#203 The Helicopter Pilot Connections we make are Pure Gold!

You know what? This stuff is just too good. I couldn't even make it up. Day two, 203 or 204, I can't remember. I just talked to this guy right here on the COVID of my book, Travis. And I'm going to title this video. The connections we make are complete gold. And I'm going to tell you about the conversation I just had with Travis that's on the COVID of this book with me. But first, this is even more cool. I misplaced this for a little bit. I started feeling bad. This box right here, I did open it to see what was in. I couldn't stand it. And then I misplaced it and I just found it today as I'm trying to decide what to talk about in a video. This is coming out later in the day, and to me, this is such a great video, I had to go for copy coffee number four. So I went in there in my living room and I have my favorite cups, like six or eight of them lined up on there. This cup is a little progress. Each day adds up to big results because I've been watching my mentors and the gurus that I've learned from, you know, to try to keep myself fresh with ideas and building content and talking to all of you every day. And the connections we make are freaking gold. Okay, this box comes from the first guy that bought helicopter Lane ground school. I just went in and looked because I want to verify this before I went hit the record on the camera. This is the guy that purchased February 29, 2012 before the button was live. This is the gentleman who saw the video that if you're new to our videos, you wouldn't see. You would never seen this video. But recently I released a clip from 2012, prior to me launching online ground school, where I'm raging, cussing in the hangar, making fun of myself because I'm so broke and losing my ass with this helicopter business I owned as I was creating helicopter line ground school. And this video leaked its way onto the Internet and was to never be seen by the public. It was a sales video, but I did a little bit of screwing around to warm up and get ready to make the video. And I'm with my buddy, so I'm cussing and making fun of myself, you know, because I was a broke dick loser and I was mad at the world and. And anyway, creating this cool product that becomes helicopter land ground school. This gentleman sees it and he emails me frantically, Kenny, Kenny, I'm looking over for your buy now button I can't find it on your website. It's because the buy now button wasn't live yet. He saw a video me introducing helicopter line ground school and starts emailing me wanting to know how to purchase because there's no button. It wasn't live yet. And this gentleman was the follower from when I was just operating my hollow, my holocaupter, my helicopter business. Swear to God, all I'm drinking is coffee is coffee number four. Just had to make it authentic, right? Just like I thought about trying to tape this box back up and pretend to open it for the first time. Couldn't do it, right? So this isn't copy number three. I made number four especially just so I could make this video. So anyway, from our first ground school member, he sent me and it's funny that it took over 200 days for somebody to do this and he sent me coffee and this is really cool and I'm gonna try it. All I have is a Keurig. So I think Heather's got a regular coffee pot. We'll have to, we'll have to brew this up and make it at the hangar with the old style coffee maker because I can't make it here. So we're going to take a look at that. I don't know that I, that I undid the cup or looked at the cup before. Oh, there we go. Very nice, New Mexico for the coffee. Coffee cup that matches the coffee. Friggin awesome. Look at my first member to ever purchase seven and a half years ago, sending me coffee for coffee with Kenny. It's the connections we make, right? And that's what I want to mention and talk about today. This stuff is gold. The helicopter community is small and he did leave me a. Here, let's just throw it everywhere. Oh, there it goes. He did leave me a brochure for the coffee and left me a letter. Let's see what it says. So Kenny, I watched over the last few years how your courses have changed and your business has grown. I like your coffee with Kenny and I want to send you a little something to celebrate your continued growth and success. Way to go. That almost brings tears to my eyes. That is so freaking cool. So let me tell you about this phone call. I just got off the phone with this guy Travis, right? This is what, this is where the, the connections comes into play. Just like this one here. You know, my oldest very first grun school member that bought before it was even live, sending me coffee seven and a half years later. How flipping cool is that? We'll say about two to three weeks ago. Travis calls me out of the blue one day and Travis is here on the COVID of the book. If you don't know Travis, Travis is the guy went off the street to double I in six months at Sevier County Choppers in Tennessee. Travis is the guy that called me up in 2012 or 13. My training was brand new and I was making DVDs and I happened to be out of DVDs at that moment that he called me. I'm in Ohio trying to fly with some guys to generate some money to pay bills because I'm trying to get ground school off the ground. Travis calls me, hey, Kenny. And super nice guy, Southern accent. We're talking on the phone and he's like, yeah, I'd like to buy your DVDs. And I'm like, okay, sure, right. So here I am in Ohio waiting around to meet with these guys who weren't answering me on what time we were going to fly and kind of jerking me around, right? And I was getting frustrated. I was actually sitting at a gas station, broke as hell, wondering what am I doing here. So I talked to Travis on the phone. He goes, well, if you can get a set ready, I'll send you the money right out, you know, So I don't know, four or five hour drive back home to burn a set of DVDs and send off to Travis. Travis told me, oh, off the street to double I in six months, these guys gonna train me. And at that time I hadn't heard of them. Again, it's five, six years ago now, almost seven. I now am friends with the guys at Sevier County Choppers. And it's a real deal. Travis did it, he went out and boom, in six months he had a job working for them. The helped him get his double eye, put him in the R22 and R44 doing training. Then he got to do tours in the R44 and then he got to move to the Jet Ranger. And now Travis is flying ems. So Travis calls me a couple weeks ago and he's got a buddy getting ready to go into ems. And his buddy trained under one of my instructors. And he tells me it's Ferdinand. I'm like, oh, are you kidding? And he goes like, yeah. So they're down there and they're communicating with Ferdinand. And this young guy's trying to go to work for Phi. And he's like, hey, he hasn't flown much. You know, he's got the required time for ems, but he Spent it all out flying in the boonies. Doesn't have a lot of radio experience and talked about coming up to fly with me up here. I'm like, you guys can certainly do that. But I. I've got a Charlie and a Delta close, but, you know, these guys were gonna drive two and a half or three hours up here. They're down by Indy. And so I go, hail, I got another idea for you guys. Not that I don't want you to come up and fly with me, but Tannen, who is our. One of our instrument instructors along with Taz Christman in our instrument online ground school, Tannen flies in Indianapolis. So I tell Travis, I go, why don't you guys call Tannen? I give him Tannin's number and give Tannen a call. And if you want to go do some flying, he's in Indianapolis. So he's got, you know, quite a bit of airspace there. More complicated airspace available right there in Indianapolis, so you guys can get there faster. Your time and effort you're going to spend money on is going to be cheaper than driving clear up here. Just your time on the road to come see me, and then we got to fly half hour or so to get to the more complicated airspace. I'm like, it's gonna be money in your guys's pocket just to, you know, go fly with Tannin a little bit and some controlled airspace. And I said, heck, Travis, have your buddy log in and watch the free radio communications course. I'll put that link down below. We haven't promoted that in a while. We have a free radio communications course. And I'm like, travis, have him go through ground school. That free portion. Go through the radio. It's got my best tips and the basics of talking on a radio and what it takes to learn it and get comfortable. And I go, he's just got to get out there and practice. So I'm sitting here today. Didn't shoot coffee with Kenny this morning. I don't know. Just having one of them days, right? Pretty soon, my third coffee was gone. Normally I'm shooting video by then, so I went and got some food. And then I've been watching my mentors all afternoon. I've been sitting here watching, you know, people who I just look up to and that I learn from all the time, looking for some new inspiration and, you know, trying to learn more and keep myself fresh, right? Because I love to learn, and that's how I keep ground school fresh. Just coming up with new ideas and talking to everybody during coffee. With Kenny every day. So I'm sitting here and I'm watching, you know, I'm in this in depth, you know, interview with one of the guys I watch. He's on Larry King, and I'm listening to this interview, and boom, Travis beeps in, right? So I'm like, oh, I better find out what Travis is up to. So I answer the phone and Travis is like, hey, Kenny, guess what? He goes, we went down flew with Tannen. Well, they were preparing Travis's buddy, they were preparing him to go do a job interview with a Czech airman for phi, right? Because he's trying to get this job flying EMs or oil rigs or whatever that particular division of PHI. He goes, we go fly with Tannin. He goes, guess who the Czech airman was that he ended up flying with? He goes, it was Tannin's brother. And I'm like, you're kidding me. And so, totally unrelated, Travis calls me, wanting to come here to fly. I refer him to Tannin just because of time, money, effort, closeness of the airspace. I refer him to Tannin because Tannins, you know, young guy out there working in industry, working in Indianapolis at Freedom Helicopters, by the way. So I knew Tanner's down there, so I'm just helping them out. They go fly with Tannen. No idea that the guy Tannin is helping, you know, get up to speed with, you know, fresh talking on radios and flying in controlled airspace, goes take a check ride with the Phi Czech airman and its brother to Tannin. I could go on and on about these stories. And that's the point. I'm getting to you, you know, value these connections that you make out there in the helicopter industry. And as we're talking, Travis has another question about going to work for one of the saw companies. Now, of course, I know Jed, who many of you may or may not have seen that video on YouTube's over 3 million views now, Jed, I trained all those years ago. Now he's flying treesaw. So Travis had some questions about that industry, and this gentleman, he's looking, working with or friend of his is looking into getting into that. And so again, I could go on and on about the connections, right? So you want to always remember this when you're out there flying and you're meeting people and you're taking jobs or you're going to flight schools, always have a smile on your face, always shake hands, always try to, you know, talk to people when you can, because you just never know how that connection is going to come back. And Help you later. And when we, you know, talk about the whole job industry. Job industry, the helicopter industry and how hard is getting jobs, I'm going to reiterate what I've said before. I haven't applied for any of them. Every single helicopter job I've had is because I knew somebody, I had a connection, I talked to somebody. Yes, I had to fill out a job application. I think for the EMS job, that was a formality. Same thing with my first, one of my first CFI jobs. I emailed them first, got the job, they had me fill out something for insurance. Every single job that I have got was because I was out there meeting people, working hard, being the best I could be. That's how I got every job. The one job, you know, after 911 I did have to email a bunch of places, right? But it was still that personal interaction when the owner read my email, the heartfelt email, like, hey, you know, in my early 30s, I'm ready to get my career going. I got this new CFI job and the 911 happened. Now that flight school is doing nothing. And I put in a little bit of my past and my law enforcement background. And the guy hired me because of that reason, because I reached out to him and he said, I like the fact that you're in your 30s, I like the fact you have law enforcement background. And that's how I got the job. So these connections are pure gold. And when people say you can't do it, you can do it. Travis did it. Kyle Parish has done it since, went to the same school and now we met him. Heli Expo 2018. We're in the summer of 2019 and Kyle's flying tours in New York City, flying a jet powered aircraft. So you can't tell me it can't be done. You can't tell me you can't get a job. It's all feasible. It's about what you got in here and it's about every day one little step closer to your dreams. We all fail, we all have problems. It's all about how we deal with those failures and how and having those problems. And I'm living proof, man. The other thing I want to add is I did a video last night. I did it on Facebook. I wish I would have saved it to the phone first before doing it live because it's a good video. But if I try to download from Facebook and put it here on YouTube, the quality will suck. But I was out in the pontoon. I made an announcement last night, I'm Going to California this coming week. So for those of you been asking about the whole CHP thing, I made the plans, me and my daughter going to California. So I called up going as a business vacation, right? So I called the guy from chp, the instructor that I know, he's like, awesome, I'm flying next weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, he goes, get out here, kind of get your arrangements, what you're going to be doing and you can come fly with us any one of those days. He's all mark you down the schedule. So that's a fun story to tell. And the reason I did it last night sunset is, you know, it's a little bit of my dream, okay, I'm too old, I can't apply for a California highway patrol to go fly with them. But it is my dream, starting at a young age as a 18 year old kid just getting out of high school, going to see the movie Blue Thunder in 1983 or 86 or whatever in the 80s. And you know, it really started as a child playing with the old vertibird, flying around the living room on Christmas day. But then I had an interest in helicopters, always maintained it. Saw that movie just out of high school and I knew I wanted to be a cop. And then I saw in this movie, you know, here's a cop flying for lapd. And that became my dream, right, was to fly up for law enforcement. And even though it's never happened, I now get to talk to people in law enforcement now I get to go to California and interview these guys at chp. And if everything goes right, I'm gonna get to go up and fly with them on a ride along. So there's a little taste of my dream, right? And just because my dream didn't go the exact path that I meant for it to, who cares? I freaking love what I do now. You know, I still get to fly. I get to interact with people all over the world with helicopter and land ground school. And now I get to travel and go cool places. And also while I'm in California, I'm going to meet up with Brian Rutledge who I don't mention his name a lot. Brian Rutledge is our operations manager. Another connection story. Brian contacted me, I think around 2013. Just new with the helicopter lane ground school. But he'd been watching what I was doing online for many years and he wanted to get his CFI because he flew for an aviation unit and the chief training guy was going to be retiring. They wanted him to take the chief training spot for his sheriff's department aviation unit. And he's like, hey, can you help me, you know, with my cfi? At that time, I was doing a lot of online stuff, one on one, just to keep the business going, right? Get a customer. Yeah, I'll work with you. One on one. And so I helped Brian get his cfi. Helped him with the knowledge. With the knowledge part of it, right. He was flying elsewhere in California, actually, with Dave Redmond, who you see in our aerodynamic videos there. Again, back to the connections in helicopter land ground school. People love Dave Redmond and they love the presentations that are in our aerodynamics section. That came from Dave Redmond, who taught Brian Rutledge the actual flight portion. I helped Brian with the knowledge portion and preparing to take the check ride for cfi. Brian and I became friends then. Brian's always watching helicopter land ground school from the other side of the country, right? And Brian, I became friends and just out of what it is, because he loves training so much. He was watching every single video I put out. Everything I did with ground school, he watched and would call me or text me with critiques. Hey, I like what you did here. That video right there is way too long, man. You just need to cut that thing down. And would give me a lot of just outside insight. Outside insight. Outside insight. Yeah, that works. So Brian and I communicated for years until we met at Heli Expo 2018. I paid for Brian to meet us at Heli Expo first we'd ever met. After hours and hours of Skyping phone calls, texting, Brian became what we now call operations manager. Brian still does it. You don't see Brian in videos. Brian flies full time law enforcement. And I kind of get to live my dream through Brian, right, Because he gets to do all these cool things out in California. You know, I'm not even gonna. That's another story for another day. I'm gonna visit Brian while I'm out there. Maybe he'll share some of his law enforcement stories. But, you know, I get to live a little bit of that law enforcement dream through Brian, who I look up to and hear and see the things that he gets to do and always tell him how jealous I am, right? And then he's always going, oh, no, man, I. I want to do what you're doing, right? So grass is always greener. So back to the connections. There you go. You know, and this is just a tip of the iceberg. This is just a tip of the connections I could tell you about if I want. If I kept going, I'D be boring you for another hour and a half, right? So with the title of the video, these connections we make are gold. Remember that. You just never know the person that's your instructor or somebody you train might be working for a, maybe a chief pilot for a company 10 years down the road that you want to go to work for. You just don't know. And these connections are invaluable. These connections we make can help get us jobs, we can help our friends get jobs, we can help our friends advance in their careers. And you know, we have the Hogs wall of fame that we're putting back together. And that's the one thing that Heather and I talk a lot about is it's kind of fun how, you know, it has become like the Hogs family, right? It's about a community in a community of people, whether you're brand new. I just did a video, what, yesterday or the day before about the guy getting back into flying after 25 years. That's what you call rusty pilot. So we all learn from others. Everybody's at a different place in their career, whether they're just starting out or they're getting back into it. Everybody's facing that struggle, everybody's facing a hurdle. Everybody wants to share their successes when they happen. And so helicopter land ground school is a community. It's a community of helicopter pilots from all over the world, from all stages of training and all stages of success and failure. And I just can't thank everybody enough, you know, back to my first online ground school member that just sent me coffee seven and a half years later, after buying the ground school, before the button was even live, after seeing me in the hangar, cussing up a storm, mad at myself over my life where it had, you know, in my late 40s, completely broke, losing everything, trying to run a helicopter company, a little tiny helicopter company, one man, one helicopter, and also flying EMS part of that time, right? So that was another problem. I couldn't focus on my business because then I had a full time job and with ems, we were short staffed clear back then. So you're always working overtime. So here sits a helicopter I'm trying to pay for. Can only fly half the time, theoretically seven days on, seven days off. But then I'm working overtime all the time. So then I get a few days off and I'm trying to run my business one of my days off. So the helicopter business is still in my paycheck from the ems. Blah, blah, blah. I've told those horror stories over and over again. And with time they succeed a little bit. But you know, it is part of who I am. It's part of the story. I failed my first check ride and I'll. I'm not going to bore you with the story because most of you've already heard it. That's how helicopter land ground school came along. There's Travis on the COVID today. Before watching all this and thinking about the coffee cup and Travis calling me, I was thinking about talking about chapter one. I just talk a little bit about myself and. And it is just about how I got involved in all what I say or I call it my story and how I got involved in all this helicopter craziness. I'm going to put a PDF link down where you get it for free. Check it out. It's a free PDF. You can sign up and download it right away. And then we ship these for just seven bucks. You know, it actually cost me money to ship you these books. I'm not making anything buy the book. We ship it to you. I'm paying Heather to email you ship them, go to the post office. In reality, with what I spend, I'm paying you to get my book. So free PDF down below if you want. Check out the free PDF. Really proud of that. My first Amazon number one bestseller. I doubt it's my last. Did another one Amazon bestseller last year at this time with Taz Christman. He's at Oshkosh this week. I decided to stay here and do Coffee with Kenny videos and get ready to go to California. So peace out. Whether this is day two of three or 204, I can't remember. I'll know when I go inside and start editing up. Do us a favor and like and subscribe to the channel. Yeah, I've been rambling today, but you know what? I don't care. It's Saturday. It's my favorite day of the week. I wanted to relate these stories and how important it is for all of us to work together and help each other out. Right? It's such a small community of people that there's not really any need or time for bashing each other and trying to put each other down when we should all be trying to help each other out and push ourselves, you know, onward and upward, you know, pushing ourselves for more. I want to put a link down below for helicopterground.com where you can go check out all of our courses. I beat that up every day talking about it over and over. So if you haven't heard of it yet, you can go check that out below. Helicopterground.com should also download that free PDF. So comment down below. Give us the thumbs up if you don't like the video. Instead of just disliking tell us why you don't like it. Yeah, how's that for a challenge? Or if you want to hit dislike, go ahead and do that twice. All right, peace out. See you in coffee with Kenny Sunday.