Boating Insider Interview with Lou Clark, Exclusive Yachts
Our Exclusive Yachts Head of Sales Lou Clark took part in an exclusive interview with Chris Heine of Vessel Vanguard and the Boating Insider Podcast. This engaging conversation took place aboard our 76-foot Sunseeker M/Y Tempus Fugit in October. Have a listen as Chris and Lou discuss the joys and pains of yacht ownership, the hit or miss aspects of yacht chartering, and ideas around how to make enjoying time on the water more frictionless and easy.
At Exclusive Yachts, we understand that owning a yacht can be both a dream come true and a financial and emotional nightmare. That’s why this insightful discussion touches a lot on essential considerations before purchasing a yacht, including maintenance costs, scheduling, and insurance.
Lou’s expertise is at the forefront of our mission to provide hassle-free access to the pleasures of yachting. Whether you’re an experienced yachtsman or someone new to the world of boating, tune in below to discover how our Exclusive Yachts membership model is making this dream a reality, offering personalized yachting experiences without the burdens of traditional ownership or the hassles of ad-hoc chartering.
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I mean I’ve seen fractional ownership programs before but you still have ownership so you’ve still got the inherent problems of owning the asset if
you then have four different owners wanting to do four different programs you’ve got challenges with that fractional ownership can still be
contentious and difficult with this there’s no ownership you just step on and step
[Music] off Lou thank you for joining me I appreciate it thank you so you’re the
head of sales for exclusive Yachts yes okay so I want to dive into what it is
who you’re serving and then also you were a captain for and crew member for
quite a while so I want to dig into some of that but if we can can you give us a background on what exclusive Yachts is
sure and we’ll go from there okay well exclusive Yachts is a membership based Club if you will um and as as we’ve
discussed previously you know the jet card thing is is a great analogy for it
um with a jet card you buy hours of flight per year that you can use across a range of jets and a range of locations
for a range of purposes with us you get to use your yacht points across a range
of yachts in an endless number of locations and the beauty of it is that you just step on and you step off so it
has taken away from yacht ownership or the hassles involved in owning a yacht
uh or the maintenance and uh what’s required with that aspect of it the cost
is a factor and just the general headaches involved with your ownership yeah and it’s it’s removed all of that
from the equation and also over chartering we’re trying to elevate the experience a
little bit as well um okay we’re providing regularity we have a consur our inh house coner service and
developing our own web app um and you know that will all provide members with
the easiest way to get on the boat and the best Ultimate Experience okay so how
how did this come about what was the what was the Gap in the market that you guys saw what was what was the feedback
that kind of led to this well our founder Josh linkner who is a an amazing
Tech startup guy um he has been involved in yard ownership and saw a lot of those
pain points experien them yes yeah firsthand so um so discuss began and um
and the company was formed around fixing that problem um you know finding the solution to it okay um and so then
exclusive Yachts was born out of that all right interesting and so the one of the one of the main things that I’ve
seen as you guys have pre-launched and launched and going through all this stuff is the it’s like the netjets of
yachting um so why why look at this model as a way to solve that
problem well I guess you know as opposed
to solving sorry as opposed to solving the netjets solving the yting solutions
well because like so in aviation netjets is is has kind of solved this problem
for their owner so so why take a similar approach to solve I see it I mean really
now I look at it in retrospect it seems really obvious to me and when the company when I first started speaking to
the earlier this year I was like yeah wow I mean I’ve seen fractional ownership programs before but you still
have ownership so you’ve still got the inherent problems of owning the asset and you know the costs are still there
yes they’re mitigated somewhat you know by that shared ownership but if you then
have four different owners wanting to do four different programs you’ve got challenges with that um and I’ve seen
some of that firsthand with a um a company in Europe that I was involved with for a little while um so fractional
ownership can still be contentious and difficult and of course you still own the asset with this there’s no ownership
you just step on and step off okay so with fractional ownership you’re on a
part excuse me you’re on a particular yacht you buy a quarter of it an eighth
of it and then you okay so you still have
the Captain Crew management company maintenance cost all of these things are
still going to pop up and because you’re a fractional owner in a specific asset
you still have to you know take ownership of the issues find the solutions and then you have the cost
associated with that Bingo okay absolutely but the other thing I find with this as well and you know I guess
it’s why people have you know the charter industry has grown so much in the last few years particularly is the
flexibility involved with this program and that’s what I loved okay um you know if you’ve got a yacht here and you want
to go boting in New England how do you do that sort of relocation fees and the costs
involved it you can’t do it you’re going to end up chartering anyway you will end up chartering anyway okay and so so then
you guys have how does that work so how do you solve that problem like do you
you go to different yacht owners in these locations or how how do you set
that up yeah great question we’ve got a number of different avenues that we’ve worked with that in some cases we’ve got
some exclusive youth agreements with your owners um some of those have been done Direct in other cases we’ve work
through some great Charter managers yacht managers in different locations and it’s just for us a question of
ensuring that the fleet meets the standards that we’re trying to maintain and that is good yachting standards sure
um it’s not some of the the dayboat charters that you’ve seen around the place um so we’re trying to make sure
it’s all a good standard and uh and we’ve got you know a number of different
agreements we can make it work with with good yacht managers Charter managers um or directly with owners okay is and
that’s who you’ve been primarily focused on working with and building that relationship with for the fleet
acquisition as it were got it um yeah and we’ve needed to build that out this summer we have we’ve got some great
relationships now with boats that were based up in New England for the summer they’re obviously heading south come
winter we’ve got some others in the Bahamas Now um Naples is very strong for
it um and we’ve got a good Fleet here already nice um and of course our key
Market initially was Midwest folk who have a second home in Naples um there’s quite a few people
that fit that yeah so uh that was that was sort of the key our initial demographic with people that fit into
that that sort of that mold um but we’re now expanding beyond that already and
and I mean I see on LinkedIn you’re traveling everywhere you’re it’s been a busy summer okay so where are the main
places that you’re you’re starting to offer this well we you know our home
Port is Naples this is where the company is based um and this is where we consider our home Port um this summer
however we did events up in Newport and then out to net as well um and we also
went to the Newport Charter show um so it’s been a great summer any excuse to get me to net that’s that’s a good
excuse yeah and you were down in the Bahamas oh yes I I went over there um to
see some of the Arts um and also to to meet a member over there um and uh yeah
I’ve also been to the Bahamas for a bit of fun on the side as well so I don’t blame you you do that yeah you got to
mix it in while you’re going otherwise you you get burnt out if you’re if you’re just going nonstop it can’t be
your work and no play right yeah agreed well and so when you start all right so when you’re looking at these different
Yachts I saw on the site you’ve got the different size classes and there’s the point system but what are you guys
looking for in the Yachts themselves are you looking for a certain standard of
care are you looking for a certain mission that it can accomplish what factors are actually
going into how you build this Fleet yeah great question we we really have quite a
range even if we take our core Fleet here in Naples we’ve got a range of Yachts from 35 ft up to 76 ft um so
there’s sort of something for everyone in that range um one of the Dark Horses is a 44t catamaran and Aila cataman that
is um I think fantastic for a 44t cat or 44t boat it’s got so much space it’s so
wide yeah yeah I mean I’ve always loved a cat anyway but um but I think that’s a great boat and particularly here where
it’s quite shallow they can get in and around a lot more too so I think that’s pretty cool so you know whether it’s
sort of you know day trip out with the kids on a a smaller boat you know we’ve got open Sports boats or right up to
corporate entertaining on something like this we can cover all bases sure now we
also go to larger Yachts as well we’ve been working a lot with a 110 Horizon which is
Sensational um it’s a lot of boat for 110 ft the interior is are spectacular okay um and that’s the yacht that we
were in Newport with they’re heading down to Fort laudale for the winter um
and you know that sort of yacht it really could cater pretty comfortably for up to five couples or fantastic for
corporate corporate stuff as well okay interesting so you so that’s yeah once you get in that size range it might be a
handful of couples that want to do a collective couples trip and then what have you seen for the corporate side
like how are people using this on the corporate side there’s a range of uses for it uh I mean it’s it’s you know it’s
endless but as far as within a company goes you know whether it’s team rewards
staff recognition that sort of thing um you know and particularly here for example where it could be staff member
of the month gets a day out on one of the smaller Yachts every month I mean what a winner yeah how to motivate
people um or whether it’s entertaining clients or prospects okay board meetings
um a very popular one and the Horizon would be a sensational platform for board meetings yeah I wouldn’t I
wouldn’t mind doing a board meeting on 110 foot yard it wouldn’t be too shabby would it wouldn’t be the worst board meeting no and we’re doing special
events as well in a corporate sense now um working on some different events coming up for the winter season from
Miami through to NE as well okay and this boat is on Charter yes or as part
of the part of our Fleet it’s it’s a boat that we’ve got you know it is part of our Fleet here but you know if we’ve
got access to the boat great it’s not necessarily boat that we need to manage and control um as long as we know the
crew and we know the boat great well so if these are owned by
individual owners or maybe they even fractional owners can put this in um
well how do you work with the owners and with people that want to use the points
and do all that stuff how do how do you avoid that I guess conflict that would come with fractional ownership well it’s
a little different to to fractional as far as the points go our members join up they pay onetime
Initiation fee and then buy their points for the year okay um and we’ve got some flexibility there with points and
membership ranges we’re trying to we will try and match the the membership to
suit their their usage of Yachts um some of that’s a little forecast so if they
don’t use all their points we’ll roll them over etc etc we can help them out with more points if they need it um but
as far as the dealing with the owners of the boats we convert those points back to Dollars and pay the owners a fee for
Charter okay fee for service got it so you guys just line up the schedules make sure that it’s available it’s not in the
yard at that time under maintenance yeah yeah got it um and as far as the points
go with us our goal is to have the points cover everything except for your Provisions for the day that’s usually
the only extra so they’ll cover the fuel they’ll cover the CR gratuities um
dockage obviously okay it’s all included so and I know one one of the things that you sent me it’s you compare the cost of
what you guys are doing versus ownership versus Charter so I know with ownership
you you have an asset but it’s a huge amount per year I think the average now
is whatever the cost of the boat is it’s about 15% of that overall cost per year
so if you have a million Bo you’re at $150,000 for insurance maintenance
insurance is a big one now too it’s huge it’s insane I talked to some customers
and it’s like hey you know what what are you paying for insurance it’s like uh 60,000 70 100,000 it was Bill Moore on
one of your other episodes was speaking you were speaking about this with it it’s insurance is crazy right now it’s
it’s wild but so you have that part of ownership and you you have all the things that come with it plus you have
to stay on top of M all this stuff and the dockage dock all of that stuff I
mean the numbers there were amazing um our CEO created Created that um so that
we could demonstrate the difference you know in the numbers and the difference between ownership and doing something
like this is extraordinary um you know when you really break it down and the average yacht use is only about 24 days
a year yep so it’s just a no-brainer when you look at it from that
perspective sure yeah and then you have the rest of the year where you’re not it
just sits there depreciating in the water and so you have the charter side so on I think the numbers were actually
for this boat if I’m not in the it was based on this boat yeah so I know that the the charter side ended up being x
amount for a day versus a day using this this was several thousand dollar less
per day so what are some of the ways that you set this up to actually deliver
this experience but at a lower cost sure I mean in this instance we have an agreement direct with the owners of the
boat and that’s great we do try and provide our members with some um value Advantage okay through the club at all
times but it’s just the Simplicity of it when you know they pay for it with their points out of their account with us um
so yacht points get used and that covers everything so there’s no you know I don’t need to bring on x amount of 100
for crew tip or worry about paying for the fuel or or anything extra like that it’s all in included in it so it’s just
the Simplicity of that aspect of it that I think is really appealing imagine if you had full
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soon and so the and for the owners of the Yachts themselves oh he is what’s the value
that you’re bringing to the owners so that you can get a a lower cost sure it’s guaranteed days in some cases okay
um we have pre-bought some days um on some of a fleet um because we believe we
can deliver those days in Charter to them throughout the season so we have pre-bought t Okay understood all right
so then you’re taking a lot of that you’re taking a lot of risk out of the equation for the actual yach owners that
have their boats with you yes okay so with that guarantee okay yeah and also one of the factor is a lot of what we’re
promoting and a lot of what happens in Naples is shorter trips so it’s not a
onewe term Charters and I think this might be a change in the charter industry anyway people I think are not
perhaps signing up for those one or two week charters as much anymore as they used to they want day trips in locations
they want short trips I mean as with everything with human nature our attention span has shrunk down to about
this now hasn’t it a little bit um so you know I I guess that’s the nature of the charter industry full stop as well
we were born out of a charter business an existing Charter Business here also and in Naples it’s a lot of day
charterers mhm yeah so um from that perspective for an owner we can plug
gaps m in their program also understood because they don’t have so it’s getting
less and less fre you’re seeing it get less and less frequent for these longer stint where the boat is you know 14 of
those 24 days this is filled up it’s getting like hey we have two day one day
three week Gap then one day yeah and even since starting with this company it surprised me talking you know
particularly at the Newport Charter show um and I haven’t been to a charter show for a few years the last one I was at
was as yacht crew um and being there talking to the Yachts how bigger Yachts
are prepared to do day trips now whereas I think back in the day when in the day
I mean when I was working on them um Day Day chars were like not so much they
were the smaller boats and you know the usually had a lower standard and they weren’t super yot standards but now I
think there’s an amazing amount of Yachts out there that will do day Charters H okay so for corporate youth
particularly that really helps as long as the price is right and it makes business sense for them yes yeah okay
and really when you compare it to things like a corporate box so football what have you it’s it’s
pretty comparable yeah and if it works for your company and you have more people that’ll be interested in doing something like this versus go to hockey
game or totally an environment like this on a corporate level environment like this you actually get to entertain
intimately M it it’s not noisy there’s not other distractions there’s not things going on you get to just
communicate and spend time with people yeah I mean this is uh you got the the
back deck yeah there’s the fly bridge upstairs we’ve got the four deck which is lovely particularly when anchor
sitting out in the four deck Sundowners out in the for deck Sensational place to be well the sunsets over here are yes I
love this Coast for the sunset me too they yeah I do love California and California sunsets but this is they’re
right up there over here I can’t complain but there’s a lot of space in this boat it’s it’s uh really almost
kind of reminiscent of a a catamaran where there’s this big wide yeah because
a lot of times when you walk into some of these Yachts you are it’s like a kind of a wide hallway yeah it’s I mean you I
could geek out on yacht design all day but I mean the Trend to go to really beamy Yachts now is is definitely a big
design Trend plus also really Plum bows they’re so vertical the bow on so many
Yachts now so they can push that forward cabin forward and get so much more space
in the hole um and just that bit of extra Beam on them as well um it’s cool
it allows for a lot of extra fun space on board yeah yeah it’s hard to complain about no um so you were on some of these
you were a crew member for over 10 years yes okay so how so you you started I was
looking at your like then you started actually how did you get that’s a better question sure before instead of
me guessing what to make a long story short uh I was living in Australia and I
was working in in sales and marketing back then with a tourism company um and
I started traveling a lot with that job and it’s hard to put a lid back on that
sometimes and and shortly afterward after I started that job uh I got a divorce and I bought a one-way ticket
out of Australia and uh I ended up in on te got on my first jot there bummed
around the med on a couple of different boats that summer and then I ended up on a 76t sailing yacht out of
Palmer and did my first Atlantic Crossing on that and was kind of hooked
okay and what what was so when you were you excited about the opportunity to do
an Atlantic Crossing yes okay it was bucket list okay yeah and what was that
experience like going into it what did you expect and then what what actually
happened I mean I think I had visions of you know sitting on the back deck struming a guitar or something like that
um and it was really very different to that um I ended up I was going to be
working on that yacht just just with myself and the captain the two of us would run that for Charters and this sort of this sort of thing and for the
owners um but on the delivery we had an entirely different crew and anything
that could go wrong went wrong systems broke down the boom broke into two pieces we had all sorts of issues um
including running out of diesel midocean and while it’s a sailing yacht you need
to run the generator you’ve got to power up your Hydraulics so uh anyone there was some fun and Adventures on that one
so you ran out of fuel in the middle of the ocean yeah it was um the captain I’m
not quite sure what what the thought process was there but anyway um I think we were still from memory
about 700 miles from Antiga um and as luck would have it I’d
connected with a wonderful crew agent and and yachting agent in Palmer so I got on the satellite phone
one night my watch and just rang them and asked if they knew any Yachts that had left recently and might be stopping
at the canaries so they put us in touch with a yacht um from memory actually
they coordinated it for us and this yacht literally met us in the middle of the ocean they had some red plastic
Dairy cans tied together and threw them over the edge and we hoisted them on board and put some diesel in the tanks
and that was enough to get you guys yeah we didn’t use a lot of fuel as a sailing yacht but we had far from ideal weather
condition as well so there wasn’t a lot of sailing to be had we were always hoping there would be more wind and I
guess that was the captain’s thinking that there would be more wind coming and it just never really came never showed
up nope all right attacking into like Wester Le did that end up on future pre-trip checklist was to look out for
that stuff yes yeah for me I mean I was green at the time really green and how many years had you been doing this for
when you got oh that was the end of my first season which is you know an appropriate amount of time before you do
a so yeah you know Atlantic Crossing oh yeah yeah you know Jump Right In um so I
mean my knowledge was knowledge was low but the experience was high I learned a lot um and uh and had to manage a lot of
different situation it was great did you take a lot of stuff that you learned from that initial trip um did you carry
that on to the other crew and Captain yes jobs that you did yeah yeah
definitely um I mean you learn more when things go wrong um you know there’s a whole bunch
of different sayings about that isn’t there but um I did learn a lot there
were some things that became hard and fast rules in my head about things to do and things not to do on board sure um
and you know this was even before I had Captain’s tickets or anything I was just winging it all at this stage um and uh
yeah it definitely set me up with some good nice good lesson and so and then you you were a crew member on different
boats and then what point did you become Captain well I was still on that Sailing Boat um we had a really super busy
program um you know doing mad and Caribbean okay we had the owners use the
boat for cruising we also did regads um so we did the Rolex Maxi in a couple of
places and antia classic week which is fabulous um and uh and then also charted
so we were really busy but I think I took off one of the Atlantic Crossings and I went to the south coast of England
and that’s when I did my yach master so I did the yach master offshore there um so the the theory cast is on Shore for a
week um and then you go and do your practical um which was a hoop but it was
November on the south coast of England so it was pretty chilly yeah I and then at the same time straight after that I
went over to the west of England and I did two or three weeks at a cooking school over there okay
why did you do that well I was it was a small boat so there was just a two of us and it was the captain and me and uh I
was pretending to be the chef on board up until that stage so I put some time into to school and learned some tricks
and I bet 3 weeks of culinary school actually gives you proba paints 80% of
the picture it it helped so much yeah your confidence levels presentation the
way you handled different foods it was a lot it was great that’s got to be exciting to be on a boat where you’ve
got that much responsibility and it’s I I actually one of the areas that we’ve
we’ve started talking to has been sportfish captains oh yes and um I’m
learning quite a bit about that world now and it really is amazing some of the
difference between yachting and Sport Fishing but those guys are doing everything and I was I was talking to uh
a customer bars he actually just came over over to this Coast on Monday so he was just over here and uh this is the
owner’s for first sportfish boat a 77f footer and they’ve been running
sportfish operations for 10 and 15 years respectively but the owner this is their first time they’ve got other Yachts
things like that so they were asking questions like well you know I’m sure crew take care of it like who takes care
of this he’s like I do who takes care of cooking I do well who cleans the bow I
do and it was an it’s an entirely different experience but there is a A
ruggedness or a I don’t it’s like a like a soldier aspect of it that I admire
when somebody actually is going through and taking care of many hats at the same
time that’s a good way to put it and I think the guys that run those sportfish boats have a whole another skill set as
well on top of just running the boat yeah um you know they really do I mean for me for a lot of my yachting career I
spent most of it on Yachts 80 ft and under um with some you know dces on
larger Yachts but um on boats that size that we usually run with just two crew
and yes if we had tight turnouts we might get day workers in to help sure you know do that that process um but
generally speaking dayto day the boat was run by two people so the captain had to be
multitasker um and most of them were great with that and I developed skills that made me a multitasker so captains
you I knew what I was doing around a boat as well and it was a win-win yeah
and so I saw that so you did that for a while and then you’ve gone on to do sales in multiple companies and then now
you’re ahead of sales here well I went I went back into sales I guess um I got offered an amazing job with a company um
and so I left France and I I moved to America in just in 2018 um and it was a
I guess it could have been considered a passion project it was a small Builder from New Zealand that had been bought by a company based there um I don’t think
it’s operating now unfortunately but he had some great projects going um but it
was a small folding sailing Prim run and it was a boat and a designer that I’d grown up knowing as I SED as a kid in
Australia you know everyone in Australia does I think and we play with the water a lot there and um and so I moved over
to to work with that as brand manager um and unfortunately could see the writing on the wall without funding shortly
afterwards um and so then I ended up going into Yacht Sales nice yeah
so what do you en what did you enjoy about yach sales hand over
day what do you mean you know you’ve met somebody they come in we had two great
showrooms up there and actually our boats up there for the most part were 42 ft maximum um but a 42 foot center
console I think is about 1.4 million these days isn’t it it’s pretty pretty nuts um but anyway they you know they
come to the showroom and you get to know them you get to understand what they’re looking for they might be experienced
boers so they’re looking for that next three ft up or it’s their first boat and particularly during the whole Co era
that period a lot of people were buying their first boats so helping them to
understand what would be involved in running it um you know not to scare them
off but to give them a reality check before they just dive in and I don’t think I I don’t think that’s a super
common practice with Brokers and Yacht Sales like unfortunately I do hear it
pretty frequently where it’s they had no idea what they were getting into and that happened a lot
during Co I heard right countless stories where somebody just wanted to sell a boat and
it’s yeah it’s going to be figure it’ll be $50,000 a year they’re like my bill
is $250,000 somebody must be robbing me something must be wrong and it’s just
the expectation wasn’t set up front it’s unfortunate I mean it builds up an A on the part of the owner um but the reality
is boats are expensive to maintain and and you know there are still well whether there are still or not supply
chain issues have been you know a key word in recent times definitely um so if you needed a part getting it was the
next challenge um but you know you go through this whole process getting to
know them you land on the right your right boat for them hopefully and then
in that case it was often having to order the boat and it’ be a waiting period at that point in time and so there was quite a journey um but when
that boat arrived and you get to greet them with a bottle of champagne you take them on board and they get to explore
their boat for the first time and you take them out on it and you know it was just a wonderful day um all these
questions and the directions it finally all comes to fruition yeah yeah they actually see it in the flesh and and it
it’s it becomes real you know it’s the culmination of a dream that’s cool um so you know that was fun and I think the
nice thing on things like this is you get to do that for me I get that experience more um you know with j with
Charters or or people who come into our program every time they step on the boat it’s that new day again it’s delivery
day all over again yeah it really is and so so now as you go from that role into
taking on the head of sales here what are some of the ways that you H how do you focus on what people are looking for
how do you figure out what they actually need how do you find a way to deliver that like just from a personal
philosophy or like a tactical standpoint what do you what do you do I mean with
us we’ve got a range of memberships and so there are different levels that you can come in at and in the very early
stages you know the discussions center around what they’ve done before with boats um if it’s just been if it’s
something they’ve never done before then you want to explore how they might use the boat and how they how they see
themselves using the boat um and from there we’ll try work out okay well this
membership might suit you best then we work at the level that would suit them the most um and then of course from
there it branches out to say well now you’ve got a selection of these yards and you know which size do you see
yourself using for which sort of occasion and you know most people have different needs at different times sure
if it’s a day out with the kids it’s a different boat if it is that corporate entertaining it’s a different boat and
for a lot of our members they are business people so there can be a mixed of corporate into even what is a
personal membership also there’s often a business use angle okay so you know it’s
trying to find the best fit for them um to the membership level sure um and and
paint a picture for them of how they could use it as well if they’re an experienced Boer and they’ve done a onee
trip every year in the Bahamas maybe there are other ways they could enjoy yting mhm it could be for corporate use
it could be days in the Northeast it could be somewhere else it’s just not things they thought of sure yeah and so
now that you have basically multiple tools to work with from your side you can present some Alternatives or find
them exactly what they’re looking for that’s that’s cool yeah it’s very flexible which I love about it as well
um you know again if you buy a yacht kind of stuck with that yacht and
if you own that yacht in one location you’re not going to be so inclined to go on charter boats in different locations
because you’ve already got this cost here so for me the flexibility in the program I think is fantastic and part of
the fun you know I realized a long time ago that what I loved about boats was the experience side of it I mean I do
like the physical aspect of them the design of them you know I’ve always been into that but um but when I’m on them
it’s it’s the experience of it that I think is so important um so for our
members they get to have a fuller range of experiences nice I think it’s great yeah so what
what caught you about this company it’s a startup as in a a career it’s always
it’s always kind of scary to take a risk and do something like that personally
what for you caught you and made you go like that’s it I’m in the people yeah yeah the people who are already involved
um you know we’re we’re a small team but we’re a great team um Josh linkner who
is the founder who naturally is soon as I heard his name it’s like okay who’s this guy and Googled him and listened to
he’s a keynote speaker he’s written a couple of bestselling books um you know he he’s a pretty Dynamic guy he’s also
exited a few tech companies startup companies and um then I got to meet
Julie the first point of contact was Julie Perry our chief marketing officer um and how we had not met before I don’t
know because we know so many people in common and have all the same friends and just never got to meet
um and then Scott stuckman who was our CEO um and Scott interestingly had just
come back from living in Australia for seven years so we instantly had quite a lot to chat about as well so the people
got me in as well as the concept I thought was interesting and I think you know as we’ve seen those jet cards
flourishing that concept growing a lot more in recent years it’s going to happen with the odds so it’s just a
question of when sure um we’ve seen it work with smaller boats you know other companies doing it um at a more basic
level maybe so what we’re doing now is trying to take it to to fullsize Yachts
nice yeah it’s exciting it is yeah yeah it’s a cool concept too and it’s uh yeah
I’m interested to see where it goes me too Lou before we wrap up is there
anything else you want to touch on no I really appreciate the time today it’s great to try and get the word out there
a bit more um you know we’re really excited about what’s coming up and this will be our
first fall season here in Naples which is our home Port so we’re really excited to to get that underway yeah absolutely
and uh yeah introduce a lot of a lot of people who have signed up already have not yet come onto our boats and used it
they’re local people here so they’re gone for the summer they’re up in their lake houses or what have you so they’re
now on their way down and we’re booking up days and we’re getting things sorted for them so it’s it’s fun time that’s
exciting yeah nice well Lou thanks for doing this I appreciate it thanks so much
Chris
Check out these short clips below where Lou explains how our simple YachtPoints system works as well as details about the variety of yachts our members can access in our fleet!
A huge thanks to Chris for inviting Lou to be a guest on the Boating Insider Podcast. From this conversation, it’s clear hat the costs and headaches associated with yacht ownership and chartering have become overwhelming and unpredictable, often falling short on reliability, service, and quality. At Exclusive Yachts, our mission is to offer a smarter way forward…
Our team is confident we can deliver an infinitely better, simpler, and more streamlined way to plan and spend your time on the water. We aim to minimize logistics, financial costs, and stress while maximizing your time, enjoyment, and overall experience at sea.