backyard pools,” Mentzel says.
Part of the successful delivery of those services relies on making smart choices about the brand’s management team, business partners and franchisees – including identifying ways to support franchisees as business owners.
“It's making sure that we are living to our core values of what we stand for as a business. So again, our core offerings are swim instruction, education and lifeguard staffing. So we want to paint a path and a roadmap for our franchisees that they will be able to achieve financial milestones and penetrate their respective geographic areas,” Mentzel says.
Mentzel is also selective about the franchisees she brings on board at urSwim. Among franchisee candidates, she’s always on the lookout for aspiring business leaders with a passion for education, an interest in swimming and a commitment to providing an excellent client experience. In exchange, the brand offers franchisees access to resources, tools and relationships to thrive, including a pre-opening training program, continued on-site support and assistance with brand development.
“For me, success is (when) my franchisees are able to deliver a great product and ultimately are able to provide themselves with financial freedom, whatever that means to them,” Mentzel says.
Beyond financial success, Mentzel points out that urSwim also offers franchisees a way to make an impact on communities in need of swimming education – especially in locations where those resources might not have existed otherwise.
“Recently, through my staff chain, I got a text message of a client of ours in Connecticut that shared a story about her young daughter, while they were on vacation in Mexico, helping save another little girl out in the ocean. And (they) gave credit to the incredible work that was done in Connecticut. I could not have done that if I was not able to scale this way,” Mentzel says.
As an emerging franchisor, Mentzel says sustainable growth, rather than rapid scaling, is particularly important – especially when it comes to learning how to build the right team, acquire the right skills and identify ways to support clients and franchisees in the most effective ways possible.
“For me, it's about delivering impact to the communities we serve. And it's also about reaping a financial reward along the way,” Mentzel says.
To learn about franchising opportunities at UrSwim, visit https://swimmingschoolfranchise.com.
