Helicopter Sales CEO: How Grit Got Me to the TOP Disrupting an Industry

From Professional Helicopter Pilot to Successful CEO

Entrepreneur Halsey Schider shares his journey from being a professional helicopter pilot to founding Sellacopter, a breakout helicopter sales company that is disrupting the helicopter sales space, and now they are branching into the jet and airplane sales industry.

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Podcast: The Helicopter Podcast
www.northamericanaircraft.com
www.sellacopter.com

00:00 Overcoming the Fear of Failure
00:38 Introduction to the Podcast and Guest
01:43 Halsey's Entrepreneurial Journey
03:09 The Birth of a Helicopter Business
05:04 Challenges and Lessons Learned
07:37 Navigating the Helicopter Industry
10:06 The Reality of Entrepreneurship
20:07 Balancing Life and Business
26:12 Balancing Business and Personal Life
28:26 Generating Leads and Building Relationships
29:37 The Power of Cold Calling
32:21 Ultra Running and Business Parallels
39:16 The Importance of Rest and Recovery
40:38 The Impact of Podcasting on Business
42:43 Expanding into Aircraft Brokerage
45:28 Final Thoughts and Farewell

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Transcript

 There's times that you were laying in bed, suffering in silence, having to try to figure this out on your own, how you're going to keep this business going. What kept you from quitting in those moments? 

To keep going? Just this unwillingness to admit that I could even fail. I will exercise literally to the point where I'm like sick for three days.

I'm excessive, so I do everything in excess. That's why I have to make certain life decisions to ensure that I can stay on a good path because I'm just go, go, go all the time. And I think I have a confidence in myself that it will work out and that's What kept me going? I think luck definitely has to play there.

I think I was prepared to receive the luck. So that helps me get through that idea of like, it was just all luck, but I think it was just  

welcome entrepreneurs to pay your quick, 

where we reveal the gritty truth behind business success. 

People see the glory. But not the struggle it takes to get there.

We're here to share the real stories of entrepreneurs navigating the tough intersection of business and relationships. I'm Tony Klein. 

And I'm 

Sean 

Johnson, and together we'll guide you through the real challenges faced as serial entrepreneurs.  

Join us for the untold stories behind the scenes. 

Buckle in, it might get messy.

The founder of  Sellicopter, a brokerage service helping people buy and sell helicopters. In addition, he just launched a new brand called North American Aircraft Brokerage, NAAP.  Halsey is also the host of the Helicopter Podcast, where he brings valuable insights into the aviation industry, specifically in helicopters.

With his unique transition from professional pilot to entrepreneur, Halsey is here to share his real truths and building a business in a very niche market. Halsey, we're excited to have you. Can you talk to us a little bit about that transition and where you went from a professional helicopter pilot to an entrepreneur and what really motivated you to do that?

Yeah, perfect. Well, thanks guys for having me on the show. It's fun to be on a podcast. You know, I've been hosting the podcast now for a couple of years. And, uh, so I, I like to talk about myself. I'm, you know, I guess I,  it's a, it's a fun transition. So thanks for having me on. And I'm really excited to share kind of my story and my businesses.

For me, always had an entrepreneurial spirit. I was the kid that was mowing lawns, you know, reinvesting in that business, buying more equipment so I can mow more lawns, just always kind of had that mindset. And then going through traditional education in school, high school and whatnot, I had a great education actually.

But I was, I had, uh, some learning disabilities, uh, and specifically I was put on what's called an IEP, an individual education plan. And it was great for some things, but on other things, I think it kind of gave me this stigma that maybe I wasn't that intelligent. And so my entrepreneurial spirit kind of died, you know, getting into middle school and especially by the end of high school, I never thought I had the brain power to be an entrepreneur, to be in business.

You know, I thought I could at least be a pilot. So that's good. Yeah. So instead of going to college and doing all that, I just went to flight school and, you know, started my helicopter career very young, which was awesome. But then kind of that entrepreneurial spirit kind of lingered back in again, some self doubt of, man, I don't know if I'm smart enough to do this.

And by happenstance, uh, about six years ago, seven years ago, probably actually, I was flying for this gal out of South Texas. And I was flying her around the oil field. There was a large oil play there called the Eagle Ford shale, big fracking thing. And she had a disposal well company and I would be flying her around and boom or bust right with oil.

So when that started to go down, she essentially was like, Hey, if you want to keep getting paid, you got to get the helicopter making money. And so I wanted to get paid. I had no choice, so I just started working the helicopter, figured out a way to get the authorization through the FAA to do nonstop commercial air tours, non 1 35, but 91 nonstop stuff, which, you know, obviously Sean, you, I think you understand.

And then built this little company, uh, in the helicopter of Texas. Ran it for a year, did pretty good. Not good enough for her to wanna keep the helicopter and keep me around, but enough to kind of reignite my entrepreneurial spirit. Uh, it made me realize to myself, like, Oh man, I'm capable of this. And so I helped her sell her helicopter.

And that was my light bulb moment of, I think that that's my business actually, uh, is selling helicopters. Cause I think I can do it better than some of the people that are doing it. Existing. 

That is a fascinating story. I did not know that about your, uh, Sales experience. How did you know that you had the sales knack in you that not everybody has that, or feels like they have that?

I think I've always been told from a young age that I had a bit of a sales personality. I don't know if that's good or bad, but you know, I think people, uh, I, I remember as even a little kid. Uh, whether it was selling lemonade or mowing lawns, you know, people always made a comment about, Oh man, you're an old soul, you know, uh, you're a salesman, you know, and so I think it was always kind of ingrained in me that I definitely had that knack and I do love connecting with people.

And if I'm passionate about what I'm selling and I believe in it, to me, then it's not even selling. It's just telling people that I care about the awesome things that we have. So, uh, to me, it's just been really natural and easy specifically on the helicopter side, because that's kind of where my expertise lies.

Thanks. 

In your podcast with Jason Hill, you mentioned that you had a business that had failed before, and you know, we often use this statistic in the harvest business review that 45 percent of CEOs have had at least one major business failure. And Tony always says the other ones are liars,  but talk to us a little bit about that, like where that experience took you and how you learned from that to be a better entrepreneur.

Yeah, it's interesting. So. I did, it wasn't immediate light bulb. Like I kind of mentioned in the back about selling helicopters. The light bulb came a little bit after, but what happened was, is this entrepreneurial spirit was ignited after I sold that helicopter. And I was working for Maverick helicopters at the time in Las Vegas.

And yeah, I started really diving deep into e commerce specifically fulfillment by Amazon. I don't know if you guys have heard of that FBA and. Man, I got like my master's degree. I was listening to every podcast. I was doing as much possible research as I could. And I found some markets in which I thought maybe I could enter.

I thought I could maybe work with some manufacturers overseas to create a better mousetrap, essentially. Uh, so I invested a lot of time, money, energy, and effort into that. And it just was continually one problem after the other, whether it might be a manufacturing issue or delays in shipping, the fees that were taken by, by Amazon.

It just was always consistently a bit of a calamity of errors. And it got to the point where I realized like, man, I don't, I don't actually enjoy this. Like there's nothing. Even though I've done all this research and I feel like I'm pretty well versed in it. Like I'm not really an expert in this field and specifically with the products that I was trying to sell.

And so that's actually when the light bulb came off of like, man, I should probably stick with what I know. And I had that sales experience with the helicopter. And that's when I transitioned into kind of going back, back home, so to speak, and into what I was really familiar with. 

I want to dig a little bit deeper into the transition that you had when you were first flying that helicopter for the lady with the oil field and starting to see a little bit of success.

You started to see a little bit of, Hey, I could, I could sell my time and do these tours and. We, I have the resources available to me to be able to do that. You started to see a little bit of success and then that kind of got pulled out from underneath you. It sounds like she decided it's not worth keeping the helicopter.

So we're going to have to change directions at this point. And so you started to see a little success there, but then you had to reposition to take us back to that moment. What that transition look like? 

Yeah, that's a good question. So the writing would always kind of been on the wall. She was really, I think, risk averse is the right word.

And so the helicopter really actually scared her for a lot of reasons, specifically on the liability side. You know, you start taking passengers in the helicopter. We actually ended up flying over 1000 people in that helicopter when I was operating it on tours. And I think that liability ultimately was kind of what, uh, was really bugging her.

And she was open and transparent about that. So I, I always knew it was going to be an uphill battle. There's also not a big push to invest in the business to make it bigger or better. Uh, as Sean may know the best way to have a. A good tour company with a helicopter, uh, is you have to have at least two helicopters because helicopters always break at the worst times.

It's Friday afternoon, Memorial Day weekend, Labor Day weekend, 4th of July, guaranteed the helicopter is going to break. And so having a backup would have been really helpful and we could have kind of kept going. We had a lot of success, but then we had a lot of maintenance that really cut into the bottom line.

And so I, I had enough knowledge at that time to kind of see the writing on the wall that, you know, we were profitable, but not extremely profitable. And, uh, with the liability, and then she had some personal things going on in her life. I knew that it was short lived, so I just did everything I could. And when she kind of decided to pull the plug, I wasn't.

Super surprised. I wasn't even all that, um, discouraged. I thought it was a great experience. I had a great time, but there was a lot. It was hard, you know, because I was out there. I was kind of a one man operation during the week. And then I had a hired help during the weekend. I was literally standing on the side of highway two 90 and a little pilot uniform waving to cars to encourage them to come in.

I was getting bit by the whatever's in the grass there. And I was in a piston helicopter, still the R44, which nothing against that, but I was, I was definitely eager to start flying some bigger aircraft. And so it gave me great confidence. And I was actually kind of excited to continue building my helicopter experience after that.

So how long after you decided that it was time to sell the helicopter, or she decided it was time to sell, and then you sold it, was there a, a. period of time in between selling it and saying, Hey, that was, that was like a lot of fun. And I was kind of good at it or that spark to be able to figure out how to get your own business up and running.

Yeah. There's actually a bit of a gap in between. Cause like I said, my, my entrepreneurial spirit was reignited during that whole operation, but getting into Las Vegas. Focusing on flying, you know, I was flying Monday through, well, not Monday through Friday, but it was a five day, you know, two, two off type of situation.

I was flying a ton. The brokerage idea had come into my head after doing it. You know, I got, I made some decent money. It seemed like a fairly easy process. It was also unregulated, essentially, so unlike real estate, there wasn't a requirement or anything to go and get certification. But that also being said, it felt too big to me.

It felt like something that was maybe, again, a little bit over my, my expertise. And so again, I really, at that point for about a year and a half, almost two years, probably just focus. Solely on doing the e commerce thing through, uh, you know, Amazon, FBA, also Shopify and things like that. And it wasn't until those avenues kind of made it apparent that that was probably not going to be my path to success.

Then I reconnected with a friend of mine in Texas. He owned a maintenance shop. He was talking about how people come in and ask him about selling helicopters and he refers them to someone else. That's when that light bulb kind of came off again and said, well, actually, maybe you should refer them to me, or we can actually start our own business together and we can sell helicopters.

And that was really the birth of at that time, what was called aircraft brokerage of Texas. 

One of the things I'm really fascinated by is when entrepreneurs. Start a business and then at some level they see the potential to 10x the dream or 10x the opportunity. And when you told me you were looking at the FBA  with Amazon, when you mentioned that, what popped into my head, which, you know, I don't know if this is what you were actually selling, but what I, What popped into my head was like, okay, you're going to sell used books on there and you're going to sell toilet paper and you're going to try to figure out how to source things and just sell it.

And so to me, that seems like a much smaller, how can I stack some pennies together to try to make a little bit of dough to keep my life moving to this large jump to, I'm going to actually sell helicopters, which to me, those require two different sets of guts to me. Right. And so what allowed you to have that confidence to say.

I was trying this thing on Amazon. I kind of figured out some things. I have that entrepreneurial spirit. I'm pretty good with sales. I'm just going to make the jump. I've got this connection. Let's just try it out. Was it a sort of, eh, let's just see if two guys on a weekend could figure something out? Or was this like, I got a business plan and we're going to make millions and we're  Where were you there with your confidence in it?

Man, there's no, there's nothing like that for sure. Uh, I actually remember having the phone call. I was on 1604 heading out to I 35 talking to my buddy Mike about it. And yeah, we just kind of like, you know, I think that that could work. And so we just started kind of slowly going down this path of building a business.

I think we invested, you know, maybe 5, 000 total and helping get a website built. Uh, help paid for some of the listing platforms like controller and try to play it off the bat. But, you know, to be honest, there was no big, um, I, I honestly thought it'd be a great side hustle. I was working now air medical at that time, and I actually enjoyed most of that.

And I thought that was going to be like my forever career. And. I can then sell helicopters on the side as, as kind of beer money. And, uh, it really took about two years of doing both to where I realized that actually my passion was in helicopter sales and that if I just committed. To going full time to helicopter sales, then I could really 10 exit.

And that's actually pretty much what happened, right? I quit flying conveniently enough. COVID happened like two weeks after that. So that was really scary, but it actually worked out in my favor. There's a lot of panic selling. So I was able to capture that market and sell, sell, sell, sell. And then, uh, interest rates, as we all know, you know, dropped super low and that included, uh, aviation financing, which has always been higher and we were seeing rates, you know, sub 4%.

So then there was a buying frenzy. So, you know, I think COVID was really scary for me at first, but then it actually ended up being a great experience. And, and it was at that time, you know, when I, when I left flying full time, that that's when I really went from like side hobby to. Okay. This is a real business now.

I'm going to do real business things. And ever since that time, we've just been growing on that and putting together a well oiled machine. 

Love it. So, uh, you know, the helicopter world is governed by a lot of regulatory bodies.  And I can't imagine like selling that first helicopter and you're really discovering a lot of.

I'm assuming you discovered a lot of different hurdles or roadblocks through that process. How, how is that helicopter industry different than, you know, other industries in that regulatory world? And how, you know, I mean, what are some misconceptions that people really don't understand about?  

Yeah, I, you know, I think the biggest misconception is that there is some type of standard process to selling and buying helicopters.

That's probably misconception. Number one, uh, cause there is none. In fact, helicopters are way behind, uh, and there's no standard process. And that's what I realized very early on that. Okay, I think if I create a standardized approach, and that's part of our mission, is a systematic approach to helicopter acquisitions and sales, then I can create a repeatable process, and then I can bring more people into that, share that repeatable process with them, and then they can rinse and repeat.

So that's, that's kind of the big surprise, you know, a lot of people try to buy and sell helicopters on their own, and they get burned, because there are a lot of, you know, there's Getting through the pre purchase inspection and understanding the pre purchase inspection and understanding the reports going through the escrow process, specifically the title process.

I can't tell you how many helicopters we'll pick up and, uh, we'll do, uh, uh, uh, uh, some title work on it. It's like, Hey, do you know that you have a 350, 000 lien on this aircraft from 20 years ago? And they're like, no idea what's escrow. Right. So, you know, it's very, Not uncommon to see those things in this helicopter industry.

And so that was, I think kind of the biggest misconception. And as far as like learning everything that we do now is because I had made a mistake and messed it up in the past. Literally it's like, uh, we have a 76 sales step approach that we take when we sell a helicopter. And each one of those steps is a step that I had messed up in the past.

So similar to like aviation, where they say that, you know, the far aim is written in blood, like our, our sales process is written in all my mistakes. All the things that I messed up, luckily, nothing ever catastrophic. We don't have any helicopters that have ever, you know, been involved in any accidents after closing or anything like that, but just lots of little dumb mistakes.

And so it's definitely been a learning process and I continue to learn something new every day. Uh, as I think we probably, probably all do within our own industries. 

Yeah, I love that. I think that's, uh, so common with, with businesses. We, we write the processes by the mistakes. Um, one thing I thought was really cool.

Your website lists. The total sales as a, like almost like a stock ticker on there. And that is not a small number. And you know, it's right now it's at almost 79, 000, almost 80. Um, excuse me, 80 million.  Um, but I know, you know, when you look at helicopters, they have a bigger ticket price. I don't know what the average helicopter price is, but I'm guessing it's.

North of 1 million, but still that's 80 million in sales. That's really impressive. How long have you guys been in business? And, uh, and really tell me, tell me more of like what has been maybe the darkest moment of starting this, this niche business. 

Yeah, well, I'll start with that. Early on, there's lots of dark periods, really.

Uh, it's very scary to start something and leave your full time comfort. And I work with a lot of sales reps that are now part of my business where we have to have that discussion. Like, you know, if you were to come and do this full time, you know, I think you would see the benefits, but that's a really scary hurdle to overcome.

Because I think as humans, we're just conditioned to have this idea of security. Consistent paycheck, health benefits, all those things. And so when I actually left flying full time, my wife and I had saved up like maybe 20, 25, 000 and I did not get a paycheck for a long time. Uh, we had no benefits for a long time.

And so there was a lot of nights specifically. I'm I, I suffer quietly if that makes sense. So I don't really try to share too much. Externally, specifically with my wife and family and things like that. So a lot of my, my scary moments are laying in bed at night, you know, and looking at the dark ceiling and wondering, Oh my God, what am I doing?

You know? And I remember early on, there were some deals that, man, if they just went through. That would really help accelerate and that would give us the cashflow that we need to keep the doors open for just another couple months. And those deals would get so rocky at times. And I can remember specifically a deal that we were selling a couple helicopters to Australia and it was keeping me up every night.

And luckily it ended up closing and that was exactly what we needed. You know, to, to keep the business and the doors open. So a lot of moments like that early on that were scary. And then, yeah, I think it's been full time, about four and a half years, I think coming up, I think the end of this year will be the, the end of really five years of like full time selling.

And yeah, it's been, been an adventure that first year was pretty dark just because it was scary and with the COVID and everything, a lot of uncertainty. But again, we did pretty good. So that was nice. And then I think just like any other business, I mean, look more money, more problems. I, I still suffer daily from lots of stress of this and that.

And, uh, we've done so much so quickly, sometimes that growth can be hard to manage. And so that's kind of what we're working on right now is how can we better manage our team, uh, to ensure that, you know, we're, they're being efficient and we're helping them and giving them the support they need. So that's causing me now a lot of stress and, you know, I think owning a business is certainly not a, for the faint of heart, but once it really starts to succeed, man, there's no better feeling.

I think you mentioned that you suffered in silence, and I think that's a really common theme for entrepreneurs because we don't know who to tell. And you know, I've been married for a long time and I share almost everything with my wife, but there are certain things that at least as a man, you, you don't want to share that vulnerability of like, I don't know how to lead us.

I don't know how to get through this next step. And I think that That's one of the missions that I personally have with this podcast is, is making it comfortable for us to share that we're doing out, we're out there doing great things, trying to accomplish something new that we've never done before.

We're on the edge of our comfort zone or pushed way out of it. We're in that area where there's a lot of imposter syndrome that we can feel. Because again, if you're doing something that you're really good at, Then you're probably not growing that much, right? So anytime we try to grow, we start to experience that imposter syndrome.

We start to get on the edge of our skillset, but that's where a lot of that growth comes from. Even when you mentioned, you know, a lot of your process came through the mistakes, you grew through those mistakes to be able to have a much better system coming through on the other side. So I think it's really common that people, entrepreneurs, Suffer in silence.

I want to take it a step further from that. So there's times that you were laying in bed, suffering in silence, being, having to try to figure this out on your own, how you're going to keep this business going, what kept you from quitting in those moments, because it's so easy to just say, you know what, that's, this was the one last thing that I just can't keep, I can't keep going with this.

What kept you going in those moments?  

Yeah, it's a good question and a good statement to, you know, I think I tell people all the time that, you know, sometimes being an entrepreneur feels a little bit lonely because, you know, most of my friends and friend groups, they all work for someone and they do things that are, you know, more traditional and they get their standard paycheck and things like that.

So I don't always feel like I have a great group to connect with. I've been trying to actually connect with local entrepreneurs within my geographic location here, just to, you know, even if they're not in my industry, I think I can learn so much from different people in different businesses. So I would definitely encourage that for, for other people.

And, and also just. That's the cool thing about selling helicopters. I get to meet with really successful entrepreneurs all the time. Uh, guys and gals that can afford helicopters on the private side, usually business owners usually done really well for themselves. And so I have great mentorship with my clients.

A lot of my clients become friends, uh, and a lot of them become mentors. And so I've just been so lucky. To keep going, man, I think just this unwillingness to admit that I could even fail, and maybe that sounds cliche, but I've just always been, um, you know, I will exercise literally to the point where I'm like sick for three days, right?

I'm just always, I'm excessive. I'm an excessive person. So I do everything in excess. Uh, and that's why I have to make certain life decisions to ensure that I can stay on a good path because I'm just go, go, go all the time. And I think I have, uh, a confidence in myself that it will work out and that's what kept me going.

I, you know, whether the writing was on the wall or not, you know, I think it could have been a toss up. Uh, I think luck definitely has to play there. I think I was prepared for the, to receive the luck. So yeah. That helps me get through that idea of like, it was just all luck, but yeah, I think it was just a tenacity of never wanting to give up.

Yeah. I think so. So common, you know, entrepreneurs just have, we're like bullheaded  are the ones that actually see success in it. You know, I, I think they summarize it with, you know, the word grit, you just keep pushing through no matter what. Um, you know, and I, and I've had a, I've had a couple of failed businesses and, and it's interesting.

I never really. Understand what the switch is like, what's going to make this one fail and the next one succeed until you're like in it, you know what I mean? In the failure process or in the success process, if you will. And I don't know what it is, but it's, it's bizarre. You know, you push through, how do you, How do you balance the, you know, like you mentioned, like you're, you have more of a obsessive nature to you.

How do you balance that with your life and put those boundaries up where, like, I don't want to cross this boundary because it's going to suffer the family and vice versa? 

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think first and foremost, uh, for me, I stay away from, uh, anything except coffee. Like, you know, I think anything else for me can, can be a little bit dangerous.

And so, you know, I just, I choose not to drink. I don't use, you know, nicotine or other drugs or things like that. So that's, you know, again, I think I'm going to, I have the personality where I can go hard on things. So that's first and foremost, I draw. Pretty firm lines on, you know, on that, even if social drinking, things like that, I just none.

So, uh, I think that's a big part of it. And then I really tried to take care of myself for at least two hours a day. And for me, that's in the morning time. So I. I get up around 545. I don't look at my phone. I come upstairs. I have a gym. I work out. I get in my car. I drive to the Deschutes River. I jump in the Deschutes River.

I get home. If I have a little bit of extra time, I'll take a quick hot tub. I'll shower. And then around 8 a. m., when all that's completed, I have our sales stand up. And then I look at my phone. And then the day's over. I'm going, uh, and that's been kind of a new routine of this last eight or nine months. My routine previous to that was I would work out midday and I would start my day by looking at my phone.

In fact, I would get up to pee at like three in the morning and start going through emails and text messages, uh, and start stressing, you know, and for me, stress is something that you, you have to really mitigate it. I think stress is a legitimate hormone. I'm not a doctor, but I think cortisol is released in your body and it can wreak havoc.

And so for me, I realized that, man, that was an issue. And so. You know, at least two hours a day of kind of me time before I really get into it. I just find that I do better. So that's been been really big and helping with my process. 

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. So yeah, I heard a saying I actually had a former business coach that used to always say Stress is like smoking a pack of cigarettes every day.

It takes years off your life. I think that's legit How do you uh, you know, I assume I actually I think your wife is also in the business and helps out so you guys With that nature, I imagine you guys are able to bounce ideas off each other really well, kind of talked about that dynamic, you know, as you're growing this business, how do you guys work together as a team?

Yeah, it's great. So a shout out to Hillary, a wonderful wife, wonderful human, uh, and wonderful. person to be in business with. Uh, her and I have very different roles at the company. So her background prior to this, this life, she was, uh, an executive admin, but also an admin for sales for sales teams. And so it kind of seemed like, Oh man, this is a good fit.

And early on, she came on, I think it's been about four years and it was just by happenstance, she lost her job. And I was like, well, Why don't you come work at Celicopter? You're not going to make any money, but maybe, maybe you could help, you know, help me get to the point where some of the things that I'm not good at that are important, like receiving money and paying bills and other things, uh, that like, I'm sometimes just go, go, go, go, go sales.

So she came in and she really cleaned all that up. She really helped build a robust accounting, uh, practice since that time, we now have, you know, a third party that comes in and works really closely with our accounting. So I feel like we have great accounting practices, but she was a big part of building that.

And she's a big part of keeping that going, you know, every day. And so we live very separate lives in the business. She's very much doing things. Very self sufficient. There's very little questions from her. She just knows what to do. The sales team relies on her heavily. And so even though we work together, it's not uncommon where at the end of the day, I can walk downstairs and see her for the first time.

You know, uh, we just don't have that much interaction in this business because we just have completely different roles. And she's just, kicking ass and taking names and she's, you know, she's like the backbone, right? She's, again, she does everything that I'm not great at and the things that are actually really important to running a business.

So, uh, I couldn't do it without 

her. That's for sure. You mentioned you spend a lot of your time on the sales side of the business, and I know in order to close sales, you have to have leads. And so I wanted to get a little bit Insight in how you go about generating those leads. I would assume, and this is just an assumption from the outside world, but a lot of your business is driven, it's relationship driven.

And, and so I'm curious, and I want to touch on how this ties into the podcast that you've got, but there's a lot of different ways that you can generate business. And what have you found to be kind of that sweet spot for you to generate business? And then how does that podcast.  

Yeah, so now it's, it's, you know, business getting business for Halsey personally, as deals come in and actually when deals come in to me, they get distributed through the team now, but that's a, that's a network deal.

I've been, you know, working hard to build the network. Sean and I got connected through a network friend of mine. Um, so I, I have a lot of connect the dots and I've definitely built a brand around myself. And my business helicopter where people know they can pick up the phone and call Halsey and I can help with, you know, helicopter sales acquisitions.

But early on that looked like a lot of cold calling actually. Uh, so before I had kind of the network that I have, I had to build that. And my whole thought was like, Hey, look, like you said, Tony, I think it's a, it's a relationship deal. And I'm guessing that other brokers have the same database list that I'm looking at.

And they're probably calling and they're probably being fairly aggressive. And so my stance was like, I'm not going to be aggressive. I'm here for the long term relationship. And so I would start having cold calls and not even talk about sales, not even really talk about wanting to sell their helicopter.

In fact, I used to play a game to where I would try to get them to ask me like, hold on. So do you sell helicopters? Um, cause then it was like, it would get me into this. Oh yeah, of course. And that's actually why I'm calling, but we just talked 30 minutes about your family and what you do with your helicopter and how the helicopter has been great for you and how it's been hard.

I've given you some advice.  And so I found that cold calling was really natural and easy for me. Cause I just enjoyed talking about helicopters and I was okay to then put that person into a CRM and nurture them for a long period of time, sometimes over a year or even close to two years. I have a deal right now that we just got an agreement signed on yesterday.

I mean, myself and team have been nurturing that deal for a year and a half, but it's a big deal. So it's cool. Right? So our new guys start the same way I did. We put them through a three to four week intensive kind of indoctrination into our company. Which includes a lot of role playing, so lots of cold calling, lots of cold outreach, building new relationships.

I also found that listings beget listings. So if I had say a bell 4 0 7 for sale, or a Robinson R 66 for sale early on, I had the wherewithal through good people. By the way, I've, none of this I've done by myself. I've had tremendous support in building systems, but you know, I could look at our CRM and I could say, okay, who's everyone that we know that has an R 44 and might want an R 66?

I'm going to direct market this 66 that we have to them. And by doing that, I think then they see, Oh man, like this guy picks up the phone and is trying to sell the helicopter. Whereas other people are just listing it and hoping it sells. And so that was just kind of how I personally got to the network build.

And that's what I tried to mentor my team to do as well. 

The podcast, I imagine you have a pretty good following and you know, the helicopter world is a pretty small market. I think there's like 15, 000 registered helicopter pilots. 

Sounds about right. Yeah, 

something like that. You and I being two of the 15.

Yeah, we're, 

look at us, 

man.  We're awesome.  That's right. But, um. Come on, tell me where you at, bro.  

You know, I'm gonna, I'll write on Sean . We're okay with that? 

Okay. You know, Tony's probably jealous 'cause most of the time we talk about ultra marathon run running and this whole episode has been nice around the helicopter world.

So,  

Tony, are you an ultra guy? 

Yeah, we, we have a, uh, we, we try to fit both flying, being a pilot and ultra running into every episode. And it just happened to Thanks Sean for sneaking that in. Yeah. Can you imagine like, 

that's a lot of ego in one room, isn't it? 

That's 

crazy. I, uh, tangent, but yeah, when I quit drinking like five and a half years ago and when I did that, I stopped everything.

I went whole food, plant based for like two and a half years and I started running. I felt like Forrest Gump. I just started running. I had no idea what I was doing and I had no particular ambitions on anything, but man, I just started racking in miles. And got so into running. I was listening to running books.

I learned all about the Tara Humara people in Mexico born to run, born to run. What a, what a fantastic book. Uh, I loved it. At least I read, Oh man, I'm trying to think of some of the other books. I mean, I just, I got really into running and I had like this idea, like, man, I love to do ultras and, uh, I was putting in some serious miles, but never got to an ultra and, uh, man, I was having to get up at like two in the morning to So I can get my miles in so that I can be at the helicopter, you know, an hour away from my house by, you know, 8 30 AM.

So it just became a little too much. I, I have so much respect for anyone that can run more than, you know, anyone that can run like five miles consistently is impressive, you know, to me. Cause I, I know how hard that is. It's very difficult on the body. 

Well, here's a, here's a personal invite for you. So I'll be running the Coca Dona 250.

In the spring, and then I'll be running the Mo, uh, the Moab 240 in the fall of 2024. So if you ever want to come out and just hang out and, uh, you know, maybe fly your helicopter, I was going to say,  

I think in Moab, uh, you know, I have access, one of the cool things about selling helicopters is I have access to a lot of helicopters and that could be fun.

I think we should stay in touch because I think that there's maybe some cool things. We could do to help support that effort with a helicopter. Yeah. 

We'll do race support and race following and you'll, we'll pretty much, you know, hover the whole way. 

Yeah. That's crazy, man. Yeah. Kudos to you. Uh, anyone that runs ultras, um.

Something that I found curious and obviously you don't, this is your podcast, but something I found within learning about ultras and things is that a lot of those people have, uh, interesting paths specifically with addiction and other things like that. So it really resonated with me, uh, with some of the alcoholism and things like that.

So, you know, it's, uh, it's a pretty, I think it takes a pretty crazy person, uh, to be able to, Do that. So man, kudos to you. 

Oh, thanks. I think we'll tie this back into what we're talking about here, but  I agree. No, I agree that, uh, ultra runners do have a pretty interesting past. I would say a majority of them have one of two things.

They either have drug and alcohol or some sort of addiction problem, or they've had some serious health problem that they've had to overcome. And it gives you the ability to suffer well for a really long time.  Going through those things and being able to suffer and come out the other end. You just have that grit that Sean was talking about earlier to be able to get through it.

And I think that's why I ask a lot of these questions about the moment when you want to quit in business and you don't, I think that a lot of those ultra running and business and addiction and all of these things are really closely tied together because in order to be an entrepreneur, Or an ultra runner or an addict, you have to be able to suffer and come through the other side.

And so I think all three of those things are tied together. 

And it's interesting. Cause a lot of my big miles were actually happening as I was starting this business full time. And so a hundred percent agree with you. There's so many times that I wanted to quit on a run. And as you know, kind of. At least for me, it came in waves, you know, I want to quit.

Okay. I'm good. I want to quit. Uh, and you know, just be able to break through that. It's been fantastic. So I don't run as much anymore. My new way of doing that is with cold plunging. Uh, I find that there's no actual benefits that they talk about for cold plunging, other than the mental fortitude of it. I would agree with that.

You're killing the marketing on this now.  There's a lot of good marketing on that. It's, it's so funny to talk about that. Cause like this morning, for instance, you know, I have a similar routine as yours, Halsey. I get up about five 45, I get up and I go straight to work out. Well, I brush my teeth and then I go straight to work out. 

And I usually spend about an hour to work out and I haven't dedicated it. Two hours. But this morning was one of those mornings. Like I did not want to do it. And it took everything to just do burpee. All I did was burpees this morning. Cause my, my mind was checked out and I was like, I would, I would just glad I just did that.

You know what I mean? Like it was going to go to, my mind was going to give me every excuse not to do anything. And it's like, it's just so, it's so funny. It's no different than business. I remember this time when I was in flight school and I had, you probably know, Gordon who owned a universal helicopters, big name. 

And, you know, I told you yesterday, but I, you know, I really had this mission to try to get my private rating in 30 days.  And that was pretty ambitious for me. I had a full time, it's a tall order. It's a lot. And, uh, people that haven't been through flight school, it's, School, it's you're busting your hump to make that happen.

And I remember I went to my pre flight exam. So like Gordon did an internal check to make sure you were ready for your, uh, private check ride. And he chewed my butt inside and out. And it was rightfully so. But I remember there was like a, Pivotal moment in my adulting  life that like, dude, you, you gotta take this serious.

You gotta take anything serious. And if you should do anything, you gotta do it the best you can. Yeah, a hundred 

percent. 

So, you know, just a reminder of, you know, the mornings sometimes suck, but dude, just put in the work. Right? Get in the reps. 

Yeah. You gotta do it and, and you gotta take care of yourself.

And I think physical fitness is, is a part of that. I've, I've let it slip actually, I, I was very much in shape and then I, I fell off, I got so immersed in my business. Put on 30 pounds, became pre diabetic, felt horrible. And so this really eight, the nine months has been me trying to get back to where I was.

And my business has seen a positive impact, like by being more, uh, more active and actually taking care of myself. And so I think it's so important. I think you also have to give yourself grace sometimes though, too. I think as an entrepreneur. The mindset is like, you know, go, go, go, go, go. And, and by and large, right, we work long hours.

We do lots of work, busy, busy. Hopefully there's a big reward at the end, but you know, I think it's also okay to take some time off and spend it with your family this morning. I told Sean, I feel sick. I have like a cold. My throat's killing me. I slept horrible. My alarm went off this morning. I said, look, the best thing that I can do for Halsey.

Today is I'm going to use that two hours to get more sleep. Like that's going to be the best move for Halsey today. And I'm not going to let this anxiety bill that I didn't work out today, because I made the decision of, Hey, look, the best thing that I can do is actually get a little more rest.  

I think for me, when I look at whether it's business or running, Or any, any sort of exercise program.

It's the incremental progress over time. You know, when I line up at a starting line of a big race, I don't win that race or, or have a good performance that day because I showed up that day. I, I have a good performance because I showed up the 180 days day after day consistently and there used to be, so I have a coach, a running coach, and I used to really not like to take the days off.

You have to, you, when you're out there. Running, you're breaking down your body. You're getting mentally fatigued. You're getting, you know, sleep deprived and you have to let your body rest. And I used to think of it as I'm taking a rest day. And now I think of it more as I'm taking an active recovery day.

Like there are very specific things that I do to take care of myself. And it's the same thing on the entrepreneurial journey. You cannot red line day after day after day. And expect you or your company to have a good performance. You have to take a step back and take care of yourself to plan for the long run, because we can all go hard and fast for a sprint, but not if we're going to be in it for the long haul.

You had about a two year period, really a year and a half, two years where it just was, it was excessive. And then it led to, you know, tons of weight gain. You know, lots of unfavorable things. Right. And so, you know, it's interesting to be able to, to, you know, take care of yourself. I do want to go back. Cause you had mentioned the podcast and I do want to talk about that a little bit, because that's, that also kind of ties into, you know, the marketing side, you know, the, the podcasts.

Has been a fantastic, I think the podcast has actually been my number one tool for marketing. You know, I suggest if there's anyone listening to this podcast and, and you're in a more of a niche business, like, like helicopters, very niche, you know, starting a podcast or creating content that resonates with the people that you're trying to serve has been awesome for me.

And it's, uh, it's been a really cool journey. I don't know about you guys. I figured I would start a podcast and, you know, my mom would listen and, You know, share it with my aunt and uncle and it's turned into something really cool. You know, we have consistent, consistent, good downloads. I go to these helicopter expos now and I, you know, I feel like I'm, I'm knowing, you know, people come up to me and they want their picture and it's all these cool things.

And uh, You know, it's just been such a great tool to not only connect with the audience and the people I serve and have them feel like they know me, but also it allows me to have conversations with, you know, top executives at OEMs and top executives at other companies and people within other companies.

And then we build that relationship and now it's B2B and now I'm able to, you know, work with that business because they feel like they know me. We had a, you know, hour, hour and a half long conversation. About them, you know, and I highlighted them and their business didn't once talk about me or sales or this or that.

It was just a fun way to promote them. And so the podcast has been just probably, you know, if I ever write a book, the podcast will be like, you know, the best decision ever. You know, it will be the chapter of that one. 

I love it. I think, you know, I had, I don't remember if it was a business coach or if it was a book I read, but they said every business really shouldn't be the helicopter business or whatever, you know, the property management business or whatever.

It really should be a media business that does X or does Y. And it just goes to prove like we are in a world of media. Everybody's vying for your time, but if you could produce good content, you know, that's the beauty of it. It's free. It's valuable. It gives people resources without having to actually sell or buy anything, which is super, super awesome.

I love that about the, uh, the world that we live in. Tell us a little bit about North American aircraft brokerage and kind of where you're going with that rebrand. And we'll kind of wrap up. 

Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, not necessarily a rebrand. It's a more of like a sister company complimenting what we do on the helicopter side and bring it into the airplane side and dark side.

Let's just 

be correct. They're the dark side.  

I will say from a business standpoint, plans make a lot of sense, you know, an expensive helicopters, maybe 4 million.  Uh, you know, a,  that's a cheap airplane, right? And we're, we're percentage based typically off sales price. So, uh, I like airplanes for that on the sales side.

And, you know, the reason why we ended up kind of actually going into a separate brand is first and foremost, sell a copter is very. Helicopter specific. And I think it's kind of cheeky. I didn't love the name of Celicopter for a long time. And I think people used to chirp it a little bit. Now that we've actually gained a lot of recognition and people like working with us, you know, people respect and enjoy the name Celicopter, but I just felt like, man, it's too helicopter focused.

And I have a, uh, business development guy on the Celicopter team. It was just outstanding. And you know, one of his, he's, he's entrepreneurial and, you know, ownership was important to him. And I knew at some point I would probably lose him because he was going to go and do his own thing. And he'd do great at it.

He has an entrepreneurial spirit. So I figured, Hey, look, let's actually partner up on this. Let's work together and let's, let's both put money into it. Let's put, you know, he has a good stake in it. We have another minority partner, you know, so we, we funded the business. Who's actually my accountant. I brought him on because with airplanes, there's a lot of cool opportunity in the future for kind of floor plan financing and other fun things that we can do to bring aircraft on and spec and things like that.

And so essentially we, we started that business. There's three of us now it's a, we're a cell copter. I'm the sole owner. I did start with a partner and I bought him out early and yeah, we're just complimenting what we do on the. On the helicopter side and we're bringing all those same processes into the airplane side and trying to see where they conform and where we might have to be a little bit flexible and, you know, amend that process.

And, you know, so far we launched two weeks ago, three weeks ago, I think during a NBAA, which is a big, uh, expo for. For private airplanes. And even before that, we had already sold an aircraft. We were actually just placing another aircraft under contract today. So just really excited about, uh, NAAB, North American Aircraft Brokerage, and you know, being able to do what we do in the helicopter side and rinse and repeat into the airplane world.

That's super exciting Halsey. I'm, uh, I'm excited for you and I'm curious to see how that will pan out. I'm sure it'll be a huge success. Congrats. 

Thanks. Yeah. No, I'm 

really excited about it. Uh, it's going to be good, good stuff. I hope. All right. I want to highlight one thing here before we wrap up. And that was that you mentioned that you had somebody on your team that was really good.

And I think sometimes people can start to fear that a little bit and I want to highlight that mindset that you had of really leaning into, Hey, I have this person that's going to grow with or without me and I'm going to lean into that and I'm going to help them grow together. So I'm not going to try to cage them or contain them or.

stifle their ability to go off and do something, I'm going to lean into that and, and become a part of it and really leverage their expertise to create something for yourself that wouldn't have been, but also provide an opportunity and help them jumpstart whatever they were going to do. And I think that a lot of times it can go one of two ways when you have somebody on your team.

You can say at, I hope that I train them so well that they leave, as opposed to, I hope I can keep them caged so that they stay.  Yeah. And 

that's, you know, I, I like to go the, the first option because, you know, if I'm training them well and they can be successful, then, you know, hopefully it's the culture that will allow them to want to stay at Celicopter in the growth potential.

This particular individual though, just had so much aspiration. of this idea of ownership because entrepreneurialism and business ownership was important to him. Typically, I would actually be kind of against partners, to be honest. I've had experiences in the past. And so we went through a very intense process.

He came up to Oregon. He lives on the East coast. We spent nearly 10 days together, essentially locked in a room. Going through every horrible scenario that could happen within a partnership and figuring out how we would mitigate that. And we were able to get through that process. And I think him and I will be fantastic partners together.

I think he's tremendous at business development and great on the airplane side. So, yeah, I think, I think it was a good move and, you know, excited, uh, you know, to have him be able to also achieve his goals and, you know, ownership. 

Awesome. Well, I will mention that if you, if our audience has the slightest interest in helicopters to go check out the helicopter podcast, it is really awesome.

I love hearing your conversations. It's a lot of fun. Of course, I love helicopters. And so, you know, I'm obviously intrigued there and I'd be remissed if I didn't mention congratulations to Tony Klein, who just became a grandfather yesterday. So kudos to our co host on that too. Sweet little Nora, right?

Right. 

Congrats. Yep. Nora. Yep. 

Yeah. So pretty cool. And Halsey, we know your time is valuable. Thank you so much for your time today. And you've got a very important, uh, important, uh, appointment to get to you. So thank you again. It was, it was awesome speaking. 

Yeah. Hey guys, thank you so much. Really cool opportunity and congratulations to your podcast.

And you know, I hope that your, your, uh, continue to grow it and, uh, uh, continue to, to be a fan. 

Cheers, man. Thank you.  

Thanks for listening. We'll be back next time to cut through the noise of what it really takes to be a successful entrepreneur. 

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