01/14/2015

Ketch of the Month

Vince Morvillo, Jr., Sea Lake Yacht Sales, CPYB

This monthly spotlight on YBAA Members asks questions ranging from personal interests and hobbies to musings regarding the industry as a whole. In their own words, members share their secrets for success, as well as how to become a more visible entity in the community of yacht sales professionals.

If you would like to be featured in an upcoming installment of “Ketch of the Month” please submit your request to jforte@ybaa.com.

Vince Morvillo, Jr., CPYB

Vince Morvillo is a highly successful business consultant, entrepreneur and yachstman. He is president of The Yacht Sales Company in Kemah, TX and a renowned yachtsman; making history in August 2004 as the first blind person to win the National Ensign Sailing Championship.

 Born blind in Louisiana, Vince quickly moved to Rhode Island where he spent his adolescent and early teen years. He learned to sail after stealing a boat while wandering down the beach. In Vince’s words, “I was twelve years old wandering down the beach sort of trying to figure out who and what I was and I stumbled across this little boat. I rigged it, slipped it into the water and took off! About fifteen seconds into my great voyage, I realized ‘How am I going to get back?’ So I turned the boat, put the wind on the other side of my face and fortunately found the beach shortly thereafter.” Having an uncle that owned a boat yard gave Vince the basic knowledge about boats he needed to get going and it was through the sensation of pressure that Vince’s first sailing instructor got him on his path to be a champion.

Today, Vince lives with his wife Margaretta in Kemah, spending his time serving on the YBAA Board of Directors and building furniture out of either walnut or cherry—he has a long list of orders from his children and grandchildren to keep him busy for quite a while!

YBAA News: Obviously you’ve been sailing for a long time, you have this Championship under your belt. What got you interested in now opening the yacht brokerage?

Vince Morvillo: It was difficult for me to find employment because people were concerned that I had a disability. I worked in a venture capital company as my first job. I earned a reputation for being able to do turnarounds—they had companies that were kind of bankrupt and they couldn’t get anyone to run them, so I made a name for myself. In the 80s, Houston had a great recession due to the dip in the oil business so I took some time off. A neighbor of mine owned a yacht dealership and asked me to sell yachts. I told him he was crazy; 20% of people in Houston were unemployed and he wanted me to sell yachts? I ended up living on my boat and selling yachts for him and I really enjoyed it. But, I’m not a guy that knows when I’m well-off, I had to own the dealership. I had an opportunity to go into partnership with a pretty neat lady and we started our company in the mid-80s.

YN: So you started this dealership because you met this lady?

VM: No, it was because I wanted to go into the yacht business and I didn’t have any money and I was looking for a partner. She came along and I thought she had money, but she didn’t either. So the two of us had no money and a lot of dreams and we just went to work and worked really hard. She was a great lady and she was a lot of fun and we did well together.                                                                                         

YN: Are you still in business with her today?

VM: No, she’s much, much more intelligent than I am. She sold me her part of the business in 1999 and retired. She spends her time traveling with her husband; she lives a pretty good life. She likes to come by every once in a while and say, “Are you having fun yet?”

YN: Who would you say has most influenced you in your life so far?

VM: Obviously, my mother. She was a pretty special lady. Most moms with a disabled kid end up protecting them because they’re afraid of something happening. My mom was different, she was like, “Get out there and get into life, you gotta learn how to do it.” Her goal in life was to make me have free-choice, to be independent. She didn’t want me to have any fear about trying things or doing things. Her whole thing was you can do anything you choose to do but you cannot do anything because you haven’t chosen to do it; you can find a way. I think that lesson I learned from her along with her encouragement is why I have tried so many different things and succeeded at things like making furniture and learning to race a sail boat to the level that I could win a legitimate one-design sailing contest. There were some really good sailors at that! But, I wasn’t afraid to put myself up against the best and see where I came out. She was the strongest influence in terms of letting me go out and try thing and be independent and take on challenges. Between my father and my brother I learned woodworking and many different things. But my mom was the influence in my life that made a difference.

YN: What’s the best and worst experience in your professional life and what did you learn from those experiences?

VM: That’s a hard question. I tend as a person to look at things that look like they’re horrible and stop and say, “OK, there’s a reason for this and there’s something to gain.” The yacht business certainly has its ups and downs, sometimes more downs than ups and there were some really tough times in there. I think in each of the tough times, whether it was because of storms or it was because of economic issues, you really come out of that understanding more about the business and more about controlling costs and key factors within the business. I think that was always the good side of some of the things that came along.

There is an incredibly great bunch of people in this industry. I really enjoy having the opportunity to share whatever I can through YBAA and being on the Board and serving others—that’s been really, really, really important. I was quite honored when Vin Petrella asked me to be on the Board because no one ever asked me to do things like that! I’ve really enjoyed my whole association with YBAA over the years. That was probably one of the really great things and, of course, you learn a lot when you’re a part of what is happening and helping things to happen to make the industry better. You learn an awful lot from that.

What I’ve learned is no matter how bad the tragedy looks there is always something positive that comes out on the other end.

YN: What is your business philosophy?

VM: I think you have to remember in business that sales is a process. Our job is to support the client as they are moving through that purchase process. At all times we have to remember that everything we do in the business is about the client, not about us. You’re advertising has to be about them, your newsletters have to be about them, customer service is about them. It’s really all about the customer and you have to stay focused on that.

YN: Ok, so then why should a customer work with you to sell or buy their next yacht, besides that you’re going to make the whole process about them? What can you offer?

VM: Hell, I’m just an incredible person to spend time with! No, I’m kidding. I think that what we do, our business thing is sharing our knowledge and experience to help you find the right yacht. The brokers are very serious about their profession, they’re all CPYB. We do have an awful lot of experience in different areas that we can share with and help our clients. Our customer service person, his discipline was in engineering, which is really helpful in regards to the boats. Whatever people want to do there is somebody within our organization who has done it and done it well. Out experience, our knowledge and our passion are the three reasons people should do business with us.

YN: What advice would you give up-and-comers or people who are interested in becoming a broker?

VM: Don’t do it, go get a real job. No, I’m kidding again.

I think people who are coming to be a broker need to really make sure they have the passion. You really have to understand what the experience of boating is. If you understand that and you’ve grown up in it and have a pretty good passion for it, you’re probably going to do all right. You have to really identify and understand what that buying process is so that you’re not pushing people into a decision; you’re giving people information that helps them make the decision.

YN: What do you think the biggest challenges are facing the yachting industry and how can we mitigate those challenges?

VM: The reality is that times have changed, life has changed, the market has changed—but our approach to the market hasn’t particularly kept up with those changes. What I think we need to do is go back and examine that actual change in the market. For one, we really need to find a new business model that allows us to bring young people into the industry. We need to get that 25-year-old kid right out of college into this profession because, truthfully, if you have a person coming out of college and they want to go into sales, financially they’re not going to do any better than they can do in yacht sales.

I think there needs to be a better “pulling together of the elements” so that we can become one team instead of individual teams trying to survive. By that, I mean, it’s the dealers, the manufacturers, the suppliers, the financing people that all need to come together as one group and come up with policies where everybody wins. Often times one group or the other has some idea of how to do something and it may work well for them, but it may not work as well for another link in the chain. We really need to examine and build different business models, especially in the dealership area, even the brokers, the whole thing!

YN: You have your hands in a lot of things, obviously, not only building furniture, sailing and your brokerage, but you also do motivational speaking on the side. How do you juggle it all? What advice would you give someone who has their hands in a few things?

VM: It’s like anything else. What I do is compartmentalize things; I have a pretty well-organized routine. I’ve always been an early riser, so my day starts about 5:30 am and I hit that first group of emails that came in overnight. You go to the office and you get those things out of the way. You just need to keep planning and build a schedule, and stay on the schedule! You also have to have enough trust in people to delegate. People who delegate, succeed. People who try to micromanage fail. If you have a good delegation system and a good follow-up system and a good schedule, you can get to do it all. You also need to know when to pull back. In regards to the motivational speaking, it was exciting at first and I did anything at any time. Now I pick and choose a little bit. A lot of what I’m interested in doing now is working with parent groups for disabled children because I really found there’s a need there. You can do a lot of good doing that. You have to know when to cut back, you have to know when to say “no.”

I’m always able to get it all to fit together and to find time to be with family, which is important. I have a lot of energy and I need to be active all the time. I’ve been blessed with a lot of energy and health and I just keep bouncing along.

YN: Well, you love what you do.

VM: Yeah, I think I’m energized by life and I’m energized by the things that I do. I try to do things that I have passion about. If you have passion about things, you’re going to stay really energized.