We caught up with the brilliant and insightful John Lipscomb a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi John, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
We are the volunteers of the UCanSki2 adaptive Waterski program. It was started by our former Director Ann O’Brien Satterfield in 1994. She ran the program till 2015 when she passed from Cancer. The Volunteers did not what it to end so we got together and rebuilt and changed the name, per her request, and honored her by naming it after her calling it Ann’s Angels Adaptive Waterski Foundation.
I took the lead and filed for a new nonprofit and name February 1st 2016. That was granted in May and we got our nonprofit certificate June 6th. 3AWF took over the clients and expanded after 6 months to ten clinics in its first full year and to 12 the second year. Currently at 10 for central Florida and 3 in North Florida and looking to create a third chapter in South Florida.
This Program fills the void left by UCanSki2 for both the participants and the volunteer base that had been established in Central Florida. It has now grown beyond the UCanSki2 years and now is a mainstay in the adaptive community. And now we are ready to move forward again moving into the 2025 season.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Our former Director Ann called me some time 1999 to ask me to join here volunteer crew as a boat driver. I did drive for the first season then a new driver showed up and I set out and started learning the rest of the process of how a clinic was done and started doing photography to show off what we were doing and to give the participants a keep sake for their participation. As I learned more I got into helping with the back end with the web site social media and the finances to do this kind of program. I helped Ann to turn this into a nonprofit and helped her get out of paying for all of it out of here own pocket.
When Ann passed away in 2015 she did not have a good plan to continue the program and I fought to continue the work under a new name as she requested before she passed. We took control in February of 2016 and started the transition to Ann’s Angels to continue the program and Honor her legacy by naming the program after her. We are the Volunteers of the UCanSki2 program. Ann called her volunteers her Angels on the water. This was what she believed made her program the best. So we became Ann’s Angels Adaptive Waterski Foundation.
As we moved forward in 2016 we did 4 clinics and started working with all but one of her clients and in our second year we did 9 clinics and now do 15 clinics a year. We have created a board of directors and an advisory board so we can continue this nonprofit well into the future. We have also expanded the program by creating Ann’s Angels North in Quincy Florida near Tallahassee to handle our North Florida clinics and are looking to start a South Florida branch in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area to handle our South Florida clinics with separate volunteer teams and equipment to continue providing the level of professional service we have created here in Central Florida.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
So we moved forward in the face of another nonprofit that took control of UCanSki2 and made it clear they intended to close and sell off the equipment after gaining control of UCanSki2. of the nonprofit well into the rebuild of Ann’s Angels. Ann had signed the nonprofit over to another nonprofit before she passed away in December and January 7th they announced the closing of the UCanSki2 program. The new business wanted to sell the UCanSki2 business back to me after they sold off everything they could. This was after our agreement to not interfere with our rebuild of the program under a new name. To get Ann’s Angels going we had to create our own nonprofit to do so. We did not need the UCanSki2 name or number to do business and we were doing good with what we created The owner of the UCanSki 2 name and number wanted to sell back to us the original name and nonprofit number to us under Ann’s Angels. I found out that the old nonprofit number had 3 lawsuits attached to it from the other nonprofit that took over the UCanSki2 program from Ann. Be wary of gifts like that. The heart warts to obtain the original name and idea that was started with the original company but if we had bought back the name and number to bring home the original program Ann’s Angels would have been burdened with the finical problems and the law suits that came with it. Protect the business you have don’t do things because of nostalgia. Do you due research diligence on any partnership or purchasing of businesses that your not fully signed into already. Don’t sign contracts without a good lawyer reviewing it and its contents.
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.
No we don’t yet but Ann’s Angels would like to get into manufacturing but that does not fit very well as a nonprofit. It also opens us up to frivolous lawsuits from buyers that are just looking to get payed for minor accidents they caused to them selves but think they can push the cost off onto a profitable program like Ann’s Angels. Our board has decided to create a new business under a new name to conduct that work to protect the nonprofit from those kinds of issues and protect what we have built for the future.
Contact Info:
- Website: Annsangelsawf.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annsangelsawf?igsh=ZjVkMHVuMHAzOTkx&utm_source=qr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnnsAngelsAWF?mibextid=LQQJ4d
- Linkedin: John Lipscomb
- Twitter: John Lipscomb @Johndiamond101
- Youtube: @annsangelsadaptivewaterski3439
- Yelp: N/A
- SoundCloud: N/A
- Other: TikTok @annsangelsawf
Image Credits
JD Diamond Photograph John & DiAnna Lipscomb