Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com and it's guest time on the show and I'm in Austin, Texas and my guest is David Mebane, founder and President of Fat Tire Bike Tours, City Segway Tours and Classic Walks. David, welcome to The BusinessMakers Show.

David: Thank you. Great to be here.

Russ: Well, let's start by you telling us first about Fat Tire Bike Tours.

David: Fat Tire Bike Tours is a company that I own and started about 11 years ago. We offer guided English-speaking bicycle tours of Paris, France also over in London, in the UK. We have sister tours over in Berlin, Germany and Barcelona, Spain.

Russ: Okay, so these would be tours on bicycles.

David: Absolutely.

Russ: Okay. Is it like a predetermined path?

David: Yeah it is. Obviously, we want to minimize interaction with cars, with pedestrians and so forth and you also want to be able to hit all of the sites, such as the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben or Notre Dame, the Louvre, Parliament, Buckingham, depending on the city and so we want to be sure that we keep our customers on the safest path in allowing them to see everything as much as they possibly can in a small amount of time. In Paris, we offer four different tours. Our bread and butter tour and the one that we started with way back when was simply our day bike tour and that's gonna be your overall summary of the city. And then we realized that people were having so much fun that they wanted to come again and so we opened up a night tour, which is a completely different route. Different information and we certainly don't want to replicate what the customers did just a few hours earlier, or the previous day, so they can come back that night. And then after that, customers were still having so much fun, that we wanted to have them a third and fourth time. So we opened up some tours out to Versailles, which is that beautiful chateau out to the west of Paris and up to Monet's gardens in Giverny, which is in Normandy.

Russ: Okay, so how long would a tour last?

David: The day and night tours are typically four or four and-a-half hours. The Versailles tour, for example, would be about eight hours and Monet's Gardens is a total of about seven. That doesn't mean we're riding the entire eight hours at Versailles. That includes our lunch break and the time in the chateau and certainly stops to visit places like the Trianon Palace, the market for all our picnics supplies. It's definitely not the Tour de France. There's no spandex allowed on these tours.

Russ: Great. Great. It would seem like if you were doing this in Paris, you would certainly want to stop quite often and perhaps go inside a building. Is that standard operating procedure?

David: It's actually not and there's two reasons for that. Number one, it's against the law. Since I'm not an employee of the Louvre, for example, I'm not allowed to bring someone into the Louvre.

Russ: Okay.

David: Number two is that if you have a group of 20 people, you can probably guess that 10 of them have already been to the Louvre and seen the Mona Lisa and so forth and the other 10 – some do want to go, some don't want to go and the ones that do want to go – some want to go for five minutes. Others want to go for five hours and so it'd be a problem. So we, we don't take anyone on the inside. We simply stay on the outside. Talk about the history, the anecdotes, the interesting stories and pretty much what's going on today.

Russ: Okay, so they get a great preview on this four hour tour and they might want to come back the next day and go tour specific buildings?

David: That's right. We encourage our customers to come as early in their trip as possible. It gives them an orientation, an idea of, okay; this is something I really want to delve into. I do want to go back to the Quai D'Orsay for example, but the sewer tour may be just sufficient to see from the outside. I don't necessarily need to go back there.

Russ: The sewer tour?

David: The sewer tour. Les Egouts du Paris.

Russ: All right and when you go, how many people are in a tour group?

David: Once again, it depends on the tour but typically our maximum group size is 22. You know, we can range anywhere from one, if just one person shows up, which would be surprising – up to 22 and once we get that 23rd person, we will break into two groups.

Russ: And they're all English-speaking tours?

David: Everything's in English, which is certainly an advantage of ours and all of our guides are native English-speakers, which is also a benefit. We do do groups in, you know Chinese and Italian and Russian if we need to and we'll pull those guides in when need be.

Russ: Okay. So are most of your customers, then, from the United States?

David: I would say we probably have maybe 60 percent from the US and then the rest would be from, also native English-speaking counties, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. We see, obviously, lots of them and then being that English is the common language, we'll certainly have our Mexicans, our Colombians, our Germans, you know, Indians that speak English well and come on the tours.

Russ: Okay. Now, are the tours offered year-round?

David: They are. We're open every single day of the year, other than Christmas day.

Russ: Okay, well what's the weather like there in the winter?

David: It can be cold. (Laughter)

Russ: Okay.

David: It can be cold. As long as it's cold you're in good shape. When it becomes wet is when you start having a bit of a problem.

Russ: Okay. Now, your company, Fat Tire Bike Tours, is headquartered, I guess, here in Austin, Texas, correct?

David: Here in Austin. That's right, yeah.

Russ: Okay.

David: Yeah, it's based right here in Austin.

Russ: Okay and you're relatively young for a company that's conducting tours over in Europe.

David: Thirty-four. I started when I was 22.

Russ: All right. Fantastic.

Russ: I'm talking with David Mebane, the founder and President of Fat Tire Bike Tours, City Segway Tours, and Classic Walks. And we'll be back with more after this. You're listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.

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Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com and continuing on with David Mebane, the founder and President of Fat Tire Bike Tours, City Segway Tours and Classic Walks. Now David, you just told us about Fat Tire Bike Tours. Apparently, along the way, you started a completely new additional offering?

David: Yeah, I did. Back in 2003, I was living in Paris and I got a phone call one day from the Maison du la France, which is the French government Tourist Office based in New York City, and they called and asked if I would enjoy the opportunity to lead several journalists around Paris on these new gadgets called Segways. Obviously, I'd never seen one before. I'd seen one on TV –

Russ: Right.

David: And I was pretty fired up and absolutely, I said, of course I'd love to. And so they showed up that day and actually, I rode my bike over to their hotel on the Champs d'Elysees and went inside the lobby and there they were, these four gray machines standing against the wall and, of course, my mouth was on the floor. I was drooling on myself, as were everybody else that happened to be in the lobby. And that full day, I looked like Mother Goose on a bicycle because they – unfortunately, didn't bring one for me, but they – so I was leading on a bicycle these four journalists on Segways. And if you've been to Paris, when you ride past the Eiffel Tower on the Champ de Mars or by Louvre or anywhere with these brand-new things, I mean heads were turning. That is for sure. And finally, after begging, they finally let me ride at the Louvre, around the pyramid, where it's a pedestrian area, so not a whole lotta traffic.

Russ: Right.

David: It was almost an epiphany. It took just a few seconds – number one, I was a celebrity. I felt like you know, the biggest movie star of the day –

Russ: Right.

David: - 'cause everyone – and I mean everybody – was watching us.

Russ: Right.

David: That is for sure and I was riding this thing around and I thought to myself, "Okay, well, this machine I'm on here, called a Segway, has wheels and my bicycles have wheels. So if I was gonna do a tour on these things, the route would have to be relatively similar, if not identical. You need curb cuts. You don't want to be in the traffic" –

Russ: Right.

David: - you wanna avoid pedestrians and so forth. I knew that the history of the Eiffel Tower didn't change whether I was on a bike, foot, Segway, boat, helicopter, or anything else, so that was easy. And I had my staff, I had my office. I had some space in my office and plenty of electric plugs hanging out over there in the corner. And then for marketing, I mean the Web is basically free and I knew my staff was already delivering brochures to hotels for the bike tours. What would be the extra cost – it would be minimal to, you know, throw in a Segway brochure. Then so we started and I started up in 2003, just about a month after this experience and it worked well. And I was really proud we were the first Segway tour in the world and then expanded in '04 back her in the United States and in '05 opened some other cities in Europe and now we've got nine City Segway Tours around the world; five in Europe and four here in the US.

Russ: Cool. And so do you find Segway Tours to be more efficient and faster than bicycle tours?

David: They're definitely not faster and are they more efficient? I wouldn't say so, either. They can be a lotta fun, though. If you're gonna see the City of Paris, you might as well do it on a, on a unique method of transportation or mode of transportation instead of walking or riding a bike. So it's a lotta fun and we certainly see a lotta families that come because we all know that the 13-year-olds may not be as enthusiastic about seeing the Louvre or being drug around on a double-decker bus with headphones, and if you, you put your family and your kids on here, 15-year-olds and so forth – that's a heck of a time and we see a lotta families that write to us afterwards and say, "Thank goodness. We couldn't find a single thing that our 15-year-old daughter wanted to do but as soon as we got her on that Segway, she had a grin ear to ear and we're so thankful for that." So it's a good experience for the families.

Russ: That's cool. So I think it would be reasonable, then, to assume that perhaps your Segway Tours are more popular than your bicycle tours?

David: Sheer numbers, no. Our bike tours dwarf the Segways. Bikes are certainly our primary business but the Segway's are very important and quite a big piece of our revenue stream. But there's a limited capacity. You know, we only have X amount of Segways, whereas we have almost 200 bicycles. So there's also that thing called batteries on there. So they can't run quite as much –

Russ: Okay.

David: - compared to a bicycle.

Russ: Okay, well and that brings me to this third company name, Classic Walks. Tell me about that.

David: Just like it sounds. It's a walking tour and we started those in 2005 and there's, there's really no good reason not to have a walking tour. Once again, the information is the same if you're walking around with the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame. There's no barrier to entry. You literally print the brochure, do your research, and show up and walk around. I really enjoy the walking tours because they allow us to visit some areas of the city that you can't easily access on bikes or Segways. For example, Montmartre, which is the northern area of Paris by Sacre Coeur, is a very hilly area with a lot of cobblestones and it's old, so the streets are quite narrow and it would be almost impossible on a Segway or a bike and I can assure you that none of my customers want to climb the hill on a bicycle up to Sacre Coeur, so a walking tour is great. We start at the top and walk our way down, down to the lower streets and so it allows us to do some theme tours, like World War II and the French Revolution, in addition to explore some specific neighborhoods in detail, which you can't really do as well on a bike or a Segway.

Russ: Okay. Now most of your business, today, I assume, is in Paris.

David: Paris is our flagship, for sure. I'm real proud of – our London operation is our newest one that opened in '08 and it's already doing numbers that are better than Paris' fourth year in their second year. So I'm proud of that and we're doing very well in the US. Our DC operation is our biggest with Chicago right behind.

Russ: Going back to the very beginning. Do you speak French?

David: Oh yeah. Je parle français.

Russ: And did you learn French when you were young?

David: I started my sophomore year in college. I'd been to Paris once as a child, in second grade, just for a day. And we trained in and trained out that afternoon and I didn't go back and had no, no love affair if you will for the country or the city until going back after my freshman year in college and I worked in Normandy as a tour guide, summer of '95 and did that also summer of '96 and '97.

Russ: But as a tour guide – how did you get that job?

David: As a tour guide. A very random family connection –

Russ: Okay.

David: - is actually how it happened.

Russ: Okay.

David: And so I was – it was in an abbey, built by Richard the Lionhearted, way back in 1189. So it was pretty cool. The – and the family that owned this wanted to develop the English-speaking tourism market, hence my involvement.

Russ: Okay. So that's what's interesting about it, too, that you know, we spend a lotta time talking to entrepreneurs like yourself about that point in time when you decided, "Hey, I'm gonna go do this for a career, for a living, for my mission." Was there a moment like that in your experience here?

David: I don't think for the bicycle tours, there was a moment. After my three summers of being a tour guide up in Normandy, I interned with Price Waterhouse Coopers in the Paris office and while I absolutely loved the work and the people and dressing up nice and so forth, it wasn't necessarily what I wanted to do and I realized that by doing this internship and so on the weekends I had friends that were in town and they were asking me to take them around 'cause they were hopelessly lost in the City of Paris. And so we rented these bikes from a man down the street and it was fun and I realized that it was a fun way to see the city. I'd been on plenty of these double-decker tours where they speak ten seconds in Spanish, then ten in French, ten in Italian, ten in Russian, ten in Japanese and no one knows what they're talking about.

Russ: Right.

David: And if you're the last language, which is typically the Japanese, they're looking at what passed three blocks behind, so they're breaking their necks and it just – it wasn't fun and you know, you have the difficulty of trying to understand sometimes what your tour guide is actually saying and I have the ability to discuss Seinfeld and the World Series with the English speakers and we all understand each other, which is a great benefit. Yeah, the opportunity for – to do this, I think, just kinda came about little by little over the course of that summer back in '98 and I realized that if I was 22 and I was, of course, still a student and I failed, I'd be 23. It wasn't a big deal. And if I succeeded, then I'd be 23 and having fun and thankfully it worked out to be having fun.

Russ: Cool story. We're talking with David Mebane, the founder and President of Fat Tire Bike Tours, City Segway Tours and Classic Walks. And we'll be back with more with him after this. You're listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.

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Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com. And continuing on with David Mebane, the founder and President of Fat Tire Bike Tours, City Segway Tours, and Classic Walks. Well, I assume, David, you have to spend quite a bit of time out of the country?

David: I do and I enjoy it. My wife and children and I, we spend about six weeks every summer over in Paris. We make that our base and certainly visit our other cities. I go over to Europe about four or five times a year in addition to that. Then I'll certainly visit the US operations at least once a year.

Russ: Okay, so when you're in Paris for the six week – is that just a vacation or are you actually showing up at the office?

David: Semi vacation. We spend a fair amount of time at Disneyworld with my young kids, as you might imagine.

Russ: Okay.

David: But I certainly work a lot and I enjoy it because it's fun to see the operation in actually working.

Russ: Okay. How many total employees do you have nowadays?

David: I've got about, worldwide, probably say 60 employees, then about another 60 that are contractors that moonlight with us.

Russ: Okay. David, I gotta tell ya of all the companies that I've looked at – this looks like it might be the sweetest, most romantic business that I've ever come across and it seems like it's probably just been a piece of cake from the very beginning. Is that – would that be accurate?

David: Looks, looks are deceiving sometimes, aren't they?

Russ: Okay. So you've had a few challenges, maybe?

David: There have been a number of them. I mean we're in our 11th season now and so – we have different challenges, but at the beginning, the challenge was simply finding a single customer who wanted to ride with us.

Russ: Okay.

David: And you know, I'm 22 and I'm sitting there in Paris and I would wake up in the morning, early, about 5:00, and hop on the Metro and go over to one of the train stations and wait for these overnight trains from Germany to come in and everyone would pile off the trains and walk down the platform and I would stand there and give them maps and information, a big smile and tell them about this great bike tour they should consider and they say, "Oh yeah that's – oh yeah. We can't wait. We'll see it. We heard it's great. We'll see you then." So I left that train station feeling pretty good. Then I'd go to the other train station and got other leads to get the Madrid and the Barcelona trains and repeat the cycle, and I'd hear the same thing, "Oh, yeah, you know we'll see you soon. That sounds like a good idea. See you then." And I'd go home and maybe catch another hour of sleep, wake up, have breakfast and get to the Eiffel Tower at 10:30 in the morning and I would stand there, feeling all confident about myself and I would have absolutely zero customers. And this happened, you know, day one. It happened day two. It would go three, sometimes three or four days in a row, I wouldn't have a single customer and of course, I have my staff I'm having to pay and I'm trying to encourage them. Of course, I'm completely discouraged and I almost, I almost shut the doors after, after year one. I didn't make any money whatsoever and I had to come home and work at an accounting firm in Houston in the winter because I had to live.

Russ: Oh, so you were out there hustling customers?

David: I was hustlin' customers and I wasn't ashamed to do so.

Russ: All right, well that's good. That's real good. So what happened that suddenly made it gather some momentum on the sales side?

David: Word of mouth. I mean, at least for our business and maybe almost every business in the world, the best marketing you can have is word of mouth and once we started having customers going and telling other customers, it became exponential and I – my opinion was even if I went to the Eiffel Tower myself and one single person showed up – and it happened often at the beginning – I was willing to go work as hard as I could for four hours for 20 bucks so I was making $5.00 an hour, not even close to minimum wage, but I was hopeful that that person would have such a good time they would go tell somebody else and I think that attitude contributed to our success.

Russ: Okay, well from that one customer per day, what kind of volume are you able to achieve these days?

David: Depends on the day. If we are in July, right around the Tour de France, we will have around 500 customers a day coming through our office. If you're on a rainy day in December, we'll have five customers in our office. So it depends on the weather. We're a outdoor company and therefore, we reflect the conditions in the city.

Russ: So you actually could have a day where you actually gave 500 tours?

David: Yeah, we certainly could. That's spread out amongst 14 different tours. All of our bike tours –

Russ: Right.

David: - all of our walking and Segway Tours –

Russ: Right.

David: - but we run many of those concurrently and run them multiple times a day. So it may be one tour at 11:00 in the morning but there's actually four tours of 22 people out in the city at any given time.

Russ: That's impressive. So say I wanted to come over and take a tour. What might I expect to pay?

David: For the day bike tour, you're gonna look at about $44.00 and if you wanted to go on our Segway Tour, you're gonna look at about $110.00. So there's quite a range and even – the walking tours would be even a little bit less than that.

Russ: Okay, let's say somebody's listening and is interested in taking a tour. How do they find you?

David: If they wanna find us, the easiest way is to hit the website, of course. So you're gonna look at fattirebiketours.com, citysegwaytours.com, or classicwalksparis.com.

Russ: Okay. Now before I let you go, let's assume that there's an aspiring entrepreneur tuned in right now and is really enjoying your story but what kind of advice might you give a young aspiring entrepreneur?

David: I would say the one of, if not the most important thing I have learned is not to fall into what I call the entrepreneur fallacy and that is the belief that the entrepreneur is the only person that is capable of performing a task. And I can think of two people right offhand that I've watched them fail and I would base their failure on this concept that they just didn't trust anyone else to do the work and there's no way they could do it all. I mean let's be clear that the – the success of the business is typically a direct correlation with how hard you work; how many hours you put in; what ideas you have and so forth, but as you grow and get bigger – there's absolutely no way that I could do this business by myself and I look to hire people that are certainly smarter than me better skilled in specific areas. It can be being a tour guide. It can be accounting. It can be the emails. It can be the relationships with our tour operators. It can be just the high tech part of all our operations with the networks and the VPNs and so forth that go through it. I could probably adequately do almost all of the jobs I just mentioned but I'm definitely not the best tour guide and I'm not the best accountant and I'm not the best high tech guy and I have tried to hire people that can take us further than I could, alone.

Russ: David, I really appreciate you sharing your story with us.

David: Absolutely my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Russ: You bet. That's David Mebane, the founder and President of Fat Tire Bike Tours, City Segway Tours and Classic Walks. You're listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.