| Speaker 1: |
You are listening to Love Maine Radio hosted by Dr. Lisa Belisle, and recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland. Dr. Lisa Belisle is a writer and physician who practices family medicine, and acupuncture in Brunswick, Maine. Show summaries are available at lovemaineradio.com. Here are some highlights from this week’s program.
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| Ben: |
They run into some of the challenges that boat ownership has, and we try to just make that a smoother process.
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| Shana: |
I call it Mainerize. I always think. I look at all this fashion stuff and I’m like, “Well, would that work in Maine? I don’t know.”
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| Lisa: |
This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you’re listening to Love Maine Radio, show number 235, Coastal Creativity, airing for the first time on Sunday March 20th 2016. Maine appeals to a broad range of people, in part because of its beautiful coast. More than simply coming here for recreation, many people find creative ways to make a living with the water as inspiration. Today we speak with entrepreneurs Ben Davis, founder of True Course Yachting, and Shana Ready, designer and founder of The Ropes. Thank you for joining us.
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| Speaker 1: |
Love Maine Radio is brought you by Apothecary By Design. There was a time when the Apothecary was a place where you get could safe, reliable medicines prepared by experienced professionals with the focus on you and your unique health concerns. Apothecary by Design is built around the forgotten notion that you don’t just need your prescriptions filled, you need attention, advice, and individual care. Visit their website apothecarybydesign.com or drop by the store at 84 Marginal Way in Portland, and experience pharmacy care the way that it’s meant to be.
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Experience chef and owner Harding Lee Smith’s newest hit restaurant Boone’s Fish House and Oyster Room. Maine’s seafood at its finest. Joining sister restaurants, The Front Room, The Grill Room, and the Corner Room, this newly renovated 2-story restaurant at 86 Commercial Street on Custom House Wharf, overlooks scenic Portland Harbor. Watch lobstermen bring in the daily catch as you enjoy baked stuffed lobster, raw bar, and wood fired flatbread. For more information visit www.theroomsportland.com.
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| Lisa: |
Having recently brought a boat into my own family I am quite excited to talk to this next individual who apparently has had boats in his life his entire existence which I’m a little jealous of. This is Benjamin Davis. He founded True Course Yachting in 2012. A generational captain, Ben grew up working for his family’s charter sailing business. Immersed in the yachting world, Ben developed a strong affiliation and devout passion for the marine industry. His natural seamanship and leadership abilities have led to many opportunities to manage and captain boats all over the world, from the eastern seaboard to Hawaii and Central America. Headquartered in Yarmouth along the Royal River with a new branch office operating in Downtown Camden, True Course Yachting has experienced rapid growth since its founding in 2012. Thanks so much for coming in today.
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| Ben: |
Thanks Lisa, thanks for having me.
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| Lisa: |
So your new office is really new. It’s within the last month or so.
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| Ben: |
It is last couple of weeks. We just had our big opening event with all of our industry partners up in Camden just a few weeks ago.
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| Lisa: |
What that tells me is you guys must be doing okay.
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| Ben: |
Yeah, we’re doing all right. We’ve got a growing team. We’ve got 10 people on our team right now and looking forward to starting the hiring program up in the mid coast and bringing some more captains and crew onto our roster.
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| Lisa: |
True Cruise Yachting does what you call comprehensive management offering, which are port captain delivery and concierge services. For somebody who’s not in the yachting or boating world what does that mean?
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| Ben: |
What that means is basically what we’re doing is providing concierge yacht management services for the people who own boats under 100 feet, primarily owner operated, they don’t want to rely fully on professional captains and crew. We provide the support for them to fall back on for all the things that they don’t necessarily want to deal with on the day to day. They’re typically busy folks who want to enjoy their boat but might not necessarily have the time to do all the other kind of fringe stuff that we focus on.
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| Lisa: |
Last summer when we were trying to get our boat out of the water quickly we have a little pursuit. It’s by no means a yacht, not even close to 100 feet, but we knew there was possibly a hurricane coming and we called you up and we said, “Hey, can you help us out?” You absolutely did. You managed to get it up out of the water, taken care of. We didn’t have to worry about it. It sounds like you do everything from actually offering captains for people’s larger vessels to the types of services that we enjoyed.
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| Ben: |
We do a lot of project management like that, a lot of support. We lean on the boat yards and the boat brokers and other professionals in our industry to do a lot of the hands on service stuff and we kind of act as a coordinator for all of that. Luckily that circumstance ended up pretty well. We got your boat out and safe.
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| Lisa: |
I think this is important because although there are people who are like you and families that have been boating for many years, there are also people like me who may have lived in Maine for the entirety of her life and still never owned a boat.
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| Ben: |
Sure. Yeah, exactly. We see that a lot and we see a lot of folks who may have done a lot of boating when they were younger and then they have moved away, away from the ocean, and they didn’t have that experience sort of in the middle of their life and now they’re having the opportunity later in life to come back and kind of rediscover boating, how it used to be. Typically, when that happens they run into some of the challenges that boat ownership has and we try to just make that a smoother process.
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| Lisa: |
For you, you are involved with your family’s charter sailing business and you’ve been associated with the marine industry it sounds like your whole life. What was the path that you took to get to the place where you actually own your own business that now has a satellite office?
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| Ben: |
Sure. Kahuna Catamarans was the name of my family’s business in Florida. Worked for the family business there and after that made a bit of a jump out to Hawaii where I worked for Trilogy Excursions, who I actually have come full circle and are working with again in a project management capacity which is really fun. Got some great experience there. Got called back to Maine about 4 years ago, 5 years ago when I started working for the Biddeford Pool Yacht Club. In my last full season there I started True Course, and that was almost 4 years ago now.
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That was the path that really helped me progress from charted captain to the private yacht world, and then following that into starting this business. It’s the business and building the team that I really have really found my niche I think and I’m really enjoying so far.
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| Lisa: |
When you were working as a captain you must have also worked with individual teams on some of the larger vessels I would imagine.
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| Ben: |
Absolutely. Yeah, whether it was private yacht stuff out of Newport, Rhode Island and yacht racing which I did there or some of the larger charter company stuff, which would be Trilogy in Maui, they did have pretty large teams and got an opportunity to manage 1-on-1 and kind of develop those skills.
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| Lisa: |
Not everyone feels drawn to manage or lead or organize other people, because it’s one thing to manage yourself, it’s another thing to look at all the different moving pieces and people and try to get everything to work. What is it about that that appeals to you?
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| Ben: |
I don’t even know if that really appeals. Just it’s what I feel like I should be doing. It’s very natural. I’m pretty confident with what my strengths are and I like to fill in those other holes with people that are better than I am. So building those teams and filling those gaps in the places that we need them in different parts of the business is something that I really enjoy and that I’m really drawn to.
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| Lisa: |
One thing I’ve noticed about the marine world is that it seems that people know each other, it seems like you can talk to somebody and they’ll be like, “Oh, I knew this person when I was over in Italy,” or, “I was around the world.” It just seems like it kind of, it makes the world seem like a much smaller place.
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| Ben: |
It sure is. It is. It is a very small community. Relationships are everything in our business, in our industry. That’s one of the things that I love about it. You can’t go anywhere in the world and run into an old friend or at least one degree of separation. That’s one of the big draws for sure.
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| Lisa: |
What are some of your favorite stories about captaining or about some of the things that you’ve done since you stopped doing that?
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| Ben: |
Well, I wouldn’t stay stopped because there’s always the opportunity. Just a few weeks ago, I got back from a trip bringing a boat from North Carolina to Florida for Bruckmann Yachts and I’m back down in Palm Beach this weekend working with Bruckmann again. So there’s definitely lots of opportunity there which leads to a pretty fun lifestyle at times. But some of the best stories definitely come from our customers where we’ve had opportunities to both teach and support folks to be able to do things with their boats that they necessarily wouldn’t have done before.
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I mentioned Trilogy Excursions before. We just started a project with them, partnering with Gold Coast Catamarans in St. Croix, which is great because I’ve been away from Trilogy for some time now, but because Gold Coast is an east coast based in the Caribbean, they’re calling on us to use some of our project management team to help them build a new sailing catamaran for Maui, Hawaii. That’s a pretty cool story of keeping those relationships and everything coming full circle again.
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| Lisa: |
Is there a difference between yachting or sailing in places like Hawaii, the Caribbean, and places like Maine?
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| Ben: |
Yeah, fundamentally it’s all the same, but their local knowledge is a big deal, and also the different sailing cultures are very, very different. New England is historically one of the best places to sail in the world. We definitely like to think that it also has some of the best boat builders and craftsmen here specifically in Maine. That’s why we’re here. That’s a big reason. It’s got a really deep sailing culture and then the environment is just fantastic. There are lots of places to go. In my experience being in the Pacific and then over here in the Atlantic it’s the best place to be hands down.
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| Lisa: |
Why? Why is it the best place to sail?
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| Ben: |
Well, one, you’ve got some of the best boat builders, so you have the opportunity to sail some of the nicest boats in the world, which is fantastic. But then it’s also the environment, the islands, and the season. We’re coming into the spring season now. It’s all very exciting. You can feel the energy of the boat yacht starting to get busy and the shrink wrap starting to come off the boats and all that. I think everyone, even if you’re not within the industry, I think people feel that. They drive down the road and they can see a little more action going on on the waterfront. It’s really a culture around here.
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| Lisa: |
So for someone who is just wanting to either get back into boating or get into it for the first time what are some of the things that you talk about with them?
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| Ben: |
Well, pairing the right boat with what they want to do and how they want to get back into boating is probably fundamentally the most important thing. For that we lean on some of our brokerage industry partners and people who sell the boats who are much better at finding that pair than we are. We work with East Coast Yacht Sales a lot here in Maine and in all over New England. Those guys are real professionals at finding that right pairing, because if you’re not matched with the proper boat it’s really tough to find that right blend. But then once they get put in the right boat, that’s where we come in. The experience of having the confidence on board and going to the right places and really being comfortable in and around the boat with their family is kind of what we excel at, building that confidence.
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| Lisa: |
I’m thinking about when we first got our boat, and having not had a boat before, just actually getting the boat into the dock, just making sure that we didn’t crash into the dock, and it’s surprisingly more difficult than you might think.
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| Ben: |
It sure is. Yeah, we do a lot of 1-on-1 coaching with folks when they build a new boat, because boats nowadays are pretty complex. There’s a lot of systems. There’s electronics. There’s a lot going on. We kind of start there so people are familiar with all the components and systems of the boat. Then we go onto the boat handling. I work with a lot of families about how you communicate on board, which is very important. It can be kind of a stressful thing every once in a while, so that’s a big deal. It’s really a pretty comprehensive how-to when we start working with the people on board.
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| Lisa: |
Yeah, that’s actually an interesting point because I remember one situation. We have 6 kids in our family between the 2 of us, and 5 of them are in college, 1 of them is in high school, so they’re all fairly old. But having never had a family boat together, just knowing how to say, “Put that over there and put the bumper or pull this in.” That can get surprisingly challenging if you’re in a place where maybe the wind is high or the tide is strange. It’s hard.
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| Ben: |
Yeah, the stress level goes up a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. For some reason everyone’s communication changes from being in the kitchen together to being on the boat. The blood pressure goes up a little bit. We try to minimize that and make everyone really comfortable so that they can have a good time when they’re boating, it’s not a stressful event.
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| Lisa: |
What I really enjoy about getting out in the water is just the opportunity to see the world in a completely different way, to see islands that I’ve known, maybe like I’ve seen them out from the mainland or maybe I’ve driven over a bridge to them. But when you see them from the water, they just, there’s something really unique about them, and it really reminds you of just how vast this body of water that surrounds us is.
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| Ben: |
That’s one of my favorite parts about being here, especially in Casco Bay because you can spend a lifetime exploring and you can rediscover it every season. It’s really another great reason to bring your boats here and to explore Maine.
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| Lisa: |
What are some of your favorite places to go within Maine?
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| Ben: |
Casco Bay again is fantastic, Penobscot Bay, really looking forward to the summer having the new location in Camden to be able to explore Penobscot Bay, again, because there are so many great little seaside towns and villages to bring the boats in, and the communities up there are so welcoming to transient boaters that I’m really looking forward to exploring Penobscot Bay more this season.
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| Lisa: |
What about other parts of the world? What are some of your favorite places?
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| Ben: |
Oh sure, well, the Bahamas is great. We’re in the Bahamas quite a bit in places like the Abacos Marsh Harbor. We’ve got some really great clients of ours that spend the winter in George Town. We’re fortunate enough to go there. I’ll be in St. Croix a bunch starting next month working with Gold Coast Yachts. I’ve never been there so looking forward to exploring there a little bit. Then of course there are lots of places to go in the Pacific.
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| Lisa: |
For people who are like you interested in doing something within this industry but maybe haven’t … It doesn’t seem like there’s a particular map, like how to start an organization like True Course Yachting. It doesn’t seem like there’s a college course on how to do this or a business school course. It seems like there’s a lot of figuring it out. What advice would you give them?
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| Ben: |
A lot of making mistakes, pivoting from those. I think if there’s anyone out there that wants to get into the marine industry and is young and is willing to work really hard, they should come talk to me. I hope my email is on this. They can shoot me an email and we’ll get together for coffee or something. But the biggest thing is start building relationships and get outside of your zone, of your boat yard and go meet people, because as you said before, it’s a small community, the more people you meet the better you’re going to do. I think that would probably be my best piece of advice, is just to get out and meet the characters, meet the personalities, and start making a little bit of a name for yourself.
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| Lisa: |
What did your childhood look like? Why did you … Do you think when you were a kid, did you ever see yourself doing this at this age?
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| Ben: |
I don’t think I would see myself doing this, but now looking back I can see how it all happened. My parents are a huge influence in what I’ve done. My dad’s probably got one of the best attitudes out there. He’s the most positive guy I know. My mom’s got this work ethic that’s pretty unbelievable. You combine those and that I guess makes for a halfway decent entrepreneur. That’s kind of how I ended up here.
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| Lisa: |
Is there anything about being an entrepreneur that you found challenging or intimidating?
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| Ben: |
Oh it’s challenging every day but that’s probably the best part, the not being afraid of not having a day off for a really long time or maybe ever. You’re always kind of on. Yeah, there’s lots of stuff intimidating, there’s lots of scary stuff, but I think that’s why we do it. That’s what I love about it, the challenge.
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| Lisa: |
What are some things that you have found particularly intimidating?
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| Ben: |
Well, it’s a lot of diving in headfirst when you’re not quite sure if it’s going to work out or not. A lot of the times it doesn’t, but those times that it does it makes it all sort of worth it. Then also the people factor is everything, so building those relationships and figuring out how you can bring the most value to folks the easiest way possible has been really challenging for me.
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That’s not just customers. That’s mainly my team. We’ve got an incredible group of people at True Course that I’m really fortunate to be able to work with every day. My journey and getting to know them and what gets them up in the morning and setting up a path for them that they want to go down is both hard and the most rewarding thing.
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| Lisa: |
Where would you like to see yourself in 5 or 10 years?
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| Ben: |
Hopefully we keep growing like this. We’d love to have True Course offices down the coast in Boston, and Naples, and Charleston, and all over the place. We’ve got pretty high goals but I think we’re on the path.
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| Lisa: |
Is there anything else that you think that people would like to know about True Course Yachting as they’re possibly considering, “Hmm, maybe I’d like to hire Ben Davis?”
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| Ben: |
Luckily we’ve got such a depth of knowledge with the people that we’re working with that we can really customize any program. Everyone has different needs when it comes to how they want to use their boat. I would just encourage anyone please reach out to me, reach out to me directly so we can talk about it. That’s the best first step. Whether it’s not getting enough time on your boat and how do we maximize that time that you do have or there’s some more challenges if you don’t feel like you’re using your boat well enough or maybe you don’t know what kind of boat you should have, let’s talk about it. I think that so far our track records show that we can adapt.
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| Lisa: |
What is the website for True Course Yachting?
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| Ben: |
It is www.truecourseyachting.com.
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| Lisa: |
I’m assuming on that website they will have access to your phone number and your email address.
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| Ben: |
The whole thing, yeah. Our Facebook page is pretty active. We’re working pretty hard on that. You can find us, absolutely.
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| Lisa: |
Well, I must say that I’ve really enjoyed working with your sister Emily, who is the social media online editor for Maine Magazine, Love Maine Radio, and people at 75 Market Street. If this is a family work ethic that you’re describing, then I certainly also see it in her. If you are as hardworking and as intelligent and as intuitive as I’ve seen Emily to be, then I have no question that you will be just as successful as you are hoping to be in the next 5 or 10 years.
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| Ben: |
Thank you very much. She coaches me along.
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| Lisa: |
We’ve been speaking with Ben Davis, who is the founder of True Course Yachting, a company that he began in 2012 which now has offices Yarmouth and Camden. Please take the time to go find out more about his organization. Ben, it’s been really great to have you here and I wish you all the best in your endeavors.
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| Ben: |
Thank you Lisa. Thanks for having me.
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