#234 "Dreams, Accomplishments, Blood, Sweat and Tears"

Day 234. Gotta do something different today. Normally I'm shooting coffee, shooting coffee, shooting video. At the end of three, three's done and I'm just gonna get rolling. Gotta go get Gloria. But I got this thing this member said that's really driving me crazy. I was a little slow in answering a comment inside the site and he said, oh, you must be too busy hanging pictures. And I was like, oh my God, did he just say that? I'm pretty sure he was talking about the Hogs Wall of Fame. We absolutely love the Hogs Wall of Fame. It's so freaking cool. I mean it's the coolest thing on the planet. We are truly excited when our members send us a picture, right? Because it's all part of the story and we get to know so many of you that are members. It's freaking incredible, man. When you send us a pic, when you get your check, right? How freaking cool is that? I do of course always try to maintain composure, right. At all times. Best as possible, of course. But of course I'm gonna stand up for myself. Why wouldn't I? You know, I respond to him like I work 365 days a year, seven days a week. I was a little slow answering your comment, but don't you dare make a comment about the Hogs Wall of Fame. Alright, real quick. Camera bag, keys, checkbook, iPad, all the stuff a person needs, right? Doing the day to day stuff. Gotta run and get Gloria. So those new to the Hogs Wall of Fame, it's. It started about a year, a year and a half ago now where we decided to start putting members up on the wall. And we've turned it into something extremely cool. And sharing those successes is just a big part of what we do on a weekly basis. You know, we're so excited when those new pictures come in. So as a matter of fact, got a whole great big new thing of Velcro just came in for Heather to put up more. It's really not a rant. It's not, you know, if you're not occasionally upsetting somebody, then you're probably not doing anything worthwhile at all. Right. Lots of cool stuff coming up. Seven and a half years online, we are just having a blast and we got a lot of cool stuff going on at the hangar and we're putting together a new studio. As many of you know. You know, we left in April, our last airport. So this summer has been about moving, getting set up in the new one, doing the daily video, which is I want to Talk about that for a minute. It's so much fun. And the cool thing about it, you know, started kind of by accident, but I am doing it. I have improved my skills so much and got so much better with my equipment that it's helping me prep for the big upgrade that we're going to start doing to the site because we know there's tons of things that need updated and, you know, we're always looking to take things to the next level. Right. And move things forward. And I'm excited because, you know, here we're putting together a brand new studio. I got some more stuff coming in that's going to help us get things set up. And it's just, what a fun journey, man. Seven and a half years of this. It is so much fun. And, you know, sharing the members Hogs wall is so much fun, but there is so much more to it than that. I just wanted to share a little bit about what's going on. Right now. I'm heading to get Gloria to take her from cosmetology school to high school for the afternoon. So she gets her driver's license tomorrow. So right now, since the beginning of school, I take her to school in the morning, then I gotta go get her at noon, get lunch, do whatever, get her back to the school and then pick her up after school, get her home. My days have been work a little bit on the road, work a little bit on the road, work a little bit on the road. And I'm not complaining at all. It's been a great summer. We've kept the daily video alive. You know, do our best to answer customers, take care of customers, and do everything that we got to do. But it's exciting that as soon as Gloria gets her license tomorrow, my life's going to change because all of a sudden I have a lot more available time. And, you know, it's been crazy moving in April and then summertime was here, right? So I've worked hard all summer as I do every single day. But I've also enjoyed myself too, because it's summertime, right? And I've earned that right. My lifetime of working hard to build what I have. It's freaking awesome and I love it. Probably our biggest challenge right now is figuring out where to start. And I want to make the comment that, you know, we keep track of all the comments that come in, right? And we read every single comment and we try to answer everybody absolutely, as soon as we can. And just because a comment was made, whether it was a month ago or six months ago about a particular video. You know, we've kept, we keep track of everything so we're always taking notes. We have a list of videos that need reshot. We know there's whole sections that we're going to rebuild. Don't think that we don't appreciate your feedback and don't think that we don't read it because we do. We read every single comment. The site has grown so big that we keep track of every single video, the time for every single video. We have, you know, a document for each course. In the old days, it was easier when there wasn't that much content to just upload and shoot a video. Now whenever we change a video, we got to change the list and change the time. So we, we shoot stuff like a chunk, right back to what I was telling you. The coffee with Kenny has been something that just was created for fun and I'm excited about it because again, I've just evolved, you know, well, I was a person. It's helped me in so many different ways, but mainly getting really good with the equipment that I do have and getting to know it and getting faster at editing and faster at setting things up. We, we had things plug and play at our last airport, right? Moving everything, you know, it's kind of different, right? Some of you that have been watching, you know, we've got the big wall set up and we've moved it around a couple times. We've got a lot of stuff going on that's, I don't know, kind of putting the finishing touches on what technically is a brand new studio, one we've never operated in before, having a blast behind the scenes, getting things set up and gearing up to really start shooting some new video. This is going to be fun. It's going to be an absolute blast. So back to the comments. I do have big shoulders and 99.9% of the time a comment doesn't bother me. We love feedback, right? Because that's how we grow helicopter online ground school and that's how we've grown the business, by taking the feedback from our members and knowing what they like, knowing what they dislike, knowing things that don't make sense. Helicopter line ground school is, you know, a continuing project. I guess that's why I let that one comment get to me so much and I was offended because I'm like, you know, I got seven and a half years of my life into this business and don't you think, you know, yesterday morning I get to the airport and I'm telling Heather about it, right? And she's like, she calls me kk and she goes, kk, you need to just stop. And I go, I know. And she, a few minutes later she goes, hey, she come down to read a couple comments that just come in over the weekend, right? And just wonderful things that people say. And she goes, see, you can't let one comment from one person get to you. And I'm like, I know that point. That day it just hit me at the wrong spot, right? And I just felt like, you know, again, not a rant, this is actually just a video to say I got to thank everybody, right? Because it's been an amazing freaking ride. The amount of people that we meet and the friends that we make, the connections, the people from all over the world, the freaking stories, it's absolutely incredible. I mean, it's just absolutely 100% amazing. And when I was in California at California Highway Patrol, you know, which was a blast, and the guy that invited me out there, and he's one of the chief training guys, you know, he's a ground school member and fto, what they call the field tactical Officer. Flight Tactical officer. He's a private pilot, helicopter. And he goes, well, I'm a, you know, thanks for your videos, man. He goes, I'm not a paid subscriber, but you know, thanks. And I go, oh, thank you. Right. Because that's fun. When people tell me that, I don't get offended. You know, we go to Heli Expo, a lot of people say that, come up and hey, thanks for your videos. I just use your free stuff. And I'm like, awesome, right? Because that's how I grew my business and how I learned. Watching the gurus that I learned from, you know, I sucked up their free stuff for years because I couldn't afford their stuff. Later I bought their training and then so I get a chance to go attend one of their courses live and get to meet them and shake their hand. So the, the lead, the instructor pilot goes, you know, when I was just saying, well, you know, the videos are powerful and I love doing it and you know, I love doing the coffee with Kenny thing. It's just an absolute blast. And. And I go, not every single person is ever going to become a member. That's okay. And he goes, hey, you know, your videos get you things like invited out here to fly with us. And I'm like, yeah, absolutely, right? That's freaking incredible. Alright, ready to pick up Gloria? She'll be out. She hates being on camera, so we'll be Back in a minute. Just picked Gloria up, and although she doesn't like being on camera, she's gonna let me tell a story about her going to get her driver's license. This is a story I wanted to tell, and I thought this is a great time to tell it. Why I picked her up last week, we went to take her driver's license test, right? So there's five documents that you have to. Have to take the test. And prior to going to take the test that day last week, last minute, she wanted to practice some parallel. And we did that. And I was telling her how, you know, it made me. I realized that going to get your driver's license test, not a lot, you know, very similar to getting your helicopter checkride, right? And I was telling her how I don't like flying with students the day before the checkride or the morning of the checkride or when we get to the airport. I'm like, if you're not ready now, you're not ready. Let's just go and take the test. We go to the license branch and we sit and wait, and we're all ready to go. We got the, you know, vehicle ready to go. Proper paperwork. She was missing one of the five documents that she had to have to take the test. So we. Oh, okay. She was missing two of the documents, Right. Point. The story is we push all the time about prepping for checkrides and about how important the documents are. And I told Gloria, I go, see, you know, test taking in general, you know, you can use a lot of the same things. It's. It seems like, oh, show up for the test, make sure you have this and this. And so many people so many times just don't have what they need. I just wanted to talk about real quick how going to get your driver's license, not that much different than going to get your helicopter license. It's about being prepared and having every single document that you have to have or you can't take the test. For us, it was just inconvenience, right? We had to wait till tomorrow to take your test. Not a big deal. But what if you fly an hour and a half to take your checkride, and then you can't take the test because you didn't have a document, and then you fly an hour and a half back home. How many hundreds of dollars did you just spend on aircraft time? And we have a case where that happened at a school I worked at early on, the guy flew from Toledo or from Cleveland to Toledo to take a test for helicopter instrument rating. And he got there, and the examiner goes, well, nice score on your airplane. Instrument, written exam. And the guy's like, oh, my God. So we had to fly all the way back to Cleveland, retake the test, and fly back again. How many hundreds of dollars did that guy spend because he had the wrong document? He had a written test, but he went to the testing center, took the wrong test. No, CFI caught that on the written test paper. It said instrument airplane. That's how taking these checkrides is. There are so many little things you got to do. Every T crossed, right? Every I dotted. Checkrides are difficult, but they get even more difficult when a person doesn't have what they need three weeks in advance. You start crossing the T's, dotting the I's, ordering documents, computers, anything you're going to use for the checkride you're going for. You gotta have all that stuff together or you can't even take the test. Thanks for letting me share that story. Gloria. Give us a piece out or throw up some rock and roll signs or something. Okay. My book. Yes. I don't want to carry it. All right, I got it. Love you. Love you, too. All right. Request denied for filming. I was gonna film her walking away just because a lot of viewers know my daughter from way back 10 years ago when I started doing this. Occasionally she would be in a video, and to me, it's a part of the story because she's walking in, getting her driver's license tomorrow, and people have been asking, does Gloria want to fly? Is she gonna learn? And it's funny. She was interested in helicopters as a young age. Right now she's 16, and she's grown up around them. So helicopters to her, like, eh, you know, I don't know. Last summer I said, hey, if you want to seriously learn, we'll do it. But, you know, helicopter training. Helicopter training is expensive. If you have a genuine interest in it, we'll start working on your private. Because I think it'd be awesome. And she's like, I don't know. And I go, but if it's not in your heart, it's not in your gut, then let's not do it. Because it's a lot of money to spend. And those of you looking to get into this, your heart has to be in it, right? It is expensive. It's a lot of money. So any one person has to decide, is it right for them. She's made a cool course. She's a junior, and the school did something incredible. She goes half a day to cosmetology, half a day to the regular school, which is all the running I'm doing, right? But it's great because when she graduates from high school, she'll be a licensed cosmetologist, then could still go on to college, could become a helicopter pilot, could become a garbage truck driver. Whatever she wants to do. She's got a skill when she graduates from high school. How freaking cool is that? Instead of spending the next two years learning a bunch of stuff she's never gonna use, at least she's gonna have a skill. You know, I've talked to her about taking over ground school, right? And I'm like, man, this is such a great opportunity. And, you know, it is set up for her to take over in the event she had to, right? And all that's been taken care of. So Hogs lives on regardless. Then there's enough people now involved, and there's a corporation involved. So, you know, no matter what, Hogs is gonna continue on, which is great and exciting, right? I love that fact. I've worked way too hard and way too long to let it go to the wayside. Just talking to Brian Rutledge last night, our operations manager in California, and we were just chatting on the phone about stuff, right? And he's like, dude, man, I just can't think back to 2013, where you were at and where you are now. And I laughed, right? I'm like, yeah, I was in the tiny little office. One little, tiny office. I mean, the size of a bathroom with all my stuff crammed in there, he goes. You know, to watch it grow from the outside has been amazing. It is amazing, right? And I am very grateful, and it is amazing. And, you know, we're on the way to the hangar now, and I'm gonna show you some more stuff. But it is exciting, and it's like anything in life, right? Sure, it's been a struggle, and I've worked hard, really, really hard. But I'm proud of that fact. And I'm not whining, I'm not moaning proof that when you want something and if it's your private pilot and you're struggling with that, or you want to go all the way to being a professional pilot, and you're struggling with that, There is nothing in this world that's easy, and nothing in this world is free, if it was easy, everybody would be doing it, right? If you've been viewing a while, you already know I love being a motivator. I like being a cheerleader. Just because it's fun, it's exciting, it's what I did and have worked hard all my life to get the things that I've got and the things I've wanted to do and the professions I've done. It was all from a want and a need to do those things. It doesn't really matter what it is you want to do in life, man. You just got to set your goal and you can never freaking give up. And you just have to work hard at it and nothing. You know, I watched so many gurus, and I call them gurus because I look up to them, right? And I'm motivated by so many other people. It's fun. Now when ground school members come up and meet us and talk to us and come visit, which I'll cover in a little bit, too, about what to do if you want to come visit us, I understand it, right? How fun it is to meet somebody that you look up to, right? And the people that I learned from, I've made numerous trips to California to meet and, you know, do a day or two of training with my heroes and the people I learned from. And it is so much fun to go meet somebody that you really only know through video, but you feel like you know them. And when they tell me that at like, Heli Expo or wherever I meet them, you know, that's so much fun. They're like, man, we never met. But I feel like I know you, you know, And I'm like, I understand because it's how I feel about the people that I learned from. When you get to meet them, it's just cool, right? Because you know the person and you know a lot about them. You just never met face to face. Brian Rutledge, who we did meet a couple years at Heli Expo. We were friends for five years and became operations manager before we ever met face to face. All through the power of online and video and texting and phone calls. And when we finally met, it was, you know, it was really wild. It was so cool. But it didn't take, but I don't know, five or 10 minutes before, you know, not that big of a deal. But it is kind of exciting, right? At first, when you meet somebody that you know online and you get to meet them at first hand, it's really cool. Now we're getting to the airport. For members that want to come visit us and check out the Hogs Hanger and sign your picture on the Hogs Wall of Fame, here's the trick. You gotta let us know prior to sometimes people try to catch us. And any given day, who knows, depends on where we're at, what we're doing. And unlike the airport before, this is the cool part of the story. We were at an airport where anybody could get to us in the particular place where we were located at at the airport, anybody could get to it. And if we didn't keep our doors locked, we were constantly directing people to other places at the airport because they would always come to our office first just because of where we were located. Try to keep the doors locked. Right. For doing videos and working with students or whatever. And then people just come walking in. Right. And interrupt your day. But where we're at now, yes, it's a public airport, but it's gated and fenced like airports are supposed to be. Now, unlike the last airport, you can get to the FBO and the FBO parking, but that's it. And we're at a different part of the airfield, so you can't just drive to us and drive to our hangar, which is great for security. Right. So if you want to come see the hogs wall of fame and sign or you want to come visit and do a video with us, come do a coffee with Kenny with me. I love the guest spots we've done. We have more of those planned, and I want to do more of that. Just make sure you give us a heads up. Give us an email so we can work out a date and time that will work so that you don't show up. And, oh, man, we're not here that day. You know, you just never know. I was gonna say, let's go see if we can sneak up on Heather, but she probably pull in. Okay. It's like Gloria, she's kind of hiding. She's like, I don't want to be on camera today. Heather is the one hanging all these pictures. Let's take a look here. We're focused on everybody that we got back up yet. But the fun part of it is when this guy says, oh, you're too busy hanging pictures. Oh, well, no, I'm not. Heather's busy hanging pictures. And I told her when we did this, I said, you know what? This is your baby, and I'm just gonna let you just do what you want. And she's like, okay, but don't get mad at me if you don't like it. So, everybody, we got so far, so many stories. Let's see who's been here to sign Dave. And I guess Dave is the only one that's been Here yet to sign. There's one side. And we got two more panels to go up yet, which is awesome. And we start on this side. So we're going to still be adding two more big ones. And I saw you last night, right here we have this really cool 50 style diner, you know, L shaped diner that we're having recovered in red and white for that 50s kind of feel. Right. And I actually stole that idea from one of my gurus who has an area like that in one of his sets where people can sit down and have a conversation. And I just dreamed up last night she started putting the pictures here. I'm like, hey Heather, go straight up on that wall for now. This might be the home of our new 50s style diner. It goes right here. It'll be cool. Badass. So this will all be changing quite a bit in the next 24 to 48 hours. We really just kind of did a makeshift get the walls set up, started using them, but now we're really getting them tied together. We got wheels ordered for the other two panels so we can get them all up. And at first we were trying to recreate the studio we had before, but this time around we're doing something different. And we're still experimenting with lighting. Which lighting is my, how do you want to call it? It's the one that I just don't have it handled. So what was I doing this morning when I'm drinking coffee, I'm watching videos on YouTube, learning about lighting, about see feel light, hair light, key light. We got a truss ordered that's coming in that will be well opposite of where you're at right now. So the lighting truss is going to be over here. And it's cool because the lighting truss, once it's up, we can get all these cords off the floor. We can mount our lights on the truss and experiment with that way we still have one or two mobile lights. I'm really going to hone in on lighting. And then the echo. That doesn't bother a lot of people, but it bugs me. And so this whole thing is what it's actually designed for is a stage, right, so it emits the sound that way. Well, with the new truss system that's going over here, we'll take a lot of the sound absorbing material that we've got from the old hanger and we'll devise a way to hang that sound absorbing material on this side facing that way. So I'm hoping to be able to do some really cool or get that echo down to where you're over here throwing the sound that way and then going into the sound absorbing material and also going to be experimenting with the back wall. I love the all black, but just a little bit of too much, a little bit too much. So going to be monkeying with some of the current sound absorbing stuff. We've got maybe order some new stuff. Just going to be kind of trial and error. It's so much fun. There's coffee area. At our last airport, we had access to some high speed Internet, which was awesome, right? So that way you can upload video very quickly, you can do live events. And one thing that has slowed us down here is the Internet that we currently have is so freaking weak. It's ungodly, it's horrible. So I'd exhausted every effort trying to find someone that could get us some good Internet here. And it was disappointing because we love the hangar so much and the location. Everything works out so great that we're going, oh my God, we're online. Business can't hardly go live. A five minute video, if I try to upload it here, two hours to upload, so I'm already making the trips back and forth, make a video run home to my home Internet where I can upload a five minute video in five minutes versus two hour, two hours. Luckily we just got word there's fiber on the other end of the airport. So we're working on that. They're telling me that they're gonna be able to get the fiber down here to this end. Didn't even know it was there. Same company providing a service that never bothered to tell me when I was begging going, come on, we need better Internet. So that's huge. We're hoping the fiber that will have that very soon, then we can get back into doing a lot of stuff live, which is, you know, we enjoy the live events and live events are fun, but even a few live things I've tried doing from home, my home Internet's okay, but it just doesn't have what it takes. So Heather standing over in the background, if she was prepared the speech she just gave after she heard I showed her the clips of the video today and what we were talking about. And she goes, yeah, the Hog's wall. We're celebrating. Well, I even wrote it down because I'm like, that's great, Heather. She's like, they're not just pictures. We're hanging their dreams, accomplishments, blood, sweat and tears to get these ratings. And I'm like, it gives me goosebumps. When she said that and she's standing over there grinning and she goes, yeah, it's about their sacrifices that they, you know, sacrifice they made with their family and sacrifices they made financially. And as she's going on and on, I'm like, heather, you should be shooting that. She's grinning, she's like, not today. And so I said, I'm gonna turn the camera on right now and finish and give the summary. Right? That's the ending. I'm Kenny Keller, the creator of Helicopter Lane Ground School. Been online seven and a half years. And so, yeah, we're hanging pictures because that's how important it is and how important you are to us. I don't work every single day because I just want to hang pictures on a wall. I work every day because I want to hang pictures with a story of any single one person that shared their stories with us and they don't share. I mean, this is the success part of it. What you don't see is every single person that had a sacrifice and had a struggle, like we all do in life and we all have all the time. We're not sitting. I mean, we do in the copy with Kenny Daily Video, we do talk about struggles and the hurdles and all the stuff that we go through. In the end it's this. In the end it's to have your picture on the wall. So in true Kenny fashion, you think I'm not sitting around. I'm teasing. We work really hard at this and we will continue to. And that's what the Hogs Wall is all about. So subscribe to the channel. When you do, click that little bell so you'll be notified of the daily video. I gotta head out like in the next five minutes to go get Gloria and then go to the dentist. And then I'll be back to the airport about 4pm to start my day. Many people are going home at 4pm I'll be here till midnight, but am I complaining? No, because I freaking love what I do. So if you'd like to be a part of Helicopter Ground school, we have private commercial, CFI and instrument courses. All of those on a monthly option, have a 24 hour test flight where it costs you nothing to check out the training. We have a 30 day money back guarantee on top of that. And you can, if you don't even want to be billed, it's not right for you. You just remove your credit card from the site when you're done or before the 24 hours is up, or if you sign up with PayPal, end it in PayPal. You're billed nothing. We part as friends and we might see you when you come back later on. Maybe not, but that's, you know, it's all part of the story, right? We're here to help those that want the help and need the help. Thanks for tuning for day 234. See you at day 235. Peace out. Hell yeah. Love it.