Teaming Up in Nantucket

He almost didn’t go. 

 

Spending his summer giving bike tours on the island of Nantucket seemed too much of a stretch for this economics major who had never been out of the Midwest. But Ryan Cronin ’13 took a chance and, thanks to a Wabash alumnus, found friendship, a historical gem, and a real-life business experience he could never have in the classroom.

 

The story of Nantucket Bike Tours begins with Jason Bridges ’98 and a four-week bike trip in Vietnam in 2002. 

 

“It’s a country that I have always wanted to see, but I wasn’t really sure how I was going to get around,” says Bridges. He found a bike tour that started in Ho Chi Minh City and, over the course of a month, made its way up to Hanoi. “It was about 50 to 80 miles a day of biking.

 

“I got my butt kicked, but it really showed me that the best way to see a place was by bike. You get to smell everything. You feel the hills. You are more approachable by the communities you go through. Everything is slowed down enough for you to experience your environment, but fast enough so that you can actually get through enough in one day.”

 

Fast-forward to the fall of 2010. Bridges and his girlfriend, Courtney Nemeth, took a bike tour of Boston. On the ferry from Hyannis to Nantucket, Bridges was lamenting the lack of such tours on Nantucket, his home for the past decade, when Nemeth said, “Why don’t you do it?”

 

Bridges mulled it over and then began researching the idea. The bicycle rental business in Nantucket is lucrative. Bike riding on the island is a popular mode of transportation encouraged and made possible by far reaching and well-maintained bike trails. 

 

“You can make a lot more money just renting bikes one after the other,” Bridges explains. To start a bike tour business the right way, he thought, “You would have to be a historian. You have to have educated people on these bike tours and people who can bike. And then there are the safety and insurance issues. So no one ever did it.

 

“But we took the leap—we did our research, and we jumped in with Nantucket Bike Tours.”

 

Bridges and Nemeth spent the winter preparing the business to launch in the spring. They were about to post ads for a summer intern when Bridges decided to call Wabash.

 

“I didn’t remember internship programs during my time there, but I figured the worst they could say is, ‘Sorry we can’t help you.’ I contacted [Schroeder Center for Career Development Director] Scott Crawford. I didn’t even get the first sentence out and he said, ‘I have the perfect thing for you—the Small Business Intern-ship Fund.’ I thought, Wow! This would be perfect!”

 

The Small Business Internship Fund (SBIF) began seven years ago with a generous gift from an alumnus. The SBIF provides a stipend for a student to spend eight weeks during the summer working alongside an alum in a small business—businesses with fewer than 100 employees—outside the state of Indiana (although there is a little leeway on both criteria).

 

“This internship Ryan completed is a great example of what this fund can do,” Crawford explains. “There’s no way this business just starting off is going to be able to pay Ryan $3,000. So the alum gets free labor, but they also get a different perspective on their business from the student. It really adds a lot for both the alumni and the students.”

 

Students apply for the position or positions that interest them, submit a cover letter and resume, and often go through an interview process. “Not everyone who wants one gets one,” says Crawford. The supervising alum gets a say in who he hires for the position. “It’s not just me telling a student where he will be, like at some schools.

 

“Small business internships give students a really rich experience. They get to wear a lot of hats and learn from the ground up how to start a business, how to keep a busi-ness going, or how to ramp up a business. They get to see the good parts, the bad parts, and everything that’s involved.

 

“The alumni get an idea of what kind of talent our current students can bring. And it’s a good way to connect them better with the school.”

 

Cronin arrived in Nantucket well-prepared. He had participated in the Business Immersion Program at Wabash, an eight-week intensive course that introduces a dozen students to the ins and outs of creating, building, launching, and maintaining a business. 

 

“Ryan was great. He had done this stuff on paper before; now he got to implement it—see it firsthand.” Bridges says, “I’d say, ‘Okay, Ryan, what do you think?’ Then we would talk about it, do it, and see if it worked out.”

 

Cronin appreciated the time and trust Bridges and Nemeth gave him. 

 

“They treated me like I was an owner—like I had money in it. And it wasn’t like Jason was just trying to make me better at business; he was trying to make me a better person, a better leader. He gave me books to read and we had discussions about them. He really helped me grow as a person.”

 

“I expected him to have opinions; that wasn’t an option,” says Bridges. “We talked a lot about what he did over the summer and how he could take that to the next level here and back at Wabash, whether with his friends or in different clubs, in the classroom, with his professors, and even his family.”

 

“The first couple days after I got there we weren’t that busy, so we went around and Jason taught me everything about the island,” Cronin recalls. “The whole time during the summer I just kept learning more and more about Nantucket and its rich history, from whaling to the early feminist movement to Broadway moving to Sconset. Not to mention its beautiful beaches, green movements, and small-town community mentality. 

 

“And I did more than just give tours all summer—we did all the marketing, we did all the Quick Books, the accounting, strategic plans, deciding whether we should expand and have a new section of the business.” 

 

Bridges and Cronin kept learning throughout the summer. With little money in the budget for marketing, the two worked together to build a Web presence and a following on social media sites. They hit the pavement on the island as well, meeting the local restaurant and inn owners.

 

The hard work quickly paid off. A few weeks into the summer Nantucket Bike Tours was ranked the No. 1 attraction on Nantucket by TripAdvisor.com and still ranks as the No. 1 tour on the island. And, Bridges boasts, “We are going to hit my projections and goals for revenue. We’re going to payout the business in the first year so next year will be wonderful!

 

“I really think the SBIF is a wonderful thing and I’d love for it to be expanded with businesses like this. I can’t imagine Ryan having this experience without the SBIF. It’s just the best decision I’ve made for this business and for my own personal growth —being a mentor and growing my own leadership. 

 

“I’m a small business; I can’t write the big checks to the College yet,” Bridges says. “But I can connect back this way. Wabash helped me when I was there. They helped me through this fund and I’m giving back through Ryan. He’s going to be a great leader this year and the next and on because of Wabash.”