This month marks our 1st anniversary for our company! We decided to start We Are Safer Together LLC in order to provide safety, self-defense, and emergency response skills to our community because we recognized a lack of trauma-informed and adaptive services in this sector. We also noticed there aren’t a lot of women, trauma-survivors, or adaptive-focused people offering these types of services in Colorado and beyond.
Throughout the year, our belief that everyone deserves to feel safe has been confirmed again and again as we worked with clients and partner organizations. We have come to a lot of clarity about what we love doing: teaching safety and self-defense skills to older adults, people with disabilities, women of all ages, and in workplaces. We also have found a lot of alignment with the people who have been excited about our work, and we’ve been able to reach more people than we thought possible within the first year of business.
We spent a lot of time this year carefully evaluating what practices and systems we wanted to integrate into our work and what we wanted to leave behind. We focused on professional development, including becoming CERT certified, taking basic and advanced behavioral threat assessment trainings, and we also completed an education course on starting a business.
We Are Safer Together Curriculum
The original curriculum and programs that we developed this year included:
Development of We Are Safer Together
The first year of business includes a lot of foundation building. In this year, we developed a business plan, had a branding photo shoot, built our website by ourselves, purchased insurance, developed our contract and service agreement templates, created our waiver forms, drafted menus of our services, and dove into social media marketing. Throughout the past year, we attended at least 12 networking events, and were able to get the word out about our specialization in teaching adaptive self-defense for seniors and people with disabilities through several talks. We also wrote a free ebook Empowered Together: A Guide to Finding Our Voice, Confidence, and Safety Within Community.
Financials
Financially, we were able to fully repay ourselves our start up investments by July 1, under 10 months from starting the business. Since then, we have been able to pay ourselves from our income AND save for the future. We had our first business investor, and we were able to buy equipment such as several larger striking pads, a box of breaking boards for our longer form classes, two orders of business cards, a large banner for events, and flyers.
First Year By The Numbers
- 20 Classes and Talks
- 33.5 hours of instruction
- Over 225 people taught
- 17 programs in Colorado
- 2 International
- 1 Virtual
Demographics
Demographics have roughly been:
- 77.5% women
- 17% men
- 5.5% genderqueer/non-binary
- 55% adults
- 43% seniors ages 60+
- 2% children 5-12
- 15% people with disabilities
- 22% people of color (Colorado is 78% white)
Programs
- 10 talks and workshops at senior living communities or senior venues
- 3 Conferences: Latina American Masculinities, Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault, and Senior Law Day
- 1 Talk at a Low Income Residence
- 1 Retreat: Ouroboros Retreat
- 1 LGBTQ-focused workshop
- 1 Private class for 10-11 year old girls
- 1 University class: University of Wuppertal
- 2 Workshops in Germany
Media
- 4 radio and TV interviews in April (CPR, NPR, ABC, BBC)
- 1 podcast (Disrupting the Dominoes)
- 87 followers on Instagram
- 68 followers on Facebook / 50 likes
- 14 followers on LinkedIn
We Are Safer Together Testimonials
Krista and Kayla recently came out to our senior’s building to teach a class on self-defense. It was very informative, hands on and practical. The class was very well received and appreciated by our group and I would enthusiastically recommend them to your seniors group or complex. (Jeff)
This class was awesome! We learned great techniques to keep ourselves safe. As a senior, I don’t feel as empowered to keep myself safe. I would love to take more classes with We Are Safer Together. (Joann)
I’ve been involved with martial arts, self-defense, and personal safety for over 20 years. I’ve led self-defense seminars and am very well acquainted with the world of personal safety. That said, the course I took part in was excellent. The two hours went by very quickly and we covered a lot of extremely important topics. Primarily standing your ground, setting boundaries, and a few very useful self-defense techniques that are simple to learn. I’d highly recommend this course to anyone! (Sam)
I thought everything was great. The instructors were both very knowledgeable, organized, friendly, and professional. I feel more confident that I could de-escalate a threat instead of resorting to violence. The class is fun and they are very welcoming. (Emma)
I loved the thoughtfulness and how truly trauma informed and self-aware this training was. I feel safer and more equipped to protect myself. (Anonymous)
They were empowering because us seniors didn’t know how many different ways one can easily defend oneself. It also helped me to overcome some fear of actually, forcefully, physically defending myself. They have a lot of knowledge and engaged us in active exercises. Thanks so much! (Anonymous)
I really enjoyed the safety class. It was very helpful to learn skills to go with safety. It was very informative, and I recommend people check it out! (Anonymous)
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