We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Florencio Palomo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Florencio, appreciate you joining us today. One of the most important things small businesses can do, in our view, is to serve underserved communities that are ignored by giant corporations who often are just creating mass-market, one-size-fits-all solutions. Talk to us about how you serve an underserved community.
I founded REACH swim over 9 years ago with the goal of creating a safe, nurturing, and welcoming environment for special needs kids, a community that is underserved in many recreational activities, especially swim. 80% of all our students are special needs, 95% of those being from low-income and racial minority communities. Though I started REACH 9 years ago, my work experience with special needs kids started at the beginning of my recreation career nearly 30 years ago. nearly 30 years ago, I was offered a promotion in my career with one stipulation, I had to learn how to swim so I could manage the recreation department of my community fully. Having nearly drowned as a child and my family not being able to afford swim lessons, the fear of swimming and water stayed with me unit the age of 26, when the promotion offer came. Wanting the promotion I decided to face my fears and try to learn to swim. Knowing my fears, my supervisor connected me with a woman, Judy Hewitt, who she felt could help me. This woman, due to an injury, was physically disabled and unable to get into the water to teach me but agreed to guide me from the deck. her presence and clam nature comforted me and we connected and over the course of 6 months she taught me how to swim…and I was able to keep my promotion. At the end of the 6 months she had a favor of me. Could I come back to the pool that weekend to help with a group of swimmers. I happily agreed. When I arrived I realized the group I was to help with was the local chapter of special olympics. the afternoon was great. I loved working with the kids and adults and connected with them easily. Having special needs people in my family I was raised to treat everyone equally and accept everyone for their unique abilities or disabilities. so this was a natural connection for me. At the end of the day, Judy talked to me and asked me how I liked working with the students. I said how much I loved it and would love to continue. At that moment she said something so profound that I never thought it would be true but how right she was. she told me “this is your calling, this is your niche, you are going to have a very strong and long career teaching swimming to special needs people”. Having just learned how to swim I could not fully grasp her vision but was happy to hear that someone believed in me. Over the next 18 years my career in aquatics grew and I began got get a following from the special needs community and every job I had I advocated for more inclusion for special needs kids in programing. After 18 years of facing obstacles and enough “No’s” I decided to resign from my job and follow my heart and REACH swim was born. Over the years REACH has grown and has become the standard of excellence in regards to teaching swimming to special needs kids. I am also proud to say that three of my former students now work for REACH as instructors and to see special needs kids teaching other special needs kids how to swim is more then I ever expected. Judy’s prophecy to me is filled and I continue to strive to fill it more.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
The answer to the previous question answers a lot of this. to add about what I am most proud of is not giving up. There have been many challenges and obstacles (unfortunately many pools did not want to rent to me as they were not accepting of special needs kids and we have also face a lot of hate towards our kids) but nothing stopped me as I knew REACH was making a difference in the community. I am also most proud of my students. Many have gone onto being a part of swim teams and their special needs do not stand in their way. One of my former students just won first place in a swim meet last week (backstroke) and beat the other by more then two body lengths. This is a child who 6 years ago would not look at anyone in the eye and didnt talk much and had a lot of fears. Now he has his sight on the Olympics. Instilling a sense of pride in my students makes me very proud.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
During our second year at our first pool, there was a lot of discrimination towards our kids. They did not want us to be at the pool as they made it very difficult for us to be there. Making the pool water cold. closing the pool without notice. changing the terms of our contract without consent. I did not let this stop me and my dream. I found a new pool and moved my program to the new pool and continued to thrive. Sadly this has happened several times over the course of our 9 years but it has all been worth it as now we are at a wonderful location that accepts our kids and wants them to thrive as much as I do.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
to fund my business I dug into my savings and spent all $25,000 of it and maxed out every credit card and took on two more jobs to help pay for my staff payroll, expenses related to starting a business and to be able to survive myself. I did not take a salary from my swim program for the first two years as I was building my business and survived on just the minimal needed to get by. Was a rough two first years but all worth it
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.reachacademy.nyc
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reachacademynyc/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/REACH-swim-Academy/61565217694973/?mibextid=LQQJ4d&rdid=KtU0Pb5jsooPeNFt&share_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fshare%2F1Ahx8mPJVx%2F%3Fmibextid%3DLQQJ4d
Image Credits
image credit: REACH SWIM