Saying Yes to Fixing a Broken Industry

Matt Foster didn’t grow up dreaming of boat repair.
He wasn’t a marine tech. His family had a boat growing up in Buffalo, but they weren’t really a “boating family.”
He did a few different jobs after college…then a real estate deal he was really fired up about totally blew up just days before closing.

And then he noticed something weird:
Boats were everywhere, but service was impossible to get.

“I called five shops pretending I had a broken motor. Three didn’t answer. Two were booked out two months. That was all I needed to know.”

This was all Matt needed to hear.
He immediately launched a company.

He built a Facebook ad. It wasn’t perfect. Still worked.
Then came the calls. Then came the customers.
Then came Motorboat Mechanics, which now has five locations across the Southeast—and a business model built around a radical idea in the marine world: actually giving a damn about customer service.

“In our industry, people are just shocked we answer the phone. That’s the bar.”

The marine service world is full of mom-and-pop shops, long waitlists, no-shows, and no follow-up. Matt saw the chaos and turned it into a business plan.

Step one? Be obsessed with the customer.
Step two? Take the service to them.

“People hate hauling their boats to a shop and leaving them for weeks. We built a mobile service model that sends a tech right to their dock, driveway, or marina.”

That white-glove, show-up-every-time model worked.
So he scaled it—fast.

Charlotte. Raleigh. Knoxville. Tampa. Wilmington.
But rapid growth revealed a blind spot.

“I had this theory: spread techs across more cities to reduce risk. But when we got busy, we had no redundancy. If one guy left or got sick, the whole city stalled.”

So they evolved again.

And it’s not just mobile anymore.

They’re finding permanent homes in their key markets by partnering with Marinas.

“They want a reliable partner. We’ve become that. They get lease revenue and happier customers. We get a high-traffic hub and access to boats that never leave the water.”

All this from a fake phone call and a hunch.

“I just paid attention. I spotted a gap. And I went for it.”

This is what underestimated looks like.

Let’s Thrive,
—Eric