How This Couple Bought a Mobile Swim School Business Without Quitting Their Jobs

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“I hated the idea of starting a business. What I'm good at is running it, organizing it, making everything efficient.”

Meet Tihana.

Together, Tihana and her husband work remotely for a fitness company. Tihana manages a team of contracted coaches and coaching managers. Her husband leads a sales team. For years, Tihana knew she wanted to own a business. Not build one from scratch, but buy one, step in, and run it.

Last year, they joined the Contrarian Academy and started searching almost immediately.

Their original deal box was focused on pet businesses: grooming, boarding, anything in that world. But those deals are hard to find and often sell quickly to PE for unreasonable multiples when they do appear. So they kept looking.

Then a mobile swim school in Los Angeles came across Tihana’s screen. Her first reaction was to pass. The revenue was low. It wasn't an industry she had in mind. Not the right fit.

A few weeks later, she reconsidered and took another look. That second look changed everything, and Tihana and her husband ended up acquiring the business in March 2026.

In the process, they negotiated the asking price down significantly, and they are now the owners of a 20-year-old, fully remote, asset-light business with a problem many new owners would love to have: more client demand than they can currently fulfill.

Here's how they got there.

Why the "wrong" business turned out to be the right one

The mobile swim school was founded in 2006 and had been under the same owner ever since. The model is straightforward: independent contractor swim instructors travel to private homes and teach children to swim at their own pools. The business also offers lifeguard services for private pool parties. No facility. No equipment overhead. No physical location.

When Tihana first looked at it, she saw a business doing mid-to-low 6 figures in revenue. Her reaction was fairly natural. "The revenue is too low. It's just not what I want."

But here's what shifted her perspective.

The revenue was seasonal. The business primarily operates during the warmer months, which means that revenue is generated in a fraction of the year. And perhaps more importantly for Tihana specifically, the model closely mirrored what she and her husband already do in their day jobs: manage independent contractors, remotely, at scale.

"I was like, ‘Whoa, this actually really fits what we already know how to do.’"

The seasonal fit mattered just as much as the operational fit. Tihana and her husband travel to Europe several months each year to visit family.

A business requiring a fixed location or year-round, on-the-ground presence would likely have been a non-starter. A seasonal, remote business meant they could be present and engaged during peak season, step back when it slows down, and keep their W2 jobs throughout.

How to use real-world leverage to negotiate

The Palisades fires hit Southern California hard in 2025, and many of the business's customers lived in exactly the kinds of upscale neighborhoods that were most affected. The 2025 season took a hit.

That became their real-world leverage.

Tihana's husband led the negotiation. He anchored their offer so low that Tihana was convinced the seller would walk away entirely. "I was convinced the seller would just say 'no thanks,'" she wrote in the Contrarian Academy Slack channel after closing. His response: "Trust me, it will work."

It did. They landed higher than their initial anchor, but right where they wanted to be, more than half off the original ask.

Closing will probably take longer than you expect

This duo hoped they'd close in October 2025.

They closed in March 2026.

The months in between were an education in many of the things that can slow down, and occasionally stall, a small SBA deal.

• The original lender was acquired by another bank that didn't want to work with acquisitions of this size. A new lender had to be found.

• That lender was slow, unresponsive, and rarely communicated timelines without being pushed.

• Tihana's husband needed to verify his green card, which added another layer of back-and-forth.

Every one of the issues was solvable. But each one took time.

"Things will happen that never even would cross your mind," Tihana shared post-close.

Her advice, drawn directly from the experience: follow up consistently with banks and the SBA. Ask to be looped into communications wherever possible. "Stay on top of timelines," she said, because in her experience, people won't always keep you updated unless you ask.

She also gave a lot of credit to her broker, who was responsive, proactive, and actively hunting for lenders when the first one fell through. "He was on top of it. He was checking, finding lenders for me," she said. "He was really, really awesome."

The real work starts after you close

One week into ownership, Tihana and her husband were on their computers from 7am to midnight, still holding down their W2 jobs while managing the business.

What the transition revealed was a business that had been running largely on the seller's high tolerance for things not working very well. Manual processes everywhere. Too many service packages. A confusing experience for clients. And most pressing: an instructor network that wasn't deep enough. Of the instructors they inherited, Tihana estimates maybe half were actually responsive and reliable.

With client inquiries coming in, Tihana and her husband have already had to turn away customers because of staffing shortages.

"I'm confident that we can increase revenue meaningfully," Tihana told us, "because the seller was operating with very, very unreliable people. When we find reliable ones, we’ll be able to serve all this demand."

Their near-term priorities are fairly clear: hire instructors who meet a higher standard, streamline the dispatch process so clients get confirmed faster, and simplify the service menu to make it easier for customers to buy.

The seller ran it on autopilot. They have other plans…

Tihana and her husband aren’t trying to build an empire overnight. They're keeping their W2 jobs, running the business in parallel, and treating this first season as time to actively tighten everything up.

Get the instructor team right. Tighten up the dispatch process. Make it easier for clients to book. If those three things click, they think, serious growth should follow.

See, not every deal has to be a moonshot. Sometimes the win is finding something quiet, underestimated, that fits your skills, and is just waiting for someone to actually pay attention to it.

For Tihana, this wasn’t about finding the “perfect” business. It was about finding the right one for her. And it looks like she did.

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The information contained here is educational, may not be typical, and does not guarantee returns. Background, education, effort, and application will affect your experience and the profitability of any business. Individual results may vary.

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