Former lifeguard Brian Sheehan leads the most important swimming enterprise in North America.

For Brian Sheehan, the hand of destiny turned out to be his personal proper hand.

When Sheehan injured himself in a freak weight room accident throughout his freshman 12 months at Appalachian State University, it ended a promising baseball pitching profession.

But that derailment launched enterprise success that exceeded Sheehan’s diamond goals.

The 46-year-old Huntersville native used the break day from that the harm to enter the swimming pool enterprise as a lifeguard.

Today, he’s CEO of The Amenity Collective, the biggest North American supervisor and renovator of swimming swimming pools, and the main distributor and repair of health tools. The collective is an entirely owned subsidiary of Toronto-based FirstService, and has shoppers in 26 states and Canada with income topping $425 million final 12 months.

Sheehan manages 1,400 full-time workers and greater than 10,000 seasonal staff in places of work throughout the continent.

“It’s been quite a journey,” says Sheehan, who lives in Davidson along with his spouse and 4 daughters.

Lifeguard to CEO

The weight room harm worn out Sheehan’s freshman season and blocked his possibilities to play summer season ball in a collegiate wooden bat league, a significant expertise builder that helps form most profitable faculty baseball careers.

“I still wanted to pitch, but you know, a right-handed pitcher with an injured right hand … there was not a lot of interest,” he says.

Instead, he spent the summer season lifeguarding at a swimming pool close to his hometown simply north of Charlotte.

Baseball continued to fizzle as his hand was by no means fairly the identical, whereas the lifeguard gig finally changed into pool administration. After three seasons managing particular person swim membership swimming pools in northern Mecklenburg County, Sheehan realized, “hey, I could do this.” He began a pool administration enterprise referred to as, fairly creatively, The Swim Club Management Group. It managed a couple of neighborhood swim golf equipment within the Charlotte space. His youthful brother Benji helped out.

The enterprise seemed promising, however Sheehan had earned a bachelor’s diploma in accounting from UNC Charlotte, the place he transferred after his baseball profession ended. He deemed a job provide from PricewaterhouseCoopers, now PWC, as too good to cross up, and joined the large agency’s Baltimore workplace. A 12 months or so later, he transferred to Charlotte.

Things had been going effectively, however he missed the odor of sunscreen — or possibly his entrepreneurial spirit referred to as. Either approach, two years into his accounting profession, he jumped into the deep finish. He left PWC to deal with his firm, which he operated on the aspect with assist from his household

“It felt like the right thing,” says Sheehan. “I didn’t really love big accounting, and, if I’m honest, it probably didn’t love me either. Still, it was a big step, a risk. As I told the HR guy as I was leaving, ‘I may be back here in six months begging for my job back.’”

Sheehan set in regards to the grinding work of managing a startup and constructing an organization. He chased new shoppers and checked chlorine ranges. He labored late nights and early mornings, particularly in the summertime when swimming pools are open.

It turned out to be one thing he may do.

The Swim Club Management Group grew into a bunch of pool membership administration places of work in cities from Raleigh to the mountains. Then, it moved into South Carolina and Virginia.

Sheehan and firm dove into extra than simply pool administration. They started constructing and renovating swimming pools. They began managing operations for personal golf equipment and health facilities managed by a separate firm, Club & Leisure Partners. They landed some municipal contracts. The firm’s full-time head depend finally topped 100, with many extra throughout “the season.”  It had practically 400 shoppers and was fairly worthwhile.

And, it attracted consideration from afar.

Sheehan remembers the day, after greater than a decade in enterprise, round 2015, when he acquired an out-of-the-blue name from Scott Patterson, the CEO of FirstService.

“I wasn’t really interested in a sale at that point,” says Sheehan, “but I also thought to myself, ‘you know, I don’t get that many calls from guys like that. I should probably take that.’” They agreed to fulfill. Sheehan warned Patterson “not to be disappointed.”

A CPA on the Deck

Sheehan and Patterson hit it off instantly. Both had began their careers at PWC. Both had been of comparable mindset. Sheehan wasn’t able to promote, however they agreed to remain in contact.

A number of years later, the COVID pandemic prompted Sheehan to reassess. “It caused me to think about the things in life that I’m really passionate about.”

Business was one factor, however so was his rising household. He bought his enterprise to FirstService in 2001 and agreed to remain on for a two-year transition interval. Swim Club Management stays one in every of Collective’s 11 manufacturers.

During the transition, Patterson and FirstService leaders requested him to assist flip round a number of lagging divisions. Sheehan excelled, and in early 2024, FirstServe requested him to guide The Amenity Collective. Long-time CEO Mitch Friedlander was stepping down after 35 years.

FirstService’s Patterson says he and different leaders at FirstService had their eye on Sheehan as a possible CEO successor on the Collective, even earlier than the corporate acquired swim membership operator.

“It is unusual to identify someone as a prospective future leader in your organization before working with them,” says Patterson, “but Brian had the unique combination of CPA accreditation plus credibility as a “pool” skilled. [That is] uncommon within the aquatics business the place most leaders get promoted from the pool deck and lack the abilities and imaginative and prescient to develop a company.”

Sheehan applied construction and processes at Swim Club Management that “you wouldn’t usually see in a pool enterprise or any enterprise that dimension, (which) bolstered our considering that Brian was able to main a bigger group.

“After he started working for FirstService, following the merger, (we) were happy to discover that he is who we thought he was when we partnered,” says Patterson.

Humans and AI

Sheehan accepted the CEO submit, though that wasn’t his meant path. But he realized it was in all probability a singular alternative, and the corporate agreed that he may use his Charlotte-area residence as a base. He visits firm headquarters in Owings Mill, Maryland, about as soon as a month and spends many days on the highway, visiting the Collective’s regional places of work.

His best problem in shifting to the highest rung of a company ladder has been re-focusing his time and a spotlight on new priorities. Strategy is the next precedence than day-to-day operations.

“That’s the biggest difference and I’m  still adjusting to that,” says Sheehan. “For most of my life, with The Swim Club, it was more of a start-up company, and in that situation you’re still the doer, or one degree away. So before, what I would have said was, ‘I need to go to shows, work network, make contact.’ But strategy is different. Your outlook needs to be longer and the reality, of course, is that we are part of a publicly traded company. There’s a need to deliver, to get thousands to do one thing, to move the needle at scale. There is a lot to learn.”

Sheehan is making use of some information gleaned from his Swim Club days to his new submit. Both the enterprise he began, and the one he now runs, revolve round human capital. Pool and recreation operations are labor-intensive.

“It’s a surprisingly intense work environment,” says Sheehan. “You’re asking people to operate a pool in some very difficult environments, and I mean that literally. We have, for instance, a lot of clients in the Houston area. Ask someone to get up every day in Texas, in July, and run a facility where everyone is expecting it all to be perfect every day. It’s not easy, so you need to hire well. If you do that, if you have people who catch the spirit of what you’re trying to do, you can kind of get out of the way.”

To that finish, Sheehan added a expertise acquisition division to the Collective’s
company workplace. The firm can also be utilizing AI to supply steering to managers and different workers.

“We’re not like some industries, where if tomorrow we need someone in finance or HR, there are dozens of staffing agencies to call,” says Sheehan. “Finding someone who knows how to build a swimming pool, or who can manage people taking care of the pool, that is fairly specific. So we added a department that does nothing but hunt for people like that.”

Once expertise is situated, coaching and nurturing turns into important, says Sheehan. “AI can help us with that. We see a world very soon where a new employee simply asks (AI) ‘how should I handle this client’s situation?’ or “how do I complete X’? and our AI walks them down the desired path.”

A Growing Pool

Despite the Collective’s success, the swim membership enterprise stays primarily within the palms of small operators. In virtually each space his firm touches, business information and greatest practices are missing, Sheehan says. They’re usually handed on from worker to worker over a few years.

There are greater than 10 million swimming swimming pools in North America, in accordance with the  IBIS World analysis agency. More than 400,000 are public or membership swimming pools. The Amenity Collective manages about 8,000.

“It’s a hugely fragmented industry, and that’s where we come in,” says Sheehan. “We can come in and create value, succession planning. There’s some private equity in this space, but aquatics is not for the faint of heart. Every day that someone is at a pool, they’re expecting it to be a great experience, and your job is to provide that. You have to have really good ops. We know how to do it.”

Sheehan says the corporate’s strategic plan requires 65% income progress, to $700 million, by 2030.

Which is a fairly good pitch, regardless of which hand you’re utilizing. ■