Transcript

[0:00]And this is right at the time when your brain goes, what am I doing? Hi, I'm Mike Davis. These days, there's two things I'm really passionate about. Outdoor adventure and entrepreneurship. So we took those two things, put them together, and came up with this new show, Hustlers and Adventure. So come along for the ride.

[0:21]Americans love to travel, and over half of them will fly when they travel. In the United States alone, there's over 45,000 commercial flights every day. And that's how most people fly in the United States. But there's been a large uptick in the number of private flights that are going every year. There's over 12,000 flights a day on private planes. And that's seen a huge uptick since the beginning of COVID, where more than 2 million people have said that they've flown for the first time privately. When you think of private flights, you're probably thinking of Kim Kardashian's Gulfstream with cashmere seats. But private personal planes only make up a small fraction of the private flights that are going every day. Today on Hustlers and Adventure, we're going to be talking with John Braun. He's the owner of a small charter aircraft company named Boone Aviation. John is the owner and the chief pilot, and they have just one plane, a Pilatus PC-12. But we're not just going to sit around and talk about planes in the hangar. On Hustlers in Adventure, we do our talking while we're out having an adventure. And what better type of adventure when you have a plane than jumping out of one.

[1:40]Alright guys, welcome. My name is Rusty. Welcome to our indoor skydiving facility here at iFly Denver. So here we're going to focus on before we actually go outdoor skydiving, skydiving for real. however you want to call it, we'll practice and focus on what will happen when we're in free fall. That's the body position, how we plan to adjust your body position to get you symmetrical, and that's what's actually going to get you flying. But today the goal is to practice symmetry and be stable because when the parachute deploys, what it really needs when the parachute comes off your back is that stable platform in order for the parachute to deploy correctly. So that's the So the body position itself, feet and knees about shoulder width apart. Hips just slightly push forwards head just slightly up i'm just going to look at you for now but your arms should be in roughly about a box configuration about 90 degrees who wants to come up and practice mike you're kind of tall so you're trying to make sure your feet don't hit the uh hit the wall perfect okay so just um just bring your arms forwards a little bit a little bit closer together. Perfect. Excellent. Okay. So point your toes for me. And if you see this signal, bend up your legs right there. I think that's roughly going to be sort of symmetrical for you. Okay. Okay. How does that feel? It's hurting. Okay.

[3:04]Thankfully it is a little easier in the wind because the pressure of the wind is going to help you be into that arch position. This first session, I think we'll just, we'll just focus on body position. We'll get in, we'll get comfortable, we'll kind of blow the cobwebs off, so to speak, you know, get, you know, some of those butterflies that are in here, maybe some nerves, we'll just get that out the way. And, and then we'll come back in and we'll do, you know, add some stuff to the, to the mix. That sound good?

[3:29]Music.

[3:37]All right, John, so how's business? Business is good. Yeah, we're standing here. It's November 2022, and we're actually kind of coming off a busy summer, and we're gearing up for a busy season this holiday, and it's going to be pretty good. Nice. What are some of the kind of standard flights, and what are some of the weird flights you do? Yeah, so I do a lot of kind of local stuff. I'd say, like, my sweet spot is, like, 500 miles or in this airplane just because it's so versatile. There's a lot of airports that we can get to that jets can't get to, and I do a lot of transfers. There's guys flying into like DIA here and I'll take them up to all the mountain airports, steamboat, Telluride.

[4:11]Aspen's pretty popular, Jackson Hole type thing. And then in the wintertime, I do a lot of trips out to Arizona, Southern California. All right. So just tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah. So I started flying when I was 15. And what inspired me to start flying was when I was 10 years old, we took a family trip to Alaska and we were there. A guy offered to take me for a ride in a cup. And for some reason, my parents let me do it. So we went on about a 30-minute flight through the back country of Alaska. We saw bears and moose and everything. And I thought, you know, at some point in my life, I want to do that. Nobody in my family has an aviation background. And so I started when I was 15. Didn't get my license until I was 18. I went to school actually to become a lawyer. I did that for about a year. But then I decided to get back into flying professionally. And that's when I decided to start my own company to do this. The trips we've gone on with you, you've gone skydiving. Yes. In fact, that was like one of the first times I realized you skydive was when you put a parachute on the plane. I was a little concerned. Yes. But my pilot was putting a parachute on the plane. Yes. But like, do you do that? Is that something you try to do wherever you go if you can? Yeah, for sure. If I'm going to a place where there's a drop zone or a skydiving facility and I have a day or two layover, I like to bring my gear and go jump. You get to meet new people, jump in a new place. So that's a really cool part of the business. And if I take a trip somewhere or there's a tunnel, I'll bring my gear and we'll go tunnel fly like we got to experience. Yeah. But you're doing great.

[5:40]Music.

[6:24]These aren't cheap planes right like how how do you how do you do something like this no they're very very expensive airplanes um the joke is what makes an airplane fly as a flight instructor we always start off with that question everyone starts thinking oh maybe airspeed or lift no it's money money is what makes an airplane fly i decided early on i didn't want to ever buy the airplanes, so what i do is i have owners that want to put their plane on charter and this is very common in the industry to, when they're not using the airplane, allow the airplane to go charter and to offset some of the costs with that. So they receive compensation for the use of the airplane. So I don't have any debt on the company. I structured it to where I only pay for the time I use the airplane. You ever have plans to kind of expand? Are you going to, you want to do more with it? I don't want to get it too big. I do want to add one plane and one pilot. And the reason is, is when you take a step from, there's different levels of certification. When I go to the next step and have more planes and pilots, there are more rules that are imposed on me, which includes more personnel I have to hire.

[7:25]Stricter maintenance rules, more manuals, a list of things that incur more costs. So it's kind of that fine line about where, you know, how much do I want to have an overhead versus, you know, the ability to leverage myself and expand. But my next step would be to add at least one more airplane, maybe two, and hire another pilot because that kind of keeps me in that sweet spot of where I can operate. Yeah. What kind of differentiates you from maybe other small charter companies or even just jet links, whatever? I would say mostly flexibility. And the reason is because as the owner and also as the pilot.

[8:01]A lot of these charter companies, they have management structure in place and certain rules and certain times and days off for their pilots and this, that, and the other. That's one thing that I really pride on myself is the flexibility so we can make last minute changes. we can, you know, cancellation, rescheduling, all those things that you won't see flexibility in another company, I like to offer to my clients. And what's fun about it? What do you like about running your own business, Tim? Without question, it's two things. It's the flexibility to kind of work, to have my own schedule, to work for myself. And the second is, it's exciting because I never know where I'm going to go. Some of the places that clients have taken me have been, I've never gotten to go on my own. So you just never know where you're going, what kind of trip you're going to get to do, and who you're going to meet. That's probably the favorite thing about my job is meeting new clients and.

[8:47]You know, interact with them, get to know them, and then kind of help them build trips and make the experience really, really good is definitely my most favorite part of running the company. Nice. Mike, how do you feel? Good. Yeah. Yeah, that's fun. Yeah. All in all, from our perspective, I mean, I think it's going to be great. And you are flying like a little superstar too. Maybe we'll just put everybody through. Just train everybody to be skydivers. John, you have anything to add? No, you look great and everything. Your cool sequence and really good, stable. Yeah, it's going to look great. So, we'll pray for some good weather. Good to go.

[9:25]Music.

[9:33]So, John, we're out here getting ready to do our actual skydiving course. We're going to jump for real. But we were just at the wind tunnel. Maybe tell us a little bit about kind of why we go to the wind tunnel to learn and what's kind of the things that we learned there? Sure, yeah, the wind tunnels kind of came on the scene in like the late 90s, early 2000s, and kind of revolutionized the sport because what it is is a vertical wind tunnel, it recirculates air, and it basically simulates the free fall sensation while being inside in a controlled environment. So what we do is we'll go to the wind tunnel, you can brief outside the tunnel, we'll get in and we'll work on body position, and it's, you know, every minute the wind tunnel is equivalent to a skydive outside. So it allows you to train and really kind of dial in all the nuances before you get out of the plane and do it for the first time. So when you get out of the airplane, you know, now all we're worried about is really altitude awareness and flying the parachute. And our body position has become kind of second nature because we've been in the wind tunnel and kind of figure that out there. Yeah, yeah. A little less adrenaline going on in the wind tunnel too. Exactly.

[10:39]Music.

[10:50]You have over a thousand jumps what do you love about it what what keeps you coming back and jumping more well a couple things about the sport i really like um first is that it's always challenging you so there's a lot of different disciplines you can kind of get involved with and you're always challenging yourself to fly in different orientations um i also like taking kind of newer people skydiving and like seeing their progression as they start you know kind of like we're gonna do today you know take someone on their first jump and then see how they progress and grow the sport and also it's like the travel aspect you can travel around the country around the world and jump once you have a license it's um a lot of countries will recognize the uspa license and you can go around and meet new people and travel around and jump so it's just there's a lot of variety and a lot of you know adventure in the sport yeah yeah so uh so tell us about like one of your some of your favorite jumps most memorable jumps you'll never forget like your first skydive like so today will be a very big day for you because you're going to remember it it's just a overwhelming sense of adrenaline and a rush same with kaylee and whoever's jumping today.

[11:46]You remember kind of going through and learning, but one of my most memorable jumps once I had my license was The first time I did a balloon jump. Oh, and we can jump out of hot air balloons And why that's different is it's a different sensation of falling because you don't have that forward motion in a plane So when you jump out it's completely dead air weightless experience It's very very different and unique and you guys just jumped out a helicopter recently, too Yes, I got two helicopter jumps. Rusty and I did a helicopter jump and those are very cool, too because you get to kind of climb out on the skid and just fall off and look at the helicopter. Oh, nice. So that was actually an item I wanted to do ever since because that's what got me into skydiving was watching the Bear Groves do that. Yeah. So I finally got to do it. Oh, nice. Like 10 years later. Yeah. Wow. Oh, cool.

[12:27]Music.

[12:35]Just be careful, you don't have a helmet on now, unless you feel like you need one on, I won't put one on you. Okay, good. You're good. You could just have a seat there at the end. Key things here are, listen to us, listen to the pilot. If you're on your own, listen to the pilot. The pilot will make the decision. It's amazing how us skydivers are big and strong and we're cool, but when something doesn't go to plan, we turn into wimps that scream. Yeah. And everything else goes out of the windows. The job for you is to be thinking about the skydive. We've kind of mentioned that in the classroom. I don't want you thinking about, oh, is the parachute going to open? We've done the checks. Everything looks good. We're going to trust that it's going to work. When we're in the airplane, that's the time to focus on the skydive. Over and all the way. It gets cold in here. And this is right at the time when your brain goes, what am I doing?

[13:26]But this is the time for you to take a deep breath, big boy pants and go, let's go. All right okay so as soon as john starts to climb out of the airplane i'm going to say something like mike you ready and you're going to go yeah i was born ready whatever whatever you want to come with that's fine and you'll feel me sort of holding on to your leg strap here okay and that's me saying to you hey if you just decide to get out i'm coming with you okay you're taking me with you okay so um john will be outside the airplane and and then we're going to approach the door we won't practice the exit in here because we have a whole practice uh set up outside so we have a mock-up which it is a fuselage of this airplane one of these airplanes that we use that we can sort of beat up with practice careful on the way down most dangerous part of being at the skydiving center is not skydiving so once we're in the once we're in the air in the door here get yourself into a position where you're stable okay don't feel like you can't touch anything and you know you, couldn't get close to the door crouch down all the way up kind of at the front of the door here left foot forwards instead of right foot forwards because we don't want to put our right hip to the wind. As we come out, as we open up, we want to try and expose this to here.

[14:41]So chin up looking out towards like the wing tip of the airplane you'll see it but as soon as you come out it's almost like you're going to be looking at the sky as we exit the airplane we start to level out now the horizon is what you want to be looking at okay okay in the door as soon as you're ready door check left check right okay was it prop yeah prop or any anything that's looking outside wing prop anything so wing or something yeah and up down arch okay so up down arch that's it just like that okay all right so here we are in free fall what's next, good what's next heading altitude wave, and arch great you got it that's the skydive hey we're about to go uh jump out of an airplane, a perfectly good airplane so right now it's just kind of calm uh i'm sure there'll be a little adrenaline kicking in at some point pretty soon so we'll see that's that's what we're looking forward to though.

[15:52]Music.

[18:56]So, you just skydived. How are you doing? Great. That was a lot of fun. There was actually not even enough time to get scared. There was just so much to do in that first jump. I was thinking about so much. It just went really quick. I think the coolest part was when I pulled my chute and it deployed, and then I see John and Rusty just disappear down below me so fast. And it just made you see like oh how fast we were really going like that was pretty cool so were there any surprises not really well i mean like i was going through all this stuff that i'm supposed to do and look they're both telling me to look at my altimeter and look and we're already like i got to deploy so it's like that it just went so quick uh i don't know a little relief maybe but yeah it was fun it's definitely a blast.