The Power of Employee Ownership

In this inspiring talk, the founder of Ocaquatics Swim School shares how an unexpected life detour led to the creation of one of the nation’s most impactful purpose-driven businesses. What began as a small swim lesson operation has now grown into a thriving employee-owned company with over 165 team members and nearly 3 million swim lessons taught.

Learn how she transformed personal adversity into an opportunity to lead with heart and built a culture centered around ownership, personal growth, and community impact.

This video dives into the core values that define Ocaquatics’ success:

• Creating a clear and meaningful purpose that drives results
• Fostering a culture of lifelong learning and leadership development
• Embracing a relentless pursuit of better through innovation and values-aligned decision-making

Discover why Ocaquatics became the first swim school in the world to achieve B Corp certification, and how their commitment to financial literacy, open-book management, and employee ownership trust models has reshaped lives and built long-term value.

If you're interested in conscious leadership, building impact-driven companies, or transitioning to an employee-owned model, this talk offers a powerful real-world example of business as a force for good.

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Click below to view the video.

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Read transcript below.

Segment 1: The Dream

[Applause] like to start today with a story so about three and a half decades ago I was in the College of my dreams and it was this amazing school that I'd once thought was completely out of my reach my parents were immigrants and they'd come to this country with very little and a private university like this was never something my family could afford but I really really really wanted to go and I was super determined so I worked really hard and I earned a 4-year academic scholarship to attend tane University in NewOrleans Louisiana and thank you and I got this really great part-time job teaching swimming lessons to pay for all the things that a tuition only scholarship does not cover so I I but it was totally fine I worked a ton of hours and I loved it I loved college life I loved campus I loved the freedom Ieven loved my tiny little room in the apartment that I rented with a lot of other people it wasn't even a real bedroom it was like a room off of one of the bedrooms but it didn't matter because it was completely my space and I loved itum my only mode of transportation at the time was a bike and I rode that bike everywhere I went to the gym I went to the grocery store I rode to my two jobs so I taught swimming lessons on campus at tuland University and I also taught swimming lessons 8 miles away at University of New Orleans and that's what I had to do and I it was I was totally happy to do it I would ride my bike after hours of studying in the library and I would you know ride past students that were rushing to class and I would um you know see people playing frisbee in the quad and my C my apartment was just off campus and I remember as I ride towards my apartment I had this feeling that just everything was perfect it just felt so great it didn't get better than this

‍Segment 2: The Detour

and then in an instant everything kind of kind of was no perfect I got some news that was going to change my life forever I was pregnant so at the age of 19 this is the situation I found myself in and I really wish I could tell you that I was happy and excited and pumped on the day that I found out I was pregnant but I wasn't I was so scared I was stressed I was overwhelmed I was financially strapped I had no health insurance and my very carefully crafted plan of getting my scholarship going to tulan University getting my degree in Biochemistry going to medical school and becoming anorthopedic surgeon were all slipping away this was not part of the plan but what I didn't realize is that this unexpected detour was actually going to change the trajectory of my life and it was going to put me on a path to something that was far greater and more fulfilling and more satisfying that Iever could have imagined so I made the really difficult decision and and I left school and I moved to Miami where my mother had just um had recently relocated and I got a job and I had my son and about 5 months later I went back to school and I got my degree and I thought you know my when I graduated my son was a year and a half old there was no way I could go to medical school with a one and a half-year-old so I thought I'm going to open this little tiny businessand I'm going to teach swimming lessons just to get by until he's older and then I can go to Medical school well my son turned 33 years old on Tuesday that little business has grown beyond my wildest imagination I mean it's been amazing and I never went to med school

‍Segment 3: A Life of Ownership

so and now I stand here you know 30-some years later and I realize that as each chapter of my life has unfolded from working really hard to get a college scholarship to making the choice to become a young mother to teaching swimming lessons to get by to building and now leading an employee-owned Company ownership has been a major theme and this now as I look back at o Aquatics we have this of one of the things that I'm so proud of is we have this amazing culture of ownership and we call it our own it culture and it has helped us to grow this business to five indoor purpose-built warm water locations and we have now taught we have 100 165 team members and we actually have about uh We've almost taught 3 million swimming lessons thank you

‍Segment 4: Purpose and People

and as I look back the one of the most important one of the most amazing things is I've had this amazing success and I've have this amazing wonderful human son Ian um and it's just the I've had so much luck and I've had work so incredibly hard and what but one of the things that I really truly um love the most that I do every single day is I get to work with the most amazing team of people every single day and now I really you know this team of people helps to grow this business and they help to make this make the Magic in our in our uh business and we have built this on it culture and we've done it with a lot of purpose and a lot of care and really strong foundation and that strongFoundation is built on three principles number one is having a clear and meaningful purpose we've heard that today number two is to embrace lifetime learning and number three is having this Relentless pursuit of better and that often requires the courage to be different and that has really helped us to grow our on it culture has helped us to grow our business and this has really helped us to grow this amazing um business that we have with all of these team members

‍Segment 5: The Power of Purpose

and I'd like to talk to you about them today so the number one the first principle of building an owned culture is to have a clear and meaningful purpose we've already heard this from Jay today um you know it has to be something that inspires people to want to be a part of something bigger than themselves and purpose answers the question why why are we doing this and it has to matter deeply either in the work itself or in the outcomes that the work creates because purpose is the fuel for an on it mindset and for an own it culture and when people really believe in the work that they're doing they'll take true responsibility for it and let's be clear making money cannot be a purpose profit is the result of a strong Purpose with a committed team behind it so at Oak aquatic swim school our purpose is really simple but it's super powerful it's to make a positive difference for our team our families our community and the planet and under our purpose we have a two-fold mission and one part of our mission is to our families we teach teach families to love swimming and we teach them to become more comfortable and more responsible around the water and this is fun and it's rewarding and it's also an incredible responsibility drowning is the leading cause of accidental death in children ages 1 to four in the United States but the National Institutes have of Health have researched and reported that children who participate in formal swimming lessons are 88% less likely to be involved in a drowning that's huge so when I said that 3 million swimming lessons earlier that's more than just a statisticthat represents lives saved and that means that every single swimming lesson that we teach every moment in the pool every high five carries the weight of that purpose

Segment 6: Investing in Team Members

but our purpose doesn't stop at the pool Edge you know the second part of our mission is to our team members and we are committed toGrowing them under this framework of Social and environmental responsibility so that we can grow The Swim School in a sustainable way and we can make a bigger impact in the world so not only do we have a job where the work they do matters but we really want to make people feel like they matter at UK Aquatics and we want them to feel valued and empowered and supported so we the the the number way the reason oh I'm sorry the impact um the most impactful way we do this is because we treat them as our number one customer when you genuinely care for your team members they genuinely care for your customers and that's not just a fluffy Feel good philosophy that's a business strategy that really really works and our team members turn around and take amazing care of our families and we're so lucky we get to work with Children and Families we see these children that walk in the door they come in scared and we help them conquer their fears and we help them with you know we we give give them life-saving skills and we have a lot of fun while we're doing this but let's get real purpose-driven work is not always glamorous there are hard days there are days when your energy runs low and there are days when the work is overwhelming and there are days when the work is thankless and those are the days that purpose matters most purpose gives you the fuel to when you remember why you're doing what you're doing and why the work matters you remember that you have true meaning in your work and that's why it helps you get the fuel from within to persevere

‍Segment 7: Lifelong Learning

so at Oak Aquatics when we um when we do this it really does help our team members own their part of the mission and when they own their part of the mission extraordinary things can happen our second principle of building an on it culture is to embrace lifetime learning and at ocaquatics are one of our core values is always learning and we talk about this from the moment they walk in the door this is like that growth mindset that Jay was talking about earlier so we talk about this in new team member orientation and we want our team members to own their growth and development at Oak aquatic swim school and they come in and why do we do this why do we spend so much time on it we feel that that lifetime learning is really important and personal and professional development is really important for the team member but it's also really really important for the business and by doing this um we help our team members you know really grow while they're at Oak Aquatics and don't take my word for it listen to them they tell us constantly that the number one reason why they have such a great experience at Oak aquatic swim school is because they are growing both personally and professionally and we it has helped us worn a top workplace recognition for the last eight years in a row but asLeaders we create the environment for them to grow but they have to own their growth they have to want to come in and take take advantage of all the opportunities that we give them and this also means they have to be really really good at accepting feedback and taking advantage of learning moments and learning learning moments

Segment 8: Learning Moments in Action

during covid I actually had a few CEOs talk to our team members to kind of lift their Spirits um we were hit really hard during Co we were closed for three months and I invited a few people and Gary Ridge of WD40was one of those people who talked to my team and he taught us lesson this was5 years ago he taught us this lesson of learning moments and learning moment she said don't view mistakes as failures instead view mistakes as learning opportunities and make sure you're taking the lessons from the mistakes that you've made so when we heard this new framework we were like this is amazing this is great so we have totally adopted the idea of learning moments and it's great for me because I have had so many mistakes I mean learning moments in my life especially I opened this business as a 22-year-old and now I look back at all the learning moments that I had some still make me cringe when I think of them but they shaped me into the person that I am today and so you know I have really because I had those Early Learning moments in my 20s I am now able to give Grace to our team members who are also in their early 20s and they have their own learning moments and I know that it's going to be okay as long as we take the best out of this the the opportunities and we learn from them

Segment 9: Financial Empowerment

so one of my early one of my biggest learning moments came to me really early in my career I was the young single mother of a toddler andI had a mountain of credit card debt um I had some student loan debt too but I had a lot of credit card debt about $60,000 and I remember writing you know those credit card checks that you get in the mail I would write those checks sometimes to get by I pay my housing expenses on those credit card checks and I remember one day after I wrote one of those credit card checks I went on a walk and I started negotiating with myself and just saying if you can just get out of debt I promise I will do whatever I can do to help others not get into the situation that I now find myself in well I'm really happy to say that I did payoff my debt it took years of steady effort but I did pay off my debt and I did keep my promise so so for the last 12 years Oak aquatic swim school has offered personally personal financial literacy education to our team members and now we have the most amazing stories of success with our team and it's been wonderful

Segment 10: Felipe’s Story

so I'd like to tell you about one um this is Felipe Felipe is the general manager at our tropical location and when he came to work with us in 2016 he had $14,000 worth of credit card debt and he joined our financial literacy program right away and he started chipping away at that debt and one day he comes up to me and he's kind of nervous and I don't know what's going on and you know he he said I really need to talk to you okay what's going on and he said I need you to do something for me okay what what's up what's up and he hands me his telephone and he says I'm about to make my last payment to become debt free and I want you to press the button right I still get chills and I still get a emotional when I think of that story and that's an amazing story but that's not the most amazing part is now I walk into his location and he is sitting with others who are struggling with debt and he is counseling them on how it is possible to get out of debt that's the most amazing part of the story and that reminds me of the power of investing in people it creates this positive Ripple of impact around that person but that affects so many other people in their Circle

Segment 11: Business Literacy and Transparency

so remember earlier I told you that personal professional development is really good for the individual and it's really good for the business right so now that our team members have confidence in their personal financials we teach them about business financials and oops I'm sorry about that we teach them about business financials and now for the last three years we have practiced open book management with our team and I know a lot of companies that say I would never open my books to my team members especially young team members like ours but we really this is really important to us and it's a game Cher for our one culture and it really has helped them see the big picture it helps them understand the decisions that we make it helps them help us make really better decisions for the business and for them as team members and now every Tuesday they come in and they're ready they want to see financials they want to see the trend lines haven't been updated they want tosee statistics they're really excited and they're owning their growth and when people own their growth extraordinary things happen

Segment 12: Courage to Be Different

so the third and final principle of building an Own It culture is to have this Relentless pursuit of better which often requires the courage to be different at Oak aquatic Sim school one our team member Mantra is we are different and we make a difference and this third principle has guided every single decision in our 31-year history so you know outdoor polls are abundant in Miami we were the first company to actually build indoor year round warm water facilities and we needed to do it to you know we had unpredictable weather we had a growing demand for swimming lessons we had um limited time in outdoor pool an outdoor pool so we needed to build indoors and it was expensive choice but it was an unconventional choice but it has worked for us and this same courage to go against the grain has led us to becoming the First SwimSchool on the planet Earth to become a certified B [Applause] Corporation so you all know how hard that is right and and we're going through rest if forationright now and it's it's a really difficult process but the process has made us better and we're so happy that we have learned different ways to measure our success not just by profit but by our impact on people and Planet

Segment 13: Employee Ownership

so similarly when we were looking at the next chapter of OakAquatics we chose a different path and instead of selling to private equity which a lot of people in our industry are doing right now we chose an we chose an employee ownership trust model and why did I do this I did this because I did a lot of research on employee ownership and I model I researched all the different um ways to do it and when I found an I found that this was a really great way that I could transfer ownership to my team members without them having to buy in um I was able to the trust is a very flexible instrument and I was able to write in my goals and my what I'd like this company to look like as it moves forward and I was able to um just keep our team members engaged and through our transparency and through our ownership culture that we had already nurtured and our long-term thinking we had already been working on all of these things so today Oak Aquatics is owned and operated by the team that make it great and they not only own the challenges they own the results and they own the future of our company and that to me is more rewarding than I could ever imagine

Segment 14: Final Words

so I hope today that you have been able to see that building an on it culture has been really really important to me and it's been you know II'm just an ordinary person but I have had extraordinary success and extraordinary experiences because we have chosen to own our circumstances because when youEmpower your team to have this shared sense of ownership whether or not you're an employee owned company you open their potential and you you um allow them to share their passion and they really want to create work that matters and when you allow them to do that they see that there's power in business not just in making a profit but also on the impact on society and on um on our community so this is really really great for business and this is really really great forHumanity can you imagine if all businesses were powered by purpose purp and driven by people who really you know wanted to embrace lifetime learning and they wanted to continue doing things that are different if they're better not just easier that's what building an on it culture is all about and so today I hope that you can help me create continue to create these positive ripples of impact and I hope that you can answer the question do you have the courage to own it thank you

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