Kenny's Story Behind How To Build Your Online Business

Here we go. Hey, we're having fun here. I want to talk about some emotion. Emotion. We're emotional here today. I'm emotional. Anyway, I got freaking goosebumps about Monday and I want to tell you a story and I'm going to be transparent here because I want to make. I just got to tell. Tell the story. I've hinted about this in my first book, Helicopter Trek Ride, number one best seller. Talked a little bit about this myself in the beginning. Talk a little bit in the new book build you'd online Business that'll be released Monday. I hint towards kind of what's transpired in the last five years, but I never really openly talk about it. And I was talking to Steve this morning, we're getting ready to go and I said, you know what, I want to tell the story. I just want to tell the story. 2008, life is good. I have great credit, have an EMS job, flying a six million dollar helicopter, making $50,000 a year. Life is good, good credit, money in the bank, have retirement, have savings, life is good. 2008, prior to the economy tanking, let's add that to it. So what do I do? I buy my dream helicopter. I had flown this aircraft in the past and thought, wow, if I ever buy a helicopter, this would be the one that I want with no serious intention of ever really buying a helicopter. Because I ran a heavy duty towing service for 10 years with big heavy duty trucks that were expensive, that cost a lot in fuel, that cost a lot, insurance that cost a lot of maintenance was horrible. And I was flying EMS and the company I worked for part time during my days off from flat from flying ems. I work with this company giving rides and they go, hey, go ahead and fly that to your flight to take the home. Fly to work tomorrow if you want. So I flew this helicopter, Whoops. I flew this helicopter to work to go fly that helicopter. And it was for a night shift parked inside the hangar. The next morning I'm out in the hangar talking to the mechanic and, and we're looking at this helicopter and I go, man, if I ever wanted to buy one, this would be the one that I want. But I'll never do anything dumb like that. Well, along the way I get flying with some wealthy business individuals and they're like, oh, you should buy your own helicopter. And at first I'm like, you're crazy. The first time I lose an engine for 35 grand, I'm going to go, where's that money going to come from? You know, so get These wealthy guys, their ratings and they're like, ah, here, you should buy helicopter. You got good credit. We'll help you get the loan. All of our buddies will come fly with you. You'll make all kinds of money, life will be grand. Oh, we've got all these wealthy part partners and oh, you can charge. At that time, I was charging $100 an hour for my time. I was charging $150 per diem to drive there to fly with them. And they were writing the checks, happy to write the checks, no big deal. Here's the check. So yeah, what do I do? I buy my helicopter. Well, that's 2008. Around July, summertime. Well, guess what happens with the economy in 2008. Nose dives. So I take delivery of the helicopter. Took months of planning, you know, loans since like buying a freaking house or worse. Helicopter comes, all those guys are going to fly with me. Oh, hey, the economy's tanking now. We're, we're not sure but you know, we don't know about this. So here it is, economy tanks. I got an aircraft costing me $2,000 a month and just in a helicopter payment. Anyway, so I try, I work really hard at it and I promote the helicopter with video. This would have been about 2010, 2009, 2010. My good buddy Nick Logan, who I worked with flying EMS helicopter. Nick comes to work where we are and I hear him in the other room talking about marketing and, and I said, hey, do you little help little companies like me, little one man operations, you know the helicopter on the side? Yeah, you should be blogging and doing videos. And he loaned me a little flip video camera. And all these years later, here I am. So I get to the marketing, marketing the helicopter. Keep working EMS for a while, but as the helicopter that cost me $2,000 a month for the payment, $1,800 a month for insurance, annual inspection. Ten grand because I paid who I felt was some of the best in the business. I wanted the aircraft maintained, right. I didn't want any problems. Whatever it cost, let's fix it. 10 grand a year just for the annual. If you lose the PTO cable, that's like a PTO cable on a heavy duty truck. I know what those are. I ran heavy duty trucks for 10 years. But that's $100 cable. But it's aircraft certified. So that throttle cable is going to cost me eighteen hundred dollars for something no more than a throttle cable. Are you kidding me? So I'm very quickly learning after doing towing, tow Trucks, heavy duty records for 10 years. High insurance, high maintenance. And that ruins my credit the first time. I rebuild my credit over the years enough to buy a helicopter. So what happens to me? Time number two, I ruin my credit again. It takes my retirement, it takes my savings, it takes the property that I owned. It took everything that I had, you know. Now, years later, my ground school members will email me, go, hey, Kenny, got this great idea how I'm going to buy this helicopter and I can make the payment if I get these two guys to fly and I can make the payment and I think I can make this work. What do you think? And I'll say, I'll respond to him and say, you know what, don't do it. Unless you have a whole great big pile of money in the bank that you can just throw away, throw out the window, don't do it. If your average, ordinary, everyday Joe blow, do not buy a helicopter. Okay, at the time when I did this, I heard that old saying, happiest day is when you buy your helicopter. Happiest day of your life. Second happiest day of your life is the day you get rid of your helicopter. I understand that now. Also met a guy from the faa, came to one of my deals when I had a big event here at the airport and everybody's here and they're oh yeah, this is cool. Guy from the FAA says, no matter what, don't fall in love with your helicopter. I'm like, what are you talking about? And he's like, well, I'm telling you, never fall in love with your helicopter or your aircraft of any kind. Of keep it as long as you can keep it. But when things start to go a little south, be ready to walk away from them. Be ready to dump them. Well, I didn't. I spent four years working, flying elsewhere, running my company, letting this thing just drag my money. Just keep, just keeps draining it. About two years into it, good friend of mine that's downstairs every morning of the airport, retired school teacher and friend of mine, 30 year flight instructor. Two years into it, he's like, kenny, you need to just sell that son of a bitch. And I'm like, what? Sell my baby? My, my helicopter that I put my whole entire life into? Oh, what are you talking about? I should have listened two years in and dumped it when he said that. But it's a funny joke now. And I'm giving you the hard luck story because there is a happy ending to this. But back to the story. The other important part of the story that I really want to hit is five years into it, 2012, as I mentioned, retirement gone, savings gone, property's gone, I got nothing. Driving to the airport one night, I'm meeting a commercial guy who is just come out of the military, wanted to get civilian trained, freshened up so he could get an EMS job. He has money on account, okay. So I'm driving to work in my car, coming to the airport, and I'm like, I literally have $30 on one account, one card, and maybe 50 on the other. And I'm thinking, how am I going to buy fuel tonight? I'm like, I'm going to have to ask my customer who already has money on account if he can buy the fuel and I can credit it back to him. So I'm feeling like a low life at this point. You know, hey, I'm online shooting video and doing great things and have a following which is all great and all happy, but in reality, I'm so broke I can't even pay attention. So I'm driving to the airport and my phone goes off. Because this is 2012. I had launched online ground school March 1, 2012. Little slow getting going, but I'm not really thinking about what's happening. This is more towards the fall. So I've been online for a while, selling my online membership site to online ground school, making money from my knowledge, not from the helicopter. So this night, driving to work, my iPhone goes off. Ding. PayPal. Whoo. Hey. You know, at that time, my training link was 277 bucks. So I'm like, yes, I got $277 in my hand. I'm all happy. I pull into the airport, meet my guy, we get the helicopter out, and here I am dumping fuel in the helicopter. I'm dumping, you know, as it's gurgling in there and the old things cleaning and going around and running around, money racking, racking, racking. And I'm going, this helicopter that has taken my retirement, has taken my savings, that's taken my property, taken pretty much everything I ever owned I put into this helicopter. And shame on me for not dumping it sooner. But, you know, you get in a mode, hey, I can do it. I'm going to make this work. I'm going to stay with it, going to do it. Well, reality is that I'm broke. I'm dumping the fuel in there. And it dawns on me, no, no, no. You've taken everything that I had, and now you are taking the money that I made from my knowledge online. And it's in my account. And it's going into the tank of the flipping helicopter. And I had an offer on the aircraft. At that time, a lot of things were going wrong in my life. My dad passed away, I'm broke. I reunited with a high school sweetheart and I moved down south. That didn't pan out. So I'm hitting all those things. You know, we have rough points in our life. We have them up, we have them down. We all do it, we all go through it. Everybody's going through something. I'm not giving you the hard luck story. I'm just giving you the reality. You know, I had problems in the past. You know, we all do. Times are good, times are bad. So I'm thinking I'm done. So I continue on with helicopter online ground school. This picture is from our five year celebration where, you know, I was online talking about and taking pictures of all our members. I mean, the success stories are awesome. Five years online with helicopter land ground school. My members have taken this training and done amazing things with it. Stuff I never would have dreamed. The connections that I've made, the people that I've met all over the world is incredible. We now have ground school members coming here to fly with us because we have aircraft to use, not owned by me, which is a beautiful thing. Elaborate on that more before we're done. But so the ground school thing, you know, is how I went from being low life, broke down the dumps, got nothing, but I built something cool. I said no to the helicopter. I'm going to pursue this online ground school thing and continued on. Published my first Amazon best seller two years ago. No, well, 2014, I did that because of the training that I watch. All the gurus that I've learned from, I'll call them my heroes. Back when I started online ground school, I was going to do an ebook and I was going to do a website and I was going to do this and I was going to charge 10 bucks for this and 20 bucks for that and maybe I can spend, you know, make a hundred dollars here. Well, I come across a couple marketing gurus and I ended up in the last year I got to meet two of them. Mike Koenigs and Pam Hendrickson. I got to meet both of these two in the last year. And this past winter when I first met Mike, I went to an all day event. I've been learning from this guy for five years. He's the one that when I launched ground school, I watched a video from him and he said, don't mess around with just an ebook and this. If you're going to make ten grand on an ebook, you need a list of 200,000 people to sell that ebook to. I didn't have a list of 20,000 people or 200,000 people, whatever it is. He said, take everything you got, all your knowledge, everything you got, put it in one package and sell it for three to five hundred dollars. That's what I did. I launched on his advice, used all of his free stuff. Same thing with Pam. I ended up later buying some of their courses, which has helped me, you know, continue on with the business. But the cool thing, when I was with Mike, you know, they never met me, and I. They go around the room and say real quick, tell us your story. I told them the story I just told you, but I made it the short version. And when I'm done, he's like, God, I wish I had the cameras rolling on that. Would you, you know, would you reshoot that for us or could we film that later? And I said, absolutely. So I got to meet, you know, my heroes in the industry, meet them firsthand. And when I told my story, I realized how advanced I was. Same thing when I got to meet Pam. You know, I'm the last person to speak in the group of people, just like the first time. And when I just a quick blurb of who I am and where I'm at and why I was in San Diego, California, they both love my story. And I was able to come back, know and go, you know what? I've done something cool. I not only have high, I'm rebuilding my wealth, repaying old debts, rebuilding my credit. And it's all due to my online efforts. So trying to remember if I got anything else on here. Which leads in to build your online business. Selling a digital. Selling a digital product online is the most. Is the coolest thing on the planet. I still fly. We have helicopters here owned by friends of ours. The main one we have the instrument is a good friend of mine from Cleveland. I taught to fly 15 years ago. We have his baby, his aircraft that we got for him about 12 to 13 years ago. It's a cream puff. And he all summer, flies a little bit in the summer, but then six months out of the year it sits and does nothing. So a couple years ago he was like, Kenny, why don't you just come get two six papa when you're. During my. During the winter and you guys can fly it. Send me the money back per hour for the aircraft. And you know, hey, what a wonderful Thing and it works out great. We've been doing it for two years now. Gary Cleveland's getting ready to go full time with us at full at helicopter land ground school in a couple weeks. He's flying, he's working full time as a police officer and he's here all of his time off flying with ground school members. We have one here from Texas. Two days ago we had one here from the US Virgin Islands. The week before we had one here from Texas. Before that we had two from Illinois. Some of them are bringing their own aircraft in. So I built the new training. Actually this build you'd online business. The book we're launching Monday, I've been working on this for two and a half years. So it doesn't take away from ground school. It's been me documenting what I did five years ago, the little tiny flip video camera into what I have today, a studio, full fledged studio, online courses. I'm losing my train of thought. That's why I have this passion for the build your online business. Also what I've been able to do online, it's incredible. And this picture right here, beach services office. I've been to the Gulf coast the last two years for a short vacation with my daughter. Something I couldn't have done three years ago, four years ago, five years ago, there's no way I didn't have enough money. I was trying to rebuild things, you know, put my life back together. But two years ago, we go down to the Gulf coast and stay in a nice motel. Still got it on hot wire, you know. So we had the, we had a really nice place for half the money or less. But this is my picture I took. We're walking out to the beach and I just stop. I'm like, you know what, I'm here now because of my online business. This is what we all want. We all want, we all have that dream of I want that business where I can work from the beach or I can work for anywhere. Well, in five years I've lived in California, North Carolina, I've been to other states, flying with people. I'm always able to operate my online business. Now I can run the whole thing from my iPhone, of course. I have computers and equipment at our headquarters, world headquarters here in Plymouth, Indiana. But I can be on the road, I can be on vacation, I can live and go anywhere I want and I can run online business. So when I walk past this beach picture, I'm just like, that's it. Beach services office. Think about this job, whoever has this job they come every day, put out the umbrellas and they sit there in their chair and they take people's money. You know, they probably work for the hotel. Doesn't matter. Point is, this is what we all want. Which is why the book, I'm going to grab it, walk off camera just for a second. That's why that picture is the one that's on my new book. Because it's a picture that means something to me. It's how I, you know, built the online business. It's how I did it. And that's why we're excited about and I just want to tell the story today because some people know my story and some people have had a hint of my story, but that's really the gist of it. You know, I'm not a marketing guru trying to show you that I, that I'm driving Lamborghinis and Ferraris and I live in this eight post mountain up on a big hill because that's not the case. I'm an average, ordinary day guy, rebuilding my life, rebuilding my wealth, driving a decent vehicle, living in a nice apartment, doing what I want to do, going to work every day because I love coming to work, love running my online ground school and interacting with people from all over the world. I still love to fly. Gary does most of my flying. Gary has me jump in like, hey, go check this guy out and do this with them. Or same thing with Chris. I have Chris Hauser flies for me. I jump in and kind of do the advanced stuff which is what I love. So bottom line, I wanted to share that story because it's very important. This is a highlight of my career launching this book on Monday. So we are going to have this live event on Monday. We're going to try to be on most of the day. We're going to start at 11am 9am I'm doing a radio interview. 11 will be live here. Amazon gift card giveaways. We want people to interact with us. We want people to ask questions locally. We've invited people to stop by if they want, come in live on camera and talk about launching books, Amazon best sellers, building online membership sites, taking whatever your passion is. You know, I have online ground school members that and I keep using the paramedic as an example and this goes across the board for many different niches where they'll email me, go, hey Kenny, you know I've been a flight paramedic for 20 years and I want to get in helicopters. I'm working on my ratings. I'd like to do something like you do. How can I do that? So I get that question a lot because people wanted to know, how does an everyday guy like me, who knew nothing about computers, nothing about the Internet, nothing about cameras, nothing about studios. I grabbed a little video and got started. Borrowed a little flip video camera Nick Logan gave me. Thank you, Nick. I should even see if I grab it real quick, Steve. See if it's in there. Nat Drew, I want to show you real quick. That's what I started with. And any of you can do the same thing. You can take your iPhone, your Android. That stuff has gotten so good, an everyday person can take their iPhone, set it up on a little tripod, or stick it to the wall, whatever, start making videos, start sharing your passion and your knowledge, and you can create a business online. And I'm not saying this is a get rich quick scheme, because it isn't. This takes hard work. It takes effort. You got to put your knowledge to the grindstone. You got to be willing to work harder than everybody else. In the last five years, there's been plenty of weekends where I've been at work, where my friends are out going on the lake, or they're going here and going there, and they're going, hey, Kenny, you know, sometimes you just have to go, well, I'd love to go play and goof off, but you know what? Launching a book this weekend, or I'm launching a new online course, or I'm building a dishonor for my new customers. Sometimes you got to work a little harder than the other guy. If you want to have your dream, if you want to have what you want to go after, you got to do the work. There is no get rich quick scheme. This is not a get rich quick scheme. My online course is not a get rich quick scheme. Learning how to fly the helicopter, that ground school, my members, they have to work at it. They use our videos, but they got to sit down and apply the training. If you don't do the work, you're not going to get the rating. You're not going to pass. So with that being said, there's the little flip video. I'm going to wrap up the story. Nick Logan loaned that to me back in 2011. The photo that I just took here, this is from a night video in my course, shot with this little flip video camera. Night video inside my course. Okay, so here's, you know, remnants from way back. And this was from that era. This was that time, that fall 2012. That's me out there with my aircraft in the end, dumping the fuel in the tank, going, there goes my money, mother. Goes my knowledge, money I made. So anyway, that little dude right there is how I started. And you can do it with an iPhone, Simply put. And that's what we preach in the book and in the online courses. Get started. If you have knowledge, you have passion, you want to do a business, look around. I can give you facts and figures all day long. Where's O World going? O World is going online. You know, helicopter online ground school is awesome. My friends, followers, everybody that's been a part of that. The support has been incredible. There's a very small niche of people I am excited about not only launching. Two people that have asked me for my ground school, but the general public, people that want to know. I like selling. I like selling. Of course I like selling. Who doesn't like selling? Who doesn't like making money? I like sharing my passion. I like the creation process. I like taking an idea. Oh, I need to make a night video. My night video is 5, 10 minutes long with a whole bunch of clips. But I created that, just one video out of an idea, and my whole site's done that way. Everything is from an idea. I think I should do a business like this. One more plug, then I'm gonna get off here. Mike Chase. Hope you're watching Mike Chase. Back when I'm flying helicopter ems, I go to work there and I meet Mike Chase. Okay, this is about. This is late 2000, whenever, prior to 2012 when I launched and before online ground school, I'm talking with Mike as I was the new pilot there. God, this was a while back. Anyway, he goes, you know, you're an instructor that's always instructed. Most instructors work two, three or four years and they get there, they move up the ladder, they never go back. You've always been instructing from day one, which I have. I've always stayed active as an instructor. Even when I'm flying ems, I'm instructing on my days off because I love to teach. All these years later, I can tell you I have a lot more Fun in a $150,000 aircraft going out and teaching somebody than I did flying a six million dollar aircraft. But that's because I do what I want. I didn't like the oversight. I didn't do well because I like to do things the right way. I like to do things the way I'm trained. I don't like intervention from other people that aren't pilots. That's a whole other story. But Mike Chase says you should do something with your knowledge, like start a check ride corner or something online. Well, I said, you know, I'm going somewhere, but I don't know where. This is where it all went. And then I remained friends with Mike, and two and a half years ago, we're talking on the phone one day and he's like, well, you know, you should take all this knowledge you have about audio and video and online membership sites and books, and you should start a how to build your online business thing. I went, I'll start that this weekend and I'll build it in a weekend. I'll have this ready next week. Well, needless to say, it took me two and a half years to do it. But, you know, Mike and I talk a lot and he recently, you know, left his full time flying job to pursue online endeavors. But two to three years ago, we were talking and he said, you know what the difference is between you, Kenny and everybody else? He goes, just between me or for like, you and me as examples? He goes, I'm always taking aim. You know, I'm kind of interested in doing that. Well, I think I want to do that, and I think this is what I want to do over here. He goes, but what do you do? He goes, you just start shooting. You just take that shotgun. You're just going boom, boom, boom, boom. And that's what I do. That's what you have to do. You can sit around all day going, I want to have my own business. I want to do this. I don't want to work for somebody else anymore. I don't like my job. I hate my life. You got to do something. Even if it's wrong, you got to do something. You can't just stay in that job that you hate and hate your life. Okay? No fate, but what we make. If you're down in the dumps and you want a better life, you can get it. You can do it yourself. You don't like your job, get another one. You want a business, do it. Go after it. Have the guts, have the passion. You know, Nothing good is easy. Nothing good is free. A line from one of my favorite songs of all time that I listen to when I get down. Nothing good is easy. Nothing good is free. You know the answer's in your own heart. You know what you want to do. So I have no idea if anybody's been watching any comments you made. Steve's over here shaking his head, Yeah, I need to get out of here. Go check out my daughter, get some lunch. I want to share that story. So there it is to the world. Hope you've enjoyed the story. Please leave your comments down below. Please like and share this video and we will see you in the next video because you'll know there'll be more. During hovering flight, Also called tail rotor drift, it's one of the three T's that everybody screws up. Effective translational lift Transverse flow effect.