Turning one's passion into a business

Ever fancied swapping your day job for one in the great outdoors?

That's what avid mountain biker Greg McIntyre did when he started Fat Tyre Adventures seven years ago.

But even then, he acknowledges, his days were pretty sweet.

After growing up on the family farm at Maitland, near Gore, and returning to farm it after graduating from Lincoln, Mr McIntyre sold it and travelled before training as a chef in Scotland.

Later he opened his own cafe, The Green Room, in Gore.

It was named as Southland's cafe of the year.

Then he ended his cafe career to start a mountain biking business in Queenstown.

"I left Gore. I had my Land Rover, my bike and me," he said. "I had this great visionary business plan in my head, where all business plans belong because by the time you implement them they're out of date."

He spent a year travelling and riding his mountain bike.

He talked to farmers about riding on their land and eventually started taking people single day trips.

"Then I moved to heli-biking and multiple-day trips."

Now he targets the mountain bikers who are keen to do "all mountain" trips - downhill and uphill.

"Most of us in the mountain biking world like a mix, not just the bling of going downhill," he explained.

And the customers love it.

"I just had a client who was 48, out riding with his 17-year-old son. They had a great time."

When he started the business mountain biking was in its infancy, particularly as a tourist attraction.

But that did not hold him back.

Mr McIntyre said it allowed him to write the rules for what he described as an "active" adventure experience, as opposed to an "adventurous" or passive one in which tourists might sit in a jet-boat or fly off a bungy.

"With mountain biking, it is very much up to the individual as to how much adventure they want."

However, he emphasised, Fat Tyre Adventures was not aimed at novices.

Fat Tyre Adventures specialised in exhilarating heli-bike rides, epic day trips and multiday mountain bike trips, offering single track, all mountain, cross-country and free-ride mountain bike trails.

•Fat Tyre Adventures is holding the inaugural Heli-Bike race tomorrow at Northburn Station, between Cromwell and Clyde.

For more information on the race, call 0800 328 897.