We were lucky to catch up with Jason Watters recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jason, appreciate you joining us today. Quality control is a challenge almost every entrepreneur has had to focus on when growing – any advice, stories or insight around how to best ensure quality is maintained as your business scales?

First and foremost, we focus on our employees and their well-being. If employees are not proud to represent the company, don’t feel heard, or don’t have the necessary tools to do their job well, it affects the end client. The employees are the ones vital to having a successful client experience or a failed client experience. Keep your employees happy, pay them well, and keep surprising them with incentives. You will gain their loyalty and they will gain you clients.

Don’t only focus on the money. Companies who try to grow too fast just to receive larger revenues are likely to have things fall through the cracks. Quality growth should come organically, with the staff and infrastructure behind it to support it. Before UnderWatters Co offers a new service or offering, we do the research to ensure that once it is desired by clients, we can see it through flawlessly to completion. Could we offer 10 new services and bring in a ton of new clients off the street? Yes, but their client experience will be less than ideal until our business and client service models can support it. “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast”.

Organizations should also have a North Star or a true purpose behind it, and it should be front and center of everything they do. Our goal at UnderWatters Co. is to provide safe, high quality scuba services and be their gateway to the underwater world. We would rather have half the business and keep our service standard the same rather than take twice the number of clients with subpar service.

Jason, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer and a native to San Diego. I have always had a true love of the ocean and its creatures since I was a kid, from snorkeling and kayaking in La Jolla every week to visiting every aquarium I could find. When I was older I took my first plunge in the ocean with scuba gear while on vacation in Bora Bora and I knew I was hooked. Over the years I gradually progressed through the scuba diving ranks, made new friends, and have been diving professionally for many years. For me personally, I believe life is too short to be lived behind a desk and forgoing things that bring true joy to our lives. As a financial professional by trade, I wanted to find a way to combine my by business and financial knowledge with my love of scuba diving and the ocean, and finally right as Covid-19 broke out, UnderWatters Co. was born.

UnderWatters Co. was created to fulfill a much needed gap in the scuba diving industry; private and highly tailored dive services where clients can learn in a relaxed, safe, and intimate environment. Whereas most scuba course allow 8-10 students per class, we focus on 1-2 people so they can get a much higher level of service, more one-on-one time with their instructor, and gain a much higher level of skill and competence by the end of their course. We aim to mimic the service model of a luxury hotel, from fully customizable schedules to match our clients’ lifestyles, to repurposed refreshments, private pool facilities, and ongoing live communications with our team. We will call every client by their name, not “diver #1.” If they call us, they hear our voice and not an automated message. Scuba diving can be intimidating at first, so ensuring our clients feel safe and have all their question and concerns addressed before they even ask them, is priceless.

We are very proud of the fact that due to our client service capabilities and highly customizable offerings, we are able to fulfil client requests when other dive shops cannot. Whether clients tied down by time constraints, unique work schedules, or a variety of other considerations, we are almost always able to fill the gap and provide them an exceptional offering that works for them. UnderWatters Co. has a wide breadth of service offerings, from our Discover Scuba Diving Experience for non-certified divers to our rigorous Divemaster course, and everything in between. Our overall goal is to produce high quality, safe divers and instill in them a love and respect for our oceans.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Due to the nature of scuba diving, every certification is built upon the previous one. There are many levels and many specialties that can be done, so for us, the key is retaining students within UnderWatters Co. for them to continue their scuba diving journey. If we have a client come to us for a private Open Water Certification, the most basic course, at its completion we have the opportunity to keep them with us through advanced courses and specialty courses. It is far more costly and time consuming to bring on a new client than it is to manage an existing one.

We choose to offer discounts to those clients who wish to return to us to complete an additional certification or service. Even though we receive less money, anything we gain from the repeat business is more than what we would have received if they never came back to us in the first place. Also, we found that clients that complete at least two scuba diving offerings with us are much stickier, and will always come back to us for anything they may desire or need in the future.

Another thing we’ve done is offering a subscription type model; this can be very effective from a cash flow perspective as it is consistent and predictable income that is not based on one-time offerings. Offering a subscription service that clients find value in (this is key) will keep them coming back to you and keep your business top of mind.

Even though we do utilize the normal channels of social media, Google Ads, and print marketing, our most successful strategy has been retaining existing clients as well as the referrals they can provide.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

I follow the Richard Branson saying that “clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.” If you have employees that are unhappy to come to work, unhappy to do quality work, or are visibly unhappy in front of clients, its not just them that suffer, its the clients that suffers.

Employees should have an open door to management. They are the ones in the field and doing the work on the ground, and if they think something needs to change or something is lacking, then they’re probably right. If employees are scared to raise concerns or to offer new ideas, a business cannot grow or let alone survive. The more control and resources the employees have the less micromanaging that is necessary and allows management/owners to focus more on big picture ideas.

At UnderWatters Co., we have informal weekly meetings and formal monthly meeting with instructors and office staff to get their feedback on our offerings, our clients, what is going well, what difficulties arise, and we create a plan to fix it right then and there if possible. We offer a quarterly bonus to employees that is tied to company quarterly revenue targets. The more employees can help create repeat business or assist in bringing in new business, the more their bonus will be. Aligning the interest of the employee with the interest of the company creates good morale and potential. If our instructor does a great job in a certification course< and that client wants to come back for another course and also refer friends or family, their efforts are rewarded and everybody wins.

If employees tell us that things are breaking, in need of repair, or have recurring friction points, or if they can’t do their job to its fullest capability due to lack of supplies or support, buy/do whatever they need. The per unit cost in the end will be far less than the cost of losing growth, clients or eventually employees if they don’t feel heard.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.underwatters.com
• Instagram: underwatters_co
• Facebook: UnderWatters Co.

Image Credits
Chelsea Mayer Photography