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Matt Leydens’ business motto is: Come dive with a fat old man. Though most marketing experts would shun such a line, it works for him. His scuba diving expertise has turned into all-expenses-paid trips to places such as the Great Barrier Reef and the Red Sea. Last year, the self-taught diver celebrated his 80th birthday the same way he does every year, with a trip to the Missouri River in South Dakota to dive with 40 close friends.

It doesn’t sound like much of a business, but Leydens and Associates Inc. has been selling scuba gear and related services since 1957, when Leydens started the dive shop in his home while working full time. About 10 years later, he left the factory and focused on this passion as well as other business ventures.

“At one time in my life, I figured out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life,” he said. “I was 40-some years old, and I said, ‘What I do best is scuba diving,’ and that’s what I went into.”

Leydens is one of very few who have found a way to run a niche outdoor recreation shop in Iowa. Here’s how he and another entrepreneur turned pastimes into dollars.

In deep

Don’t be fooled by the room full of scuba gear and dusty photographs of past trips or dives with famous people, such as the son of the famous deep-sea explorer Jacques Cousteau. The real money comes from a fire extinguisher business that fills the back room of a warehouse set off Park Avenue on the South Side of Des Moines.

“But the fun part of this business is diving,” Leydens said.

Even as he approaches age 81, Leydens, a certified instructor since 1960, teaches scuba diving classes a couple of times a week for about 12 to 15 students. The self-taught diver, who learned in his free time during his service in the U.S. Navy, also sells scuba diving gear from his store.

But the best part is the trips, which he plans about six to 10 times a year to places such as caves in Northern Florida, a sunken vehicle in Southern Illinois or the Grand Cayman Islands. The trips attract anywhere from a half-dozen to 40 people, with Leydens keeping 10 percent of their fees to pay his way.

He also has been called in for special tasks, including training Iowa Department of Natural Resources employees or recovering bodies or vehicles for law enforcement officials. He doesn’t get many calls now – he says his rates are too high. He usually charges 20 percent of the value of the recovered item.

Leydens lived in Newton and worked for Delavan Manufacturing Co. for 13 years until it got boring, he said. After opening his shop in the ’50s, he added the fire extinguisher business in 1968. His dive shop was located on Locust Street downtown for 33 years before he was forced to move to make way for Western Gateway Park and the John and Mary Pappajohn Education Center.

Compared with manufacturing, this job is “not lucrative, but interesting,” he said. “I enjoy coming to work every day, six days a week.”

An adventure

After writing about canoeing in Iowa for three years, Jeff Holmes put his words into action by starting a paddling shop, CanoeSport Outfitters in Indianola. That was 15 years ago, and it took about a half decade to reach a point where Holmes could quit his part-time job and rely solely on the store’s earnings.

“It takes time to build it up,” Holmes said. “The first few years, we had to put a lot of money into it and build the inventory up.” The business started with six boats and now regularly stocks 200.

Holmes and his wife, Casey, who primarily run the store without any employees, also have gone through several changes to come to a comfortable balance, where much of their income comes from instruction and selling high-end canoeing and kayaking equipment. At one point, they opened a second store in Omaha, which Holmes said he shut down last year because of the extra work it entailed.

Now CanoeSport offers 25 to 30 classes a summer in an effort to get more people interested in the sport. It also runs a concession business at Lake Ahquabi, where the Holmeses rent kayaks and canoes and do weekly demonstrations. “We have something going on almost every weekend day all summer,” Holmes said.

It also has started setting up larger events to raise awareness for paddling in Iowa, such as the February Iowa PaddleSport Expo, which several hundred people from the Midwest attended. “We focus a little more on customer service and taking care of those customers that are really going to get into the sport,” Holmes said.

The payback comes in the winter, when the Holmeses close the shop and offer a couple of trips to places such as the Gulf Coast. Anywhere from four to eight people sign up, which pays the owners’ way.

Trips like this help sweeten the deal of running a niche business.

“You have to like what you do,” Holmes said, “because you’re not going to make a lot of money doing it.”