Get to Know the Guys of Tourism Titans

Kevin: 0:15

We're live. Episode one of the tourism Titans. Sub name Dirty Mike and the boys. I am here with three handsome individuals. One day we're going to do some video and then you guys will have something to really enjoy yourselves with. Guys, I'm Kevin O'Neill, with me is Steve Edwards, Andy Kurtz, Jared Broach, boys. Starting with Andy here. Why don't you introduce yourself, my friend?

Andy: 0:41

Hey, I'm Andy Kurtz. I'm the owner and operator of Seaforth Boat Rental in San Diego. I've got four locations, 150 boats, we do everything from kayaks to yachts. We've got a sailing school, we've got a sea school. If it floats, we do it. I've been doing this for about 40 years and I hope to have amassed a little bit of knowledge that I'm anxious to share.

Kevin: 1:02

Steve.

Steve: 1:02

Yes guys. It's super exciting to be here. Such an asshole.

Kevin: 1:09

I love it when people say that I'm so excited. Are you really?

Steve: 1:12

I actually am. I actually am. I love you guys. This is pretty exciting to get going. We are all guys that are in tourism and it makes sense to bring this together, try to deliver some knowledge, try to bring something that makes sense to operators, business guys, guys looking to be in the tourism industry.

Steve: 1:29

My little intro, my name is Steve Edwards. I own a marketing agency based on Las Vegas called AAMP Agency. I work with tour operators from around the country, from San Diego down to Cape Verde Africa. And on top of that I'm also a tour operator. I have a couple of different rental operations- Jeep rentals, jetski rentals and yeah, just trying to grow a business like everybody else.

Kevin: 1:52

We got Jared Broach here, ResTech. ResTech entrepreneur.

Jared: 1:56

Yep, here we go ResTech entrepreneur. Yeah guys, I'm Jared Broach, Owner of Eat, Drink, Scare Tour Company. We have several brands under that umbrella. And if I wasn't being paid by Steve, I don't know if I'd be on this podcast. But you know, we've got locations in about 18 cities for ghost tours, two locations on wine tours. I do not have 150 boats, but I got about 150 cable cars like Andy. Mine drive, they don't float. If they did float, latch it. Actually I wish they could float.

Steve: 2:25

They are made of wood. They probably actually could float.

Jared: 2:29

I mean honestly, it's the same type of like the wood requires the same type of boat wood that you would use so I mean maybe I put Andy out of business if I converted these from roads to boats, but yeah, that's me.

Kevin: 2:39

Yeah, boat wood.

Steve: 2:40

Those things are like you could turn them into duck boats.

Jared: 2:43

Oh, and then we could put them in Lake Mead and find one in 15 minutes when it drops levels.

Kevin: 2:50

Fucking boat woods. That's awesome. You're giving me fucking boat wood right now with those sunglasses on. Yeah, guys. Yeah. So I'm Kevin O'Neill. I've got 150 bucks to my name. I own a water sport company myself. We do boat rentals. We don't have as many boats as Andy. I got some jet skis. I got some boats, I got some sunset tours.

Kevin: 3:15

I also do another podcast, which is why these guys have been so kind of let me kind of spearhead the hosting efforts here, that will change as everybody starts to get settled in and comfortable. And you know, there's going to be rotating, probably a rotating guest list and rotating hosts because it's hard to get the four of us together in one room because we're in four different man, we're almost in four different time zones. Jared's in Denver, Steve's in Vegas, Andy's in San Diego, and I am in North Florida.

Kevin: 3:44

So you guys are probably thinking yourself, "Oh, yay, another tourism podcast." Fucking wanted, right. And you're maybe wondering to yourself what what we're doing out here and so you got four guys that are pulling from four different major markets and four different vertices. We're recording the first episode because I just bombed everybody.

Kevin: 4:04

I wanted to ask everybody what they make. But the point of this is we're real entrepreneurs. We're not podcasts. We don't work for other companies, we're boots on the ground. I wouldn't like to think the last of probably a dying generation. We're not like fucking jerking off over.

Andy: 4:21

It's not a reference to me again. Is it?

Kevin: 4:23

No, no, no. If we were referencing you, we would add fucking like an old timey fucking microphone thing like "Hey Andy, what to do you think about the moving pictures?"

Steve: 4:33

But he is the only one of us who gets AARP emails.

Kevin: 4:38

Those are AAR-Pussy.

Jared: 4:44

And that's getting cut.

Kevin: 4:46

No, it doesn't have to and we and we hope that you know because like we're all blue collar guys. I think at the end of the day, and that we do this show because each one of us are sunburned. Andy, dirty Jared has run his own, Jared has run his own tours. He has taught his own crew, train his own crew. You know, Steve, still me and Steve were complaining the other day. Steve was out there dealing with a jeep, I was doing an oil change on a jetski. And you know, fucking Andy has been a little bit longer in the game, but he's still very much a part of his day to day business. And that's what we're going to talk about the day to day shit that that entrepreneurs and business owners have to go through. And this isn't going to be like a huge like marketing fluff job for you guys, although we will talk about marketing because you know, we all do love that portion of things, because that's how they pay the bills. Andy, how's your week been, buddy?

Andy: 5:35

My week has been great. We've we had a fantastic weekend, and we got a lot of shit going on. We're launching an app. We're doing all kinds of stuff. It's always fun to keep growing and keep learning. And I gotta say, I've probably learned more from you guys in the last couple months that we've been hanging out than I have in the last 20 years. So I'm excited to do this project, because I've learned so there's a lot that we can teach other people.

Steve: 5:59

Yeah, I think that's going to be a pretty exciting piece of this. I mean, sometimes it feels like we're in an echo chamber, all of us talk about this stuff quite a bit. You know, how do we get more bookings? How do we grow our business? How do we exit, when is the right point to explore all this stuff. And I think a lot of times in tourism, all that gets talked about is ResTech and OTAs. And it becomes a pretty redundant conversation where there's a lot more to operating a business and what TripAdvisor is going to send your way or what booking platform you should be operating on. And I'm excited to kind of dig down those trenches and have those conversations and see where that goes.

Kevin: 6:40

What about you? What about you Broach? Why don't you broach this up?

Jared: 6:45

Sorry, I was distracted when Andy said he built an app because I'm trying to trying to think of Andy actually knows what app stands for. Or if he's like,

Kevin: 6:52

He's there like a fucking saw?

Steve: 6:57

He ordered some chicken wings and he's like, "Damn, this is great."

Kevin: 7:00

Yeah.

Jared: 7:01

Well, I can just picture like some sales guy call, you get to that like spam email, "We'll build you a customized app for $19.95." And Andy responds, and he's like, all of a sudden, he's got like an app built.

Steve: 7:12

He's got an app built. He's got an app built from a guy in India.

Kevin: 7:15

We're all gonna like, give Andy a bunch of shit, because he's fucking old or whatever, I guess. But just so we're clear here. He's like, probably the most experienced and most successful out of fucking all of us. So what every time like we're like, yeah, and you're so dumb. I mean, he's like, Yeah, real dumb. I'm gonna go over to my yacht club, and I can smoke a cigar and I can have a whiskey literally all fucking day. I'm out there doing an oil change. Yeah, you don't know about that. You focus more on.

Andy: 7:43

But you know what's funny about the app? So I found the app because again, I'm following you guys lead. We sent somebody to arrival, I sent two guys to arrival. They went to different booths, they found stuff. And we were able to buy something there. So it's only the big thing is not to stay where you are. It's looking over the horizon. So yeah, I don't know shit about building an app. And I don't know what I should pay for it. And I don't know. But I have people and I trusted people. And I went and I, I learned so it's all about continuing to learn.

Jared: 8:09

Can somebody told me where exactly were these app builders at arrival? Because I walked through everything. I never saw the app builder.

Andy: 8:15

I didn't actually go to arrival. I'm gonna confess.

Kevin: 8:19

Yeah, we were. We were fucking hanging out. Yeah, we were hanging out with Andy.

Andy: 8:25

I was drinking at the Yacht Club. And there was a bourbon bowl.

Kevin: 8:29

And that's what happens when you're not keeping your eyes on your shit. You end up with a fucking app. On your app in our group thread, you know what I mean? Everybody was like, like, I want to be like, Hey, you could do it. Like, you're so optimistic and positive. And so West Coast man, and then like, Jared fucking over Dude, are you doing like, are you getting ready to like, do a fucking armed robbery after this? Are the lights to brighten your fucking house? Or like well, I mean, dude, can you take off your sunglasses? A minute? What the fuck, man like we're busting balls in the air?

Jared: 8:57

No. Bro. Got in a bar fight last night. I got blackout, so I can't please y

Kevin: 9:02

Oh, lady fucking tuning me out, man.

Steve: 9:04

That's awesome.

Kevin: 9:06

Steve: 9:14

A little bit about the recession thing? I think that's you know, gonna be an interesting conversation. I you know, we've got a pretty interesting list of conversations or podcast topics. We're gonna roll out here as this gets going.

Kevin: 9:26

I mean, what did we do in episode one? I can't. Well, we did episode one guy has become-

Steve: 9:31

Episdeo one, we grenaded because Kevin went for the jugular and fucking course.

Kevin: 9:35

Yeah. Well, I yeah, I mean, and so I'm not going to do that again. I guess because everybody, everybody feels awkward. No plug there.

Andy: 9:45

I think he's just putting a target on your back.

Kevin: 9:47

But I don't I see a lot of guy I see a lot of guys that talk about a lot of guys that talk about their revenue. A lot of guys that do a lot bigger revenue than all four of us. All four of us put together and so but again, somebody doesn't want to put themselves out there. I 100% 100% respect that. But I think the reason I even asked is because every guy in here is accomplished and they're accomplished by the sweat of their brow. And I don't think that you know that I know it's taboo to talk about money and stuff like that. But when you like, build something from the fucking ground up, you know what I mean? Like, I think that's what people are interested in. Nobody gives a shit about you know, if you're making if you're on a what if you are a charter boat captain doing fucking less than $100,000 a year? Or you are a single operator doing a tour? And you're doing under 100 grand a year? Am I wrong that you have a fucking job? You have a job not a company in my opinion with there's nothing wrong with that.

Absolutely. But if you have a job that you can get fired from fucking percent you know, one bed one bed move.

Don't get me wrong, like there's at times I feel that way too. You know, I got I got a landlord. I got a destination based you know, of the hurricane Central. Don't get me wrong, like I could go back to be a charting charter boat captain tomorrow, but I think anybody that's going to tune in and listen to this show, as I talked to, so I'm gonna I'm gonna plug my show awkward watersports, guys. I mean, I've literally talked to and at arrival, I mean, I've talked to hundreds of operators. And there's not a single person that does not want to scale. And the reason you guys should be listening this show this is the fucking hard sell is that every single one of us has done it as Steven. Good. I'm sorry.

No, guys. So what I think is interesting is everybody wants to scale. But nobody really the part I'm super interesting or interested in is, you know, everybody's interested in scaling. And that might mean more tours, more boats, more Jeeps more, whatever. And you've got to figure out your utilization. You got to fit, make sure you're booking all this stuff. But nobody ever really talks about the exit. Nobody ever talks about like, what's the end game? Like? Do you just keep scaling until infinite scale? Do you eventually have in Andy's case handy has 150 boats, but at what point is 150 boats or 200? boats or 500? Boats? At what point is Andy sitting there like, hey, one day, maybe I don't want to do this, maybe this is worth, you know, $100 million, or whatever the magic number is, and I can exit and move on with my life. I know Jared and I have talked about it. Kevin and I have talked about it. It's scale is such an arbitrary question. Because I know a lot of big businesses or big operators that make less money because they've got more payroll, they've got more staff, they got more expensive. And they're bigger, they do big revenue, but they don't make as much money.

Oh, it's definitely diminishing returns. I mean, I made way more money on the first million dollars of revenue than I did in the second and so on. It's it's diminishing returns. So you're right, you do have to have an exit strategy. Or you have to have a reason for wanting to scale. Because again, it's diminishing returns, I want to get big enough that I have a CEO that I have an HR manager that I have all those people that are running it that I don't have to worry about the things that I have to worry about.

And he wants to make enough to cover is ensuing health care costs. I want to

I want to Cuban cigars and those are not cheap. And I also want to put top shelf bourbon like this is not coming down the road. Fucking California

Dude, everything's expensive out there.

While I'm on the scale side, I want to really kick that over to Jared. Jared is operating in a ton of different cities. He's got a few different tour businesses. I mean, if anybody can talk about scale, it's Jared.

Yeah. And I have actually no idea if you guys can hear me. Well, my whole thing is like frozen open. I'm just like, staring at myself moving and I'm like, you guys. And he's got like

Your and your sunglasses. Yeah. wood framed fucking room. I would imagine Andy would be in that. Actually.

I'm back at my parents house. I'm back in the deep woods here. Yeah, so you know, like scale. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I agree with Andy as far as like, you know, hey, you definitely made more money to million than 2 million. And, you know, like, it's tough to scale in like, sometimes when you scale like you decide, I'm gonna scale and I'm gonna just lose even more money like, because you're like, it's gonna take me a while to build that up. I mean, I've gotten to the point where it's like, if anything I like if I'm gonna go open something I'm gonna go do a new city or I'm gonna do something I'm like that doesn't have like a million dollars the bottom line or to the you know, gross revenue I'm like, I even touch it because it just can't move the needle for me it's not worth it you know? I fine tune like what I do but as far as like scale I I'm over scaling like small cities, like I'm only into scaling like big stuff, but you got to you got to start somewhere. And you know, picking and choosing the right cities is like the key to being able to scale if you go my route, whereas if you just keep adding votes, like Andy I mean shit as long as you have the Darkspace you know, I guess you can you can run them it's like just keep buying them keep taking those loans.

Don't be fucking dead space. Really? This is Yeah, can room and if

We can take one more PP Loan. Come on, guys.

Man, where's the payroll?

Like some more PPP money. Come on guys.

Yeah, you know, man-

If I had only known.

Yeah, so and then like to that point though, like, at what point do you like I got a buddy and they gave him like every last penny and he just like just spent it you know what I mean he has this like fucking yes to everything. And so that's like sort of like to your point that if you continue in our industry it's a little different than Jared so we can you can I mean I've only been in business for five years but if there's anybody that's that been in business for more than five years and water sports, you've owned a water trike. You've said yes to Andy, have you ever owned water trikes? Oh god damn, I wish I was a salesman on that fucking guy.

I think I still have spare parts there was the all kinds of shit that broke so off.

My god, who wouldn't? Who doesn't want to get out in the fucking hot sun and take a nice long ride on a water trike? Again, specially when it's time best? Yeah, so. So to that point is like, I think like Steve said, you have to have you have to have some type of goal, maybe not even an exit strategy. Because if you're the young, hopeful entrepreneur and you're starting a business and you're you're running your, your fucking solo goes to her, or you're running your solo Charter Business, or you are I got guys all the time. I got my gym today fucking hit me up. He's like, Man, I really want to get running jet skis. I'm looking good luck with that, man. You know what I mean? As I fucking have a brand new fucking seat you $15,000.30 hours on it to sitting in a parking lot. Getting a fiberglass hole fixed in it and figuring out where like water is the raw waters coming. So you know, the point being is that it's like, yeah, not even necessarily maybe like an exit strategy. But like anything else you want. You need to have what that what this looks like three years out five years out. 10 years out. 15 years out.

Yeah, it's a growth strategy. And also, I think Jared is 100%, right? You need to figure out at what point things matter. And don't matter. Like yeah, am I gonna bust my ass for another, you know, $25,000 worth of revenue? No, it's not worth it. You need something, you have to have that give a shit number. And that's super important in your growth.

Do you guys ever wonder like who you'd sell to like, I mean, I remember like I bought, you know, company before. And I'm always like, Jesus, you keep growing this you're growing like too big for any other operators. But then, you know, I'll come across another operator and be like, yeah, what do you guys you know, you're doing and then I'm like looking and they're like doing like 50 million like on a zipline.

As we come down the line, I've got a client and partner that is going through or has kind of gone through, like what a venture capital private equity investment looks like. And, you know, all of it seems super sexy to have somebody come in and read a huge, huge check for your business. But seeing what he's gone through to get there as I think he would say differently, you know, so he actually didn't take the exit, he didn't take the exit, he kept the business. It just wasn't, it wasn't worth the squeeze to sell the business. But now he's also left with the problem of like Jared just said, who's a buyer of a business that's doing 10 million plus a year?

Your competitor, your larger competitors? The reality of it is is that that's who's gonna be most interested in in what you do. And if you're in if you're the top dog, then yeah, more than likely private equity, private equity that's got the got into watersports and tourism. Our buddies over there was a PE firm that owns some water sports stuff and genmark. And I think that's precisely why they're in our space and why they're at a rival because they're like, yeah, man, we want to be the P company that that's like, the multi company because we're all Mom and Pop almost every single it's all lifestyle. Everybody that's in this business is like didn't really, you know, want to get into it, because they thought they're gonna get rich overnight. Most people got into it, because it seemed like a cool way to make money.

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, and when you say the biggest fish in the pond, I was looking at Andy over there, because I'm pretty familiar with that San Diego market, there isn't a lot of people that are going to be able to come in and buy up Andy because Andy is the biggest fish in the pond.

But Andy, you got kids, right?

I have one daughter that's involved in the business. And then I have two others that are now

Are you ever selling like or the daughter, I have picked that over?

I actually have a couple of employees and my daughter and I would love to just kind of take this as an annuity, let it grow, let it keep going. But I want to get to that next level. Before that happens. I don't want to give them all the headaches that I have, like I'm chief cook and bottle washer, I want a couple of people at my level that we could afford to pay so that they have an easier job.

Quite frankly, you have to you have to have that for anybody to even be interested if you were going to take that buyout because that's like one of the main things that private equity looks in is like can this business exist, or some subsets without the owner. So at any rate, like we're gonna keep this one Short but guarantee that our episodes are not going to be 20 minutes long. We wanted to like all business owners, and operators, we wanted to get the log in the fire. We wanted to get shit rockin and rollin. We're all super busy guys. And we had 20 minutes to jump in. I know Steve is has a meeting that he's going to be that he's got. He's got to get out of here and go do big things and make big deals and, you know, take over his corner of the world. Guys, we really appreciate you tuning in and listen to this first episode.

Jared, Steve, Andy, anybody got any parting thoughts for our listenership? And Jared just disappeared. Like fuck you. I'm out. So Jared unfortunately just dip so we'll say goodbye from Jared and his sunglasses.

Just very excited. That wasn't a great impression. He doesn't sound like that.

Go grab your fucking phone.

That was my timer to say that I have important things to do, or that the actual microphone was too long. I want to say that I'm super excited to hear more from Jared like. I think he has a lot to say. And I'm excited to to hear that.

Let's end it out there.

A little bit more Mike time

I look forward, guys.

Thanks for listening and see you next time.

Keep thanks, guys and I'll see you next time.