284 - Sailing into the Future: How Technology is Transforming the Yacht Industry with YachtWay's Heigo Paartaul

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Hi, Igo Portiolo. Welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the founder and CEO of a company called Yachtway. Which can be found at yachtway.com. Basically what you've done is created a multiple listing service for high-end yachts. I think I got that right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're basically— that's, uh, all right. That's 100% correct.

Tell us a little bit about your backstory.

How—

you haven't been in the yacht business all your life. How'd you get there?

Yeah.

First of all, Doug, thank you so much for having us. Absolutely. Glad to connect here. How I got into the industry, I come from Silicon Valley, used to I used to be very involved with the tech over there. At some point moved to Florida and then was very fortunate to start looking for boats myself to own one. The whole buying process itself was so archaic and I was quite literally thinking I am about to get scammed because every listing looked like a Craigslist posting with images and with ton of advertising. But luckily I didn't get scammed, even though the fear was always standing right on my shoulder. And I found a brand who I got very involved with and at some point started doing the marketing for. And that marketing, one thing led to another and I became the sales advisor. At some point I became a director of sales. A few years fast forward, I did quarter of a billion dollars myself. In yacht sales.

Wow. In Miami?

As a ho— in Miami, as a hobby. As a hobby?

Yeah. What's— just out of curiosity, now I live here in California, I live in Central California, but I've got family that lives down in Santa Barbara.

What—

when you're a— when you're a yacht broker, what's the commission structure?

It's oftentimes— it depends. It's usually 2.5% for if it's a house broker, 5% if it's a multi-deal with the buyers. Okay, if you're representing both, but yeah, it's around 5%.

Okay.

So did you say $250 billion?

$250 million.

Oh, okay.

All right.

That's a lot.

And while I was doing that, I was always thinking that this is just a learning process for me because I want to change not just one company. I want to change the industry because I had the challenge of fixing not just one place, but doing something for everybody. Because I, I always feel like if we do something, there needs to be a value that we add to people's lives. Obviously, doing business, it's important to make money, but you can't just take, you have to give as well. So for me to understand, before I take, what could I give to others? So that's what I did by being a sales director and running marketing for them. How can I help and change the way people finding boats? That's how Yachtway became.

I, I imagine boats, like, like other conveyances, in the old days there was probably a printed sheet that was circulated around, like, yacht brokers around the world, and then the internet came and people started posting their stuff on the internet, and then you, like, as you said, the Craigslist things came up where posted yachts for sale, but never anything where it was as elegant as what Yachtway is. Yachtway.com, anybody that's listening, check it out. It's a pretty interesting website. How do you conceive of the idea of doing the virtual tours and really presenting the yacht so an owner 1,000 miles away could, or potential owner, could really get a sense of what the boat was all about?

Yeah, it's an excellent point that you're bringing out, and It's something that we're doing unconsciously and in our everyday lives already with the real estate websites. We're able to browse them virtually or any property from anywhere in the world. And it's a normal thing. We expect it to work like that. Yachts, which are toys, very expensive toys oftentimes, the, the industry hasn't changed digitally since 1996. So for the last century, there hasn't been a change. So obviously it was very challenging for us, and it still is, trying to teach the industry that there is a new way and there are people who are looking at yachts in a very different way than they used to look. So for us, it was very important to visually make the whole listing page as appealing as possible. And brokers and manufacturers do a great job at the boat shows. They set these boats up perfectly. Everything is nicely set up. There's somebody who opens the doors for them, somebody who does everything for the customer. But after the boat show, they forget it. And then the listings online are oftentimes filled with photos that are bad quality and the dark images, not creating the appeal that they all should create like they do on the boat shows. So we had the focus from day one to be media-focused and visuals-first mindset, and that ultimately led to Yachtway.

And how do you set it up? You've got these virtual tours like real estate.

Do you—

when somebody signs up to have a yacht listed on Yachtway, does the crew go out and do all the photography and get it all set up that it can be put into your system, or do people submit Tell—

walk us through that.

That sounds like quite a process.

Yeah, so Yachtway has quite a few different departments. Number one is obviously the listing platform, which is dealerships, brokerage firms. They can sign up with Yachtway, they can create their listings on their own, which they pay money, monthly membership, to list on our site. Uh, an additional service that we have is called Yachtway Studios, and that's where now the dealers and brokers can sign into their account and they can book Yatwei Studios to come out to create appealing visuals to them, which we then share with them once done. And if they would like to do even more, then obviously 3D tours is something as well we do in-house. And these alone have shown over 300% greater engagement with the listings than normal typical listings. Not to mention that people can actually measure the spaces that they look with the virtual tours.

So that was going to be my next question. You, do you have data that show that when you can create a virtual tour that you're getting better engagement and actually converting sales at a higher rate than if it's just a straight listing?

Correct. Listings that are usually just with images and maybe a video get about 1 minute 45 to 2 minute engagement time. Listings with 3D tours get oftentimes 5 to 6 minutes.

Wow.

Because people really go through the entire boat and they want to make sure that they know everything prior to even reaching out to the broker. So once they do, they're very well informed what the boat has, which rooms it has, and how does the general overall look of the boat feel to them.

So are the people that are perusing the site as buyers, are they the actual— going to be the actual Buyers? Are they buyer agents or—

Yeah, no, it's brokers looking for their buyers and it's buyers themselves. And we're seeing a lot of people being the buyers who are on our site because we're making their whole finding process simple and fun. And we do it via the tags. So if you go to Yachtway, the first things are experiences. So we let you sort out the boats so that the experiences that you would want to have on the water.

That's a cool way to do it. What, just again, this is the life of the super wealthy, not my life. What, what's, what are the, the price listings? Where do they fall on the site?

So as of today, right now, the brokerage met, you mean the membership prices or the vessel prices? Ah, so we have some boats that are over $50 million.

Wow.

Average price is starting from around $1 million.

Okay, so, so pretty high-ticket stuff.

Yeah.

What—

you've been— how long is the— how long has the company been up? How long has it been going?

So we came out officially on September last year. We did the beta launch May 4th, 2023.

So it's been a little bit more than a year, but 16 months. And now that you're in it and you're operational, what is it that really gets you excited to get up in the morning?

The greatest thing that gets me up is emails from customers who are enjoying the, the content that we put out. And the team. We have an incredible global team with so many talented people and people who are challenging us as a company how we can do better than we did yesterday. So that for me is probably the most exciting part.

So you, um, I take it you're mostly virtual?

Uh, yes.

And so you got people, you got designers and coders and people all over the world that wherever they are, they're on the team and they're contributing every day to making Yachtway the extraordinary site that it is?

Yes, it's somewhat challenging to build a tech company that is consisting of teams that are all over the world. And oftentimes don't get together physically, but we do it in a very fun way and encouraging people to have meetings with each other, team meetings, team huddles, and these contribute to the great results that people see on yachtway.com.

Do you ever bring everybody together physically to meet?

We do actually. We just came from Monaco now and the Cannes Boat Show, and we had some of the European team get together over there. We have every 6 months at least, we have the entire development team coming together. We have some get-togethers amongst them, to a studio team because it's predominantly located in Florida. That always gets together because we create content right here. And so while segmented, everybody feels still very much together. So there you go.

So you've seen, and I take it that Yahweh is successful. You're making, I presume you're making money. You're at least breaking even.

I'm assuming that.

What do you, what is it that's unique about you as an individual that you've been able to bring this whole, all these pieces together and make this, even after its first 16 months, so successful?

I like to look back at the things that I've done in my life and now everything starts making sense. I started off when I was 7 years old. I started sailing. My grandfather was pushing me to do sailing because that's what you have to learn. And then some years went by, I got involved in TV. So I learned a lot about media, broadcasting, live TV, editing, cameras. And while at that time none of those made sense, there was no connection between the sailing and media. And then moved to United States, got involved in technology a lot, software. Again, nothing made sense. Moved back to Florida, started doing marketing, boat sales, media. And that's when everything clicked. And that's how Yatwei became to be. So now I'm able to see the skeleton of Yatwei. I know exactly how every single bone of the company moves. And I just have the incredible team to make sure that every cell between the bones is run as smoothly as possible.

That's a great metaphor. So basically it's all your varied life experiences, which at the time weren't making sense to you.

Yeah, exactly.

Set you up. So that when you saw the opportunity, you were able to take it and run with it.

Yes.

Where do you see Yahweh going in the future? Still a very young company. Where do you see it? Where do you see it growing to?

The funny thing is that we have plans for the next 10 years. We have a product roadmap for the next 10 years, uh, and we're executing it to an absolute T. Wow. We're coming out now on October 31st, by November 1st, with a new add-on service called EasySign, which is going to be the only globally accepted purchase agreement and listing agreement creation feature where dealers around the world can create purchase agreements and listing agreements with their customers. And we're doing it through our partnership now with DocuSign. And so that's our next big thing that we're adding to our platform.

So you had to get some international lawyers involved because the purchase of a vessel varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. That had, that had to be a little interesting to get, figure out all the legalities to put together a, a document that could be used as a listing agreement or a brokerage agreement that would be used. Yeah.

We are starting the first country is the United States and the first focus is Florida and California. Okay. And from there, We are quickly ramping up to New York, uh, the Great Lakes area. So we are gonna add quickly new countries and they're quite generic contracts already existing in the industry. Um, so it's not gonna be too complicated for us to, to add new countries or new jurisdictions. Mm-hmm. Because obviously we wanna protect both. We don't wanna make a one-side-centric contracts here. It's important for us to make sure that everybody feels confident when they're making these high-ticket purchases.

Do you own a vessel yourself? Yes.

Yeah.

A motor vessel or sailing vessel?

Motor.

Yeah.

I'm a sailor myself.

Yeah. I can see myself one day slowing down and cruising the world oceans.

Yeah. If you ever get a chance, charter a bareboat down in, down in the Caribbean.

Yes.

Uh, especially the, uh, British Virgin Islands. Some amazing sailing down there.

Yeah.

A lot of fun.

It is.

So this show is called Listening with Leaders because as a lawyer turned peacemaker, I've learned that listening is the foundational skill of life and very few people really know how to listen. I'm curious about how you couldn't do what you're doing today unless you had learned how to listen. Where did you pick up your skill, your listening skills?

I think it comes mostly from the fact that you have to be interested in learning, and the only way you can learn is if you listen to somebody. And I think the greatest listenings that I've ever done is listening to my grandfather. So everything he said, it felt like pure gold. So I think maybe that taught me to listen. I'm quick at making decisions, I don't like to ponder around which way to do something. I like to make decisions fast, even if they are wrong decisions sometimes. I feel if you move fast, you can do things at a significantly higher rate than other people who might overanalyze things. But I always challenge and tell the team to tell me why I shouldn't do it or why we should do it differently. So listening to the team is super important.

How do you deal with people who are not good listeners? You surely encounter them.

The thing is you weed them out and they weed themselves out.

Hmm.

Because, and it happens actually quite a lot, not quite a lot, but we've had instances where we hire somebody to the company and if they don't listen or if they're not a team player, the team just eats them out because they don't want to be part of folks that are not listening or who are not team players.

They're voted off the island quick.

Yeah, 100%. And I strongly encourage that.

Yeah. And is there like a culture in the company of where people take the time to listen to each other and really understand what people are saying?

Yes. We have different panels and we do that, for example, with development team every 2 weeks, every Friday. And this is a ritual where we have a phone call and I listen to every single developer. What they have to say, what we can do to better ourselves, what can we do to make their life easier. I have the same meetings every week with a sales team to understand what we can do better as a company to offer them better tools, how they can succeed.

Um, yeah, you're spending a lot of time listening to your— here's something I hadn't really thought about before. You've got a totally remote team. You're spending your time with regularly scheduled meetings, presumably over Teams or Zoom or whatever platform you use, and your focus is on listening to what they need. Yes. Listening to the problems that they're facing and then helping them solve problems so that they can be more productive. And that requires you to not talk. It requires you to listen.

I do talk, but I think the most, more important thing is to understand what are the issues that they're having. And I have to be the mediator between the different departments to bring it all together now.

So you get it. Sometimes you'll get into a little tussle between the departments and you got to help them come to an agreement about how you're going to move forward on a project or an idea.

You use— we, we rarely have any disagreements. We, we all make a very unified decisions and decisions that help the company and help the product to come out to the best that we want it to be. So Yeah.

What about dealing with, what about dealing with outside the company? You gotta deal with vendors, you gotta deal with your customers. How are you going about teaching, for example, your sales team to do effective listing with the people that you'd like to have sign onto the platform?

So we have a rule that we have a person who's a head of customer relations and his job is to call to every single customer every single week. And listen what they have to say. We have an entire system created, just a board with features and requests from existing customers. And every 2 weeks we go over those feature requests to understand how can we take it into production and keep continue building a platform that is not just something that we would use, but actually our users would use.

What kinds of things do you learn when your customer service representatives make those calls?

Number one is the features that they want to have on the platform. How do they use the platform? What can we do to, to help them sell faster? So we try to find out which boats are your priorities, which boats should we spend our advertising dollars on, because we don't want to advertise something that you may be not so interested in selling. So understanding exactly what the customer wants is super important for us.

So when you talk about advertising, are you going out and buying like PPC advertising, Google, Facebook, place like that, and you're featuring certain boats that are for sale and but featuring the Yachtway as the landing page where people go if they're interested in looking at the boat?

Correct.

And part of what comes with the membership package is the fact that you are doing online, online advertising?

Yeah, we reinvest quite a bit of monthly membership subscription costs that the members are paying for us, paying to us into PPC. Yes, absolutely.

That's gotta— just from a business perspective, that's got to make a lot of sense to a broker. They don't have to mess with it.

Exactly. And I think PPC, while a lot of people might think, oh, it's easy, you just create an ad, it's very complicated.

So PPC is— you got to be really good at it and really understand your market. To make it work.

Yeah. So throwing money, that's what we do. We, we're constantly learning what we do. We're adapting to our customer needs and we're trying to understand what are the trends in the industry, um, through our platform. 'Cause we can do that via the experience tags alone, understanding which areas like what type of boats. And these are the boats that we can request from future members and the dealers that we have currently on the platform.

So how's artificial intelligence gonna change your business model?

A lot, actually a lot, because what we've learned is people lack knowledge and utilizing AI to our advantage is something that we can make people make decisions faster, make them find the boats faster. So something that we are working, we have a whole AI department in the company that is developing the future, the future services and products for Yachtway. And one of that is where we let people upload an image of a photo of a boat that they maybe saw somewhere, and we tell them what boat it is. We're already making these calculations, and if you upload today, we can tell 80% chance accurate vessel that you showed us on a photo.

Wow.

And then we will match those photos with active listings on Yachtway that, hey, this is the boat that you can buy.

I, I'm, I'm, I just was curious whether or not there's gonna be an opportunity for people to go on and be interviewed by an artificial intelligence chatbot, for example, to get detailed information about what they're looking for and then come up with, based on what we've talked about here, some recommendations you might consider, something like that.

Yes.

So this is gonna be part of that. Yeah.

And eventually they can type. Yeah.

Yeah.

You can type or you can talk to it and it'll give you a, give you the responses.

Yes. That's something that is going to be part of that as well.

Yes.

Wow.

It's a new world, isn't it?

All right.

Heiko, I got one more question for you. I'll let you go. What's one thing about yourself that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

Well, I, I've revealed it before, but something that a lot of people don't know about me is, uh, number one, I, I like to play is Legos. And number 2 is I like to torture myself via marathons and doing Ironman. So this is something that maybe not a lot of people would know about me.

Wow. You're an Ironman guy, huh?

Yeah.

That's a lot of training.

Yeah. I'm training for my first one. I've done a half already. I've done about, I don't know, 20 marathons, but I found that marathons are not challenging enough.

So you got to do something that's tougher. Good for you. Better you than I. I was pretty crazy when I was younger, but you get older, mellow out a little bit.

I don't know. You're doing sailing. That's not—

yeah, sailing. I still— I'm an avid skier. I used to be a ski instructor, so I still— I ski a couple of times a week in the wintertime. So I'm still pretty active.

That's quite extreme.

Higo, it's been great chatting with you. Thank you so much for joining us on the show today.

Thank you so much for having me.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com. Com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.