John Corcoran: 12:51
Lots of sexism with the construction people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Miren Oca: 12:57
But we got open and honestly, we got open and we did great. It grew and grew and grew and grew and grew and it grew really quickly. And, you know, one day.
John Corcoran: 13:06
What do you think that was, was it because of having the pool, the controlling the facility, the experience? Was it just the consistency and not a lack of unpredictability that you had to deal with before?
Miren Oca: 13:18
Our pools are pretty beautiful. They’re pretty nice. They’re 90 degree water. They’re 86 degree air temperature. Oh, that sounds nice.
58% humidity. Like it’s a completely controlled environment no matter what’s happening outside. Yeah. And when you’ve got weather issues here and the weather issues are, you know, wind and rain usually. However, the winter of Miami and I’m doing that in air quotes.
You know, if it drops to 65 degrees here, people, you don’t want to get in the pool. It’s too cold to be outside.
John Corcoran: 13:46
And people are canceling their lesson, right? Yeah.
Miren Oca: 13:50
So now we suddenly turn this little, this business into a year round business where people thought it’s great to swim around. In fact, we feel the best time to swim is the nine months of the school year and then take the summer off so you can go and play and hang out and, you know, practice in your own backyard. But children should be swimming during the academic year so that they’re ready during swim season, in the summertime.
John Corcoran: 14:11
That’s from a business perspective, that’s interesting because that builds in some seasonality into your business. How do you plan for that as a business owner?
Miren Oca: 14:20
Well, at the beginning when we first opened, people still had in their mind that swimming is for summer, swimming is for summer. So we had to do a lot of education for ourselves, our parents and our families.
John Corcoran: 14:29
So it was the opposite kind of seasonality. You had people that weren’t doing lessons during the school year, right?
Miren Oca: 14:34
So now we have to say no. But now you can swim year round, you know? And the best time to swim is in the off season because you really can, you know, it’s calmer, it’s quieter. But also you get your children ready for the swim season. Yeah.
So we had to do a lot of education. I do think now we, you know, we still see a little bit of seasonal fluctuation, you know, fluctuations. However a lot more people are now educated and they realize that swimming is one of those lives. It’s a lifelong skill. Yeah.
You really want your children comfortable. You want them to be able to swim very well because when they’re 16 and they’re on the boat with their friends and they fall into the water, you want to make sure that they’re very, very good swimmers. This is the only sport that can save their life. And so we really this is and it’s, you know, there’s water everywhere here in Miami. So we really want to make sure that our children are really strong swimmers.
John Corcoran: 15:25
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe karate too. If you get beat up, you know you get cornered in a dark alley or something like that that could maybe save your life.
Miren Oca: 15:32
You’re right.
John Corcoran: 15:33
However, two sports. Yes. So. And at some point you became a certified B Corp.
Miren Oca: 15:40
We did.
John Corcoran: 15:40
Yeah. Tell me about the process behind that and the decision behind that.
Miren Oca: 15:45
So you know we’ve always been this business that, you know, again, it was a single mother. I had this special spot in my heart for single moms or for the community or for helping people, you know, in the community, in our swim schools. And so we have always had a two fold mission. Of course, we make families safer around the water. That’s one of our parts of our mission.
But the other part of our mission is to teach our team members under this umbrella of environmental and social responsibility, so that we can grow the business and make a bigger impact in the world. And so we always worked on habitat for Humanity Homes, and we did community cleanups and we did beach cleanups. And, you know, we did all these food drives and toy drives. All those things. And we thought, wow, we’re doing something really great for the community.
And we thought, well, you know, one day we found the B impact assessment, which is the assessment that’s put out by the B lab that certifies companies to become B Corps. And so we did that assessment. It’s a completely free tool. And we did the assessment because we wanted to measure how well we’re doing our impact. And we didn’t score as well as we thought.
And the B impact assessment really gave us the opportunity to learn what we could do better, how we could improve. And then b like how much more we still could do as a business, you know, trying to use business as a force for good. So we worked on it. We continued to improve and we did achieve B Corp certification. And we were actually the first swim school on the planet to become B Corp certified.
So we were pretty pleased with that. Since then, there’s another school in Canada that has gotten B Corp certification and also one in the UK. So now there are three and we just want to see more companies understand that business can be more than just shareholder profits. It really can be a positive force for their team members, their customers, their community, the planet. And that’s what being a B Corp is all about.
John Corcoran: 17:47
And how did that change things after you got that certification in terms of communication with your team, with prospective employees, with, you know, customers, parents that you were working with?
Miren Oca: 18:00
We talk about B Corp certification all the time. We really like that. But there are not many B Corp in Miami. So I don’t know if our customers are choosing us because we’re a B Corp, but what they’re doing is because we’re a B Corp, our team members, we’re educating our team members about it. They’re really excited.
The group we’re working with really want to work for a company that’s making a difference in the world, and they want to be able to help families be safer around the water, while also doing all of this environmental work and these social projects that we do. And so they’re happier. We have, you know, we have above industry retention rates when it comes to team members. And so they stay longer. And then our customers are happier because our team members are staying longer.
So that leads to a healthier bottom line. You know, so indirectly B Corp certification is really helping us actually do better. Yeah. But I can’t wait until parents are making choices to come to us because we are a certified B corporation, and they know that that means that we are a responsible company. So I think that time is coming.
I know that time is coming in different parts of the US. Yeah. You know, in California there are a lot more B Corp’s in Colorado. And so I think that time is coming.
John Corcoran: 19:15
So you built the first pool. Indoor pool. You said it took about a year and a half to build. And I’m kind of fascinated by businesses that have to, you know, a smaller part of their process suddenly have to become routine. It becomes a process around it.
So at your core, you are a swim school, but you built five pools now, so you have to get better at that. And you found that you got better at it and you were able to build them quicker. So talk to me a little bit about from the first pool to the last pool that you built. You built five of them, five indoor pools. What you learned and what it was like building the last pool of those five, and how you got better at managing that process, which is ancillary to the core of what you do, which is swim lessons.
Miren Oca: 20:03
Right? You know, I think I got a better team, you know, for the people that I used to build the first pool, I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no idea, you know, but I learned a lot. And then the second one, I learned a lot more. And then I found a contractor I really liked.
And now they’re our go to. Like, honestly, we have a contract down to build six locations right now and we’re still under contract, you know, under, you know, negotiations. But he’s my go to you know, we go to the same contractors, the same subs. We’re using a lot of the same people who know how we build what kind of product we like, because we do. We spend a lot on our pools more than most people do.
You know, this is a small thing or but not really a small thing. So water in the state of Florida is supposed to go through filters in a pool every six hours and hours, and goes through the filter every 90 minutes. So we, you know, we have UV sanitation, ultraviolet light zaps all the water before it goes back to the pool. We have, you know, we use less chlorine. We do have all these sophisticated systems that most pools don’t even they don’t do those sorts of things.
So we’re really finding those vendors that want to work the way we do, and understand that we really do have a lot of pride in our pools. And they work really hard to help us have the best pools in Miami. So we’ve learned a lot. Yeah. And so, you know, when we built them, it’s been a learning curve every time.
You know you learn how to know how to do things differently. You learn how to manage classes more efficiently, things like that. So yeah. Yeah, I think this one’s going to be even better.
John Corcoran: 21:51
In March of 2020. Yes. Covid hits. Yes. And you are, by the very nature of it, a business that kind of requires you to be up close with your customer base, which is young kids.
What was that like for you and what was going through your head as that started to unfold?
Miren Oca: 22:14
Yeah, Covid was really difficult for our industry. I mean, as, as imagined, you know, from one day to the next, we had to shut down the business and we were closed for three months. And what that meant was what we did. We had 100, about 100 and almost 150 team members at that point. And we had to furlough basically 100 part timers.
We just had all of our part timers. We told them, we can’t keep you on right now because we weren’t open, but we did manage to keep our full timers on for a little while, just while we were figuring things out. And then eventually we had to keep scaling back until we could get peop. You know, we did get a pptp loan, and it was one of those things where we worked on, like we couldn’t go to the pools and we could not work as we normally work. So we did professional development.
We did personal development. We did training classes online for all of our staff. We did mental health, you know, opportunities where we could talk to each other and make sure, because that was a tough time. You know, there were a lot of times I just wanted to curl up in a fetal position behind my desk and not get up. You know, it was a really, really tough time.
So we spent a lot of time really nurturing our team, making sure they were cared for, but also that they were learning so that the second we could open, we would get back to it.
John Corcoran: 23:37
And what was reopening like for you? Because every bit, every business was different. Some, some businesses, it was like a rocket ship, others it started and stopped.
Miren Oca: 23:46
Very slow going because we could only do private lessons and that we had to have patterns in our building where people could walk this way and out the other door. And yeah, all of our teachers were in shields. We had to design these plastic shields that they had to wear in the water. Eventually they let us put two children in a class, and then we had two children with a teacher. And then little by little, you know, we could start adding a third child if the.
If the children were swimming far apart from each other, you know, different things like that. So it was really slow going to get back into it. However, the team, you know, so many people had a really difficult time bringing their team back once they reopened. And we didn’t, you know, we probably had 98% of our staff report to duty, report back to work as soon as we reopened. And that was pretty tremendous.
And I think it was because we took care of them. We wanted to make sure that they felt cared for more than just trying to keep them or hold on to them, but to make sure you know that it really was such an odd, unusual, difficult time. Nobody knew what was happening. So we really wanted to be there for each other. And I think that they showed us that they, you know, that they felt cared for by coming back.
Yeah.
John Corcoran: 25:05
So four years after that, in February of 2024, you celebrated 30 years, I believe. Yes. Right. Yes. Of this business.
And you celebrated by selling the business to your employees? First, before we get to the structure that you chose, was there something that motivated that? You know what? Why did you decide that it was time to sell?
Miren Oca: 25:29
Well, you know, about ten years ago, you know, almost ten years ago, people started approaching us. You know, private equity was starting to come online and starting to say, wow, this is a great business model and this is an opportunity to get into a different industry. And so, you know, I didn’t even know what PE meant the first time I spoke to one of these, one of these companies. But it really started to help me come to think of some sort of succession plan. So of course I went to my son first.
And you know, he’s the one who changed the path of my life. And I went to him and asked him if he wanted the business. He has chlorine in his blood. He was born, you know. He.
He grew up around it. He really liked that we were a B Corp. He really liked all of the social and environmental responsibility part of our job, of our business. But he wanted to do his own business. So he said no.
And then he realized it was hard for me, but that helped me realize I wanted to get it into the hands of my employees, because they really were the ones who were super passionate. You know, private equity was out there very, very hungry for it, but I didn’t I wasn’t sure they were going to be as values aligned or as mission driven as I really wanted them to be, you know, because I know I just I’ve seen I saw what was happening to some of my friends. So I did a lot of research. I looked at co-ops, you know, just trying to get into the hands of my employees wasn’t a good option. I looked at ESOPS employee stock ownership plans and we were going to be an ESOP.
I hired an attorney, I did evaluation, I did feasibility studies. We were on the path. And then I found out that Esops could be sold to private equity. So somebody told me, why don’t you look at yachts? You know, it’s the primary source of ownership in the United Kingdom.
Why don’t you look at that? And so I did, and I started talking to yachts in the US. And there are very few of them. But why do they?
John Corcoran: 27:27
You think that is. There are so few in the US.
Miren Oca: 27:28
I think it’s just the best kept secret. I really do think that it’s newer, but it’s coming online. There are a lot like since we’ve started, I know of probably 20 companies that have turned into yachts. So I think it’s just that people don’t know about it. My accountant didn’t know about it.
My attorney didn’t know about it. I really had to do a lot of research, and I had to educate a lot of people. And, you know.
John Corcoran: 27:50
And other than the fact that an ESOP could be sold to private equity, what are some other advantages to it?
Miren Oca: 27:57
So I love that the trust it’s a I sold to a trust. So I designed the trust and I designed it whatever way I would like this business to stay, so I really would like it to strive to to maintain B Corp certification. I would really like it to strive to become, you know, to maintain its conscious capitalism. Membership 1% for the planet partnership, all the things that we currently do. I want to take care of our team members as we currently do.
I want to, you know, divide our profit a certain way by our team members. I was able to decide who’s going to become an owner. And ownership at Ocaquatics means you have worked 2500 hours. Once you work 2500 hours, you’re a co-owner, and so you can get that by working full time. You can get that by working part time.
And we do have part time co-owners that have just worked with us for six years, eight years, you know, a couple shifts a week, and now they’re co-owners. And I think that that’s what was really cool for me because they’re the ones who have helped build this business. They are the ones who make this magic happen. So I really wanted to reward those that had helped grow the business.
John Corcoran: 29:08
So you decided on this format. Do you have to then turn around and sell your team on the idea behind it? Like, what was that like? You know, you turn to the team and be like, guess what, I’m going to sell the business. Do you guys want to buy it?
What do you say? I mean, how does that conversation work?
Miren Oca: 29:22
So it’s funny, I only told three people: our operations manager, our financial manager and someone in our business who helps us like bookkeeping because we had to put all the financial reports together and everything for the transaction. It’s an M&A transaction. So we still had to do everything. So on March 1st I, I transacted, but they did not know it. March 3rd, I actually brought everybody together and we had dinner and I said, I want to talk to everybody about something really important.
And we had dinner at one of the locations. They all thought we were going to announce that we were opening a second location. And I told them, you know, that we went through the history of aquatics and everything, and then I told them that private equity has really been talking to us a lot, and I told them I had decided to sell the company. Wait. Hold on.
John Corcoran: 30:10
What were their faces looking like at this point? You know, I.
Miren Oca: 30:14
Have it on video and it’s pretty tremendous. They were all like, how could you do that? And then I told them we had a big screen and I put employee ownership trust. And I said, but I sold it to an employee ownership trust. And then they were still like, okay, what is that?
And what it was and yeah, still. Okay.
John Corcoran: 30:34
And it’s at dinner. So are there a couple of glasses of wine in here? No. Okay.
Miren Oca: 30:39
Yeah. We don’t serve alcohol at our dinners because our team is so young.
John Corcoran: 30:42
Okay. But that could make it a little messy.
Miren Oca: 30:46
Yes, it could have, but no, they were getting it, you know, and there’s no liability for them. They don’t have to buy in. The trust owns the company. They are beneficiaries of the trust.
John Corcoran: 30:57
So they don’t they don’t have to buy in, are you worried about them having an ownership stake in it or taking it as seriously? Do you know what I mean?
Miren Oca: 31:07
Well, you know, for the last couple of years before we ever transacted, one of our guiding principles has been ownership thinking and having an ownership mindset. And we talked about it all the time. Well, you messed up. Own it, own it, fix it, move on. You know, and we had open book management for two years with our managers.
So they understood and they were looking at these things and, and we just talked about own it, own it, own it so much that when we actually said, well, now you really own it. Like now this is big. It really started. It was a slow, slow going. But as we educated them, you know, the next day we had a lunch and learn on financials and what it meant and what it looked like and the projections and the company or the, the, the trust is buying the company From, you know, me, basically, but out of the cash flow of the company.
So every month I get a note payment. I chose to do seller financing. I could have gone to a bank and gotten about 40%, but I chose to do seller financing. And now they’re learning what it means to pay interest on these notes and what’s deductible. What’s not deductible.
Where are they, you know, they’re learning all these sorts of things. And they have it has just been tremendous to see how they’ve responded.
John Corcoran: 32:27
And what are they? You know, you have about 50 owners now is that right? We do. So how do they make decisions or is it all the decision making made by you or a leadership team or how does that work?
Miren Oca: 32:40
Yeah, that’s a great question because, you know, a lot of people say, oh my gosh, what changed? And I say, oh, everything changed. But really nothing changed. You know, so everything changed in the ownership structure. But nothing changed in how we run the business.
And we still have. I’m still the CEO. We still have our leadership team. We still have our executive team. We still make those decisions.
But for years we’ve always gone to our team for feedback. So we’re very transparent with open book management. We really do give them a lot of opportunities to give us ideas because frankly, they give us the best ideas, so we want to hear from them. When we were making decisions this year about whether to raise wages or to wait till the end of the year and just have more profit distributed, they chose to raise wages, which was what I would have chosen to do had I owned it as well, which I was really pleased to see. But we do give them opportunities to talk through decisions with us and to help guide those decisions.
And then also it’s really, you know, I’m still the trust protector, so I still have. And then, you know, we’re forming a board now. And so ultimately as this progresses, the board will have more opportunity to help make decisions. We will have employee representation on the board. So we’re setting all of that up now.
John Corcoran: 34:00
It sounds like something where you need to have some ongoing guidance from professionals, from attorneys and CPAs and things like that to kind of guide you through where the rubber meets the road with all of this. Yeah.
Miren Oca: 34:14
And now we’ve met some really great, great professionals that are working in this space. And they are really working to help spread the word about this because it is so great it’s a great alternative to succession planning. I just think that everybody should consider it, even if you, you know, just put everything on the table so that you really make a good choice when you’re deciding what to do with your business.
John Corcoran: 34:36
I want to ask about the emotional experience for you this year, both celebrating 30 years in business and also this experience of selling the business. And you’re still CEO, but you’re not the sole owner anymore. What has been like for you emotionally?
Miren Oca: 34:55
You know, a lot of people that I’ve spoken to before, I sold before the transaction. I was a little worried because so many people had some kind of seller’s remorse or they felt this way.
John Corcoran: 35:06
Did you hear it a lot? Yeah. Yeah.
Miren Oca: 35:08
You do. You hear about that a lot. And I think I mean, honestly, the night that I, you know, I told them while you were sleeping on March 1st, you became an owner of Ocaquatics Swim School, you know, and I just I mean, I threw my hands up in the air, and I felt like the secret’s out. I’m so excited. Like, this is so amazing.
And I really haven’t had a moment. I have not had that remorse at all. I have felt so good about what I chose to do because I did so much research before. I mean, it was years of research in the different models. I really feel like this is probably the number one biggest, but also the best decision of my professional life.
I’m really excited to get this into the hands of my employees, and the one of the main reasons is Miami is one of those towns, and you, you live in one of these communities as well, where you can work very hard and do very well and live very well. And you can also work very, very, very, very hard and have eight people living in a two bedroom apartment paying several thousand dollars a month in rent, you know, and I know that in Miami, there is a huge wealth gap. And I think that this will help at least my little community at Ocaquatics. It’ll really help close some of that wealth gap, and it’ll help them be able to get into homes, and it will help them be able to send kids to college. And I’m excited by that.
I mean, that is just super fulfilling and satisfying to me.
John Corcoran: 36:35
Yeah, it’s great to have that drive in you. So probably another big milestone will be you deciding to step down as CEO and have someone else taking over. What’s your timeline for that?
Miren Oca: 36:49
I don’t know yet. Right now, honestly, things are going really well. I have been doing less since we did the transaction. I’m doing less and less and less because the team is just stepping up. They are just doing amazing in our exec team.
We call them the lead team. They’re rocking and rolling. I mean it is going very, very well. So I’m just pleased to see that this is going really well. And I’m just kind of watching, you know, gauging it.
But I’ve had some extra time. And now I actually opened a non-profit this year. I didn’t think I would be doing that this year at all, but I had the time. So I started that, and I’ve been starting to work on some other projects. Some people have been wanting to learn more about what we did and how we transacted the EOT process.
And so I’ve been talking a little bit more about that. So it’s giving me time to do other things, and I’m not sure I haven’t made that decision yet how long I’m going to be in this seat.
John Corcoran: 37:44
You can go out there and be an advocate for the employee ownership trust. I would love that. Yeah, it’s my.
Miren Oca: 37:49
New favorite topic. It really is.
John Corcoran: 37:51
That’s cool. Yeah. Marin, as you look back over your career, your journey, who are you grateful to? Who’s some people, many peers and contemporaries? Any mentors that you would want to shout out and thank for everything they’ve done for you?
Miren Oca: 38:06
Yes. Well, I mean, I know and you know, we always thank our family and we always thank our teams. And I think that that’s, you know, that’s who comes to mind first and foremost. But I also do, you know, you and I are in EO and entrepreneurs organization. And I do think that I owe so much to my forum because I remember when I was going through this decision and no one had known.
Nobody knew what this meant and what it was. And I would put all I remember doing a presentation on retreat, actually, and putting everything on big post-it notes all over the walls of this retreat house that we had and just going through the details and talking through it and the questions they ask and the way they helped me really understand. It’s really interesting because I really remember back to that time and I did not know what I was going to be doing, but they really helped me focus my thinking on what I really wanted to do. So. So my EO forum, you know, eight is great.
We have a really great group and I owe them so much. So I’m very, very grateful to them.
John Corcoran: 39:10
And this has been great. Where can people go to learn more about you and Ocaquatics?
Miren Oca: 39:15
So Ocaquatics on Instagram. You can follow us on Instagram. We would love that. And then also I’m on LinkedIn. Super easy to find me there and I would love to connect with people.
John Corcoran: 39:26
Awesome! Thanks so much.
Outro: 39:30
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes!