River, Roots, and Rafts

Imagine floating past sunlit bluffs while otters slip through willow shadows and a guide turns river science into basketballs-per-second. That’s the unexpected magic Cody Dudgeon and Desert River Guides bring to Farmington—a city more famous for oil and gas than river tourism. We talk with Cody about building a thriving rafting culture where no one was searching for it, training teachers as guides, and crafting five-star experiences that blend geology, history, and wildlife with calm-water serenity.

The journey starts with the hard parts: weekend-only guide schools while teaching full-time, figuring out billboards and social posts that actually convert in a non-tourist town, and keeping old buses and trailers alive to make shuttles hum. Cody shares how partnerships with Three Rivers Brewing and Wines of the San Juan expanded their reach, why a family-first approach keeps 90-year-old grandparents and five-year-olds smiling on the same raft, and how consistent stewardship—like pulling 70+ tires from the San Juan and Animas—changes community behavior. We unpack the systems that matter most: training guides to read the room and the river, matching crew strengths to trip types, and translating cubic feet per second into visuals anyone can feel.

Looking ahead, Cody lays out an exciting plan for multi-day trips from Shiprock toward Four Corners, plus winery shuttles and a dream “bar boat” cataraft powered by solar-assisted electric. We get honest about last-minute bookings, no-shows, deposits, accounting routines, and the constant dance of vehicles, lunches, and put-ins. Through it all, a clear theme emerges: deliver an experience that deepens connection to place, and word of mouth will carry you farther than any ad. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves rivers or local business stories, and leave a review with your favorite moment—what part of the journey should Cody scale next?

Be sure to follow or subscribe!  And, if you're a local business owner who'd like to be featured - or know someone whose story should be told - get in touch at Ken@StrategicHorizonsConsulting.com

This show is brought to you by Strategic Horizons Consulting (a division of Ken Collins Marketing).

Transcript

Cody’s Path to Guiding

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Okay. I'm here with Cody Dudgeon, the co no co-owner of Desert River Guides. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Yeah, um, well, I grew up in Aztec and uh have always been, you know, swimming in the rivers locally and just played on the rivers most of my life. And when I was younger, I kind of fell into getting uh raft guiding. And so a friend of ours had my wife and I were living in Durango, and a friend of ours had taken a guide school, and so she was like, You should do this, it's so fun, you'd be really good at it. And I decided, okay, I'll take the guide school next year, jumped into it, and just had a blast with it. 17 years down the road from that. I was living back here in Farmington after having lived in Montana and guided in Montana and Idaho. I was back here and kind of getting bored in the summers. Um, I teach during the winter, and so looking for something to do, I decided let's give this thing a shot. And we opened Desert River Guides in 2021, and since then we've seen growth pretty much every year. There have been some challenges and some really cool successes with collaboration with other local businesses. Um, I also teach high school at Piedra Vista, and so yeah, I got a winter gig and a summer gig.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Nice. So you it's it's you and your wife that are co-owners in this.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

Yeah, that's correct. Ryan and I started this thing together.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Awesome. Very cool. So um what what was it like in the early days opening this place?

Launching Desert River Guides

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Any lessons or surprises or well, our our first year there was a lot of uh the challenge was getting people that could actually qualifiably be raft guides and training them. Um the training was difficult because during the season that we needed to be training, we're still teaching, and so we had to do that every weekend, and people would show up some days and not show up other days on the weekends. And for other raft businesses, what they generally do is they have a week-long training, it's five days in a row, seven days in a row, depending on whatever their plans are, and then they are able to you know decide whether to hire somebody or not out of that pool. We had to do it differently because we couldn't take seven days in a row in April, and so we'd we're doing it weekends only. So we'd have people that would show up and they'd say, Oh, yeah, we're gung-ho about it, and then they'd kind of fizzle out, and so we ended up having a pretty limited pool of employees. Um, our first year, so that was one of our struggles. Luckily, or maybe unluckily, I don't know, it wasn't too crazy busy that that lack of having qualified raft guides hurt us. Um, the other big challenge our first year was marketing, um, getting the name out there, letting people know that there was a raft company in Farmington. Farmington's not known for tourism, it's not known for its rivers, it's been an oil and gas and an extraction town for the majority of Farmington's you know growth since the 1930s. That made it more difficult to find customers. Um, although using some social media marketing platforms, we did attempt a billboard. Uh, our first year, we got a billboard up. Um, and then also working with the Farmington Chamber and the city of Farmington to sort of use our stuff as a way to market tourism in Farmington in general did help us. Um, our first year we were able to pay our bills through the winter, but as a seasonal business, it was by the time spring rolled around, we were definitely like in need of income again. And so that was kind of a wait and wait and see if we could hopefully uh you know hire new people. And so the training that year was again pretty limited, but it it worked out, you know, that we we were able to get a couple more guides, and we ended up uh after Riverfest buying a couple new boats, and so we expanded our fleet uh from the three boats that we had up to five for our second year, and that and that really allowed us to do a lot more trips, bigger stuff, and so it worked out pretty well.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Yeah. So that's an interesting place to be in, right? Where uh you have no competition, yeah, none. So you were the first and are still the only raft guide company in Farmington, um, which you would think that'd be an ideal solution, but what you had to do was build the customer base for it.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Because there was no solution, no one was looking for it, because it just wasn't an option. So to try and explain to people this thing that has never been here is now here, is is a difficult start, but but you're you're there now.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

I mean, yeah, yeah. We've seen uh growth every year in our numbers. Um even though the water was low this year, which is another challenge for raft companies, that we were able to uh bring in enough people that it it kept us rolling, and we've uh added collaborations with uh Three Rivers Brewing. We do a collaboration with the wines of the San Juan now, which is really fun. Um, and those collaborations really do help to get our name out there as well.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

So we we enjoy that other businesses around the area are are willing to work with us on on specialty trips like that.

Creating Demand Without Competition

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Yeah. So that's an that's an interesting thing as well. I I uh it doesn't always work out the same for everybody, but there usually is some kind of way to find a way to, like you said, collaborate with other businesses and that opens your market up even further. And of course, the the chamber and CVB, you you were doing that, which you're the type of business that would um uh be a natural fit for somebody like the CVB, where you know people can come into town to do this thing here. Maybe not the sole reason they're doing it. We just took a trip of people out, none of them, not one of them live here. Yeah, they're all here for Jeep reasons and whatnot, but since they're here, live it up. And and there's a raft company, so of course we've got to take a raft trip. So um, so anyway, integrating yourself with those other organizations outside of your own world um to to find ways to make things work um better for you and for them. I mean, it's a kind of a win-win for everybody.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Yeah, absolutely. That that group uh was just looking for alternative things to do in Farmington because Farmington does have great jeeping, but they're here for uh I think they're here for five days, is what she was saying. Yeah. And so one of those days they wanted to do something other than go jeeping, and here we are. Took out 14 people on a raft trip today.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

That's awesome. Yeah, right on. So you've talked a little bit about that, but how's how's your business changed or evolved since you started?

SPEAKER_00 8:17

Well, uh last year over the summer, we worked with the city of Farmington and expanded into doing rentals up at Farmington Lake. We have paddle boards and kayaks that we were rented up there. Um not sure if we're gonna do that again, but we do have paddle boards available for rent. We'll probably do it here out of the shop rather than out at the lake uh for the next couple of years. It just the the logistics of putting stuff out at the lake was a bit of a hassle. Um, and so yeah, we we are expanding into some rental stuff. Uh, we're hoping to start doing a multi-day rafting trip. I'm hoping we can make it work for next year. We'll we'll see. We we're working on the logistics of that.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Um so basically you raft a little bit, you camp overnight, and then you raft some more and you camp overnight.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Yeah, we would hopefully be doing that from Shiprock, New Mexico down to the Four Corners area. Wow. Um, possibly into Utah, but the logistics of actually actually going into Utah is a lot of stuff there. Sure. So if we can take out right there before the Four Corners, which the New Mexico Fishing Game has an access that they use through the Navajo Nation out there that we're hopefully going to be able to get some sort of use out of too.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Right. Cause yeah, the um you said four corners, and I thought that's weird. That's kind of the wrong direction for typical water running, but um from here. But this river, the Animus and the San Juan um merge here in Farmington and then go on to Lake Powell.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Yes, that's correct. Yeah, it flows from the east to the west, and it sort of meanders its way through the northwest corner of New Mexico and sort of barely butts up towards Colorado and then curves back down around towards the four corners. In fact, the monument is just south of the river. Um the actual monument's less than five miles from the river itself. Wow. As the river cuts through the corner of uh southern Colorado and Arizona and Utah.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

So you also mentioned um the difficulty when you first got started creating an employee pool of guides. Um, how has that changed since you started?

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Well, we've drawn in our pool more from the schools. Uh teachers make excellent raft guides because they have summers off and they're not looking for full-time work in the summer. They're looking for something fun to do that can pay them a little bit, but they don't have to do it all the time. Um, so we have a large number of teachers. The majority of our employees are actually from the school systems around the county. Uh, we've got a principal from Shiprock, we have a principal from Farmington, we have a couple teachers from the middle school here, and a couple teachers from the high schools. And then we have a we do have a couple college kids, right? We I recruit right out of my high school classes. Um, the kids I know that are were good in class and I think would be athletic enough to learn to raft guide. I recruit them as when they're seniors to come and work for me.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

That's a great summer job.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Yeah, it's a fun summer job. And a lot of them are going off on going on to college or whatever. So having something that they can do for fun for their last summer in town, and they it's a good way to go. And our pool has expanded largely because we have trained enough people over the last five years that we have, you know, backup people that are like, we don't work much, but call us if you have a big trip and you need a hell hand. Yeah. So it works out really nicely.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Awesome.

unknown 11:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

So um, besides being the first and still the one and only, what what do you think makes your business special in this community?

Partnerships That Open Doors

SPEAKER_00 12:02

It's really a family-friendly organization. We have trips that we do that are focused on families. We have trips that people can bring their 90-year-old grandmother and their five-year-old daughter all at the same time, and they're all gonna have a good time on these trips, and we make sure everybody enjoys themselves. Um, we've never gotten a review below five stars on Google, which I think that shows we're doing something well with over 60 reviews. Um, another big part of it is we are oriented towards our community and the growth of our community as a recreation hub, as well as to become more environmentally conscious of what the river is and what it does for our community. We do annual river cleanups. Uh, last year for our spring cleanup, we removed 70 plus tires from the San Juan and Animus Rivers. Um, we we're stewards of the place that we love. And so a big part of our our sort of mindset is to pass that stewardship along to our employees, our customers, and any we anyone we come in contact with that is interested in the river.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Right on. Yeah, yeah. And part of that work, I know that you're on the board with uh uh River Reach Foundation, which they're the parents of River Fest.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Which, if you haven't heard of River Reach Foundation, you've most definitely heard of Riverfest and they're responsible for that. So that's great, and that's a natural fit for you, obviously. So wow. So what are you most proud of when it um when it comes to your team or your customers?

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Um, you know, I I really am proud that my team has adopted that uh stewardship mindset and that we've been able to not just clean up the rivers ourselves, but I see other organizations looking towards you know cleanups out in Choke Cherry Canyon or uh focusing on you know beautifying the parks, beautifying the city. And that stems from a change in the mindset of the people of the region. And I think part of that is the growing outdoor recreation here in the county. Um, it really does, the more you use it, the more you see what's going on, the more you're gonna care about it. Yeah, and so we we've been able to sort of extend our stewardship towards other areas, and and it's really been useful.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

I think part of that also is instead of telling people they should care and they should do something, you care and you do something and let them see you doing that.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Yeah, you lead by example, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Perfect. So if someone's never been here before, uh, what's one thing you'd want them to experience?

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Well, um the beauty of the bluffs through the river and the the little bosque we have, the beautiful cottonwoods and the fox willows and the wildlife. We see otters and deer and beavers and lots of different types of ducks and geese. Um, just a couple weeks ago, I saw an Ibis on the river, and people don't even realize that we have that type of wildlife in San Juan County. Yeah, so it's it's really cool. The otters we've only been seeing them for about two years, but there's a family of otters that's growing in the animus and San Juan River basins, and that's shows that the ecosystem is becoming more helpful for the wildlife there. The cleanups, the the habitats are becoming more acceptable to those creature critters.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Yeah. That's something I can speak to firsthand because I've gone down the river with you a short, a short distance, a short, a short run. Um, but that was the first time I'd ever done that. And I grew up here. Right. I've driven all around this town and the area, and um, I've played in the lakes, I've fished in the lakes, I've fished in the river, um, up north, you know, around Navajo Dam, but um I've never traveled the river. And so traveling the river, you don't get one screenshot of where you're standing and fishing or playing or whatever you're doing, you get miles of it. And the scenery is something that I had never seen from that perspective, and it just blew my mind. It was amazing.

Expanding Services and Rentals

SPEAKER_00 16:41

And that's what a lot of people from Farmington that go with us their first time say. It's a whole new perspective on the beauty of the area that we're in. Because, you know, when you're in the middle of the city and you're looking around at the bluffs, it doesn't feel the same. And so you don't see it from that same vision. By going on the river, it's peaceful, it's calm. The houses and the cars are hidden by the forested areas, and the bluffs are right there. You know, you're floating right up against them or floating through the Bolak Ranch from McGee Park down, and it's just a whole different way to understand the place that we live, and it gives people a more respectful vision of the river itself, instead of seeing the river as a place to stay away from because it's cold and it's wet and there's people trashing it, and instead they see it as a place to play and recreate and and have some joy in.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

Yeah. And I I know that um from my my float with you, uh, there was a lot of history, there was a lot of education, there was just like really cool things that I didn't know that you were imparting to me as we're floating the river. It was it was just cool.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

So yeah, and I try to teach my guides some of that history, some of the geology that we talk about. I mean, we're in the Mesa Verde group sandstone, things like that. Just all these different little things that people don't even think about when they're driving down the street looking at the area we're in, you know, they're thinking about driving down the street and they're not thinking about the geology and the geography and the history of the place that we are.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know when the mall was put there, but I didn't know that Farmington had three different locations in its history, you know, yeah, kind of bouncing around. So yeah, just kind of cool stuff. But um, so getting getting kind of behind the scenes a little bit, what's uh what's something people don't see that's crucial to keeping your business running smooth?

SPEAKER_00 18:45

Vehicle maintenance. That's one of our big costs, and and maintaining and cleaning the boats, but vehicle maintenance for the logistical part of it, you know, keeping that bus up and running, making sure we have enough trailers going the right place, yeah, making sure we have drivers, the you know, guides could be going on, you know. I have three different sections of river that we run on a regular basis. I have full-day trips, I have two-hour, three-hour trips, one-hour trips. And so the logistical part of organizing all that around we basically only have two vehicles, and then also getting the guides where they need to be, it becomes uh a lot of sort of behind-the-scenes background work the day before, usually figuring out okay, this is who's available to work, this is the trips I need them on. This person's really good with doing lunches, so they got to be on the full day. This person's better with just short trips. Let's get them over here and let's make sure the vehicles are going to the right places and make sure we have enough time between different trips for the you know, maybe the bus will drop people off here and then go immediately do a takeout and pick those people up, bring them back to the office, then go back to the uh takeout again to bring another group back, and it's just kind of all over the county in some case, some days.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

So matching employee availability and ability with business needs and logistics. Yeah, just logistics is always uh can be just a deal breaker. I mean, it's one thing to say, yeah, I'm gonna start a raft company, that'd be super cool to like float people down the river and then realize, oh well I need to haul the rafts, so it's not really working, like strapping them to the back of my pickup truck. So I need uh something bigger, so a bus. Well, I can't strap them to the top of the bus, so I need trailers now, also, and then just things start compiling.

Hiring Teachers and Training Guides

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Yeah, just putting a a hitch, a tow hitch onto an old school bus was like, all right, here's here's the next piece I gotta figure out. Who can do that for me? Am I gonna do it myself? Right. Um, so yeah, which hitch do you buy that'll fit a bluebird bus? You know, it's like how do you how do you know which one's gonna fit? And they don't, you know, Reese tow hitches doesn't make a bus hitch, right? They're not like that's a very uncommon thing to hook up a tow hitch to is an old school bus. Yeah, so it was it was fun figuring all that stuff out our first year, and then being able to buy a van the next year, and that gave us a lot of expanded opportunity. You know, we bought two boats and a van our second year, and so that was able to really extend us out further and put a lot more people on the river. We we've done trips with as many as 65 people on it, yeah, all on one, all on one float.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

Yeah. So wow, that's a big, that's a big trip. It is. So what's a let's call it small but mighty system or process that you've put in place that makes a big difference?

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Um basically guide training that focuses on the nuances of customer service. Um you know, they need to know how to get a boat down the river, but that's not the only thing that guiding is. Uh teaching them these little pieces of history, these little pieces of the story of Farmington and the geology and that stuff really makes a huge impact. Because if the customer is sitting there on a raft and they're going through a flat section of the river, they don't have much to do. If they're not a talkative group, that guy needs to have some way to entertain and educate those people. And generally, the educational piece, while people don't want to be educated when they're in high school, they come do something like this, they find that it's a much more attractive part of what they're learning because they're in the place that it happened. Um so the geology, the history, the geography, the science of the river flow, the you know, all the different little pieces that I'm able to teach my guides. Here's some stories to tell. That for one, it helps the guides earn some tips, and for two, it keeps our customers coming back. Yeah, they they find an interest in this place beyond what they thought they were going to find on a river trip. They thought they were just gonna come float, get wet, and leave, and then all of a sudden they're getting an education too.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Yeah, it's one thing to understand how to correctly navigate a boat um down moving water. Um, but it's another to bond with people that are literally stuck with you for two hours. For two hours.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

That you've never met before, and you've got to do this thing. So that is a talent.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

And sometimes they've never met each other. I mean, yeah, you get a couple of groups of two who are three people, and they put them all together on the same raft. And so here we go, you got six strangers on a boat.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

And so they've got to, you've got to manage personalities, you've got to manage, you know, time, you've got to manage the river, and you've got to ensure that they're uh entertained because that's really in the long run, we're entertainers. Yeah, that's what they're paying for, is some form of entertainment.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Right. Unlike uh let's say uh a hardcore white water rafting trip, you're not the guide, you're the tour guide. Yes, it's a tour. It's a tour. So you have information to to impart and and all that kind of thing. So so you put a system in place of kind of um teaching them that that one the information, but then also how to introduce it, how to nuance it, all that kind of thing.

Family-Friendly Trips and Stewardship

SPEAKER_00 24:28

You know, the the places where it it becomes most interesting, like as you're floating into Kirtland, you can talk about how there used to be a mission down there, and that mission got swept away by the river in 1910, and all this different stuff. So there's there's a lot of different things that you can really pull out of the actual location, but also you have to know when the customers want to hear that. There are also, you know, there are times when customer service they're having too much fun conversating with each other, and you don't need to interrupt to be like, hey, hey, hey, right here, this happened. You know, so yeah, they teaching the guides to manage their own personalities in order to professionally guide a raft as a tour guide and a river guide. It's it's something there. And even on my most hardcore class five trips that I've guided, there's still that element of tour guide in there because there's there's no river out there that just drops for you know 20 miles straight. Yeah, there's there's always going to be a calm between the rapids or a a time where there's a calm or a lull in the conversation, and and you have to be able to sort of manage your clients in order to keep them interested in you, interested in the river, interested in the the trip.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

Yeah. I know uh I was just one thing came to mind from from our float. You were just giving off all kinds of information while we were doing that. And one of them was cubic feet per second.

SPEAKER_02 25:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Um, which people have heard before, but you it's hard to that's geek level knowledge, right? It's hard to visualize that. You equated it to basketball. Yep. So basically you took the cubic feet per second and said it's this many basketballs flowing past air every second. I'm like, wow, okay, I can visualize that. Yep, that makes sense to me.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Yeah, yeah. Imagining a cubic foot, you know, a foot by a foot by a foot. Sure. Sure, okay, like that's a box, yeah, yeah, whatever. But if you think about 10,000 basketballs rolling past every second, you know, oh wow, that's that's a whole different visual. Yeah, definitely people are able to uh recognize things like that. So finding finding those little nuanced ways to get people to understand what you're talking about is also key.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

Yeah, very cool. Has anything um in your business gotten easier or harder over time?

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Um marketing has definitely gotten easier. We're getting better at at the marketing systems. I'm learning some of the the more technical aspects of creating advertising type posters and things like that. And yeah um figuring out where to market has it's I I wouldn't say it's gotten easier, but knowing what types of people are going to be looking for the the rafting and so where to place that marketing it has gotten more sort of self-explanatory in my own head.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Um who who's gonna respond? Yeah, who's gonna respond? How are they going to respond?

SPEAKER_00 27:33

What type of marketing are they gonna respond to? Like for a kid's trip, I'm gonna market it differently than a beer float. Yeah, different. Right. So and and figuring out where to market those things has definitely been uh was an initial challenge, but it's gotten easier. Yeah. Um knowing which you know which platform I'm gonna get the high school kids interested on is gonna be different from you know the parents and the grandparents who are on Facebook instead of Instagram and and TikTok. Right. Um but yeah, uh the logistics stuff has gotten easier just because we we know our drive times better. Um overall, you start to learn what it's gonna take on a on a Friday, you know, driving to the put in, it's probably gonna take a bit longer than on a Saturday just because there's more people on the road doing whatever at that specific time. The three o'clock trip on a Friday takes a little bit longer to drive over to Flora Vista and do the put in than it did on a you know Tuesday.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

Yeah. So yeah, definitely. So what's something you wish ran a little smoother behind the scenes?

Seeing Farmington by River

SPEAKER_00 28:45

Hmm. Um I wish I had a a little bit better system in place for guide scheduling. Um, overall, it's it's tough because there's a lot of times where maybe we had zero bookings for Tuesday when it was Sunday, and so I tell the guides, yeah, yeah, we've got nothing for the next couple days, and then Monday I get like five different calls, and I have a 12 o'clock trip now and a three o'clock trip, and I've got a one hour going out uh in between those two. And now I'm calling my guides, hey, are you gonna be available on Tuesday? Hey, uh, and it's on a Monday. So kind of figuring out um the logistics of guide scheduling and who's available is definitely a system that I would like to be able to do something better with. Um, we don't book out you know a month in advance. Our our business is still pretty small. It's not like some of these really big raft companies up in Durango or some of the bigger companies in other states. We're new, yeah. And so people are learning about us. A lot of times people call us, like they show up in Farmington, they're like, hey, we drove past that that city of Farmington billboard and we looked up rafting in Farmington and we found you guys. Can we go tomorrow at 8 a.m.? Okay, yeah, we'll figure it out. And you know, suddenly you uh you know, added another five people, and now I gotta take the bus instead of the van. And right then okay, who's driving the bus? I thought I was gonna guide the raft and have somebody, but I've only got me and one other CDL driver employed for the company, and so her excuse me, her availability, my availability, my need for guides, all those things just kind of it it hits hard sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Yeah. Do you have you uh thought about something like um I'm just thinking off the top of my head, like a voluntary on on call sort of situation to where I I can say if I'm one of your guides, I can just put my name in, like, hey, uh, I don't really have anything major going on this week. If something comes up, I'll you know, I can I can work around it and I can do it.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

And that's kind of the way it works already, right? There, most of my guides are like, yeah, these are the days I have to have off. I've got a big whiteboard dry race calendar on the other side of the wall, and they just sign off, they write down the days they aren't available, and then I you know call up, okay, these people are. Aren't aren't available, these people are available. I'll call them up and say, Hey, I need you tomorrow. And most of the time they're pretty able to do it. Once in a while, there's they're like, Oh man, something came up, I can't. But right, 80 or 90 percent of the time, actually, more than that, probably. We uh we have plenty of guides, it's just the the immediacy of the logistics of that is is definitely a challenge.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

So you're working working that out. What's what's something else? Maybe it is that what's what's uh another area that that you're still figuring out as you go?

SPEAKER_00 31:38

Um accounting, making sure the the books get dealt with every day. So you know, sometimes you'll you know have a big group of people that came through and then figuring that out, and then all of a sudden I've got the the guy coming in from the lake, and then I've got to sit here and do the books at the end of the day. And that's something that I wasn't prepared for. I didn't kind of I I knew it was part of the business that end of stuff, but I didn't really understand how much time that actually takes. Um and so it we're still like I recognize that there were some days I didn't do the reconciliations, and now going back to try to reconcile the end of the season, it's like okay, where did we miss this, or where did that that payment end up, or you know, things like that.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

I think a lot of people can relate to that issue. Yeah, uh myself included. Yeah, I get so caught up in everything that I I don't focus on the books and I set my system so that everything's pretty much automated. So I don't do billing, my system does billing and in collections and all that kind of thing. And so it frees me up. So I've uh overcompensated for that freedom and freed myself way too much from the books, yeah, because they still need to be done.

SPEAKER_00 32:55

Yeah, ours is pretty well automated, but you still have to maintain that level of you know balancing the books.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

And yeah. And it is helpful to have somebody else do it for you, but it's important as a business owner that you at least spend the time uh pouring over the reports from that other person do it because you can't let that stuff go. You have to be your nose has to be somewhere stuck in it.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

So do you feel do you ever feel like you're wearing too many hats or juggling too much at once?

SPEAKER_00 33:28

Um no, I feel pretty good about where we're at. Uh my my wife's really good at the systems for, you know, she does a lot of the logistics. I I'm uh the bus driver and I do guide when I get a chance to, and I do a lot of the vehicle maintenance myself because mechanics are expensive. And yeah, um, overall, I I feel like we've got a pretty good balance between the two of us. If I were to try to do this with just myself, it would definitely be more overwhelming. But because she's really good at the focus on okay, when do we need to get lunches for a full day trip? When do we need to get uh you know, new new life jackets? We had you know, five life jackets got I had blown out of a vehicle this year and it they got run over. The guides stuffed them down into a raft and didn't strap them in and they blew out and got run over. And so buying new life jackets was a thing, you know. So um, but she she jumped on that. I you know, I called her and told her, I was like, hey, uh the we just had five life jacket jackets get trash while the guides are putting the boats into the river, and she's like, Okay, I'll order them right now. And she jumped on and got the new life jackets. We maintain we have about 15 extra beyond the capacity of our boat and such. Um, but that way we do have if something gets broken, we're covered.

Logistics: Vehicles, Trips, Timing

SPEAKER_01 34:47

Yeah. So yeah, I I was just thinking through that that that you're business partners with your wife. Yeah, and um, you guys do really great at that. Right. She's got her strengths, you have your strengths, and you come together on it. Um, I wonder how some other people might feel about that type of thing. Like that's a nightmare scenario where now you've got either your husband or your wife, you know, depending on who you are, butting into, you know, imposing their opinion on what you know should be done, and you guys work together really well on that. You're a good team.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

Yeah, well, we both we both know where our strengths lie and allow the other one to take that part of their skills. Yeah, take the reins. Yeah. I mean, I'm uh she's if I need a patch of boat, that's not something she does. You know, I I fix the boats or I fix the vehicles. If I need uh, you know, to a lunch menu, I'm gonna ask her to do that because I'm not the the planner for that kind of stuff. Yeah, you know, she didn't and she knows exactly, you know, she knows down to the slice almost, it seems like how many pieces of ham she needs for 14 people, you know. Yeah, we we have we often uh end up with like just a little bit of extra stuff, but we've never run out of food on a lunch trip or a you know a trip where we're providing food or something, and people always rave about the quality of what we put together and the way it looks and the way the spread is put up. That's awesome. So yeah, so it's good.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

So what's your biggest headache right now, if you don't mind asking?

SPEAKER_00 36:20

Um it's uh and it probably always will be uh just keeping guides organized and logistics. It's just uh with a raft company, and especially when that we're trying to grow, and and like I said, hopefully next year we we're hoping to start doing multi-day trips. The logistics just continue and there it's not ever gonna change. Um but managing that and we're getting better and better at it. Like it's it was really went pretty dang smoothly this year. We were rarely scrambling. Um, the group of guides that we have aren't the type of guys to go out and get super wasted at night and calling hung over the next day with the bottle flu, you know.

SPEAKER_02 37:03

Right.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

Um, I've worked at raft companies where that that was a problem. Yeah, um, the guides were you know mostly college kids, and as soon as they got off the river, they went out to the bar, and next thing you know, they you're going over and knocking on the door and dragging them out of bed.

SPEAKER_02 37:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

Um, come on, we need you now. Um yeah. But it's it's uh it's the plan the planning because it is such a last minute type of endeavor a lot of times, you don't have the the pre-planning ability. Like I said, we'll get a call at 5 30 on Sunday and have you know 20 people want to go rafting with lunch on Monday. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

So yeah, that can lead to the scramble, and the scramble can lead to mistakes and um other issues and whatnot.

SPEAKER_00 37:55

So um I guess the other big headache is people that reserve a couple weeks out and then no call, no show.

SPEAKER_01 38:03

Right.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

Um, we don't have a system in place for taking a deposit, and I think that's gonna be our next push. We've got to find a way to ensure that when people make a booking, that at the very least, if we have a guide show up but no customers show up, I can pay those guides rather than out of my pocket, out of the pocket of the no-shows.

SPEAKER_01 38:25

Right. Do you do you have some kind of um any kind of automation at all, like any level of automation built into your book?

SPEAKER_00 38:33

For bookings, no, it's all sort of call us up and we add you to our calendar and then we start making phone calls for who's gonna guide that trip.

SPEAKER_01 38:41

Right. Um even if it's not a great customer-facing solution, the automation, like you require them to go to your website and click a button to schedule a thing that goes into your system. So even if that's not a great solution for you, you receiving the call like you do, you might be able to put them into a solution like, hey, awesome, give me your uh your name, your email, your phone number, all that kind of thing. You plug them into the thing, you've scheduled them, and now they get an email, maybe some reminders if the system's just automatically reminding them.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

Yeah, that would be a great, that would be great, actually. We would love to be able to do something like that. Um in fact we've with long time outbookings, I've got a reminder set in my calendar that we use to tell me to call them the day before, and that's helped uh significantly, you know, making sure that I give them a ring the day before, be like, hey, remember you have this trip. Most people will either call back and cancel uh if they have to that that day, or if I leave a message, or they talk to me and they're like, Yeah, yeah, we're definitely coming. And so that's relieved some of that, but sometimes I'll I'll make the call, leave a message, no call, no show still. Sure, you know. So yeah, it is what it is, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 40:01

Yeah, sometimes it's just gonna happen. Yeah, and people in automation is gonna get over it. So so looking forward into the future, what's um what's something you're most excited about for the future of the business?

SPEAKER_00 40:13

Um being able to offer that full day and multi-day type experience. Um, we've also uh been working with wines of the San Juan. They asked us at our last trip that we did with them. We've been generally doing like specific dates for wines of the San Juan trips. They asked if we could do some stuff where we would just offer a trip that goes to and from the winery for their customers, right? We could pick people up at the winery, take them downriver, and then bring them back to the winery at various times of day. Um, if it's logistically, you know, available to do that. If I, you know, if I have a hundred people going downriver on a Tuesday, I'm not gonna go out to the winery, you know, it's a 45-minute drive. But if they call me up and I only have you know five people going downriver that day, and I can send a separate vehicle out that direction, yeah, we can make stuff like that happen. So we're expanding into that idea, and then the idea of doing those camping trips out to the four corners. So yeah, that's one of our biggest uh look forward to that'd be really cool.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

I would like to run the river on on that route. I mean, I've ran it through town, but yeah, it's outside of town.

Customer Service as a System

SPEAKER_00 41:25

It's pretty out there in the Badlands area. Yeah, it's it's very remote going through that section of the uh Navajo Nation. Yeah. So it's it just it feels like wilderness.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

Yeah, awesome. So if time and money weren't an issue, what's uh something new that you'd want to try?

SPEAKER_00 41:46

Um we would really like to be able to build a sort of a bar boat um that would have a setup where people sit sort of on the outside edges, maybe some tables built down the center of the frame that we could set up and do like a floating picnic lunch. Like a big catamaran, yeah, cataract type deal with uh like a table in the middle and and set that up as a uh specialty type tour. Yeah, and be able to use something like that. Maybe get a little electric motor on the back of it so that the the guides aren't pushing that big heavy frame, you know. Um little the there's like a solar powered battery uh outboard motor, 15 horse outboard motor that I would want to put on that type of thing.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:34

The the cover over it, the shade, everybody would be a big solar panel, you know.

SPEAKER_02 42:38

Oh, how amazing would that be?

SPEAKER_00 42:40

I I worked with a company in Montana that had they called it the the pub boat, and it was set up something like that, but you had to row it, and it was 20, 24 feet long and seven and a half feet wide, and weighed about 3,000 pounds, plus then you add the customer's weight onto it. That thing was hard to row, but it was a lot of fun. Um and the the size of it, it floated, it still floated pretty high, so we was able to use it even at relatively low flows.

SPEAKER_02 43:11

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 43:11

Here we couldn't go that big. It's our rivers just aren't don't have that kind of volume, yeah. Um, but we would like to do something like that, as well as you know, money is part of an issue for doing overnights because you gotta have dry bags for people's gear, you have to have tents to offer, you have to have sleeping pads for people, you have to have cots in some cases, and all that has to go in a boat somewhere. You know, all that has to go on a boat that's you know built to carry all that stuff, right? So the there's you know, the uh a new raft just to do a multi-day gear raft is you know 12 to 15k to get a decent setup.

SPEAKER_01 43:49

Yeah. Wow. So do you have any big goals or changes you're working on um towards uh you mentioned overnight trips this year or next?

SPEAKER_00 44:00

Well, I am going to do the uh New Mexico outdoor uh was it the outdoor economics division from the state has an adventure pitch fest. And so I'm gonna be going down to Albuquerque a few weeks away, November sometime, um, and pitch that idea of the multi-day rafting. And if I do well and I win the prize, it's ten thousand dollars towards getting all that stuff together. Oh, nice! Yeah, so if we could the ten thousand dollars would be used to purchase probably um dry bags and pads, uh and maybe a few tents if that you know, and uh funnily enough, it you know, you enough dry bags and pads, that's gonna take about half of that money in any way.

SPEAKER_01 44:47

Yeah, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 44:48

And then yeah, there there might be, you know, some spending needed on another vehicle. Um, I think our initial offering of that trip, we would have like a maximum of 12 people to do that trip, you know. Yeah, two two boats. Um yeah. So that's awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:04

So what would it mean to you personally if if you got that done?

SPEAKER_00 45:08

Oh man, it would be huge. Um, I think it would really drive a lot of business our way. People like adventures, and that is you know, a venture that's never been offered in in the Four Corners area. There's not anybody rafting that section of the river. Um, so we would really, really be stoked to do that. And just my wife and I have for a long time been multi-day river guides when we were living up in an Idaho and in Montana guiding in Montana, we were doing seven-day trips on the main salmon river. And um, she was she's done over a hundred of those seven-day trips on the main salmon river. I I'm somewhere around 50. Um, it's just a lot of fun. You really make a good connection with the people that are on your trips, the the families. Um, I've lifelong friends now that are I guided down that river and have become really close with. Yeah. So yeah, it's a really cool way to connect with your customers.

SPEAKER_01 46:07

Yeah, yeah. Very cool. So, what's a piece of advice you'd give somebody that's just starting out in in this industry?

Marketing Lessons and Platforms

SPEAKER_00 46:18

Oh, uh, if they're coming into the the outdoor industry in general, be a steward and show show why what you're doing is something you're passionate about. I think that goes for almost any business, right? Be a steward of your customer, be a steward of your industry and and promote the high quality uh interactions with your customers and and you know the what's the word I'm looking for here, uh high quality experience for those people that are really your bread and butter.

SPEAKER_02 46:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:55

If if they can have a good experience, they're gonna tell the next person and the next person and the next person. And that's how 80% of our business comes through uh word of mouth, people telling their friends how great this was. Yeah. You know, whether it's on a Google review or face-to-face, if somebody can talk about how great it was, the person they're talking to is likely to want to experience that as well.

SPEAKER_01 47:21

That's a massive piece of advice for any business at all.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

Especially local big, you know, you deal with corporations and whatnot, but if you're a local business owner, you're not competing on price because you can't.

SPEAKER_00 47:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:32

Unless you're in the niche market like this. There's not a corporate, you know, solution for what you're doing. But um providing an experience is is uh key. It's just key to getting people to want to do business over and over again with your with your company. So that's awesome. So what's something that your customers might not know about you, but they should?

SPEAKER_00 47:59

Well, um just the the level of care that we put into our customer experience. They should hopefully they once they've experienced it, they they will know. But we want every one of our customers to come away from this with a changed outlook on both the area that we live in here in Farmington as well as a changed perspective on what rivers are. A lot of people, especially people that are rafting for the first time or getting getting into the uh uh outdoors and recreation for the first time, they don't know what they've been missing. And by giving them that high quality experience, they they change their lives in some way and they become more connected to the environment around them rather than being in the urban jungle, they're in the wild environment that even in an urban setting can be possible.

SPEAKER_01 49:00

Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, and that's a that's a good one too. I mean, your customers shouldn't know all the headaches that you're dealing with behind the scenes to give them a good experience. You guys make it look easy and effortless, and it isn't always, and so um, but they don't know that. Yeah, just they're out for a good time, you show them a good time, and you do with the headache.

SPEAKER_00 49:22

Yep. Well, just today, uh my wife is out on a multi-day trip. She has a couple of our boats and a couple of trailers. Um, we rented a boat to a friend that was going on the trip with us, and he needed a trailer, and so I had forgotten that all the trailers were not down here, and I had my other trailer up at my house because I would been cleaning my yard out. And so I had to got down here, opened up the shop, walked out there, and I was like, oh no, the trailer. And so I jumped back in the truck, ran up to my house. I had to unload the trailer, hook it up to my truck, run it back over here, yeah, and then still had to get the busk started and go through the walkthrough and they get the boats cleaned up and then loaded on the trailer, and we still got the customers outright on top.

SPEAKER_01 50:09

Yeah, they were they all seemed super psyched.

SPEAKER_00 50:11

Yeah, they were super psyched. They didn't even know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:14

That's how it's supposed to work, man. You're doing it right. Well, man, I appreciate that you got you guys are here and that you're doing this. And you're just good people anyway. So, I mean, I appreciate that you're part of the community, whether you're doing business or not. But uh the business is definitely a welcome, welcome addition. So um who knows? I mean, the ideal solution is that someday you do with competition because that means it's growing.

SPEAKER_00 50:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:40

Um, I hate to put that on you, but I mean, that's kind of the ideal solution. Right. This grows into a place where it can support another business doing exactly what you're doing right here. So, and there's enough for both of you. Yeah. So, yeah. Well, awesome, man. Thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. This is yeah, thank you. I always like talking with you. Get so much stuff stuck in your head, it's amazing. Well, thanks.