Knowing what you’re good at and not good at is influential in your plan forward. Play to your strengths and educate yourself on your weaknesses. Be honest with yourself and others. The list of skills needed is intense. I have never met a master of all the skills required for aquatic roles, but I have met plenty that were strong in several areas that I was weak in, allowing networking and great working relationships to flourish.
If you don’t know, go get educated. We are in the generation of endless free information online. Being resourceful and willing to put in effort to educate yourself will make all the difference. The first grant I ever wrote was 75% of my operating budget. I spent nights at bookstores, hours working with fellow directors on advice and accessing my network to help me get the grant in. It was not easy work, but I did the work and succeeded. This led to me writing several more grants through my career. These grants improved thousands of lives. Using your resources are a massive key to your success! Some great and simple sources of education and knowledge are LinkedIn courses. Many of these courses can help provide that edge you need to get ahead. Excellent resources are trade publications such as Aquatics International, Pool & Spa News, Recreation Management, World Water Park, and National Drowning Prevention Alliance.
Look for new challenges. Diversifying your skill sets in an industry that demands many is an essential key to growing and expanding your career opportunities.
· Diversity in your program knowledge is a great way to get started. Working at a facility in Florida, to my surprise, I discovered what underwater hockey is. It is a sport, and my facility hosted the national championship. Developing and financing programs based on community needs and fulfilling feeder programs are essential to successful programs that have generational impact on your communities.
· All facilities are built different. I have traveled, visited, and operated many and none were alike. Steam rooms, saunas, hot tubs, plethora of water slide types, splash pads, spray features, dive wells, competitive pools, teaching pools, resort pools, wave pools, and more, including newest to the industry Lagoons/surf parks.
· Aquatic finances play a major role that many don’t talk about. Knowing the basic understanding of how finances work varying from for-profit, and non-profit is a great place to start. YMCA has a great intro to finance programs! Knowing where the money goes and if you are on target can be life or death of an aquatic department. Keys to staying in the black is your ability to future forecast your expenses and ventures, leaving room for the unexpected. I implore you to research resources that fit your educational needs. I have mentioned this before, but LinkedIn has some great resources.
