What I’ve learnt after selling private jets to billionaires for 40 years

If I was 21 again, what would I do differently? Wow, and a lot of times people ask, if you started from zero today, you know, what would you do first? It's so tough out there in the world. We calculated 1,500 millionaires that travel past the window every day. We deal with a lot of powerful people, wealthy people, billionaires, celebrity kind.

The biggest reason I built a f SL is what are my top tips for starting a new business? First of all, who are you? That's the biggest question. Do you really know yourself? Do you know your capabilities? Do you know your drive? If you're the kind of person that really stuck to any project until it ended no matter what—when you were a kid, when you were a teenager, or whatever adult—if you can do that, if you did that, if that was your habit, then maybe you have a life as an entrepreneur to start a business.

Okay, but I'm talking about sitting down, starting your homework, not walking away until it's completely finished. You know, if you had a project of cleaning a house until it's done, you didn't stop. If you had a project that somebody gave you at work, you didn't finish and walk away until it was complete. These are really signs of somebody who can start a business because if you don't have that finished attitude, okay, no matter what, stepping over dead bodies to get to the end result, then you are not cut out to be an entrepreneur, and you can't start a business.

You can start a business with somebody else maybe who has those capabilities, but just because you have an idea, a fantastic idea, if you can't execute and stick to it, you'll never succeed. When I first started my business here at the jet business, we had a few obstacles because this was a concept that just was a crazy concept. Nobody ever thought of building a shop or a storefront to sell corporate jets.

So, we had to really create—what do I put in the window? I didn't want people to think we’re a travel agency, we’re selling model airplanes, things like that. So, the design was really important. We had to build the technology, the data for the app on the video wall. We had to really market ourselves correctly.

So, for the first 6 months, we really weren't hitting our stride. It took a long time, you know, more after the 6 months to really get the sort of locomotive out of the station and pick up speed. Once after we got the message across and the people in the office knew what we were supposed to be doing and how we were pitching it to the media and to our clients, we started getting one, two, three deals over the wall, and then all of a sudden we picked up some traction, and now we got a pretty good deal flow that keeps us going forward.

We deal with a lot of powerful people, wealthy people, people in government, in public office and corporations—mostly big corporate executives, chairman, CEOs, C-level kind of people, billionaires, celebrities, kind. There’s such a large gamut of a cross-section of people we deal with, but some of the things you really know about talking to all these people is that you have to listen.

You have to listen to what they say because what they will tell you makes you sort of evolve the pitch that you're going to give them. You want to basically find what kind of problem they're trying to solve for, and the more you listen to what they're telling you, you could put these little pieces of the puzzle together to make that picture as complete as possible so you can actually know what the objective is.

Sometimes it’s just not clear; sometimes they don't even know. By them talking it out, basically instructs you and teaches you what kind of goals they want to reach, which means which kind of goals you have to meet in order to deliver them a product that they are going to be happy with. And what we learn from these people—you are being tested constantly. They are used to people doing what they say and having no excuses.

I've learned to not say no. We say, "Let me find out." If I don't know the answer, if I don't think it's possible, I'll say, "I don't think it's possible," but not at the beginning because I will double check, triple check, quadruple check, to see if there's any way around getting to a solution. Definitely what I learned is don't say no.

Another thing I've learned from all these successful industrialists, billionaires, business people—you can't get an overnight success. Everybody just dreams of these people creating an app and boom, the next day you have a billion dollars. It really doesn't work that way. Nobody ever understands the thousands and thousands of sleepless nights most entrepreneurs have before they hit that overnight success.

It reminds me of this saying that Ratan Tata is like an 85, 87-year-old industrialist from India, very successful guy with multiple companies. He says that slow success builds character; fast success builds ego. Just something to keep in mind.

If I was 21 again, what would I do differently? Wow, that's a big, big question. I actually enjoyed really every bit of my life. I think one of the things I do differently is maybe sort of get into the entrepreneurial job, start my own business much earlier than I really did. I really worked for somebody—a lot of people—through my teens, my 20s, my 30s, my 40s, and they were very, very demanding people, not just in sales but in the sort of corporate takeovers, mergers and acquisitions, private equity.

And I worked really for a lot of powerful kind of people. They taught me just how to work around the clock and just don't take, you know, no for an answer. If I was 21 now, I think I would start my own business earlier. You just don't learn until you really try. You can learn, you can read, you can read, you can read, but until you really put the motion in action and actually do what you're supposed to try to do, you're never going to learn if it's going to be possible or not.

Why did I build this f SL? The biggest reason I built the f SL is I wanted to get the attention of every potential client that drove down Park Lane. There's almost 100,000 vehicles every day that go up and down this street, and we calculated that there are something like 1,500 millionaires and dozens of people who own a jet that travel past the window every day.

And I wanted to make sure that if they saw this window, they wanted to be curious—curiosity what was going on in there. It was going to sort of get their attention, and then eventually get them to come in. If they pass the window enough, their curiosity is going to get them, and they're going to want to come in this office.

Once they do, then it's up to us to get them into the video wall, get into the technology, show them the data we have, all the information we have, and how much we know about this industry. If they are a potential client, we'll get them. What did I learn from failures?

You learn everything from failures, okay? But if you don't try, if you don't move forward, if you don't sort of execute a plan, you can't fail. So, you can always talk about doing something, but if you just keep talking about it, you never fail. And if you don't fail, you're never going to learn.

Reading out of a book how to execute a business plan, how to build a business, it’s nice in theory, but until you really do it, you won't know. A lot of times people ask, you know, if you started from zero today, you know, what would you do first? It’s so tough out there in the world.

There's so much competition and things, but I really think that today it's so much easier to go from zero to 10 than it was, you know, 10, 20, 30 years ago. You know, before you needed to have, you know, money. You didn't have the internet, you didn't have any of these technologies that really you could be sitting in a bedroom of an apartment, create a website, create a company, buying some product from someplace in the world, and selling it someplace else.

You can do so much research just at your fingers’ touch. Now, with chat gpt and AI, it's amazing how educated you get on any subject in a second. So, if you really think that you know I have an idea, it's so easy to see on the internet if somebody else has that idea. Is it a waste of time to do it?

So really, you could do some research really quick at that zero point and see if it's a good idea, and then you can go each step along the way. You can find resources, you can find people to help you, you can find reports, data, everything, everything off the internet. So, I think that really starting from scratch today for the younger generation is just so much easier.

The problem is, you have to have that determination to sit home or sit in an office, get a group of friends together to really have like-minded energy and determination to drive forward and really not think about just going out and partying and texting your friends and things like that. I mean, really, you have to be so dedicated and want to do nothing else but succeed. If you don't have that drive, then you'll get a job working for somebody else.

I like to read when I’m traveling. It sort of continues my education process. Besides for learning from all the different clients that I deal with, basically three standout, I think, books that come to mind that really have an impression on me are one by Tony Robbins. It's called "Life Force."

I'm into longevity, anti-aging, and things as I age, which I'm doing. I'm trying to find ways to basically live my life healthy, really take care of my health rather than take care of my sicknesses. So, really health care instead of sick care. Such an easy-to-read book about every single kind of advancement in the medical field that's easy to understand.

Everything for longevity, anti-aging, any kind of medications, anything that you really want to know how to sort of extend your life in a much more healthy body, internally, exterior, and in mind. The next book is Peter Diamandis wrote a book called "The Future Is Faster Than You Think," but that book really shows you how quick the future is upon us now.

He's really, really getting more into artificial intelligence and things like that, but he's usually on the cutting edge of most of the technologies, and it's a great book to see what things are coming. Actually, probably a lot of them are already here and passed because the book came out a few years ago.

But it's a great book to sort of get yourself up to speed on really where this world is going from as far as technologies. And the third book is my all-time favorite, which is "Atlas Shrugged." It's been written by a lady named Ayn Rand. She was a Russian immigrant back in the 1950s.

It's really a book that talks about altruism versus capitalism and how the world really needs this capitalism to basically assist with bringing intellectual property and bringing new ideas and sort of businesses forward, and really developing technologies in any industry. And how they're so important to help any country advance.

If you really don't support the people that are building these industries, then all of a sudden these people just decide not to build these businesses—sort of a disincentive—and eventually if you don't have all these people that create and build anything in the world, in any sector, if you don't give these people incentives to sort of create, then all of a sudden you have no creation, and you just get a deterioration of civilization.

The book that was written 60-70 years ago, but it actually is a fictional book, and it's a great education on why this mindset is so important to have. If you have any more questions that I can answer, please add them in the comment section below, and I'll try to get them answered. Be sure to follow the channel. [Music]