We used to joke about this. We still do actually, but we’re fixing that last part. We might be right and frequently ignored, but we’ll get paid to stay in the corner with the geeky kids that quietly build a future that affords better sleep.
Why this post today? Maybe it was the news that Eclipse is laying off folks which reminded me of the Flighttime debacle of 2002. You have to love an industry that is driven by emotions, financial obscurity and whipped into a frenzy by magicians who bring you great flying things & programs. When Flighttime went bust in 2002 it was a classic case of the “double trouble bubble” kafuffle.
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Balancing your company’s daily investment of funds and energy isn’t easy. Fortunately, while in the start up phase of our own business, we were given some very clear direction by a friend. He said, “Spend as much (or more) on your sales & marketing effort vs. ‘everything else’ and your business will fit the pattern of the most successful start ups in history.” If you can’t or won’t you are prone to flounder.
Popularity: 41%
Most marketing at the FBO and Air Charter level is broken.
It is not that we are bad, inept or uneducated folk, we just have very poor role models. We never learned how to articulate “why we’re better” or anything that would drive more consistent recurring sales, and let’s face it.. that makes us feel like a rudderless ship when it comes to finding and retaining clients.
Then came NetJets and Signature, who proved to us that people will pay double or triple to ride in the very same aircraft or use the same fuel, or similar FBO for no particular reason other than their logo is cool and they made you feel good as they took your money.
Popularity: 29%
It is good not be alone. At first there was just fellow nerds (ok, gurus!) and academics like the Teal Group. Then there was the blog Richard Aboulafia showed me, and it dawned on me: I’m not alone. One of the most powerful feelings for lackeys like me, is to know that there are other lackeys thinking the same way. Which is really quite simple:
Are we the only ones warily eyeing the VLJ hooplah? The press, the start ups, even a few questionable pilots bang down the door with “what do you think, pretty cool, eh?” Well yes, ofcourse new technology is cool. But what is really happening here?
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Like this asian rice farmer, some days are just not easy to get through. The suction of the mud on the hooves of the beast and the patient farmer do not make rice farming in monsoon season much fun at all.
We can all relate to those days when the spark and magic is gone and we see ourselves plodding through the fields wondering how and why we got onto this track. The rice farmer keeps going for one simple reason - no rice, no food.
Thankfully we can fly things through the sky, and as crappy as we may feel, we look at the tops whiz by the cockpit window on an otherwise dreary overcast day and we can regress to the 12 year old inside ourselves and say “Wow, that is cool… I’m going fast… and it’s sunny here on top.”
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We all love a great story. Even the mundane gets better, as long as the story “sauce” is adequate and flavorful. And fractional was too good to not discuss back in the day: “Hey…I don’t need the whole thing, I’ll just buy a share.”
Selling spoons on Ebay? Well, they are always worth a wee bit more if you can add the story about the family that faced incredible hardship when they lost the other half of this set aboard the Titanic, which sailed from their nearby Southampton home. True? Who cares.. the spoons just went up in price.
Same goes for most well marketed and overpriced fractional solutions: It is a club and by definition the most expensive way to access an aircraft.
Refined story telling came into its own around those first chats around the fire. Fireside lore was a great place to swap stories about the hunt, animals, the other gender and the general highs and lows of neolithic life. Eventually those stories would grow to include the highs and lows of one’s air charter experience and jet ownership.
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