When Olympic gold medalist Lenny Krayzelburg went looking for a pool to launch his first swim academy, he visited the Westside Jewish Community Center on Olympic Boulevard, where he first trained as a teen newly arrived from what was then the Soviet Union.
But the pool had been bone dry for years. A nearby Miracle Mile-area museum was using the pool not for aquatic sports, but for storage.
That was almost 10 years ago. Krayzelburg, now 38, decided to invest in the facility and make it the first site of his learn-to-swim company, LK Swim Academy, which has grown to 10 schools in seven states. The company is continuing to expand and Krayzelburg is in talks to open three additional schools next year.
He said running the business appeals to him for the same reasons competitive swimming did – it’s up to him whether it sinks or swims.
“Maybe it’s from years of being in a sport that so much depended on you,” he said. “You sort of controlled your own destiny.”
Krayzelburg owns two swim schools, one at the Westside center and one at New Community Jewish High School in West Hills. The swim academies have about 1,600 and 600 students, respectively, and last year they brought in about $2 million in combined revenue. His company keeps a majority of that but shares a portion with the pool owners, he said.
Students or their parents pay a monthly fee from $78 to $200 or more, depending on the frequency of lessons and whether they’re private or in a group setting. Some lessons are discounted.
The coursework is based on his proprietary method called SwimRight. Classes are taught by trained instructors – but not by Krayzelburg, who said he prefers the business side and lacks the patience to teach day to day. The L.A. locations have about 70 employees, most of whom are part-timers.
He has been spreading the academies to other parts of the country since embarking on an expansion plan that began in New York in 2009. A program opened in May in Austin, Texas. Other locations are in the Boston, Chicago, Detroit and New York areas; still more have opened in Louisville, Ky., and Atlantic City, N.J. He’s currently in talks for another Texas location, along with one each in the Midwest and the Northeast.
All of those locations are at Jewish Community Centers under a deal with the organization.
The swim schools outside of Los Angeles operate somewhat like a franchise. Krayzelburg licenses his name and training program to the facilities for an upfront fee of about $25,000 and his company gets 10 percent to 12 percent of the schools’ monthly revenue.
The SwimRight method emphasizes water safety, has seven levels and takes a few years for students to complete. The locations outside of Los Angeles last year brought in about $400,000 to Krayzelburg’s business.
Different strokes
Jay Ogden, a senior vice president who specializes in Olympic talent representation at sports consultancy IMG in New York, said Krayzelburg’s academy approach sets him apart from schools started by other Olympians.
For example, U.S. Olympic medalists Phil Mahre and Steve Mahre run a ski camp in Deer Valley, Utah. Those types of facilities usually offer a few days or a week of instruction, not the long-term education that Krayzelburg sells.
“A network of swimming academies is an impressive accomplishment,” Ogden said in an email to the Business Journal. “I have no first-hand knowledge of athletes doing anything similar.”
But Krayzelburg acknowledged that there are drawbacks. His expansion plans depend on finding accommodating sites at Jewish Community Centers. He also can’t grow too quickly because of the staff training required for SwimRight.
As a youth, Krayzelburg left Odessa in the then-Soviet Ukraine and came to Los Angeles with his family in 1989. He began training at the Westside center before moving on to Santa Monica College, USC and, eventually, the Olympics, where he was a star in backstroke.
He began to ponder his post-swimming career after the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, where he won three gold medals but realized he wasn’t going to be able to compete at that level forever.
The idea of swim schools occurred to him while training in Irvine for the 2004 Summer Olympics; the pool had a popular learn-to-swim program. The urgency to find a new calling was only heightened by shoulder and knee problems that set him back during that training. Despite his injuries, he won another gold medal in Athens.
That same year, he began scouting pool locations and was surprised to find the Westside Jewish Community Center pool wasn’t open anymore. He invested $115,000 from his savings to help get the facility up and running.
Brian Greene, executive director of the center, said the pool has made money. It also increased enrollment for the center’s other programs.
“It does a good job of bringing in revenue,” Greene said. “And the numbers from the swim academy spin off into our day camp and other activities.”
The plan has faced some turbulence, though. For one, it has been a marketing effort to get people to use a community pool for lessons, Krayzelburg said, since there is a large industry of teachers who go to private pools to teach swim lessons in Los Angeles.
He has faced barriers to getting into more of the 300 or so other Jewish Community Centers around the country. A lot of the centers don’t see the pools as big revenue generators. They focus more on gym memberships and he’s had to make them aware of this opportunity. Also, many already offer a swim program through the Red Cross and are reluctant to change.
Another challenge is in getting staff versed in the SwimRight method. That involves flying two or three people from Los Angeles to the new sites for one round of instruction as well as flying the trainees to Los Angeles for another round. Krayzelburg believes that will cap growth to about three or four new centers a year.
He said he’s getting more interest than ever before, which makes him optimistic that he can continue to grow. He’s hoping to extend his Jewish Community Center exclusivity deal beyond next year.
“More and more sites are now reaching out to us,” he said. “It’s a good place to be.”
