Today we’d like to introduce you to Alec Benko.
Hi Alec, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My company originally started out as “Dockd”, a service for matching boat owners with homeowners who had unused dock space. It wasn’t until 2021 that we started brokering charters. In 2017 I had an obsession with the TV show Miami Vice. At the time, I had never been to Miami, and I didn’t know the first thing about boats. On July 4th, I remember I was making a Bloody Mary and a scene came on Miami Vice where Sunny Crockett uses one of his two boats to go on a sting operation. For whatever reason, the idea popped into my head about how he could rent his unused dock space while he was away. After some research, I noticed that some homeowners were attempting to do this by listing their unused dock space as a cheaper alternative on various forums. I decided that to get started, I would copy and paste their forum listings onto my own Craigslist ads. When I got a response, I would contact the homeowner who originally made the forum posting and negotiate a commission.
Eventually, I had a website built and tried pursuing this idea of “the AirBnb for docks” full-time. Unfortunately, I learned some hard truths during this time. For starters, I learned that customers searching for the cheapest alternative of anything are incredibly difficult to work with. Additionally, while capturing boat owners searching for dock space was easy, it was very difficult to market my service to homeowners since none of them were aware that a service like this even existed. This meant that marketing was an expense far too great to take on at the time. Finally, thin margins and liability risks associated with the nature of booking with private homeowners made it so that the business model just didn’t make sense anymore.
In 2019 I decided that we were only going to work exclusively with marinas. This meant that we could focus our marketing spend on just capturing boat owners which is extremely straight-forward and that we were dealing with businesses who have proper contracts that we could use to mitigate any potential liability and risk. On top of that, we were dealing with qualified customers and earning significantly better commissions from the marinas. After some time, I established close relationships with all of the local marinas, and a few in the Caribbean. I then realized that I could completely cut out advertising and leverage partnerships with yacht brokerages to feed me a consistent stream of clients. Rather than spending any up-front marketing costs, I would simply pay out a referral. I became known as the “dock guy” which I found pretty funny.
Eventually, in 2021 after I had lived in Miami for some time and networked a lot, I noticed that a lot of people were asking me about yacht charters. At the time, it never crossed my mind to try to complete the requests myself, I knew nothing about chartering. I would send all these requests to the yacht broker partners I had and not think anything of it. At some point, I realized how much money I was leaving on the table and started to brainstorm how I could build an inventory. It then clicked that I had a database of over 500 boat owners in the area from all of the docking requests I had collected, and a lot of these were charter vessels. Not only did I have word of mouth demand, I now had inventory. At this point in the story, I have to express my gratitude for my broker partners because rather than gate-keeping, they were incredibly helpful in guiding me through how to set up contracts and operate a charter business. Since 2021 we have grown exponentially. We started out with the occasional, say, 40-foot charter here and there in Miami. Today, we have completed charters in Miami, NYC, the Caribbean, and Europe. I’ve brought on a Vice President of charters, Joe Ahern, who now handles all of our charter bookings, and we are bringing on a principal broker in the next coming weeks who will give us the ability to start facilitating sales and purchases of vessels, making us a full-on brokerage.
I’m still known as the “dock guy” and still complete requests for long and short-term docking. My intent is to raise enough money from our new brokerage division so that I can build a mobile application that will streamline marina docking. Simultaneously we’ll build out marina management software that’ll be on the backend of the vendor-side of the application which will allow marinas to keep live track of vacancies, bookings, historical revenue trends, etc…
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It definitely has not been a smooth road. If you can imagine going on a wild rollercoaster and your harness coming off in the middle of loop while trying to hold on for the rest of the ride, that’s about as close as I can get to describing my experience!
Money was definitely always a struggle, even at times when we would do well in the beginning, I couldn’t get too comfortable because I never knew if/when I would lose a contract that was responsible for paying me a significant sum each month. Even today, we can do $100k in sales one month and the zero the next, which actually happened over the Winter. We reported zero bookings for the entire month of January, and it stung.
Mental health has definitely been a major part of my life as well. Being 26 now and having started this business when I was 21, I’ve gone through the highest highs and lowest lows of my life, as any 20-something would. It has been really important for me to know when to take a step back from work to work on myself. Last year I actually took a few weeks off, which took A LOT of convincing because I was so worried about the business being run properly. It actually ended up being beneficial not only for my mental well-being but also for my business, as it forced me to delegate tasks for the first time and build a team that could run the company should I get hit by bus tomorrow (which hopefully won’t happen!).
The biggest struggle of all though has been self-discipline and staying motivated. Starting a business is incredibly exciting, you find yourself dedicating all of your time towards it and it becomes your life. After that, it’s very easy to be discouraged during any slow period. One of the hardest things I still struggle with is keeping the same hustle and motivation during slow periods as I have when business is great. I think that bringing on a VP for our charter division has been great for my self-discipline since he constantly checks in to see how my progress is with various tasks. It is incredibly difficult for anyone to stay focused and driven when there is no one else staying on your ass.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Benko Yachts is a charter brokerage that operates out of Miami, Florida and serves South Florida, the Caribbean, and Europe. We conduct yacht charters and also operate as a concierge for yacht owners looking for luxury marina accommodations under our parent company, Dockd Incorporated. We’re best known for our transparency with clients and our business partners. I’d say that transparency is definitely what sets us apart. With any given client whether it be a charter client or a client looking for dock space, we take the time to educate the client on all the costs involved. I have found that it’s one thing to just tell a client “I have better pricing”, it’s another to educate them how and why I have come to that price and how I differ from my competition. Even when it comes to marina bookings where I’m more expensive than going marina-direct, I’m still able to breakdown my value-proposition effectively to clients.
I’m most proud of our relationships with our business partners, even the ones who would be regarded as competition. It doesn’t matter if you have the best service and best pricing, the yacht industry is incredibly small, and especially more so in Miami. If you decide to make enemies and play dirty with other businesses, you’ll never get far. I’m incredibly grateful for the relationships that I have fostered in the industry and knowing that I can pick up the phone and call a broker from almost any brokerage with any problem and I will be helped. I sometimes like to say that I don’t have any competition, I only have friends.
I want readers to know that we offer a gorgeous fleet of yachts that range from high-end to affordable and that we will work with every client to meet their needs whether it be related to special requests or pricing. No matter what, I can guarantee that as a client you will have my personal phone number as owner of the company and you are free to reach me any time, any day with questions. For the potential owners, I’d like to say that we work as hard as we can to ensure that your ownership is as hassle-free as possible. There’s a saying that the best days of boat ownership are the day you buy it and the day you sell it. We strive to make every day the best day of owning your vessel.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Resilience. Like I said, it’s too easy to become apathetic at the slightest indication of adversity or lull in business. This is especially important when one does not have a boss to report to such as my case. I have come to recognize that it is not enough to simply ride out the bumpy periods of time and that I need to be just as passionate and proactive as I am when the business is thriving. One of my sayings related to this is that “the only direction you can coast is downhill.”
Contact Info:
- Email: alec@benkoyachts.com
- Website: www.benkoyachts.com
- Instagram: @alecbenko
