Miles Laflin – aka TikTok’s The P00L Guy

Miles Laflin was a regular bloke from Bedford who became a professional pool engineer 12 years ago.

After downloading TikTok during lockdown, he soared to fame, earning 13.5m followers, with his videos regularly getting 12 million views. In other words, he’s the most famous pool cleaner on the planet.

It’s all been a bit of a whirlwind, for him and his family – wife Lauren, who is now his manager and their two children. We asked Miles what it was like to work as a social media content creator and whether his kids will follow in his footsteps.

When did you realise you’d become an ‘influencer’?

I guess this was when I got my first brand deal with a company called BiGDUG. It’s a weird one really as I don’t actually think of myself as an influencer, just an ordinary guy with a job that people love to watch! Although saying that, I am getting a little more used to some of the perks like going to awards shows and things like that. Plus I do have a lot more brands wanting to work with me now, which makes it feel a lot more real.

Why do you think something as comparatively regular as pool cleaning has become such a hot topic on social media?

People love to watch things being cleaned, whether its carpets or cars or swimming pools, they can’t get enough of it, it’s addictive! That feeling of pleasure when it’s tip top at the end is hard to beat. Not only that, but nobody else was doing anything interesting around swimming pools, so I guess it was quite a niche area I could tap into. Mad to think it’s become so successful, I’ve even been featured in the New York Times!

How did you monetise your TikTok?

This is hard to explain as it just happens naturally without much actual work – essentially, as soon as you hit a certain level of followers and engagement it drives brand deals towards you. It starts as DMs to your account and you’ve no idea if they are scams or genuine invitations to work with them. Not only that, but it’s confusing to know what is a good deal and what isn’t, if you don’t have any experience.

Secondary to that, Tik Tok actually set you up with a creator fund, which means that the more views you get the more money you earn from it. This is more of a constant ticker which evaluates all of the engagement and serves back funds from the company direct.

Has it made doing your 9-5 job more difficult?

It has yes. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful in any way, I am super-grateful for everything that has happened to me so far and that is yet to come, but it is tricky having to record everything when I am at work, it makes the job take twice as long. Not only that, but I have to spend my evenings editing the content, so it’s not a 9-5 anymore, more of a 24/7 job! I absolutely love it and wouldn’t change a thing, but life has definitely become much busier than it was before!

What does your work-life balance look like now? Are you able to spend a lot more time with your family/kids?

It’s more flexible having my own business. I can block out time for the family or move things around, but there is a lot more pressure to get the job done. When I am at home there is always something to be done, editing or content creation, so it can be hard to know when to drop it and just focus on time with the children and family, but I make sure I do.

They are the most important thing and I try my best to remind myself of that. I make sure that we have plenty of little breaks and holidays so we can spend quality time together too and go on a lot of family adventures making memories.

How do you see this changing as you move forward/get older?

It would be great to be able to have a little team working with me eventually, to capture content as I work and then do all of the editing etc. for me – that would save me a lot of time! But having a team like that would cost quite a bit and I’m not at that stage just yet. I spend a lot of time making jobs into family projects, like at our Nan’s house (she has a pool and we take the kids when we go). So perhaps one day they could grow up to be mini content creators and help Dad with his recordings!

Read more:

The rewards and challenges of life as a ‘manny’

Ollie Ollerton: How to build resilience in children

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