We Started a Paddleboard Business With $10,000 From My Retirement Account

When Aaron came to me and said he wanted to start a paddleboard business, my first response was: What?

We were supposed to move back to Hawaii. He’d just spent months working for a computer animation company that never paid him a dollar. We had two kids — eight and six — no family nearby, no business experience, and almost no money. The idea was, objectively, insane.

I took $10,000 from my retirement account. That was how SURFit USA started.

I don’t tell this story because it’s inspiring in a tidy, podcast-friendly way. I tell it because most adventure business owners I know are waiting for the right conditions — the right funding, the right season, the right location. And the conditions never feel quite right. What actually happens is a window opens, and you either move through it or you watch it close.

We moved.

The first thing we built was a summer camp.

Our kids were small and we had no childcare, so the business had to work around them. We figured: parents in Sarasota are always looking for active summer programming. We went to the county, met with a man named Jonathan who was genuinely encouraging, got permits for four weeks of paddleboard summer camp on the beach, and set a goal of eight kids per week.

We built our own website. Found the cheapest booking platform we could. Created a Wufoo form and figured out how to take payments through it. Spent nothing on advertising.

Then one afternoon I was driving down University Avenue and my phone dinged. Someone had signed up.

We filled every week. Not eight kids — twenty. Twenty kids per week, every week, with no paid marketing and a website we built ourselves.

That summer taught me the first real rule of adventure business: if the experience is genuine and the community is ready, word gets around. Paddleboarding was exploding. There were races every weekend across Florida. People were hungry for it. We happened to be in the right place at the right moment, and we were too green to overthink it.

But “too green to overthink it” only carries you so far.

In the early days, Aaron’s most consistent client was a woman named Jackie. He’d drive an hour each way to surf with her, spend the whole day in the water, and come home with $35. I was working my full-time job, paying the household bills, watching him “work”— without any real income coming in. I was angry. I was bitter. Why does Jackie get to have fun every day while I’m grinding?

What I didn’t understand then is that those days were foundational. Aaron was there when other companies packed up and left. He took the guests other guides turned away. He stayed at the park on slow days with no bookings, just in case. That consistency built trust — with the county, with guests, with other operators. None of it showed up as revenue, but it was the thing that eventually made revenue possible.

What I’d tell any adventure operator starting out:

At some point, you have to move. $10,000 from a retirement account is a real risk. Waiting until the risk feels comfortable means most people never start. We weren’t brave; we were honestly slightly reckless. But recklessness with a plan, and the willingness to work hard, is sometimes enough.

Start with the community that already knows you. Our first paying customers weren’t strangers from the internet — they were parents connected to local schools. That network was closer than we realized. Those kids stayed with us and grew up with us. Some of them still work for us today.

Set your prices like you’re a real business from day one. We kept prices low out of fear. We kept showing up out of stubbornness. Both were mistakes that somehow worked out. You don’t have to repeat them.

We’re fifteen years in now. Over 3,000 Google reviews. Three locations in Sarasota and working on building more. Sold out summer camps every year and kids that keep coming back. It all started with $10K and the worst and most clunky website ever.

Looking back, I feel like we owe our kids so much gratitude for being dragged from one paddle event to another and putting up with us and our constant talk about the business. The whole experience has been messy, painful, exciting and really fun. And, we are constantly evolving, changing, experimenting and learning new things.

Stick around if you want to learn with us.

Adventure Business Pro is where I share what we’ve learned — and what we’re still figuring out — running SURFit USA and Adventure Fix. Subscribe to our newsletter and follow along on social media. We can’t wait to see what you are building.