Hey! Who are you, and what are you working on?
Hey! My name is Kevin Le Goff, I’m the co-founder of Swenson, a community of creatives and entrepreneurs who do things with the ocean to imagine a better future.
For that, we catalyze our members through inspiring places on the coast.
Build events/workshops and experiences.
What motivated you to get started with Swenson? What was the first product?
I was working in the digital industry, back in 2007, beginning of the Apple mania where we were all looking to create the most ridiculous app of something. Where entrepreneurs started to become rockstars, startupers were what we discovered with DJ at this time haha.
And to be honest we got a bit tired of this startup scene and wanted to give back true honors to entrepreneurs.
This is why we started (our first product), Swenson Magazine, a print magazine of inspiring stories and passionate people. 160 pages of portraits, telling true stories, failures and not just about raising money.
You have multiple different products. How do you prioritize what to work on?
Started with the magazine, then we decided to create a place where we could gather the community we built with the print mag.
Today our main focus is The Swenson Houses and Swenson members.
Our job is to imagine content (event/workshops/retreats) for our members at our houses.
The magazine is now part of the content and brand, but we don’t see it as a product, more a way of sharing our lifestyle and stories of people surrounding Swenson.
What were your challenges and obstacles to growing your business?
We opened our first house in Brittany, at the edge, in a town of 4000 people. This was a big challenge as we were bringing something unknown to the local community. We had to educate the town about our mission and what was going to happen in the house :)
Then, building a business out of big cities is something that asks a lot of energy and a good brand. We had to face the difficulty to bring people over there as our house was not big enough for more than 50 people at the same time.
The capacity was a big subject to grow the business. And as we were starting the story we couldn’t jump into a bigger place so we had to create lots of different ways to make revenues with our main place.
What has been helpful to help you to grow your business?
We have the perfect spot with my co-founder and the team because we are close to some of the most inspiring people thanks to the community. They are the ones helping us with advice to grow the business. When we say, surround yourself with the people that inspire you the most, we actually did it without knowing it :)
If you had to start over, what would you do differently?
We would go slower but without changing what we did.
What's your advice for surfpreneurs who are just starting out?
Start your business while having a job to test and learn. Once you think you’ve got the right product, jump into it. Then, take as much advice as you can and tell people when you don’t know a topic, you’ll learn much more stuff like that, even if we’re talking about your main topic. Create situations to learn, every day.
What is in your opinion the most underrated surf destination?
I shouldn’t say that, but Brittany is actually the most underrated surf destination. We have more than 1200km coastline with tons of different types of waves.
What are your next plans?
I used to work in the music industry. I love composing and I’m trying to bring more music into Swenson today. We are opening a recording studio in one of our houses to bring artists to the coast for producing stuff and also enjoy the residence for another part of the job.
