Many founders assume licensing is the safer path.
You develop the technology. An incumbent with infrastructure, labor, and customers distributes it. You avoid operational complexity and capital intensity. You reduce exposure.
That logic holds, until it doesn’t.
Jeff Doss built a patented anchoring system designed to replace an unsafe and environmentally damaging practice at Lake Powell. His instinct was to license the technology to established marina operators. That had been his career pattern: develop, validate, license.
But incumbents hesitated. Skepticism slowed progress. Social resistance hardened. And what began as a low-risk licensing opportunity became a stalled growth path.
The decision shifted.
The real inflection point was not technical. It was structural:
If incumbents won’t move, does waiting protect the business or slowly kill it?
Licensing reduces operational burden. It also reduces agency.
In Jeff’s case, the potential partners were marina operators with existing contracts, facilities, and customer relationships. They were entrenched in decades-old anchoring practices. Some were risk-averse corporate entities. Others were long-standing local operators protective of their methods.
From their perspective, the downside risk was asymmetric:
From Jeff’s perspective, the technical risk was minimal. He had real engineering data. He had load testing. He had built wind test rigs and measured forces directly.
“I had so much, I was really confident in the data.”
But data does not override institutional inertia.
In small markets—especially ones where reputation travels fast—skepticism compounds. Influential voices shape early perception. If respected operators say “it will never work,” that opinion spreads faster than a white paper.
Jeff described the environment simply: “Everybody was against us.”
At that moment, Iiscensing concentrated risk in a different way: dependency risk. Waiting on reluctant partners meant indefinite delay.
Jeff did not initially want to operate the business himself.
“I had no desire to start a new business on the lake.”
Operating meant:
Licensing would have avoided most of that.
But licensing also meant:
The trap for many CEOs is mislabeling inaction as prudence.
At some point, protecting downside becomes equivalent to surrendering upside.
Jeff’s inflection moment was personal as much as strategic:
“It wasn’t a foregone conclusion this thing was going to be a winner.”
“You kind of have to look in the mirror and go, am I crazy?”
That question surfaces when external validation collapses and internal conviction must carry the weight.
There is a difference between stubbornness and data-backed conviction.
Jeff did not rely on optimism. He built test rigs. He measured wind loads. He quantified holding forces. He knew the safety margins.
That mattered because the reputational risk was existential.
“We knew that if there was any failure of our system, we were going to be dead.”
In a small recreational market, one visible failure—even if misunderstood—can permanently destroy adoption.
This reality shaped his early operating decisions:
Operating was not about ambition. It was about protecting technical integrity until performance spoke for itself.
Transitioning from product developer to operator imposed new demands.
Licensing would have kept Jeff in engineering and deal structuring. Operating forced him into labor management, scheduling, logistics, and daily execution.
The first season exposed the gap between theory and throughput. Early projections suggested two to three boats per day. Financially, that model failed.
Jeff stepped in directly.
“It really took a lot of leadership from the front.”
He recruited family. He mobilized engineers. He personally worked the lake to redesign workflows and increase daily capacity. The business anchored 480 boats in its first season.
This shift is structural: when you operate, you cannot hide behind a partner’s inefficiency. You must solve execution friction yourself.
Licensing optimizes for leverage. Operating optimizes for control.
At that inflection point, control was more valuable.
Eventually, performance changed perception.
Boats held during 50-mile-per-hour winds. Influential skeptics reversed their stance. Customers who initially resisted became advocates.
But the breakthrough was not persuasion. It was incentive alignment.
Jeff structured a marina partnership where both sides benefited economically.
“The deal we structured, they’re making money, their customers are happy, we’re making money, our customers are happy.”
That alignment mattered more than convincing arguments ever could.
True win-win partnerships do not rely on belief. They rely on shared upside.
Only after operating successfully could Jeff negotiate from demonstrated value rather than theoretical promise.
The licensing versus operating decision is not about preference. It is about where risk lives.
Licensing concentrates risk in:
Operating concentrates risk in:
Jeff’s environment forced clarity.
Waiting on incumbents would not de-risk the venture. It would freeze it.
Operating exposed him to execution risk—but restored agency.
For scaling CEOs facing stalled distribution partners, the question is rarely “Is operating harder?”
It is:
Where does risk compound faster—inside our balance sheet, or inside someone else’s hesitation?
Jeff Doss did not set out to build an operating business. He set out to solve a technical problem.
But when licensing stalled, he faced a decision common to scaling founders:
Protect downside and accept slow erosion of momentum.
Or assume operational risk to control the outcome.
The answer was not ideological. It was contextual.
He had data.
He had conviction grounded in evidence.
He had capital within reach.
And he understood the reputational stakes in a small market.
Operating became the rational choice.
Five seasons in, with thousands of anchor nights and zero technical failures, the model speaks for itself. But at the inflection point, none of that was guaranteed.
The lesson is not “operate instead of license.”
The lesson is: do not confuse partner hesitation with market rejection. And do not mistake reduced exposure for reduced risk.
Sometimes protecting the business requires assuming more responsibility—not less.
__________
Jeff Doss is the Founder of Beach Bags, a patented anchoring system operating at Lake Powell. An experienced product development leader, Jeff has historically focused on licensing technologies rather than operating businesses.
Beach Bags represents a strategic departure, requiring him to assume operational control, capital exposure, and reputational risk inside a tightly regulated recreational market.
His experience offers a clear view into how seasoned CEOs evaluate inflection points when conviction collides with institutional resistance.
Beach Bags: https://beachbagsanchors.com/
__________
Jeff Holman is a CEO advisor, legal strategist, and founder of Intellectual Strategies. With years of experience guiding leaders through complex business and legal challenges, Jeff equips CEOs to scale with confidence by blending legal expertise with strategic foresight. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Intellectual Strategies provides innovative legal solutions for CEOs and founders through its fractional legal team model. By offering proactive, integrated legal support at predictable costs, the firm helps leaders protect their businesses, manage risk, and focus on growth with confidence.
__________
The Breakout CEO podcast brings you inside the pivotal moments of scaling leaders. Each week, host Jeff Holman spotlights breakout stories of scaling CEOs—showing how resilience, insight, and strategy create pivotal inflection points and lasting growth.
Listen and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform:
__________
Want to be a guest—or know a scaling CEO with a breakout story to share? Apply directly at go.intellectualstrategies.com.
Transcript Summary
Full Transcript (AI generated and might include errors)
Jeff Holman (10:41.905)
Welcome back to the Breakout CEO Podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Holman, and I'm here today with a really interesting guest and a really interesting, unique business.
at least one of his businesses. I'm sure all of his businesses are unique, but Jeff Doss, thanks for joining us on the show today. Hey, it's what I'm super glad to talk about this. So I let me let me give the audience some background and then you can tell me and tell the audience the real background behind all of this because I don't want to get it wrong, but I'm going to give it from my perspective. I've got a buddy Tyler and he and he's invited me out on his houseboat out at a large.
Jeff Doss (11:14.989)
Thanks for having me.
Jeff Holman (11:36.539)
Dammed reservoir called Lake Powell sits on the border of southern Utah, northern Arizona. It's huge. There are several different marinas there. And when we go out, he's got a, he's got a decently nice boat. And the first thing we have to do is pull it out of the marina, get it down Lake or up Lake and park that thing. And this is, you know, the winds there and the water, like it's pretty crazy. So, so Tyler always,
calls ahead. I don't know how far you have to deserve a head. think I saw that reservations are starting to open up now for summertime, but he calls ahead to this company that he's always referred to as beach bags. And we're not talking about, we're not talking about like a hand carry bags that you put your stuff in. These are enormous. like if I'm not mistaken, thousand gallon plastic or rubber, you know, bags that you set on the red rocks on the shore and you tie your
huge houseboat to these bags. It's an anchoring system so that we don't disturb, you know, I think they used to do drilling and put rebar posts or whatever. They used to do things that weren't as, let's say, as environmentally friendly, but these beach bags are totally environmentally friendly. We just have to have them set up and taken down and stuff like that. Did I get that right as to what the service is?
Jeff Doss (12:56.576)
Yeah, I think the only thing for the audience left as we fill them with water, right? So they, they start out. Yeah, they start out as a, as a big bladder. We place them on the shore and then we fill them with these big, basically, fire pumps that are located in our work boats and we fill them with gallons of water. And then, and then they weigh, you know, we have anchors anywhere from 4,500 to 13,000 pounds. So, and then we can put them together in a chain. So you can have, you know, 30,000 pounds holding one line on a houseboat.
Jeff Holman (13:01.403)
that's right.
Jeff Holman (13:26.885)
Yeah, it's amazing. I got there and with my engineering background, the first time I went, Tyler's explaining, hey, this is what we got to do. And he's always got this cooler full of drinks and stuff because your guys work hard. They jump out, they're putting this together. In fact, it's I think it's always been there and ready when we get there. It's pretty much just tie it down to the boat. But you know, they've been there filling them up. So and he's always got this cooler of drinks to give them because they're doing such an awesome job. But yeah, I saw that. And I'm like, you're kidding me that.
that bladder of water will hold this boat. mean, there's for his boat, he's got a handful of them and you tie them off to the front corners and the back corners of the boat, which those aren't the technical boat terms I know, but you you tie your boat down that way. And I just thought this is amazing. So who thinks of this business? Like this is your idea or what? Where did this come from, Jeff?
Jeff Doss (14:20.588)
Yeah, so we like Tyler have been going to the lake for 20 some years at least and as the boats got larger people started doing what's called pinning which is is illegal. A lot of us I didn't know that was even illegal. I did it for years. I got in trouble with a ranger he told me why I couldn't do it and I shouldn't do it and all the reasons why they were cracking down on it and so
Jeff Holman (14:43.907)
And pinning, tell us what pinning is, just so everyone's clear.
Jeff Doss (14:46.764)
So that's where the alternative would be, you know, could take your boat and you could put it on a sand beach and dig these big holes and drop fluke anchors in and they're buried in the sand. But there's not always a lot of sand at Lake Powell, so that really limits where you can go. And then the holding power of those is highly dependent upon the way you dig them in, how deep they are, the quality of the sand, right? So that's one issue. And the bigger boats didn't want to have that.
Jeff Holman (15:01.19)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (15:16.768)
potential failure of those anchors in the sand. And so what they would do is they'd go anchor on this slick rock where they would park the bow of their boat on the slick rock. And then they would go onto the beach and they'd drill an inch or an inch and a half hole, you know, a foot and a half deep in the rock. And then they would put steel pins in. That's why they call it pinning. And then they would tie their anchor lines to these pins. And the problem is it's a national park. And so they don't want you disturbing.
the rock. And there's a lot of safety reasons as well that there's a problem because people would do it incorrectly and they hit the pins with a hammer, then you can't get them out because they're literally nailed into the rock. And our reservoir goes up and down significantly with water from the runoff from the dam, from the snow melt and what the dam lets out. so the lake can go up a foot a day, can go down a foot a day and
Jeff Holman (15:58.001)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (16:02.362)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Doss (16:09.952)
So when people don't take these pins out, you've got this incredibly dangerous situation where you can be pulling a boat onto the beach and you can hit one of these pins that's underwater, or you can hit it where you're swimming. it's really, there's a lot of reasons why it's not appropriate. So yeah, so we were told by a ranger, you can't do that. And it was very frustrating because we prefer to be on rock. so we basically just spent a year being irritated about, well, now what are we going to do?
Jeff Holman (16:37.073)
Well, you can't just not park. Like these boats, the winds come. If you didn't tie your boat down securely, your boat's gonna float into a 500 foot cliff wall that's sitting there next to you, right? Or worse.
Jeff Doss (16:56.404)
sure. And we have, we have monsoons in Arizona. If you're not from Utah, Arizona, you don't understand, but we have these monsoons to come through and you can have 60, 70 mile an hour winds. And these boats are quite tall and they're like a big sail. So yeah, it's, it's quite a serious thing. boats get damaged every year because of that.
Jeff Holman (17:13.807)
You know, yeah. And I actually, was playing tennis with a friend. This was probably 15 years ago or so they had, they had gone down, pinned their boat. And one of the dangers that hopefully it was not a common occurrence, but their boat in the wind actually pulled so hard on that, that line. It, you know, tensioned the line and then eventually pulled the pin out the pin.
Jeff Doss (17:43.285)
No.
Jeff Holman (17:43.953)
swung back as hard as possible and impaled his wife. She survived, but I mean, talk about a tragic incident. Yeah. And another friend from tennis actually who owns a flight company with, you know, helicopter services and plane services actually was able to get on the scene and get her to a hospital, fortunately, and she survived. I mean, I don't think that's common, but these are real issues in addition to the environmental, like it's
Jeff Doss (17:47.776)
Yeah.
my gosh.
Jeff Holman (18:13.323)
it's not very safe, right?
Jeff Doss (18:15.595)
No, and what I would tell you is the solution we came up with is actually much safer than pinning. Our solution doesn't fail catastrophically. So you're right. What happens is if you have a massive event, you build up all this force in the rope, and then when the pin does fail, it comes flying back at the boat. Our anchor solution, basically, if it becomes overloaded, will just slide. It doesn't let the boat go. And as it does slide,
Jeff Holman (18:25.073)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (18:38.981)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (18:43.371)
the boat will weathervane into the wind. And so the load on the boat goes down as it moves. Right. So it's actually a much better solution. of, you know, this is our, we just finished our fourth year. We've anchored 3,600 boats, everything from the biggest to the smallest on the lake. And we've had zero failures. And that's like 20,000 anchor nights because people go for like a week. So it's by far the safest way to anchor your boat on the lake, by far.
Jeff Holman (18:49.926)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (19:03.153)
awesome.
Jeff Holman (19:07.185)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (19:12.795)
Well, you, yeah, no, that all makes sense. I love that you're explaining the engineering behind it too. Like it makes perfect sense, but the solution I'm sure wasn't super obvious from the get-go, right? You've got a product development background, you, like if anyone's gonna solve this problem, you're the guy to do it probably.
Jeff Doss (19:12.907)
Even over a pin.
Jeff Doss (19:24.042)
No.
Jeff Doss (19:30.623)
I think it was serendipitous that was us that attacked it because yes, I had a product development business for 25 years. have a team of mechanical engineers, developers, electrical engineers, a whole team. We have our shop. And so we just sat there and looked at the shore while we were on our vacation going, we got to solve this. And so we knew that the weight of water could be very powerful.
Jeff Holman (19:59.473)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Doss (20:00.288)
So we probably spent a year or two working on our free time, different concepts. And when we finally figured out how we wanted to do it for ourselves, we thought we were just solving the problem for ourselves. And I took it to the park service because I didn't want them to tell me I couldn't do that either, right? I was worried they were going to say, well, you're going to suck up some little fish from the lake and you can't do that. And so to our surprise, not only were they fine with the solution, they were highly encouraging if we would
Jeff Holman (20:10.832)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (20:20.689)
Hmm.
Jeff Doss (20:29.877)
develop it for commercial use because it had been a problem that they had been trying to solve for years and nobody has been able to solve it. that was probably the first major inflection point where we went from, OK, we didn't really think about this as a business. We thought about this as just solving our problem. And that's when it
Jeff Holman (20:39.334)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (20:50.577)
You mentioned something there though. You said you, you know, you spent a week down there at Lake Powell and you're just thinking about it. I'm curious where you like, was your wife, I mean, she sounds like she's, she knows how you work. She's on board. Maybe she was down there ideating with you, but were there moments when she's like, Hey honey, we're like dinners made, come over here. Like we need to, we need to eat. Are you the classic entrepreneur or you get into a problem and you're just kind of like hyper-focused for a bit and you're like, man, how do we, how do we solve this thing?
Jeff Doss (21:19.733)
Well, the solution actually ideated over the course of like two years. It wasn't like it was just one thunderstruck, it's simple. It was like pulling on a thread. The idea of using water was the first thing, but then you try to fill up a bladder. There's like nothing flat at Lake Powell. Everything is angled. so being able to fill up, yes, yeah. But the idea, if you think about trying to fill a thousand dollar
Jeff Holman (21:27.674)
Uh-huh.
Jeff Holman (21:37.497)
No, no.
And beautifully so, right?
Jeff Doss (21:47.744)
or thousand gallon bladder up, it just wants to roll down the hill. It's incredibly dangerous. So finding ways to fill something and have it stay on a slope and still have holding power. How do you fill it fast? How do you drain it fast? How do you move it around? How do you make it not weigh so much that people can't really practically use it? So there was a whole host of solutions that had to be come up, that we had to come up with. So it took us about two years to do that. But my wife is frankly, she was more on the marketing side.
Jeff Holman (21:51.857)
Hmm.
Jeff Holman (22:16.241)
Mm.
Jeff Doss (22:16.263)
about what color they should be and what should we brand it and how do we how do we sell it.
Jeff Holman (22:19.786)
Okay. She's like, you solve that problem. I'm going to solve this problem.
Jeff Doss (22:25.213)
Yeah. And like I said, we would vacation with my partners, right? So I would have electrical, mechanical, all kinds of engineers on the boat, and we would all be beating up the ideas of how we might solve these things. And then we'd go back in the winter and then we would work on some of those things and go back that following spring with some prototypes, you know, and then we'd work with us. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (22:45.103)
wow. Did you actually you mentioned before that your team, your product development team probably has a thousand patents or like that. Is this a patented product?
Jeff Doss (22:53.803)
Yeah, as a matter of fact, this was the fastest patents I've ever received. We filed for it and within three months, it was the first time I've ever had somebody give us all our claims, like everything, first time. Yeah, nothing even close.
Jeff Holman (22:58.709)
really?
Jeff Holman (23:05.371)
done, because it was so new. And rightly so. Nobody had been doing this. Are these beach bags now used outside of Lake Powell, or is it really a Lake Powell type issue?
Jeff Doss (23:19.571)
It's a Lake Powell thing. We've been so busy just trying to continue to improve them for that environment. you know, we've been, this will be our fifth year of doing what we call full service anchoring where we anchor boats. The development hasn't stopped because we've made them lighter. We've made them more robust each year. We learn, you know, doing ALT accelerated life testing is one of the hardest things to do for products.
Jeff Holman (23:31.846)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (23:46.385)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (23:46.473)
this thing, know, how does it survive the sun in Arizona every year? How does it survive being treated when it's set up, taken down, set up, taken down? So, you we're constantly making it better. The solution of how do you get the anchors to the location to provide the service? We've had to learn how to develop boats because having boats that can run 30, 35 miles an hour, carry six, 7,000 pound loads all day long.
with pumps, equipment. It's been a, mean, I love it. That's what I love is solving all these problems.
Jeff Holman (24:21.263)
You're saying even you guys even had to think closely about the boats transporting the people and the equipment, you know, not that you're transporting these things full of water, of course, but you transport. There's a there's a lot of equipment and weight involved. And so you got to do that efficiently because because you're you're going 10 or 15 miles, you know, across the lake. Right. Is that.
Jeff Doss (24:29.007)
yeah.
Jeff Doss (24:36.618)
Sure.
Jeff Doss (24:42.034)
At least it's like, I would say our average anchoring is 20 miles up lake. So, you know, our, our crews start at four or five in the morning before daylight, we load 60, 70 anchors onto a boat, which is, you know, five, 6,000 pounds. And then they motor up lake and to rendezvous with our first customers. We'll either be helping customers depart where we drain the anchors and take them down or, or we might be meeting somebody to set up a site for them and, establish their anchoring.
Jeff Holman (24:46.308)
Okay.
Jeff Holman (24:56.463)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (25:03.759)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (25:11.134)
But yeah, it's a lot of development.
Jeff Holman (25:15.269)
Well, that's all fascinating. I don't want to get too distracted myself on the on development of it, but I love that part of it. Maybe we'll have to chat offline about it. But so you mentioned that the going to the park service was was surprisingly well received.
Jeff Doss (25:32.562)
It was. that kind of goes back to my background. Like I said, I tried to look down the path we're going and see where the big obstacles are, where the opportunities are. And I tried not to get focused on the implementation too much, but obviously the park service and having them approve it would be a huge issue. Then when they said that it was commercially, they were interested in that, then that opened up a whole new set of
Jeff Holman (25:49.947)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Doss (26:01.291)
questions of how much is it going to cost? How is there a market? mean, if people are pending illegally, are they willing to pay for this? Who would be my customer? How do I support this? at the time, I wanted to get on the path of my normal process, which would be to just develop the technology and then license incumbents. I had no desire to start a new business on the lake.
Jeff Holman (26:12.421)
Right.
Jeff Holman (26:25.041)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (26:29.659)
Who would the incumbents be for the lake? Would that be like, I believe there's some local service providers that help captain the boats in and out of the marina. is that who the potential service provider would be that you could license this to or who?
Jeff Doss (26:45.598)
Yeah, we identified there's two, there's basically two marinas that have large contracts to provide these types of services on the lake. And so we quickly met with both of them to try and form a partnership to let them know we were doing and it was, it was quite disappointing. They, they, thought we were crazy. you know, it depends each, each marina had their own take. What, one of them was a big.
Jeff Holman (27:00.71)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (27:06.935)
that there'd be no business for it.
Jeff Doss (27:15.146)
They're owned by a multi-billion dollar company, and they were super risk averse. How do we know this is going to work? What happens if boats come loose? And our view was, well, they're coming loose now.
Jeff Holman (27:20.1)
Okay.
Jeff Holman (27:27.057)
I see. they weren't responsible for that because people were illegally pinning it. The risk was totally distributed across the users, not concentrated on the service provider.
Jeff Doss (27:32.65)
Correct.
Jeff Doss (27:38.506)
Correct. And well, but also what happened was, once we were able to look at commercializing it, we said, OK, we don't think this is just about solving a pinning problem. This is really about it's a better anchoring solution for everyone, right? Small boats, big boats, it would allow a lot of boats that would never even think to go on rock because they sand anchored. Now they had a credible way to go on rock. So it opens up more of the lake. There were a lot of different opportunities that came from the solution. So the one marina.
Jeff Holman (27:50.662)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (28:07.773)
Again, being the big corporate one, you know, we kind of expected that answer. It's kind of like they're used to what they're used to for years, even though it had problems. You know, nobody in you typical big corporations want to raise their hand and say, it should do something totally different. That's just not how they're wired. And that's probably not how they're compensated. The other Marina was owned by a very wealthy individual. that environment was quite different because I really had to just deal with a small
Jeff Holman (28:14.246)
Right.
Jeff Holman (28:21.455)
Right, right.
Jeff Doss (28:37.044)
couple guys and and they were more the incumbents that were actually doing a lot of the piling and some of this anchoring and they were a hard sell. But ultimately what got them over was we I had to I learned I had to position myself to be was kind of like the carrot or the stick right so by trying to nobody wanted to license it because they were just afraid it wouldn't work and so.
Jeff Holman (29:00.291)
Right. And the liability if it didn't work was like you said, the, I mean, these are the, these are a lot of these are million dollar, multimillion dollar boats. And if they sink, they're not, it's property damage. It's also risk of life. mean, there's a lot of, and that's just one boat. And you said you service multiple boats in a day. Now, like, there's just a lot of liability, right?
Jeff Doss (29:09.77)
Three, $4 million boats, $5 million boats. Yeah, it's crazy.
Jeff Doss (29:16.904)
Yeah, serious stuff.
Jeff Doss (29:25.47)
Yeah, last year we had 90 boats on the lake at any one time. Yeah, it's.
Jeff Holman (29:28.805)
Wow. So here you are, you're like trying to get these people to listen to this solution and adopt and implement it so you don't have to. And the risk is there for you too, the same way, right? Although you developed the product. So how did you navigate that?
Jeff Doss (29:43.146)
Sure. The difference is, I had the benefit of knowing it would work because I had real engineering, had real test data. We followed the facts. Most of the people that are at that lake have been doing it for years and they're not engineers. They don't know how to test things. That's not what they do.
Jeff Holman (29:51.302)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (30:11.834)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (30:13.149)
So the problem I had was, I would start to explain them the technical reasons why they should believe that it was gonna work and they just didn't even wanna hear it. All they said was, well, have you ever had it attached to a big boat in high winds? I'm like, how is that relevant to you as a solution? mean, you could be one mile an hour away from failure and you didn't even know it, right? So that the people I was dealing with were just, they were very entrenched in the way they currently did it or they didn't want to do it, they were afraid of it. And then there were other credit,
Jeff Holman (30:32.442)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Doss (30:42.491)
some relatively credible people in that arena that are involved with the boats who took a position that it would never work. And people that looked up to other people who maybe built boats or service boats would say, it'll never work. And so we really faced a pretty strong negative opinion. And it's a small town. We were the outsiders, right? would have made a great movie. Everybody was against us. At least we felt that way.
Jeff Holman (30:57.497)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (31:08.177)
Well, maybe the movie is yet to come. So this seems like, you're there, you've got the solution, you know it works, you have the engineering to back it up, but nobody wants it. Why didn't you just say, okay, I'll just do it myself, it solves my problem. What was it that compelled you to turn it into, you know, from a technical solution into a business?
Jeff Doss (31:12.169)
Ha
Jeff Doss (31:23.273)
Correct.
Jeff Doss (31:37.073)
the honest answer is my competitive nature. just, was, I was, angry is not the right word, but I was, I was, I, I believed in the product. I, so we had done our homework. We knew that there was a need. We knew that it wasn't being met. and, and we knew that the product worked. And so we're also just coming out of COVID when this happened. So I wasn't super busy with my other businesses at the time. There were different factors going on.
Jeff Holman (31:46.811)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (31:59.696)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (32:05.982)
The other thing is the business wasn't that capital intensive. mean, it's a lot of capital, but I was able to do it myself. Like there's no way I could have ever gone to a bank and said, hey, I need 2 million bucks to make this happen. They would have said the same thing probably. Yeah. So it was within our means to finance. given that we were coming out of COVID, I didn't have a lot of other opportunities that looked as
Jeff Holman (32:20.305)
Wait, we've never seen this before. Are crazy?
Jeff Doss (32:35.963)
is good. But at the time, I have to say, it wasn't a foregone conclusion. This thing was going to be a winner. I mean, I had a lot of confidence the product was going to work, but I didn't know for sure. And when you have that many people telling you all the reasons it is going to work, you kind of have to look in the mirror and go, am I crazy? Am I the one that doesn't know? So yeah, it was interesting. That was probably one of the major inflection points where we had to make a decision.
Jeff Holman (32:48.56)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (32:55.748)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (33:02.319)
So it almost sounds like, you know, I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's trustworthy data, but the data you were getting back was, we don't think this will work in some form or fashion. And yet you said to yourself, I'm a data guy. I've got my background. I run the numbers, but I think there is this, was this a moment where your gut instinct took over and you said, I think this is going to work. Is that what, like, did you have to do that and, and ignore some of the data or was there other data and you're like, no, I have
Jeff Doss (33:11.271)
Hmm? Yeah.
Jeff Holman (33:31.832)
more data and the data says it will work.
Jeff Doss (33:34.759)
No, I had so much, I was really confident in the data. I'll give you a great example, right? So you say, well, how could you be that confident? Well, we built test rigs where we would go out to the lake, we'd get a houseboat, put it in a windstorm, we'd measure the wind speed, we'd measure the forces on the lines, we'd measure the forces on our anchors, and we knew, we just knew what the loads were. So it's not like there was some mystery. Now, the kinds of things that we heard was,
Jeff Holman (33:48.186)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (33:56.934)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (34:04.084)
We certainly heard it was never going to work technically, but then we were told, you you can't get employees and if you get them, where are you going to house them? There's all kinds of issues that people had with working and setting up a business up at Powell, which was part of why we wanted to use the incumbents, right? Because they already have all that. So we had to do the work to decide, you know, can we go up there and create a whole nother infrastructure management? You where do we operate out of all those things? And so
Jeff Holman (34:21.145)
Yeah, they had the infrastructure.
Jeff Doss (34:33.063)
The solution that allowed us to do it was we finally were able to coerce us, maybe the wrong word, convince the marina we were based out of to take a chance with us. I think another one of my personal strengths in my career is I do a lot of deals, right? So lots of convincing of people and trying to understand what are their motivations, what do they need and make a true win-win deal. And so we were able to do that with the marina. It took about a year and a half to convince them.
Jeff Holman (34:38.907)
Hehehe.
Jeff Holman (35:03.045)
Well, did the National Park Service, because you said earlier on that the National Park Service said, yeah, you could do this. It's OK. Right. Did that not carry much weight in the conversations with people?
Jeff Doss (35:03.265)
Jeff Doss (35:09.04)
Rape.
Jeff Doss (35:12.701)
Well, it didn't carry enough with me because I didn't feel like, know, how the lake is very remote and there's only so many ways you can get onto the lake and off the lake. you know, it's already a super big challenge for us having to load these boats as I just explained to you. But if I had to launch a boat every day and keep stuff in town and try and get it to the lake, it would have been almost impossible. so by partnering with the Marina gave me a facility to work out of a place to store my equipment.
Jeff Holman (35:29.2)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (35:42.247)
And then also they had a base book of business that they were already using. So by partnering with them, we sort of already got a head start of customers. So that's.
Jeff Holman (35:52.017)
okay. So the operator, the people that you went to to operate this for you said no, but the marina itself, you were able to not coerce, but convince them to let you come in.
Jeff Doss (36:04.073)
We basically went to him with a win-win proposal saying, I understand you don't want to do it, but how about we do it and we do it together? And here's a deal that could make it work for both of us. And that's really what we did. And even that in the beginning didn't really convince them. They wanted nothing to do with it. What finally I had to do was I knew that piloting is a big part of what our marina generates revenue from.
I knew that if I was able to get the Park Service to give me a license to pilot boats to my anchorings, then then.
Jeff Holman (36:39.407)
Meaning captain the boat or drive the boat from the Marina to the the parking spot that they're going to be for the week, right? Because a lot of people that own their own boats don't necessarily want to or aren't comfortable driving that big of a vehicle on the lake in those conditions, right? so yeah.
Jeff Doss (36:46.664)
Correct. Yeah, because if I...
Jeff Doss (36:57.405)
Right, the vessels are huge. And if we didn't have a way to pilot boats, then we would have been severely limited because of the competitive environment with the marina. So it was a combination of how I worked with the park service and how I worked with the marina to massage it so we were able to get not just the approval from the park service, but then also a deal with the marina. And I have to give them credit.
Jeff Holman (37:08.154)
Hmm.
Jeff Doss (37:26.185)
The top leadership there, the owner at the marina, I'm sure in their mind they were taking a chance. What was great was probably the first weekend that we actually anchored a bunch of big boats, we actually anchored the owner of the marina and his big boats, and we had huge storms that weekend. 50 mile an hour winds were constant for several days. I'll never forget they came up to me and said, well, you're right. It works.
Jeff Holman (37:32.283)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (37:53.773)
It works. Was that on purpose? Not that you knew the weather was coming, but had you kind of saved up the first installations for the owner of the marina so they could see it?
Jeff Doss (37:55.657)
So from
Jeff Doss (38:06.693)
It was the holiday weekend, right? So I really, was just the way it worked.
Jeff Holman (38:11.109)
Are there many other people doing this though? Like it sounds like, and I don't know for sure, but when I've been down there, it seems like the marinas are run by these organizations. There can't be very many third parties who are able to get in and offer a service, you know, kind of aside from what the marina services are themselves. Is that right?
Jeff Doss (38:32.998)
Yeah, it's not uncommon that most national parks or places like the lake have concessionaires. they're because you can't just let anybody operate because it'd be free for all. nobody would go and invest the capital they need to if they didn't have some assurance of the market just isn't big enough to support multiple players. So to do it right, have to the park service puts out a contract bid.
Jeff Holman (38:41.136)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (38:56.038)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (39:02.066)
people bid for that and then you have to play with those rules that the park service requires. It's not a perfect system by far. think a lot of people are not happy with a lot of stuff that goes on, but that's just the way it is. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (39:14.405)
But that is the system, right? But, but nobody was putting out bids for the service cause that you're, that you proposed cause you created the service. So.
Jeff Doss (39:22.856)
Correct. So a lot of people, I shouldn't say a lot of people, there are people who criticize and say, well, you guys kind of have a monopoly. I'm like, well, we really don't. mean, anybody can apply for what the park service has given us a license for, which is what they call an alternative anchoring, CUA, commercial use authorization. But you have to go to them with a credible solution. And their requirement is you have to have a method for doing anchoring where you can put it on rock or sand and not disturb the environment.
Jeff Holman (39:39.171)
Okay.
Jeff Holman (39:52.635)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (39:52.924)
We're the only ones so far that have a solution that does that. Now, so, correct.
Jeff Holman (39:55.779)
and it's patented. there's a moat there. Did you explore another business model that said, hey, these guys have these multimillion dollar boats. What if they just buy and install these anchors themselves?
Jeff Doss (40:11.879)
Yeah, so in the very beginning, we didn't want to offer that because we knew that if there was any failure of our system, we were going to be dead. We would have invested a lot of money in these systems. And if there was a failure, nobody would know the technical reason why. All they would know is in our small market, the word would get out and we'd be dead. We were almost dead from the start because people had such a negative impression and they had even used us. So we didn't want to risk that there could be a failure that may not have even been our fault, right?
Jeff Holman (40:34.587)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (40:41.692)
People don't often know the details. So after a couple of years, we have then offered units for sale. And we've sold some. But what I would say is, for the most part, people have realized that our full service anchoring and the service we provide is really worth the money. Because what used to happen is people would load all their people up on their houseboat. They'd head up Lake.
and then they'd spend several hours searching for a satisfactory place to anchor. Then they would, you know, and if you went to the lake a lot, you might go every year, but you might go one time. Well, that doesn't make you an expert at anchoring. So people would then be trying to get their boat anchored in the meantime, the winds blow on and so, you know, there are people.
Jeff Holman (41:17.659)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (41:26.881)
Well, in the lake conditions change from year to year, you might go the same weekend and the levels are different from year to year, so you can't necessarily park in the same spots, right?
Jeff Doss (41:36.824)
Absolutely, right. So I think once we started offering what we call our full service anchoring, I would say most people are like, I'm never going back.
Jeff Holman (41:46.001)
Yeah. I mean, I've experienced it. I haven't experienced much of the alternatives, but it is smooth and you make it really, really easy with your team and the service. So, which is of course probably why Tyler said, Hey, you got to talk to Jeff. He's got this cool business, cool guy, and we actually use his business. So, well, is there a moment in the, I mean, it's been five years, maybe longer with kind of some of the development process.
Jeff Doss (41:58.685)
Thanks.
Jeff Holman (42:14.801)
What's been the moment where you've said to yourself, hey, this is a little more exponential than normal. Maybe normal is kind of this linear growth, have you had some exponential moments in the business?
Jeff Doss (42:31.422)
yeah. I mean, the, the, so the very first season we were just coming out of COVID and we, we, the deal we thought we were going to do with the Marina was changed at like the last hour between the parks. So what was supposed to happen was the park service and the Marina, we're going to enter into an agreement to have some limited amount of pinning. And, and that would take care of all the really large boats. And we were going to focus on the midsize boats and smaller boats and the Marine.
Jeff Holman (42:44.143)
Hmm.
Jeff Holman (42:56.312)
Okay.
Jeff Holman (42:59.801)
What's the length of a midsize boat just for reference here?
Jeff Doss (43:02.44)
Uh, it's a 75 foot boat. That's maybe two stories tall is what I'd call a midsize boat. Um, and, and there's, that's by far the vast majority of our anchorings. Like if we, did 1,250 anchorings last year, the vast majority, seven hundred and fifty, you know, eight or 900 of them were what we would call a midsize boat and down. Um, and so those, and those boats weren't even pinning, right? So people think about our solution is all about replacing pinning. It's really not. It's.
Jeff Holman (43:08.421)
Okay.
Jeff Holman (43:23.002)
Okay.
Jeff Doss (43:30.664)
That was part of the initial impetus for it, but really it's now become just the preferred way to do business on the lake.
Jeff Holman (43:37.637)
that well that because because now the operator which might be the dad and a family can go and just park and know that it's secure and not spend the end. mean they'll have to adjust as water levels adjust from day to day or whatever but you you know that that's secure you're not worried you know 23 hours a day that your boats gonna come off the off the shore right. So it's a it's a lot more than I mean there is the maybe the initial impetus of pinning was
Jeff Doss (44:00.262)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (44:06.479)
not great for the environment, but the stress levels are pretty high out there and having to worry about your anchoring system the whole time, I could imagine just multiplied that for people.
Jeff Doss (44:17.064)
Yeah, the biggest probably inflection point was when we finally signed that deal. And at the last minute, we went from thinking we were going to do one level anchoring on one size boats to basically their entire fleet at our marina. so I was just personally coming back from Africa. My wife and I just done a big stage race over there. So we were super fit, thank goodness. I had sent one of
Jeff Holman (44:30.617)
Mmm.
Jeff Holman (44:40.271)
Wow.
Jeff Doss (44:45.489)
Couple of my partners and some interns were at the lake to do, start providing this full service where we actually rendezvous with boats and do the anchorings. And in early May, they, told me when I got back, said, well, we think we can do like two or three boats a day. And I'm like, that's never going to work. I mean, that's, that's like, you know, no two, two to three boats a day. mean, that's, that's way too few. We, and so, they said,
Jeff Holman (44:51.248)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (45:03.889)
Too many boats or too few boats? I know, was that too many or too few for you?
Jeff Doss (45:15.047)
So I'm like, if that's the case, this will never work. Yeah, the capital requirements will be huge. The labor costs are huge. so I literally the good news, was the end of COVID, we were coming to the end of COVID. And so I literally dropped everything and went up to the lake with my wife. then I called, I had to call friends and I called my kids and had them come on weekends. And really, it took a lot of leadership from the front. I mean, the good news is I have
Jeff Holman (45:18.299)
financially. Got it.
Jeff Doss (45:44.587)
Like I said, I like to be fit. And so I had to literally go out and figure out how do you anchor six or seven, eight boats a day because they thought it was impossible. You know, it's like there's just too much work or the scheduling of it was a challenge. So there's just lots of challenges. And that was really hard.
Jeff Holman (46:03.557)
Well, so maybe I missed a part there. So their projection was two to three a day. That's too few for you financially. they scheduling these for you? And so they kind of were a bottleneck in the scheduling process? Or how did their projection flow down to you?
Jeff Doss (46:23.525)
Well, it was a myriad of, a whole host of problems. The original contract was the Marina was supposed to do the scheduling for us and that we were just gonna be a sub vendor. That turned out to be a nightmare. within the first week or two of us working together, we said, we'll do all the scheduling. We just took it over. And then the challenge even with my guys who were up there, mean, they're engineers, they're interns, they're...
Jeff Holman (46:32.913)
I see. So if they scheduled too few, you were kind of stuck.
Jeff Holman (46:43.449)
Yeah. Got it.
Jeff Doss (46:52.271)
trying to figure out how to literally drive boats and run pumps and meet customers and find spots that are acceptable. it really took, that was by far the hardest was we had to go up there. And then I had to get the marina to give us some help. It was definitely a partnership where we just had to get everybody pulling on the rope. And that first year we anchored 480 boats was, over the course of like,
Jeff Holman (47:15.407)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (47:18.857)
wow.
Jeff Doss (47:21.255)
12 weeks. That's a lot of boats.
Jeff Holman (47:23.845)
Wow, that is a lot more than two or three a day, isn't it? Well, so you got through that bump. How did that first season of, you said 480 boats? How did that first season of 480 boats change the way you thought about your business?
Jeff Doss (47:40.901)
Well, we went from this at the start of the season. went from literally meeting customers on the lake and then like screaming at me that this is never going to work. I'm only doing this because I have to the Marina won't pilot me unless I use you. They point.
Jeff Holman (47:57.401)
you were, you are now another cost for them and they were mad about it. Just to paint the picture, you're pro you're walking down, you're walking down the docks, right? Or what?
Jeff Doss (48:00.559)
we're another cost.
Jeff Doss (48:07.088)
No, so in this example, for example, it was one of the larger boats on the lake. And after we had anchored it, I went back. I wasn't on the boat to anchor them. And I went back to see how his experience was. And he came off the boat just screaming and he's like pointing to some strapping that's on our anchors. And he says, you know, look at that. That's that's stitched together. That's never going to hold this boat. And I said, well, the military drops Humvees out of aircraft with parachutes and strapping.
Jeff Holman (48:34.033)
This is the nylon webbing that's strapped to the bladder.
Jeff Doss (48:36.935)
And he says, that's the military, that's not you. And I said, well, my company is the kind of company that makes that stuff for them. That's what we do. But the beauty of it was literally, and this happened week after week, I came back a week later to unanchor him and he was shaking my hand and apologizing for his reaction and that he became effusively positive. Man, we had 50 mile an hour winds.
Jeff Holman (48:44.475)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (49:05.499)
Those things didn't move at all. My boat was the most stable it's ever been. This is incredible. So we were riding this incredible roller coaster of how are we gonna actually fulfill all these anchorings? And everybody seems to hate us. Hate's maybe too strong a word, but we really flipped that all around. And so at the end of the year, we went from a reluctant partner in our marina to a very effusive partner.
Jeff Holman (49:10.833)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (49:22.768)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (49:34.257)
who made money with us, we helped them provide a better service to their customers. We developed relationships with people in town and other vendors that supported us. And our customers became really quite, a lot of them became very quite positive. Now there was a lot of people that on social media that didn't know who we were or what we did. And so they might be complaining because they didn't know where we were. Correct, but anybody who used us was,
Jeff Holman (49:44.825)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (49:56.345)
They had lots of opinions about what they'd never done before, right?
Jeff Doss (50:02.969)
really positive and that was super motivating.
Jeff Holman (50:06.085)
Was that a shock to you? Because as you say that, I'm like, wow, I can't believe people do that. But when I think about it, know, people are getting to the lake, they packed, they've driven hours and hours, they've got their families with them. Like that could be kind of the beginning of any vacation, can be kind of high stress moment. Much different from hopefully the end of vacation. If it went well, they're relaxed, they're, you know, they're so grateful they had some downtime, they had time with it. But at the beginning, when you show up, like,
I guess it kind of makes sense, especially if they had to drive their own boat down the lake like for four hours. That's stressful. And you're meeting them right at that point of probably a really high stress moment.
Jeff Doss (50:46.906)
Yeah, and like I said, there were a number of people that are highly influential at the marina and at the lake. They build boats, they've serviced the boats, and they were not on board in the beginning. They thought that they knew better, and they told people. And so once we sort of passed that first few months and the word got out, it really works. And don't get me wrong, we've still been going through that where we...
Jeff Holman (50:53.723)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Jeff Holman (51:02.043)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (51:13.274)
have been, I mean, it happened last year. It happens every year. I end up with people that I've been watching this for years. I didn't believe it, but I'm going to try you now. My cousin told me I need to use you. it's like the good news, it's like a record that keeps playing over and over, which is this is the best thing ever. So we're super proud of that. And we don't take it for granted because it's really what's allowed the business to grow.
Jeff Holman (51:23.046)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (51:34.447)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (51:38.427)
well, five years in, zero technical failures, and a record on repeat of happy customers. Business must be easy.
Jeff Doss (51:50.951)
Why? I don't know. I'd say that. I mean, the other thing that was nice about a small market is everyone told us all the problems we would have. So the flip side of that negativity was it was an alert, right? It got our antennas up about, these people have been working this lake for 40 years. They're not dummies. They don't know my system, but they're not dummies. And so in a way, that really helped us because it allowed us to zone in on things early on and say, okay, we...
Jeff Holman (52:05.723)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (52:20.666)
We need to look out for this. We need to figure this out. We need to understand these things. So that was helpful.
Jeff Holman (52:25.903)
Yeah, no, that's getting the feedback. But you know, as we started this conversation out, I thought, I was curious, where will this conversation go about business? But there's so much to it. And I think a lot of founders and CEOs out there who are building and scaling their own businesses will listen to this and say, I've been down that path. I mean, I might not be anchoring houseboats on Lake Powell with, you know, a patented bladder system that's new, but
But they've been, they're dealing with some of these same things that you've been dealing with, right?
Jeff Doss (53:00.13)
I would think so. mean, the other thing for us is having been a product development company, our time horizon for development is, know, and I from an idea to a product or a company might be multiple years. So this has been a really refreshing thing for us because we have instant feedback every day when I'm driving back from on the lake from from anchoring boats or whatever we're doing up lake. I know that day we did a great job or I know we didn't. And I have the ability to to influence.
Jeff Holman (53:12.721)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (53:25.999)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (53:28.858)
how the following day is gonna go. So for me, that was a really, believe it not, that was a really unique and new experience. We really enjoy that.
Jeff Holman (53:36.933)
Well, you became not that you weren't and aren't operating your product development business, but like you said, either at beginning or maybe even before we started recording you, you mentioned a lot of those ideas you develop and you, you license about or spend out. So somebody else is operating those eventually as businesses. How has the experience been and what's maybe the biggest thing you've taken away from operating this business, as opposed to sending it out on its way somewhere else.
Jeff Doss (53:53.638)
Correct.
Jeff Doss (54:07.109)
Yeah, like I was just saying, it's the immediate feedback of knowing I did a good job. mean, we could invest millions in something and spend years and then find out at the end of that road, it didn't work. mean, most developments are, if you're doing hard stuff, everything doesn't work. And so, you're constantly going, am I doing the right thing? Am I doing the right thing? This, we had that phase in the beginning, which was, we doing the right thing? Is this going to work? But once we found that answer,
Jeff Holman (54:27.878)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (54:36.304)
You know, I was comfortable with that. That's a world I was familiar with. The piece I wasn't familiar with was really the, you how do I interact with the customers every day? How do we make sure we're providing them a great experience? How do we articulate to the customer the value they're really getting? And because like they never had this before. It was, it was like totally new. So we, we just love that. I mean, that's been something we love. It's invigorating. It makes us get up and want to go make it better every day.
Jeff Holman (54:44.773)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (54:56.57)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (55:06.321)
How would somebody who's in a different line of business, and I don't know if that's SaaS business, e-commerce, some other technology-based business, or how would somebody else try to bring more of that into their business, do you think?
Jeff Doss (55:21.152)
you know, I wouldn't pretend to know their business, but what I would say is for us, you know, having great partners has been the key to my success in life and in business. I have a phenomenal team I work with. So, you know, I didn't have to pull a team together to solve this problem. I already had it. had mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, I had a whole team, marketing people.
Jeff Holman (55:45.542)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (55:46.806)
And then we went out and we partnered. found the best, what we felt were the best in class. Now it's not a big market, but we partnered with the right people to deliver the service. We didn't try to do everything. We tried to do what we do really, really good and then make a deal with the other people that do what they do well and try and get both of us aligned so that we're both doing what we're good at and not have a we win, you lose deal, right?
Jeff Holman (56:13.585)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (56:13.902)
So the great thing about the deal we made with our marina is that, you know, as we've scaled, we're just getting happier and happier. I mean, because we work well together. The deal we structured, they're making money, their customers are happy, we're making money, our customers are happy. It's a true win-win.
Jeff Holman (56:31.453)
that sounds like an awesome story and a great place to be and probably a great place to grow from because, you know, while Lake Powell is big and beautiful, it is one of probably several places that eventually this could be rolled out to, right? What do you still have that's unresolved in the business and what are you working towards? What kind of milestones are you working towards in the next three to five years?
Jeff Doss (56:55.653)
Yeah, so one of the things that we've been trying to understand is what the real, the TAM is on the lake. What's the total available market? The Marina we operate out of, I think we've got the 60 % market share there probably, but the, they sand anchor. I mean, there's still a lot of.
Jeff Holman (57:10.053)
What did the other 40 % do, by the way? Okay. They sand anchor or they illegally pin without saying they're pinning.
Jeff Doss (57:19.525)
Correct, or they tie off the natural features. There's different ways of doing it. But Aramark is the other major operator on the lake. They have an up-lake marina and a down-lake marina, and we just now are working with them, finally, after five years. And they were the first ones we approached, and they were, they're a big corporate, they were very concerned, and now they're like, we believe it, we believe, we're believers, how do we work together? So we're doing that. We also have been approached.
Jeff Holman (57:21.935)
Got it. Okay.
Jeff Holman (57:40.539)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (57:46.693)
I mean, I'd love to take credit for this, but we got approached by a construction company. They were going to do some work on the Yakima River in a wilderness area. they were potentially going to have to go in put in these big concrete pilings to hold some barges. And they had to do an environmental impact study. And they came to us and hey, I sell your anchors. Can I just pack in with those fillers of water from the river? And I don't have to do all that. I'm like, yeah. So I think there are other markets. The challenge for us is, you
Jeff Holman (58:00.568)
Hmm.
Jeff Holman (58:09.766)
Yeah.
Jeff Doss (58:16.016)
How big are they? do I get to them? How do I penetrate those markets? But I do think there's other places for the product for sure.
Jeff Holman (58:23.865)
Yeah, I mean, you're in one beautiful place in the world and the rest of the recreational and industrial world is out there. So there could be very big things on the horizon. So, well, is there anything that we haven't asked you? I mean, other than the entire rest of your career and business life and successes that you've had, anything else about this experience that you would want to highlight for another CEO who's listening and thinking, man, I wish I could, you
Jeff Doss (58:40.634)
Yeah
Jeff Holman (58:54.011)
take a few insights here and apply them in my business.
Jeff Doss (58:57.961)
Well, I would just say, I don't know if this is so much a business point, but I found that developing our young people has been a real joy on the lake, right? So the crews that do this work, it's very physical work. I've really enjoyed, much more so than I ever thought, recruiting, bringing in these seasonal workers, college kids, and really
Jeff Holman (59:15.451)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Doss (59:26.125)
watching them go from people who probably never got up at four in the morning in their lives to do something physical, unless their mom or dad got them up, right? That has been really rewarding. I mean, of course I've hired and fired people my whole career, but that part has been exceptionally rewarding. And so, you we've always had interns, but I have an even greater desire to work with young people than I've ever had.
Jeff Holman (59:30.288)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (59:50.755)
Yeah, well, if I'm not mistaken, and don't hold me to this, I think Tyler might have a kid who's talked about coming down there. I might have a 15 year old who when we were down there last year and heard Tyler's kid talk about it, like, hmm, maybe one day I'll be I'll be out here doing this. So pretty fascinating stuff. Well, Jeff, I don't know if I'm cutting our conversation short or not. I feel like there's so much more we can talk about. But
But for the time you've spent with me, I really appreciate it. And just want to say thank you. I think they're, you know, again, as different as your business is as unique as it is and your journey's unique. I think there's a lot of stuff in this, in this episode that people running other types of businesses will really relate to and maybe be able to, because it's so different, maybe you'll be able to even identify it and say, my gosh, he did that in that business. I think I could do that in mine, even though.
I'm in XYZ industry. So thank you for the audience before I leave you. I'd love to share your product development company if you don't mind. if people wanna, do you develop products for other people or is it all internal?
Jeff Doss (01:01:00.565)
we, we do, primarily we work on our own stuff, although it's not uncommon for people to approach us with an idea or concept and, and, and no, I would say that probably over the years, I probably told 90 % of the people that that's a cool idea, but there's about 20 reasons why I wouldn't invest in that. And, and so we, most of the time we're politely telling people don't waste your money.
Jeff Holman (01:01:05.233)
Uh-huh.
Jeff Holman (01:01:10.779)
So you don't mind being approached.
Jeff Holman (01:01:28.229)
Okay.
Jeff Doss (01:01:29.135)
But not that I'm the definitive answer on what people should do or shouldn't do, but we've
Jeff Holman (01:01:35.983)
But for your business model, you've got to make decisions as to what works in your model and what doesn't.
Jeff Doss (01:01:41.795)
that and we provide them information because that's what we've done for 20 some years and we say, well, have you thought about this and you've thought about that and you thought about this and you know, they're like, I want to use my $100,000 of 401k money and at 30 and I'm like, I'm not sure that's how I would spend it if I were you. no, we have successfully partnered with a lot of other people as well.
Jeff Holman (01:01:43.963)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (01:01:56.325)
Right.
Jeff Holman (01:02:01.593)
Okay, well if you want to share that and then definitely share your share your website for the beach bags. The people who need you probably already know where to go already know that when to reserve and how to reserve but I'd love for other people to go check it out that are listening to the episode here.
Jeff Doss (01:02:18.745)
Great. Thank you, Jeff.
Jeff Holman (01:02:20.495)
So we'll share that in the show notes. So, well, it's been a pleasure, Jeff. Thanks for coming on the show.
Jeff Doss (01:02:28.121)
Thank you, appreciate meeting you.
Jeff Holman (01:02:29.647)
Yeah. And thanks to the audience for, for joining us again this week on the breakout CEO podcast.
