Greg Heine is the CEO of Baxter Marine Group, an organization that owns Vessel Vanguard and SeaKits.  Greg has built a variety of successful business in the niche luxury space. An incredible story of entrepreneurship, from his beginnings at Flightdocs a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform in the Aviation industry, to the creation of a successful podcast, The Aviation Growth Podcast, Greg brings his learning and experience of building companies in niche spaces to the Maritime Industry. This is an enthralling episode on the impacts of technology and how it comes to effect industries as a whole. We also get to hear about commonalities and difference between Aviation and Marine. Get ready for this exciting episode that highlights the multitude of opportunities in industries that people seldom consider.

Transcript —–

Talha [00:00:00] www.Shipshape.pro The number one resource in the U.S. for marine professionals.

 

Merrill [00:00:17] Today on the Shipshape podcast, we have Greg Hiene is the CEO of Baxter Marine Group, founder of GHC Interactive and the host of the Aviation Growth Podcast. Welcome to the show.

 

Greg [00:00:30] Hey, Merrill. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

 

Talha [00:00:32] Welcome, Greg. Good to have you on.

 

Greg [00:00:34] Yeah, thank you.

 

Merrill [00:00:35] So, Greg, you’ve been kind of all over the place. You know, you’ve been in the aviation space. Now you’re in the Marine. Kind of doing both of that. But how long have you actually been in the maritime industry?

 

Greg [00:00:47] Yeah, so good question. Professionally, I’ve been in the maritime industry for going on about three months now, but I’ve I grew up on the water. I’ve been boating and fishing since I was a little kid. And so I’ve been around the industry quite a bit by Baxter Marine Group, which I joined in February or March of this year, been my first step into the marine industry and in a professional way.

 

Talha [00:01:17] It’s cool because so many of the people that we get on the show, they’ve sort of later in life they’ve discovered that, Oh, there’s like a whole other world out there. Yeah. Right. And sure does. Tell us more about this, this most recent marine adventure. What’s been involved?

 

Greg [00:01:32] Yeah, sure. I’d be happy to maybe give you a little bit of a rundown about Baxter Marine Group and what that’s all about. And so Basham Marine Group is is actually made up of two companies. One is a product called Vessel Vanguard or a business called Vessel Vanguard. And Vessel Vanguard is what we call a SAS or a software platform that we sell and is used by a couple of different segments in the in the marine space. And so we sell it to yacht owners, yacht managers and also commercial fleets. So, you know, passenger ferries, crews, fishing fleets. And the core of the platform is really focused on helping these owners and operators manage all of the maintenance on their vessels. So all of their preventative maintenance, one time maintenance events, inventory, managing all of their documents and maintenance manuals. They can do that all inside of the Vessel Vanguard platform.

 

Talha [00:02:40] We’re talking about bigger boats here as well. I was going to ask.

 

Greg [00:02:43] Yeah. So you we do track we have boats on the platform that range from as small as 20 feet up to over 250 feet that are on the platform. I will say that that kind of the sweet spot for our platform starts at once. You get into that 40 foot plus range. And so, you know, once you get to that type of vessel, you start getting into the complexities of having, you know.

 

Talha [00:03:12] Systems.

 

Greg [00:03:13] Yeah, exactly like multiple engines, electrical generation, h-back, you know, all different types of systems, water makers. So it’s a big one. But, you know, all types of systems that can really affect, you know, the your use of the of the boat. Right. And so, you know, staying on top of preventative maintenance is really huge. So that, you know, when you go out and you’re looking to, you know, take a weekend trip or you’re planning your your summer vacation, really trying to reduce the number of times that something goes wrong on the boat and preventative maintenance can can really help do that. And so platform helps with that. And you know I’d be lying if we say our our platform like prevents all issues from going wrong because, you know, as everybody knows on boats, you know, there’s always.

 

Talha [00:04:08] Something.

 

Greg [00:04:09] It’s always something. Right. And so kind of the the second piece of what I’d call our like value proposition for our platform is that when something does go wrong, it’s really nice to have all of the information about your vessel and that piece of equipment all in one spot. And so you can easily see, you know, the make model, the serial number when something was installed, all of the maintenance manuals, all the history for whatever component you’re looking at. And so when something does go wrong, you have all that information and hopefully it helps you in getting it back, you know, repaired and back up and running as quickly as possible.

 

Talha [00:04:51] Yeah, maybe they can find the guy in shipshape.

 

Greg [00:04:53] Yeah.

 

Talha [00:04:54] Right. Sure.

 

Greg [00:04:55] Sure. Yeah.

 

Talha [00:04:57] So this was back to Marine and. Vanguard. And then you mentioned there was another part of this puzzle.

 

Greg [00:05:03] Yeah. And so the second company is called C Kits, and under SickKids we have a few different products, but the kids brand, what we sell are damage control and repair kits. We have three different sizes gone from our we have a sport essentials and an expedition. And essentially these are high quality kits that have a lot of different products, all in one kind of neat waterproof case. And so in the event of, you know, you hit something while you’re underway, like a, you know, a piece of wood or a shipping container or you run into you run aground somewhere and you have a hole breach or you have a through hole fitting that fails or any situation essentially where there might be water coming into the boat that should not be there. See, kids can help in having all the all the materials in one place. They can help you repair it quickly and effectively.

 

Talha [00:06:08] Tell me more about this. What does it mean to you know, there’s a hole in your hull like would include like the the wooden cork and the plug it and some fiberglass body and a pump and like, Well, what would be in that?

 

Greg [00:06:22] Yeah, sure. So we have all different types of products that can be used based on the situation. Right. And so, you know, first we have tools in there. So we have like a hatchet, a saw, a knife, screwdriver, all that type of stuff. We also have different types of sealants. We have different types of waterproof tape. We have different types of plugs, which I’ll I’ll elaborate a little bit on. We we have the kit comes with wooden plugs, but we also own and sell a product called True Plug, which is under the Sea Kids brand, but it’s a product that we own that is a what we call a modern alternative to wooden plugs. And so it’s a foam plug. It comes in two different sizes. We have our original and our mini, and it is a super effective way to stop a hole, supposedly come in through a hole. And it’s a great product. That was an individual company that we actually bought last year and rolled up under our C kids brand.

 

Talha [00:07:33] All right. So this was and so Zeke, it sounds older then, right? Yeah.

 

Greg [00:07:37] So, you know, both you know, Baxter Marine Group was actually formed last year in the beginning of 2021. But the two vessel, Vanguard Company, as well as the Sea Kids company, they’ve both been around for for some time. And so they they came together under Baxter Marine Group through acquisitions.

 

Merrill [00:08:01] Okay, great. So you said that you grew up boating. Are you originally from Florida now?

 

Greg [00:08:07] So, yeah, I was born and raised on Long Island in New York, so I grew up on the South Shore or Long Island on the Great South Bay and lived in between New York. And then I went to school in Boston. So I spent some time up and up in your neck of the woods. And then I moved down to southwest Florida, Fort Myers area in 2010. And so I’ve been been living the Florida life for the last 12 years or so now.

 

Merrill [00:08:36] And so at what point did you get into aviation because you had a whole career with that? Sure.

 

Greg [00:08:41] Yeah. So I got into aviation pretty much straight out. Straight out of college is one of my first ventures in a company called Flight Docks. And so Flight Box is very similar in a lot of ways to Vessel Vanguard in that we sold a software platform to business aircraft operators. So like business jets, helicopters, turboprops, and it helped them keep track of all their maintenance on their on their aircraft. So all of their preventative maintenance, their one time maintenance, inventory management, purchasing, they could do inside of their the flight docs platform. And so I had joined Fleet Docks when I was a pretty small company. There was there was less than than ten people there. And over the next, I guess ten or 11 years as I was as I was there, we really evolved that company through new product development. We were able to, you know, new product development, you know, really upping our sales and marketing and just expanding our customer base. We were able to grow that company about ten times over. And so that was a. A really funny experience and being a part of that and driving that company forward. And in 2020 we had about 100 employees at Flight docks and we had yeah, that was a really fun ride. And we ended up actually selling flight docks and merging with another company in aviation called ATP. And so I stayed on as part of the executive team at ATP and for the merged companies and stayed on there for about a year before, before heading out and starting at GSE Interactive, which Marilyn had mentioned, which is my at this point somewhat of a side project for the last year or so before joining Baxter Marine Group. That was my full time gig and where we worked with aviation companies and helping them build new new software products and new technology, but also worked with them on strategies around go to market. So helping them scale their teams, helping them build, you know, strategies for marketing. And so that’s what I was doing for about a year before, before joining Backstrom Marine Group.

 

Merrill [00:11:13] Now when I go out to bars and stuff and I tell people that I’m in the maritime space, they say, You ever get out on those megawatts? And I say, Damn right I do. So were you able to get a lot of playing experience? Do you know how to fly a plane?

 

Greg [00:11:28] So, no, personally, I don’t know how to fly a plane. It might be something that I think one day I’ll I’ll I’ll have enough time and interest to do it myself. But I just have a lot of other hobbies, honestly. And so I never, never learned how to fly. I was able to to get on some of these planes, but not as much as I would like. I’ll be honest. I flew a lot of flew a lot of commercial over the last ten years.

 

Talha [00:11:59] But but tell us, I mean, our listeners and we don’t have probably seen some of the crazy stuff you’ve seen give us like a was the craziest plane you’ve done.

 

Greg [00:12:06] I mean I’ve been on all say, all types of planes. Some of the most impressive are if you’ve heard of a Boeing business jet. Most of them.

 

Talha [00:12:17] Are about it.

 

Greg [00:12:20] Yeah, sure. You know, the most popular plane in the world, A commercial plane in the world as a as a 737, which if you’ve flown commercial, you’ve probably flown on a 737. They typically hold there’s typically seating for in between like 100 and maybe 130 people on your your typical like Delta or Southwest flight. Right. And there are the same make model plane in the business jet world can be configured to seat eight people if you. So you get a.

 

Talha [00:12:55] Massive leg room.

 

Greg [00:12:57] Yeah yeah there’s there’s a lot of leg room there is their bedrooms in there. I’ve even seen one that has a full gym on board and so with, you know, a peloton and you know, weights and all different types of stuff. And so yeah, there’s some pretty there’s some pretty crazy stuff out there and there’s.

 

Talha [00:13:21] Business class and then there’s a business jet.

 

Greg [00:13:23] Yeah, yeah. And flying business class is really nice, but flying on a business jet is, I’d say, next level. Yeah.

 

Talha [00:13:34] Oh, wow. That’s crazy. Okay, that’s cool. And what about boats? And have you seen any crazy boat so far?

 

Greg [00:13:40] Yeah. I mean, I’ve definitely been on, you know, a decent amount. You know, obviously you walk, walk. Some of these shows are, you know, even with even with some of our customers. Yeah, there are some you know, it’s just really nice boats out there. I think for me personally, some of the mega yachts are you know, they’re they’re maybe a little bit overkill, I think. I think, you know, maybe down the road something in the in the 50 to 60 foot would be would be nice for me. But even then I’m more of the honest I’m more of a small boat guy. I’m really into like a die hard flats and fly fisherman. Nice. So, yeah, my boats are typically under 25 feet. And you still.

 

Talha [00:14:29] Do you still have one? Do you rent?

 

Greg [00:14:30] I did, yeah. I have a skiff and I have a B&B. And so yeah, any, any time that I get be out on the water, I’m out there. The nice thing about small boats is that you just don’t have the, the headaches of bigger boats. You know, you.

 

Talha [00:14:45] Need a whole crew for example.

 

Greg [00:14:47] Yeah. You don’t need a whole crew. The maintenance on them is easy. And typically, you know, especially nowadays with the, you know, the equipment that’s on board, you know, or to. Talking about. You know, my one skiff has a Yamaha 74 stroke and the other one has a three or 400 mercury. They’re so reliable. And, you know, it’s you do your annual service and you’re pretty much good to go. And so those.

 

Talha [00:15:17] Decades.

 

Greg [00:15:18] Yeah. As long as you’re as long as you’re using them, you know, regularly, they, they tend to run great. And that’s I just like being out on the water. I like fishing and yeah, the the small boats work really well for me.

 

Talha [00:15:33] Hmm. What made you make that jump then, from like, hardcore aviation to pretty like you jumped off the deep end of the the marine world as well?

 

Greg [00:15:43] Yeah, well, you know, obviously I have a lot of, you know, personal interest in them in the marine world. It’s, you know, what I love doing Any time that I’m not working, I like being on the water. And so this was really interesting for me from that perspective. But also the, you know, in reality, the looking at what I did in the aviation space, a lot of that was really focused on the software and the business side of things. And it wasn’t you know, I made a lot of great connections in aviation. My my network was in aviation. But a lot of the a lot of the experience that I gained through that through that was really like, I’ll say, you know, straight up just business and software and SAS experience. And so it’s something that you get the experience and building new products and marketing them and selling them and supporting them. And you could pretty easily, I believe, transfer that to other industries. And so there was just a lot of similarities, especially with the Vessel Vanguard platform in between, you know, maritime and aviation. And it’s just something I’ve been able to jump into pretty, pretty smoothly.

 

Talha [00:17:01] And you sort of missed it at one level.

 

Merrill [00:17:03] How big is the aviation market compared to the maritime market in terms of size?

 

Greg [00:17:09] That’s a good question. I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t quote this, but there’s about when we looked at we looked at the number of aircraft that we looked at as kind of targets and potential customers in the aviation space, there was about 50,000 targets worldwide. And if you were to to do that same look at the maritime space. I believe it’s it’s significantly more you know, obviously when you start looking at that, the number of small boats out there is in the millions, I believe. And as you go up into the Superyacht category, you know that that market gets significantly smaller in terms of numbers of boats. But, you know, the dollar value associated with those is significant. So I think we have a lot more targets. But it’s, you know, you need to find kind of a sweet spot for where it makes sense to to do business.

 

Talha [00:18:05] So so give us some of the similarities and trends between the industry because you’re so well-poised to tell us about that. What like in the boat world, you know, like you said, the small boats is a 40 foot boat. Is it is like personal aircraft a big thing? Like how does that work?

 

Greg [00:18:19] Yeah. So there there’s definitely some similarities there. In the past business, like I said at Flight docks, the core the the key targets that we had were really in what we consider business aviation. And so these are like turboprop aircraft and above business jets. There’s a huge number of aircraft that are in the what we would call GIA or general aviation segment of the market. And so those are going to be your little papers and Barron’s and Cessna 170 twos. And so a lot of the small aircraft that you see flying around every day are really part of that general aviation segment, which we didn’t target at my last business. And so there is some similarities there because like, as you like I said, as you start looking at, you know, you’re looking at boats that are in that like 16 foot up to 30 foot. You know, I really consider those, you know, somewhat like recreational type users. These are, you know, weekend warriors and people who just, you know, like to get out, you know, single engine boats, twin engine boats, maybe at the at the larger and but the complexities of, you know, the maintenance on these types of boats, the complexity of the buyer, it’s very similar to like that general aviation market. And so that’s where, you know, with our vessel Vanguard platform, we don’t really target the smaller end of the of the market. But the similarity is as you start moving into the larger boat. And comparing them with the aircraft. It’s eerily similar.

 

Talha [00:20:05] In terms of is there a liveaboard community on an airplane like that? No, no.

 

Greg [00:20:12] I mean, there are. So there’s a lot. There are people that do spend a lot of time and they do like long extended trips where they’re flying from, you know, point to point to point and kind of traveling around. But I don’t know if they are living aboard. They’re in their air traffic pool.

 

Talha [00:20:31] Right. Just get it. The whole thing made it exactly the way they wanted. Yeah.

 

Greg [00:20:35] I think the the boat world is there’s much more people that that choose that type of lifestyle than on planes.

 

Talha [00:20:43] Yeah. It’s even more niche, right? Yeah, it is. I know so many people in the world, though, that are going to like flying school or something and, you know, getting their pilot’s license. So it is definitely sort of a gateway. Yeah.

 

Merrill [00:20:56] For sure. We know a ton of people that were coming from, you know.

 

Talha [00:21:01] Flying the other way around. Yup.

 

Merrill [00:21:03] You know, planes and fighter pilots and all that other type of stuff that got into boating after they finished their their tour.

 

Greg [00:21:12] Yeah. I think, you know, it’s just one of those things where they’re the type of people that gravitate towards, you know, specific hobbies or activities. There tends to be, you know, there’s tends to be a lot of crossover there. And a lot of the people that we’re talking to at Vessel Vanguard, you know, it’s talking with somebody the other day he has thinks a 75 set boat and yeah, he also has a Cessna 172 and he flew as a commercial airline pilot was his career. And so, you know there’s there’s definitely a lot of crossover between the two industries.

 

Merrill [00:21:49] One thing that we know about the marine industry and we’ve had this brought up multiple times is kind of how far behind in technology the maritime space is. You know, I heard some person say that although it’s ten years behind and then boats are ten years behind auto. And I like to think that probably the aviation space is a little bit better with technology just because there’s so many more standards that are out there.

 

Greg [00:22:16] Yeah, I’d say aviation’s in a similar place as Marine in in some areas, but I think, you know, as we look at like maintenance management for sure is a bit behind and marine and then the aviation space and, and one of the reasons is because aviation is much more regulated than marine. And so we looked at even some of the more basic aircraft in that that we service my last business they the idea of doing things on like spreadsheets or, you know, pure paper just wasn’t feasible because of the risks associated with the regulatory aspect of things. Because if you were to miss preventative maintenance or, you know, a maintenance event as an aircraft owner, an operator, there are significant fines that come with that. If that was to be reported to the FAA or they were to find that. And from a business standpoint, you know, if you’re a charter operator and you have an issue or you miss something or there’s an incident, you can have your certificate, your operating certificate revoked, which essentially means that your business is is over. And so, you know, the regulatory aspect is one of the big differences between aviation and Marine. And one of the reasons I think that, you know, the aviation space is is probably a little bit farther along. But as we as we look at the marine space, we just see that there’s a big opportunity, especially, you know, in the in the area that we play in today, to give customers an easy and effective way to keep track of all their all their maintenance because, you know, the customers that use it, what we hear back from customers is that they are paying like the the return on investment is significant. You know, our subscriptions not all that much and just the just preventing one maintenance issue or having information on hand when something goes wrong can really pay for itself very quickly.

 

Talha [00:24:35] So the MasterCard advert is priceless.

 

Greg [00:24:38] Yeah. And so, you know that that’s what we’re hearing back from customers, especially when you start talking about these larger vessels. There’s very little on them that is inexpensive. Right. And, you know, the parts are expensive. The lead times, especially nowadays, are significant. Getting into into boatyards is now you know they’re back. Yeah. You’re months and months now And so, you know, having a tool that allows you to stay on top of this stuff is just so important. And. And we’re really trying to shine a light on what what’s doable in this space.

 

Merrill [00:25:18] Well, I like to think that preventative maintenance on planes has a little bit more of a risk of death and loss of life than maritime. You know, I got like a phobia about planes. And every time I get on a plane, I’m like, oh, my God, how are they even doing this maintenance? Like, I’m so used to boats breaking down all the time. And I’m like, How is this even possible that they’re keeping up with all this?

 

Greg [00:25:40] Yeah, I mean, for sure there’s software, there’s more risk to it. But, you know, they they definitely are a lot more methodical in how they approach maintenance, both preventative and like unscheduled maintenance. And, you know, especially that the airlines and the charter guys, they really are on top of all this stuff. And it’s made it an extremely safe industry. When you think about the amount of flights that go, they take off every day and the number of incidents there are. It’s a such a small percentage. And a lot of that is, you know, because of the the preventative maintenance that’s that’s taking place, as well as the training and the the amount of training that, you know, the pilots and the mechanics and the support teams have in the aviation industry is is significant.

 

Talha [00:26:34] So, Greg, give us maybe a little bit more about like the similarities and differences and also maybe tied into like some of the trends you might have seen develop maybe in aviation or if you can speak about the marine world as well.

 

Greg [00:26:46] Yeah, I think as we looked at like aviation as time went on and again, a lot of my experience is really on the technology side of things. And so, you know, we started to see and we were actually a driver of the adoption of new technology. And so the what we saw over the last ten years in the aviation space was, you know, people going from recording all of their maintenance and everything they did all on paper to, you know, we introduced an iPad application that allowed them to walk out to their aircraft and sign things off electronically. And so we started seeing that, you know, that hunger for adoption of new technology, which I think, you know, comes from two places. One is everybody is now used to, you know, having an iPhone or iPad or being connected. And so as time goes on, it’s just the adoption of new technology. And then there’s now this hunger of wanting that in their professional life. And so, you know, I’m not writing things down by hand in my day to day life or communicating with, you know, people around me. Why would I be recording all of this information in a paper logbook? Right.

 

Talha [00:28:07] And so that track ability improves.

 

Greg [00:28:09] Yeah.

 

Talha [00:28:10] Meaningful, right?

 

Greg [00:28:11] There’s there’s so many benefits in doing that. And so, you know, you start seeing that that technology, you know, hunger for new technology. And also, like one of the big things that we saw in the aviation space was the integration of all different platforms. And that’s somewhere know.

 

Talha [00:28:32] Tell us more about that. What do you mean?

 

Greg [00:28:34] Yeah. So, you know, and I’m sure you guys have this experience and I’ve seen this, you know, for instance, we had our maintenance software and then there would be a flight operations software, then there would be another work order management system. And for the longest time, a lot of these systems ran what I call in silos. And so they weren’t integrated and there wasn’t a good flow of data between these platforms. And a lot of that had to do with the limitations of of the technology available. And so, you know, as time goes on and advancements have been made and, you know, cloud technology integrating and moving data from one place to another has become easier. And we’re starting to see, you know, much more many more companies actually integrate. And so I see that as being a big opportunity in the marine space as well, and being able to, you know, take information from one platform to another and create an experience for customers where there’s minimal, you know, transferring of information between platforms or, you know, 1 to 1 of the examples would be even like taking the actual data from your boat or from your engines being able to automatically. We update your maintenance platform. And so I think that the technology that’s out there today is going to create a more integrated world as more and more people are willing to adopt new technology in the space.

 

Talha [00:30:14] Speaking about technology, a big push is also electric, and we’re seeing it in boats now. It’s making it in steps. How is it affecting the aviation world?

 

Greg [00:30:22] Yeah, I mean, there’s a number of companies that are making a push for EV aircraft. And, you know, there’s been just like in in any of the other industries, there’s been a couple companies that kind of come out and there’s like a big hype around them. And and I had a friend who kind of called them just science experiments and not not, you know, not legitimate products. But there is there are a handful that are actually showing, you know, some pretty decent promise and being able to deliver, you know, fully functional electric aircraft. And so, again, I think that’s one of the big difference. Like we were talking about some of the differences in safety, You know, in aviation, these have to be much, much, much more reliable tested products. Whereas, you know, we’ve been using trolling motors and things like that on boats for a long time. And so I think that the use of, you know, especially you start seeing all these lithium batteries and quick charging, I think that it’s much more a reality in the in the marine space and can be used in in a number of different applications. Whereas I think in aviation it’s going to be a little bit more limited. The idea of flying like, you know, flying three or 4 hours on electric, we’re probably pretty far out from from something.

 

Talha [00:31:50] And is that where you were saying that, like aviation’s almost like lagging because they just need everything so thoroughly tested? Yeah, like a decade before it shows up in the air, for sure.

 

Greg [00:32:00] I’d say that’s one of the you know, it’s one of the restrictive things about innovation getting into aviation is that, you know, it’s similar to like if you think about pharmaceutical, right, it takes like ten years before before a new drug comes out. And the amount of investment that goes into that is huge. And so, you know, it’s you know, there’s very few new companies creating new equipment or technology in aviation because the amount of investment in infrastructure that you need to to do something like that is is significant because of all the regulation.

 

Merrill [00:32:41] What do you see the future of the the marine industry headed? Is he you know, one of the things about innovation and in pretty much any industry is that there almost never is any innovation from someone that’s been in an industry for a very long period of time. Almost all most innovation kind of comes from this new perspective, new person coming into the space. So, you know, from your time that you’ve been in the industry and your experiences and others, where do you think the industry is headed in ten years and 20 years?

 

Greg [00:33:15] Yeah, sure. You know, honestly, then, yeah, I’m probably not the best person to answer that, to be honest. You know, I do. I do definitely see the advancements that are being made and in, you know, whether it’s electric or, you know, even some of the advancements that are being made where you’re seeing like the technology being used in outboard motors to the point where we now have, you know, 600 horsepower and, you know, five outboard engines on a on a 53 foot center console. There’s obviously there’s been some pretty big changes that have that have gotten us to that to that point in regards to, you know, like, you know, major advancements or like, you know, mind blowing changes in the industry. You know, honestly, I’m I’m not too sure. I think that, you know, electric could be part of it. I’m starting to see like new things with like hydrofoil designs and.

 

Talha [00:34:17] Batteries making a big.

 

Greg [00:34:19] Solar. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, with most things, you know, it’s just about that, like continuous evolution. It doesn’t ever seem to be like overnight, like something gets introduced that’s just wild, you know? It’s, it’s a slow evolution and building upon, you know, kind of what I’d call production proven technology and consistently building upon that, you get to where you’re at today.

 

Talha [00:34:47] And Greg, in the aviation, Well, one of the cool things I saw was that iron drive or something that they’re working on, right, where they charge the air and there’s almost no moving about. Then they can’t really like lift heavy stuff yet. But that sounded really exciting.

 

Greg [00:35:03] Yeah, I think. Yeah, I’m not super familiar with that, but I have seen some things around that. There’s also, you know, people are talking about and testing hydrogen power, which is another, you know, another source. And so yeah, there’s, you know, there’s just a lot going on. It’s tough to keep track of everything that’s happening, but definitely some some neat stuff that’s happening in both industries.

 

Talha [00:35:30] Exciting times.

 

Merrill [00:35:31] One of the things about the marine space is just how international it is. We had an interview with this girl, Georgia, from the Superyacht Times, and she said this really good quote where it was basically like everyone’s international because we’re all connected to the ocean and like every country is connected to the ocean. I like to think that probably the aviation space is in a similar type of wheelhouse in that sense, probably made you relatively prepared for the maritime space. Have you guys tried to are you guys going international at this point?

 

Greg [00:36:07] MINOR Yeah. Yeah, we do. I mean, the the, you know, especially just with how connected everybody is, whether it’s through the Internet, through LinkedIn, through Instagram, you know, now it’s all kind of like, you know, obviously each country has its different, you know, whether it’s culture or regulations or, you know, whatever. But, you know, everybody is so interconnected nowadays and it’s made it really easy to to do business around the world. And so we have customers on Vessel Vanguard and all over the world. You know, our biggest, biggest concentration is here in the States, just because that’s where we’re where we’re based. But we have we have owners and operators and in in Europe, in the Middle East and Asia, South America, you know, I mean, all over the place. And, you know, nowadays it’s just it’s just so easy to do business internationally from a from a technology standpoint.

 

Talha [00:37:13] Nice. Maybe I don’t know how how much you want to share, but we’d love to hear some of the future plans for this Vanguard or even you haven’t spoken about your aviation podcast. Maybe like, what are your plans about that?

 

Greg [00:37:24] Yeah, sure. I mean, with with Vessel Vanguard, I would say that that’s taking up the majority of my time at this point as we as we dig in and really figure out the plans for for the future of the company. But one of the big projects that we’re working on right now is a full re platform. And so we’re actually building a new version of Vessel Vanguard right now. It’s called Internally. And who knows, this might be the name for the future, but it’ll be called Vessel Vanguard 360. And so it’s going to be a new version of of our platform that just brings a completely modern infrastructure to it. And so we’re we’re building it from scratch. We’re we’re building it utilizing a lot of the tools that are now available in Amazon Web Services. And the idea behind it is going to be delivering just a super user friendly interface, whether you’re on the on web or mobile and giving giving kind of one platform that maybe has multiple views that allows us to really sell effectively to the smaller end of the market or the more simpler type of customers.

 

Talha [00:38:43] How smart is it already and how smart kind of become?

 

Greg [00:38:45] Yeah, just to finish that thought, you know, really catering to it could be a single, single boat owner up to, you know, we have customers on Vessel Vanguard right now that are, you know, 200 boats plus in like 50 different locations. And so trying to create a platform that allows us to cater to both of those types of customers is can be kind of tricky. But that’s where, you know, we’re bringing our bring our experience from the aviation side because we were able to do that very something very similar in that aspect and and bring that type of technology into the marine space. And so, you know, we’re still I’ll say somewhat early in this project, it’s moving along very quickly. And so, you know, we’re we’re expecting an initial rollout to come probably in Q4 of this year.

 

Talha [00:39:42] And how smart is it already and what the future smartness plans?

 

Greg [00:39:45] And so right now we we have a version of it in our I’ll say it’s in a prototype phase right now. We’re actually using it on on a few boats in. Certainly. And so, you know, we have a super nice we’re kind of doing the initial testing in our iOS mobile app. We will expand that to Android and in the future. But it’s going to it’s going to give users a single view where they could see everything that’s going on with their boat. So all their current equipment times any maintenance that’s coming due in the near future. We also have, you know, some cool little features in there around operational checklists or shopping lists. And so just a really clean, powerful user interface. And ideally, as we move forward with it. Like I was talking about the integrations we’d like to start integrating with with some other platforms out there to be able to deliver some more data into into our system. So whether it’s pulling equipment, information or, you know, service providers or things like that into the platform, I think that’s where we’d like to see it go. You know, ideally in the future.

 

Merrill [00:41:03] Are you afraid of shark?

 

Greg [00:41:06] Not really. In addition to all the boating and fishing, I don’t surf as much as I used to, but I used to. That used to be my my number one hobby is surfing. And so I’ve spent quite a lot of time in the water all over the place. And I was never really too worried about it. So I’d say maybe on a scale of 1 to 10, maybe at a five or so. But I’ve seen sharks in the water and it’s not super comfortable. And if I saw one up close, I probably crapped myself. So and actually, I’ve done some scuba diving as well, and I’ve seen some actually up close. But scuba diving, like when you see them in the water like that and I haven’t seen I haven’t seen really big ones. I’ve seen a couple like maybe five foot blacktip sharks here in Florida. It would be good if I didn’t see them. But, you know, it is what it is. If I saw like an eight foot bull shark, I’d probably be pretty I’d be a little scared.

 

Talha [00:42:12] Size matters.

 

Greg [00:42:13] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Talha [00:42:15] That’s for sure.

 

Greg [00:42:16] These lunatics that are, like, diving down with, like, 18 foot great white sharks or, like, you know, 15 foot tiger shark. That is.

 

Talha [00:42:25] Mad.

 

Greg [00:42:26] Yeah, that’s it. Absolutely insane. That’s not for me.

 

Talha [00:42:30] They’ve been so great on the show. We love doing sort of tips and advice for our listeners. What? Like, I bet you like your job, right? Would you recommend it to other people? Right. That whether it was aviation or boating. Right. So how does somebody get set up? You know, maybe again, even technology specific, because you work on so much like software as a service stuff. How did like what is like a good 1 to 3 things maybe even just the top three things that come to mind.

 

Greg [00:42:57] Yeah, I mean, just kind of a general advice from one of the things like if I were to look back on my career so far, one of the biggest things I always tell, you know, people that are looking for, you know, career advice or maybe younger people entering into their professional career is like, just get in and get your hands dirty, You know, with how fast things are evolving nowadays, really, nobody knows it. All you could claim to be, you know, a technology expert or an expert in social media or an expert in sailing or or whatever. But all of these things are evolving so quickly. And I think that for a lot of people, they may be hesitant to like jump in or they’re quick to say like, Oh, I don’t really know too much about that or I’ve never done this before. And so they kind of stay away from it. And I think that you might be selling yourself short by taking that approach. And so I always tell people, you know, I didn’t know anything about aviation aviation, I didn’t know anything about software, I didn’t know anything about selling. But, you know, I just got on the phone one day and and did a demo or, you know, I decided to start working on developing a new product and, you know, just delve into it. And I think that by asking a lot of questions and just digging into it, you could learn so much very quickly. And so that’s probably a big thing. And one of the things that has really become, you know, super powerful for me over the last the last few years here has just been networking. And networking is easier than it’s ever been before with, you know, like LinkedIn and Instagram. And, you know, I’ve been able to connect with just in the last year, hundreds, if not thousands of new people and and just getting other perspectives and. Whether it’s in the industry you’re in or outside, you know, you can learn a lot from these people and you know, they can connect you with, you know, new business or, you know, vendors that can help you do things. And so I think just networking is something that is just huge for growing professionally.

 

Merrill [00:45:16] So, Greg, this was a great interview. We learned a whole lot about aviation Marine and kind of the similarities and differences of both. So where can people find you and hear more about what you’re doing?

 

Greg [00:45:29] Yeah, for sure. So, you know, personally, you can find me on LinkedIn. Greg Huynh on LinkedIn, if you have any questions, want to learn more about what where, what we’re doing on either the Marine or the aviation space, feel free to contact and shoot me a message. Love to. Love to talk. You can also learn more about our product at vessel Vanguard dot com or sea kids dot com. Also, you can follow us on on all the other social pages under those two names. And then you can find our aviation podcast at GHC interactive dot com. The name of the podcast is the Aviation Growth Podcast and, and that’s up on YouTube, on Apple, on Spotify and a few other platforms. And so they are definitely if you’re if you’re interested in learning more about that, you could reach out but also subscribe to, to those pages so you get the latest updates this share.

 

Talha [00:46:32] Thank you so much, Greg.

 

Greg [00:46:33] Yeah, no problem. I really appreciate you guys having me on. And then let me talk about all the things that we’re up to. And yeah, just appreciate the opportunity.

 

Talha [00:46:44] Yeah. Best of luck on your adventures.

 

Greg [00:46:46] Thank you.

 

Talha [00:46:46] Take care. And if you liked this content, you’ll love what we have on shipshape. Dot Pro.