Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kaylee Kennedy . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Kaylee, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I was a swim school owner in Saskatchewan and Alberta Canada when the pandemic hit in March 2020. When looking for ways to keep our swimmers engaged in and practicing their submersions, I started teaching Online Bathtub Swim Lessons. The idea quickly picked up and I opened a new branch of my swim school, calling it Watermellow. Since then, I hired a small team to teach remotely from Canada to families all over the world. My team and I have also created a successful at-home bath and pool program that our Instructors teach to parents online. The mission of the company is to teach parents how to teach their children to love the water.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I grew up in Montreal and have always been very free-spirited, willful, and spontaneous. I became a mother at a young age and now have 2 children. In trying to find my purpose in life, I moved across the country with my young family and found myself opening a small swim school operation in rural Saskatchewan. I gravitated to teaching children to swim because I was learning how to connect with my own children. I would teach my one-year-old to swim on a casual Sunday afternoon and then hop into the water to teach 10 more kids the following day. My cup was always full because I found that teaching children (including my own) to conquer a fear of water and increase their self-confidence was the most rewarding career I could ever have. It was my calling and what I was meant to do.

So, opening Watermellow simply fueled my reach and made my connections ‘pandemic-proof’. I wanted to inspire other parents to experience ‘real swimming’ with their child. As a parent, teaching your own child to swim, you build a special bond that is created through mutual understanding of fear, and discomfort, and overcoming the challenges together. It’s just so special

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Growing up as the eldest child of a working single mother, I was inherently taught to take care of everyone around me in order to be emotionally safe and secure. Over the last 10 years of owning a business, I have had to unlearn this natural thought. My team has allowed me to realize that operating a service-run business is a lot of taking ownership of your own ‘slice of pie’. It takes a lot of puzzle pieces, that have nothing to really do with me, to make a great idea operate. And man, building human connection every day, is a lot of work that I simply cannot do on my own.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I joke that I am only built by resilience cards. I have been dealt many ultimatums that have been attributed to my level of resilience. I have learned most of my life lessons the hard way. I was a child who never took the word ‘no’ as an answer and because of that, many of my relationships in adolescence were ruined.

But in the same breath and because of that attitude, I opened my first business when I was 17 and got my first apartment in the same year while attending school. I found out I was pregnant at 21 and moved across the country to make a better life for myself and my family. I traded my stable Dental Hygiene career to be a self-employed Swim School owner. I had another baby and battled severe post-partum depression that almost took my life while expanding my business an entire province over. The pandemic hit and, instead of tapping out, my brain kicked into ‘resilience mode’ to build a second business that has allowed me to connect with people around the world.

Resilience was simply my coping mechanism to create diamonds out of coal. And never take ‘no’ for an answer.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://watermellow.ca/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/watermellow.swim/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/watermellow.swim
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaylee-kennedy-3b781543/