#293 There is no right way - Coffee With Kenny

Are they already recording then?

Yeah.

Oh, yep.

All right, here we go. All right. Day 293. Coffee with Kenny. Got kind of a special edition for you today. I'm Kenny Keller, creator, Helicopter Land Ground School, and this is Heather. Heatherelicopterground.com Heather takes care of. She shipping you books. Heather takes care of emailing new members, talking to people. And so I invited Heather to sit down with me for this video today because she can give us some good input with a lot of these things that we talk about. And I'm going to kind of start it off as a fastest, cheapest, best is not the answer. And the reason I want to do this video today is, you know, we. We're always doing these videos to try to help you out, right? And we're doing videos to give you ideas, I tell you my experiences, try to help you with some guidance along the way. With that being said, understand my opinion. That's all it is, is it's an opinion. And I want you, the people watching this video, the viewers, when you're going after your helicopter pilot dream, whether you're brand new or you're a rusty pilot, that's a CFI and you haven't flown in five years, and you're going to get back into it, bottom line, you got to do what is right for you. And, you know, I talk about all kinds of different things, and I'm pretty partial with aircraft and I talk about the different aircraft. We all have our favorite, right? But I think all aircraft in general are good as long as they're maintained correctly. But you get so many people out there. And I just told Heather a little bit of this video is inspired by some of the haters and the people that, you know, they're going to tell you you got to fly this aircraft and stay away from that one and don't fly that because it's a death trap. And, you know, everybody is going to give you your or give you their opinion, but we know what they say about opinions, right? They're just like something else that we all have and everybody has, right? So the basic moral of the story today is do what is right for you. There's nothing wrong with doing research, checking out websites, watching other people's videos, but just remember to take all of it with a little bit of a grain of salt and remember, depending on what you're doing and what's right for you could totally be not right to the next guy, you know, in the other country or the other state where he's giving you this opinion where what works or doesn't work for him may or may not work for you. So let's cover fastest. What's the fastest way to get to private pilot or the fastest way to get to cfi? A fast route may be the route for you. And maybe it's going to work if you take like Johan, who we talk to often, and Johan's plastered on the wall here and getting ready to do another rating. He just emailed me recently. Did I send you that email from Johan? Johan's the guy who did his private in three weeks. Johan had to do that because of his circumstances. Because he farms 10 months out of a year out of the year, he has two months off. He wanted to come to the USA and master the private pilot rating in a short amount of time and he did it. And it worked for Johan because he could spend the 10 months prior coming over learning the ground knowledge and learning as much as he could before getting here. That worked for Johan. For you. That may not be the best course of action for anybody that's got a family, a job, you got kids, relationships, you have all these other things that get, I don't want to say get in the way because those are all important things, right? And that should be number one. Your family, your kids, your personal well being, your finances should always be number one. And you can ruin any of those. And you could specifically ruin them if you were going the fastest route. So doing it fast, getting through it in a big hurry could work. I know Heather just mentioned I'm going to hand her the microphone because she's going to tell you about one of our members that just emailed us with a fascinating story.

So, yeah, that was Tor Stenberg and he got his private license in five weeks about a year ago or so. And just now got just sent us his picture. We just put his picture up on Instagram this morning. Or no, last week. Last week.

It's pretty fresh.

Or was it this morning? I don't know, check it out. I've done so many, I'm losing track. But yeah, he just got his commercial in five weeks as well. So that definitely worked for him. Obviously his situation was just to smash it, get it done. But then you got other members going, oh man, that's so cool. You know, how do I do that? Do it that fast? Well, it might not be right for you in your situation. So what works for one person might not work for you.

Exactly. Next one, cheapest. This one I love to talk about because everybody worries about how much it cost. Now, you can apply this to anything you're doing in life. And I go back to the towing service. I was into heavy duty trucks for 10 years, and I went out and worked semi accidents. That was my specialty. I had a big truck, really heavy, built, with three separate winches so I could go out and do a lot of things that somebody with one or two winches could do, or they might bring out two or three trucks. And I built that truck specifically. Over the years, as I got more advanced, I wanted a truck that I could use and go up by myself and roll semis over. While that price per hour for that truck was a pretty good chunk of money, right. The next guy says, oh, our truck's only so much per hour. But then they end up bringing out two or three trucks, do the same job, and the entire bill ends up being a whole lot more money. Same thing with helicopter training. You know, if you're just pinching every single penny, I understand that most people are, but over and over, I get the question, what's the cheapest way to do it? The cheapest way is not always going to be the best way. And if you're picking a school or a helicopter solely on the fact that it's cheap, you have a whole series of other things to consider. What's the quality of instruction? What's the quality of that cheaper aircraft? Going a cheap route is great, and we all struggle. And I did. I sure as hell did. It went traveling around, flying at the places that were the cheapest. Right.

How much do you trust your instructor?

Exactly. So you get what you pay for. So cheapest is not always the answer. What's the best way? Back to what's the best way for you, I'm going to say again, I'm giving you my advice. I'm giving you my tips, and a lot of them probably will work. We have tons of ground school members that are happy and, you know, email us and thank you, thank you, thank you for the help, thank you for the stories. But they are stories and they're my experiences. I don't make them up. I just tell you what's going on. And I'm not afraid to tell you the truth, and I'm not afraid to give you the headache and the heartache and all the problems that we go through. And we hear that all the time. People say, hey, thanks for your honesty, right? But anything in life worth doing is a struggle. Nothing is freaking easy. All right, next up, slow it down. One day at a time. This training that you're going after. Whether you're just doing a private pilot or you're going all the way to professional pilot. I understand the overwhelm. I understand that you know your research and you're getting overwhelmed and you're. And you're asking all these questions about private and then what about commercial and what about instrument and what about cfi? I always tell people, slow down, work on that private first. I understand you want to be a commercial pilot, you want to be a CFI and you want to move on. But it does overwhelm you when you try taking on the whole thing and thinking about the whole chunk of money that you're going to need. If you can save it up first and go through it quickly, great. The average person probably is not going to be able to do that. Take a big frickin deep breath, slow down and focus on the private pilot. You're going to have instrument in mind and commercial in mind and CFI in mind and hopefully you're going to do instrument in between private and commercial to help you along the way. But take a big deep breath and slow down and focus on the private pilot. Make that your focus, get the money around, focus on that, study that, get the license and then you can go. Start having fun while you put your money together and plan your course of action for commercial. Because opportunities are going to come up for you in that first one month, three months, six months, one year, two years. There probably will be some opportunities that will come up for you for time building or flying different aircraft or flying at different schools. There are so many things that could come up that could change your mind on what you want to do in the future. I still haven't accomplished the dream that I first went after, but that's okay because my path took a completely different course. I'm now the ground school guy, sitting here with Heather talking to you in video. I still fly, I still love to fly and I still love to teach. I didn't make my end goal was to be a law enforcement pilot. I have law enforcement experience. Then I became a helicopter pilot, but I was never able to put the two together. Still might happen, but it's not that important of a dream anymore because I love what I do right now. So understand that your course, your path may change and there is nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with it. If your course changes, if your path changes, your dream changes. As you start working through these ratings and working through this path, things are going to change, opportunities are going to come up, you're going to have struggles Things are going to happen, but just slow it down. Baby steps. One step at a time. Yeah. Here, tell us about the guy that started with the book.

So I got an email this morning from a guy that just wants a career change, and he didn't know where to start. So he's starting with Kenny's book. And I think that's a great thing. You know, maybe visit some schools or get a free solo flight.

Right?

Or a free. Can you get a free flight or you got a.

Not normally. You can normally get like an introductory.

Sure. Yeah. So starting there and talking with different schools and see where he takes it, because you probably kind of get like a gut feeling on, you know, going back to what he should fly and where he should go. And so, hey, he made a start.

Absolutely. That's a great point. Because that comes question comes up to us here all the time. We get this over and over, and I've mentioned it in videos many times. And when people say, what do I do? Schedule an intro flight. Because as Heather brought up, usually you can get an intro flight at a reduced rate. So spend a couple hundred bucks or 300 bucks or 150, whatever it is, spend that money, go take an introductory flight and see what it's all about. Because I can promise you, you can sit around all day watching videos and watching this YouTube channel and reading that article and watching Facebook post, but by making that first step, that's all you got to spend. You don't have to buy any course, you don't have to buy a book. You don't have to do anything. You don't need a medical. Find a flight school, Schedule an introductory flight and go try it. Most of them will do an introductory flight for like a half an hour. If you want to fly longer and you can afford more, that's great. But that's the first step. You want to know what to do. Introductory flight. I'm glad Heather brought that up, because that is a really good one. All right, and next, put your head down or put your head up and execute freaking go for it. The paralysis by analysis is what I'm thinking. And I get so many emails, which is great. We love emails, right? And we love the comments on YouTube and we love hearing all of your questions. But I feel the tension most of the time when these emails come in. I can tell the person they're just so overwhelmed and they're taking so many things into consideration that they're overwhelmed. And again, back to listening to all the haters and the naysayers and Then they get themselves all freaked out. And I always tell them, look, you know, I'm pretty good at just looking at the totality of the circumstances and finding a way to tell them, hey, slow down for just a second. Here's the direction you need to go to get some focus. You know, we've got one YouTube guy, commenter, viewer, I don't believe he's a ground school member and I'm not going to call him out by name, but what a negative attitude. And every single video I do I get slammed with this negative attitude. Every time, same guy. And I mean, at least he comes back and he's viewing, right? And that's great. We want your comments. And rarely will I argue, but sometimes it's like, give it a break. If you're that jaded with the industry, why keep putting a damper on it? For every other person that comes along that may have a great experience, their career may go where it needs to be. If they put their head down and execute and they focus and they go after the dream again, we're always going to have haters and you're always going to have people talking about the negative stuff. But I want to keep going back to you got to do what is right for you. There is no right way. Bestest is not. Or fastest is not always the best. Cheapest is not the best. And the whole helicopter thing, really more than ever, I think if you fly a helicopter that is maintained properly and you're with good instructors, you're going to be just fine. I'm going to pick on one YouTuber and this guy's pretty big on YouTube, but, but he gets around there and says you shouldn't fly this aircraft and you shouldn't fly this aircraft because I just don't like it. But this is what you should fly here. And this one will be okay if you want to fly that one. Who is he to tell you because he doesn't like that one specific helicopter. Yeah, he's putting a predetermined notion in your head. And the helicopter he's talking about is one of my favorite that I have 20 years experience in and is a great frickin aircraft. I don't bash the aircraft that he talks about. So just be careful when you're watching and you're listening and you're reading. Take all that information in. But remember your path isn't anybody else's path and what works for them or what didn't work for them may very well work for you. You can do things that not everybody else can do. Oh, great. Time to bring up what we have right over here on the screen today. When we moved in here, we went shopping one day and we grabbed this cool little deal. And I freaking love this. Today I will do what others won't. So tomorrow I can do what others can't. Today I sit here and talk about helicopters and helicopter videos and I go fly with people. I had plenty of people to tell me why I couldn't do it, how I could never become an EMS pilot. Did that. Did it for five years, along with everything else I've done in my life. Oh, you'll never be a cop. Did that. You'll never make it in the towing service. Did that. Ten years. And when I got out of it, I got out of it to go fly helicopters. People are always going to tell you why you can't do it.

The blood, sweat and tears on the Hogs Wall of fame on the other side over there that we talked about.

Exactly. It's plastered. We have the studio reversed because we're doing some Halloween stuff. There's a whole wall of people over there, right. That you can't see behind the camera. And everybody has a story, everybody has a dream, and they've all done it. Screw the naysayers, screw the haters, screw them. Make your own path. And by working hard and doing things that others won't or aren't willing to do, they're not willing to sacrifice doesn't mean that's the right path for you. You know, beating your head against the wall and pulling your hair out is the way to do it. And I got one other little one here, a little note for you. This morning I was at home drinking coffee. I'll be honest, I watch other people, right? I've created what I do from watching people who I believe are gurus, motivators. And I watch all kinds of people. Some about online training, some about, you know, just being motivational, some of them things about being an entrepreneur. But they always boil back to the same thing. And a lot of these notes I took this morning when I was drinking coffee and I just got motivated and thought, you know, I want to do a video like this. And the one thing that's one of the gurus I watched, he said, nobody has ever been successful without hard work. And he's telling a whole crowd of people and he's going, if you. Just because you heard about Joe Blow and you thought he was an overnight success, he's not. He probably has seven to 18 years behind the scenes before you Ever heard of that guy? And he was talking about social media and he's a big social media guy, but he said, everybody's looking for that. Oh, if I can just hook up with that social media superstar because I'm attached to them, that'll make my business explode. And he's like, you're full of shit. You don't understand. You got to put in the time, you got to put in the work, you got to put in the effort. You can't ride on anybody else's coattel. There is no magic bullet. He was talking about how you think, oh, you're going to build your online business in a year and you're going to be on the beach somewhere, you know, drinking martinis while you got five people working for you back at home. Let me tell you, that ain't the case. That'd be nice. But work seven days a week because I want to. I'm not sitting on the beach having everybody else run my business. Same for you, going for your dream, going for your helicopter ratings or whatever it is you're doing in life. Heck, let's just make this all the way around because, you know, everything is. To me, everything is relative. Everything we do, everything we learn is all relative. It's like my daughter, you know, junior in high school and doing cosmetology right now during school, and she's like, I'm not sure if I'm going to do this when I get out of school, dad. And I'm like, that's fine. You're learning a trade right now. Your choice or your idea might change. You get out of high school, yeah, you got something to fall back on. And you could start making money and still go to college, or you may decide you like it, your path is going to change. But she's working towards a goal. And everything that we learn, every job that we take, even if it's a job we don't like, we learn something from it. Every single experience that we have helps us become who we are. And these struggles and these headaches and these heartaches and all these things that happen to us, that's just life. You know, you gotta remember social media is social media. And we know now and you know, we all see the reports, right? Social media is what it is. Everybody's on there with pictures of their buddies beside a jet, making you think that they own the jet or their outliving the high life. So much of it is fake and so much of it is crap. And these people didn't just become millionaires Overnight because they hooked up with some famous Instagrammer. You know, it's just not the way it works. All right, I got so got one more for you. And it ties to everything that we've been talking about so far in this video today. And that when it comes to the videos and even me giving you my opinion, it's my opinion, but, oh, I know what I want to say. I skipped one. I worked to never tell you what you want to hear. And it sounds kind of. Maybe I'm contradicting myself because every day I'm giving tips and tricks and trying to help you, but I am always trying to ruffle feathers just a little bit. And I am trying to get to the point where may be telling you not what you want to hear. There is this particular video one day where a guy, he talked about the worst examiner ever and he had a horrible experience. But then he also in the video said or in his email, well, he got mad when I googled an answer. And I'm like, I said to. In the video response. I didn't call him up by name, but I said, dude, you don't go to a checkride and Google the examiner. You know, that's just. Or Google a question on your checkride. I don't always tell you what you want to hear. I do try to make it realistic and make you understand that sometimes the hurdles that pop up are just hurdles and you got to get through them. And I'm not here to babysit you and sugarcoat it and just tell you that, oh, in six months you're going to get all your ratings and you're going to make a bunch of money and life's going to work out for you and you're going to be happy. Now, with that being said, we got Travis over there that did it in six months and we got Kyle Parish recently, who did it in six months and off now flying New York City. But that's because they busted their ass and they were highly motivated people and they scrounged up the money, they had their money saved and they were ready when they went after it. So where am I going with all that?

I think the majority of the majority of people have families or things going on in their lives or unexpected things that pop up and you can't always control it, but you can't always control how you deal with it and how you're going to keep going forward.

That's exactly right. She said it better than what I could have even said it. So that's not for me. To tell you that's for you to go figure out for yourself. And we're talking about the path, the dream, the journey. I'm going to give you insight, I'm going to tell you what I've seen and you know, if you've watched many of our videos, I'll tell you all about my screw ups. And we know that people like that and that's why we've been able to do what we do. Because when I first started, everybody said, yeah, you're a little crazy, but don't change and always be you. And that's why like when I screw up my words, I used to edit out every single thing and tried to make it perfect. And at a certain point I'm like, if I try to make myself perfect, then I spend four days editing a four minute video. Yeah, wouldn't be authentic. So you do, you, you do what works for you. You go after the dream and you go out there and you start doing it. And we'll help you along the way and we'll give you the best tips we can. But what's the best route for you? What is the helicopter you should fly? Should you go part 41 or part 61? Should you fly the Robinson? Should you fly the Cadbury? That's not for me to tell you, that's for you to go figure out for yourself. So there you go. Day 293. Subscribe and click the bell. Nothing to sell you today. Today was just, I wanted to kick back, make a different kind of video. I wanted to get Heather involved so she could give you a little insight from all the things she hears and sees. And she sees a lot of these stories and hears the struggles and I wanted her to be able to jump in and share. So subscribe to the channel, click the bell and we'll see you tomorrow. And day 294, peace out and we're done. Sa.