CEO Shares Insights on Building Relationships in the Charter Flight Industry

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Jordan Brown Teaser 00:00

If you think about it, let's say these guys live in a four or 5 million home. There's not much in life where you're spending, 8, 000 an hour. So you get very much involved in making sure that everything is executed properly with assistance. We're a team with assistance.

We want to make them look good, and be there for them. So it's a real teamwork when, trying to assist their CEOs and their principals.

Intro 00:24

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of.This is the I Am CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:53

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Chris from the I Am CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Jordan Brown. Jordan, excited to have you on the show.

Jordan Brown 01:01

Oh, man. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to see where the conversation goes today. So thank you.

Gresham Harkless 01:06

Yeah, absolutely. You're doing so many phenomenal things. So I know as the conversation flows, we're going to end up in really phenomenal places. So, of course, before we jumped into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Jordan. So you can hear about some of those awesome things.

And it really boils down to one trait, confidence as a result of experience. Humble beginnings, a damn hard work ethic and a deep passion for genuine relationships built on trust. And that right there is the essence of Jordan Brown. Talk to any of his friends, colleagues or clients, and they will tell you that Jordan is absolutely in his element as CEO of Jet agency.

Pursuing his childhood dream and always doing everything possible to make sure his clients are completely taken care of. Because for Jordan, that is literally everything. A genuine professional relationship built on trust and a mutual appreciation for premium quality at every opportunity.

Jordan knows this industry. After all, he grew up in it ever since he began washing airplanes at the age of 11 to score a ride in the skies above. Rides turned to conversations, conversations turned into friendships and friendships turned into long-lasting professional relationships.

He continues to treat every traveler as a long-time friend, sometimes driving for hours just to help and personally send them off to safely and it is easy to see that he loves you helping people and would do whatever it takes to make their day. Now it is one thing to stay current within an entry, but Jordan is a true visionary.

He has a site set on pioneering, unprecedented approach, unprecedented approach to the charter flight experience and forever transforming the industry. And absolutely who doesn't love, people that have put in their 10, 000 hours starting at the age of 11, which is absolutely awesome.

I think I read that this led to your first startup airplane aesthetics, if I'm right. And it's always great to hear that not only you're doing good, but you also give back as well too. And I think the things that you're passionate about with your wife are passionate about, like teen homelessness. I really love, of course, to hear all the awesome things you're doing.

Love even more that you're making such a huge impact in the world today. So Jordan, excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I Am CEO community?

Jordan Brown 03:04

You got it, buddy. Thank you.

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Gresham Harkless 03:06

Yes, absolutely. Thank you. So I wanted to kick everything off. I would want to talk a little bit. I know it's a little bit, but I wanted to hear a little bit more about the story that you started with all the awesome work you're doing.

Jordan Brown 03:15

Yeah, no, thank you so much. I grew up near a small airport. It did not service commercial airlines. It was just, yeah. Little one 72s. My grandparents lived on one side of the airport. My parents lived on the other. So I would ride my bike back and forth, and it clearly became my passion.

I wanted to become an airline pilot at first, so started washing and detailing airplanes in Louisville, Kentucky. Or to earn flight time. And it was a great way to earn extra money. And, I would skip school just to be out at the airport, later on in high school and stuff. So, from there just to move through the aviation industry. So.

Gresham Harkless 03:57

Yeah, I absolutely love that. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more here, a little bit more about Jet Agency.

Could you take us through a little bit more on how you're serving clients, and how you're making an impact.

Jordan Brown 04:06

Sure. Absolutely. We've been in what's called the on-demand jet charter business, and that just essentially means you call us up. You we give you a quote on how much it would cost from D. C. Maybe to Miami, which, roughly about 15 to 20, 000 for a one-way on a jet that, seats 6 to 8 people.

That's and you never have to call us again, right? That's been our previous business model. And one of our companies still operates that way today. But jet agency is really a higher pedigree experience than that, than just the one-off. This is folks that, make a deposit of somewhere around a quarter million dollars to become a member of jet agency, and they have a fixed hourly rate.

And there's, the relationship is much more cemented. Not that we don't take care of our people that fly once a year on on-demand charter, but the jet agency is really a long-term relationship, and, and a higher pedigree of experience, the higher pedigree of, of aircraft and it's also a great model to where you don't have to own your own aircraft and you don't have to own a fraction of an airplane that essentially works as a debit card.

As you fly your hours, your statement, is debited. Essentially.

Gresham Harkless 05:19

Yeah, I appreciate you breaking that down and really understanding that.

Jordan Brown 05:22

If you think about it, let's say these guys live in a four or 5 million home. There's not much in life where you're spending, 8, 000 an hour. So you get very much involved in making sure that everything is executed properly with assistance. We're a team with assistance.

We want to make them look good, and be there for them. So it's a real teamwork when, trying to assist their CEOs and their principals.

Gresham Harkless 05:48

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I imagine and I would love to hear more on like, how that. process goes and you know how you serve them.

So could you take us through so people have the membership and they pretty much reach out to you and you guys take everything from there. Could you take us through what that looks like?

Jordan Brown 06:01

It is they simply, go to our website, send us a text message.

They give us about a 48-hour notice that says, hey, I need to go from Boston to Palm Beach. And they have an aircraft there at what time 11 a.m. That airplane is there at 11 a.m. to take them to Palm Beach. And if that's about almost a three-hour flight. They have their locked-in rate of somewhere around 6000 an hour, and that's what they're charged.

We also provide ground transportation. We provide catering And any, any type of services that they're gonna want to make their travel, a lot easier.

Gresham Harkless 06:38

Yeah. And that really, the word that again comes to me is that that experience where you get to have, there's so many things that you have to juggle.

I imagine, being any type of leadership, but especially being a CEO, but to be able to again, have that partnership, that friendship, that relationship has been cemented.

Jordan Brown 06:51

You got it. And response time is so important. Our clients do die. They're paying for the commodity of time, right? That's why they fly private.

So. We don't have the luxury of getting back to people an hour later when they call or email. If you could picture kind of NASA mission control, that's exactly what our staff is right with client services as we call them. They send an email and, they want a salad or something on board.

We're responding. Our average response time is nine minutes. So that's what is required of myself and the team. I still get involved in the weeds and, and enjoy it. So a lot of times the staff tries getting me out of the weeds, but I like it. I enjoy it so much. So.

Gresham Harkless 07:34

Yeah, absolutely.

So, you touched a little bit upon what I think might be your secret sauce.

This could be for the organization itself or a combination of both. But isn't that, awareness of I think the commodity of time and how powerful that is, but also how you can create that experience for your clients, your customers, those relationships being able to build. Do you feel like being locked in and understanding that and being able to execute on that as part of your secret sauce?

Jordan Brown 07:59

I think it goes well beyond that. For me, I'm a recovering micromanager. I'm five years in recovery. I think part of the secret sauce is I'm not sure where I read it and I'm not a great reader. I love the fact that a lot of CEOs read books. They're like, I read five books this year.

I haven't. It's not a strength of mine, but it's something that I certainly want to build on and get a discipline of reading more books. But somewhere I read that management is like a rubber band. And if you pull it too tight, it's going to break. But if you leave it on the desk, it's not doing its job.

So there's some happy medium here in the middle of management. And that's really, I think, been a secret sauce for me over the past couple of years. And it sounds cliche ish, but also failure. I've had a lot of failures this year. It's been a rough year for me personally and professionally. So learning a lot, not to chase revenue, but to chase, the P and L and chase profit instead of growth.

At all costs. I think we've seen a lot of companies, the ubers of the world that, have got a ton of investment and they operate in the negative for years. Some of these companies never get profitable. We just saw we work filed bankruptcy this week. I got sucked into that a little bit.

Over the past few years. And it made a lot of mistakes there. So I think we can look at today's environment that it is no longer cool just to have as much revenue as possible, right? As you look at we work. and stuff. So, I'm hoping to utilize some of that secret sauce the next year or two to really focus on the profit of the business.

Gresham Harkless 09:38

Yeah, I appreciate you sharing so much of that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for maybe 1 of those things, which is called a CEO hack.

So it's a little bit more of an app. It may not be a book or that you mentioned it, but it might be a habit that you have. What's something that you lean on that makes you more effective and efficient.

Jordan Brown 09:54

It's got to be our KPIs. Data. We're a very data-driven company. Private aviation tends to be very antiquated.

DocuSign is a, the new revolution in private aviation for signing contracts. We're very much technology forward but I would say it's, the Power BI-type app Domo. Business intelligence app is crucial. And I ignored a lot of that this past year and it got me into trouble.

So that's what I would say is going to be mission-critical.

Gresham Harkless 10:24

Yeah, absolutely. When you start to see what impact that you're making and how in order to do that, do you feel like it's also really important to make sure you're selecting the right KPIs to make sure that you are, like, paying attention to those things?

Jordan Brown 10:37

I think that's a really great point because some KPIs are irrelevant to our business model. But, certainly cost per acquisition is a big one retention rates. We're a sales organization, right? Our mission on a daily basis at JET Agency is to sell JET Charter JET membership.

So very sales-driven KPIs, I can say, who's responding the quickest out of our sales team. But I would say mainly those sales KPIs and how the sales teams performing.

Gresham Harkless 11:10

Yeah, that's huge. So what would you consider to be what I like to call a CEO nugget? This is a little bit more word of wisdom or a piece of advice.

I usually say it might be something, if you were to hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

Jordan Brown 11:21

I think grace is a huge one. It's giving grace to, the staff that might be having a bad day, a client that might be having a bad day. I tell the team all the time, look around.

Your teammates are going through something. You might feel like you're the only one struggling personally or professionally. It's not true. I try to be extremely transparent and vulnerable and, and that would be my nugget is vulnerability as a CEO and, making sure the team understands that everybody's going through something.

You got to be there for your teammates, regardless.

Gresham Harkless 11:56

Yeah, I think that's so powerful. And often, you find even in doing these episodes, I often say people forget about the human part of business. And of course, KPIs are important. And make sure you have your profit. All those things are important.

But when we get down to the nitty-gritty of what we're doing, we're helping out people, whether you're talking about clients, customers, the people that are on the team. So I love that grace piece, because I think by giving ourselves grace, but also giving other people grace, I think it creates a relationship Better environment, a really great environment where you do have that human part that celebrated you do ultimately get to make the impact that I think ultimately these organizations and businesses like yourselves are trying to do.

Jordan Brown 12:31

Yeah, it could be very emotional in that sense. So I agree with you.

Gresham Harkless 12:37

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that. So I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Jordan, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:12:48] Jordan Brown: Yeah, I can sit here with the cliche, leadership and lead by example. And of course, that's all it. But I'm not a big believer in titles. I poke fun at myself when it makes me uncomfortable when you know, a staff member introduces me a CEO even though our revenue reached about 85 million this past year on a run rate you know the at the high point about 90 employees.

I still feel like we're a small business. And so the CEO part is a little weird for me, but I tell people, Hey, I'm chief email officer. In, in that sense, but I really, I wake up every morning and my question to the staff is, what do you need from me today? What tools Do you need from this organization to be successful in your role?

Gresham Harkless 13:36

I love that. And I think that I was talking to somebody, I believe, and they said sometimes the most powerful thing that you can do is actually the questions that you ask. And I love that question because It really gets down to what I think is the key about, being a CEO, entrepreneur, business owner to, it just depends on whatever that's how it is.

It's asking and being there and being able to answer and do those things for people. But if you don't ask that question, you don't provide a culture of that opportunity for them to answer. Then how well are you actually leading and how much of an impact are you ultimately at?

Jordan Brown 14:07

Sure. Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 14:09

Yes. Absolutely. I love that, Jordan. And of course, I appreciate that. I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get a view and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Jordan Brown 14:24

You gotta been awesome. Jet agency dot com. We're a premier private aviation company. We've got veteran company. industry leaders on our team. We got a great product that we put together. We put it together from scratch. I tell people it's not, our slogan is all membership, no fees.

Private aviation can be a very convoluted process of buying. And I do not envy our clients because it's difficult to understand the different products and that are available in the private aviation space. So we really break it down very simple. It's an hourly rate. No extra fees. All membership. We're going to take you to F 1 suites.

We're gonna have great experiences. We're not sponsoring the Super Bowl. We're not sponsoring horse races. We're taking those dollars and putting it right back into the client experience, not taking your dollars and doing ridiculous marketing campaigns. You can reach me JordanB@jetagency.com.

I will respond within nine minutes to your email. So, love to hear from you guys. We are hiring and expanding. We've been profitable at jet agency since day one. So, really appreciate the opportunity to lead this organization.

Gresham Harkless 15:39

Yeah, we appreciate your time. And of course, we're gonna have the links and information in the show notes as well, too.

So everybody can get a hold of Jordan and the team and all the awesome things that you're doing. But I truly appreciate you obviously again, taking time out today, but I appreciate even more, the vulnerability that you talked about and being able to talk about that journey. And I think, When you see people that are successful and doing so many phenomenal things as you and your team are doing, we sometimes don't see how those things are happening.

So I appreciate you sharing that with us today. And of course, I appreciate you making sure that you are putting the client experience at the top of the list and making sure that you are creating that for your clients is such a great reminder for us. And of course, I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Jordan Brown 16:18

Awesome, man. You too. Thank you guys.

Outro 16:20

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This has been the I Am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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