Background
Kayaking St. Augustine, in its current form, started in a bar in Illinois around September 2021.
I co-founded it with my longtime childhood friend, Maciej Kalina. You can check out his blog for more info about the company and the kayak lifestyle.
Maciej had recently returned to our hometown after living in Poland for a long time. Moving countries means leaving most of your old life behind, and he and his family were ready to start anew.
On the other hand, I had been living a relatively structured life, which I had developed since COVID started and work from home became popular. I was feeling worn out by the lack of change, social interaction, and overall stability.
It was time for a change.
So, after a long night of vodka and pickles, Maciej shared with me this opportunity he had learned about in Florida.
The previous owner, Greg, of Kayaking St. Augustine, was looking for a buyer. It seemed like just what I was searching for.
I bombarded Maciej with many questions about it. Though he was excited about the business, he hadn’t yet found a feasible way to make it work during his preliminary negotiations.
Around this time, cryptocurrency was riding the hype train, with its value close to an all-time high. I figured exchanging part of it for a stake in this business might be a smart move.
Pooling my resources with his, and with the help of his family, we set to work figuring this out.
To be honest, I had never been into kayaks, paddleboarding, or water sports in general. But the idea of trying something new and learning the ropes of starting a business was incredibly enticing.
Going to Florida
Maciej did his best to convince me that this would be a fantastic business venture. Although I was interested, there were still many uncertainties.
I realized the only way to feel more comfortable about it was to go there and see it with my own eyes.
I told Maciej that if he wanted me on board, we had to head down to Florida right away.
So we packed up his Jeep Gladiator with cases of water, trail mix, Kielbasa, and beer, and hit the road.
Once we arrived in St. Augustine, we set up a meeting with Greg.
Greg is quite the Florida man. He had lived in Florida his whole life and was a true survivor, having battled cancer multiple times. Nothing could keep him down. Cancer had taken the use of one of his arms and affected his speech, but he was still running the business.
At that point, Greg had been gradually growing Kayaking St. Augustine since sometime in the 2000s, slowly building a strong reputation and acquiring more equipment.
He had a good thing going, but with the cost of US healthcare and his age, he was looking for someone to take over.
In the past, he had received many offers, some of which were larger than ours. However, he turned them down. The successors to his baby had to be a specific kind of people.
According to Greg, they couldn’t be “Philadelphia lawyers.” Luckily, we were quite different from the previous business people who had submitted offers.
HFinally, I got to experience my first trip out; the salt run was gorgeous, and the dolphins were out. I was finally convinced this could work.
Running the Marathon
Once we decided we were interested, we had no time to waste! I wanted to see more financial information and returns before we pulled the trigger.
Greg is not exactly the most savvy computer user or accountant. In order to get numbers, he sent us screenshots of each month for the last three years from his tour operations software. Keep in mind these weren’t totals but just records of each tour that took place. During the busy season, it can be over 100 tours in a month.
To see a complete picture, we sat down with some beers and worked for hours in Excel, manually entering all of the data. We didn’t have a lot of time; we booked one week at our Airbnb. Finally, after about a day, we had totals and averages of each month and year.
The spreadsheets we made probably had errors, but regardless, we had an idea. During a later meeting with Greg, we also got to see some physical tax returns he submitted, which confirmed our data. This was the point at which we had to make a decision – to pull out or go all in. We decided on the latter.
We had a list of things to get done and not a lot of time to do it:
- Create the Purchasing Agreement and Bill of Sale
- Register the LLC and Get an EIN
- Open a Bank Account
- Find a Place to Rent and Store the Kayaks
Maciej talked to our lawyer and got things moving on the agreement. We sat together and learned the process of filing the LLC. It’s not very hard and took about an hour and something like $200.
We had to wait around a day or so before Florida created the LLC. Then we filed with the IRS and got the EIN.
Meanwhile, we were touring places we could rent and trying to find something that could house me, his family, and the kayaks. We had to live together as the rent prices in a tourist trap like St. Augustine are quite high.
We viewed several places; a few seemed promising, but nothing we felt conclusive about. We had a few days left, and finally, we found the place to rent. It was a run-down house with a big fenced-in yard in a very nice neighborhood. It worked for us, but the rent was awfully high at $2,600. We didn’t have much other choice.
The next step was convincing the property manager to sign us. My end wasn’t too difficult; I have a clean record, rental history, and a credit score. Maciej, being just recently back from Poland, meant he didn’t have any rental history or credit score in the US.
One of Maciej’s greatest skills is smooth-talking people. He made a very convincing argument to the property manager, talking about his hard work ethic and desire to build a family, all of which is true, but he has a way of selling it.
We scraped together the money and paid the rental application. Everything looked good, and then the deposit was 2 months’ rent, another painfully high cost for this house. At this point, we had the lease signed. We are moving to Florida.
Meanwhile, we got a draft copy of the agreement. We forwarded it to Greg, but suddenly it spooked him, and he’s freaking out, threatening to pull out of the deal, calling us “Philadelphia lawyers.” What Greg didn’t understand is that all of what was in the agreement was common sense and best practice.
This was horrifying after just signing a lease like that. Maciej and I discussed it in depth, and the only way to convince Greg was to meet with him and go through every line, providing a suitable explanation as to why it’s there.
We also had to tweak one clause in the agreement, which wasn’t a big deal.
Now we are staying at an Airbnb, and we don’t have a scanner or printer. We are running around to Kinko’s and so on, constantly scanning and printing documents. All of which takes time.
Again we met with Greg, and before this meeting, we were anxious. Maciej, being the smooth talker, had to put on his A-game, which meant chain-smoking a Juul vape in the car for 15 minutes.
We did it; we went line by line and convinced Greg. Also, a check made out to him sitting next to the papers probably had something to do with it. He signed the papers, and the business became ours.
Now What?
I had to go back to Illinois; I had a lease to break and a life to pack up. Maciej stayed in Florida; his family was going to fly down in a few weeks to come live with him. But somebody had to stay with the kayaks and get things going.
Lots needed to be done, and a lot had to be learned – managing employees, payroll, accounting, taxes, regulations, insurance, etc.
I will elaborate on all of these things and what we learned in this series.