#56 | FEAR OF FAILURE | with the | HELICOPTER CHECK RIDE |

Good morning. I gotta try and do this fast. It's cold out here. Gotta get this done before I start shivering. I wanted to share the sunrise with you today. And it's awesome. Seven years online today. Happy birthday to helicopter online ground school. My favorite cup. I'm reverting back. I normally introduce a new cup, but I want to use my favorite cup today. Fear of failure on your checkride. That's why we're here. That's probably why you're watching this video. It's how you got started watching our videos. Or maybe you just found our videos now. I've been making them for 10 years, but today is seven years online ground school. Fear of failure. Fear of checkride failure. It's what drives all of us, right? It's why I make videos. It's why I created helicopter online ground school. I struggled like every single one of you out there that struggles and worries about a checkride, okay? It is a lot of hype, right? And I built online ground school because I struggled like you do or you have or you will. Learning all the information there is to know to become a helicopter pilot. It is like a college degree. It's like a mini college degree, but you're not really getting, you know, college type instruction most of the time. Some schools, like, you know, there are some schools that have 141 programs or even part 61s that have really excellent ground schools. But many places you go, it's one guy, one instructor. Some young guy who doesn't really care about you getting your rating. He just wants hours in his logbook. Come on, that's. That's the real deal, right? We know most people, not most, a lot of instructors don't really care. A lot of structures aren't that good. They might be good in the aircraft, but not that good with the ground school or they just don't want to teach it. Okay? So I failed my first check right from my fear of failure. I was so hyped, I was so freaked out. I was so damn scared that I did have pretty good knowledge and I was pretty good in the aircraft. But the overwhelm of that stupid check ride just. I mean, I was flabbering around in the check, in the, in the oral portion. I didn't even get through the oral and I knew the material, but I was, you know, having retreating brain stall and I was having panic attack and you know, you're sitting there across from a guy. I took it with a guy from the faa. First tip, use a designated examiner if possible. The guy from the FAA works for the faa. He's getting paid regardless. This is sad reality, but a designated examiner, I shouldn't say they're going to be easier on you, but you're paying them, right? There's a difference. And I learned that early on. My instructor said, well, hey, you know, you can save money by doing it with the faa. And I was like, you know, like, I was like a lot of you, I didn't have. I was struggling to pay for every single helicopter hour. So when I thought, well, I can take it with the FA for free. Okay, I'll do that. And, you know, I'd love to see this guy, you know, now, 20 years later and tell him, thank you for failing me. Because it is created a business, you know, well, seven years online now. So it created it 13 years ago because when I failed my first checkride, I had to study my ass off before I went back to test again. And there was no online ground school. The only training out there was for fixed wings, fixed wing. And nothing wrong with fixed wing training, right? But I was flying a helicopter. I don't want to watch fixed wing training when I'm trying to learn how to fly helicopters. I remember driving down the road going, man, I wish there was something I could listen to, you know, an audio or cassette tape or something, you know, dvd. Because I was driving. I had both in the car, right? I could have listened either. There was nothing. There was nothing for freaking helicopter pilots. And I failed my first checkride. It was up to me to go back and finish it. And I put together my own notebook after I failed. You know, it took me six months before I went back. And at the time, I was working as a police officer. And one of my. I was training a new officer one night and we became pretty good friends. And he was like, well, when are you going to go back and finish this helicopter thing? Six months after I had failed, right? And I'm like, you know what? I need to get up back on that. Damn it. So I went down to the local drugstore, bought me a notebook, and I went home and I just started taking all the notes because I'd flown a couple different places. I'd flown a Schweitzer, I'd flown an R22. I had different notes from here, different notes from there, different notes from this instructor. And I had all these books piled on the kitchen table. And it was like, you get overwhelmed. You don't know what to study, you don't know what to do. It's like oh, my God. So only thing I could do is I thought, I got to create something here. We didn't know that 20 years later it was going to be where we're at today. I sat down and I created my own notebook, my own study notebook. And I just sat down with every single note I had, every book I had marked up. And I started in the beginning of the notebook with the things that I struggled the most remembering. And when I felt that checkride, the FAA examiner said, when I ask you about selling with power, I want to hear 30, 20, 10 rate of sent, you know, 20% power, blah, blah, blah, right? He's like, you struggled on that and you kind of stumbled through it. I want to know, when I asked you a question like, selling with power, you need to know. And I want. And this should be just nice and smooth, roll right out of your mouth. I don't want to come in and investigate your accident. That's what he told me. He said, you need to know this stuff so that when you're out there on your own and you get into trouble, you know what to do. And it hurt when I failed. I mean, it hurt so bad. God, Driving home with my tail to my legs, just so frustrated with myself. So anyway, I created this notebook, and I studied that damn thing, and I studied it and I studied it. But again, I arranged everything in the notebook. I made it for me. I didn't make it for anybody else. I made it for me. And when I went back and retested, the examiner's like, I don't know, we're probably halfway or three quarters through, through the oral. And he goes, oh, I'll stop for a second, take a little break here. He goes, you brought a pink slip with you today? And I go, yeah, I did. And he goes, I don't understand what the problem is here. He goes, because you're hitting everything 100%. And I said, well, because of that failure, I studied my ass off and I built my own notebook, and I just studied that thing because I was not going to fail again. I was not going to fail again. And he said, well, you know what? The examiner world is pretty small. He said, I'm going to call this examiner to let him know that you came back all this time later and how well you did. And that made me feel really good, right? That this examiner was going to call the original examiner just to let him know that I did eventually come back and that I did really well. And I'm going to go ahead and say his name, Jerry Ventrella, legend in the flipping industry, right? Amazing. And even though I passed, I mean, he was like a four hour oral for my private. Jerry is very thorough. But, you know, two hours is that two hours of that is him telling you, you know, war stories, man. And the guy is just this wealth of knowledge, just amazing, amazing examiner. And he taught me so many things between my private and commercial checkride because he, he was more than just an examiner, he was a teacher. And he showed me stuff on these checkrides that I'm using today in helicopter online ground school. I mean, he showed me good stuff. And when you have a guy like Jerry Ventrella, you know, a legend, right, Says, I want you to teach this exactly like this. Here's how you need to do a normal approach. Not like this, yo, yo, over here. Does it, this is how it needs to be done on takeoffs, you know, the high velocity diagram is what you need to be looking at, you know, on all these things that, that he was really strong or really, you know, ingrained in me, I've held to today. So when somebody makes an argument with me on some certain subject, you know, I think back to, you know, Jerry Ventrella, right? Here's a legend that taught me these things. And I thought, I'm pretty much sure that I, I'm pretty good to go on my, on my explanation of this particular topic. When you have a legend that tells you, da da da da da, right? So I created Helicopter online ground school. We launched it seven years ago today. Happy birthday. I rushed around this morning. I wanted to have the video as the sun was coming up. Because every one of you has got your own struggles. We all struggle through life, right? But failure can be such a wonderful thing, right? As much as that first failure hurt, it was the best thing that ever happened to me because of creating my notebook and because of going back and making it a second time. And then over the years I was using that notebook and I can remember Jed. And I'll put the link down below for Jed flies the MD500, cutting and sawing trees. Maybe I'll even include a little link in here when I'm editing. Either way, I'll put the link down below. My video Jon Jed has 3 million views, right? Well, when this kid was young and working with me on his private. We're going around and around the pattern one day and he's like, man, you're really good at training. You should start your own training manual. And I'm like, yeah, whatever, right? Well, that was 20 years ago. And Other people would say that to me and they're like, you know, you got kind of got this down. You really ought to make your own manual or something. So it was kind of a joke for a long time. And then seven years ago today, I launched helicopter only ground school because of working in the industry for 13 years. Prior to that, nothing was coming along for helicopters. It was all fixed wing stuff. So a buddy of mine named Nick Logan came along. I was working as an EMS pilot flying the EC135, and my buddy Nick Logan comes in and he was also an Internet marketer. And he's like, you know what, you should take your knowledge and you should put it on an online ground school. And he goes, I've had the thought. But you know, he was going a different direction with his Internet marketing. He goes, so you should do something. And Nick inspired me with this little camera. I wish I had it here. Well, I showed it in the video yesterday. Nick inspired me and loaned me that damn camera years ago, right? And actually started using it to promote my little helicopter business that was failing anyway. Doesn't matter now, right? Another big failure in my life was the owning a helicopter and trying to make a small flight school go. And as much as it still even kind of hurts today, it was part of the story. It's part of how I got to where I'm at. And I was so broke for the longest time that it's not even funny. And now I can sit here on a beautiful day and make a video for you sitting on my deck next to the channel that goes out to a beautiful lake right over here. And it's not a mansion, but it's, it's. I have a nice house. I got an old pontoon, bought an old cheapy, you know, didn't spend a lot of money on it. I don't live high on the hog, but I have a roof over my head now. And I didn't even have that for a lot of years. A lot of years I stayed with family. You know, I was so broke in the beginning. Even in the beginning of online ground school, you guys don't know how bad it was. I was living with my sister, driving my sister's car, and she was unemployed and loaning me gas money to get to the airport in her car. That's how bad it was. And I'm not kidding you, that was from the helicopter running me into the ground and basically lost everything that I ever owned. So fear of failure, we all fell. Take it, use it. And now you don't have to fail your checkride. You can smoke your checkride. Look at that. Sun's coming up. I better finish this video up. I'm going to face is going to keep getting darker and darker. That's why I created helicopter online ground school is to give a person a place to go and it works. In the beginning I called it checkride preparation. Now it's full fledged ground school. In the beginning it was just tips and I'm at home. I wish I had the video. The first, my very first customer ever seven years ago, he bought before the buttons were live on the site. And me, my buddy was out in the hangar. I still owned the helicopter that basically ruined me and I'm making a video and I'm. And I'm broke and my girlfriend, my high school sweetheart had just broken up with me. You know, I'd reunited with her after many years and that didn't work out. And I'm mad at the world, right? And I'm on the hangar, something happens and I'm cussing and, and when we laugh and joke about it later in this video I was going to edit out the me cussing and ran and Raven and somehow, you know, I put it on YouTube but I meant to be unlisted so I could edit it later or whatever. This video goes live. I don't realize it. And my first online ground school member bought even though he sees this unedited video of me and Hanger launching online ground school. When I'm mad and I'm complaining about my life and frustrated and cussing. Oh, it was horrible. And I'll have to find that play that guys for you guys sometime and edit out the beep or beep the you know, the filthy language. But that's where I was at when I started this and it's funny now, right? And God, where am I going with that other than failure can breed success, man. And that's why you don't have to struggle like I did. I did this to help people get through the checkride. You can use online ground school to supplement your training. No matter what you're doing, whether you got, you can have the best instructor. But maybe you just want to watch videos at home in your pajamas, eating cereal, drinking coffee in the morning. You know, that's what helicopter land ground school is for or it's also for if you're not getting the best ground instruction. I give it my all, right? I have for seven years. You got the story now. I struggled. I, you know, like all of you man. It's just that's why it's here. So Happy birthday. God. I see as I'm at 14 minutes. Gee many Christmas. I guess I better wrap it up. Getting cold out here. Didn't think I'd make it this long. Thank you everyone. Every single one of your comments helps every single person that buys a monthly membership helps anything. Comment and like and sharing, emailing me, cheering me on. I have bad days too like the rest of you but I have days like this where I'm watching the sun come up making a video for all of you on my on the seven year birthday of Helicopter Land Ground School. So the biggest sell is on March 1st today celebrating the launch of helicopter school seven years ago and it's going to my birthday March 15th. Biggest sale I've ever had, the most days I've ever had and the most money off I've ever offered. It's never been this big. Heather told me no. She kept telling me no in the office and I'm like no, I'm doing it. You know, she's going I don't think you should do it. That's a lot of that's you're losing money. I'm like no I'm not. It's all in the good. And our operations manager Brian Rutledge, I just noticed he come on a video last night and he said good for you Kenny. Happy seven years and you're giving back to the industry. So I guess I did alright. Got the approval from operations manager Brian Relige. All right, please give me a like and a share. Please give me a comment down below. Go check out helicopter on Land Ground school down below helicopterground.com link descriptions box below. Go check out the big Go check out the big discounts because they're pretty darn huge. Give me a like please thumbs up like Share comment. You know the drill. Subscribe. Click the bell and we might see another might see another video later today but we'll see you tomorrow morning for another coffee with Kenny.