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Name: Amy Albiero
Title: Franchise Owner
Brands: SafeSplash Swim School
Units: 3
Years in franchising: 8
After years of coaching and competing, I wanted to make an impact even earlier in a swimmer's journey, teaching toddlers and preschoolers how to be safe, comfortable, and confident in the water. That meant I needed the right platform and a partner who shared my values and vision for growth. I found that with SafeSplash Swim School and opened my first location in 2018. Franchising with a service brand meant I could take a mission I'd already spent my life on and build a real business around it.
Water and coaching are the two threads that run through my entire career, so aquatics was never really a question. SafeSplash stood out because it combines a structured, progressive curriculum with the kind of elite instruction I already believed in. My husband Arthur and I opened our first location in Louisville, and in 2024 we brought on a business partner, Will Baumgardner, who was the first coach I hired at Cardinal Aquatics almost 20 years ago. Recognizing the need in his hometown of Lexington, along with Elizabethtown, made expanding into both markets this year an easy call.
As an athlete, I lived by systems: structured training, clear goals, and measurable progress. Franchising felt familiar in that way. It has quarterly reviews, KPIs, and team building, but the athletic mindset only gets you so far. You must possess the patience and care that little kids need, and the ability to develop staff the same way I'd build up a swimmer. I don't just see them as employees, but instructors and team members with the potential to become exceptional leaders.
You get to measure success in more than revenue. My greatest joy has been watching someone accomplish something they never thought was possible, whether that's a toddler putting their face in the water for the first time or a teenager or adult finally getting comfortable in the deep end. A service brand puts that impact at the center of the business instead of on the side.
Culture beats talent over time, and that's true across three locations just as much as it was on one pool deck. Your culture is defined by what you consistently model, not what you say, so we focus on building strong leaders at each school rather than trying to be everywhere ourselves. Having partners I completely trust makes that possible, and staying disciplined about the systems SafeSplash Swim School gave us keeps everything aligned as we grow.
SafeSplash Swim School gave us strong marketing infrastructure from day one, strategic support, and site selection expertise we didn't have to build ourselves. The primary way we’ve grown our schools is through our reputation. Twenty years of coaching in the Louisville aquatics community built a level of trust that carries directly into how families find us, and that word-of-mouth only compounds as more families see results.
Chase purpose, not brands. Find something that aligns with your own values and gives you room to grow as a leader, then use your own story as your north star. Franchising isn't casual entrepreneurship. It's a disciplined, intentional form of leadership, and the ones who do it well measure success in real, human impact, not just revenue.