A (3:26)

So amazing. And, and talk a little bit about, you know, and I know you've got your first list thing. You could give us 30 seconds on the first listing that you've got going. I, I, I saw that. It looks beautiful. It's a $4 million boat or something like that where you get a fractional share for less than that. Can you take a moment on the first listing and then we'll talk a lot about how, how does fractional yacht ownership actually work? What do you get when you get a 25% share? How is time scheduled? And use those questions and tell us about the first listing too, if you don't mind.

B (3:57)

Sure. So, so it was perfect. There was a Navy Pier boat show for the first time ever. We had an in water boat show in Chicago at Navy Pier at the new marina there. And I was giving out flyers to my yacht broker friends. They were there and saying, hey, if you know anybody that's interested in selling half their boat, that's the way we really want to do it. Trying to find four people to buy one boat is very challenging. So instead of just people want to take some money off the table, give me a call. So I gave out my flyer to all the top brokers in Chicago that were there. And the next day I got a phone call from a guy who talked to one of the brokers there. So this gentleman bought his boat three years ago for about four and a half million dollars. It's a Sunseeker. Sunseekers are arguably one of the best boats that are leased in the Chicago Market they're made in Great Britain. Sunseeker makes boats from probably about 45ft up to 150ft. And so he has a 68 foot Sunseeker which is about as big as you want in Chicago because the fact that it has a. It's called a Sunseeker 68 Manhattan. Manhattans are the flybridge versions of their boats. They make a predator which is without the fly bridge, but flybridge doubles your space, especially in the sun. This boat is great because it's got a, what they call a bimini top instead of a hard top. And you could take it down the Chicago River. You could, you know, just, it's, it's just, it's got a huge open area instead of just being solid top which is too tall to get down the Chicago river. And that's half the fun of Chicago is going down the Chicago River. Beautiful. Especially during the day. The night it's beautiful. So this boat is four bedrooms, three bath plus crew cabin. So you. So the idea of our business model is that this boat could be driven by, not could be, will be driven by a captain and, and one crew member and you'll pay a quarter of the cost. So this is a three and a half million dollar boat, you know, new it was over four million dollars. So basically you're paying one quarter the price and you get to use the boat about what it comes out to, you know, about one week a month. And the Chicago boating season is, you know, they call it six months May 1st through October 31st. But in reality it's more like five months and then bad weather talking maybe four months. But people love boating in Chicago because it's a, it's fresh water. When you're down in Florida, every time you go swimming, you got to take a shower when you're done. Chicago, the water is beautiful, it's fresh, it's clean. We're really lucky to be in, you know, at Lake Michigan right here. So it's an amazing experience to have something like this because again, you know, a million dollars doesn't buy you that much. You can buy these little 40 foot pardos, which is a beautiful Italian made boat, but it's 40ft long and it's, you know, a teeny little bedroom and a little bathroom and that's it versus your invest a million dollars in this or in this case, 875,000 DOL. You now are a fractional owner of a 68 foot boat that weighs. Instead of it being a 15 or 20,000 pound boat, it's 130,000 pound boat. I mean it's just the volume of this boat. It's a, you know, it's like it's a house versus a studio apartment.

A (6:58)

Phenomenal. And talk numbers with us a little bit more. And, and can you sell that unit? If you buy a fractional unit, can you wait or sell it? What does that look like? Can you resell it? And then talk about the investment you're looking at is a recurring cost. Give us a sense of what this looks like over time too.

B (7:16)

Sure. So normally any boat you buy, I don't care what it is, you're going to have your annual expenses. So, so in this case, you're, you're, you know, whatever the price of the boat is, you're, you're paying one quarter of it and you buy a share. So the idea is you own a quarter of the LLC that owns the boat. Most of these big boats are in llc, they're not in people's names. And so then you're also responsible for one quarter of the expenses. And the expenses are basically your summer dockage. So for a big boat like this in Chicago, it's about $15,000 a season. Your winter storage is usually more than your summer storage because you want to keep these boats inside heated storage so the pipes don't burst on the boat anywhere. So that's another 15 or $20,000. And then you've got insurance and you've got maintenance, you got oil changes and then an air conditioner goes out. It could be $30,000 and, and you could have a generator blow and that's $50,000. So there's a lot of expenses on a boat. But the beautiful thing about owning a fraction of a boat is you only a pay, you're only paying a quarter of those expenses. So a lot of times when it comes to a, you know, 60, 70 foot boat, a lot of times the insurance company won't even allow. You especially don't have any experience driving big boats like that. The insurance companies would tell you you've got to have a captain. And in our situation with our company, we want everybody to, to have a full time licensed captain driving the boat and a crew member. So a Captain costs about 10 to $14,000 a month, depending on experience. And he'll be there five, six days a week to take everybody out day and night. And he'll have a crew member to help docking and undocking of the boat and serve drinks and clean the boat because people don't realize the amount of work to get your boat together before you take people out, you're on the boat an hour too early, washing down the boat, getting rid of the bird poop and spider webs and all sorts of fun stuff like that. But the bottom line is, you know, when it comes to this type of boat, normally a boat like that, just the insurance and storage and all that stuff, you're probably talking, I don't know, 60 or $80,000. But in this case we're having a full time captain, which a lot of these people that have boats like this do have a full time captain. So again, you're adding the cost of the captain and you could be adding an extra $150,000 a year of expenses. So in total, you could be around, call it $200,000 a year and you're paying $50,000. You know, one quarter of that cost is, is yours whether you use the boat or not. But we're hoping these people will use their 20 days or 40 or 50 it comes on. A boat like this will come out to about 25 full days or 50 segments, which means we're, we're breaking the day down into two. So it's a daytime segment and a nighttime segment. So from 10 o' clock in the morning till 5 o' clock at night, and then again, you could take the boat out from six o' clock at night till nine o' clock the next morning. So and the captain would be driving and you hang out the playpen, watch the fireworks, do all that fun stuff.

A (10:12)

I mean, it's like, it's like buying a fractional jet or one of these France fractional luxury condos in Aspen or Deer Valley and stuff like that. I mean, just, just fantastic in. Ted, take a second on. Is this an investment? Is it a lifestyle concept? Is it a hybrid of both? How do you sort of look at this? Is somebody buying into this? How do you look at that? And who's the ideal customer for this? Is, is it someone who's a seasoned boater or a first time boater? Who's the, who's the ideal customer here?

B (10:42)

Yeah, so first and foremost, boats are not investments. So we just, that word is not used, investment. The idea is you worked hard for your money, you've made a lot of money and you now want to spend it to enjoy yourselves and your, enjoy your family and all that. So it's, it's a, as my mother would say, a boat is a hole in the water in which you pour money and you just afford, how much money can you afford to pour into the, the lake is the question. So that's the answer to that question. I mean, very rarely do boats go up in value, but if it's well maintained, it doesn't lose as much money, but they go down over time, period. So. And if I always tell people if you're looking for an audit, you can try writing it off. We don't want anybody chartering. So you own a quarter of the vote. You own a quarter boat. We don't want people taking that time and try chartering it to make money off of it. It's just a lot of extra wear and tear that the other owner would not be happy about. So we don't want to do that.

A (11:32)

No, no, that's very helpful and I appreciate the very straightforward, honest answer. This is not an investment. This is a luxury addition to your life. So, and this is the beauty of this. If you're only going to use about 20, 25 days a year, which is about as much anybody can really use it by the time you get done with life and everything else. Now you're paying for that versus paying 4 million for the whole boat. You're getting a fantastic boat. You have ownership for the amount you want. You could resell it at some point but don't kind of make a good profit from it. This is really a part of your lifestyle and hopefully you get back some of your money at some point. But it's, but it's really a lifestyle thing to be able to afford the type of boat you want to spend money on.

B (12:09)

Yeah, no, I mean, it's this boat. One of the parts, the question was, you know, what kind of person is this for? It could be for somebody who's always thought about boating, never had the time for it. Now they do, but they know nothing about boating. This is perfect to do that because there are some boat share companies out there called Sail Time and Pinnacle where you can get the use of a boat but then you're still supposed to captain it. But they do have captains they can use. In this case, you'll have a full time captain and crew member. They can teach you everything about boating. So if you're thinking about maybe buying a boat, a big boat, we're talking about, I mean, our boat's going to start around 40 or 50ft and up. But this is one of the bigger ones that I could have dreamed of to be the first boat. But it's a great way to get into boating to see if you really like it because you only made quarter the investment and then and Then you get a professional captain to hopefully teach you the ropes, to show you how to be a good captain, how to anchor properly, how to dock properly, how to, you know, manage a boat, how to change the oil or check the oil and things like that. A lot of people on these big boats do, don't change oil. That's a lot of work, but it's really a good way to start. And even if you're a seasoned veteran and you realize you're getting older, your wife doesn't, can't be doing the docking lines anymore. I've got a lot of friends of mine where the wives are, no offense, in no condition or no, there are no spring chickens. They shouldn't be running around trying to get to the lines on a windy day and just stress the heck out of them. It's just not fun. So having a full time captain and crew member who can take care of everything, where you just. The idea of our experience, it's walk on, walk on, walk off. We do all the cleaning, we do all the prepping, we get all the food and drinks for you, everything. And you just pay for the gas, food and drinks and all the annual expenses. But it's called apas or advanced provisioning allowance where you pay for all those extras when you're using the boat. So if you take the boat from Chicago to Saugatuck and back, you know, you're spend a few thousand dollars in fuel, you'll spend a bunch of money on food and drinks. We could even. There's an extra room on the boat tied in. This boat, it's poor vitamin. You can hire a chef and I'm, and I'm a Seuss or something. So to be cooking all your meals for the, you know, five days, seven days you're gone. I mean it's, it's really a five star experience that most people, especially the Chicago market, never have an opportunity to do. But it's unbelievable. And this in, in the last couple years, the boats in Chicago have really come up a lot. I mean There are some 80, 90 foot sunseekers in Chicago. These are 10 million dollar boats. And you never used to see that in Chicago. These boats are too big to even go down the Chicago river. But a boat like this 68 foot sunset figure, it's the same boat that basically the guys that own the Chicago Cubs, it's, that's the same boat that they, they use because they want a boat that go down the Chicago river.

A (14:49)

It really is amazing. And I did get a chance to go up and down the Chicago river on a friend's boat this summer. And just really remarkable to do so. I've not done that in a long time, and it was a stunning day and just absolutely beautiful. So Sunseeker, fantastic brand, will be working with other brands as well over time. You're, you're an entrepreneur. You founded Chicago Scene, an amazing sort of media and event company in the Chicago area. Literally remarkable. Do you think you'll expand to other markets as well? Coastal areas or internationally at any point? And, and also, where do you see Great Lakes for excellent yachts in five years or so? Where do you see this in a few years?

B (15:29)

Yeah, so we have this other company, shared yachts. Shared yachts.com. and that's for the bigger boats. But we're trying to figure out what's the niche that makes the, the most sense. You know, we were going to call the Chicago version of this Shared yacht Chicago, but then it turns out this boat that we got is in Traverse City right now. And once he sells it, it sells half of it or so we're going to bring it down to Chicago. So we realized we really want to go up to the Great Lakes market. You know, the season is short. A lot of people still have weddings, bar mitzvahs, golf tournaments, things like that. They can't use the boat all the time, so why not share it? And so we like the idea of this expanding all over the Great Lakes. A lot of the yacht brokers that are in Chicago may have started in Chicago, but they now have offices all over Detroit and Cleveland and, and all over, you know, near Saugatuck and all those kind of places. So we're hoping just will serve that market. And if it works, you know, well, we'll go to the east coast where, you know, in New York City, there's not really, as far as I know, I haven't heard any kind of a shared yacht program in New York City, but I think it just makes sense. It just, it, it's a, there's a better way to go boating and spend money for a nice boat, and it's just not wasteful. And these boats need to be used in order to perform properly. Even bathrooms need to be flushed on a regular basis to, to run properly. And, and just, it's, you know, I, I, A lot of times I got friends on my dock who start their engines because they never take the boat out. So they start the engine once a week, but they don't even take the boat up.

A (16:59)

It's like, no, they got to do it, to keep it running. It's like, it's like having a fancy sports car. You better run it once in a while or it's gonna be in real trouble. And you love boating. I mean, this is one of your loves of your life is the boating.

B (17:10)

You love it.

A (17:11)

Fair statement.

B (17:12)

Yeah. No, I, you know, I've been boating since I was a kid. My dad used to have a boat in Lake Geneva. We waited 20 years to get a slip in Wilmette harbor and finally got that slip and so we boated and we'll met fishing all the time and for coho salmon and all that fun stuff. But I saw, you know, boating has always been in my blood, sadly. But I've had some great experiences boating. I had the opportunity to take my sailboat with my son from Chicago to Florida. So we sailed at people. I said, I didn't know you could do that. So, yeah, we were. You can take a boat from Chicago going down the Chicago river, which turns into the Illinois river down by Aurora, and you keep taking that 350 miles down to Grafton, Illinois, and you get onto the Mississippi river there, which is about maybe 100 miles north of St. Louis. And you take that boat south to the Ohio river, which is where the Ohio river meets the Mississippi River. That's where the upper Mississippi and the lower Mississippi, that's the bifurcation mark, I think that's what it's called. So most people get off the Mississippi river at that point, it's Cairo, Illinois, and they make a left turn, they go up the Ohio river to the Tennessee river at Paducah, Kentucky, and then take the Tennessee river down to the Tom Bigby Waterway, which is another 500 miles. And you come out at Mobile, Alabama, and that's 1300 miles from Chicago. It's 26 locks and you're dropping about 650ft of elevation. And it's an amazing trip. I did that with my son in 2019. It took, if people are good with math, it's basically on a sailboat, you go about 50 miles a day and it's 1300 miles. So that comes out to 26 days is how long it took us. Exactly. And an amazing, amazing trip. And then we had our mast put up in Mobile, Alabama, and then we sailed on to Sarasota and sailed the Gulf of Mexico during COVID And it was a lot of fun, but highly recommend. You know, trips like that. You know, there's, there are, there's something called the, the Great Loop, which is basically sailing that, that Trip from Mobile, then to Key West, Key west to Miami, Miami to New York, New York, up the Hudson river to the St. Lawrence Seaway to basically Toronto and to Mackinac and back to Chicago. It's 5,500 miles. It's called the Great Loop. And there are less people and boats that do that trip on an annual basis that then climb Mount Everest.

A (19:41)

I am sure that's a big trip because that's a, that's a 100 day trip or 200, 110 day trip or something like that.

B (19:48)

It's a 365 day trip. You need to follow the seasons. So you gotta be in the. Yeah, you gotta follow the sun.

A (19:56)

That makes sense. That's a trip of a lifetime. Even the trip you did is a trip of a lifetime. That's remarkable. So talk a little bit about business and advice and challenges. You've launched several businesses over the course of your career. Biggest challenge in launching a business in the luxury space and any, any lessons learned that you'd share with other entrepreneurs wanting niche or high ticket businesses. So biggest challenge in a luxury space in any lessons in launching niche or high ticket businesses.

B (20:24)

Yeah, so I think, you know, when it comes to this, you need to find out first with. I had another partner, I have another partner with my other business and, and he was fanatical about making sure we have all the agreements right and all these details. The website's got to be perfect, all the copies got to be perfect. And the reality is, and I've got other friends of mine that are kind of advisors of mine, they're like, bring it to market. Bring it to market. So with this business, with the, our, our shared yachts business, it took us over two years to get it to market. In this business it took me about two or three months to get it to market. Where we wanted to just build a website relatively quickly. You know, thanks to AI, you can help you write some stuff, whatever. But the idea is you got to bring things to market and find out if there is a market. So we were able to at least get the, you know, materials out to get the word out that we have a business here. And now we've got a boat and now we, you know, we've got, our legal agreements are, you know, about, you know, three quarters of the way done. But we're not, it's a fortune legal. You know, writing these agreements there are, you can't imagine how many agreements there are for a fractional ownership. I mean when it comes to that you're, because you're you're buying a fraction llc and there's. So there's a existing llc, and then every time you transfer ownership of an llc, there's tax issues, there's all sorts of issues that come about with, with this ownership. So I'm spending a lot of money on legal fees, but the reality is I'm minimizing that until we have a deal. Once we have a deal, then I'll spend the rest of the money to finalize these documents because otherwise you're putting kind of the cart before the horse and the money before there's money. You know, you're spending money before it's coming in and really proving your. Your business model. So you first got to sell it. And then you could figure it out. You could just tell them, I will tell people, hey, we're finalizing all these documents. They're not perfect, but we will make them perfect. Just once we know that there is a marketplace for this. And then, you know, there's. There's competitors of mine out there. A company called CNET is in California. They've done this for over 20 years. The owner is a friend of mine, and there's people doing in other places in the world. And they've all done it successfully. And I know we can do it successfully just once we put the time and energy into it. But the idea is, I. What I believe is when I started Chicago Scene, I just got it out there and see if people liked it, and they seem to like it. And then you put more energy money into it and hopefully it. It pays for itself and, and builds up.

A (22:48)

We're a big believer in, in your perspective. We talk a lot about ready, aim, fire versus people that ready, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, fire. We talk a lot about commercializing early and figuring out whether you've got the right product market fit. And, and I could not agree with you more on your lessons.

B (23:05)

You.

A (23:05)

You could spend a lot of money on all these upfront expenses that don't need to be spent until you know you have a deal in hand. And even so, if you spend all the money on front, you're still gonna have to revise them and change them and redo them. Could not agree more with your perspective when you're looking at sort of. You've mentioned this. Well, I mean, they've got these businesses in other places. You mentioned cnet. There's other places that do this fractional ownership they have in Florida too. So you know that there's a market for this. How have you had to Deal with people or overcome market skepticism. And then I'll give you a second question there. What advice would you give to someone who's thinking about turning a lifestyle or passion into a business? How do you think about that?

B (23:49)

It makes all the sense in the world to do it just again, you just have to test it and see if there's really. Just because it's a passion of yours doesn't mean it necessarily makes money. And it just depends on, you know, your situation. You know, can you do it on the side while you're doing other things? Just, it's got to be fully baked and you just, you got to get it out there and see if there are real customers. You've got it. If there are customers out there, then you got a real business. So I am hoping I've got some people that are very interested in buying these first, you know, couple shares of this boat already, and it's only been on the market for a week. And you know, if, if it turns out that there's no market in Chicago market, that's why there's nobody doing it, I'll move on. But in the meantime, you just got to test and, and see if there's customers and you got to do. Obviously, I'm starting to do some social media marketing and things like that. But no matter what you're, you know, it's great that you got a passion for it. It makes it a lot more fun and it doesn't feel like you're going to work when it's something you really love to do. Like I love to do to be around boaters and talk to boaters all the time. I just literally walk the docks in Chicago and tell people what I'm doing. They're like, oh, my God, what a great idea. I never use my boat. I think I would have done that in two seconds. So just the question is when you got to try being around enough to make sure you're in the cycle, that you're there when they're ready to pull the trigger to. Instead of buying a full boat, they buy a fraction boat. But you just got to be in the marketplace. You got to be, you know, people know me when I'm walking around and I tell people that I'm the guy that started the Chicago scene boat party. You know, in Chicago, 90% of the power boaters know exactly who I am. I say, my name's Ted. They, they can answer, oh, you're Ted Widen. I mean, it's pretty funny. I've been in, I've been In Colombia where I mentioned something about the boat party and I said, my name's Ted. They're like, oh my God, I know you. So I mean, the Discovery boat party is literally world famous. We were, you know, written up in the New York Times. We were written up in all sorts of magazines and newspapers and online things. And, and so some of the things that I've done, a lot of notoriety and now the question is, can that notoriety turned into real dollars? We've had unbelievable sponsorship of the boat party over the years. So I'm hoping that this becomes the same kind of thing that it's a big monster.

A (25:58)

That's, it's remarkable. It really is the story of Great Lakes fractional yachts. And your story is remarkable, really amazing. Ted, how could people learn more about, about what you're doing about Great Lakes fractional yachts? How can they get to know you? How can they book a call and where can listeners find you online or connect with you directly?

B (26:18)

Yeah, no, they can go to our website, Great Lakes fractional yachts.com and my phone number is 312-593-1180. My email, I always use my personal email which is Ted Wyden at Gmail. That's widen, like widen the street. W, I, D, E, N. And yeah, I'd love to talk to people about any kind of boating. I'm a, I'm a yacht broker as well, licensed yacht parker in Florida. But I can help people in Chicago, you know, find a boat. You know, we're, we're hoping to get some boats for about a million dollars. We're looking at a couple people have boats that are 46 and 52 foot prestige boats which are really beautiful boats as well. They're two cabin boats. I think actually the 46 is maybe a three cabin boat or the 52 is a three cabin. So. But they're, they're beautiful boats and you know, so you're talking about a price point of a quarter of a million dollars instead of, you know, $870,000 to get in the ball game. But we're gonna have more and more boats get listed once the word gets out. And, but love to help people when it comes to boating in Chicago. I always tell people, it's funny because a lot of people like, oh, I want to buy a boat. I'm going to buy a 60 foot boat and put it at Belmont Harbor. I'm like, how much time do you have? Like, what do you mean? It's like you can't get a slip in Belmont harbor. For a boat that size for 10 years, like, oh, I didn't think about that. So the beautiful thing about our program is that the boats will be in a slip already or, you know, we'll, in this case, we're bringing the boat from Traverse City, so we're bringing the boat to the new Navy Pier Marina. And it makes sense because Navy Pier Marina is very expensive. It's, it's double the price of a normal marina in Chicago, which would be like $15,000. Instead they're charging thousand dollars, but you're only paying a quarter of the cost. So it's 7, 500 bucks is what you have to pay for it. So. But when it comes to boating, a lot of people don't realize they've got to understand the budget of the boat, you know, how much fuel that boat uses, you know, how much can it cost for winter and summer storage and all that. There's a lot of questions before you just run out and buy a boat. And for me, I did. When I was buying my last boat, which is a 35 foot sea ray, I wanted to be in Burnham harbor and the biggest slip I could find was simply a 30 foot boat, 35 foot slip. So I knew I wasn't buying anything bigger than that. So you got to go by where the boat's going in Chicago, Florida is the same thing. You know, there's all the big marinas and I don't care if you're in South Beach Marina or some of the nice meters in Palm beach, there's no room. So you got to find out, call them, find out what, where the, you know, how much, what slips are available and then you got to work within what they have. So that's the key.

A (28:44)

Ted, can I ask you one more time just for our audience? Give us the phone number and the email address. So we've got both those two again.

B (28:52)

Yeah. So my phone number is 312-593-1180 and my email is just simply my name, Ted Wiedenmail.

A (29:02)

Fantastic. Ted Wieden, literally an amazing entrepreneur. We are so excited to feature him this month, October, as the founder of the month. Ted, what a remarkable story and congratulations. We hope this goes also double down and put the phone number in your email address and a little discussion of this in the next couple newsletters so people see it and we'll post it that way too. Ted, remarkable journey. Thank you for joining us. Say what a pleasure to visit with you.

B (29:34)

Thank you so much for having me and it's been a pleasure.