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How to Start a Private Jet Charter Business With No Money | Kolin Jones of Amalfi Jets

60m 22s

How to Start a Private Jet Charter Business With No Money | Kolin Jones of Amalfi Jets

The conversation highlights the private jet industry's dynamics, focusing on Colin Jones, founder of Amalfi Jets. Private jet owners often rent out their aircraft to offset costs, but this increases maintenance risks. Jones built Amalfi Jets as a brokerage without owning jets, using a tech platform that connects clients with vetted operators, offering 10-20% lower prices. He emphasizes the superiority of private flying, contrasting it with declining commercial airline quality, where seats are smaller and service minimal. Jones started the company during COVID, leveraging his pilot background and a fake persona to research competitors, finding many lacked knowledge. His social media presence drives rapid customer acquisition, allowing him to outpace competitors. However, the industry is unregulated for brokers, leading to potential risks, such as a client being stranded in the Galapagos when a plane broke down, requiring creative solutions. Jones advocates for broker certification to improve reliability. Overall, the summary underscores the opportunities and challenges in the private jet brokerage space, from tech-driven efficiency to the need for better oversight.

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A lot of people that own these private jets want to offset their cost of ownership. So they say, "Hey, when I'm not using this airplane, I'm going to rent it out to offset my cost of ownership, so instead of spending a million bucks a year, man, man, I'm only spending 200,000 dollars a year." But it's still a cash-22, because the more you offset your cost of ownership, well, the more miles, and in this case, the more hours and time is going on your airplane, meaning the more likely that you'll have maintenance issues and your carpet will get stained and stuff like that. My competitor is probably sending maybe three to four hundred emails a day. And I was like, "All right, so within one day, I sent 25 hundred emails. I'm essentially doing six of his days in one of my multi-days." And I was like, "So if I did one of my multi-days every day for a month, I will be three to four months ahead of my nearest competitor." I'm a bit psyched. Like, how much would I need to do of spend on Google ads or frickin' print ads in order to get that amount of engagement? And I was like, "Take out cost of snuffing." This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altichar Show. I wish I had been Colin Jones when I was 18 years old. So Colin, who you're about to hear, when he was 18, set up his own private jet airline, Amalfi Jets, grew up to hundreds of millions of revenues, and guess what? He didn't own any jets, didn't have any space on any airports or anything. And I feel like his method of doing this, anybody should be able to do. Any 18-year-old should be able to do it. Now, even with AI, it's that much easier. I love this guy's mindset. I love the way he was thinking about business, and I love how he built his business. It's kind of a good template. If you're an entrepreneur or a creative or anything, had a great conversation with Colin. When's the last time you flew out of private jet? I don't know, a couple days ago. What was the flight to it from? We went to Scottsdale. Scottsdale, Arizona from LA. And personally, so I would say, there's always a mistake once you fly private, you can ever fly commercial again. Very true. People just don't understand. It is a completely different experience. You go to a basically a terminal and some smaller private airport and you just walk in, somebody hands you a glass of champagne. They get, they, somebody asked for your IDs, but it's not like some big TSA thing. And then essentially you just walk onto the plane and take off. And you, and like cars waiting for you and you drive to your hotel. And then on the plane itself, there's not like a meal, but you could have snacks and you're just hanging out in these big lounge chairs or couches or whatever. It's a great experience. There is no stress, no hassle. It is very digesting and it makes a lot of our clients seem very pretentious because a lot of first time flyers, while private and they're like, oh, I'm never flying commercial ever again. And then they're like, I'm not pretentious now because it's awesome. And that's what we're saying. Flying private is the most efficient way of travel. And I think that it's sad that a lot of the commercial airlines get some of these, you know, these brand new airplanes and then shove 300 seats on it. Whereas private jets, the newer, best, more technologically advanced airplanes are constantly improving. You're being able to fly further distances. You're putting beds and showers and conference tables on board. Whereas the commercial airlines, it's how many people can we shove on this airplane. So it's kind of sacrilegious to like airplanes in general. Yeah, I feel like, you know, most, a lot of things in life get better because of technology. So like a classic example where technology improve things, we made things worse for the consumer is like, you know, AI customer service. Like clearly AI customer service saves companies enormous amounts of money, but it is so painful for the consumer to talk to an AI. I don't think that's ever going to get better. So that's one thing we're technology made things worse. Peter Teele once said, the first half of the 20th century was all about debating with transportation. The second half of the 20th century was all about innovating with ones and zeros with, with computer. I mean, airplanes now in every way, commercial flight in every way is worse than it was in the 1950s. It's actually slower now to go from New York to California because of regulations. And to your point, they fit more seats in like, even in even first class, I'm, this is going to sound like snobbish, but let's say coach any class, the seats have gotten slimmer, even flying international. Sometimes you don't get the flatbed first class. And I'm not like, oh, I'm so rich. I'm confined. It's dreaded. It's dreaded. If you look at the like TWA and kind of Pan Am days, I mean, you would dress up in a suit. You would have the carts of the steak and the lobsters. It was like, even their economy was multiple huge seats with all that room. It's, it's not like that anymore. And I think obviously, you know, with airline deregulation, I think the eight, you know, you have a lot of more capitalistic nature and a lot more price commas. And obviously like, I think at one point, it's, you know, the ultra low cost violence, it made flying commercially and just traveling a lot more accessible. But the first class model, I mean, I think it's kind of embarrassing when like I see tech talks and stuff with people posting like, oh my gosh, I'm in first class and you get a full bottle of water. It's like, is that the bare minimum now that you just, you get a water bottle on board and they're playing like, wow, they're using real plates. It's like, really? That's, that's it. You get, you get a ceramic cup and you're freaking out because it's not plastic. I feel like the bar is so low that when people see that it's, it's kind of silly. So looking in private, entirely different, more efficient. Again, like there's no direct wall. I guess you have like JSX and stuff like that. But it's really hard to find flights directly into those smaller, closer to the city airports like you were flying in New York or flying in a two to bro. All right, you can take the drive like 35 minutes in the city or you can take the helicopter like a support skis 76 takes five minutes versus landed JFK rush hour one to three minutes of air plane. You got to wait for everybody else to get off. Then badly did you play him? All right, that takes forever. And then actually getting out of the airport is this whole other thing that again, like as long as that exists and keeps getting worse the way it is, flying private will always be a necessary requirement. It will always be growing and people can afford it will essentially never go back to commercial. But you know, okay, I want to touch on just JSX in a little bit, but, but, and also of course, I want to deal with the price of all this, but let's rewind a little bit. You're 24 years old. You run a Malfi Chets, which is a private jet service. It's like a, it's like a chartering service, right? You like broker empty leg flights or, or how does it work? Yeah, yeah. So I'm 25 just turned 25, which is great. And thank you. And I think that, you know, we're, we're private jet charter brokerage, but I think right now we're more and more into a technology and media company. I kind of always say that we've like three different parts of our business. You know, on the brokerage space, you know, we're a six year old company. We have, you know, thousands of customers that we've flown all around the world. There's about 3500 airplanes across 170 countries that we have access to for context. There's roughly about 26, 27,000 airplanes available for charter. Being a pilot myself, I went to Emberrittle, Ernak and University at number one aviation school. And safety is one of our biggest kind of cultures here at Malfi. So of the 26, 27,000 airplanes available for charter, only about 3500, then actually meet our safety centers in terms of maintenance in terms of the operators, in terms of the flight crew, in terms of insurance, you know, in terms of like quality. So we have a big kind of checklist that we have been able to build that out. So where are the planes from? Are they planes from other? Yeah, that's a great question. So 90% 90, 95% of the airplanes that, you know, you use on the charter side are owned by ultra high-neighborath individuals, four to five-hour companies, or some operators directly. And essentially how it works. So let's say that you and I wanted to go have Zs on maybe the global six thousand right there, one of the favorite airplanes. We're about to use right now probably costs us about 30 to 40 million, right? So let's say that we took that 30 million dollar airplane and we parked it at Tieta Bar Airport in New Jersey right next to New York. And let's say we parked it and we never flew it. That would still cost us about $800,000 a year in fixed ownership costs, even if we never put fuel on it and we just owned it, right? We have parking it. Well, it snows in New York. We want to park it in a hanger. So per month that can be anywhere from 15 to 30,000 dollars a month. We've insurance on year plane to engines and the APU. We have engine programs that we're paying in kind of like your warranties on a car. We have updating navigation database cleaning it. You have your schedule maintenance. So you know, every, for example, in the car world, like every 10,000 miles and you get it will change every X number of hours on the engines. They need to be overhaul. And then you have your unscheduled maintenance, hey, I took a really far-drating and I blew it higher. All right. Now I need to replace the landing gear or something. Now it's a poor million bucks, right? Then you have pilots. There's kind of still a pilot shortage going on right now. And in order to find experienced pilots, you know, there's a lot more demand. So average pilot salary is about 250 to $3,000 for an experienced captain. So you need to them. You want to fly that? You hire your own pilots or you borrow them from other words. Yes. So we don't own or operate any year planes, which keeps our business operating costs quite low and is allowing us to scale. Essentially, if we bought that airplane, right, if we went haves on this airplane, now you have clients or individuals like Elon Musk, Shepa, just that own multiple airplanes, they're you know, very, very wealthy. They can afford to spend a million to $2,000,000 or whatever they own it. But a lot of people that own these private jets want to offset their cost of ownership. So they say, hey, when I'm not using this airplane, I'm going to rent it out to offset my cost of ownership. So instead of spending a million bucks a year, man, man, man, only spending $200,000 a year. But it's still a catch 22 because the more you offset your cost of ownership, well, the more miles, in this case, the more hours and time is going on your airplane, meaning the more likelihood that you'll have maintenance issues and your carpet will get stained and stuff like that. So these people give these airplanes to park 135 operators. Essentially, they're literally private jet airlines. So those companies hire their own pilots, their own flight attendants, and they manage that airplane for these individuals and rent them out to companies. like us. So let's say you're saying, basically, I buy a pair of plain. I'm not hardly ever going to use it. I'm using like twice a year, three times a year, but I want to make money on it while just it's a teeter burrow. I'm going to call you up and say, listen, you take care of it. Get it out there every weekend, except these five weekends I plan to travel and charge 4,000 bucks an hour or whatever it is you charge. And so I can at least make my 800,000 fixed cost a year back and maybe a profit. Yeah, I mean, it's very hard to make money owning a jet. There's very rare like an Embraer feed on 300. Maybe you can make money because it's a new airplane. It's expensive to charter and it is very low cost-growing to operate. But those companies that, you know, I'm just going to be there, part 135 operators. So it's not really what we do. They are the ones that have the most highest operating expenses in the company because they employ hundreds, if not thousands of pilots, the manage these airplanes for these high-net worth people and they staff and crew and they're certified by the FAA. So they are essentially private jet airlines. So that's not what we do. We are a brokerage, right? Brogage and tech company because what we do is we, I get it, if we look at our associated we do, we're the most followed private aviation company in the world by lands that we have over 4 million farmers across everything every nine days to get over a billion impressions across everything. So we get a lot of customers. So when customers reach out to us and say, "Hey, I need a jet." I'm calling these 135 operators of all of these different airplanes and say, "Hey, I need to get a client from LA to New York who has the best price. " So all these companies essentially bid for the trip. Now, these companies bid for the trip in the software that we've built that allows us to track these airplanes, understand their roots and optimize it. So when clients reach out to a mall fee versus some other company that does what we do, the pricing that you're going to get from a mall fee is usually 10, 15, 20% cheaper than the standard market. You're going to get quoted a little bit faster. And then you get advantages of our great flight ops and concierge team and then some of the tech that we've built in there. So that was the kind of main problem that I noticed when I started the company, living in my college dorm, since it was 2019, during COVID, right? So I went to school to go be a pilot. My goal was to actually go fly for one of our competitors. I wanted to go be a private jet pilot, travel weather. That was going to be awesome. And then COVID happened. And absolutely nobody was hiring pilots for a code, right? A lot of my friends that had airline classities were driving door to ash during college because they were like, yeah, I had this class day. It was going to be an airline pilot. I'm not hiring anymore. So I'm driving door to ash. And these kids were taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of loans to for school and flight training. So it's a bad situation. So I remember being on campus freshman year and I was like, well, this sucks. I mean, oh my god, like all these student loans, I'm not even going to be a pilot. So I remember opening up this app, FlightRider 24 and going to map and just seeing how many airplanes were flying. And a lot of the jets that were flying were private jets. And I was like, ah, so no one's flying commercially because he had to wear a mask to be around all these people. But I didn't jets were so rocky because it was a private airplane. You were essentially not going to get COVID because you were just for you. You weren't sharing your plane with anybody else. You didn't really need to wear a mask. Some companies had forced it. Some didn't. Most didn't. And you know, it was that private world. So I was like, ah, private jets are growing. And I got my pilot license. I then I served for here in California, which is the busiest private general program wall. Like the day I got my pilot license, I sent next to ludicrous at the FBO and he was hopping on his private jet. That was a really cool conversation. So I remember creating my fake rich person email. James Middleton III, I thought all rich people were like the first second. And I reached out to a bunch of other companies that did well, you know, on the broker side because I kind of knew what the brokerage model was. It was a way to get into the jets face without having any investors that buying any jets and kind of growing, right? And I remember reaching out to these like five or six companies and I was shocked and flabbergasted because these companies were just telling me things that were just raw up. They were like, oh yeah, the Embraer phenom 300 can see 12 people and fly nonstop from New York to London. No, it can't. It ran out of fuel around the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and everybody would not make it to London, right? So I was like, all right, I'm a pilot. I know that. But someone that doesn't know if you should may take this random person's word for it, book this airplane and then what happens when they show up in the airplane's out there. So it shocked me how little these companies knew and in doing research in order to do what we do on the brokerage model. There's no licensing required. There's no certification. We have been very strong advocates of a certification. You want 35 operators that are operating the airplanes. Very regular. But the actual broker side zero regulation. And let me ask question. So like if I wanted to be, if I wanted to do what you do, if I wanted to slip, you would go, you would go to go and you'd buy James Jets dot clung. You would create a new gymmy Jets. But yeah, okay, I'm perfect. Ginny Jets dot clung. You would create a website. And that's it. Boom. Now you're a private judge harder brokerage and you're a social media like, here's me flying a private jet with all the girls and bikinis or whatever like. Pretty much whole lifestyle. And then people would call up, oh, Jimmy's Jets, I need a plane. And I would call them, you know, Tito, you got any planes lying on the ground like, hook me up. And pretty much. Yeah. And so I want to reach out to you and say, I need a jet and they say my budget's 40,000 and you can try to go find an airplane for 32,000. And if everybody works out, then boom, you sign the contract and now you've made $8,000. But that's the easy part. Well, what happens when the client shows up to the airplane and the airplane is now broken now you need to find a replacement airplane in T-robo. Let's say there's no airplanes in T-robo or let's say my favorite situation is one of our airplanes broke on Galapagos Island. Like, there is literally my God, Rick and airplanes in the Galapagos. And then it's like, all right, the clients strange in the Galapagos. He refuses to fly commercially. The nearest airplane is in Florida. So it can physically get there today. But you have to land in Guayaquil, clear customs and then fly to the Galapagos. But that permit process takes three days. So not only is my client stranded on the Galapagos for three days, but there wasn't really any hotels available. I was like, oh, this is like probably the worst situation possible. Oh my God. What did it first off? How did the client react? It was not thrilled. Obviously. I wouldn't be able to buy a specific airplane. I think it was. I think his exact words where you get me the f off this island are well effing and you and your entire company pretty much to the effect of that. You got to do, I know you do a lot of social media. I'll take you out and all the different things. You got to do. Have you ever seen the Instagram account travels with Lily? Like I maybe. Well, what is she? She's like a high end travel consultant for like billionaires. And so she's always reenacting conversations she has with the kids and billionaires about what their travel demands are. And it's like ridiculous. You got to do something like that with the story you're just telling me. But okay, so how did you get this down off the island? This was the worst case situation possible. So we're working with our operator part of him saying, hey, we have replacement airplane. It can fly into Miami or it can fly from Miami into where it will. But it takes three days. And then that's when our plane to assistant calls me and says, how do we bride the customs officials? And I was like, all right, now I'm freaking played model UN right now with how we're going to sound. So we're calling the customs officials and I'm broadening them. We're saying, hey, everything we could do, like how could we speed this up? And they're like, oh, well, we're going home because it's late. So we'll maybe be here tomorrow. And I was like, this is freaking insane. Client strain of there. And the issue was the FedEx system. It was a Gulf from G200. So essentially the pilots were like troubleshooting it and calling on a satellite phone or maintenance team and like forwarded to try and troubleshoot it. A couple hours go by. We pre booked our client commercial flights just as a complete backup. And there was no first class with only Columbia. So I was like, all right, at least let's we can get him home. And then he's on his way to the commercial airport, begrudgingly because like it was going to wait three days in important meetings. And then I going to call for the pilots and hey, call we fixed it. We're going to go. And then I'm like, all right, I'm calling this van driver trying to understand the language fairer, trying to tell him to turn around and go to the other side of the airport because the airport works again. That happened. They took off the landed the client landed. Obviously was happy. Called him the next day and I was like, I just want to apologize. And he laughed at he was like, I don't even know how I wouldn't figure that out. He was like, this was a great situation. And we all found it funny. So that's how we saved someone from me trying to pop it goes. But again, like that is how our business model works. And it's like all of these different things that you don't really think about are super, super important. And that leads into kind of that level of customer service that we provide, which is really, really fun, really, really interesting. But no two days at the same. You have that. We have clients that poop on their plane. We don't have our clients. Punch the pilot. That was a whole thing. And we had one of our. Okay. This is a stupid question. But how often do people have like sex on the plane? Running a small business is tough. And believe me, I've run quite a few. And here's the thing. When it's time to get alone, it feels impossible to find a lender that you actually trust. Like big banks, they just say no, because who are you? And the internet is filled with like just sketchy offers, sky high rates. And whether you need help covering payroll or managing cash flow or investing in growth, you deserve better. And that's why I can't recommend highly enough the small business marketplace, fun, dara, powered by nerd wallet. It's a free, easy to use platform. 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Maybe once or twice a week, how often do people accidentally take a little bit more often than that? Don't the pilots see what's going on in the cabin? Well, I mean, if you take a typical golf street and you have your cockpit, you have a jump seat and then you actually have like a door that you close to separate like the cockpit and career from the passengers and send clients say, "I don't want to interact with anybody. I just want to be on board, don't bother me." So literally, if I attend, we'll just sit in the cockpit with the pilots for the entire tent while that would fly. Check them and then maybe once or twice. So probably happens to run out. There's no video though in the cockpit of looking at the cabin. No. No, I think you're any reason there would be. No, and that's the thing. Like, it's very different than then flying coercion. Like, there's no cockpit door. Like my favorite saying being a pilot in an aviation geek about flying private is almost a spend half my private jet flights sitting in the cockpit just chatting with the pilots the entire time because, you know, ever since 9/11, obviously you used to be able to visit the cockpit pre 9/11 and go chat with pilots even on your commercial flight. Can't do that anymore. So it's really cool and really awesome to see for non-pilots what the cockpit's like at 43,000 feet or on an approach or in a landing. So that's really fun. A couple of times I've fallen, my friends, one of my friends is just the most nervous flyer on the planet. And it was, we're on a big airplane. We're on a globe, right? We're fine with Vegas. It was like a 35-minute flight. And she was just like having a panattach was freaked out. And I was like, "You know what? Let's do this." We walked up to the cockpit and the pilot was just like walk your through thing, pointing everything out in the cockpit, showing her how it worked. And then she went back, she felt a lot more comfortable when she landed and she was like, "Wow, that's really cool. I've never seen a cockpit mid flight." And I was like, "Oh, that's awesome." So there's a lot more experiences that you can experience flying private. And so you were 19 years old. It was COVID. Yep. And there weren't already private jet brokerages all over the place. Correct. But these people were not pilots. So again, you know, go back to what I was saying. There's no certification required. So like looking actually into a lot of these competitors at this time. I mean, these people, like super-respectfully, were coming from working at like enterprise rent a car to revolutionizing the private jet space. We're not pilots. I never flown in an airplane, never flown on a private jet. I'm like, "How are you?" Like, if you were in this space and you were dealing with people's lives, I think a lot of times people look at the money and the flashy and the glamour aspect of private jets. But if you go back to the core business, you're literally dealing with people's lives and getting people around the world safely. So we have to prioritize that. So there's so many situations that we turn down. About a million dollars, probably a week of deals that we lose to illegal or questionable trips, meaning we send a client a quote, let's say it costs $50,000. Client reaches out and says, "Hey, Thalon, I have another jet from some other company for $30,000 cheaper." And I'm like, "All right, show me this airplane." I'm looking at this airplane. I'm looking at the tail member. And I'm like, "This isn't a legal 135 certified airplane." Like, it was jetted this. And it was like, "Oh, well, this company was like his friend of a friend's airplane." And I was like, "Okay. Do you know how often this friend of our friends airplane was maintained? Like, do you know who the pilots are? Are they actually even pilots?" And they're like, "Oh, I don't know. It's $20,000 cheaper." And I'm like, "You're going to risk your life or worth hundreds of millions of dollars. You're going to risk your life to save $20,000 here." So that does happen. So we try to use our social media and conversations like this to educate as many people possible on the dangers of illegal charter because if you look at that post-COVID world, you have an insane amount of people that are moving towards flying private. It's very addictive. There is so much opportunity to make a lot of money in the space. And if you and I, for it can bought a jet and hire random people to be pilots, you can make so much money in this industry. And there needs to be more regulation. It needs to be more transparency because that is a big problem that a lot of people don't recognize. So we've been trying to show people this is an emulphys certified airplane. Here's what the airplane is. Here are the pilots. Here's how many hours. Like, we have a full, like, the kind of pilot work that we send over. Most companies don't, which is really sad. So you're 19. What did you start doing? Well, it's the first step. Like, what did you do? So how to start a company that is going to do $104 million a revenue this year, six years ago, 19 years old. Well, first, one, build a website. So I'm freaking go daddy, a multi-jets.com, oh, no. Then an email, boom, get set up. Great. So multi-exist is a company. How do we get clients? Well, I would literally go to Starbucks and I would visit fire when my best friends from high school, Calvin. He's the finance, like our chief legal officer, I was joke, but he's kind of the, the EVA or the finance guy behind the scenes. I'm the aviation. This is kind of operation side there. So when we literally meet at Starbucks, and this is still I was in my dorm at college. So we would like to zoom and then I would fly back every two weeks on a spirit airlines flight from Orlando to LA. So I could work with him for the weekend and we just meet at Starbucks. And I would literally Google. I was like, I don't know. I'm never flown privately at this point. I was like, I don't know rich people. So I would literally Google loss endless attorneys. And the funny thing about attorneys is their website always have their emails public. And I was like, great. I was like, I'm free client list. So I would literally no joke email every single frickin' Los Angeles attorney under the sun, whether you're personal injury, whether you're M&A, whether you're corporate, whether you're immigration, literally any frickin' attorney, I would, I can guarantee I emailed every single one of them practical. And so I, my name's Colin and I'm all the Jets. We're all the leading IBGE charter companies. Our price is very competitive. We're very focused on safety. The next time you will final fly private, please reach out. We'd love to compare our pricing with whatever you're currently flying. And my thing there was, all right. So every day I sent 25 hundred emails and I did this every day for two months. It would pretty much be statistically possible that I wouldn't get one or two cents. So it's a big numbers game. And I looked at it and I was like, all right, let me think about my competitors here. So I have a competitor, let's say that they showed to the office nine to five, eight hours an hour for lunch to seven hours. I was like, let's say this competitor actually is good, right? Maybe he's really aggressive and he's co-calling and he's sending some emails. He's made the day he's co-calling. He's co-calling like legal firms, corporate, corporate off. Yeah. I mean, essentially, anyone that flies private, you can Google what companies fly private, what industries. So again, personal injury, really big niche, oil, gas companies, construction is a really big one. Enter team and private equity, VC and stuff like that. And I was like, well, my competitor is probably sending maybe three to four hundred emails a day. And I was like, all right. So within one day I sent 25 hundred emails. I'm essentially doing six of his days in one of my multi days. And I was like, so if I did one of my multi days every day for a month, I will be three to four months ahead of my nearest competitor. And that's what I did. I literally freaking email everybody. I would Google, I don't know whose wrench. Oil, all right. How do I get oil companies? So I literally call these random companies. So I hate him. He's calling a multi jazz. I was speaking with your CEO. I just want to confirm his email really quick. And then I would kind of lead that and get the email. I'd be like, awesome. Great. Thank you so much for sending me my favorite day at Boob and I was in brain so I could email him. But then I can be like, oh, hey, I just spoke with Sarah. Your receptionist who's really sweet. I just wanted to follow up on our conversation. I would just try to get as many conversations as possible. Did this six months in? Look, client response. It says, hi, Colin, thanks for emailing me. Yeah, I was about to book a jet with this other company. Please let me know what you charged for this trip. And I was like, oh my god, here it is. My first sale. Let's do it. And it was a trip from LHA to Cabo and back. And it was on a phenom 300 and we charged 25,000. This was in 2020, right? And so this was a long time ago. And on that trip, I remember he was like, hey, Colin, you're 25,000. My other company is like 25,500 or whatever. But I know that my phone with them sell anything you can do on price. Meanwhile, this jet cost me 24,500 dollars. And I was like, I wasn't making any money on this airplane. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to take the Jeff Bezos approach. I'm going to be like Amazon and we're going to lose money and just good loyalty. So I sold it to him for $20,000. So something crazy enough that he would be like, wow, Colin is so much cheaper than my guy. And I was like, I don't know why he's charging you 25. That's crazy. So boom, lost $4,000 on the first sale. Then he came back again, didn't say big lost a couple of worth thousand dollars. I need to be so freaking cheap that this guy needs to tell his friends on the golf course, god yeah, that's called me. That's so freaking cheap. I don't know how I was making money. I wasn't making money. I was losing so much money in stupid. But did you have like, how did you have the money to lose? The beginning become and this is why I'm very thankful for American Express and America's Express is a very instrumental part is if I sold it in a $4,000 loss, I could carry that balance for 30 to 40 days, which gave me enough time to make a sale to offset that, you know, that essentially difference. And I think every business owner has that mentality of like, how can you be cheap? Because again, there's no investors. I was called as June. I maybe had maybe a thousand dollars in my bank at this point being freshmen. So I was like, all right, like, yeah, it's all operating expenses at the company. I mean, you have a website email and things. You're at maybe a hundred dollars a month. And I was like, all right, so boom, when my thousand bucks, I have a near business guarantee. Great. But we cost first. So after that, after a third or fourth flight, then I started making a little bit of money. A thousand bucks there, two thousand bucks. And I was like, hey, I can give you free catering if you can refer me to two people, send me in a group chat with two people. And then from that, it slowly kind of disparate our web. And then other, some clients started to respond and you'll have a situation where I was like, oh, wow, this guy's other company is twenty-eight thousand. I can sell it for twenty seven and actually still make some money. So slowly grew from there. And again, we just started focusing on doing that. I was like, how can we build good personal service where I was the one that I was selling the trips and I was handling the operation with the catering. I was their first call when they landed. I was the first call when they needed the next trip and that kind of slowly spider webbed obviously, but not to the point that it did until we started posting on social media. So we started posting on social media in 2024. And when we posted, I was very, very dense. And at this point, again, we slowly hired some people in the company. We had like one person in the marketing and we added more sales people somewhere commissionally. So we still at least kind of started to get, I think we had eight people at this time. And I was like, I feel like we can be on social media. Because I was like researching the jet space and obviously all these competitors that have been on the industry for 10, 20, 30 years. These are very well capitalized, very well-resourced companies. And I was like, they have millions of dollars to spend on marketing. I was like, we're not going to out market that. And my original goal for a multi-jess was how can we be the most pretentious, rich, coral to any private jet company? But that's already been done. I was like, I'm not going to freaking out brand companies that practically invented private jets. So that's when we looked at social media and our marketing team was like, hey, when we post on TikTok and I was like, guys, that's unprofessional. All clients you're going to see, then I think that we're a joke. I was like, I don't want to do that. But then I was like, well, hold on a minute. These companies are so corbid, boringly, dinosaurly profession. I was like, I'm not going to out brand them. And I was like, but what if we were more provocative and more ridiculous than that? So that's when we post it on TikTok. And then it was one of our first stories where I was talking about one of our clients who had a mistress and pretty common. And I remember posted that video about how one of our clients, sharp two airplanes won for his wife, one for his mistress. And they do got a million views. And I was like, oh, wow. And not only did it hit a million views, but then I logged into Google Analytics and I saw that we had 150,000 people on our website. And I was like, oh, it got. And I looked at our website forums and we had 15,000 flight requests that one day. And I was like, oh, my God, I was like, this is it. I put it saying, like, how much would I need to do of spend on Google ads or freaking print ads in order to get that amount of engagement? And I was like, that's not cost us nothing. And I was like, oh, this is going to be good. So I was very, very against for TikTok and I was like, this is on professional people going to see it. Screw it. Well, you're going to be the most freaking provocative, hybrid tech company. Because again, like on the mass media, you know, if you look at the inner workings of the private jet space, there's never been a TV show. There's never been a social media that really gives you that interlooking and what that world's like. On the yacht side, you have like below deck and things like that. You have all the real stage shows, but there's never been something like down the private jet side. So we started posting on social media and I mean, we just kept talking about the situations that we're encountering, showing the office culture. A big thing that we wanted to do. And I guess kind of our like three main goals is how can we spread awareness about the private jet space and get people that interworking to how can we personify the brand? People buy for people, right? So I was like, how can we humanize the team networks here? How can we show our genuine personalities? And three, how can we be the most well known private aviation company in the freaking world? And what a year and a half, two years later, it's four million followers across everything, we get over a billion impressions every quarter. And if you look at that, that directly leads to 80, 85% of our inbound leads and the engagement. And it's funny because we track a different qualification rate per bottle. Tiktok reaches the most amount of people. But Tiktok tends to reach the kids and I get a lot of phone calls of 50, 60, 70 year old ultra conservative people that are not on social media that are like, hey, Colin, I've been flowing with Blink jets for the past 20 years. I've never heard of your company, but my daughter is just obsessed with you guys. Like she said, I should reach out. And I'm like, sure. And then I send my pricing and they're like, wow, you're like 20% cheaper than what I've been paying this entire time. And I was like, yeah, we've been doing the entire time. They fly with us, realize that we're the jet company and not just a Tiktok, you know, social media account. And they're like, wow, this is great. And then now, Blink, now we've got a customer from that Instagram is an interesting blend of both. You have some of your end user customers. You have your kids as well. Facebook is just the most qualified older conservative like goover level people that are still on Facebook. Let's see our Facebook shorts and reels and stuff on that. And then YouTube is funny because YouTube is the amount of people that we get from YouTube that are like, oh, I'm not on social media. And I'm like, well, YouTube is kind of like social media, I guess. But it's just social media that come in and they convert. So we track different qualifications for platform, but it's funny because in the now we are so viral that I go in public and people are like, hey, you're the jet guy. And I was like, exactly. I am the jet guy. There are no other private jet companies don't even think about it. We're the only people in. So he's trying to kind of own that, that like societal and that social work at shared is funny. I was like, literally at a bar a couple of weeks ago. And this guy was like, hey, Colin, it's really great to meet you. I'm in private equity, you know, I followed your company and he's like, it's really smart what you guys do. And I was like, I really appreciate that. I was really against it. And he's like, no, I can't even name another private jet company. And I was like, yeah, now they can I, I don't know anybody else. But like, that's the whole point is that if we can be so loud, you don't even think about it. Going online without express VPN, that's like driving a car without car insurance. You might be a great driver, but you never know. With all the crazy people on the road these days, why take that risk? Every time you connect to public Wi-Fi and cafes, hotels or airports, your data is not secure. Hackers can steal passwords, your credit card info. It doesn't take much tech know how this is the way to do this all over the internet. That info sells from $1,000 a pop on the dark web. So express VPN fixes that by creating an encrypted tunnel. So hackers can't touch your data. Before we talk about how it keeps you safe on public Wi-Fi, now for the same price, they've added Express Mailguard and Express AI. 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So secure your online data today by visiting express VPN dot com slash out of your that's express VPN is it's spelled exp R ESS V P N is a Nancy dot com slash out of your define on how you can get up to four extra months express VPN dot com slash out of your. So what's the components of other than the private jet aspect, which is very glamorous. What are the components of a viral take stock that you do? Like, what's your storytelling technique that you tell all your creators to make? Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing is how do we, you know, kind of go back to our court ethos of like, how can we consistently personify the people that work here? People live for people. So it's like, how can we show people's personalities? How can we ensure, you know, show some of that humor? How can we also, I don't want to say like, how fun at the situations that we're at, but it's like, these are real, true, crazy situations like the client pooping on the airplane. So we did it's client who's, you know, normally you bring a dog and where the dog poop, sorry, whatever. But we get a call from five tenants saying, hi, your client hooped on the couch. And now we need to take the airplane out of service for 24 hours to clean this poop in addition. If they need to replace this couch, it's like at $80,000 couch like credenza on this golf street. And the opposite walks into the clone, what do we do? And I was like, I don't know, they don't teach this a business school. Like, I don't know what to do. We clean the freaking couch with the clients. They say, hey, you're taking the freaking couch, right? And so it's just funny because it's like, like, we want to show that these are, I couldn't be at the bathroom. You, that's a great question. I've been asked myself that for a very, very long time. Like the client, the call from the high tall and your client punched me in the face. Oh my God, I am so sorry. They were on a fuel stop in the middle of, he was a Texas out like one or two in the morning. And our flight options track in the airplane, the client got punched and I was like, dude, like, I don't know. I was like, well, it's really hard to get, it's easy to get kicked off a commercial airplane. You say there aren't things you get kicked off in two seconds. We all see it all over the internet. But I was like, it's really hard to get kicked off a private jet. And I don't know what happened. We're dealing with it. I'm calling the pilot back and speaking with our operator partner and then flying up to my office and like, calling they took off. And I was like, what do you mean? And I was like, they just made up and got back on the airplane and called the pilot. And he was like, yeah, he apologized. And I was like, okay, and like, you're good with that. And he was like, he apologized. He's like, he took you pretty well. And we just kind of forgot it. It's like, okay. So he felt bad. In cases that they're pooping in the punching. What was the what was the approximate net worth of a passenger? One was probably a couple hundred million, but was very big in crypto and crypto was not doing well. So I'm assuming there was a lot of additional stress there. And one was very high, but it was given to him. So he came into money from his parents and his family. I mean, there is a trend like our highest net worth of richest top spending customers are not always flowing on the big gigantic airplane. Most of the time, it's a small lightjet for a trip. And I'm like, yeah, I'm sure with the Gulf Stream. And it's like, well, I don't need it. It's just me. I'm going to get there in 45 minutes. I don't need the fancy airplane. Whereas the clients that I don't want to say can't afford it, but maybe you shouldn't be flying private are the ones that are ordering the champagne, the caviar, oysters, and all of the fancy stuff. And pulling up in a frickin rented Lamborghini, like, you know, that's the thing of like, that's funny, like our original marketing team was like, hey, let's do a photoshoot at the jet with the frories. And so I was like, I don't remember the last time one of my clients ever pulled up to a jet in an actual frory that wasn't rented. I was like, most of the highest net worth clients are showing up, maybe just in like an Uber or even a taxi jeans and a t-shirt, but maybe like a $400,000 watch. And you don't know who they are. And you have to Google them and they sold their company for a billion dollars a couple of years ago. Those are the most down the earth, most understanding people because they're used to business owners. understand how our model works. Do you think there's a lot more people worth like a hundred million plus than we realize. Oh, yeah. Now, there is a lot more people that fly private like a lot of renew sales guys like, Hey, this is really hard. We're selling the word percent. I was like, well, I mean, yeah, but there's a lot more people that fly private like we are, you know, this year on fact, you do about a hundred and twenty million, which makes us one of the top 10 brokers in the space in six years. It took some companies, 15, 20, 30 years to get there. However, we do not own a crazy big gigantic market that there's so much room for people flying private. And honestly, I believe in the commercial airlines as long as the delays happening, I mean, you look at the funding lapse of TSA, those those delays at the airport are freaking insane that if you have a business meeting that you must make it, you cannot like consistently rely on the airlines and all the issues with the TSA and the airports and delays and stuff like that, especially because the airlines operate on the hub and spoke system and these airplanes are at mass utilization. So one delay early in the day, just completely torpedoes the rest of the day schedule. Whereas prior to jets that are planned is dedicated for you, it leaves when you want you have a dedicated crew. Sometimes, you know, for really big trips for high net worth clients, we'll actually have a backup airplane. So you can pay like a certain fee and we'll have another airplane tool that ready to go. So if this airplane breaks or something, boom, you're not delayed. Obviously it's expensive, but if you must make it to this meeting and under no circumstances, can you miss it? Then what is an additional 10, 20, 30 K for that sort of peace of mind? And that's what I always like talking about because like a lot of clients are like, wow, have a chance or so expensive, but it's like 30, 40% of our trips are not crazy big business deals. It's you had a CEO that is running a very big multinational company that will charter a jet to be back for their son or daughter's baseball game or a ballet or something like that and be there, be present and then make it back to work. And it's like, if you look at that, someone's like, wow, I'm a test or expensive, but it's like, how do you put a price on being there for your kids? So if you're able to afford it, that is something that is worth paying for and that is the beauty of private deviations that you cannot do that commercially. So if you could show up somewhere, do that and be there and lead like for most of our clients, I know they would say that is worth billions of dollars to be there for that moment. Therefore the cost of the jet is almost negligible, right? And situations like that. So it's so interesting to me how like it realistically, it is a lot more expensive than commercials. Let's say, let's say first class from New York to LA is what? Like like three, four thousand Delta one or like JetBlue men. Right. And so, but at a private jet, it's going to cost you like 60,000 one way on a gold stream about 45,000. And then one way on a Centaiton 10 about 35,000, a light shit, maybe 30,000. Oh, what again? Yes, if it's just you, yes. But then we do have some customers that think about it. Like let's take a golf shoot, right? So gold stream, let's say it's 12 people for a company that are going from New York to LA, you know, $4,000 for a short airlines flight plus 12, right? We're $40,000. Then you have the time at the airport, drive me to jave, can stuff like that. Whereas a situation like that, if those 12 people could fit on a gold stream and paid 45,000 is actually cheaper. You're flying direct at a T2 boroughs. You're actually buying that three to four hours back at your time. So for 12 employees in a multinational company at like a direct rate level, what is that four hours? Dude, that's half of a work day. How much more money could they make in that moment? Well, I like a lot of times. It's simply just like the flight schedules don't align meeting. All right. Hey, I have a really big speaking engagement. My speaking engagement is done at 11, 30 PM in Georgia. I need to fly back home to Charles and South Carolina. All right. Well, the next version of the flight isn't seven in the morning. And then you need to fly to Charlotte and then Charles and all right. Whereas if you can just charge it even a cheap like a plat is PC call with turbo prop paid e-grand to just a leave it midnight together exactly when you want. All right. Well, that now allows you to have that full work day tomorrow and for a good, successful CEO, you can make more than eight grand in that day. You know, for the cities that you operate out of that are very high use, like what's a New York or LA or Miami. You consider doing kind of like a semi private thing kind of people who will get your card or whatever they can use a regular flight from New York to Miami, from Titoboro to a lot of our, a lot of our competitors have done that. And me and again, some of these are private jets. Most of these I'm called them a VIP airliner. So you have like a configured CRJ 200 or a John Drey 50. That has like a two in one seat. So it's a nice leather seat. It's a flight. But it's it's on a private jet. I mean, all it is in my opinion is just nice first class. There's companies that do it that I know if they do it well for us. And we don't like again, like in the private jet world, the two most popular flights here in the States are a north to south or south in order. So New York, Miami, Miami and vice versa for people transiting their different homes. And then the second is New York to LA, LA to New York, second most popular route. And then the third is LA to Vegas and back. So we've talked about it out there. There is some regulation. It's called part three 80 charter in order to sell charter by the seat. Some companies have tried it. Those companies do not still do that. And I guess the big issue with stuff like that is like based on the part three of laws, essentially, if you sell X number of seats, the airplane needs to fly. Meaning if we charter a Gulf from view for that seats, 12 people from Van Ais to Tubera, South, Atlanta, New York, and we sell these seats for five grads, right? Five or six thousand, right? Because you can charge more than the commercial airlines because it's a better experience. If we sell every seat, sure, we'll make $30,000 a track. But what happens if we only sell two seats? Well, we can't cancel every time we lose money. So boom, now on that one trip, you're losing 20 grand. Okay. What happens if you got a gap? Now you lose another 20 grand. So it's really easy to hemrich cash really quick or grow up. And I think with the way that our model is growing is my biggest thing. It's like, we know what we're good at. Let's consistently excel at that. But I'm wealthy and like we've kind of positioned us where we look. Three main parts that we're coming. So we have the aviation side. We have our technology side. There's 72,000 members on the multi-gets app. So how can we build a platform that allows people to engage with their services, engage with 24 or 7 concerts key, but also to our tech side. We've built some really, really cool stuff both on the kind of AI fleet optimization. So we track different aircrafts in order to kind of track seasonal demand. So if we notice a bunch of airplanes are sitting in the west coast and need to make it to the east coast. But the night clients that need a flight of the east coast, how can we pair these clients up with these airplanes that need to go there, allowing them to be cheaper than the market, get quoted quicker by flying with them all feet, and be able to book it all through attacking for sure. So that is a really big pride for us. And that's something that we're still in rising. And the other thing that we built is a socialist tool. So when we post videos, I know with certain wire videos to admire what the hook was, how well I spoke statistically, I perform it. It's like 36% better if I wear a black t-shirt. I don't know if it makes me look slim. I don't know why, but I like wearing a black t-shirt and I perform better if I wear a white t-shirt. Doesn't go as viral. In addition, if we feel here at my desk, it goes a little bit more viral. I think it's like 12 or 20% more viral because we've tried to analyze this. All right. Well, is it because people see the background like, "Hey, that's falling from all these deaths." Where they see them all the deaths or maybe the colors or maybe the fancy ball. Why not visit for a moment? I have no idea. Right? But when we also show the dynamics of our office, you know, you have those recurring characters. Like we have clients that fly with us all the time that are like, "Hey, how's the team? Hey, how is Daniel from Fight-Ops?" I really want Daniel from Fight-Ops to be on my trip. And I'm like, "Wow, you remember Daniel from that video?" Like, you know, a couple months ago, that's crazy. But people kind of feel that connected. It's kind of the same way that like, if you watch your favorite, and again, I'm not calling our team here by any means, celebrity's or influence really to like that. I'm still never calling myself an influencer. I think there's a bad connotation with that. But the same way that if you watch your favorite TV show all the time, you feel connected with the characters. Like, "Hi, 5.0 is a kid. It was my favorite TV show." So it'll be able to watch Steve McGerat on there. Like, if I met him first and I'm like, "Steat, it's up. It's good to see you." Same thing when people watch our videos of like, people feel connected to the team here. So that really builds a lot of loyalty. And we still got a lot of great customers. And I like, "Hey, Colin, I didn't find with XYZ jets for the past 10 years. Along this year, the same or even a little bit more expensive. I just want to fly with them, Luffy." Can I do that? Also, can you send me some cool and Luffy merch? Because I want to wear it, right? So that's what we think about the stuff. So the media just totally changed the whole business. It created a lot of fun. No other private jet company from my understanding is posting at the level that we post. We have the Malfi account. We have our reserve membership. We have the Colin account. We post eight times a day. - Well, eight times a day. - Well, eight times a day across all of our accounts on TikTok. And if you add that up on all the other accounts, essentially, there's like 30 or three videos that go live on all the accounts every single day. Because we post on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, we post everywhere, right? So I'm a very big competitive person. As a kid, I did a bunch of sports. Always was terrible at sports, but I was very, very competitive when it comes to business. So I know, and I have a chart in my office that shows me and I've done math on how much all of my competitors make with the revenue mess. Let me please say how? How much do employees make? So I want to understand where Malfi ranks within this whole competitive nature. But then also, I talked to the team and I was like, "How can we bury our competitors?" And it's not necessarily be them or hurt these competitors, but it's like, how can you bury people with a relevance? We're the most followed private aviation company in the world. So when people think about private jets and when people see a jet taking off, they should be like, "Hey, that's in a Malfi jet." Even if it's completely not a airplane, what if it's jet-based, is this airplane? No, no, no, that's in a Malfi here, right? And I think if we can keep pushing that, and that's why a lot of our social media we collaborate and film videos with people that have asked nothing to do with private aviation. A lot of our competitors push on a 10, 20, 30 years ago. I mean, these comments are dinosaurs. We posted one of our videos on LinkedIn and this woman from a competitor, commented on it on LinkedIn, and she was like, "This is the most unprofessional thing I've ever seen. This is not the way it's always been done." That comment is framed in our office. And that's great. - That's a cool point. So many people in this industry always do things because this is the way it's always been done. And if you do it, the way it's always been done and you will always get what you've always gone. So we are trying to be as loud and as provocative as possible because in order to get things you'd never had and you gotta do things you've never done, and with the amount of videos that we post in the other people that have nothing to do with jets that we can post about, because people that have no business are never gonna fly private when they, when someone asks them, "Hi, talking about a private jet, they're like, "Oh, well, if a jet's, right?" And that to us is so freaking valuable because that brand equity is something that you can't really buy it. Our competitor could have jumped in TikTok, throw hundreds of millions of dollars behind it. You still, you can't change public opinion in that way. So it's great for us because also being a business owner that doesn't have any investors, we don't have any debt, we're not on this kind of VC or private equity world. I'm still very cheap and very frugal. So like I can't stand wasting money. So as our team was like, "Hey, let's find money in Google ads and then we'll hold on all of our competitors do that." And I was like, "If we're gonna spend $30,000, $40,000 on a month of Google ads, we would need to get 10, 20 customers from that." And if we don't, now I've wasted $40,000 and I'll never get back. I was like, "How can we deploy $40,000 in a TikTok video?" So one of my favorite videos that we filmed was Joss on our team and I, we race to Vegas. I fruit private, he fruit spirit, and we race to see who would get to Vegas better. That video maybe costs us $25,000, $30,000, but we directly tracked, I think it was like $4.7 million revenue just from that one video. Wow. And that video didn't get the most amount of views on YouTube, but those long form videos build loyalty because you feel connected with the people on our team as you see us in a more natural setting. But then that one 20 minute video can get clipped up into 30 or 40 or 50 videos for an across multiple accounts gathering views and building that loyalty that then we can convert. So it's like, so should be just great. And I see a lot of our competitors start and try to post in such a media. Some of them fully just copy our video and just say, "Blank Jumps, this is blank." And I'm like, all right, we kind of did that first. But social media is great, but how does social media feel top of funnel? So great, you get all these people that know about your brand. Great, but where do you send them? All right, where do you send them to website? All right, well, is your website ready to receive that amount of traffic? Is your phone number ready to receive that amount of traffic? We used to, when you call the main line, 18776, and we'll see, it would just kind of go to different sales reps. And then we posted a video, as a most video, got 50 million views on TikTok. Across everything, it was 170 million. That phone or our sales teams, physical phones were reusable for the entire day, because it would not stop me, because it was just so many calls. And I was like, "Oh, we need to fix this." So we have step-in receptionists that answer the phone and qualify in filter-out calls before they forward to our team, because I was like, "Wow, that was really funny." Like, I didn't realize that was a thing. So it's like, it's been fun for our team to deal with these growing pains, but I think that really separates the companies that have good success is like, "Great, you can have this great engagement, but if you're doing anything with it, if you're not capitalizing it, if you're not actually understanding how that's gonna work, then you're gonna shoot yourself in the foot, right? - Now, do you want into any competition from these new things like the PS terminals, which almost give a private jet experience, but at the commercial airports? I think they're in an LA at the-- - Yes, it's fantastic. My business partner's a member. He uses it all the time. PS is, I like it as well. - One of our, they're a part of ours. - So if you've lied commercially with a MOLPHY and you're owner of the MOLPHY-1 JAKAR program, you get one free use. And a lot of our customers, I'm sure, will go on and purchase that PS membership. It's fantastic. I can't say anything to our LADDA because I've used it, and it's absolutely wonderful. But it's interesting, I'm glad you're laughing out because some of our highest-net worth customers will still fight commercial. Meaning, I had a client at the Fish and LA, and he wanted to go to London. If you were to charter a goal of 6,000 men, I still learn in one way, it's got 150,000, right? It was just him and his wife, they were going on vacation, and he was like, "Why would I spend $150,000 if I could drive the LAX, hop on the first class British Airways flight and make it there in the exact same amount of time?" And I said, "Direct doesn't make sense." But what if he was going to Sicily, and he did that later that summer? Well, from LA to Sicily, there's no direct flights. That would have been flying from LA to London, then to I think Florence or Milan, then driving. Whereas if you fly private, you can fly directly into the airport direct from LA. So that is when he decided to spend $180,000 on that one truck there. So that's the thing, it's like a lot of our clients pay for that convenience, 'cause commercial airline service and it's direct between airports, and then your private jet will physically fly faster. You're talking maybe five, 10 minutes. You're landing in a smaller airport, but the real time savings are at the airport and honestly the convenience factor of it. But when you're flying to small places in the atmosphere in the middle of nowhere, but just not primarily served by commercial airlines, flying type would be a lot more efficient. Like people go into the almond geary hotels, one of the biggest locations. If I'm sick and there's no direct, but commercial airline service from LA into page Arizona and then you drop people, I think are flying into Vegas or something like city or something and like drive. Well, private jet can fly directly to page and anything that's like a 30 or 40 minute drive and then back. So it's like flying private and made that one trip a lot more seamless. Whereas commercials would have been a lot worse. But I mean, LA to Vegas, that is one of my favorite tips that we sell a lot because I love to see a bunch of like baschlers who will split a jet on like nine different credit cards, but then they'll all go to Vegas the first time fly private they have a really good time. So we do have a fair share of your ultra high net worth customers to this is the first and probably only time we're ever gonna fly private, but it's just an awesome really fun experience. So it's really cool to share that with people that are new to private aviation. And so what's next? You're 24 years old, you have this, you know, 100 million, 120 million revenue private jet business. Do you want to sell it? Do you want to go public? Do you want to sell off a piece of private equity? Like what's your goal? I think there are goals really fly. It's one I think it always ties back to the formation. Why did I start this company? Well, as a kid, I always thought that private aviation was this glorious glamourous thing with the right carpet. When I first started into space reaching out to my competitors and seeing how terrible this industry was, I was like, damn, like I was, I was like, I was like, I thought I'd be just wearing this awesome cool industry and I was like, see how it's run. I was like, it sucks. So as long as everything ties back to the formation how can we make private aviation the most unparalleled flying experience? How can we make it more efficient? And how can we consistently be the most recognized and volatile aviation company? And then next two to three years are goals to keep growing. I would love to go public. However, a lot of our competitors have been there and it has a going to well for them. So probably not going public. Our goal would probably be to acquire some smaller companies and to build the kind of standard for aviation or to merge with competitors that I do admire and be a part of their ecosystem, which would be really fun. Or if private equity wants to partner with us and take a piece, usually they don't provide the best valuations and goals on that front. But if a private equity were to be interested and actually believed in our mission and we got along with well, I think that would be really fun to have that capital to deploy across the team maybe even and a buying an airplane for our customers and operating on that model. But I think I look to the future and think that there is so much room for growth if we just be our heads down and focus on the mission, the right opportunity will come. And when you first, with this first start scaling up and you realize, oh, this is going to be a success. Like I'm going to make a lot of money. I'm going to make a million dollars, going to make five million dollars, whatever. Well, when did you first, like what did you first floor John for yourself when you realized, oh, I'm going to be rich? This watch, this watch. So I like watches and it used to be a lot bigger into watches, but it's funny. The very first business meeting that ever went with a client in person, he had this watch. It's a mega-sea master, you know, again, it's not like a million dollar watches, like $56, $6,000, $7,000. I remember being at that, that lunch with him. And I had like a cheat in Victor watch. No shade to Invicta, great watches, but it's all I could for it was like $1,200. And I remember being at that dinner and he was telling me he was like, yeah, if he was like, this watch was the first watch I bought when I sold my company. He's like, I didn't need to roll likes, I didn't need to reach to me, oh, this is what I bought. So when we made, shit, I think it was two million in a month, the first time I was like, you know what, I've earned that watch. So I went on and bought this watch. So it's like a lot of people look at this watch and like, yeah, it's not a most expensive watch. But to me, this watch represents so much more. And that's why I love this. I got a lot more expensive watches, but to me, this one means the best to me. That's cool. Well, look, you have, you know, it's great success. It's an inspirational story, you know, starting at 19. And I love the industry. I just think it's so fascinating the whole private jet industry because it really is a whole other world of transportation. And also it really is underlying, underlining how wealthy many people, I mean, you don't see this mostly, but there's so many people. I once had Steve Forbes on the podcast. And I said, you know, I think your Forbes 500, the richest 500 people in the world, I think it's inaccurate. I think there's a lot more wealthy people than you think out there. Yeah. And he's like, oh, no, we've do all the respin years doing the research. And like, but how would you know if somebody, you know, made money on crypto or made money? Yeah. You know, they were the second investor in a business that got sold. You just don't know who they are. And I think a lot of people, that fly private, fly private, also friddy privacy. They just don't want to be known. And I think that's pretty common. You'll never see the inner situations on our social media. But again, 89% of our social media or any 9% of our clients is very simple. It's high quality of jet. Great. It's $250,000. It's pretty called money-cent, thanks. That's not going to perform as well in TikTok because that's not crazy, right? But it's funny because, you know, there's that saying of like, you can't afford to fly on a private jet. You can't afford to fly on a private jet once you start flying on a private jet and you don't host about it. And I think that's pretty common to pre-troom. That's funny. Well, Colin, thanks so much for coming on, explaining your business. Good luck on everything going forward. And congratulations to your success. I appreciate it. It was great to see you. Thank you very much. ♪ This is the mantra ♪ ♪ This is the mantra ♪ ♪ With movies like Pineapple Express ♪ ♪ The entire Star Trek film franchise ♪ ♪ And Gladiator ♪ ♪ And TV shows like Survivor ♪ ♪ SpongeBob SquarePants ♪ ♪ The Fairly Odd Parents and Ghosts ♪ ♪ Pluto TV is always free ♪ ♪ Zom ♪ ♪ Pluto TV ♪ ♪ Stream now, pain ever ♪

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Private jet owners often rent out their jets to offset high ownership costs, but this can lead to increased maintenance and wear.
  2. The speaker, Colin Jones, founded Amalfi Jets at age 18 as a brokerage, using a tech-driven model to offer cheaper, faster quotes without owning any jets.
  3. He leverages social media (over 4 million followers) to generate leads, outpacing competitors through high-volume email outreach.
  4. Private jet travel offers a superior, hassle-free experience compared to commercial flying, which has declined in quality over time.
  5. The brokerage industry lacks regulation, making it easy to start but risky for clients, as illustrated by a stranded client incident in the Galapagos.

Summary:

The conversation highlights the private jet industry's dynamics, focusing on Colin Jones, founder of Amalfi Jets. Private jet owners often rent out their aircraft to offset costs, but this increases maintenance risks. Jones built Amalfi Jets as a brokerage without owning jets, using a tech platform that connects clients with vetted operators, offering 10-20% lower prices.

He emphasizes the superiority of private flying, contrasting it with declining commercial airline quality, where seats are smaller and service minimal. Jones started the company during COVID, leveraging his pilot background and a fake persona to research competitors, finding many lacked knowledge. His social media presence drives rapid customer acquisition, allowing him to outpace competitors.

However, the industry is unregulated for brokers, leading to potential risks, such as a client being stranded in the Galapagos when a plane broke down, requiring creative solutions. Jones advocates for broker certification to improve reliability. Overall, the summary underscores the opportunities and challenges in the private jet brokerage space, from tech-driven efficiency to the need for better oversight.

FAQs

Owners rent out their jets when not in use to offset costs, like reducing annual expenses from $1 million to $200,000. However, more usage increases maintenance issues and wear and tear.

Private jets offer a stress-free experience with no TSA lines, direct boarding, champagne, lounge chairs, and efficient travel. Commercial flights are cramped and less luxurious.

Amalfi Jets vets about 3,500 out of 26,000 charter aircraft based on safety, maintenance, crew, insurance, and quality. They use a strict checklist to ensure high standards.

Owning a private jet costs about $800,000 per year in fixed expenses like hangar fees, insurance, maintenance, and pilot salaries, even if the jet is not flown.

Amalfi Jets uses proprietary software to track aircraft, optimize routes, and get bids from operators, resulting in prices 10-20% cheaper than the standard market.

Colin, a pilot student, saw private jet demand rise during COVID as commercial travel declined. He created a brokerage model with no aircraft ownership, starting from his college dorm.

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