Why It's Never TOO LATE & How To Sell to Billionaires | Steve Varsano Conquers the Luxury Aviation Market at 55

Steve, what's the most expensive jet you've ever sold?

Ah, that was a Boeing business jet because it was actually green, meaning that the airplane came in a metal can. That's how you get it from the factory. And the completion on top of that, between the two, the price was about $97 million.

For one jet?

One jet, yeah.

And what was your share in that?

It was really good actually. And I closed it on the day I finalized my divorce. So it was even more happy day. So yeah, that was the biggest, the highest priced airplane I've ever sold.

Wow. And in your career, how many jets would you say you've sold?

You know, I don't want to say sound obnoxious, but I really don't even count anymore. It's probably close to maybe 500. And now it's, you know, we don't really say how many airplanes we sell each year, but you know, it's, we sell in the upper end of the market. So the airplanes are basically broken up into small midsize, super midsize, large cabin, ultra long range, and then VIP airliner, which we're in here. So I don't really deal with the small and mid sized jets. We deal with what they call super mid up. And so we're not really looking at how many airplanes we could sell. It's really the value and how much we can make out of them, obviously.

And is the margin better on the bigger planes?

You know, it's funny you ask that, it sounds like an obvious question, but sometimes you can make as much or more on a $5 million plane as a $50 million airplane. It depends how you, how you have the opportunity. Sometimes somebody just wants to get rid of something quick and you can make a markup on something, but the fact of the matter is it's not like in property, it's not like in yachts. There's no pre established percentage that you get paid to buy or sell an airplane. So it's really what you convince, what you can convince your customer to pay you. And as you probably know, no matter how much it is, it's too much.

Yeah, because I suppose some people would have a perception. Are you just dealing with really rich people and they just throw the money down and it's really easy. But talking off camera, you said that once you've signed the letter of intent, that's like you've just started. Can you talk us through that process?

Absolutely. I mean, first of all, these, not just high net worth people, but just, you know, heads of major corporations. You Know, their whole life is negotiating, and part of it's just for sport. Okay? I mean, when you say, how much is that airplane? Okay, no matter what price, you say, the answer's gonna be, wow, that sounds high, no matter what you say. And so you just get used to it, and you have to just deal with it. But I just think that some of the deals we work on, the clients we deal with, are super difficult.

The reason being.

The reason being is just because they demand the best, they expect everybody to say yes to anything they ask for.

Because they're powerful people.

Because they're powerful people. And a lot of these people have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people working for them. And their direct reports that report to these executives, you know, are known that if you don't get the job done all the time, you're gone. So they expect when they're talking to people like me or any other vendors or people that are trying to do business with them, you better deliver, or they don't deal with you anymore. So you learn how never to say no at the beginning. You know, you always start with, let me see if I can get that done. You know, you just don't never say no. It's not acceptable to most of these people.

And how does that make you feel?

You know what? As old as I am, it keeps me on my toes. And I could be complaining and bitching. I mean, I get really mistreated sometimes by some of these people, but, you know, you just don't take it personal. You know, this is part of the game, and I think it just keeps you sharp. And every time I think I've learned a lesson, somebody else is going to teach me another one. It's a really interesting business to be in because the adrenaline of this business is not really airplanes anymore to me. It's who I meet. I mean, these are the people at the top of the game in every sector in every country of the world. And, you know, and they have the most top people working for them. And these people are all obviously trying to make points with their boss. So they're trying to make you look bad or show you what they know and that you don't know. So you're constantly in this sort of tennis game of back and forth, back and forth, and, you know, it's not who wins, wins. But the fact of the matter is, to me, it's not a game. It's how do I get to the finish line? And sometimes if you have to give in for some of their demands, you do the key is get to that finish line.

So if they negotiate and it's not just for the money, for the sport, is there a sport element for you in it?

Oh, of course. But to tell you the truth, you know, we are exclusively either representing the buyer or the seller. Okay. And I take it personally. I really do take it personally, as if it's my money I'm negotiating with. So I really am fighting for my client much more than I say some of my competitors do. They just want to get the deal done and move on. So we push and push as hard as we can, but we also are realist, and we tell our client, when you know you're stepping over the boundary here, you're demanding too much, it's not right. And of course, when you have the hat on of one person, you're saying something different than you're saying to the person that you're negotiating with. You're trying to be a realist with your client, but you're obviously trying to fight for their points anyway for the opposite side. So it's really a negotiating game, but it's a high stakes game.

And have you got any good negotiation tips?

Listen, I can tell you one thing. You don't want to give away your secrets. I can tell you one thing for sure. No matter how many times you think a deal is dead, it's not always dead. And you got to keep on going back. You got to figure out, take your ego out of it. That's a big point. Take your ego out of it. Because again, I go back to what I said before. How do I get to the goal post? How do I get to that finish line? And sometimes you gotta just eat it up and suck it up and just let them beat you up. Even if you have to give some of your fee away or, let me do this, let me do, figure out how you get the other side happy without abusing your client. But it's the biggest thing in negotiating is taking your ego out of it.

Right. And is there always a way? Do you have that attitude? There's always a way to get a deal done.

I'd say 90% of the time, there's a way to get a deal done. Sometimes people just change their mind. They got another opportunity that came up that was better over the weekend. I hate weekends. Because your customer runs into somebody and they, oh, did you hear about this opportunity? Or do you know about this? And then Monday comes and everything changed. So you got to keep on top of these things, and you got to keep the momentum Going if you let the momentum slip, then their interest slips and then you're finished.

So does that mean you're always on the go? You've always got your phone, you're here.

Late, you're always, oh yeah, 24, 7. I mean if my phone rings at 3 in the morning, I pick it up. There's no question about it because we deal in all time zones. So you know, early in the morning I'm on the phone, emails, checking what's happening in Asia, who's talking to us, who needs a response, and then you know, the Middle east and then we're open in Europe and during the afternoon the US opens up and blah blah blah. And you know, until 10 o' clock at night I'm still on my emails, calls, even if I'm out to dinner. I come home, I'm back on finishing emails till 12, 1, 2 in the morning.

And how's that affected your personal life and your relationships?

And she understands.

The last one didn't.

Yeah, well that's okay. I didn't want her to stick around anyway. But no, I got a fantastic partner now. She's amazing and she understands. I mean, okay, sometimes it's inconvenient, I have to get out at a dinner and go make a phone call or an email or sometimes I have to go to a meeting and I can't be at a certain social event and but the fact of the matter is people always say, how do you have a work home balance? Listen, if you want to be successful in business, there's no balance. I mean you really have to give up some of your home benefits in order to get ahead. If you want a 9 to 5 job and you could just cruise, sure you can have a home life, work balance. But really it's a competitive world out there and I think you really, you need to put that the indicator has to go way to the work side than the home side. And there's just some, you just have to figure out how it works and give it up.

Are you ever able to switch off? Do you do anything outside of work?

We travel a lot, but even when I travel to places I'm always on, I mean I'm traveling to places where a lot of our clients go. There are beautiful places. I'm lucky that that's where most of my clients are going to. And so I'm always meeting people, networking, I'm always on my phone, I'm in my emails, I'm calling my office, I'm on all the time and I don't Mind it.

I'm getting the feeling you quite like it.

Yeah, I don't know, I don't know if I like it but it's just become my way of life. It's my business and you know when you have your own business you just can't shut off. It's just, it doesn't work that well. Of course if you have a senior executive team that has all those operations in a big company maybe is more possible. We're a small little hit team here. It's like a family, 10 people. It's, it's, you know, you don't. Everybody takes a big piece of responsibility here and I always want to know what's going on with all the deals. Not only the ones I'm working on, the ones you know, my team is working on. So I'm always on, always involved, no matter what time zone I'm in.

Does that mean you micromanage them a bit? Should I ask them?

I probably over micromanage but I just think, you know, it's. Some of the guys are relatively new the last couple years I've joined and so they're also, you know, they want the mentoring. Yeah, the guys that have been with me a long time, they can work on their own and you know, I could just turn right in the right direction they could do from A to Z. So I have full confidence in them. But you know, we're still building the team and we have a lot new, a lot of new inquiries coming now because of social media and stuff and where you know, a lot of people are overloaded with a lot of stuff.

And do you like having some of the young guys here and their energy and mentoring them?

Yeah.

Really to keep you young.

It keeps me young but it keeps me open minded, you know. You know you're a parent now, I'm sure you know, you've heard a number of times like any parents heard from their kids, you don't know what you're talking about. You're not in touch with what's going on in the world. You're too old minded, you know, you're old fashioned. Well, unfortunately a lot of times they're right and we are.

But you know a bit as well.

Yeah, well of course you know a bit but the world's changed a lot and it's changing faster and faster and I find being around these young people, they keep my mind open looking at things. I mean even social media, I mean you would talk to me on social media that I'm gonna put my jet selling business on social media, I'd say you're crazy.

And now you're blowing up on social media.

Yeah, it's opened my eyes like, wow, I can't believe this. And these guys helped get me into it and I started doing it and then it just really went crazy. And so, you know, they've given me an idea that really helped me open my eyes. So really, the more that I'm in touch with these younger generation, the more opportunities I see and the more options to look at. Okay. Some of them might not be for me, of course, but even things that I don't know nothing about, like metaverse or NFTs or crypto and all this, I'm sort of paying attention more and learning about it because these younger generations are going to make that normal day to day life, you know, I mean, you think in nft, oh, people say, ah, what's an nft? What's it going to be worth? Well, they're saying the same thing about a Picasso. You know, how you paying $100 million for a Picasso and these guys saying, how are you paying, you know, 100,000 for this NFT? But as the people get older and older, they build that marketplace and the marketplace is created by them and that becomes the regular and the standard. So they might say, you know, in 10 years, 20 years from now that Picasso is worth nothing. I mean, I'm just saying this as an example. I'm not saying that's going to happen, but that's with anything.

Yeah. So I want to talk about the social media stuff a bit later because that's exciting and it's been great to see you because I've, I noticed you quite early on and I've seen you blow up and some people I know you've interacted with here, so I'm going to come to that later. But I'm really fascinated. How does someone get into the jet business? How did you get into this?

So I was really fortunate because most kids don't really know what they want to do even when they finish uni because it's just so early in their life, they're not exposed to much. I was so lucky. When I was 14 years old, the older brother of a friend of mine was going up for a flying lesson in a little four seater airplane and he said to us, you want to come up for a ride? The two seats in the back are empty. Yeah, sure. I mean, I'm in New Jersey. I mean I be up in an airplane. It's a dream. You wouldn't even Think about. So we went up for this ride, and I was just mesmerized. There's this little thing. It's like basically sitting in a lawn chair at 3,000ft. But it was just such a feeling of freedom and, like, wow, you're looking out over the world. This is crazy. I want to be a pilot. This is something that was amazing. And in those days, even at 14, I was washing dishes. I was, you know, dishwasher. I was working as a busboy in a restaurant. And so I was making a little bit of money. And then I started saving up, and basically every two, three, four weeks, I'd have enough money to pay for an hour of flying. And so I started taking flying lessons when I was 14. I soloed when I was 16, which is the legal limit in the U.S. and then I got my license when I was 17. And then I went to university, and I got my bachelor's degree in aeronautical studies. And that started my love of aviation.

And then how did you start selling the jets?

So when I first got out of university, I was a lobbyist for a trade organization in Washington, D.C. that represents the airplane manufacturers. So walking around Capitol Hill, talking to congressmen, senators, or their aides of making sure they weren't passing any regulations or laws that would be detrimental to the industry. And it was an incredible job. I mean, for an ego standpoint, you know, you're walking around Congress, you know, I'm 22, 23 years old, but the pay was absolutely ridiculously low. So my roommate at the time in Washington, D.C. owned, like, the hottest nightclub in D.C. so I worked at night as a doorman in the nightclub. And this guy used to come in all the time, and he had a Learjet on his pin, on his tie, a tie clip. And I was like, how come you got a Learjet on there? He says, I sell jets. You sell jets? What do you mean, you sell jets? Yeah, I buy and sell jets. And he's like, used ones. He goes, yeah. I said, wow. And every couple weeks, the guy would come in and show off a commission check. Because in the old days, you used to get paychecks, right? And, oh, look, I sold this one. I sold this one. And over the course of a few months, finally I said, where the hell do you work, man? I want to come and get a job there. No, we're not hiring anybody. I said, please get me an interview with your boss. I want to meet the boss. So I finally convinced him to introduce me to this guy. And at the time, I put on My best polyester suit I could find. And I went in there and it was really weird because I walked in the door and everybody's in T shirts and sandals and shorts and a beard. I went back out and looked at the door. I'm like, maybe I'm in the wrong place. And the guy says, what's the matter? I said, I thought you guys sold jets here. Yeah, we do. I said, but I'm sorry, but dressed like that. Yeah, well, we don't have a meeting near our clients. It's all done on the telephone and telex machines, you know, before faxes and stuff. And I said, what do you mean you sell planes on the telephone? He said, yeah. So I was, like, intrigued. How do you do that? And I started talking with him for about two hours. And I said, you got to give me a job here. He said, listen, you've never sold anything in your life, Michael.

So you'd never had a sales job before?

No, I mean, newspaper deliveries, you know.

But you went from newspapers to jets.

Yeah, and I was working as a busboy in a restaurant and a doorman, and I was a lobbyist in the daytime. I said, no, listen, I'm a lobbyist. I'm trying to convince the legislators, you know, it's part of. It's an intangible sale, but it's a sale. And I said, listen, you've been listening to me for two hours. I sold you, you know. And the guy said, no, I don't know. I said, listen, I'll tell you what. Just let me work here for free. And if I don't sell anything, you don't have to pay me. When I sell something, you can pay me. Guy said, okay, you want to do that, fine. So he said, I'll hire you. I went to go work for him, and then I got a job as a waiter in a restaurant at night to pay my rent. So I was working in the daytime trying to sell a jet, learning how to do it. And at night I was waiting tables, and it was quite humbling, you know, at 3 o', clock, I'm trying to sell some guy something for 2, 3, $4 million, which today is like 50 or $80 million. And then two hours later, this guy's yelling at me because I didn't fill his coffee cup. You know, it was, you know, it kept my reality check because, like, okay, you're a big shot trying to sell jets, but you're just selling jets. It's not your jet. You're not buying that jet. You're Just a salesman. So it kept me really in touch with reality. And I think that first step in my career has always sort of kept me grounded because I did start from nothing. And I appreciate every day. I mean, I knock on wood. I mean, I feel so lucky. But you know, nothing was really handed to me. It was all been from work.

And how long ago was that?

I was 23 years old. So that's 45 years ago.

Wow, you've been in the jet business 45 years?

Well, I started, then I left the industry because I met a guy who I sold three jets to in a helicopter. And he was a big corporate takeover in Wall Street. And it was in the early go go days of the 80s. And one day he said, you know, listen, I don't know what I want you to do for me, but come work for me, come work in this business and you could be my right hand guy and stop selling airplanes. Okay. I figured, you know, I've been selling airplanes for a while at that time and okay, I could sell more jets, but this is a different career opportunity and I could learn something new. I can always go back to selling planes. And so I decided, okay, I'm going to stop selling planes. And I went to work for him and doing corporate acquisitions and basically what they used to call private equity, they used to call it merchant banking. And so I did that for about 16 years. And so I left our business running parts of that business. And then eventually I decided to get back into my industry.

And why did you get back into the jet business?

I think, you know, I had a love of airplanes. I wanted to keep meeting so many different entrepreneurial CEOs of companies. It's something I knew well and it just, it was something that I grew up on and I just, I just felt it was my roots and what I should be doing. And so I, when I went to go back in, into the industry, the whole demographics of where jets were had changed. Because really from 1990 when let's say the wall came down in Germany and the cold war ended, you know, with Russia and you know, things changed a lot in the world. So before, 80% of all the jets were in the United States and 19% were in Europe and it was maybe 1% in every place else, that all changed. And all of a sudden places like Russia and China and Nigeria and India, places that never even had food on the supermarket shelves, became up and coming emerging frontier markets. And people were doing international business in oil and gas and agriculture and they were buying airplanes. So I was like, wow, there's some big opportunity in these international markets. So I figured, how do I get to see them? Because when it was 80% of the jets were in America. You can get on a plane, fly to see somebody and you can go be back at the end of the day. But you know, I believe in a lot of this face to face. And it couldn't happen when all these demographics change. So I couldn't really go to Russia and China. It was too expensive to do it. You go there, spend three days for a one hour meeting. It just wasn't feasible. So I just came up with this crazy idea. How do I build a showroom? How do I build something to get my clients to come and see me? And I talked to a few people in the industry about my idea of building a store, a shop to sell planes. And basically they all told me, go check into a psychiatric hospital. You've definitely fucking lost it. You just believe exactly why you did it. Yeah, exactly. I mean, listen, don't ever ask anybody to give you advice on something they've done. And most people, unfortunately, there's not that.

Many people in this business, is there?

No, there's definitely not many. But most people in general, human nature, unfortunately don't like to see other people succeed. It's really a sad thing.

Is that worse in the UK because you've obviously lived in America. Uk, we are worse, aren't we?

What we're grumpy European is. I don't want to get everybody mad at me here, but you can be.

Honest, I've always wanted to know this because I've always in business more resonated, certainly initially with the American mindset.

Well, listen, I think more people want to be generals than soldiers. And maybe in Europe, more people, more comfortable being soldiers in general. People in China, let's say, want to be generals. I don't know if that analogy is actually correct, but just people just keep challenging themselves more and are not worried about working 70 hours a week in America. In America or India or in China or, you know, there's, and just, you know, in some specific countries that, you know, there are people who just would like to work 35 hours and just cruise and have a good life. And are we more skeptical as Brits? I don't know, Maybe they just like to have more comfort.

You're being very diplomatic, you know.

Yeah, People, you know, everybody's different. You can't, yeah, you can't get, you can't expect anybody to be like you. And everybody's DNA is different. And, you know, maybe they're. Maybe they got it right. Maybe working 35 hours a week and going home with your family every day and having a nice life, maybe you can't buy as much and you can't do as many things, but you have a much better family life.

But why do those not want other people to be successful, though? Because that's where you started. Yeah.

Well, I mean, for example, let's say. I think. Let's say if you are in New York City or. And you see a guy driving by in a Ferrari, like, wow, man, that is so cool. You know, I gotta get one of those things. Or maybe in some of the European countries, I won't say which ones, but you might see a Ferrari drive by and like, why the hell does he have one? Why should he have a car like that? Or if they walk by it and they just take a key and go. You know, I mean, it's. And it's not everybody, but they're just, you know, it's just a general attitude. And sometimes, you know, they have it right, and sometimes the other people don't. But it's in your DNA. It's what your mindset is. It's what the adrenaline, which keeps you going. And some people want a chilled, relaxed life living in the countryside. And some people love this crazy go, go, go, go. Your stress level's high, and. And people are like, why would you want that life? And so, you know, people on one side say, how can you have that other side? And that other side says, how can you have that side? So it's not that one side is right or one side's better than the other. It's really what your mindset is.

I also. I don't know about you, but the people who always say you can't or you shouldn't or, you know, they're a bit negative on you, that actually motivates and inspires me. So I'm very grateful for those kind of people because they give me fuel.

Of course. Listen, look at the word that sits on this little purple box under your mic. Disruptors. So if you want to be a disruptor, you're not cruising. You're not working nine to five. You know, you have to come up with an idea that is a disruption that, you know, you want to break the mold. You want to do something different. And, you know, in order to. You have to have a different mindset. You're not working from nine to five. Yeah, but those people have maybe a better life than you do. They have less Stress, they're not losing their hair, then, you know, they're not going to the good doctor. They're not going to the doctors because of, you know, all these issues. They, you know, they're sitting back, going home, have a glass of wine with a nice dinner with their family and going to the movies. And you know what? Who's to say that's not the better life?

So I guess you don't then think that anyone can be an entrepreneur, do you?

No, no, no. It's, it's. Can you learn to be an entrepreneur? Okay, I don't think so. I think it's in your DNA. And you might not know you have that DNA and you might, it might erupt out of you and you don't even know you have it. Okay, but if you don't have it, first of all, being an entrepreneur is really the most loneliest job in the world. It is so tough. People just see some guy waking up in the morning and creating an app and now he's worth $10 billion. That's just so not reality. That is not reality. But that's what people read about, right? I mean, they say, wow, it's an overnight success. Yeah, but the guy had 2000 sleepless nights before he got that overnight success. And nobody hears about that or wants to know about that. They just like, wow, look at this person. Just made a whole bunch of money. So I just think that, you know, being an entrepreneur, you could be a CEO of a multi billion dollar company that came up from the ranks of, you know, a stock person and become an executive, and now you're CEO of a company with 100,000 employees. That person doesn't necessarily. Can't be an entrepreneur. Okay? An entrepreneur is really somebody, I think.

Well, they can leave, they can just resign.

Yeah, of course. Yeah, an entrepreneur. You can't just. You have a bad day, man, it doesn't matter. You can't sack yourself. You can't sack yourself and you gotta walk over dead bodies, man. You can never, ever give up, no matter how bad the day is. First of all, you can't share it with your partner in business or in life. You can't share it with your employees. You gotta have a smile on your face and you have to. Everything's great. You could be going bankrupt. And like, where am I gonna get my next dollar or pound from? You can't share it because you need everybody enthusiasm to continue. And you got to close the door and you're like, oh my God, how am I going to make it through the next day. It's terrible. It takes such stamina, tough skin. You can't be insulted by people. It's really tough. And you got to keep making calls and getting hung up on and making calls. It's tough.

So why do you still do it?

Because the satisfaction of when you succeed is just amazing. It's amazing.

So when you sell a jet, you still get a great buzz.

It is. It's actually anti climatic. Is it? Yeah.

So is it the chasing it?

That's the chase.

And when it's done, then there's the come down.

It's the chase. But you know what? It's anything in life. Anticipation is the real excitement of our life. Okay. The first time you're going to get a car, the first date you're gonna go on with your boyfriend or girlfriend. You know, when you get married, the anticipation of the event is so much better. It is.

It's like a holiday.

Yeah.

The holiday's always better before you go.

When you dream it, I mean, New Year's Eve, the build up to New Year's Eve and you're like, that's it. So anticipation is so keen and that's. And it lasts so much longer, of course, you know, and it gives you the drive and the push. The actual event. Great, man. What's next? And it's not as wow, push the button and spray the champagne. You feel elated. And actually the one thing I didn't like when I was a lobbyist on Capitol Hill is there are a lot of people working to change these laws. And when something happened in Congress or Senate or whatever like that, you never knew if you had anything to do with getting that accomplishment passed. So you never really had that pat on your own back. You never knew if you had something to do with. In this business, like in a lot of other business, when you get a deal done, man, you know it was because of you. And everybody needs to feel good about accomplishing something by themselves. Okay? You want to pat on your own back. It's great when people say great job, Steve, especially your boss or people around you, your family, it's fantastic. But you need to have your own feeling that you are doing something good to keep you going.

All this stuff about self worth and self love and all the things you can do and getting therapy and taking part and taking time out, but relating to what you said. Surely the greatest way to feel good about yourself is to do good, to be good, to win some shit. Is that not the best way to have good self worth?

100% man.

I mean, because you can't lie to yourself, can you? You can pretend, oh, I'm doing great. I'm happy because I was fifth and I'm, you know, getting therapy. Haven't you just got to win.

Energy doesn't lie, okay? Energy doesn't lie, okay? You can say any lie you want. People can lie to you, you can lie to them. But energy doesn't lie. And people read energy. I really think, you know, listen, when people go to these counselors, you know, marriage counselors, everyone I've known that ever went to one of these, I had to go to one. I mean, they just make it worse. I mean, they make you say stuff. Oh, you got to get this out on the table. No, you don't. You know, I mean, you're just going to throw, like, oil into fire, you know, I mean, and there's no coming back from. Once you say something, you can't take it back. You know, I really. Listen. I was brought up, you know, on the streets. Single mom, four kids. She worked two jobs her whole life. You wanted something done, you got to go out there and work for it and make the money, go buy something. You know, in the old days, they, you know, the teachers would slap you over your hands with the rulers and, you know, you get punched around in school today, it's like, you know, this whole woke thing is like, you know, you can't say hello the wrong way. You can't say, he, she. You can't say, you know, you look pretty today, miss. Because, you know, the sexual harassment, I mean, the world has gotten a little bit changed. And you think it's got soft. Well, it's softer than it was. But, you know, a lot of people think they need these protections in life. And, you know, it's just not the way I was brought up. And it's hard for me to adjust to something like that. They're brought up in that world, so maybe it's correct for them. But I just think it makes life tougher because, you know, you just can't brush off an insult and just move on. You take it more personal. You say it's not correct, it's not legal, and, you know, maybe that's the way the world is going. And I'm wrong. It's just not what I'm used to. And I'm just. I just was brought up. Brought up with a tougher skin, and you just get on with it. And in business, you just get on with it. And if you lose a deal, okay, you got punched in the face, you get up and you go again and you just. The other thing is it's hard to rely on, on other people because, you know, just most of the time people don't really do what they say they're going to do when they say they're going to do it. And it's, you know, you have to really rely on yourself. I'm not talking about your direct family. You know, you can trust them, they can do things they say, but just in life in general and business and socially, you know, people don't take their responsibilities as serious as maybe we used to in the past.

And growing up without a dad, how do you think that affected you? This recent budget should warn you that your pension is not safe and secure and they're coming for your inheritance. Do you even know how much is in your pension or where your pension is invested? Add to this the recent inheritance tax grab on your pensions and the risk of a market crash crash. You probably didn't know this and I didn't until recently, but physical gold can be added to your pension. Pot gold is inheritance tax free and has grown 700% in the last 20 years. You probably know from my content I'm investing heavily in silver and gold and that's why I've partnered with direct bullion. Myself and Nigel Farage are brand ambassadors and direct bullion can help you with gold to protect and grow your pension. I buy my gold and silver from direct bullion and I don't earn any money on any purchases of gold or silver if you buy direct from direct bullion. So if you go to robmore.directbullion.com you can get a great price on your silver and gold and you can get the pension Gold investing guide completely for free. As you know, I don't do many strategic partnerships and when I do, I do them with people who are credible, who've been doing it a long time, who invest in things that I invest into. And gold and silver's going wild. I'm investing heavily in gold and silver. I and I recommend you check out robmore.directbullion.com well, you know, I didn't feel.

Sorry for myself because I didn't know any better. I mean, a lot of my friends all had dads, but I said before, I mean, I started working when I was seven years old, I was sweeping floors in a beauty salon, okay, Even though it was a Friday and Saturday, you know, stuff like that. But I always worked and you know, from 7, 8, 9, 10 and my whole life. So I never really had time to say, oh, man, woe is me. I don't have a dad. My mother was working twice, you know, two jobs all the time. We were just trying to keep busy and take care of ourselves. So it just, you know, I have a different outlook of, you know, feeling sorry for people who had a more cushy upbringing. And I just, you know, you feel sorry for them or I don't have maybe the patience because I just think, you know, you really should just get on with it because if you feel sorry for yourself, you're sort of going backwards. And maybe you didn't have a good upbringing or a problematic life. And I know it's easier said than done, but try to look at the past is always going to make you go backwards or hold you back. I try not even to think of my past. I always, what am I going to do tomorrow? What am I going to do for my business? You know, I try not to look backwards and just. That's my solution to not feeling sorry for my past. Listen, I still. My mother worked two jobs her whole life. We were never without food. We always had a place to live, clothes on us, we had cars. I mean, we were not deprived a normal life in the sense of the term, but it was not an elaborate, luxurious life. But my mother was working all the time. We never really had a family around the house. So what we did, I worked. And I didn't think it was normal, but for me it was normal.

Someone else who's grown up without a dad, because a lot of people at the moment are saying that there's a lot of lost young men and that they really need a father figure. That's why they maybe really go for people like Jordan Peterson or Andrew Tate, because they can almost be that replacement father figure in some ways. What are your thoughts on that as someone who's experienced it?

You know, that's one thing about social media, you know, interacting with some of these younger kids. We've, we've had a lot of interns here. We're so full with interns. I just, you know, I'm packed up, we can't take any more. But I feel great that we can do anything to give them guidance or something to look at as a positive thing to go strive for. But I can see there's a lot of broken families because marriages, divorce rate is so high and there's a problem between the mother and father and the kid suffers from it, depending on how old they were when that happened. But, you know, again, I try to look at the glass half full and I said, listen, it made me tougher, it made me more ready to face the world by myself and go out there and get what I wanted. So I look at the negative turned into a positive and if you feel sorry for yourself, it never will turn into a positive because you're always going to feel sorry for yourself. It's a tough thing to mentally change in your head. But I think also if you get an opportunity or a job, don't think it's below you because something else will come out better from it. And maybe that's a problem today. People in younger generation sometimes think things should be given to them more and their normal job is to beneath them. And it's great to get into one of these things because you meet other people, you get some experience and then you find someplace else to take the next step. It's much better than doing nothing.

So as someone who doesn't feel sorry for themselves, is there a downside to that? Are you hard on yourself?

Yeah, I'm definitely hard on myself.

And is that hard sometimes beating yourself up a lot? Yeah, because I do that 158 times a day.

Yeah, but, but that's me. I mean again, if I feel sorry for myself, what's that going to accomplish? Nobody wants to hear it. Nobody cares. And by the way, everybody always is. You know, especially with social media, they're trying to put on an image to get their friends to think that they are more than what they really are. You know, you have a bigger house, a better car, a better job, you're richer or poor, I don't know, whatever. People try to promote something more to give that image of people around you thinking of you. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. You're doing it for your own self. And what happens is you get yourself into a spiral. You get yourself in too much debt, you get too much responsibility you can't handle. You spread yourself too thin, can't live up to you can't live up to that hype and then you know, crash and burn it. And you know, you are who you are. People should like you for who you are. And if they don't, then they shouldn't be your friends.

Amen. So back to the jet business. So you're 16 years in private equity. So how did you start your first jet business? Did you self fund? Did you raise some equity from the contacts you'd built? How did you start your own jet business?

Well, in those years of being in the private equity world, I was saving up money and Then I started just doing a few airplane deals here, like the normal people do from the cell phone and trying to do some deals.

So I started getting quite low overhead. Is there because you could just broke it.

Yeah. Working out of my house, my apartment, and trying to do a deal here and there. And then I came up with this idea and I figured, you know what? I really want to do this showroom idea. And then I met Lisa here in London, who's really. I just got done with my divorce. I met her. It was amazing. And I said, you know what? I'm going to start my business here in London. And I had this devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, like, yeah, go do it. And the other one's don't do it. Yeah, do it. Don't do it. And I was so torn. Do I really want to jump into this entrepreneur, you know, vat of, you know, boiling water? Because I wanted to do. I was so convinced this idea would work, but it's never been done and. And should I do it? Shouldn't do it. And then one day I found this location, the one I was at before.

Here, which is just over the road there.

Yeah. Just on the side of High Park Corner. And like, this is it. It just. The light bulb just went off and I said, I'm going for it, man. And once I flip that switch, that I'm going for it. I am not looking back. I just went. Threw myself right in. And if I lose it all, I lose whatever money I saved. I don't care. I'm, you know, I was 55 years old. I'm going for it.

So you started your own business at 55. So all those people that say they're.

Too old, you started it at 55 today. You know, with Internet, you could be nine years old, as you know. Okay. And you could be 69 years old. I mean, it's. Now it's so much easier if you really want to go get a product. I mean, some people are just finding something on ebay and buying it for £5 and going someplace else and selling for £6. That's a business. Okay. You know, people are doing. On social media, they're promoting this kind of, you know, get followers, whatever. Today. I think it's so much. You don't need an infrastructure, you don't need a building, you don't need employees. You know, everything. And with AI, man, you get all the help you want. Ask it a question will give you the answer. So there's no excuse today for not starting Your own business because you don't have the money.

So you sell some really expensive stuff. Take us through the process of how you sell a jet.

Well, it takes many, many years of building that network because the network is key. You know, you have to get to know people who have these assets and you have to convince them to give it to you to sell for them, or if somebody's looking to buy, to buy from you. So you have to build that reputation that you know what you're talking about. And when you call them, they take your call or somebody else refers you to them. And that relationship is so important because you can call somebody on the phone, as these guys will tell you, time and time, every couple months for a year or two years. And maybe you have that telephone relationship you build, but it's a special kind of relationship. And sometimes the chemistry works with somebody on the telephone, sometimes it doesn't. The same thing happens face to face with people. There's an energy that connects or doesn't connect. So once you have one end of that deal, you either control the buyer or control the seller. Then it's more easy to go find the other side. So the key is trying to find the foundation of the deal. If you're selling an airplane, get an airplane listed, you control it now, you start marketing it and you wait for people to come to you to buy that airplane. At the same time, you are doing a guerrilla marketing and, and calling people who have the airplane model that's maybe one or two levels below, seeing if they're looking to upgrade to your airplane.

And you call that guerrilla marketing.

Guerrilla marketing starting from the ground up, right? The easy way is putting an ad in a magazine and waiting for people to call or something on the web or something like that. But guerrilla marketing is actually making those cold calls. If you're looking at selling this level three jet, start with the level one guys and call them and say, hey, you can to change in the next six months, a year. And sometimes maybe I'm not, but the guy in the hangar might be looking, or do you know this guy? And if you make enough calls, you'll find that needle in the haystack. If you just stay home and never go to meet anybody, nothing's ever going to happen. But if you go out to enough restaurant, bars, parties, events, shit happens. I mean, you will meet somebody who will know somebody or need you to do something, or you give you a piece of information that will give you an opportunity somewhere else. You need to be out there. And it's the Same thing with sales. You need to be out there. You need to be promoting yourself. You need to be promoting your product. And sometimes you're promoting something else, and the answer to a different question comes to you. So we might be working on 10 or 15 deals at one time, and another new opportunity comes just by calling on another deal. And then you have to take that little seed and then grow that to a plant. So it's the people you're dealing with, though, really know their stuff from the technical standpoint. And then the principals that you're dealing with are the CEOs of these big corporations. You know, like I said before, they're powerful people, and you can't bullshit them. And you have to be sincere in what you're telling them. And they'll feel that. They'll feel that in your voice, and they'll know if you're trying to hustle them or if you're really telling them the truth. That's one of the key things to a good deal, is get them to feel that they could trust you.

So do you think a lot of more modern companies, maybe in the last 10 or 15 years with social media, they've lost that personal touch?

Yeah, because a lot of people just do something without actually. This is what you and me. Yeah. We do this. Okay. Even if we did this on a zoom.

Not the same.

It's not the same thing.

Not the same.

And if we did this on a telephone call, forget it. I mean, it's. It's, you know, apples and oranges, so face to face. And that's what the whole reasoning for putting a showroom together. You know, this isn't just a showroom. Yeah.

You're allowed. You're allowed to get your ego out. Here we are sat in a fuselage, aren't we?

A fuselage of an Airbus 319. The same airplane, basically. You fly around an EasyJet. This is the airplane.

Well, slightly nicer leather.

Yeah, it's a little bit nicer. But, you know, the key about this showroom is, you know, the airplane is to grab their eye outside.

Yeah.

Once you get their attention, they come in. Well, now what do you do with them? So, you know, you need technology, because today, if you don't have a piece of glass with your finger going back and forth on it, you know, nobody has interest. So once you get them in here, you have the technology. But when you have the technology, you need the data. So it's really the combination of these three things, and you put them all together in an environment that they're comfortable in. And that was the idea behind the showroom.

Wow. So has anyone ever walked in off the street and ended up buying a jet off you?

Yes, definitely. More than one time.

That's kind of cool.

Yeah, that was. It's happened a lot of times. They will come in, and then we'll get them to sign a mandate to represent them to go buy or sell. It's not that they just walk in and said, I want to buy a jet today. Here's my credit card.

But they've walked past, stopped, no appointment, walked in and ended up buying a jet off you?

Yes, yes, many times.

Wow.

And I can tell you of some of the people who have been in this showroom. You'd be surprised. They're really some special people. I mean, powerful people, wealthy people, government officials, celebrities, sports figures. I mean, you name it, we've had people in here.

And is there anyone you can name? There must be someone.

Well, one guy is Tony Robbins. Okay. He's the motivational life.

He got me into this world.

Yeah. So he. I could say him because. Because he talks about owning his own jet, you know, in his. In his seminars and shows and things.

Yeah. And has Grant bought off you? Grant Cardone?

No. I tried with granted. Yeah. He actually called me up 10 days before New Year's. One year, like six years ago. Yeah. I need to buy a jet. I want to buy this jet, Steve, before next week. And I said, you can't do that. And I said, you know, you got to do an inspection. You got to do a contract. No, no, you can do it. I said, you can't do it. You shouldn't do that. And lo and behold, the son of a bitch called up Gulfstream. He said, I just sent you $40 million to your bank account. Make sure I have an airplane by next Friday. They delivered him an airplane by Friday to close so that he had the tax benefit at the end of the year, and then he leased it back to him for the next, I don't know, whatever, six or eight months so that he can.

Wow. How'd you feel about that?

I felt like a schmuck. I felt like an idiot. I mean, I.

But you said the great thing about being an entrepreneur is you learn every day.

Yeah, but I still. Gulfstream could do that deal because they had an airplane. It was a demonstrator. They sold it to them, leased it back. I couldn't get the deal done. It just wasn't. You know, I could have sold him something, but, you know, it wouldn't have been the right thing to do because you still need to do the inspection and. But he ended up figuring it out. Yeah, he's an entrepreneur. He figured out, I'm gonna go buy an airplane. I'm gonna figure out how I can solve my solution. He figured it out.

Yeah. What about someone kind of more mainstream famous who's bought off you? Everyone wants to know this. I know, I respect, I respect. I don't like pushing this stuff, so I respect your confidentiality. But there must be someone who flaunts it everywhere or has given you permission.

They don't flaunt. These people don't flaunt because. Because unfortunately, it's, you know, it's the have and have nots kind of thing. And, you know, if you live by the sword, you die by the sword, and the media will come and they'll attack. And it's just people don't like to talk about owning their airplane. Some of them don't put that brand right across, you know, somebody who I tried to sell an airplane to, I didn't get it done, was Floyd Mayweather.

Right.

Okay. So I try. And he has it plastered on the side of his airplane. I can say that, you know.

Yeah, he's been on the show, actually. Okay.

So, you know, he flies that airplane around like crazy, man. He really uses that thing. But again, these are people who, you know, earn their own money. They don't have to, you know, listen to, you know, shareholders or public equities or the media. They've. They have built themselves on, you know, getting that following. So, you know, those are. That's a different kind of user than the big corporation which has 27, you know, regional offices or factories and 2 million employees and has to go around and see their companies everywhere and see clients and things like that. So. But all the big, major fortune, thousand companies all have jets. Yeah. I mean, 94 of them.

Wow. So some people have walked past here on Park Lane and come in and end up buying a jet. Has anyone bought a jet or inquired from your new social media explosion?

Yes, we've actually sold a few jets.

Wow.

From social media.

That's where they found out about you first. On a Tick Tock or Instagram or something like that.

Yeah.

Did you ever think that would happen?

No. But again, it was a pleasant surprise. And some of it, you know, we did it through people calling us and finding us from it. Some of us trolling through the social media.

Scrolling. Not trolling, no, trolling.

Trolling through people who are following, you know, you and then contacting them and seeing Kareem did one right there. Yeah. He went through social media and found a guy who was posting on his airplane and things and he contacted him and sold him a plane.

Perfect first one.

We can say that, Steve. Yeah, yeah.

But no marketing costs, no ads.

No, but it proved that, you know, this. There is a. Again, it's not guerrilla marketing, but it is a little bit, you know, you're trying to find any place. How do you find the customer?

Yeah.

So if you go on, you know, social media and find somebody. There's a lot of people who post in airplanes, but they're usually not the owners. They're the ones who are renting airplanes and they're posting. They're chartering a plane. But it's rare. You see the people who own jets are posting on the jet. But he found one.

Nice. Love the hustle. We do some quick fire rounds on this show. We do two. So this one's designed to be slightly more fun. So the first thing is, has anyone tried to offer to buy a jet.

For cash off you in the early days? I did have one instance.

Did you sell?

We. I had a guy was. It was a turboprop, twin turboprop airplane. He wanted to lease it for a year. And it was so funny because we were going to see the airplane with this guy and he was telling me that he was in the lobster business based out of Miami, and he was picking up a lot of lobsters from the Caribbean islands.

Did that raise any alarm bells?

That was interesting, you know, and one day I says, you know, I don't think that story is going to help, but, you know, listen, if you want to lease the airplane, we can go see the airplane. And maybe, you know, if they don't have a credit, maybe you pay, you know, for the payments up front or something like that. So I went with him in this airplane and to go see, this is my early, early days in my 20s. And we went and looked at the airplane and he said, you know, we left and we're flying back. He said, yeah. He goes, he goes, I want to lease the airplane. I'll pay for a full year's lease up front. I said, okay, great. I said, so send me the money. He goes, no, no. And he, he's flying his airplane, right? He reaches back, literally, and he pulls out a briefcase in the backseat and he gives it to me. I says, what's this? He goes, that's the lease payments file. What are you talking about? And I opened it up and it was just Piles of cash in there. Piles of cash. I'm like, what do you want me to do? You want me to count this? I mean, really. I mean, are you crazy? And he said, no, no. I said, I can't give them this cash. I said, we can't do that. Put this bang, wire transfer money. You got to sign a lease with the company, you got to send the money to the. I swear I can't do this. You know, anyway, it's funny. They did the deal, they wired the money, six months later, they found the airplane crashed in the Colombian forest. The airplane was crashed.

So you've never.

Yeah, I was like 26 years old or something like that.

Do you think it's a bit of a shame that we may end up being in a cashless society, or does it not bother you because you don't deal in cash?

Yeah, I mean, listen, it's difficult now to pay for anything big ticket item even, no matter how legitimate it is. The know, your client Kyc kind of stuff, you know, the background checks, the due diligence, it's gotten to be so out of control. Much more so, you know, here in Europe or in Asia or in Africa, in the United States, it's a little bit easier within the different banks and everything like that. So it's become. This is why people are pushing for crypto and things like that, because it's hard for the legitimate businesses to actually get money flowing to place to place. Yeah, I mean, cashless is a problem. You know, people still live on tips and, you know, you always want to pay for little things and, you know, just putting on a card all the time. Again, the younger generation is used to just tapping, tapping, tapping with a card. But, you know, we're used to tipping people or paying cash for certain things. So it's just adjusting and adapting.

Yeah. Has anyone tried to buy a jet from you with cryptocurrency?

Yeah, there's been a couple, but we haven't been successful. But I think it's coming around that you, you can get a company who will take the crypto and convert it to cash and pay the seller. So we could facilitate it now if we really found that buyer who wanted to do that. Obviously there's a percentage that gets charged by the person who's going to change it to dollars.

But do you foresee a future where you receive payment for a jet in crypto?

Yes. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it's going to happen.

Does that excite you, the evolution of money like that?

I think, you know, this whole thing, even with, what do they call blockchain? Okay. Eventually, you know, like in houses, you know, you're going to get all the documentation when these places are born, you know, when a building is built or an airplane is built, and all the maintenance records and log books and everything goes onto a blockchain so it's confirmed.

And papers on a watch, for example, that would be very useful if it was an nft, because as soon as sometimes I started to go off on a random. But obviously they say London is really bad for your watches. And I don't really wear them in London. But surely you could have a sort of tracking device in it that can link to your nft. Digital ownership surely would make them harder to steal.

Yeah, I agree with you. And theft has gotten to be really out of hand today. Whether it's financial debt hacking into your system, whether it's stealing your watch or. Yeah, people just can't walk the streets now.

Have you ever had anything stolen off you on the streets in London?

We got robbed three weeks ago in Paddington.

What, as in.

As in we turned around to go pay for the ticket to get on the Heathrow Express. And as it turned around, they took the wheelie and my briefcase and it was gone. Didn't even know it was gone, really. Laptops, credit card, cash, jewelry, passport, gone.

And did the police care?

They looked at the videos, cameras. They see who did it, they know who did it. And they won't show me the video because it's against GDPR rules. Okay? Privacy rules. I'm like, excuse me, why can't I see? And they're like, no, because if you actually see the person and you go and try to find the guy and it's not the right person, we can get in trouble. I said, yeah, but what if I find the right guy? You know? And we finally. After a couple weeks, we got. They finally went to the person's house, but the guy moved out a year ago. That's how current their information was. So it's gone. But yeah, it was really feeling violated. I mean, you know, not raped, but I mean, for a month you really had this weird feeling in you because.

I guess then that puts you on edge all the time.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah. That sucks. What's a day in the life of a private jet seller? You did a great video on this. I saw that.

Yeah. I mean, listen, sometimes they're really exciting and we got a lot of stuff going on and people coming in and there's calls and there's deals going on and you're with lawyers, you're with the principals. I look at my phone someday and I'm like really? I talk to these people. I'm just this kid from New York and New Jersey. I mean how do I. So some days are super, super exciting and they're better when you're making progress on deals and sometimes you have to go out to a meeting with somebody but with the showroom most of the time we got people coming here so we're lucky about that. So I think a typical day is really I get in here early in the morning.

What time?

Sometimes it's seven and I start just going through emails and I read some things and try to catch up on stuff and call people whether it's in Asia or Middle east or time zone wise. And the team shows up around 8:39 o'clock and then we start reviewing because sometimes they had things change from last night since they left the office. And we update each other on some progress on certain transactions. Sometimes people will walk in here. Sometimes we'll do a social media capture. We'll have a staff meeting of who's working on what transactions. We're trying to move a deal along whether it's a letter of intent, a purchase agreement coordinating airplanes being inspected or we have to go out to the airport to go see an airplane that comes through London. We're trying to get a mandate from a buyer or a seller. It's really, it's a pretty busy day and I'm usually here until I go to dinner 8:30, 9:00 clock at night.

And you like the variety there?

Yeah, of course. I mean it makes, it takes away any boredom in your day. Sometimes I end up day with very very stressed and sometimes very satisfied, sometimes very happy. I always try to walk out happy even though maybe things weren't going as well as they should. But you go out at night where Lisa and I we go out, we entertain a lot so takes my mind off it every night.

So is there anyone you wouldn't sell a private jet to?

Yeah, there's been a few, very small number but a few people who just wouldn't pass a kyc a know your client kind of thing, you know, a political kind of person or somebody. Today obviously you can't do business with anybody who's sanctioned. You can't even talk to them.

Would you be ever like Ferrari? You know, so Ferrari they'll be banish a famous client if they upgrade the exhaust on the car or anything like that. You're not like that?

No no, no. You're gonna spend that much money on an airplane, you can do whatever hell you want to and I can help you do it. That's their asset. No, no, we don't. Everybody likes to have their own little stamp personalization on an airplane. But the funny thing is always people ask me what's the craziest thing people have done to their airplanes? And it's actually a boring answer. I mean, you know, you look at this airplane here, it's pretty boring. It's a contemporary looking, you know, you're going to sit on this thing for 10 hours looking at these walls. You can't get up and go into another room. Most people don't make it look garish or ugly or of course, money doesn't buy taste. Sometimes they think they make it look beautiful and it doesn't. But nobody does anything really, really crazy in these airplanes.

No. Okay, next one on the quick fire is what's the weirdest deal you've ever done or the weirdest client engagement you've had?

Well, wow, weird. I mean, dealing with different nationalities, I won't say which ones. They just don't think the way we think. Western civilization. And sometimes you're ready to pull your hair out. You. There's no logic in what they're saying, but to them it's. I don't know if the word is logical, but what they're doing is normal and you can really pull your hair out.

No one's tried to buy one. No money down or some, you know.

Listen, in the old days I used to say we get some real weirdos who call us. Really, we get weirdos. And some of them, of course, right off the bat, you know, it's a waste of time. Some of them sounds like a 12 year old and they're trying to pretend they're an adult. I want to buy a jet, you know. But there's sometimes these adults and they will take you to negotiating on a letter of intent. They'll even get a lawyer to get engaged. And there's nothing behind it. There's nothing. And it's so funny, I used to say when we were in the earlier days, I think we had an office next to a psychiatric hospital and they used to give each patient a roll of quarters and say, go out and make some phone calls and pretend you're going to buy a plane. It's just the weirdest thing. And I don't know what they get out of these things.

Do you ever call them out? Do you ever say what you're Doing?

Oh yeah, of course. But I mean that's the same thing I say on social media. We have a lot of our platforms that people are copying and changing a letter, you know, and then and copying the videos or things and putting it on. Like what benefit are they getting at it? I don't understand it. But just people, I don't know, they just don't have too much free time on their hands or they're bored. They want to feel good about themselves that they're pretending they're buying a jet even though they will never buy one. I don't know, it's very weird. We've dealt with so many weirdos. Sometimes you have a laugh at it, you know, and then you.

Well, how else do you deal with.

It unless you laugh at it, you know. And sometimes, you know, if they're really a weirdo, the guys start listening in and you play them up and see how far they'll go.

Ah, so if it's a quiet day, you might have a bit of fun. Yeah. My friend Carl Hartley, who's got Hartley cars, they've obviously get a similar thing but they have had 15 year olds or 16 year olds phone up and they have bought supercars. Have you ever had someone that surprised you that was really young or you just thought this person's never going to buy and they did.

Well, the thing is a lot of these younger people have wealthy parents.

Right.

And so you sort of have to listen to them.

Yeah.

And again, you can ask certain questions. You can like what? Qualify them. You know, just two plus two has to equal four. Okay. And he just in a roundabout way, if you start, if they know a lot about airplanes, that's pretty impressive. Okay. You ask them about, you know, who they're, what their company is or who their parents are or where the money's coming from. You know, they have to come up with the logical answers and the other guys are, you know, checking to see if what they're saying is true.

So they'll be in the background live just doing the checks.

Yeah, yeah. And. But you know, most of the time we give the people the benefit of the doubt because you want to believe obviously that you're. That people are good natured and mean. Well, you know, you don't want to go through life thinking everybody's just a scammer that's going to be a miserable life.

But you don't want to get your time wasted all day.

Exactly. So sometimes we just don't have as much time available to give to these people.

Yeah.

And so you have to be a little bit more short. Yeah.

What's the secret you've never shared or a story you've never told?

Most stories I've told is that a secret never shared I probably will never share.

Unfortunately. That's a good answer. But let me do my job and push you something, or at least something you've never shared on a show like this.

I mean, not a secret, but, you know, like an event or something where, you know, on an airplane where the pilots, you know, they just. If you're successful in your job, sometimes, you know, the pilots that are flying you to show the plane to the customer are going to be fired. Right. So you're not their friend. Right. Oh, wow.

I'd never thought of that.

Yeah. So. So people who are selling their airplane are either doing two things. They don't have the money and they're getting rid of the airplane, or they're moving up to another plane, a better plane. Right.

So pilots flying the plane knowing that they're losing their job. Yeah, I'd never thought of that. So how do they act?

Well, they try to be nice. Sometimes they're blatantly not. But, I mean, in my early days, I was in a jet one time, and I'm sitting in the back not thinking about what I just told you, you know, having a drink, and they, like, turn around and look at me and say, hey, Steve, have you ever done a roll in one of these planes? Like, oh, yeah, sure, sure. And the guy literally flipped the jet, flipped it completely upside down and back around again. You know, it's like I had a drink in my head and I was like, holy shit. Then the guy. You ever see how fast we can go from 41,000ft to 9,000ft? And, you know, he pulls the power and just dive bombs the thing down. Your ears are, like, ready to blow out of your head, and you can't hear anything for three days. I mean, there's been a lot of instances in the early days where, you know, there's a leak in the door seal or something because they just didn't fix something. This doesn't happen now today, but these are the early days of the cowboys in this industry.

Wow. But I'm glad I pushed. That's quite a good story.

So. But there's not a naughty story or anything or.

There might be and you're not telling me.

Yeah, well, you got it. Mystery. Sometimes it gives a little more intrigue.

It does, but I have to do my job.

I know, right?

So I've Got one more question and then it's the final quick fire, the disruptive round. So my final question of the main discussion is about the uk. So you're American, you've lived here. A lot of the people I speak to, I interview my friends, they're kind of over the uk. A lot of them are leaving. My friend just went to Monaco. He's in the top 500 wealthiest people in Britain. He said they have like 50, 60 ongoing investigations on him all the time. They're just always trying to get money out of him. He knows someone super rich in Monaco was going to come back and they wanted to charge him 50 million to come back to the country was born in. How are you feeling about the state of the uk?

Well, not positive. You know, ever since Brexit really there's been an exodus of these wealthy people, entrepreneurs kind of people. I don't know if you are a big reader of books or nonfiction. Basically there was a book written in 1957, my favorite book, it's called Atlas Shrugged. It's by a woman named Ann Rand. And it's basically a fictional story about altruism against capitalism. Everything you should give to the state. And eventually these entrepreneurs, these people with intellectual property, the corporate executives, I can't give everything away cheaper and for free. And you need to have some benefits and eventually these people will just disappear. And if you lose all those people, you know, the infrastructure will just, you know, collapse because there's nobody creating new just they're siphoning off the bottom. And I just, you know, you know, from Brexit, you know you had Brexit, you know, you have stamp duty, you have inheritance tax, you have taking away VAT refunds, you have non dom status being, you know, cut off, you have, I mean, I can go on and on and on, but it's just, it's chipping away, it's peeling away this, you know, layers of the onion. And at the end of the day there's just, you know, there's just so many people who will just say, you know, okay, England's my place, my life, I love it here. But sometimes you just push them over the ledge. And it's not maybe one individual thing, it's the combination of things. So I mean, listen, for the time being I'm here, but I see a big difference in the number of people and the kind of people who are coming through here. Because the people who have left and there are thousands and thousands of them, you know, they can only come here maybe 90 days depending on what they own here and stuff like that. And, you know, eventually they just build life's other places. They don't even come back to 90 days. So I just don't. You know, I would think the best way to do, which would never ever happen, is make this a tax haven for the wealthy. Then let them come here and spend their money and build businesses here, hire people which pay taxes and, you know, build homes and infrastructure and things like that. Rather than, you know, tax them to death and chase them away because, you know, it's. They feel, they just. They're overpaying and they're not getting something in return. So, you know, okay, now this week you're getting the election and it looks like labor's gonna win. Who knows if it's gonna be better or worse.

They're not gonna bring all the rich back, are they?

Yeah, well, not by history. So, you know, people are sad to see this kind of thing happen because this is an amazing city, I mean, amazing country. But this, you know, London was such a mix of every race, color, creed, religion, sex. It was just. Everybody just got along. And that's what made London so special. All of these cultures coming together and nobody giving a damn about what country you come from, what religion, you know, what race, what sex. Everybody just loved being here and it was just a brainiac place and it just. It sort of lost. It felt like it's lost that a little bit. And, you know, the government just keeps on trying to do things to get more votes and at the peril of, you know, chasing away people who are adding value to the country.

So do you think that's the fundamental reason why they're refusing? Because to me, it just seems so obvious. Give incentives to people who bring economy into your country and that lifts the economy. Is that not the most obvious thing ever? And for anyone who can afford a private jet, they land the private jet in your airport and they hire security in your country and they hire cars and they stay in hotels in your. And all of a sudden all this money flows in. Why does no one in government get this? Is it purely because that's an unpopular vote?

Yes, exactly. That's exactly because people hate the rich here. Yeah, exactly. But the fact that I. Listen this simple thing. I was talking to one of the executives of the Conservative Party. Why do you disincentivize companies or wealthy people from bringing money into the UK and spending it? I say we don't. Yes, you do.

You tell them so they don't even think they.

No, they don't. Even think they do, I say, but you tell them you before when you had the non dom status, you can make as much money as you want around the world. You pay your whatever, 100,000 a year here and as long as you don't bring the money into the uk, you won't get taxed on it. Who thought of this concept? Why don't you say bring as much money as you want in here? If you buy something, you pay vat, you hire people, they pay taxes. I mean that's a logic nobody understands in the business world how you can think the opposite. It makes no sense. And you see it happening and you see some of these small towns falling apart, nobody's investing in them. In America you see some cities that are just going to waste, you know, that are because of these issues of being too sort of left wing and you know, letting people steal and not prosecuting, you know, it's, people know I'm going to rob you, no problem. They're going to arrest me tomorrow, I'm going to be back home. There's no violation that gets, you know, serious enough to scare people into not doing them. So it's a combination of different things and it's just unfortunately just not getting better. And it's too bad because the city architecture, the history, the restaurants, the clubs, it's still an amazing, amazing place. I love it. We got a great social life here still. Our business here thrives because we get people who come and go out of here. But the people who live, live here are definitely, you know, a lot of.

Them have gone, well, thanks for being open about that because I think if more of us talk about it, I sit on the. Sometimes I think you have to speak up about these things because if you stay silent on it and everyone does, you're sort of implicit and nothing will change. And then I think I speak up on it, get distracted about it. I can't do anything about it. I should just focus on my business. And I'm sort of, I feel stuck between the two.

Yeah, yeah, you know, you could be a catch 22 side of situation. But you know, listen, you can have your own opinion, but you can't make up your own facts. And you know, you can tell anybody what you think, what you think, but facts are facts. You look at statistics, I mean, it's clear what's happening.

Well, the rich people are leaving.

Yeah, we're not just rich, not just rich people, but corporations. Yeah, corporations are taking them with Brexit. Okay. I mean, just think, I mean all the people who you want working in restaurants, chefs, waiters in hotels. Okay. All these people, you know, a lot of people don't want those jobs. And these people from Eastern central Europe, these people love these kind of things. And they're so good at it. They want to come here and do this. They can't get in, you know, so the companies that are still here, they can't really even staff their businesses. The corporations, the big corporations. Why are you going to invest big money here if, you know, you can't bring people in to work for you? Because not just English people are. That's what England was about. London's about all the, you know, the mix of talent. So if the people can't come here and work, you know, then you're not going to start a business here. There's a lot of banking kind of businesses that. Left.

Right, Final round. The disruptors round. Okay, so first question is, what's the most dis. Disruptive thing you've ever done?

Built this showroom.

Can we have a little tour? In a minute. Is that all right?

Yeah, sure, sure.

So maybe we can get that on the visuals.

Yeah.

I mean, you've put a fuselage in here, and that screen is something else out there.

Yeah. What we. The app we have on there to take people through a process of how to, you know, buy the right airplane. You know, a lot of people, they think they know what they want, but they really don't know the gamut of choices.

So you're able to show them?

Yes. And when you get a very successful, strong, powered, wealthy executive, you can't tell them you don't know what you're talking about, but you can show them that they don't know what they're talking about. And by doing that process, they start understanding. Wow, I didn't know that. I didn't know this. This is interesting. And they start engaging a different way because they see you're helping them and you're not throwing it in their face like, ha, ha, ha, I got you. You're really trying to help them so they realize that, and it makes them more open, and it makes the process much more simple.

What's the biggest risk you've ever taken?

I could say again, opening the showroom, you know, that late in life and, you know, putting everything all on red or black.

You went all in, did you?

Yeah, I could have went bankrupt with.

Really?

Didn't succeed for sure.

And did your. Were you with your current partner then.

Or were you with your ex at the beginning? I was right at the beginning.

Did you tell her you've gone all in?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She knew?

Yeah.

And she backed you?

Yeah. Well, she. Yeah, she. I moved here for her. Right. You know, so that you had some credit. I already put all in. I moved here.

Yeah.

And then I started my business here. So, you know, thank goodness, after 15 years, we're still just as happy, if not happier than we started, so that worked out well. And so, you know, you got to take risks in life, man, you know, and if you lose, okay, like I said, you brush yourself off and get up and start again.

Yeah. What's the most disruptive thing anyone's ever said or done to you?

Disruptive? Wow. I don't know. That's a tough one. I mean, we've had a lot of transactions that you've taken all the way through the, you know, romancing and dating and foreplay and ready for the clothes, and it's like, changed my mind. Goodbye. It happens a lot. Not a lot. It's happened a lot. And as tough as your skin is, man, it still. It affects you.

And how long can that process take? Days, weeks?

Sometimes you're working on a transaction for a year or two, sometimes it's a month. That's still a long time, right up to the line. And, I mean, I've had a transaction where we've signed the contract, they put up a deposit, and we're going to go for the inspection, okay? And he called, this happened just recently, and he called me up and said, hey, you know, I talked to my accountant, and, you know, I have a. Have a big tax recapture. I've changed my mind. I don't want to buy it, and I'll walk away from my deposit. I know I have to, but that's life, okay? That's it. Gone. I get zero. The people that were doing the deal with them got the money, and, you know, we're out of pocket. We've had times where you get on a closing call, you've done the demonstration, the inspection, the contracts, everything is done. You get on a closing call with the buyer's lawyer, the seller's lawyer, and the escrow agent, and the buyer's lawyer gets on the phone and says, thank you all for joining for this closing call, but my clients have decided not to go forward with this transaction. So we know we're going to lose the deposit, but we're ready to do that. So really, there's no more sense to stay on this phone call. Thank you all very much for your time. Goodbye. Click. I'm Feeling that now, I'm telling you, it is terrible. I mean, you know, when you're. You know, when you do that kind of deal and you've been working on it for so long, I mean, you're thinking about, what am I doing with that commission? You know, you've already spent it in your head, right? You're, you know, I'm gonna buy this, I'm gonna buy that. I'm gonna put a deposit on this. You know it's there, right? You could touch it, feel it, and boom. And then you just pull that carpet out from under you and it's. It's like ripping your heart out. Yeah, it's tough.

Ouch.

I feel you there.

What's your most brutal life lesson?

Oh, man. Divorce.

Was it? We actually. We've got this really viral at the moment, Divorce Lawyer. He's coming on our show. He's got some cool stories. Was that was expensive? Was it hard?

It was really hard, but you know the day. And it's sort of like in business. Okay. It's really hard to make that decision, say, but one real lesson I've learned in life, man, cut your losses as soon as you can and move on with your life. Whether it's business, whether it's personal, whatever, it is really tough to really cut that loss and say, you know what? Take your ego out of it again. Like I said before, you cut your loss, man. Take that burden off your shoulders, that negative energy dragging you down, and, man, just wake up the next day and start again. And that's gone behind you. It takes such a heavy load off you. You feel so much better. And it's not as painful after you did it. It's writing that check, signing that deal, that. Whatever it is, okay, Signing, get it off. Forget it. The next day, man, you're so happy. You're so happy and relieved, really. So the biggest thing you can ever learn, man, just cut your losses as early as you can and move on with life. I mean, my divorce, man, I'm the happiest guy in the world right now.

Wow. What's the best advice you ever remember receiving?

Don't give up. I mean, that's. It's easy to say. It's really easy to say, but just don't take no for an answer. Don't give up. Don't care what people say. Don't do this, don't do that. It's never going to work. Listen to your gut. Listen to what your best feeling is. Maybe it doesn't work out, but your best life Lessons come from an experience and not from a dream.

And the worst advice you ever remember receiving.

Go all in with a lawsuit.

Did you?

And go all in with a lawsuit, did you? Yeah.

Is this the divorce?

No, no, it was many, many, many years ago. Yeah. Before I came to the uk.

Yeah.

And before I had the showroom.

And what happened?

It's just, you know, just. It just takes so much energy out of you. You know, it's just.

And it's a bottomless pit financially as well as.

It never ends. Exactly. And it just. It. You know, nobody likes to just give up and say, fine, you know, I was right anyway. You know, nobody wants to do that. But it was, you know. You know, I should have, would have, could have kind of thing. You look back. But you know what I learned from it, and I think I did. And, you know, you gotta just take the life lesson. It was an expensive lesson, but, you know, that's. Life goes on.

So even if you're right about something now, do you now have the ability to walk away? And even if you're right, fine. And you could just walk away, you're.

Not principal 95% of the time, yes. Right. Don't say a hundred, but 95% of the time, yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's always that, you know, but yeah.

Yeah. I remember seeing something Keanu Reeves said. He says, at my stage in life, if someone says two plus two equals five, they're right. And I kind of like that.

Yeah. Again, like I said before, you can make up your, you know, you can have your own opinion, you can't have your own facts. So. But the fact of the matter is, is that kind of a thing, you know, that's not. Has nothing to do with opinion, facts, who's right, who's wrong. It's like, where's this? What rabbit hole is this gonna take me down? Do I really want to do that? You know, where in my life am I? You know what? Just to prove a point, what's the point? You know, just take it on the jaw and just move on. And tomorrow you're gonna forget about it.

So would you rather have 10 million engaged followers on your wildly viral social media right now or 10 million cash, which is clean?

Give me the cash.

Why the cash? Surely you can make more than 10 million out of 10 million followers.

Well, yeah. How many of those 10 million followers are really gonna make the money for you? And, you know, listen, I'm not doing none of that social media stuff to be famous, okay? This is, you know, I did It. Okay, let me see if it can help the business a little bit. And as a result of doing it, I've seen I've got such a young, big following of young kids. And that, to me, has given me the gratification to keep doing it, because I see I'm inspiring and motivating young kids not just about the airplane business or jet business, but, you know, sort of just about work ethic, about how I started sweeping floors, you know, in a beauty salon or a restaurant or busboy, how you talk to, you know, negotiate, or, you know, they see me talking with people, or how you qualify people or, you know, know your subject better than anybody else, this kind of stuff, and maybe how to search for something you really love, you know, and try to follow through on it. Those kind of things have gotten me much more internal gratification, knowing that I'm helping these people in some way, and that's more gratifying to me than maybe selling another couple airplanes. So I found that part of me that I didn't even know I had.

Yeah. Oh, wow. So, final question. This show is called Disruptors, as you can see. What does the word disruptive mean to you?

Do something to change the game. Doing it a different way, getting a different result, going after a market that didn't exist. Doing something out of the box. And usually anybody asks about what they think about your idea will tell you you're crazy, and it won't work. That's usually a good disruptive project to take on.

I meant, can you show us around there? Can we have a quick look?

Sure. Sure.

Thanks, Steve.

Let's go.

This episode was brought to you by Disruptive Media, helping bold entrepreneurs stand out through podcasting, video and social content. Visit disruptivemedia.co.uk to learn more.

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