welcome to "your business". since august 13th, 2006 we have been bringing you information entrepreneurs. we are kicking off our 11th season with a high-flying show. we start off with one that is taking off, water based leisure activities with the walter propelled boards.

but how do you get customers to try out a brand new extreme support? i find out how this business took off and got to ride of a lifetime. >> undoubtedly, unequivocally it is the next big thing in water sports. >> it looks like it's right out of a james bond movie, flying over water, powered by water craft engine attached to big jets strapped to your feet. the company says if you've not flied it yet surely once you see someone up in the air you'll want to be there too. >> why wouldn't anyone want the ability to dive like a dolphin? >> it launched after james plant

got on a board and fell in love with it. it was geared towards the extreme sports jumping. the fly dive team had a didn't idea. >> it was a different demographic group. it is more towards the actions, sports, hard core, weekend warrior, the one that wants to do all of the really complex tricks. we want today stay away from that and build a product and a technology that would really address a much broader and different type of individual. >> the beginner? >> the beginner. >> she said they joined the industry at the exact right time. the space was in you they could reach an untapped audience but

had been around long enough they didn't have to learn everything from catch. >> how many companies were doing this? >> maybe only a handful. now including us there were five! because y . >> because you were not the first you got to see what they did right and wrong. >> we did. we sat back studying, learning, collecting as much data or getting all of the data points we needed to see where the potential opportunities were for us. >> the opportunity was in engineering. they built a board they say anyone can get on whether you're 6 or 66. because of all of the amazing footage out there of the crazy things fly dive has had to be strategic. >> i saw all of these people doing flips in the air and all of these amazing tricks.

my response was no way, i can't do that. how do you counter that to get someone like me this out? >> everything about our brand permeates simplicity. in all of our marketing you will not find a lot of people doing advanced maneuvers, a lot of tricks, things that don't seem accessible or relatable. >> they got a couple of the kardashians on board. >> first time. >> they see other planes as the competition but he says friendly competition. >> i am probably the biggest cheerleaders hoping that the other four competitors are having gate success. we want it to get to as many people as possible. >> it operates as a b to b

business. dino started carrying the fly dive boards early on because he realized the opportunity to reach more customers. >> they are focused on the part of the market that we are focused on, the family, the general population. this is not an extreme sport. you can do extreme things but you don't have to be an x games athlete to do what we do out there. you take a first timer out there and within three to four minutes you have people up 5, 10, 15 feet in the air and they have smiles. that's what makes it worth it. >> after all of this talk i had to give it a try myself. i got a quick lesson with the lead eninjure near and trainer. >> when you're up and balancing if you're falling forwards or backwards you can push your

toes. let's get your in your boots, life jacket and helmet. >> i'm ready. >> there were a couple of hard falls. i made it. next time. >> for sure. come back for more any time. >> i will. i'm hooked. >> and fly dive is confident that's how everyone who takes a ride will feel, creating customers for life! we want to build our base of customers, know that they can do it and enjoy it for the first time. we'll continue to build more and more products that are going to be more in alignment with where they are to our skill level. >> you think very early to what

is becoming a more popular sport. what is it like? >> there is nothing more exciting. we'll set the pace. we'll set the tone. we'll set the new standards in safety and all of that. we're going to be that company. that's what's exciting. we have the capability of doing it early enough before it becomes too mature. hydro flight is one to appeal to fan of water sports. another sport people are flocking to is paddle boarding. we traveled to bend, oregon to talk to the company, stand on liquid. it almost drowned but finally found its balance.

>> mike was on vacation with his family in mexico when he got a mess thaj had a potential to topple his business. >> sorry to inform you. it's like a dear john e-mail from china. i went over premier board manufacturers and informing us that it should have shipd two or three weeks before that had all burned up. >> it was one of the worst messages he could have gotten. he was expecting his highest margin paddle boards. he found out his inventory was destroyed in a factory fire. his stress level went from 0 to 100 in seconds. they were preparing for what they call the silly season, the four months that most paddle boards are sold. >> getting these boards in august or september, it's too late. we would have lost a tremendous opportunity to sell and keep the

company profitable. >> and he had just brought on a new partner. >> i was mortified. i thought he would contact legal council. you sold me a bill of goods! not getting the boards in time would be a major blow to the company mike and his wife started three years older. they opened a paddle board. >> when you started the company how big was stand up paddle boarding compared to now? >> i believe at the time it was the fastest growing water sport and now it's just the fastest growing sport. >> mike started to see a bigger opportunity in manufacturing his own brand of boards. >> we could double our margins. >> did your boards fill a hole in a market that you saw as a

retailer? >> yes. a lot of boards we manufacture ourselves are 200, 300, $400 less than those. >> it is absolutely amazing. >> the popularity had grown. by the time he got that call in mexico he had promises to deliver to retail stores across the country. >> we would have let down our new retailers. hey, sign up, we don't have anything for you. >> he had already paid the factory in advance and the factory was supposed to have already start ond a second shipment of boards which they had nlt yet. >> i was trying to come up with a strategy and all of them seemed very high risk.

>> mike had known something like this could happen. he was never comfortable with the lack of diversification. >> he add all of our files, already knew all of the pricing. >> he quickly ordered a container and doubled down on the old one making sure it would be placed immediately. by june 1st mike had a more diversified manufacturining project, just in time for him to take advantage of the silly season. there is a lot of competition and a friendly rivalry can some times be good for business. imagine going head to head and then one day your coworkers. that was the case at three

whitewater rafting companies in west virginia. while it was clearly good for business the owners never learned it would become a lesson in conflict management. once upon a time in the wild and wonderful mountains of west virginia there were three river rafting companies. mountain river tours and rivermen. they started in the 1970s and each had their own personalities. >> river men are beer drinkers. >> they loall loved running the business. >> it's okay. i'm wrong also. >> we were fuel bid passion. we weren't fuelled by cash or anything other than we were doing what we loved. >> you can imagine when they

were approached about merging into one. >> i really wasn't interested. we had a good gig growing. we were making a lot and putting in our bills. >> the paul he is referring to is a former financial guy. a few years ago paul saw an opportunity to become the ceo of a new or sort of new company. >> they were very profitable and because of price cutting and a little bit of decline they rnt nearly as profitable. i would have to merge two or three together. >> that's how adventures on the gorge yuz.

>> i did see challenges. >> soon enough he was able to convince them their key to collective rival is joining. >> there is a point in a business where the business outgrows the family. the rivermen were at that point. >> each founder owner maintained partial ownership with paul serving as the ceo. the brands liver on independently. when i walk around i see logos of all three companies. it seems confusing. >> the loyalty is to the brand. in lot of cases thigh have been around 30 plus years.

when you say class 6 or rivermen they automatically become tied. >> adventures on the gorge means nothing to them. >> right. that's the tricky part. >> rivermen was very passionate. there was a fair amount of culture clash. >> many are still quite loyal to the individual brands. >> i found a lot of back room operations, ohousekeeping, maintenance and even rezization staff were easy to merge. >> they were the personalities and competitors really. >> they are competitors in anybody that is in charge of eight people for a day. some of them have very larg large egos. >> one of the companies puts in

at one place and another one puts in about 2 miles down river and one of the companies feels like where they put in is the best experience for the customer and the other they feel is the best for their customers. i can't seem to get them to aglee to put in at one place. >> the rivermen put ice to keep their lunch meat cool during the day. i got into a big 30 minute debate, ice or ice packs. i said, goois, the customer doesn't care how we keep this lunch meat cool today. >> he want today do something none of the original three

companies had done before. >> our strategy needs people to do more things. you can run go or three different rivers. you can take a climbing and repelling class. you can do mountain bike tours, horse back tours, atv tours. the zip lines have been the biggest product we have expanded. we now have two zip line courses. >> with all of the new activities and new accommodations adventures on the gorge was turned into an all exclusive. >> a variety of scenarios. >> some times radical change needs to happen. it has made us much more profitable, a much stronger company. we have been able to reinvest in things. >> reporter: paul sz he is proud

of what vie have been able. one day he hopes these three companies will be one. >> it will take more prominence and you'll see the flip-flop and some day it is our goal that adventures on the gorge will be the primary brand that is associated. when we come back our special anniversary edition of your business continues. we visit the ohio man who wanted to go mountain backing year round and created a company to indulged his passion.

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>> make sure that you lead with your confidence. if you don't believe in your business no one else will. >> when we started this show in 2006 we had a simple mandate to help small business owners by providing information and inspiration and one of the first stories we reported was what we tried to accomplish over the last ten years. like many of the entrepreneurs we have spoken to over the years, he had a dream and a passion, to be able to indulge in his love of mountain biking year around. the result, a successful small business that capitalized on a niche and still thrives today.

>> people said it wouldn't work. >> one friend said, just keep your money in the bank. >> they told him he was crazy. >> i became the subject of some jokes. >> they said no one would come to an indoor mountain bike park. >> but he had a dream of starting his own business and he knew in his heart that was enough. >> it's like a mountain bike miracle. like a field of dreams type thing. there was no business plan, no business model, blind stupidity, luck, passion. >> for the die hard mountain biker, riding was an addiction. one that replaced a life of drinking, drugs and partying. >> i sobered up and started riding my bike and i've been riding ever since. >> but when the cold winter months hit cleveland he had to endure a whole season off the

bike. >> here in the northeast when you have rain and mud for five or six months out of the year i always thought it would be fun to do something on an indoor level. >> he tossed around the idea for years but never acted on it but one day he got together with an old friend and they started talking about dreams and regrets and the idea of the mountain bike park came up again. >> he asked me. i said there's this one thing that still bothers me. it's this indoor mountain bike park. i think it would work well and he said i think it's a great idea. so i got a sunday paper. monday morning i make a phone call to a little small ad in there that said clean space, low rent. >> the next day ray saw the space. >> she slides open this big door and there's this huge space with all of these skylights in it and it's like where the sun is blasting through the clouds.

>> with a day job in construction and his life savings of $50,000, this was the moment when he turned his love of mountain biking into a business. >> did you have any doubts at that time? >> i did after i got home and i started thinking about it and i was like how am i going to do this? this is crazy and then i asked myself what's worse going broke or having to live with myself the rest of the life knowing hi the opportunity to live my dream and i chickened out. >> soon there was a buzz in the biking community about the world's first indoor mountain bike park. >> they showed up at my door. >> he has this whole community of people and those are the people that really make this place work. that's a hard thing to make happen. >> as he and his army of volunteers worked building elaborate ramps and trails one problem kept rearing it's ugly head. they didn't have the city's okay. >> iphoned up to city hall and i

was like i want to open up an indoor mountain bike park and the other on the other end of the phone laughed and i was like oh boy this isn't starting off good. >> the city way and the right way may be two different ways but frankly the innovative spirit doesn't always raise their hand and ask for permission. >> but when ray ran the risk of being shutdown he worked diligently with his local councilman to comply with all the local codes. >> i guess they had every right to shut the doors so i laid my cards out and i said if you shut me down i'm headed to bankruptcy court. i'm willing to work with you and whatever we need to do and that's how we started the whole thing. >> you're in my lane. >> now it's a local fix tour in the community. a destination for out of towners and a magnet for the pros. >> my official reaction when i walked in here was like who did

this? >> who did it. >> ray. ray is the man. it's like speed defies gravity. it's the old get close to death and experience life sort of thing. >> and the sponsors are lining up to take part in the phenomenon that the is rays mtv. >> i get a phone call left on my voice mail from subaru. and they say we think this is cool. we'd like to help you out. so they said throw us a number. so i threw them a number and they were like how about we do that and we'll send you a car and we'll have it all stickered up and i'm like okay. if that's what you want to do. >> why did you guys choose to sponsor this place? >> rays is the only place in the world, here we are in cleveland in a warehouse riding bikes in the winter. the fact that it's such a unique

place makes it special. we couldn't help but to be a part of it. >> financially it's nice to have the extra money. personally it fuels me. i try to maximize every nickel. >> he continues to work his day job in construction so he can put all the profits from the business back into the park and he doesn't think of himself as a business man. just a guy with a dream that got lucky. >> a business man? i don't know. there's probably a lot of people watching this going this dude is an idiot. he just got lucky. i don't know who said it but there was something about if you do what you love you'll never work another day in your life and i think i feel very fortunate that i got to experience that. >> instagram can help your small business target millennials especially if your grand is visual like some of the businesses we featured so far. how do you increase engagement

and keep the counts high. one, great images. either upload photos taken with a professional camera or you can use phone photos if they're high quality. two, add 5 to 10 hashtags on each image. identify industry related tags and include a good mix of common and uncommon ones. three, if you have a brick and mortar store, make sure to geo tag your images. this way people can scroll through and add their own to your destination's photo library. four graphics with text. it can be challenging to stand out with just an image. sood graphics. and five, repost. if a customer uploads an amazing photo of your product, give them credit by reposting it on your feed. this is a great way to interact with your client base and the instagram community. thank you all so much for

joining us today. we'd love to hear from you. so if you have any questions or comments please send us an e-mail to your business@msnbc.com or head over to our website which is open for forum.com/your business. we posted all the segments from today's show plus a lot more to help you grow your businessful also you can connect with with us on all of our social media platforms as well. we'll see you next time. until then, remember, we make your business our business. will your business be ready when growth presents itself? american express open cards can help you take on a new job, or fill a big order or expand your office

and take on whatever comes next. find out how american express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open.com.