Today we’d like to introduce you to Liam Howlett.
Liam, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I had been swimming and in my water almost my entire life and I had volunteered at my local library apart of their kids reading program so I felt I could really understand and reach children. A couple summers back I took those skills and went to work for a company which gave mobile swim lessons. I really enjoyed the work but the people I worked for had no understanding of 210 freeway traffic due to the fact they were not based out of LA. The next summer I worked on my own giving lessons casually here and there but decided I really liked it. During college, the following year I started to read Forbes quite a bit and invested my time in learning about other fellow startups and especially people starting the same type of businesses as myself. Then as of March 23, 2017 I decided to go out on my own and start my own mobile swim lessons and lifeguarding company at the age of 18.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It was not a very smooth road. Considering my age, a lot of people didn’t believe I could run a business let alone make it profitable. It was also very difficult just because of the line of work to get insurance, clients, and other people to work for me. Although I am more than qualified to teach swim lessons (12 years of competitive swimming and 4 of water polo) people still just see you as a 19-year-old while my competitors have much older teachers with very different methods than ours. Though different, ours work just as well. It has been a very long and tedious road to start this business but hard work pays off in time.
Safety First Aquatics – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Our company goes to individual’s homes or we go to apartments/community pools to give swim lessons to anyone over the age of 3. I’d say we specialize in child experience.
The way a child views learning how to swim will forever affect his love or hate for the water so our goal is to always make sure that the child is learning but at the same time they’re having a great time as well. What sets us apart is we are not so heavily focused on teaching over child experience. Both are important but they go hand in hand. Our methods are also different than a lot of our competitors but in the future, we might possibly adapt to the industry standard.
Our prices will probably increase to be a little closer with our competition next summer also.
Pricing:
- $30-30 minutes
- $45-60 minutes
- Life guarding $35-60 minutes
- Lessons $160-(6) 30 minutes
Contact Info:
- Website: safety1staquatics.com
- Phone: 626-272-5710
- Email: [email protected]
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
