Intro

Brian 0:10

Well, welcome back to the Viral Beach podcast. This is Brian.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Nope. We don't have serenames anymore.

The Team

Brian 0:14

We don't have serenames. Okay. Well, you can Okay. Well, you know who I am. I don't know who the lady is sitting next to me, but well, this is part two of our interview here with interview. Like we're we're going to hire you or not, but a part. I hope I get the job. Yes. Our interview with Chris.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

I'm hired. I'm I'm making the call.

Brian 0:31

From the Bureau of Tackle and Water Sports. So during this episode, we're going to talk about the day-to-day, what it's like running the business. First, I want to go ahead and open up. You you were mentioned about your teams, your team members. We were talking about that during part one. How many people are on your team, Chris?

The Day to Day & Challenges That Surface

SPEAKER_02 0:44

So we have about 30 hourly employees. And then we have a anywhere between four to six uh guides that kind of run their own business through us. Yeah. So we have about 35 or so.

Brian 0:56

Tell us a little bit of what it's like to run the business from day to day.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

You never really know what it's going to be like from day to day. So we um yeah, I wake up with a rough agenda, what I'm gonna do, and then I kind of see how the day goes, right? Like um, I'm the main problem solver for the business, and and I try to kind of embrace that. Uh so I look for whatever problem I can get into that day, and and that's where the value is gonna be in the business for our for our customers and for our employees, is if I can solve their problem quickly and efficiently, then then we're all gonna win and give people good vacations.

Brian 1:29

What are some of the problems that kind of surface? Because this is what I this is what I love about this part, is like, you know, we go to restaurants, we go rent boats, and I think this is good to talk about these kind of random, like the randomness of business, because when customers come, you know, we've we've been places where we've had bad experiences before, we've had great experiences, but then we don't really consider all the randomness stuff that can happen. And uh so like what are some of those things?

SPEAKER_02 1:57

So one that happened this last weekend actually was um the tide. The tide came up really high, so it came all the way up to the dune. So we're trying to bring out a hundred chairs and 10 cabanas onto a beach resort, and the tide's coming all the way up to the dune. Wow, and so we have a full hotel trying to get on the beach. I call it beach physics because like I can only do what physics allow. Yeah, right. Like I only have so much beach, right? Right, you're not on a dune, and and I can't get my equipment wet, it's gonna wash away. So it's like, how do we figure out? Like, what are we gonna do? And so we have a you know, four-hour window that we just can only seat maybe 50 of the hundred, and like how do we sort that out and make sure they're happy, the hotel's happy. Um, so that's a few conversations, and usually that happens while I'm off. So I'm at Round Island launching a kayak and talking to those guests and getting calls from the GM, like, hey, how can we make more beach here in the next hour? And like, well, which they're not really like that, but it's kind of it's going in my head. I'm like, man, I don't know how we are how are we gonna make more beach, you know.

Brian 2:57

Um, this is a lot of problems that people have is like, how do we make more beach? Right, right. And it's just weather, right?

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Like um, so yeah, that's a big one, or it's too cold. Like, hey, we don't want to go out, it's too cold. And it's like so like trying to figure out like, okay, do we have blankets? We've had we have hot cocoa maker uh for the winter time for our sightsee to our boat, like you know, because we want to get them to say yes also, and how can we make it comfortable and fun? So it's a bit of those problem solvings. It's mostly weather, but it's smart, yeah. Yeah, we we occasionally get this too where like, oh, boat's gonna be late coming back, but then there's a reservation set to go out. How do we work that out? How do we talk to that guest? You know, what do what do we talk about? Yeah, so you never really know though, yeah.

Brian 3:38

That is interesting. Like that's a lot of the stuff that you just don't have control over. You're like, hey, we gotta pivot. How do we how do we flow with this? I mean, it's out of our hands. I never would have thought about making more beach or about even like the cold weather, like how that's a good thing.

Available Services

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Yeah, I didn't think about that either. Yeah, so well, it's funny too, because we'll get like cold weather days are kind of rough because like most local if you've been here through a summer, your cold weather tolerance just is not there, right? Yeah, because it's so hot, you know, so you balance it out. But we're always gonna get somebody from a cold weather state that is gonna want to go. So our you know, yeah. So we still have to pay an employee to be out there because somebody's gonna want to go, but the the revenue is just not really there anymore. So, how do we make that all kind of work too? And it's an interesting uh dynamic.

Brian 4:19

All right, so you offer many ways to get out on the water. Can you tell us a little bit about some of those services that you offer?

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Yeah, so one of my favorite ones is our tiki boat. I love that.

Brian 4:29

Now we saw the tiki boat, we have not been on it yet, but I've seen some of your your reels about it and stuff. I'm like, that looks like a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

You gotta get on it. It's fantastic. Uh so I custom built that boat. Uh it was uh yeah, it was a tour boat in Little Stump Pine on the West Coast, and I bought it, stripped it down to the deck. Um, it's made all locally, so the aluminum is made in Fort Pierce. Uh, I designed it and um Noah's Ark and uh uh at a boat yard in Fort Pierce built it. Uh the bar top, so it has a um a big surfboard bar in the middle of it, and it's uh Florida Cypress and mahogany. But the guy that did the bars at Walking Tree Brewery did the bar top for it. Oh, so it's all kind of local. Yeah, it's so pretty. It came out so well. And Captain Bob runs it. Uh, he decorated it. I'm not gonna decorate it. So I handed that off to him. He did a wonderful job on it, and he loves um, he's got a system for and a song for every kind of thing. Like you see a dolphin, he's got a song. When you're coming back, he's got a song. I don't want to say what it is. But it's just so well thought out, and and he loves it and um does such a good job of it. It's so fun. So you're gonna see dolphin, it's private. You can take kids and family, you'll you know, do whatever you like, whatever you guys want to see or do if you just it's a bachelorette party or if it's a bunch of kids just want to see dolphins, that is totally okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Okay, so we rent the whole thing. I see. Okay, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

It's so it's a private trip, and and it's just whatever you guys want to do. So, you know, if you want to listen to you know Disney songs the whole time and have kids on it, that's fine. If you guys want to just dance, that's fine. That is cool.

Brian 6:00

How many people fit on the the tiki bar? You can do six people on six people on wow, okay. I've already got ideas going through my head, so we even do tiki okay on it too.

SPEAKER_02 6:10

We have a karaoke we call tea tiki ok.

Brian 6:13

No, uh okay. So you have paddling, boat tours, wildlife experiences, some of the things I was reading on your website. Tell us a little bit about those as well.

River Wildlife

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Yeah, so like paddleboard and kayaks. So we launch right there at Riverside Cafe, and you can go and see dolphins really easily through the city marina. And once you get north of that, too, it's really pretty. It's just mangrove and little trails, it's really cool. And then we also do Round Island um paddleboard and kayaks, so you can get in the middle of that. It's really known for manatee, things like that. Uh uh, and it's just just really pristine area. Once you launch, you just feel like you're in the middle of nature, it's just so so quick and so easy and achievable to do. It's so cool. But it is the exploration, um, like you said, too, in the river is phenomenal. There's so many little trails and places to go. It is very much kind of like being in the woods or a forest, and there's these wonderful trail systems, and and you know, I think of kayaking and paddleboarding here are more like hiking, then you're just gonna take these really cool little mangrove trails, and and you can do the same hiking trail a couple of times, and it's wonderful. And you never know what you're gonna see. Yeah, dolphin, manatee, eagle ray. Yeah, you know, there's actually three things that we'll commonly see on a guided tour that if I didn't see the guests looking, I won't mention it. So that's one of them, right? If you didn't see it, if you if I didn't see anybody looking, yeah, you're not I'm just gonna bring it up and they're gonna feel like they've missed out. Yeah, and they kind of did, but I don't want to bring it up if they didn't see it. Um, you also such a good point. So I just kind of like uh did nobody okay, cool. Moving on. Like, let's go find a dolphin. Um, because that's easy to see.

SPEAKER_03 7:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

Um, and then they're like more consistent. Um, to that, uh the Eagle Rays one, um, we do see green sea turtles in the river occasionally, and that's a little head'll pop up and then go back down. But if you didn't see it, um we occasionally get spinner sharks. Uh little like we see the beach, little juveniles, they'll jump and spin and then drop back down, but it's very brief.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

It's so fast. I know. Yeah, so that is hilarious that you say that because we have now had that experience both with sea turtles and with spinner sharks, where we'll be on the beach, and I'm like, there it is. Do you see it? Like with Brian and with the first time we ever saw spinner sharks, I thought I was going crazy. We're on the beach. I keep seeing something in the corner of my eye. So finally, I'm like, stop. We just stood there for 10 minutes and I was just and then I see the spinner shark. I'm like, did you see it? He's like, No, I'm like, there's something jumping down the wall.

Brian 8:35

Yeah, I felt like I was missing out the entire day. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

So I'm gonna take your uh a page from your book and not point it out if I see that.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

Yeah, it just frustrates him. Yeah, yeah, which is funny though, but it's you got that moment though. That's the cool part.

Brian 8:47

That's right. Yeah, and she rubbed it right in my face. Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

You missed it all day. No, I really wanted him to see it because once I found out it was spinner sharks, that is just cool.

Fire Ants on the Water

Brian 8:57

Like, and then it was like it was that's exactly the way it went down. And then it was like, just keep watching right there. And then I'd watch her for like 10 minutes, and then as soon as I would turn my head, she'd be like oh, you just missed it. Like, okay, it's like your cat with the phone, right? As soon as you record them, they're gonna look the other way, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:11

Like, that's the same thing. That's right. Yeah.

Brian 9:12

So have you ever okay? So we when we were at Round Island and we walked the trail, we walked down there to the end, like where you had like little uh lookout area over the water. My son pointed out, he's like, I have never seen this, but I've heard about it. And you probably could speak this, but it looked like there was fire ants all on top of the water.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

Yeah, they do float, yeah. They can create rafts for themselves. I'm not as an expert on that, but I have seen that where they they can float and move around and that was interesting.

Paddleboarding

Brian 9:40

There was like a bunch of eggs, and they were like all moving this huge thing of eggs. And he's like, Yeah, he's like, if you would swim into that, he's like, it would be really bad. I'm like, fire ants on the water. That was interesting, but they're on each the dock area, they weren't like out in the middle, but yeah, so well they have Florida floods pretty consistently, too, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:57

Or like heavy rains where they're gonna kind of have to move a bit, you know. That's part of the Florida life.

Brian 10:04

So paddle boarding, we've not done that yet. And uh, is that something like if someone says, Hey, we want to do paddleboarding, do you guys do training beforehand? Like, how does how does that all work?

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Yeah, and actually, that's a really good question. That's a core part of how we founded uh all the things that I started with. Is uh I took a paddleboard lesson the first time I did it, and so I picked it up pretty quick, being kind of a waterman, anyways. And then I took some friends um paddleboarding and they we rented and they were just like, Okay, bring our stuff back in two hours, bye. And my friends didn't do a good job of it at all. Like, it's not paddleboarding isn't as intuitive as say a kayak, right? Like, if I put somebody in a kayak, they're just gonna figure it out. They're they're not gonna be amazing at it, but they're gonna be okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

You can get around, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

Right. Paddleboard, you're gonna kind of struggle unless you learn some of the fundamentals, and it's not intuitive. So you at least need to know a few of the little things. So, and I knew my friends are like, oh my god, these people, I know they're gonna love this, but they're not because it was a really windy day. They let us go out with no instruction, and I'm like trying to teach what little I knew. I'm like, oh wow, this is a there's a huge gap in this industry. It's like this is kind of a problem. Uh, I think more people would like it had they had better instruction. So that's when I started doing lessons and things. Um, and I actually kind of forgot your question though.

Brian 11:09

No, no, it happens, I know. So you must be you must be over 40. Are you over 40? Yeah, okay. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, yeah. I'm 47 too, Chris. So yeah, I totally get it. It's uh we can totally relate. Right, right. What were we talking about? Yeah, where was I going with that? No, I was asking about like, did you guys do like training like people that are new?

SPEAKER_02 11:26

Yeah, so yeah, that is our core fundamental, is like giving a less, particularly paddle board, but it's with everything, right? For if they need lessons on the boat or if they need it with, you know, whatever it might be we're doing, right? Fishing charters, we're gonna give lessons with that in the shop, how to hook a shrimp. Like, you need any questions with any of that stuff, come in. That's that's that's cool. Core, you know, teaching is we want to create people that are doing it more. Um, it was actually with paddles uh by the seas, what I started originally. Um, the core fundamental of the company was to get people to the to enjoy paddle sports so much that they went and bought their own, which sounds counterintuitive for business, right? Like I'm actually handing my customers off to a retail store to buy something and not ever come back to me. But they always brought their friends who were like, hey, I just went and bought a paddleboard because I love it so much now. Now I'm gonna get all my friends to go get this lesson and go through the same journey. And so you kind of create it seems counterintuitive, but it really was worked out well to make new paddlers, you know.

Where To Start?

SPEAKER_00 12:19

I love that philosophy. And to me, I don't know exactly how to put this into words, but I think about stuff like this a lot. Like if you look at basically anything and you hold on to it so tightly that you try to control it and you try to like in your case, like if you were like, no, I'm keeping these customers and I'm never letting them go, then you strangle them and then they can't paddle board anymore. But if you have like a generosity of spirit, I guess is what it would be, then it it always just continues to multiply because then, like you said, you're like opening up the door to more people to fall in love with it. So it's just in general, such a smart thing to realize like you can't control everything anyway. And if you try to, it never goes the way you want it to.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

Yeah, you know, just embrace it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Yeah, I love that that's it.

Brian 13:09

Okay, so I want to ask you this for people who's never really experienced water sports before, uh, you know, any of this, where would you suggest they begin?

SPEAKER_02 13:18

So if you're new to the area and you're into fishing, definitely take a fishing charter. Get to know the waters. You're gonna have a one-on-one with a local guide that can tell you what bait to use, what locations, you know, am I trying to fish at the mangroves, incoming tides, whatever it might be, right? They're gonna give you the good, intimate local knowledge because it's different everywhere, right?

SPEAKER_03 13:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

So if you're new to the area and into fishing, just take a fishing charter. You know, you're gonna you're gonna get a crash quick course and and you're gonna know all the things you need to know. Um, and same too, like uh uh boat tours, really good way to get to know the waterway, or rent a boat and then just go explore on your own, or take a guided kayak tour. And so we're gonna give you local knowledge. Um, our guided kayak tours are generally um dad jokes and history until we find dolphins.

Brian 14:02

That's awesome. I'm gonna love that.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

Yeah, that's like that's made for me. Yeah, it's like the coal, like just do those things and everything. The two hours are gonna go by super fast, and you're gonna all have a good time, you know. Even the guide.

SPEAKER_03 14:13

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Right. That's fun. So, do you do um fishing charters on the sea and in the lagoon?

Surprises on the Water

SPEAKER_02 14:20

Just a lagoon. Okay. Uh, we when we leave from our location, so you just go right to the tackle shop and we we pick up right behind there. So it makes it, you're not trying to find somebody at a park or you know, anything like that. Like it's you know right where to go. Um that's perfect. Yeah, and we get all our bait there, and we take care of all our guides. They always have bait and all that and whatever gear they might need.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Yeah, yeah. Awesome. What is something that you find people are surprised about once they get out there on the water? Is there anything that comes to mind?

SPEAKER_02 14:46

Two things. Dolphin, that that they're even there, and then the numbers they are, and then the other one that we find a lot, even with kayak and paddleboard and boat rentals, is how shallow it is. Yeah, it's looks really deep and it's shallow.

How Do You Like to Enjoy the Lagoon

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Yes. The best advice your team gave us was stay between those. I forgot what they're green and red, yeah. Be very careful if you go off that. And we did try once on one of the little side things. We're like, that looks deep over there. No. What is your personal favorite way to enjoy the lagoon?

A Perfect Moment

How Goes Through Your Mind

SPEAKER_02 15:18

That's a good question. Honestly, I like all of the things we do because and we do these all all the things that you guys or we offer, I do with my own family, right? So when I have people come in, we take out a boat rental, or I'll get on the tiki boat, or we'll do kayak tour with you know friends or family. So I'm commonly doing all the things. Yeah. One of my favorite parts of my day, though, in general, is I'll pop in to fuel up a rental boat before we open. So I'll make it a point to just show up and I'll have my coffee. And it's like there's just a beautiful moment in the day. It's eight o'clock in the morning. I have my coffee, I get to go to the fuel dock, nobody's around, and I just get a nice little boat ride. So that's cool. Yeah. So it's just creating those little moments within the business that the guests get to experience also. But you know, you get to kind of help the business and get it to enjoy them all sometimes.

Brian 16:05

That's awesome. Uh, okay, so this is this has been so good, Chris. Uh, learning more about the behind the scenes. So I want to ask you this question as we wrap up this episode. As you're talking about, you know, being able to one of your favorite things is getting up in the morning and and just kind of enjoying that moment, like you get to do this. Um, so my question is when you're out, and when you're out and you see the other people that are coming in, your customers and stuff, and that they're connecting with nature and wildlife and and enjoying time together out on the lagoon, what goes through your mind?

SPEAKER_02 16:35

That I'm lucky that I get to do this, honestly. But that I get to make a living giving people a good vacation is just the coolest feeling. It's fun to see.

Brian 16:44

Okay, well, I'm excited to get into part three. We're gonna talk about Vero Beach, what you love about it, and about the community. So, with that, if you guys have enjoyed this episode, make sure you click that subscribe button and see on the water neighbor.