Bob Denison’s Insider Guide to Navigating the Yacht Brokerage Industry and Achieving Your Dreams

However it might look from the outside, there’s more to superyacht sales than signing huge checks and popping champagne. In short, there’s a lot more nitty gritty.

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The President of Denison Yacht Sales, Bob Denison, is a case in point of said nitty gritty, having grown up in a boatyard and spending his formative years sweeping up screws and nails from the shipyard floor. Bob gets us up to speed on how to enter superyacht brokerage – and why more diversity is needed now more than ever – the role of crypto within the industry, and gives plenty of time and attention to why we need to just “pick up the phone” and stop hiding behind our emails.

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Podcast Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Shipshape Podcast, a series of podcasts where we meet amazing people and talk about their experiences, personal, technical, and all related to the maritime world. Come and dive in.

Merrill: Today on the Shipshape podcast, we have Bob Denison, President of Denison Yachts Sales. Your two hosts today are Merrill Charette, I’m a live aboard on a Toshiba 36 in Boston, Massachusetts, and Talha.

Talha: Hey guys, welcome to the Shipshape Podcast. This is Talha, and we have Merrill and we have Bob Denison with us, and I am aboard my 40-foot power boat in Virginia, and it’s not as cold as Boston. Bob, where are you joining us from?

Bob: I’m here in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where it’s the kind of weather that would make both of you guys just sort of hate your lives a little bit because it’s perfect. The skies are blue, it’s like 60 degrees and yeah, it’s just one of those days you’re really happy that you live in a town like this.

Talha: Nice. All right. That’s the place to be. I know a couple of friends who escaped winter probably. Yeah, somewhere in your neighborhood. I don’t know if they’re on boats, but you know, they’re also live aboard. So yeah. Thank you for joining us on the show, man. It’s going to be fun.

Bob: Yeah, for sure.

Merrill: So Bob, you come from a legacy of being in the boating industry. Did you grow up on boats? And what type of boats did you actually grow up boating on?

Bob: So we grew up mostly at the shipyard. My grandparents, and then my uncles and my own parents built boats starting in the forties, obviously way before I was around. So my earliest memories are in Fort Lauderdale, Danny Beach, and up in Saugatuck, Michigan, where our family had yacht building plan. Oh, broad Marine. But I spent a hell of a lot more time sort of like sweeping up screws and aluminum shavings and stuff like that more than I was on yachts. I was sort of in and around them. We did have a 46 foot Broward Sport Fish that was a wood boat. That boat was called the Angler, and we were on that boat quite a bit. But yeah, I was more in the shipyard, less on the yachts.

Talha: That’s cool. And this is like way back because it was a wooden boat. So what year are we talking? 80s?

Bob: So I was born in the late seventies. By that point Broward had gone away from wood boat building and they switched to aluminum in the seventies. So all the Broward that were built around the time that I was at the yard were built out of aluminum.

Talha: Nice. And do you have any sort of fond memories from back then a day on the ocean that like, brought you back? Or was this like, way down the line, you coming back to the family business completely unconnected?

Bob: Yeah, so I don’t think I have ever really skipped a beaten my life or career where I wasn’t somehow involved in the industry. I mean, about the earliest age, so like around the boatyard, anybody that grew up in a family business sort of environment might relate to the fact that we would spend our Saturdays just at the shop sweeping and doing random things. We would celebrate birthdays and my dad would invite all of our friends out on like a quick boat trip, and then when we get back for our birthday, he would have us clean up crap around the yard as a pretty good example of that. So that was a lot of like, yeah I’m in the yachting industry, but it’s not as cool as you probably think it is kind of stuff. But it was a growing up that I wouldn’t trade for the world, especially now that that’s what of course do for a living. And it offered a really neat perspective, not only on the like cool part of the yachting thing and the being on a yacht’s awesome, but also just the people that helped build the boats. And that’s really what our industry I think needs to do a better job of is less, Beyoncé cracking a bottle of champagne in the me somewhere with whoever the cool pretty people are. But the people that built that boat really is what makes our industry what it is. And all that stuff, the economic impact of it. So for me, even now, when I look out at a yacht, it’s hard not to just see the people behind it that make that thing possible.

Merrill: Yeah, it’s certainly interesting perspective. We’ve heard that from several of the people that we’ve interviewed in the past where you look at a yacht and you just realize all of the components and people that were involved in actually creating it. I’m sure you see like the end of it where people are enjoying it and popping some champagne, but the amount of work that goes into one of these yachts is quite fascinating.

Bob: Yeah for sure. It’s a really important part of it. And again, I think it’s our fault as an industry for not ringing that bell a little bit louder, but if you Google yacht photos or something like that, there’s a lot of like TMZ stuff that’ll come up and it’s salacious and it’s fun and it’s cool to see you. Leonardo DiCaprio hanging out with whoever his new girlfriend is and a bikini and it’s just, all that stuff is sort of like clickbait ish stuff. But the reality is that boat that he’s on, not only when it was being built, but as it’s being maintained is really about a hell of a lot more than Leonardo DiCaprio’s new girlfriend. It’s about thousands and thousands and thousands of people and families that came together to make that thing possible.

Talha: And how are you seeing things change? So you’ve been doing this now for decades. You know how sort of technology stepped in every time and changed things up a bit.

Bob: I think technology, just like in any industry, technology as it makes life easier for the people using and having fun with the thing. In this case, it’s a boat yacht, the better that thing becomes. And I think in our industry safety and just accessibility are the two big things. So I think a lot of people don’t get into yachting because they’re a little intimidated. Like, how do I time that weird line? I can’t remember. And I’m going to look like a jackass. If I’m pulling into the marina or like a restaurant and everybody’s looking at me, my palms look, get sweaty. I don’t want to deal with that. And you’re just sort of embarrassed because there’s a lot of that like unknown, unknown. And I think on the technology side, it’s going to be, and it has become way easier to operate a boat. And even just like the comfortability part of it, there’s a lot of people that want to be on a boat, but they get seasick. They’re sort of embarrassed by that. Things like stabilization make being on a boat just way more fun. So I think technology’s going to continue to make it a lot more accessible. And I have we have four little kids, and I really believe this when they’re in high school, they’re going to be able to take their girlfriend or boyfriend out on a date. Press a button and the thing will dock itself which again opens up this boating experience to a lot more people that don’t want to be scared of that kind of scenario.

Talha: What about the flip side because like for example, nowadays everybody’s afraid that, oh, AI is going to steal all the jobs? Again, you guys have been long enough, has technology previously stolen jobs?

Bob: Yeah, I mean, I think and any part of that, so when we were building Broward, it used to be all handmade, and of course you have the well torches, which still of course play an important part or even a wood boat. But in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, and even now, there are advancements in making the cuts of aluminum more precise, more efficient, which is ultimately at some point going to result in less jobs for that part of the boat being built. But in other ways, technology introduces itself to where it’s going to introduce new jobs, whether it’s electronics or different parts of the boat, where you’re going to need people to install things that didn’t exist on a boat before. So I think nowadays you actually have more hours going into a boat. So you have more jobs as a result. But so the net result is more hours, but in certain parts of it’s less. In terms of, I do think at some point there will be a robot operating a boat.  But you’re still going to want the human service. You’re not going to want a robot coming out and giving you a plate of really good ceviche or whatever. It’s that human touch. I think part of it will remain. But I think you will see on the operations side parts of that taken over by AI in the next 20, 30 years.

Talha: And somebody’s got to build them. So that’s a job.

Bob: Yep. Today I think that AI, whatever you want to call it Talha, experience will be, it’ll only happen if it’s better and safer and when that occurs, it’ll be a no brainer for that for that to happen.

Merrill: Getting back to your personal life, it seems like you grew up in the boatyard, right? Shipyard, and then you went to school, and then you got into the aerospace industry and in healthcare. What was that like? And then tell us about the experience of coming back into Marine.

Bob: Yeah, so I graduated college in 1999 from the University of Miami. I have to plug them because we are, if you’re a football fan, we need all the plug we can get right now. But I graduated from that year, my grandparents or my grandfather sold Broward Marine, which I sort of thought my entire life growing up, that would be the thing I step into. And he sold it. A few months later, I graduated and I needed to go find a job and I worked for an Internet company that happened to be in the healthcare space and then an aviation company, right in like the early 2000s. So 1999, 2000, 2001. And it was an awesome experience that was sort of on the forefront of the internet changing a bunch of stuff. And then back then, right there in 2001, my parents pulled me aside in only a way they could, and basically passive aggressively kind of manipulated me into jumping back in. And I think they did the right thing in doing that. As much as I’d like to make fun of them nowadays for sort of pseudo manipulating me into it. But they put some pressure on me. They said, hey this is what we do, this is who we are and what we really hope you’ll come back in. And I did of course, but it was about two years where I got to gain experiences in different industries that certainly helped out a lot here.

Talha: I love that. So you saw the light. So tell me more about, you brought up, for example, the internet in there, right? And again, your business has been around way before the internet is you know, before the phone lines even, before computers even. And now we have the internet and we have stuff like that. How over the years especially, but especially now, how do you guys still find, buyers for some of these super luxury odds?

Bob: Well, two ways. I mean, the primary way is just word of mouth. And when you take really good care of people, whether you’re good marketer or decent at understanding how the internet affects things, at the end of the day, you take awesome care of people. You’re going to very likely get those people that you take great, great care of them to tell their friends about you and people on the dock. And that is our primary kind of. I don’t know what you’d call that. Our primary lead source, I guess. And we’re lucky enough to have a lot of good brokers that do that well. And then the other part of it is our primary lead service or sources the internet and our philosophy from the very beginning was to make things really simple and easy for people. So we sort of embraced that UI-UX thing really early on. And even today, when you go on our site, it’s probably a little pedestrian. It looks a little bit, not on the forefront of design, but we really, really cater to our core client who’s going to be a family, a man or a woman in his 50s, 60s, or 70s that wants to very easily shop things on or search things on our site. So that’s sort of the core of what we do, is to keep it really simple and not in any way intimidating people that are a little bit older than us to go find a boat or a yacht.

Merrill: You guys are almost like the one stop shop. If you guys are, if someone’s looking to buy a boat, you have financing, you have charters if you want it, used boats, new boats. How does that factor into the overall business model of Denison?

Bob: Yeah, it’s really important to us. We, of course, started just on the brokerage sales front after my grandparents sold Broward. And then what ends up happening when you start a business like this is you end up referring let’s say TI charter or cruise services or financing insurance to other places. And most of the time, it’s a pretty good experience. Sometimes it’s not. And the bigger you get and the stronger you sort of become, you become like obsessed with like we are of making sure the client experience is a good one. So we want to control that. And it sounds like a weird word, control, like we want to control our clients, but it to make sure and guarantee that the people here are all working together to provide a good experience throughout like the whole buying our ownership process is important to us. And yeah, that’s critical. And so our newest division, which was started four or five years ago, is yacht management. And that whole thing is just about making sure people with the bigger yachts can own a boat and provide sort of just an easy, good, safe ownership experience throughout with all the boring stuff like the flagging and crew issues and shipyard periods and things that go into that.

Merrill: During the process of selling the boat and then after it’s sold, how do you maintain contact with your clients? Because obviously if we’re talking about word of mouth, you have to have some type of amazing customer service.

Bob: Yeah, we do a pretty good job there. So like, during the selling process and we talk about it a lot here, like when somebody decides to allow you as a yacht broker to sell their boat, you’re giving that firm and that broker a pretty good chunk of money there and we need to earn it. And a lot of times I think a yacht broker, even as good as they are sometimes there’s not much to talk about until there’s an offer. So one of the things that we developed as an example, is an owner’s dashboard. So you can see in real time the email marketing we’re doing, the social media marketing we’re doing, we do a lot of video stuff and you can log in and really get access to all the stuff behind the scenes and then immediately be able to talk to your broker about it. So communication’s a big part of it, and sometimes brokers don’t have anything to talk about. Let’s say you were to sell your boat and there’s not much activity. The broker calls you up and says, hey, just wanted to let you know we’re working hard. See you later. But that dashboard gives sort of like data and meat to that conversation. So those are the ways that we try to be transparent about what we’re doing and give our brokers a really good reason to call somebody up and say, well, we haven’t had an offer yet. We’re working like hell. And here’s an example of what we doing.

Merrill: We asked Ken Clinton, the owner of Intrepid Power Boats, the same question here. So you started from the floor and now you’re president. How, and obviously through all those different experiences you’ve met diverse group of people. Can you give us any tips on communication skills in the industry?

Bob: Yeah. By the way, I’m a big fan boy of Ken. I think he’s awesome and I’m very proud of my beard, but I traded in any day just for a few minutes in that guy’s mustache. But the communication part of it’s really important. I think one of the most important communication themes is to have hard conversations in real life. And I think that too often, and this isn’t specific to yachting, of course this could be anything, but I think too often it’s easy to hide behind an email or a text when you have to deliver hard news, whether it’s to a client or another broker or even to your spouse or I don’t know. And I think that’s one of the things we’ve been talking about lately as company, is when you have to have a hard conversation, pick up the phone and talk to the person, or go meet them in real life. And I think oftentimes our industry does a bad job. First of all, even getting back to people when there’s bad news. And then secondly, delivering the bad news in a weak hide behind an email kind of away. And I think that that’s a big way that we could do a better job at as an industry. And I think you’ll see more of that happening.

Talha: So, Bob, tell us a little more about you do all of this on a global scale. Tell us a little bit more about that. Is it like more US based or like, is it well spread out? What sort of, is it different target markets in different regions? Has the demand always existed worldwide or is that like a new endeavor?

Bob: Yeah, I think that’s one of the unique things about our industry is boats of course move around quite a bit and you could be in Boston one day in Newport the next, and you can go to different harbor every week if you want to. So we very much consider ourselves not only a national but international company. We do have an office in Monaco, which is the place you’d want to be on the big boat side of things. And that activity on the sales and charter front is really taking off. And then here in the US we have 2 1 offices. Every one of them, except only for one, is attached to a marina or a shipyard up and down the east and west coast of the US. And for us it’s really important to be there physically and we see it especially with the smaller brokerage market and even with the bigger brokerage. There’s a lot of movement with the boats seasonally. So it’s important for us to have a local peoples and a local office and all of those places.

Talha: One of the things that we always hear in the industry is the issues with bringing youth into it. Can you speak on that subject?

Bob: Yeah. I think that’s an issue, but I think it can be a distracting issue for some companies that can become, and there’s some marketing people that become obsessed with reaching out to Gen Xers, and I think it’s really freaking important. But I think there’s still an underserved market and the Gen Xers and the boomers that haven’t been made aware of how safe and boating has become compared to when it was in the 60s, 70s and 80s. So I think it’s really, really important and I think as industry we need to do it, but we also can’t take our eye off the ball and making sure that our core customer is looked after. My favorite thing about Gen Xers and millennials getting into the industry, I think is the share consumption model, which is like boat clubs of course, and charter companies and day boating and stuff like that. I think is really where we’re going to get that younger guy or gal into boating. And I’d love to see much more of that and many more clubs pop up. But I think that’ll happen. And I think you’re going to see a continued growth of younger boaters coming into the market. They just might not own a boat. They may charter it or join a boat club, which is just fine.

Merrill: It is a gateway boat, right?

Bob: Yeah, totally. It doesn’t matter what kind of freaking boat you’re on, when you just get out on a boat like it’s just less likely you look at your cell phone for instance. And I don’t know if it’s a rowboat or a canoe or a little bow rider, it doesn’t matter. And I think once you get that and once you’re like, oh man, this is a place I can interact with the people I’m with in a deeper, cooler way and the environment around me. Like, it will hook you for life and you’ll continue very likely to climb in terms of boat size and all that stuff. So, yeah, I think just getting people out on the water is the best first step.

Talha: I agree. So tell us, Bob, what does like a day in the life of football broker look like a yacht broker?

Bob: So it’s a hell of a lot less exciting than you think it would be. There’s a lot of phone calls, a lot of emails, a lot of behind the laptop stuff. There are some pretty cool perks, of course, when you get to go out and just be on the docks and get on a boat and go out for a sea trial or go meet a client at a really neat destination. But it’s a lot of CRM, customer management software stuff, following up. Even just like the boring things, like just calling up for, I just got off the phone about 20 minutes ago with an owner of a boat that was having a hard time and he’s a good client of ours and I’m calling people up at engine places trying to advocate for them to respond a little bit quicker. It’s all that. And at the end of the day, while it’s less exciting, it’s really rewarding because and it sound like a yacht broker. It sounds like, sort of this waspy. And it is, I guess for the most part, most yacht brokers are older white guys that wear yellow pants. But there are parts of it that are unbelievably meaningful because you’re truly like engaging with a family in a totally different way. And I really believe this, when you own a boat and your family is out in the water, I’m going to sound a little cheesy here, but you do enrich their lives and you make that experience better. It really is a life enriching thing to do for a living.

Talha: Agreed. And then you mentioned something crucial there. It’s sort of what got Marilyn and I to start ship shape at all, but how do you guys deal with the repair side of things and the service side of things once somebody’s bought the boat and you mentioned you’re calling people up and you’re trying to make things happen, but what is the state of that industry in your mind and you guys said you like to control the whole experience. How are you guys controlling that?

Bob: Well, we’re controlling it only for a segment of our, so we have a new boat, part of our company where we do warranty and commissioning and that kind of thing. But we don’t do a lot of the kind of retail brokerage, like a boat that’s 10 years old, taken care of. Helping that we are working mostly with third parties. I think that part of our industry sucks a lot. And there are other ways that it’s awesome. It just depends a lot of things on geography, on the type of thing you need fixed, but many friends in that part of the industry, they’re all very well-intentioned and good people. But a lot of times, it could be a very small operation. There’s not good systems or processes in place and forget to call people back. You forget to order the part. You just are constantly battling with big time demand and not a lot of supply on the human talent side. And it’s a struggle, but it sucks, man. It’s a really tough part of our in industry, but there’s some people doing it really well. And again, a lot of it is based on geography and a lot of it’s based on time of the year. But it can be really, really frustrating. And that’s probably, there’s a few things that keep me up at night. That’s one of them long term is I hope one day I get to manipulate my own children to get it into the industry. I think that we really need to step it up there.

Talha: Merrill was that crazy stack we have on how many boat service providers for every boat?

Merrill: Well, if you exaggerate how many service providers there could possibly be, and then you look at how many boats are actually registered, it’s one marine business, whether it’s a small mom and pop shop to one of those giant marine maxes, there’s 175 boats. So there’s a huge problem when it comes to service. But MRAA last year, they came up with some statistic where it was like, God forbid if you needed some service, it would take if you needed a part, it would take them 30 days to just order the part and then it was like 30 days to work on it. So that’s bam. Huge chunk of the season. But, we’ll see how it all changes. I’ve seen a lot of younger companies enter in the space that are trying to become bigger. You certainly have like the old god of marine repair and refit that are so busy with the work that they have now that they’re like, oh, we don’t need anything else. Which certainly messes the customer experience for the boat owner, but yeah, it’s going to be a journey for all of us. So here’s a question. Talking to people in the super yacht industry, super yacht industry has changed in the size of boats and the amount of boats that are actually being put out there. How do you see the future of the superyacht industry headed, like where is it going over the next 10 years?

Bob: There’s a lot of conversations years ago that have led to real things happening in real life in terms of boats embracing greener technology on the superyacht side, which I think is great. And those builders and designers and owners aren’t doing it just to sort of look like they give a damn about that, but they really, really do give a damn about that. So I’m very much encouraged at that. And I’m not even talking about propulsion and emission stuff, but just even the use of plastic cups on board and things that are just widespread for years on onboard boats have been just really stupid things to do for them, like all that stuff’s being cleaned up and I love it. In terms of demand, massive demand with not as on the supply side of gait, it’s hard for the shipyards to keep up. So you’re seeing a lot of these shipyards in Europe that have backlogs of years and years and years and years. So on that side of things, our industry is looking pretty healthy? But again, it goes back to the human part of it. One of the struggles we’re having is the captain crew part of it, where there’s not enough people to service these boats, which becomes an issue. So, and that trickles down and that’s going to mean really nice family here in, let’s say Fort Lauderdale wants to hire captain and a few crew are not going to have a lot to choose from. So it’s going to get more expensive for them to hire crew and they may get service that’s not great as a result of just paying too much for somebody not quite as experienced. And that may push people out of the industry. But overall, it’s really healthy. It’s mostly just the people stuff that we need to get our arms around.

Talha: And then, I mean, I remember working on a real estate client’s website five years ago. And back then it was like million dollar properties were selling for at the end they’d be like, Bitcoin or Ethereum accepted and this is again five years ago. How is that in the yachting industry?

Bob: I mean, it’s here and it doesn’t matter so much of the value of Bitcoin today or tomorrow. It’s just guys like my dad or women like my mom and just the more people that are out there five years ago would roll their eyes at a conversation with Bitcoin. Perhaps they might own some themselves and are more comfortable talking about it and using it, and we’re continuing to see a real growing demand there. We just closed on our 13th, actually it might be 14th now. I need to check, but it’s a little more than a dozen transactions using crypto charter and sales. And we’ve had three of them over 10 million and I don’t think that’s going to let up. And again, it has less to do with the price of Bitcoin today and more to do with how comfortable boomers are in using it, or Gen Xers and I don’t think that that side of the buying process is going to go anywhere.

Merrill: Previous years, you guys were the number one in boat sales. How many boats have you sold in totality? You have any like range of numbers?

Bob: Yeah. I hate answering that question because it just sounds so obnoxious when I’m like, you are the biggest or the best. We’re amazing, but we are, I’m just kidding. But we do, it’s hard to measure that stuff because unlike real estate or automotive, our industry doesn’t keep track of those stats as well as they do. But international keeps track of all super yacht sales over 80 feet, we just concluded our fourth year in a row where we’re responsible for the most transactions there. But we do a lot of smaller boats too. So we the last three years we’ve sold about 3,000 boats and yachts and obviously that’s just the very literally the people behind the wall on the marketing closing ad admin side, just in the, of course, the sales side. They just work their butts off to make sure that while it’s a big number, I want to make sure, and we as leaders here want to make sure every single one of those 3,000 something people had a great experience. If they didn’t, I don’t care how much where we were on the rankings, we freaking, we screwed up. So that’s important to us. It’s not like the big number, but just making sure that guy last Tuesday, when he closed on his boat, felt really good about it and he had an awesome experience.

Talha: Yeah. And again, one of our crazy stats was something like it, one was about a a year, is that if somebody managed to make a season. Yeah they were sort of in it for four years and then that four years stat was that if a person made it to four years, then they were basically hooked for life. Then they’d do a second boat, a third boat or whatever. And it’s interesting how just inviting the ocean is in that way. Once you actually get involved, like you said, the kayak would even make you feel that.

Bob: No, I was just going to say, but it all kind of ties back into the post-sale when your air conditioner isn’t working. I don’t care how cool your boat is when it’s 90 something degrees here in Fort Lauderdale. You really, really want to make sure that you get that thing fixed. And if that side of our industry’s broken, it kind of screws up everything else. So that’s where I think one of the big opportunities lives.

Merrill: So you’ve sold so many of this boats. Is there one story in particular where you were like this was the greatest boat I’ve sold?

Bob: No, I mean there’s a few stories that stick out for me and I haven’t been responsible for selling anything for a pretty long time, just because I’m busy doing this stuff and running a business. But one of my favorite boat buying experiences was a couple from Canada and they came down and of course when you’re selling somebody something like this, you really get to know the people and they came down to buy a boat. And as it turned out over lunch, I found out that the gentleman had terminal stage four cancer and it was his life’s dream to live on a boat and a do the great loop. And he married his childhood sweetheart and they had never been in a place financially where they were an able to do that until very recently. And he came down and of course they became friends and that process of finding the right boat for them and then the process of helping them kind of make some really, really neat trips together. And to see a couple like that live out this childhood fantasy during the latter stage of their life was unbelievably important and sticks with me today. And I remind our brokers of that a lot. Cause that was a very small boat, but it was a major, major deal to that husband and that wife. And that’s sort of the magic of what we do. And again, I said it sounded cheesy, but like that enriching part of people’s lives is really important. It has less to do with the size of it and more to do with this guy was able to like tap into that 11-year-old version of himself. That got really excited and giddy around a boat and he got to live out that dream.

Talha: Dude, that was a complete tear jerker. I love it. We should make a movie out that one.

Bob: Yeah. But the way, that happens a lot and it’s neat. And I think that’s part about the boating magic I talked about is an easy place to put down your cellphone, but it’s also an easy place being on a boat to feel like a kid again. And I think you have a lot of that happening with grandparents wanting to relive that part of their lives with their grandchildren. And that’s just sort of the magic of being on the water.

Talha: Nice. Okay so maybe then just like as we start closing things off, you can give us some tips if somebody wanted to get into like the brokerage business, what are some of the avenues he should explore or certifications he needs or she needs.

Bob: Yeah. So I think I would say, and I’m glad you said she, because I think our industry on the brokerage side really needs more men and women of color and more women especially. We are such a white dominated industry and it’s okay. I mean, there’s nothing inherently like, it’s not like we tried to do that as an industry or we were in some way conspiring against, but it’s really refreshing when there’s a lot of men of color and women that are coming into our industry. I think it’s an awesome thing. And so I would say if you are not white, jump into it regardless. If you have interest, and if you’re not a man. Jump freaking into it because we need you. And great ways to do that are, I mean, there’s a few avenues. One of them is the crew front where you just get on board a boat and you learn the yachting industry by serving, which I think is unbelievably important because the best people in sales or service have a very service minded outlook on their work life. Is a great one. And then also just anything on the, I believe we have a lot to learn from on the real estate side and the process of buying or selling a house is extremely similar to buying or selling a yacht. So we’ve had some success with some realtors that have switched over, but it’s just that like learning how to serve people really well no matter what you look like or how old you are, you do that and you know boats and you can really help people with the process of it. It’s not just the product knowledge, it’s also the process knowledge and knowing the right steps of buying or selling a boat, and also the right people to refer to make sure that your experience is a good one. But we need you, our industry needs you, not just on the sales side, but on the turning the rent side. There’s a lot of ways to make an awesome living in the boating and yachting world, and I hope more people do it.

Steve: Well, looking at you over Zoom here, you look like a young guy. Where do you see Denison going by the time you’re an old man and your sons are taking this over?

Bob: Yeah, so we just got acquired and I’m third generation, which is a weird thing to say because it’s sort of a mixed thing there. But we just got acquired by the good people at One Water who have been freaking awesome. And I mentioned that because, there’s a lot of things that we as a company want to do in terms of growing and getting into new markets and the one water, and it’s not just they’re publicly traded, so they’re financially really sound and all that stuff, but there’s also just really good people with a difference for perspective. So I think, it’s sort of revitalized. I’m in my forties, but I’ve been doing it my entire life. And sort of revitalize my energy and love for this industry. And I think, I was just talking to my wife the other day. I would love to see our boy or one of my three girls jump into it, and I think they will. But for us, it’s going to be just about making sure that they’re in it and around it the right way. And they understand that it’s not about, the champagne and it’s not about looking cool in the back of a yacht with Leonardo DiCaprio, although by the way, that would be awesome. But it’s just more about serving the everyday person and making sure that they know, our kids know that that decision to buy a boat is a really, really, really big deal for that family and to sacrifice for them and to understand that it’s a big moment and to take it really seriously.

Talha: Bob, so you might have just answered this, but like, how do you make a family business survive like multiple decades?

Bob: I think my grandparents did this well, and then my parents did of course, and uncles and I hope I am. But they really understood that word sacrifice, and I think it’s easy to say, and everybody has like customer, client experience is really important to me, so we’re going to figure out how to make it happen. But at the root of it, it’s sacrifice and it’s about inconveniencing yourself so that somebody else can have a good experience. And so for a yacht broker, that might mean waking up really, really early to pick up somebody from the airport or showing up to the boat way ahead of time, making sure that it’s looking good, and it’s just all those really annoying, hard parts of life, but doing that consistently with the right attitude. And so for them, for boat building, it was the same thing. They were constantly sacrificing themselves for their employees and of course their clients and really making sure that they were aware of and so as a good example, when they inconvenienced themselves and sacrificed their time or their money for their employees, it really resulted in the employees being ready and willing to do the same thing for clients and yeah, for us I think, generationally, that’s a really important thing is just to make sure that we’re willing to suffer for good client experience. That that sounds fun, I guess. But I think it’s important. Suffer, you must. So that’s what we’re teaching our four-year-old.

Talha: Yeah. I mean, but I think it’s got that element of sort of service attached to it. And one thing I think I caught in there basically was sort of attention or detail. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Bob: Yeah, I didn’t say that, so that must be something you were wanting me to talk about, which I am cool with. I think the detail is unbelievably important, not just from like the website UI-UX thing, but also we’re talking big numbers. Even on the smaller votes, you’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars and to make sure that eyes are crossed and teases are, wait, how does that go? Eyes are dotted and tees are crossed and making sure that you’re looking out for the client with, again, all the boring details is unbelievably important and that’s says all the stuff we learned in the fifth grade. Like proofreading, double checking stuff, and that attention to detail stuff on board, if you’re a captain or crew or if you’re fixing an air conditioner that stuff is so important.

Merrill: So Bob, where can people find you and check out the yachts that you guys have for sale and charters and all that.

Bob: So we are online at denisonyachting.com and then we are pretty much every big boat show, and I made fun of yacht brokers a few minutes about wearing yellow pants, but you’ll probably find me wearing yellow pants at these boat shows and we really, really love meeting new people. So it doesn’t matter if you’re our client or not. We just love it. And I think that’s one of the annoying parts of the super yacht industry in particular is there’s a little too much pretense. And like, are you even allowed to go in there at that display? And we really here at Denison and want to make sure that people feel really, really welcome to get not only an honors display and talk to us, but also get on board some of the bigger boats. So if you’re at a boat show like that and you want to go see some cool boats, please come see us because it’s really important to us that you feel extremely welcome to do that.

Merrill: Yeah, it’ll be the big orange banners with Denison Yachting on it.

Bob: Yes, exactly.

Talha: Awesome. Well, it was a great episode. Thank you for coming onto the show.

Bob: Thank you guys so much for thinking of me and I admire what you guys do and it was a big deal for me to talk to you guys, so thank you.

Talha: Oh, appreciate it, Bob. Thank you so much. Stay in touch and hopefully we’ll discuss more adventures soon.

Bob: Awesome. Thanks T.

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