As many entrepreneurs will tell you, often the best business ideas come from trying to solve problems for yourself or your community, as was the case for entrepreneur Paulana Lamonier, founder of Black People Will Swim, an organization based in Brooklyn that provides community swim lessons during the summer.
While the company offers swim lessons to everyone, its call to action is to help people of color learn to swim because Black people are 1.5 times more likely (and Indigenous people are twice as likely) to die from drowning as white people, per the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). And, as Black People Will Swim notes on its website, 64 percent of Black children have no or low swimming abilities, according to reports from the USA Swimming Foundation.
“Black and Brown people are drowning and dying, so swimming is a life skill,” says Lamonier, who won the Create & Cultivate pitch competition in Dallas last year. “If only a certain group of people have access to a life skill, where does that leave everyone else?”
The beginnings of Black People Will Swim
Initially, Lamonier didn’t set out to start a company—the idea for Black People Will Swim began as a challenge in 2019, she says. Her goal was to teach 30 people how to swim. But after one of the participants told her that Black people can’t swim because their bones are too dense, she realized that people didn’t just need access to instruction, they needed information as well.
“We created four pillars to make sure that anything and everything we do aligns with our core mission,” Lamonier says. “Essentially, we are encouraging our community to face their fears.” Aptly, these four pillars form the acronym FACE: fun, awareness, community, and education.
“We want to make sure that people are having fun, that we’re building awareness around the statistics, that we’re creating community, and that we’re educating people on how swimming is a life skill,” Lamonier says. “It’s not a matter of whether we, as Black people, can or can’t swim—it’s more like we will swim.”
So far, Lamonier’s helped 200 people of all backgrounds and ages learn to swim, but she believes that’s just the beginning.
How Lamonier plans to next-level her business
At the top of Lamonier’s to-do list is building out her team. “This year, I aim to onboard a few more people,” she says. “I’m hiring an aquatics director, which is hard to do because this is everyone’s side hustle. We’re a seasonal business.” (Read: If you, or anyone you know, fits the description, contact Black People Will Swim.)
“We’re also looking for a place to call home,” Lamonier says. “Grants like Create & Cultivate’s really help us with funding so that we can find a pool and not scramble for rent. We’ll pay for rent upfront and pocket the profits from our classes.”
Within the next three years, Lamonier’s biggest hope is to establish partnerships, particularly with Black celebrities who swim and share their love of swimming online because seeing someone who looks like you doing something you always thought you couldn’t do is quite inspiring.
“I would love to partner with Kevin Hart because he grew up swimming,” she says. The actor and stand-up comic told the Golf Channel that swimming shaped his life.
In the not-so-distant future, Lamonier would also like to launch a swimwear line that solves another of her problems: Being able to find a suit that falls somewhere between leisure and competitive styles.
Lamonier’s tips for making an impact as an entrepreneur
1. Figure out what your ideal business would look like
Lamonier believes that before you can actually start making an impact, you have to make the vision plain. “Literally write it out, and understand the roadmap,” she says.
Ask yourself what your mission is and how you’re going to get there. Part of doing this, Lamonier adds, is figuring out what you’re naturally good at. “What do a lot of people come to you for? For me, it was always swimming,” she says. (Lamonier learned to swim in 2009, and spent 10 years teaching lessons for swim clubs, teams, and gyms before founding Black People Will Swim.)
2. Tailor your team to your weaknesses
Once you know where you’re going and what it’ll take to get there, it’s time to figure out who will help you stay the course. Lamonier has a great hack for building a well-rounded team: “Get familiar with your strengths and weaknesses because you want to hire to your weaknesses,” she says. “Like, if you’re forgetful, get an assistant.” After all, you can’t get to where you want to go if you spend most of your time catching up with emails.
3. Remember your why
“We are in the business of saving lives,” Lamonier says. “We taught 200 people how to swim this summer—and that’s 200 lives we just saved by teaching this life skill.” That’s an opportunity she seldom takes for granted, and one that keeps her motivated to keep going.
As an entrepreneur who often outsources work, Lamonier is also grateful for the ability to bring jobs to her community. “I am blessed to be able to create a small ripple effect in this economy through the power of swimming,” she says. “Black People Will Swim was a lot of people’s first job—like my sister and my cousin.”
Above all, the most important thing is to not get caught up in worrying about what other people are doing, according to Lamonier, who says: “I stay in my lane, no pun intended.”
Written by Natalie Arroyo Camacho
Want to learn more about Paulana's work? Tune into this week's episode of WorkParty where she talks about the investment she made to launch the organization, her secret to an award winning pitch, and advice for founders who are seeking grant money.