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HATTIE: Hi. I'm Hattie Bryant. This program is for anyone who owns a business or who thinks someday they might want to. From Los Angeles to Boston and from Tampa to Seattle, small-business owners tell you exactly how they do what they do.

This week, you'll see how an entrepreneur created a tourist attraction in one of the country's oldest and most-visited cities. You'll also hear from a viewer and get advice on enlarging your customer base.

People are always looking for a magic formula. We all search and struggle to find our way. The journey is easier if we have advice from those who have gone before us, so every week, we bring you into a small-business Master Class. This is an opportunity, not just a tip or two, to learn from a master. From Boston, here's the young but now business-wise Andy Wilson.

HATTIE: This is Boston, the birthplace of America. Visitors, both tourists and convention-goers, pour into the city to experience the history, the architecture, the culture, the schools, the rich texture of a place that represents freedom, independence, democracy. Our Boston-born and bred executive producer tells us that Boston has a longstanding identity with certain amphibious creatures. The swan boats have been part of the public garden since the 1800s, and every child who grows up in Boston reads, "Make Way For Ducklings." The stars of the book also reside here in the gardens.

Unidentified Group: (In unison) Quack, quack, quack, quack.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Now there's a new duck in town, another amphibious wonder brought to the people of Boston by this imaginative entrepreneur.

Unidentified Woman #1: Are you guys ready?

Unidentified Woman #2: We're ready.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Boston Duck Tours is an 80-minute sightseeing tour of the city. The ducks are World War II landing craft originally used to transport supplies from ship to shore. There are 12 ducks with colorful names, like Beantown Betty, and colorful characters, like our tour guide, to take us on a historical journey.

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"CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS": Good morning.

HATTIE: Are you going to be our guide?

"CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS": I sure am.

HATTIE: Now what's your name?

"CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS": Captain Courageous, my lady.

HATTIE: Captain Courageous?

"CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS": That's right.

HATTIE: You're going to make us learn how to say `quack, quack'?

"CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS": That's right. We're going to do the whole thing here.

You'll see those people who are gonna be kinda gawking at us or taking our picture, whatever the occasion is, we have a mission and our mission is to put a smile on their face.

Group: (In unison) Quack, quack, quack...

"CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS": The quack and the wave go like this--quack, quack. That's all it is, two quacks and a little bit of wave. But we do it all at the same time so that way it sounds nice and loud. So let's all try it right now as a whole group as I toot my horn here.

"CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS" and group: (In unison) Quack, Quack.

(Voiceover) Very good. I think everybody did it. So let's get going on our tour here.

Now over here on the right-hand side is the second tallest building...

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Each duck runs five tours a day, from April through December 1st. This year, about 300,000 enjoyed the ride, grossing the business $4.4 million. Believe it or not, he had to turn away over 200,000 people. Named Small Businessperson of the Year for Massachusetts, Andy Wilson will tell you how a guy with no money and a vision in a very short time built the hottest attraction in the state.

We were lucky we had called ahead, because the tour is so popular, it's hard to get tickets. If you come to town during the summer or on weekends, buy tickets early in the day.

"CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS": Over here on the right-hand side, you're gonna see where the Declaration of Independence was first read to the people of Boston in July of 1776.

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HATTIE: (Voiceover) Andy explains his non-conventional hiring process.

ANDY WILSON (Owner, Boston Duck Tours): We just run ads in the Boston Globe for Coast Guard captains.

HATTIE: Oh, you say, `Wanted: Coast Guard captains?'

ANDY: Yes.

"CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS": Now duck drivers need four licenses to drive a vehicle like this. One of them's from the United States Coast Guard, which is a captain's license. One's from the state, what they call a CDL or commercial license, one is from the Department of Public Transportation, it's for a passenger endorsement, and the other one's from the city of Boston, that's a sightseer's license.

Of course, it's a little fee here, and a little fee there, here a fee, there a fee, everywhere a...

GROUP: (In unison) Fee, fee.

"CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS": Right on. Very good.

ANDY: (Voiceover) And then they come in, and we have cattle calls. And we have a theatrical coach that puts them through a theatrical skills sets, because the first thing we want to see is whether or not they can project themselves as being someone else besides themselves comfortably.

HATTIE: Does that coach ask them to do things like stand on your head, or like pat your head and rub your belly or, you know, what is it that they have to...

ANDY: Well, she has all these props and so they, like--maybe she has 50 props, hats...

HATTIE: And she'll pass them one.

ANDY: ...binoculars, and they say, `Go pick one.'

"CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS": During the Second World War, I was a radio operator down in the South Pacific. That's where I first became acquainted with these amphibious ducks.

ANDY: By putting them in--letting them develop their own character and their own costume, they take ownership of it, but more importantly is they don't feel as much at risk any more because they're not themselves.

HATTIE: OK.

ANDY: You know, so they can project themselves much easier.

(Voiceover) They're on stage, this is the best show on wheels. You know, this is a stage, it's a platform.

"CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS": All right, are we all ready? Especially in the back, all of you. Wait a minute. Here we go with a big splash. How was that for a big splash? Pretty good? Only one word of warning: please do not try this with your own automobiles. It could be very dangerous.

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ANDY: Well, I was, you know, in a suit and tie, working in corporate America, and was in the back room office of investment banking, doing all accounting for "Commingle Investments," and making a lot of money for the company. And I just woke up one day after working seven years, and I said, `Something's wrong here. This isn't what life is all about.'

So I went out and for 300 bucks bought a 90-day Greyhound pass and took my own bus trip. And along the way, I wanted to go see an aunt who I did not--had not seen in 18 years and she lived in Tennessee, and I stopped off in Memphis to see Graceland. And I pulled into the bus stop at 5:30 in the morning, stumbled across the street, checked into a hotel to get some shuteye, and I woke up about three hours later, opened the drapes and I looked down, and there was this duck that was one of these.

There was this little rinky-dink duck business in Memphis. I didn't know they existed, so I took the duck tour.

(a stream of consciousnes) I finished the rest of my trip -- went on and saw Graceland and saw my aunt and so on. I was home for less than a half an hour, saw 10 trolleys in that first half an hour. . . home in Boston. 10 trolleys packed with people. Living on a boat. I used to take my friends up the Charles to see the views when they'd visit, and they'd rant and rave about this experience years later ... HATTIE: They loved it from the boat best.

ANDY: Yes, and all of a sudden it just hit me. I said, `This will work in Boston.'

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ANDY: I researched and I found out that there were really three main duck businesses that had been flourishing, and I toured the three of them and it became very clear and evident to me that the guy in Branson, Missouri, Bob McDowell, had clearly taken this business to the highest state of being that anybody else had, in terms of tour--execution of the tour, but more importantly the equipment. So I approached him, and realized that he had taken and continually tries to strive to improve on safety and improve on reliability...

HATTIE: OK. So what is the relationship? Do you buy the finished vehicles from him? Do you spec to him what you want for Boston? How does that work?

ANDY: Well, I specced what I wanted from Boston over and above what he was already doing. I'd buy the vehicles from him and then in terms of sharing his 26 years' worth of knowledge, mechanical knowledge he's

developed, I pay him--I have a licensing arrangement where I pay him a certain percentage of my gross.

But more importantly is I started helping him cash out his technology. You know, he was running his own sightseeing tour, but all of a sudden, now he's cash flowing off of his technology as a result of me. And one of my things I like to say is, `Businesspeople are ultimately much better off working together than working apart.' So I convinced him to work with me. First time he'd ever done that. So not only was it good for me, but it was good for him, and our success has helped improve his success both financially and making the duck tour concept potentially successful anywhere in the world.

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I thought I was gonna be able to pull it off like this. And so I started lining up money and commitments for money, and I said, `Well, it's gonna take another six months.' Six months would come and go, and then by the time that I got all the permits, they said, `Oh, you know, it took this long, something else is gonna happen.'

HATTIE: We're nervous.

ANDY: We're nervous. And so, I was desperate, you know, and I tried to get bank financing, and I tried to go to the SBA, you know, all that stuff--was gone. So in last desperation, I made phone calls. So I finally got a hold of this woman and--through a partner at an accounting firm, because I called him desperately. I said, `You've got to help me find--.' He says, `Her name is Carrie McIndoe.'

(Voiceover) And he says,`Her name's all about what she is, Carrie "Mac Can Do."' I called my mom up, and I said--because I was broke--I said, `I need to borrow some money to buy some people out so I can get to the last step,' and that was in June, and by August, they had raised the money for me, $1 1/4 million.

And, you know, they had the contacts, I had the offering memorandum...

HATTIE: All right. So explain to me an offering memorandum. What is it?

ANDY: An offering memorandum is a legal document that explains your business idea, how you're gonna execute it, your financial projections, the legal structure and it does it in such a way--and it also discloses all the risks. In other words, there are inherent risks in any business, you know. I feel like a farmer. One of the risks was the weather. If it rained for an entire season, I'd go bankrupt, you know.

So I had the logo on the front of my offering memorandum. You know, it's a big, thick book.

HATTIE: The little duck?

ANDY: And when I first showed her this, I showed her a picture of the skyline views from the Charles, and she says, `Andy, you're all wrong. It's not the logo.' And she put the picture of the views right here of Boston on the front of the thing. And I was just telling you about these investors in Maryland. I'd been going around because I'd never met half these people. And I said, `Why did you invest?' And they said, `We liked the idea, and we saw that picture on the front of the offering memorandum, and we were sold.' We said, `We knew it would work.'

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Unidentified Employee #1: Now I just got a call from Waterfront Wanda. They have an electrical problem down at the ramp, so they need our duck.

ANDY: It's this wire. You see how the--there's nothing we can do with it. Just see how that just split right off?

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Running a successful business often means you have to run it hands-on, as we found out before boarding one of the ducks.

ANDY: They're mechanical, they're bound to break down, at some point, you know? So--but what you try and do is do your best to--in terms of managing the business, you do everything you can to try and do it--you know, repairs and preventative maintenance, under your own terms.

HATTIE: So you're one of the official maintenance persons?

Unidentified Employee #2: Yeah. There's me and five--well, four other guys, and I'm one of the two that does breakdowns right now.

HATTIE: Good. So you're having fun?

Employee #2: Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's the best job I've ever had, so...

ANDY: I thought, at some point, it would get easy. I think that's what surprised me. It hasn't gotten any easier. You know, I thought, at some point, it would be up and running. You know, we have our customers, we're profitable, I have a stable staff, I have, you know--but every day, there's a new problem. As I like to say, `Business is a state of perpetual motion.'

(Voiceover) You just don't sit back and say, `OK, it runs on its own.'

Two weeks before we opened, after I pulled this all together, the city came back and said `You have to make these things wheelchair accessible.' And I was horrified.

HATTIE: You were out of money.

ANDY: Well, no, I'd raised the money. But here I'd hired--I'd finally hired the people, you know--pulled the--raised the money, hired the people, got the permits together, the duck...

HATTIE: Got the ducks.

ANDY: Got the ducks, and all of a sudden, they're saying you had to become wheelchair accessible, two weeks to opening day. And the night before opening day, this piece of equipment, this wheelchair lift to be able to get the wheelchair six feet off the ground to get it into the duck, came the night before. And that morning, at 8:30 in the morning, the accessibility people were there, and I demonstrated that I complied with all the ADA standards, and they wouldn't issue the last permit to me until I could do that. And a half an hour before our grand opening event on the front steps of the Statehouse, I got the permit. So I walked up to the event, you know--ran up to the event from the office, holding my permits, saying, you know, `I'm really open!' It was quite--quite...

HATTIE: `We're in business!'

ANDY: Yeah, we're in business. I had the sightseeing permit.

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Unidentified Employee #3: Good morning.

Unidentified Woman #3: He's sharing my ticket.

Employee #3: Does he have a ticket?

Woman #3: Well, he's sharing.

ANDY: (Voiceover) We take surveys now, and we find out where they're coming from. Are they coming to Boston specifically to take us? And now that we have all this information, then, you know, coming up with scientific ways or whatever to quantify the economic impact, because I figure that the economic impact at the Prudential Center had $20 million of economic impact by us being there. So if you look at the whole economic impact that we have in the way we structure our business has got to be twice or three times as much of all the incidental spending of all these people who are coming into Boston to take in this attraction. We're the number-one attraction in the state now.

"CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS": Hey, Thomas. Quack, quack. Great. Good smile here. Thank you.

HATTIE: You're perceived by the outsider as extraordinarily successful, which means you must be rolling in dough.

ANDY: Well, I'm not. I owe--before I start really participating in the equity of the business, you know--the way the deal was structured was that I had to say, `I'm gonna put everything at risk,' and that, you know, I'm deferring my position. In other words, my position is subordinated to the investors until they get a certain return. So basically, I've got to pay off another $4 million before I just get past subsistence living. It's not all about money. I mean, it started out about money, for me. I knew I could make this a successful business, but then once you get into it and you start affecting people's lives--300,000 people is here taking it and getting off and are loving it, and the employees enjoy working at the company. In my own way, I've helped change the world, I think.

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HATTIE: Money. It's what we need to get started, it's what we need to keep going, it's what we need to grow, and it's how we keep score in business. Andy had none when he started Duck Tours, and today, he is in deep debt. But he's on the path to wealth. What is that path? How did he find it? His experience working in the finance community taught him that venture capital is available, but you have to know how to attract the right people. Andy did his research, put plans in writing, prepared an offering memorandum, but money didn't fall from heaven. It wasn't until he met Carrie McIndoe at Strategic Capital Resources that he was able to go forward. She was the catalyst. She raised the funds needed, $1 1/4 million. How do you find your catalyst? You become like Indiana Jones in search of the Holy Grail. You become like Andy Wilson, so focused, so enthusiastic, so persistent, you will find the money or you'll change the business plan until you have one that can be funded by outsiders. Venture capitalists don't want little ideas. They want big ideas. Get a big idea, put it in writing, find some people who've already done it to coach you, and be willing to go without for months, maybe even years before you actually see any cash for yourself.

(Voiceover) The tour is full of heart-stopping moments for all of us history buffs, but Andy believes the most important person in American history has been overlooked.

"CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS": Now over here on the left-hand side, you're gonna see a statue of Mary Dyer.

ANDY: Mary Dyer gave the world the right to religious freedom ... Boston was originally settled by the Puritans, and they passed a law that said if you did not practice their puritanical beliefs, the penalty was death . And the worst part was is they came to this country to escape religious persecution. Mary Dyer said, `Hey, you know, you're hypocrites.' And she put them to test. They found her guilty -- her only crime of being a Quaker -- and they hung her on the Boston Common. As a result of that, her husband went back to the King of England and proposed an experiment called the Lively Experiment. The king ... signed a proclamation and made Rhode Island the first place on the face of the earth where people could freely practice their religion.

(Voiceover) That's a hundred years before this country became independent. Mary Dyer, she's my hero. This woman ended her life to give the world the right to religious freedom, which was the first acceptance of diversity in the world, and nobody knows who she is.

Unidentified Child #1: I learned that Benjamin Franklin was born on Milk Street.

Unidentified Child #2: Well, I learned something.

HATTIE: Oh, tell me, darling, what'd you learn?

Child #2: To drive a boat.

HATTIE: You learned how to drive a boat!

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ANDY: There was a defining moment the day--I was 19 years old when my dad dropped dead in front of me, and then at that point--from that point forward, I was on my own financially. And the world has never been the same for me again. And I always got that sense that the world was against me. But the whole point is, if you think that way, you know, you'll never go anywhere in life and you'll be a miserable person. And so it's optimism, you know, and passion and that passion has to be optimistic passion. You know, you have to be optimistic about the world and about being able to do something. Otherwise, you'll never take any action. And your life will never move forward.

My grandmother taught me that everything fits into banking someplace, meaning that as you get older, you accumulate more and more knowledge, deposits of knowledge. And at some point in your life, you're gonna withdraw that knowledge again. So everything fits into banking someplace. And so that's one thing I learned along the way is that, you know, you always learn from your experiences and, you know, don't let your experiences just go by without gleaning something from it.

There's a lot of knowledge you can never get in college. And, you know, the world is a--that's what I'm saying: As you go through the world, you accumulate that knowledge, and I think that's very important, as you accumulate it and try and apply it. There's a reason why--you know, to become very philosophical, the Ten Commandments say, `Respect thy elders.' If somebody does accumulate that knowledge through their lives, they're gonna be a lot more powerful. Knowledge is power. And so I believe that to be very important.

One of the things--I'll tell you, when you have a business and after you've been through the struggle and then it all of a sudden becomes so wildly successful from the outside looking in and from, you know, even passing your expectations, part of it is kind of, you know--your head gets a little bit swollen at first. And you know, again, I thought I was ready to take on the whole world and expand the duck business everywhere I could. All of a sudden I said, you know, `Do I want to have 55 employees and 20 different locations around the world?' And the answer was no. And so I feel very fortunate, again, that this has taken off, and so I need to make sure that this business stays as a long-term, sustainable business.

President, Boston Chamber of Commerce: I am president and chief executive officer of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. What Duck Tours has done is built upon the culture and heritage of Boston and our whole region. In just four years, they have become a role model for other businesses throughout our region.

USBA Official: I'm the regional administrator for the US Small Business Administration. Duck Tours is a great American success story. Entrepreneurs have a unique heart and a unique drive, and Andy Wilson has that, personified. When he finished his remarks at the awards banquet for the Small Businessperson of the Year, you could have heard a pin drop. I mean, I think his last line was, `God bless America. You couldn't do this, what I've done, anywhere else in the world.'

ANDY: Once you have a successful business, people look at you differently, which bothers me. See, this is what bothers me is that before, people wouldn't listen to me. You know, I was a no one, and now you have this kind of successful visible business, and now all of a sudden people hang on my words more. And so I realize I can do more with my life.

The world is a difficult place; and there is a lot that's a sham; there is a lot of drudgery, but it really is a beautiful place. And with that kind of attitude, you can conquer the world.

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Our marketing expert, John Wargo, tells us how to get more good customers just like the good customers we already have.

JOHN WARGO (Marketing Expert): Do a profile of your existing customers and your best customers and determine the demographics and the psychographics, if possible, to determine why and how they purchase. And then there are lists available in the marketplace that could match that profile. There are list brokers that are available that will help you find a list of people who look like your best customers. Then what you want to do is to take that list and mail to them because they're similar to the customers that are buying from you.

That's one way.

The second way that is really unique is, a creative way to get new customers is go to your existing customers and develop a referral program. Ask them if they have five people that they know who might enjoy the same services, the same products that they are. And then provide them an incentive and let them send those names in to you. And then you can send them a letter and say, `You've been referred by one of your friends as somebody that might be interested in this.' So the friend of a friend referral program is a very creative way to have your best customers help you find customers who act and behave like them. It really works.