December 10, 2024 • 39 mins
John Price is the CEO of Take Flight Ohio Flight Simulation in Columbus. He opened the Flight Simulation business to show and educate those that are curious about the fascinating world of aviation and how it all works. John's goal is to always put a smile on your face. Here's his story
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Columbus and Central Ohio have a rich history of companies
being headquartered here, everything from technology, manufacturing, retail, insurance, and more.
But what about the leaders behind these companies? What makes
them tick? How do they get their start? This is
where you get to meet the captain of the ship.
Welcome to CEOs You Should Know and iHeartMedia Columbus Podcast.
(00:20):
From a bus boy at camera Mitchell to the founder
of take Flight Ohio Flight Simulation. Our latest guest on
CEOs You Should Know, which is an iHeartMedia Columbus Podcast.
This guy is I think, not just brilliant, but he's
very energetic, very well spoken, and probably one of the
nicest businessmen I've ever met. Our guest this week on
(00:42):
CEOs You Should Know is mister John Price. John, good
to have you with us.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Thank you. My head is already starting to swollow up.
I may not be able to get out of the
building with that nice lead in. So thank you Sean.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
From the moment you gave me an opportunity a few
years ago to take advantage in the opportunity you gave
me to be a part of take Flight Ohio Flight Simulation.
I was in awe of the technology, but I was
probably more in awe of just how how kind, courteous
and thoughtful you were, Like there was no especially when
you're in the simulation process.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
There's pressure there.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
I think there was pressure on me, but there's always
pressure on me.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
I want to do really well.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
But you and your staff do such an amazing job
of describing what's happening, what you need to do. And
I know we're going to get to the simulation more
a little bit later, but I love your business.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
First of all, thank you. There's only a few of
these type of locations in the entire United States, so
we're so lucky to have something here. It's my passion,
as you could probably pick up. Yeah, and I love
Sharon and my staff. We're all we call ourselves aviation nerds.
So no matter what your level is, it's just a
fun thing to come in experience what it is. And
you're right, it's exactly right. There's a little bit of
pressure on you, but it's a good pressure because you
(01:53):
know it's fake. So put that realism in there in
the back of your mind. At the end of the day.
Do know it's fake, But yet sometimes I have to
kind of joking lead to the person next to me.
We're only a few inches off the ground. So if
we crash and burn, we're good. We're stilling, We're good.
We can laugh about it in my world, so always
what I tell everybody.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
John Price is this week's guest on CEO's Ushandow and
I Heart Media Columbus podcast. John, Before we get into
more about your life, just a question that popped up
about the simulators. I've noticed because I was at Rickenbacker
a couple of weeks ago for Veterans Day honoring the
one hundred and twenty first air Refeeling Wing, and they
also have a simulator. I guess my question to you
(02:32):
is whether it's civilian or military. Is that the technology
you are using now the world of flight?
Speaker 2 (02:40):
So the company who made this for the actually sell
them to training companies. We don't train with ours. My
vision was more to put you up there and see
us like to fly the aircraft. But yes we could train.
We did not certify it, but we could get it
certified from the FAA and do actual training with it.
I always joke, and again, my whole goal is to
put a smile on your face. I'm not the person
(03:00):
to say you failed your check, right, So we need
those people out there just out to one. I want
people to have a good time. And that's really kind
of back to what we were saying earlier. That pressure
is to have this fun, unique experience in a fun way.
But we can get in the weeds and details if
that's what your passion is. But again, most people have
never flown a plane period, right, come in right, and
(03:21):
we are showing them this brand new thing that they've
never even experienced in their life. And the idea is
to have some fun and you'll have a little more
knowledge next time you fly as a passenger.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yeah, and it certainly is.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
John.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Let's talk about your life a little bit. Where you from?
Where did you grow up?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
I still live there. I grew up in Worthington, moved
away for a short period of time, and I'm currently
living back on about four or five streets away from
my home. I grew up in Washington there, so my
wife and I we'd lived in Delaware for a little while.
Then it was an accident we ended up back in
Worthington again.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
And so it wasn't something where you're like, hey, I
was born to raise the worthy. Did I want to
go back.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
No, I'm all about the mountains out west, and I
wanted to live out west really really bad. But anyway,
but unfortunately, when my parents was, you know, getting had alzheimer,
you know, diagnosis, you know, and that type of thing.
So basically thought, hey, being in the neighborhood might be
a little more helpful for us.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah, absolutely did. And everything there was a time where
you left to go to what was in Phoenix.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Or went out to Phoenix. I love. My first time
I went out to Arizona was and I don't know
if I'm allowed to say this anymore, but we're a
big Cleveland Indians fan, okay, and they had spring training
out in Arizona. I'm in tenth grade. Get off the
plane and it's sunny and sixty five degrees leaving snowshowers
and cloudy weather here, and I thought this is amazing.
(04:39):
And it was sunny the entire time we were there,
seventy two every day, you know, and I was like,
this is great. And I just fell in love. And
I like the hiking out there and all that. So
that's my passion. So I left home. My wonderful mother
hated I left, but she lets me live out my dream,
just like my siblings as well. And I had a
huge guilt trip the entire time I out there, thinking, Oh,
(05:01):
she's upset that I'm out there. You know that type
of thing here. So I came back reluctantly. I met
a lot of great friends out there. I enjoyed my time,
but yeah, came back to Ohio. And I tell you
that's part of life is you have a crossroads. Which
way do you go? We always fantasize this way would
have been better the one you didn't take, but it
may not be. You never know which is the right
(05:21):
road to take. I came back to Ohio. I've had
a great life here in Ohio, met my wife and
have this wonderful business and had great experiences in Ohio.
So you never know, but I always fantasize what would
have been like if I would have stayed in Arizona.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
So let me ask you, John, how does a bus
boy who is at Camera Mitchell eventually fall into aviation?
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Ted tell us about the work.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Kind of interesting on this. So just to kind of clarify,
I did not work for Camera Mitchell his stores. He
was actually just a young Sioux chef when I first
met him, which was kind of interesting. He was a
very I came from a gasoline industry. This start there,
and my father had this gas station. It's an old
style three bay, we fixed tires, full service all this
(06:07):
the most slowest boring business to ever be in. I'm
kind of a high ergy person. If they haven't picked
up on that. And one of my friends said, you
need to get in your restaurant industry. That's a nice,
fast paced area. So I went to apply. Cameron's the
very first person I met. He took me over to
the manager to interview, got hired. On probably about three
years later, Cameron became the general manager of that. Little
(06:28):
did I know that he would become the person he would.
I mean, he was always a great person to be
very respectful to. Yeah, a good guy to me and everything.
I wonder if he even still remembers me. I'm thinking
in those old days he probably does, because that was
kind of early in his come too, But who knows.
He knows so many people nowadays.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
I know know when you're an entrepreneur, and obviously Cam
Mitchell is an entrepreneur. Did did he ever talk out
loud to you about a someday I want to go
to own restaurants.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
A funny story. Not Cameron, but one of the line
cooks told me Cameron and I are going to run
this city. I'm like, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah. Probably ten
fifteen years later they were in the city. You know,
good for them, and you know, and again back to
those cross roads, what if I would have stayed? And
you know what would have been my life and career
(07:14):
could have been if I went into that direction. I
am not a college person. I'm not one of those
that learns great through books, study and everything. I'm not
a strong reader, but I'm a number crunter. I love numbers.
That just makes sense to me. But reading the novel
it's not going to be my thing. And so again,
trying to find a career path was always kind of
tough for me because everybody says, you have to go
(07:34):
to school. And so I got lucky, and you asked
how this kind of progressed from a bus boy. I
got lucky that when I moved back from Arizona, my
father was being kicked out of his one location and
he was going to open up a new store, high
volume store that his whole staff wouldn't be used to
that high volume, which is right up my alley. I
(07:56):
joined him the great thing through that process. My dad
and I stayed friends throughout that whole process. I looked
at it. It was his business, his money, but I
had the youth and energy. He had the experience. So
we worked really well together because I was respectful of
his business, but he let me run it the way
I wanted to. Oh great, but I would certainly question
anything if I was doing something, Hey what do you
(08:17):
think about this? And we tried that it didn't work,
so we The whole process was a great experience for
both of us because again, it could have been one
of those things that I'm against my father. It never
end up ended up being that way. Yeah, So why
did I get out that gasol gasoline industry? I was
working probably eighty hours a week. Met my wife at
that point. We're just dating, and I'm seeing she's working
(08:37):
forty hours a week, gets guaranteed time off, you know
all this stuff. I don't get any of this. This
sounds pretty sweet. So I decided to go work. And
at that point I was very much into finances down
that numbers thing, and so I started going to school
a little bit to try to see if I could,
you know, go through that, and net Jitz had a
(08:59):
job fare. So I went to the job fair, talked
to them. They were nice enough to hire me. And
since they were nice enough to hire me, and I
came out with zero aviation experience at that time, okay,
so they were nice enough to hire me. So I
had to prove it was a good hire, not just
take it for granted. You were out to prove, you know, again,
back to the respect they were respectful enough to hire me,
(09:19):
I needed to show it was worth the hire.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Such a great you know how, what a breadth of
fresh air that is to hear like I owe them
now I need to approve to them because I don't
think I need to go too far and to tell
you how today's society it is now and I don't
want to paint a picture a broad stroke that it's everyone,
but there there are younger generations and even those you know,
(09:44):
I'm a gen xer that you know, kind of feel like,
oh I'm I'm owed this and no one's owed anything great.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, and again it's just a respect thing. I try
to reproach everything with respect. I'm a person. So after
I give that respect of saying hello or whatever for
five times and the person doesn't say hi back. Okay,
I might have a little chip on my shoulder at
that point. You know, up until that point, always have
some grace to you know, just try to be friendly
to other people. But believe it or not, a lot
(10:11):
of these young guys that are working for me have
that attitude. So it's not completely gone. Sometimes you think
it is to some degree. And it's amazing watching these
young guys that work for me for me right now,
that brilliant minds, super sharp, very kind care and it's
really funny and backed in camera. When I was working
with Cameron there way back when we had just a
(10:33):
great teamwork effort, nobody was taking a break when we
were busy, but when it started slowing down, we would
start alternating and other ones would work while the other
one would take a break. Same thing here. I never
thought I'd get this again in my life. It was amazing.
So right now we have a plan. As the day starts,
that plan goes away because you know, other factors out
of our control. Everybody just kind of jumps in the
(10:53):
roll whatever they need to be. Nobody's pouting that they
have to do this or they have to sweep the
floors or anything like that. Everybody just kind of comes
together and it's just amazing seeing that. But you're right
outside of my business. When I go to a business,
you see, the person doesn't care at all to wait
on you. Yeah, and there's no courtesy whatsoever. No hey,
thank you from coming in. Went to a speedway just
(11:14):
a couple of days ago. Yeah, Cash, you're actually hi.
How you doing to Hi? How are you with a smile?
And I'm not even used to a smile anymore for
those types of places, So they're out there. It's just
I'm very fortunate. I'm not sure why I have this
great staff, but God has blessed me with this stuff.
Basically out of by control, Sean.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
What did what did you do? At net Chets?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
So I end up becoming a flight dispatcher for them,
And most people don't really know what a flight dispatcher is.
Everybody thinks it's like an air traffic controller, but no
for the company. When you're flying as a passioner, lets
say on Delta, there's a person on the ground and
this is a very simplified version of this. We're gonna
run all the performance numbers to make sure it's safe
(11:57):
to fly from point A to point B. Captain's going
to do that information as well, and we're gonna make
sure we sign off and everything's safe for your flight.
So just the crew, the pilots are not out there
on their own, the other set of eyes making sure
everything's good, and we're going to talk about things if
it's some iffish weather. So as an example, if we're
flying from Columbus to Saint Louis and it's a nice
sunny day, we're probably not going to talk a whole lot.
(12:19):
I want to make sure we on a fuel course
and they're gonna check all this, make sure runway take
off links, landing links are all good under the weather condition.
So on a beautiful day, probably not gonna worry too
much about it. But if we're flying into a snowstorm
or something along those lines, we're going to talk about
some options we may have and what both parties are
comfortable with, because I'm not gonna sign my name on
a release unless I feel it's safe, and you're the pilot,
(12:39):
you're not going to sign it off unless you think
it's safe. So we're gonna come to a nice agreement
to figure out what's safe for that flight. And that's
to me, one of those hidden agendas. I can't say
agendas that people don't understand about aviation. It makes it
even that much more safe than you really realize. We
have different flight packages and from different time ranges, and
there's a price per each time range. So our shortest
flight we call it the region flight, and we do
(13:01):
the same flight every time. We take off from Columbus
or I'm sorry, from Dayton and fly over to Columbus
and we do it take off and landing. The next
one up is fifty minutes, and this is where you
get to decide. So if Brandon remembers, we took off
out of Palm Springs on his flight and here in
the San Diego for his flight, so that's a really
neat flight. And I think taking off, believe it or not,
taking off out of Palm Springs is a beautiful look
(13:21):
and departure. To me, there's mountains all around you. It's
really a cool departure coming out of Palm Springs. That's
our most popular package, the fifty minute package, and then
we have an hour and fifty minute package. We call
it the Ultimate flight, and we recommend that if there's
two people taking a turn in the captain's seat, we
always have one of our staff members in the co
pilot seat. There's so much going on over there, so
we always have one of us sit over there. But
(13:43):
if one person would like to fly the first leg,
then we will take off from that location and go
to the next airport and that second person will take
flight second leg for that or if you're very much
into aviation, that hour and fifty one hour and fifty
minute flight package is ideal. But the fifty minute I
think so perfect spot just because you may bog down
(14:03):
if this all, all this stuff is really new to us.
About an hour ten minutes, I see people start bogging down.
But if you already love this stuff, and you may
be homesome yourself, you're going to be fine with the
hour and fifty. And also, if you have a lot
of questions, that hour and fifty gives us a chance
to communicate more because there's more time for us to
talk about. Yeah, and one of the unrealistic expectations I
see with people coming in and I have to, you know,
(14:24):
just kind of let them know what it is it's
all about This is complicated. It's not easy, but that
is part of the fun of it. If it was
super easy, you'd be bored in five minutes. So some
people will come in expecting they're going to learn every
single thing about this sophisticated jet in a fifty minute period,
and that's not realistic. It takes years and years and
years for people to learn. But we can share a
lot of information right in that short time absol that's valuable.
(14:48):
So the next time you fly, you'll know things. If
this is fun, you want to come back later, we'll
build on that and you'll learn more and more. And
this is how they do it over a much longer
stretch in real life. But I always just let people know.
I'll have guys in particular come in give me the
hardest airport, and I'm like, you know, this is a
little harder to think it's going to be right, Cause
again from my standpoint is I want you to have
(15:09):
fun and build your confidence up. Yeah, but you're your
own person, so they want to if I explain, hey,
this is harder than you think, and they want to
do it, knock yourself out. But I want you to
enjoy the experience, not being stressed while you're doing it,
and so it's just a fun thing. And most times
they're happy they did the easier flight because again we
can build that confidence and help them understand how the
(15:30):
plane operates and those types of things there and see
if they make the landing at the end. That's always
the fun part.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
How long did you stay at Natschets?
Speaker 2 (15:37):
So? I was there for seven years and I really
enjoyed that job. They were very good with me, very
respectful back to me. I felt like I was a
valuable member working for them. So it wasn't really there
doing why I left. What was going on in my
head towards the end was something in the back of
my head kept telling me, you need to run your
(15:58):
own business. And I didn't know what it was at
the time, and I just kept telling myself, I need
to run my business. And I remember working with an
individual back in my gasoline days that for the fifteen
years I probably worked in that industry, I heard him
every day saying he's going to get another job. Never did,
and I want to be that person at net Jets,
(16:20):
And again I wanted to make sure I was a
good what I did, make sure I was providing a
great service for them. So I showed a value and
I just kept saying I want to run my own thing.
We all work for somebody at some point, and again
I everybody has their own logic, So this is John's logic, Okay,
not everybody's logic. So when there's a policy it comes
(16:41):
down that makes no logical sense to me. That just
drives me crazy. So just as an example, and this
is not net jets, I won't name the company here.
We had to fill out a huge personal evaluation form.
Probably took you an hour to fill it out, right, Wow, Well,
my boss doesn't really understand the details of all the
psychological methods, all these questions and how you're answering him.
I'm thinking, why am I spending an hour and a
(17:01):
half for them to already know what rays are going
to give me there? They should have the data on
what my performance is. Yeah, knock on wood, I've been
healthy most of my life. I want to chanks myself
on that. But I mean I show up to work,
I'm well early for work, and I'd do an accurate job,
so they should know that. So I don't need to
fill out why John is such a great worker. But again,
(17:24):
so those types of things just started bothering me. This
is why I wanted to become That's why I started thinking,
I want to be my own boss so I can
make those type of decisions. Yeah, and I really didn't
want to be a franchise because I'm kind of still
under that same umbrella. Working for the gasoline business. They
made a stay open twenty four hours a day, which
made no logical sense for our location. Wow, we'd sell
fifty gallons of gas overnight, had to be at risk
(17:46):
of being robbed. Having an employee that's probably not the
greatest person in the world. I shouldn't say that, but
I mean it's hard to find somebody that's not going
to steal front me and yeaheah with those odd ball shifts,
that's at risk of being robbed. And at the time,
we'd make about a sense of gallon, So what do
we making eight dollars? Is that what we were making? Wow?
Doing my math real quick there on on here, but anyway,
(18:08):
that wouldn't make any sense. But we were forced to
stay open twenty four hours a day. So that's why
I wanted to develop my own thing, and that took
up that was a process for me to figure that out.
But once the flight simulation idea came into our the mindset,
that's where it didn't stop. I don't know if that's
just happened in your life. It's just all of a
sudden boom. Once it was that came up, it was okay, NonStop,
brains going one hundred miles an hour. This is good,
(18:31):
this is good. This is gonna be a problem. This
is gonna be a problem. And then trying to figure
out how to get these puzzle pieces together and see
if we can get this to work. So the funny story,
I get this, I get this. Asked a lot people
ask how did you open up? How did you come
across this idea? Right right, I'm very fortune fortunate on this,
and I'm so happy people have fun. That's my whole goal.
People are like, wow, what an amazing idea. I'm really
(18:52):
not that smart. It was just I was just home
on No, I'm not. But anyway, my wife and I
way back, I'm guessing twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen timeframe. Smart
TV's had been out for a while, but we're a
little slow getting to that, getting that smart TV. And
it started realizing we can watch YouTube on the smart TV.
So I'm like, eh, so I'm showing my wife a
(19:15):
YouTube video on smart TV. And I brought up somebody
who had one of these in his house. He had
built it from scratch, very smart guy. And my wife
tells me that's so cool, and I'm like, well, she
hates airplanes. If she thinks it's cool, I know it's cool.
I'm telling you, Brandon. At that point I knew that
is what I wanted to do. I thought, Wow, I
(19:37):
can do what I love. I love talking about aviation.
There's no danger. That's a beautiful thing. Working in the
gasoline industry, people could slip and fall in the oil,
or a a freeze or something like underneath the car.
Car could fall off the rack, those types of things.
In restaurant food industry, food poisoning, all this good stuff.
Working for net jets, FAA regulations, all that, we don't
have to deal with any of that. We can come
(19:58):
and do this in a fun way. But again, I
love sharing details. My staff especially loves getting in the
weeds and details and stuff like that. If that's your passion,
they won't if that's not your passion. But yeah, yea,
because they're trying to see what makes it enjoyable for you,
of course, and we adjust accordingly with it. But the
whole premises have some fun flying a big jet to
see if you could make the landing at the end.
(20:19):
So this is how it all came to me from
my wife saying, wow, that's pretty cool, because at that
point I wasn't thinking that to be an ideas of business.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
You were you, John?
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Were you still thinking something in flight as a as
a business of your own? Were you thinking about that
all over the place.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
To a sub shop, to printing, to all sorts of
different things. I was trying to find something I'd have
some passion too. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
We were look talking to a printer about his industry,
and I just couldn't get the passion up for it.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Do you have passions for subs?
Speaker 2 (20:50):
What's that passion? Necessarily? That's the thing, That's what I'm saying. So.
But but again, at the time you're seeing Jersey Mikes
and everything's opening up, you're trying to think, well, maybe
that's that's the way to go. Yeah, So it wasn't
my real passion for that, And that was such a
long road to hall to try to figure out what
it was. And again I'm a believer, so God helped
(21:11):
guide me to that. And again it was instantaneous. I'm
telling you a minute. She said, Wow, that's cool. That
was her actual words, by the way, Wow that's that's cool.
That's when the idea came to me and it hit
let off the throttle from that point.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
On, John, you said, you're a numbers guy, So did
you immediately start a business plan?
Speaker 3 (21:29):
And where did you go from there?
Speaker 2 (21:30):
So basically, this is a business and I mentioned earlier
as you already know that there's not too many of
these in the whole United States, and I really don't
know how many. If you google flight simulation, it brings
up software, so I personally don't know. I'm pretty confident
where there's no other place like this in Ohio. I'm
really sure about that. And so again it's only a
handful that I'm aware of, and they're spread out well
(21:50):
away from me.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
That had to have excited you, because I knowing you,
you probably did your research and you noticed, you notice this,
and you're like, well, wait a minute, this is it.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
I've I've got it.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
It just kept adding on, Hey, this is a plus
this is a plus. Of course, there's a minus here
and there. And again one of the things of getting
into a business trust me. I wasn't going into this thing,
and yes, this is a for sure thing, but I
had confidence it was going to be a thing that
could work for us. But I had a lot of
people in my life telling me, do you really think
people would want to do this? And so it had
that little doubt in my head. Sure, but we were
(22:22):
so fortunate. We opened December first of twenty eighteen, and
we were slammed right off the bat. Wow. So that
gave me that confidence. If we would have started and
there was nothing going on for the first month or so,
I think I would have been completely crushed mentally, emotionally
and everything else. But yeah, started off really really fast
at that point. And this December time frames are business
(22:43):
busiest time of year because this is that secret holiday
gift that people get coming to us. And I had
to do some really deep research. My business advisor who
helps me help me write the business plan, and I'm
not a skilled writer, that's my thing, And he said
years later, nobody came more prepared to talk to the
(23:04):
banker than you. And I still felt I could, I
still felt I could have done more, by the way,
so I didn't go to the banker think and I
had all figured out. But he's told me many times
since then that you know, no, I've never taken anybody
to go to a banker and talk this as well
prepared as you were.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Okay, So John, Johnny and I I'm asking you this
because I'm I'm secretly wanting to get educated myself in this.
So you you were about to start a business that
uh there's there's really you can't track anymore? Tell right, exactly,
no template, thank you. So you I know a few bankers,
I know how they are. If there's nowhere else they
(23:40):
can look to see what how this business and El
Paso is doing? Uh that you want to open that similar?
How hard was that with the banker?
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Well, again I'm naive, right, I've never had to do
this before, but again I had, and again I don't
know what it was. I had some confidence that this
was going to work. And again the day I was
getting felt like I could make the numbers work, okay,
And I'm a spreadsheet junkie, and so I just kept
playing with the numbers and making sure and one of
the best advices my business counselor advisor gave me is
(24:12):
don't do the numbers to prove it to the banker.
You need to prove it to yourself. So don't fudge
the books or what are you're trying to do. Fudge
the numbers in my case because I haven't opened the
business yet, but to you know, make sure you feel
it's good. So I took that to heart the entire
time I'm putting this business plan and figures and all
that together for him.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
So absolutely, so the bank says, yeah, John, we'll give
you a chance at this. Yes, we'll give you a shot.
What happened next is I keep thinking about the simulator itself.
Did you build that yourself? How does that work?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yeah? Good question. So aget through that and again this
is around I'm guessing twenty Fourteen's when the idea came.
We opened in twenty eighteen. So this is how quickly
I do things. It was not a short window. And
again I'm a little bit of a methodical thinker when
it comes to this. That's where it took some time
and have to do the research to the best of
my ability to figure this out. But the hardest thing
(25:05):
for me was the two hardest things for me was
to actually purchase the equipment, and we had to during
that four year research. I had to try to find
somebody who builds these because I am not talented enough
to build that. That's not really my skill level. Sure,
and I found a place in Italy, Australia and Canada,
and Canada happened to be in our same time zone. Okay,
(25:27):
so I figured, hey, that's great. If we have an issue,
we can call them up. And Italy they may not
have a strong they may have a strong accent. I mean,
I understand them at the time they're trying to tell
me over the phone how to fix something or whatever.
So I went up and checked their facility out. It's
flight Deck Solutions treated me very much with high respect.
I have been very good with me ever since. In
my nature of being very methodical, I had about three
(25:50):
hours worth of questions for them, and it never gave
me any pressure of looking at their watch hurry up.
That's great and again and they gave me some good
advice early on as well, and so I was very
happy with that. So they built it, brought it down
here to Columbus, Wow. So buying that signed that contract
to that was one of my big scary moments because
once we do that, we're in. Right, the next biggest thing,
(26:13):
it is more scary than you would think, is sign
that least for the location we're at because you're committing
some several years and again we're coming in have no
idea or we're going to sell one flight package or
be successful. We had I again, right, I had that
ambition and hopefully it was going to be successful, but
really not knowing. So those were the two hardest parts
about going through that process that because there's no turning
(26:33):
back at that point.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
No, Right, John, You you talked moments ago about when
you opened and how you had a line and you've
been you were really busy to.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Say a line, But we were pretty busy. That's busily
ever expected? Right first day?
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Sure, when when what was the moment that you felt
you felt confident or you felt like, okay, this is
going to work.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
See that's a lot more drawn out and a good
question on this. And we were very fortunate. Again and
I'm going to go back to God and help me
on this process. If we would have opened in December
of twenty nineteen. I don't think we would have survived
because of COVID exactly. So COVID hit a year later.
So about the time COVID hit is about the time
I started to thinking, hey, this is going to work.
(27:17):
And as a business owner, you don't pay yourself right
until you start making enough money to pay yourself. And
at that point I was thinking, now, maybe another three
or four months, I can start paying myself. Obviously, COVID
hit pretty heavily in March of twenty twenty, and I
couldn't pay myself again, so I had to wait a
couple of years before I started paying myself. So it's
a tough thing as being a business owner. You work
all these hours and sometimes you don't get paid for it.
(27:40):
But in my mind, I opened this to put a
smile on people's faces. And I was so fortunate because
you know, when you're around a nice person, it just
makes your day better. Pretty Much everybody comes into our store,
goes back there, Everybody sits down, it says some type
of form of wow, this is amazing. You know something
along those lines that is up my energy period, just
(28:01):
because there it's better than they thought it was going
to be. Compared to, oh, it's not quite as good
as I thought it was going to be. And then
we have this fun session together and then afterwards we'll
talk for a while if they want to ask any
questions or you know, and just and they leave. Most
people say that was just amazing. That's really nice, and
that makes me feel as a value of a person.
So through that two year period of not paying myself,
(28:23):
that was really my paycheck paycheck. Yeah, it really felt
good with it. So then that's the whole premise. My
pressure I put on myself nowadays is always be one
hundred percent to one hundred percent of people. And knock
on wood, were there. But at some point we're going
to have somebody that's going to be upset about something
because people are people. But we've been fortunate that all
of our reviews are you know, give us five stars
(28:45):
and and they don't have to do that. They take
the time out of their day. It's so easy to
complain about a business doing bad service. It's so hard
for somebody to want to give you a review and
give you a five star and say, hey, that was
amazing or that was nice, or your team's wonderful or whatever.
The case is, and again it's great for me to
share it to my staff and everything like that. Again
we have this nice morale going on. But again it's
(29:06):
a lot to the client coming in. They're already jazzed
about coming in and seeing what this is about. But
then we try to do this in this fun way
and we're all people personal I guess I know the
right things to say that, but and again, just makes
you feel good at the end of the day, Thank
you did a great job. And again it just makes
me feel good as a person.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
I've known you for a few years now. You're one
of the nicest people I know. But I have to
ask you, do you get upset? And what upsets you?
Speaker 2 (29:33):
So ah, that's a good one. So here here's my
biggest pet peeve in life, and it's just a john thing.
I should get over it. I'm fortunate to live in
the United States here and I have air conditioning and
you know, all this good stuff is. I love saying
hi to people, and I find many people nowadays don't
say hi anymore. And I'm a statistical guy, so I've
actually run a little bit of numbers on this, and
(29:57):
because I want to make sure I'm just making not
making it up, maybe just be I might be thinking
it's a lot higher number than it is. And the
funny thing is, I like to put a smile on
people's faces, and it actually personally hurts me. I'm so
lame for this, but it personally hurts me when they
don't say high back, because I'm just trying to brighten
your day for a couple of seconds. Yeah, And a
story I remember way back. This is in the mid nineties.
(30:18):
A lady came into my father's gas station. As she
was leaving, I said, thank you, have a nice day,
and again, not looking away, give an eye contact because
I seriously mean it. She turns around, looks at me
and says, since you told me that I will, And
that stuck with me. She has no idea she had
that impact on my life back almost thirty years ago
at this point, but that was already in my nature anyway. Yeah,
(30:42):
but that always comes back up. So I always enjoy
trying to brighten you, whether you're passing me on the
bike trail or something like that, just for a couple seconds.
She might be having a rough day, somebody says, says hi,
with a smile on her face. But since COVID, it
just seems gone downhill tremendously that people don't want to
say high back. And I can't quite figure out what's
the mentality behind that, because I try to be a
(31:02):
logical thinker and there's a reason why they're not saying
hi back. And again, I try to give the body
language that I'm not coming up on you. I kind
of stay on my side of the trail, and I'm
walking with dogs, so it's not like I'm, you know,
taking a survey of or something like that. So I
don't understand that. That is my biggest pet peeve that
people don't say hi. But once we get into the store,
all that changes. I don't know why that is, because
(31:24):
I'm just fortunate to have these nice people that work
for me that people will come in are very nice
and courteous to us there. I mean, I don't think
anybody's unrespectful to us coming in, So again it's just
this cast nice environment. But once I leave the store,
it's like, uh, oh, there's that person not saying hi
to me At Wendy's or whatever they're you know, or
whatever the case is. I'm the one saying hi and
thank you. At Wendy's or I'm wanna put Wendy's under
(31:45):
the bus. But that's any Yeah, most of yes now
is what I'm getting at. So it's just it's just
I don't that's my pet Peeve.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Basically, I have you have you always been this way?
Like optimistic? Positive? And did you do you get that
from your mom?
Speaker 2 (31:59):
You're dad?
Speaker 3 (32:00):
How were they?
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I don't know? But my family is a gift of
gabbers or you have the gap gift me gab is
the way I'm trying to say it there, So we
do have that into it. I don't know what it is.
You know. I have my woes, me moments and those
types of things. I try to I try to take
myself out of those because again, just like I said
a moment ago, we have air conditioning where I live.
Could you imagine living in South Alabama with no air
(32:23):
conditioning and all that humidity or something like that. So
I try to put it in perspective. I can see,
I can hear those types of things. I try not
to get myself too down for a long period of
time over that. And again, the weather, we're it's an
ice rainy day right here. It's hard to stay upbeat
about that, but again, make the most of it. And
for me, it's a day off, so I'm like.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Hey, yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, I thought this
is your day off today.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
I'm like, Wow, John's coming in to do this on
his day off. That's a big deal.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Best way to get a to buy package is it
to come in in person?
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Do you recommend that? Do you go online? What's website?
Speaker 1 (33:00):
A him?
Speaker 2 (33:00):
By the way, Okay, so our website is take flight
Ohio dot com. And just so everybody really knows, we
have a full scale flight simulator and it's a realistic
flight similator. It's not a little video game. I really
kind of joke about that that I think some people
come in and think it's going to be just a joystick, and.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
It's take it from me. I've done it.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
It's as it's as real as real gets.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Yeah, we can train, it's yeah, absolutely, And again so
that's that's why I think we get the wow. No
matter what pictures we have or videos we have online,
it doesn't, you know, seem to capulate the moment. I guess,
and you know, until you get and see it. Actually,
but yeah, we can go to our website at take
flight Ohio dot com and you get a gift voucher there,
and this is the perfect time of year for gift
giving and surprising somebody.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
So the holidays are a busy season, oh by far okay.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Because you're always trying to find well, at least I
am anyway, trying to find something that's different. I don't
want to get my wife the exact same thing, you know,
or something that's not too exciting. You want something that's
kind of memorable and that type of thing. And kind
of my joke and as it's after all the years
we've been open, I've just come up with this. I'm
guessing you've never flown a commercial air liner before. So
most people have never. So that's the uniqueness of what
(34:06):
we do. And in my world, they can't hurt themselves.
It's not like, you know, if they crash and burn,
we're good. I mean, that's the beauty of this. But
yet you'll learn some things next time you fly, and
that type of thing. So and or you can come
in in person. We're close on Sundays and Tuesdays, but
we're open from eleven am to eight pm outside of
(34:27):
a holiday or something along those lines so we can
come into our store and purchase a gift vulture there. Unfortunately,
many times we cannot show the similarity to a client
because maybe want to come in and take a look
at it. Sure, because we're again fortunate fortunate on this
is that we're busy and doing flights one after another
all day long. Right. The only time we can may
show it to you if we happen to be in
between two flights or something like that. But we really
(34:49):
have a pretty short window between that, so you'd really
have to tie that up exactly, you know, and sometimes
people are early and late, so we can't guarantee a
certain time to come out and see it. We'd love
to show it because again every he sees what it
is once a Yeah, it makes sense once you see
that that full scale flight.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Some of it is age requirements, John.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Good question. Yeah, our minimum age is twelve. And another
good point. It's open to the general public, so it
means you don't have to have any experience at all,
and that's why we had one of us over there
to help guide you along the way. And kind of
a funny story, I had a client that came in
popular radio personality, but I want to not throw them
under the bus. And wasn't Boxer here. But anyway, we
(35:29):
were coming into Columbus and he was flying pretty well,
but we were about five miles out and he puts
his hands up and goes, John, you go ahead land it.
And I'm like, well, we're only a few inches off
the ground. Nope, go ahead and land it again. We
want you to have fun with this. And he wanted
to see how I handle the airplane to land it
and look out the front window for a change. What
do you need? You know, we don't get to see
that as a power Yeah, yeah, that's true. So that's
what it was with him. He went to see what
(35:50):
it looked like without having to worry about concentrating on
flying the plane. He wanted to see just visually what
was going on as they're coming in for the runway.
So again, we can cater it to however you want
to make it fun for you. And I always ask
from the clients just communicate to me so I can
better provide what you're wanting to get out. The things
we don't do is fly upside down or anything like that.
We do have to try to fly it the right
(36:11):
way and of course, we don't fly into buildings. That's
why one of us are over there as well. We
have a pause button so they cannot do that. We'll
not let anybody come close to doing anything along those lines.
We take it serious. One of the questions we get
a lot is people I need to get fighter jets.
And I tell people, and again I'm not the answer
to everything on this, but I think fighter jets aren't
(36:31):
as fun as people think they would.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
I've heard you say this before.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Do we talk about this? I think so, yeah, it's
because what happens is you think it's great, we'll take
our buddies there, we'll go try to shoot each other.
But the thing is you're gonna fly by each other
at you know, I don't know, mocking like that and
one point five, and you're not going to see each other.
The next thing you know, you're flying around again trying
to find the other person, and you're where's the at
I don't know, And you're just gonna be flying around
(36:55):
chasing nothing for a while. So to me, that which
comes a little more video gameish and things like that,
and not sure. My vision, My vision is to have
that realism, to put the average person in the seat.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Judd as we wrap up here for more info, or
you just want to take a look. You've got some
pictures of the flight simulator right online.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
I think, yeah, definitely, we have some videos and that
type of thing there. And the other thing I would
recommend is, you know, feel free to give us a call.
This is a unique business. We're not a Starbucks, so
most people don't really understand what this business is. But
like we said, the minimum ages twelve, and it's because
of the sophistication of the aircraft and the simulation that
we do. But anybody can do this and we'll help
(37:37):
work you through it and have as much fun as
we can in the time period we have. And yeah,
so we can come into our location We're at forty
eight sixteen Sawmill Road in Columbus, Ohio, and or go
to our website. You can book a flight or purchase
a gift foucher. And our gift vouchers are good from
two years from data purchase, so they have plenty of
time to come in and see what it's like to
(37:57):
have fun flying a big jet. And by the way,
something we didn't talk about, which I think this is
a neat thing yes, two people can sit in the
back and watch your loved one fly. So if you
want to get one for your father or your husband
and have the two kids come along. And we still
have that minimum age of twelve years old because okay,
the younger ones will be too busy back there and born.
I get it, and it will. You know, the father
can enjoy the experience quite as much because he's got
(38:19):
to concentrate on what he's doing. But you can enjoy
the experience with him, and you can take pictures and video.
And my joke is you can either make fun of
him or encourage him whatever, whatever. Whatever your family likes
to go, I.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Think it should be Mama and my family. We get
my wife up there and we make fun of her.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Yeah, there you go and have some fun and get
some video evidence of it.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Yes, exactly, Well, John, I can't thank you enough for
your time, John Price of take Flight to Ohio Flight Simulation,
Congratulations on your success and if you keep up the
good work.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Yep, thank you very much. Have me out here.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
CEOs You Should Know is host it and produced by
Brandy Boxer, a production of iHeartMedia Columbus s
Columbus and Central Ohio have a rich history of companies
being headquartered here, everything from technology, manufacturing, retail, insurance, and more.
But what about the leaders behind these companies? What makes
them tick? How do they get their start? This is
where you get to meet the captain of the ship.
Welcome to CEOs You Should Know and iHeartMedia Columbus Podcast.
(00:20):
From a bus boy at camera Mitchell to the founder
of take Flight Ohio Flight Simulation. Our latest guest on
CEOs You Should Know, which is an iHeartMedia Columbus Podcast.
This guy is I think, not just brilliant, but he's
very energetic, very well spoken, and probably one of the
nicest businessmen I've ever met. Our guest this week on
(00:42):
CEOs You Should Know is mister John Price. John, good
to have you with us.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Thank you. My head is already starting to swollow up.
I may not be able to get out of the
building with that nice lead in. So thank you Sean.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
From the moment you gave me an opportunity a few
years ago to take advantage in the opportunity you gave
me to be a part of take Flight Ohio Flight Simulation.
I was in awe of the technology, but I was
probably more in awe of just how how kind, courteous
and thoughtful you were, Like there was no especially when
you're in the simulation process.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
There's pressure there.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
I think there was pressure on me, but there's always
pressure on me.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
I want to do really well.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
But you and your staff do such an amazing job
of describing what's happening, what you need to do. And
I know we're going to get to the simulation more
a little bit later, but I love your business.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
First of all, thank you. There's only a few of
these type of locations in the entire United States, so
we're so lucky to have something here. It's my passion,
as you could probably pick up. Yeah, and I love
Sharon and my staff. We're all we call ourselves aviation nerds.
So no matter what your level is, it's just a
fun thing to come in experience what it is. And
you're right, it's exactly right. There's a little bit of
pressure on you, but it's a good pressure because you
(01:53):
know it's fake. So put that realism in there in
the back of your mind. At the end of the day.
Do know it's fake, But yet sometimes I have to
kind of joking lead to the person next to me.
We're only a few inches off the ground. So if
we crash and burn, we're good. We're stilling, We're good.
We can laugh about it in my world, so always
what I tell everybody.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
John Price is this week's guest on CEO's Ushandow and
I Heart Media Columbus podcast. John, Before we get into
more about your life, just a question that popped up
about the simulators. I've noticed because I was at Rickenbacker
a couple of weeks ago for Veterans Day honoring the
one hundred and twenty first air Refeeling Wing, and they
also have a simulator. I guess my question to you
(02:32):
is whether it's civilian or military. Is that the technology
you are using now the world of flight?
Speaker 2 (02:40):
So the company who made this for the actually sell
them to training companies. We don't train with ours. My
vision was more to put you up there and see
us like to fly the aircraft. But yes we could train.
We did not certify it, but we could get it
certified from the FAA and do actual training with it.
I always joke, and again, my whole goal is to
put a smile on your face. I'm not the person
(03:00):
to say you failed your check, right, So we need
those people out there just out to one. I want
people to have a good time. And that's really kind
of back to what we were saying earlier. That pressure
is to have this fun, unique experience in a fun way.
But we can get in the weeds and details if
that's what your passion is. But again, most people have
never flown a plane period, right, come in right, and
(03:21):
we are showing them this brand new thing that they've
never even experienced in their life. And the idea is
to have some fun and you'll have a little more
knowledge next time you fly as a passenger.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yeah, and it certainly is.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
John.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Let's talk about your life a little bit. Where you from?
Where did you grow up?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
I still live there. I grew up in Worthington, moved
away for a short period of time, and I'm currently
living back on about four or five streets away from
my home. I grew up in Washington there, so my
wife and I we'd lived in Delaware for a little while.
Then it was an accident we ended up back in
Worthington again.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
And so it wasn't something where you're like, hey, I
was born to raise the worthy. Did I want to
go back.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
No, I'm all about the mountains out west, and I
wanted to live out west really really bad. But anyway,
but unfortunately, when my parents was, you know, getting had alzheimer,
you know, diagnosis, you know, and that type of thing.
So basically thought, hey, being in the neighborhood might be
a little more helpful for us.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah, absolutely did. And everything there was a time where
you left to go to what was in Phoenix.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Or went out to Phoenix. I love. My first time
I went out to Arizona was and I don't know
if I'm allowed to say this anymore, but we're a
big Cleveland Indians fan, okay, and they had spring training
out in Arizona. I'm in tenth grade. Get off the
plane and it's sunny and sixty five degrees leaving snowshowers
and cloudy weather here, and I thought this is amazing.
(04:39):
And it was sunny the entire time we were there,
seventy two every day, you know, and I was like,
this is great. And I just fell in love. And
I like the hiking out there and all that. So
that's my passion. So I left home. My wonderful mother
hated I left, but she lets me live out my dream,
just like my siblings as well. And I had a
huge guilt trip the entire time I out there, thinking, Oh,
(05:01):
she's upset that I'm out there. You know that type
of thing here. So I came back reluctantly. I met
a lot of great friends out there. I enjoyed my time,
but yeah, came back to Ohio. And I tell you
that's part of life is you have a crossroads. Which
way do you go? We always fantasize this way would
have been better the one you didn't take, but it
may not be. You never know which is the right
(05:21):
road to take. I came back to Ohio. I've had
a great life here in Ohio, met my wife and
have this wonderful business and had great experiences in Ohio.
So you never know, but I always fantasize what would
have been like if I would have stayed in Arizona.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
So let me ask you, John, how does a bus
boy who is at Camera Mitchell eventually fall into aviation?
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Ted tell us about the work.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Kind of interesting on this. So just to kind of clarify,
I did not work for Camera Mitchell his stores. He
was actually just a young Sioux chef when I first
met him, which was kind of interesting. He was a
very I came from a gasoline industry. This start there,
and my father had this gas station. It's an old
style three bay, we fixed tires, full service all this
(06:07):
the most slowest boring business to ever be in. I'm
kind of a high ergy person. If they haven't picked
up on that. And one of my friends said, you
need to get in your restaurant industry. That's a nice,
fast paced area. So I went to apply. Cameron's the
very first person I met. He took me over to
the manager to interview, got hired. On probably about three
years later, Cameron became the general manager of that. Little
(06:28):
did I know that he would become the person he would.
I mean, he was always a great person to be
very respectful to. Yeah, a good guy to me and everything.
I wonder if he even still remembers me. I'm thinking
in those old days he probably does, because that was
kind of early in his come too, But who knows.
He knows so many people nowadays.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
I know know when you're an entrepreneur, and obviously Cam
Mitchell is an entrepreneur. Did did he ever talk out
loud to you about a someday I want to go
to own restaurants.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
A funny story. Not Cameron, but one of the line
cooks told me Cameron and I are going to run
this city. I'm like, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah. Probably ten
fifteen years later they were in the city. You know,
good for them, and you know, and again back to
those cross roads, what if I would have stayed? And
you know what would have been my life and career
(07:14):
could have been if I went into that direction. I
am not a college person. I'm not one of those
that learns great through books, study and everything. I'm not
a strong reader, but I'm a number crunter. I love numbers.
That just makes sense to me. But reading the novel
it's not going to be my thing. And so again,
trying to find a career path was always kind of
tough for me because everybody says, you have to go
(07:34):
to school. And so I got lucky, and you asked
how this kind of progressed from a bus boy. I
got lucky that when I moved back from Arizona, my
father was being kicked out of his one location and
he was going to open up a new store, high
volume store that his whole staff wouldn't be used to
that high volume, which is right up my alley. I
(07:56):
joined him the great thing through that process. My dad
and I stayed friends throughout that whole process. I looked
at it. It was his business, his money, but I
had the youth and energy. He had the experience. So
we worked really well together because I was respectful of
his business, but he let me run it the way
I wanted to. Oh great, but I would certainly question
anything if I was doing something, Hey what do you
(08:17):
think about this? And we tried that it didn't work,
so we The whole process was a great experience for
both of us because again, it could have been one
of those things that I'm against my father. It never
end up ended up being that way. Yeah, So why
did I get out that gasol gasoline industry? I was
working probably eighty hours a week. Met my wife at
that point. We're just dating, and I'm seeing she's working
(08:37):
forty hours a week, gets guaranteed time off, you know
all this stuff. I don't get any of this. This
sounds pretty sweet. So I decided to go work. And
at that point I was very much into finances down
that numbers thing, and so I started going to school
a little bit to try to see if I could,
you know, go through that, and net Jitz had a
(08:59):
job fare. So I went to the job fair, talked
to them. They were nice enough to hire me. And
since they were nice enough to hire me, and I
came out with zero aviation experience at that time, okay,
so they were nice enough to hire me. So I
had to prove it was a good hire, not just
take it for granted. You were out to prove, you know, again,
back to the respect they were respectful enough to hire me,
(09:19):
I needed to show it was worth the hire.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Such a great you know how, what a breadth of
fresh air that is to hear like I owe them
now I need to approve to them because I don't
think I need to go too far and to tell
you how today's society it is now and I don't
want to paint a picture a broad stroke that it's everyone,
but there there are younger generations and even those you know,
(09:44):
I'm a gen xer that you know, kind of feel like,
oh I'm I'm owed this and no one's owed anything great.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, and again it's just a respect thing. I try
to reproach everything with respect. I'm a person. So after
I give that respect of saying hello or whatever for
five times and the person doesn't say hi back. Okay,
I might have a little chip on my shoulder at
that point. You know, up until that point, always have
some grace to you know, just try to be friendly
to other people. But believe it or not, a lot
(10:11):
of these young guys that are working for me have
that attitude. So it's not completely gone. Sometimes you think
it is to some degree. And it's amazing watching these
young guys that work for me for me right now,
that brilliant minds, super sharp, very kind care and it's
really funny and backed in camera. When I was working
with Cameron there way back when we had just a
(10:33):
great teamwork effort, nobody was taking a break when we
were busy, but when it started slowing down, we would
start alternating and other ones would work while the other
one would take a break. Same thing here. I never
thought I'd get this again in my life. It was amazing.
So right now we have a plan. As the day starts,
that plan goes away because you know, other factors out
of our control. Everybody just kind of jumps in the
(10:53):
roll whatever they need to be. Nobody's pouting that they
have to do this or they have to sweep the
floors or anything like that. Everybody just kind of comes
together and it's just amazing seeing that. But you're right
outside of my business. When I go to a business,
you see, the person doesn't care at all to wait
on you. Yeah, and there's no courtesy whatsoever. No hey,
thank you from coming in. Went to a speedway just
(11:14):
a couple of days ago. Yeah, Cash, you're actually hi.
How you doing to Hi? How are you with a smile?
And I'm not even used to a smile anymore for
those types of places, So they're out there. It's just
I'm very fortunate. I'm not sure why I have this
great staff, but God has blessed me with this stuff.
Basically out of by control, Sean.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
What did what did you do? At net Chets?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
So I end up becoming a flight dispatcher for them,
And most people don't really know what a flight dispatcher is.
Everybody thinks it's like an air traffic controller, but no
for the company. When you're flying as a passioner, lets
say on Delta, there's a person on the ground and
this is a very simplified version of this. We're gonna
run all the performance numbers to make sure it's safe
(11:57):
to fly from point A to point B. Captain's going
to do that information as well, and we're gonna make
sure we sign off and everything's safe for your flight.
So just the crew, the pilots are not out there
on their own, the other set of eyes making sure
everything's good, and we're going to talk about things if
it's some iffish weather. So as an example, if we're
flying from Columbus to Saint Louis and it's a nice
sunny day, we're probably not going to talk a whole lot.
(12:19):
I want to make sure we on a fuel course
and they're gonna check all this, make sure runway take
off links, landing links are all good under the weather condition.
So on a beautiful day, probably not gonna worry too
much about it. But if we're flying into a snowstorm
or something along those lines, we're going to talk about
some options we may have and what both parties are
comfortable with, because I'm not gonna sign my name on
a release unless I feel it's safe, and you're the pilot,
(12:39):
you're not going to sign it off unless you think
it's safe. So we're gonna come to a nice agreement
to figure out what's safe for that flight. And that's
to me, one of those hidden agendas. I can't say
agendas that people don't understand about aviation. It makes it
even that much more safe than you really realize. We
have different flight packages and from different time ranges, and
there's a price per each time range. So our shortest
flight we call it the region flight, and we do
(13:01):
the same flight every time. We take off from Columbus
or I'm sorry, from Dayton and fly over to Columbus
and we do it take off and landing. The next
one up is fifty minutes, and this is where you
get to decide. So if Brandon remembers, we took off
out of Palm Springs on his flight and here in
the San Diego for his flight, so that's a really
neat flight. And I think taking off, believe it or not,
taking off out of Palm Springs is a beautiful look
(13:21):
and departure. To me, there's mountains all around you. It's
really a cool departure coming out of Palm Springs. That's
our most popular package, the fifty minute package, and then
we have an hour and fifty minute package. We call
it the Ultimate flight, and we recommend that if there's
two people taking a turn in the captain's seat, we
always have one of our staff members in the co
pilot seat. There's so much going on over there, so
we always have one of us sit over there. But
(13:43):
if one person would like to fly the first leg,
then we will take off from that location and go
to the next airport and that second person will take
flight second leg for that or if you're very much
into aviation, that hour and fifty one hour and fifty
minute flight package is ideal. But the fifty minute I
think so perfect spot just because you may bog down
(14:03):
if this all, all this stuff is really new to us.
About an hour ten minutes, I see people start bogging down.
But if you already love this stuff, and you may
be homesome yourself, you're going to be fine with the
hour and fifty. And also, if you have a lot
of questions, that hour and fifty gives us a chance
to communicate more because there's more time for us to
talk about. Yeah, and one of the unrealistic expectations I
see with people coming in and I have to, you know,
(14:24):
just kind of let them know what it is it's
all about This is complicated. It's not easy, but that
is part of the fun of it. If it was
super easy, you'd be bored in five minutes. So some
people will come in expecting they're going to learn every
single thing about this sophisticated jet in a fifty minute period,
and that's not realistic. It takes years and years and
years for people to learn. But we can share a
lot of information right in that short time absol that's valuable.
(14:48):
So the next time you fly, you'll know things. If
this is fun, you want to come back later, we'll
build on that and you'll learn more and more. And
this is how they do it over a much longer
stretch in real life. But I always just let people know.
I'll have guys in particular come in give me the
hardest airport, and I'm like, you know, this is a
little harder to think it's going to be right, Cause
again from my standpoint is I want you to have
(15:09):
fun and build your confidence up. Yeah, but you're your
own person, so they want to if I explain, hey,
this is harder than you think, and they want to
do it, knock yourself out. But I want you to
enjoy the experience, not being stressed while you're doing it,
and so it's just a fun thing. And most times
they're happy they did the easier flight because again we
can build that confidence and help them understand how the
(15:30):
plane operates and those types of things there and see
if they make the landing at the end. That's always
the fun part.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
How long did you stay at Natschets?
Speaker 2 (15:37):
So? I was there for seven years and I really
enjoyed that job. They were very good with me, very
respectful back to me. I felt like I was a
valuable member working for them. So it wasn't really there
doing why I left. What was going on in my
head towards the end was something in the back of
my head kept telling me, you need to run your
(15:58):
own business. And I didn't know what it was at
the time, and I just kept telling myself, I need
to run my business. And I remember working with an
individual back in my gasoline days that for the fifteen
years I probably worked in that industry, I heard him
every day saying he's going to get another job. Never did,
and I want to be that person at net Jets,
(16:20):
And again I wanted to make sure I was a
good what I did, make sure I was providing a
great service for them. So I showed a value and
I just kept saying I want to run my own thing.
We all work for somebody at some point, and again
I everybody has their own logic, So this is John's logic, Okay,
not everybody's logic. So when there's a policy it comes
(16:41):
down that makes no logical sense to me. That just
drives me crazy. So just as an example, and this
is not net jets, I won't name the company here.
We had to fill out a huge personal evaluation form.
Probably took you an hour to fill it out, right, Wow, Well,
my boss doesn't really understand the details of all the
psychological methods, all these questions and how you're answering him.
I'm thinking, why am I spending an hour and a
(17:01):
half for them to already know what rays are going
to give me there? They should have the data on
what my performance is. Yeah, knock on wood, I've been
healthy most of my life. I want to chanks myself
on that. But I mean I show up to work,
I'm well early for work, and I'd do an accurate job,
so they should know that. So I don't need to
fill out why John is such a great worker. But again,
(17:24):
so those types of things just started bothering me. This
is why I wanted to become That's why I started thinking,
I want to be my own boss so I can
make those type of decisions. Yeah, and I really didn't
want to be a franchise because I'm kind of still
under that same umbrella. Working for the gasoline business. They
made a stay open twenty four hours a day, which
made no logical sense for our location. Wow, we'd sell
fifty gallons of gas overnight, had to be at risk
(17:46):
of being robbed. Having an employee that's probably not the
greatest person in the world. I shouldn't say that, but
I mean it's hard to find somebody that's not going
to steal front me and yeaheah with those odd ball shifts,
that's at risk of being robbed. And at the time,
we'd make about a sense of gallon, So what do
we making eight dollars? Is that what we were making? Wow?
Doing my math real quick there on on here, but anyway,
(18:08):
that wouldn't make any sense. But we were forced to
stay open twenty four hours a day. So that's why
I wanted to develop my own thing, and that took
up that was a process for me to figure that out.
But once the flight simulation idea came into our the mindset,
that's where it didn't stop. I don't know if that's
just happened in your life. It's just all of a
sudden boom. Once it was that came up, it was okay, NonStop,
brains going one hundred miles an hour. This is good,
(18:31):
this is good. This is gonna be a problem. This
is gonna be a problem. And then trying to figure
out how to get these puzzle pieces together and see
if we can get this to work. So the funny story,
I get this, I get this. Asked a lot people
ask how did you open up? How did you come
across this idea? Right right, I'm very fortune fortunate on this,
and I'm so happy people have fun. That's my whole goal.
People are like, wow, what an amazing idea. I'm really
(18:52):
not that smart. It was just I was just home
on No, I'm not. But anyway, my wife and I
way back, I'm guessing twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen timeframe. Smart
TV's had been out for a while, but we're a
little slow getting to that, getting that smart TV. And
it started realizing we can watch YouTube on the smart TV.
So I'm like, eh, so I'm showing my wife a
(19:15):
YouTube video on smart TV. And I brought up somebody
who had one of these in his house. He had
built it from scratch, very smart guy. And my wife
tells me that's so cool, and I'm like, well, she
hates airplanes. If she thinks it's cool, I know it's cool.
I'm telling you, Brandon. At that point I knew that
is what I wanted to do. I thought, Wow, I
(19:37):
can do what I love. I love talking about aviation.
There's no danger. That's a beautiful thing. Working in the
gasoline industry, people could slip and fall in the oil,
or a a freeze or something like underneath the car.
Car could fall off the rack, those types of things.
In restaurant food industry, food poisoning, all this good stuff.
Working for net jets, FAA regulations, all that, we don't
have to deal with any of that. We can come
(19:58):
and do this in a fun way. But again, I
love sharing details. My staff especially loves getting in the
weeds and details and stuff like that. If that's your passion,
they won't if that's not your passion. But yeah, yea,
because they're trying to see what makes it enjoyable for you,
of course, and we adjust accordingly with it. But the
whole premises have some fun flying a big jet to
see if you could make the landing at the end.
(20:19):
So this is how it all came to me from
my wife saying, wow, that's pretty cool, because at that
point I wasn't thinking that to be an ideas of business.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
You were you, John?
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Were you still thinking something in flight as a as
a business of your own? Were you thinking about that
all over the place.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
To a sub shop, to printing, to all sorts of
different things. I was trying to find something I'd have
some passion too. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
We were look talking to a printer about his industry,
and I just couldn't get the passion up for it.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Do you have passions for subs?
Speaker 2 (20:50):
What's that passion? Necessarily? That's the thing, That's what I'm saying. So.
But but again, at the time you're seeing Jersey Mikes
and everything's opening up, you're trying to think, well, maybe
that's that's the way to go. Yeah, So it wasn't
my real passion for that, And that was such a
long road to hall to try to figure out what
it was. And again I'm a believer, so God helped
(21:11):
guide me to that. And again it was instantaneous. I'm
telling you a minute. She said, Wow, that's cool. That
was her actual words, by the way, Wow that's that's cool.
That's when the idea came to me and it hit
let off the throttle from that point.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
On, John, you said, you're a numbers guy, So did
you immediately start a business plan?
Speaker 3 (21:29):
And where did you go from there?
Speaker 2 (21:30):
So basically, this is a business and I mentioned earlier
as you already know that there's not too many of
these in the whole United States, and I really don't
know how many. If you google flight simulation, it brings
up software, so I personally don't know. I'm pretty confident
where there's no other place like this in Ohio. I'm
really sure about that. And so again it's only a
handful that I'm aware of, and they're spread out well
(21:50):
away from me.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
That had to have excited you, because I knowing you,
you probably did your research and you noticed, you notice this,
and you're like, well, wait a minute, this is it.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
I've I've got it.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
It just kept adding on, Hey, this is a plus
this is a plus. Of course, there's a minus here
and there. And again one of the things of getting
into a business trust me. I wasn't going into this thing,
and yes, this is a for sure thing, but I
had confidence it was going to be a thing that
could work for us. But I had a lot of
people in my life telling me, do you really think
people would want to do this? And so it had
that little doubt in my head. Sure, but we were
(22:22):
so fortunate. We opened December first of twenty eighteen, and
we were slammed right off the bat. Wow. So that
gave me that confidence. If we would have started and
there was nothing going on for the first month or so,
I think I would have been completely crushed mentally, emotionally
and everything else. But yeah, started off really really fast
at that point. And this December time frames are business
(22:43):
busiest time of year because this is that secret holiday
gift that people get coming to us. And I had
to do some really deep research. My business advisor who
helps me help me write the business plan, and I'm
not a skilled writer, that's my thing, And he said
years later, nobody came more prepared to talk to the
(23:04):
banker than you. And I still felt I could, I
still felt I could have done more, by the way,
so I didn't go to the banker think and I
had all figured out. But he's told me many times
since then that you know, no, I've never taken anybody
to go to a banker and talk this as well
prepared as you were.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Okay, So John, Johnny and I I'm asking you this
because I'm I'm secretly wanting to get educated myself in this.
So you you were about to start a business that
uh there's there's really you can't track anymore? Tell right, exactly,
no template, thank you. So you I know a few bankers,
I know how they are. If there's nowhere else they
(23:40):
can look to see what how this business and El
Paso is doing? Uh that you want to open that similar?
How hard was that with the banker?
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Well, again I'm naive, right, I've never had to do
this before, but again I had, and again I don't
know what it was. I had some confidence that this
was going to work. And again the day I was
getting felt like I could make the numbers work, okay,
And I'm a spreadsheet junkie, and so I just kept
playing with the numbers and making sure and one of
the best advices my business counselor advisor gave me is
(24:12):
don't do the numbers to prove it to the banker.
You need to prove it to yourself. So don't fudge
the books or what are you're trying to do. Fudge
the numbers in my case because I haven't opened the
business yet, but to you know, make sure you feel
it's good. So I took that to heart the entire
time I'm putting this business plan and figures and all
that together for him.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
So absolutely, so the bank says, yeah, John, we'll give
you a chance at this. Yes, we'll give you a shot.
What happened next is I keep thinking about the simulator itself.
Did you build that yourself? How does that work?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yeah? Good question. So aget through that and again this
is around I'm guessing twenty Fourteen's when the idea came.
We opened in twenty eighteen. So this is how quickly
I do things. It was not a short window. And
again I'm a little bit of a methodical thinker when
it comes to this. That's where it took some time
and have to do the research to the best of
my ability to figure this out. But the hardest thing
(25:05):
for me was the two hardest things for me was
to actually purchase the equipment, and we had to during
that four year research. I had to try to find
somebody who builds these because I am not talented enough
to build that. That's not really my skill level. Sure,
and I found a place in Italy, Australia and Canada,
and Canada happened to be in our same time zone. Okay,
(25:27):
so I figured, hey, that's great. If we have an issue,
we can call them up. And Italy they may not
have a strong they may have a strong accent. I mean,
I understand them at the time they're trying to tell
me over the phone how to fix something or whatever.
So I went up and checked their facility out. It's
flight Deck Solutions treated me very much with high respect.
I have been very good with me ever since. In
my nature of being very methodical, I had about three
(25:50):
hours worth of questions for them, and it never gave
me any pressure of looking at their watch hurry up.
That's great and again and they gave me some good
advice early on as well, and so I was very
happy with that. So they built it, brought it down
here to Columbus, Wow. So buying that signed that contract
to that was one of my big scary moments because
once we do that, we're in. Right, the next biggest thing,
(26:13):
it is more scary than you would think, is sign
that least for the location we're at because you're committing
some several years and again we're coming in have no
idea or we're going to sell one flight package or
be successful. We had I again, right, I had that
ambition and hopefully it was going to be successful, but
really not knowing. So those were the two hardest parts
about going through that process that because there's no turning
(26:33):
back at that point.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
No, Right, John, You you talked moments ago about when
you opened and how you had a line and you've
been you were really busy to.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Say a line, But we were pretty busy. That's busily
ever expected? Right first day?
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Sure, when when what was the moment that you felt
you felt confident or you felt like, okay, this is
going to work.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
See that's a lot more drawn out and a good
question on this. And we were very fortunate. Again and
I'm going to go back to God and help me
on this process. If we would have opened in December
of twenty nineteen. I don't think we would have survived
because of COVID exactly. So COVID hit a year later.
So about the time COVID hit is about the time
I started to thinking, hey, this is going to work.
(27:17):
And as a business owner, you don't pay yourself right
until you start making enough money to pay yourself. And
at that point I was thinking, now, maybe another three
or four months, I can start paying myself. Obviously, COVID
hit pretty heavily in March of twenty twenty, and I
couldn't pay myself again, so I had to wait a
couple of years before I started paying myself. So it's
a tough thing as being a business owner. You work
all these hours and sometimes you don't get paid for it.
(27:40):
But in my mind, I opened this to put a
smile on people's faces. And I was so fortunate because
you know, when you're around a nice person, it just
makes your day better. Pretty Much everybody comes into our store,
goes back there, Everybody sits down, it says some type
of form of wow, this is amazing. You know something
along those lines that is up my energy period, just
(28:01):
because there it's better than they thought it was going
to be. Compared to, oh, it's not quite as good
as I thought it was going to be. And then
we have this fun session together and then afterwards we'll
talk for a while if they want to ask any
questions or you know, and just and they leave. Most
people say that was just amazing. That's really nice, and
that makes me feel as a value of a person.
So through that two year period of not paying myself,
(28:23):
that was really my paycheck paycheck. Yeah, it really felt
good with it. So then that's the whole premise. My
pressure I put on myself nowadays is always be one
hundred percent to one hundred percent of people. And knock
on wood, were there. But at some point we're going
to have somebody that's going to be upset about something
because people are people. But we've been fortunate that all
of our reviews are you know, give us five stars
(28:45):
and and they don't have to do that. They take
the time out of their day. It's so easy to
complain about a business doing bad service. It's so hard
for somebody to want to give you a review and
give you a five star and say, hey, that was
amazing or that was nice, or your team's wonderful or whatever.
The case is, and again it's great for me to
share it to my staff and everything like that. Again
we have this nice morale going on. But again it's
(29:06):
a lot to the client coming in. They're already jazzed
about coming in and seeing what this is about. But
then we try to do this in this fun way
and we're all people personal I guess I know the
right things to say that, but and again, just makes
you feel good at the end of the day, Thank
you did a great job. And again it just makes
me feel good as a person.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
I've known you for a few years now. You're one
of the nicest people I know. But I have to
ask you, do you get upset? And what upsets you?
Speaker 2 (29:33):
So ah, that's a good one. So here here's my
biggest pet peeve in life, and it's just a john thing.
I should get over it. I'm fortunate to live in
the United States here and I have air conditioning and
you know, all this good stuff is. I love saying
hi to people, and I find many people nowadays don't
say hi anymore. And I'm a statistical guy, so I've
actually run a little bit of numbers on this, and
(29:57):
because I want to make sure I'm just making not
making it up, maybe just be I might be thinking
it's a lot higher number than it is. And the
funny thing is, I like to put a smile on
people's faces, and it actually personally hurts me. I'm so
lame for this, but it personally hurts me when they
don't say high back, because I'm just trying to brighten
your day for a couple of seconds. Yeah, And a
story I remember way back. This is in the mid nineties.
(30:18):
A lady came into my father's gas station. As she
was leaving, I said, thank you, have a nice day,
and again, not looking away, give an eye contact because
I seriously mean it. She turns around, looks at me
and says, since you told me that I will, And
that stuck with me. She has no idea she had
that impact on my life back almost thirty years ago
at this point, but that was already in my nature anyway. Yeah,
(30:42):
but that always comes back up. So I always enjoy
trying to brighten you, whether you're passing me on the
bike trail or something like that, just for a couple seconds.
She might be having a rough day, somebody says, says hi,
with a smile on her face. But since COVID, it
just seems gone downhill tremendously that people don't want to
say high back. And I can't quite figure out what's
the mentality behind that, because I try to be a
(31:02):
logical thinker and there's a reason why they're not saying
hi back. And again, I try to give the body
language that I'm not coming up on you. I kind
of stay on my side of the trail, and I'm
walking with dogs, so it's not like I'm, you know,
taking a survey of or something like that. So I
don't understand that. That is my biggest pet peeve that
people don't say hi. But once we get into the store,
all that changes. I don't know why that is, because
(31:24):
I'm just fortunate to have these nice people that work
for me that people will come in are very nice
and courteous to us there. I mean, I don't think
anybody's unrespectful to us coming in, So again it's just
this cast nice environment. But once I leave the store,
it's like, uh, oh, there's that person not saying hi
to me At Wendy's or whatever they're you know, or
whatever the case is. I'm the one saying hi and
thank you. At Wendy's or I'm wanna put Wendy's under
(31:45):
the bus. But that's any Yeah, most of yes now
is what I'm getting at. So it's just it's just
I don't that's my pet Peeve.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Basically, I have you have you always been this way?
Like optimistic? Positive? And did you do you get that
from your mom?
Speaker 2 (31:59):
You're dad?
Speaker 3 (32:00):
How were they?
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I don't know? But my family is a gift of
gabbers or you have the gap gift me gab is
the way I'm trying to say it there, So we
do have that into it. I don't know what it is.
You know. I have my woes, me moments and those
types of things. I try to I try to take
myself out of those because again, just like I said
a moment ago, we have air conditioning where I live.
Could you imagine living in South Alabama with no air
(32:23):
conditioning and all that humidity or something like that. So
I try to put it in perspective. I can see,
I can hear those types of things. I try not
to get myself too down for a long period of
time over that. And again, the weather, we're it's an
ice rainy day right here. It's hard to stay upbeat
about that, but again, make the most of it. And
for me, it's a day off, so I'm like.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Hey, yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, I thought this
is your day off today.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
I'm like, Wow, John's coming in to do this on
his day off. That's a big deal.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Best way to get a to buy package is it
to come in in person?
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Do you recommend that? Do you go online? What's website?
Speaker 1 (33:00):
A him?
Speaker 2 (33:00):
By the way, Okay, so our website is take flight
Ohio dot com. And just so everybody really knows, we
have a full scale flight simulator and it's a realistic
flight similator. It's not a little video game. I really
kind of joke about that that I think some people
come in and think it's going to be just a joystick, and.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
It's take it from me. I've done it.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
It's as it's as real as real gets.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Yeah, we can train, it's yeah, absolutely, And again so
that's that's why I think we get the wow. No
matter what pictures we have or videos we have online,
it doesn't, you know, seem to capulate the moment. I guess,
and you know, until you get and see it. Actually,
but yeah, we can go to our website at take
flight Ohio dot com and you get a gift voucher there,
and this is the perfect time of year for gift
giving and surprising somebody.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
So the holidays are a busy season, oh by far okay.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Because you're always trying to find well, at least I
am anyway, trying to find something that's different. I don't
want to get my wife the exact same thing, you know,
or something that's not too exciting. You want something that's
kind of memorable and that type of thing. And kind
of my joke and as it's after all the years
we've been open, I've just come up with this. I'm
guessing you've never flown a commercial air liner before. So
most people have never. So that's the uniqueness of what
(34:06):
we do. And in my world, they can't hurt themselves.
It's not like, you know, if they crash and burn,
we're good. I mean, that's the beauty of this. But
yet you'll learn some things next time you fly, and
that type of thing. So and or you can come
in in person. We're close on Sundays and Tuesdays, but
we're open from eleven am to eight pm outside of
(34:27):
a holiday or something along those lines so we can
come into our store and purchase a gift vulture there. Unfortunately,
many times we cannot show the similarity to a client
because maybe want to come in and take a look
at it. Sure, because we're again fortunate fortunate on this
is that we're busy and doing flights one after another
all day long. Right. The only time we can may
show it to you if we happen to be in
between two flights or something like that. But we really
(34:49):
have a pretty short window between that, so you'd really
have to tie that up exactly, you know, and sometimes
people are early and late, so we can't guarantee a
certain time to come out and see it. We'd love
to show it because again every he sees what it
is once a Yeah, it makes sense once you see
that that full scale flight.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Some of it is age requirements, John.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Good question. Yeah, our minimum age is twelve. And another
good point. It's open to the general public, so it
means you don't have to have any experience at all,
and that's why we had one of us over there
to help guide you along the way. And kind of
a funny story, I had a client that came in
popular radio personality, but I want to not throw them
under the bus. And wasn't Boxer here. But anyway, we
(35:29):
were coming into Columbus and he was flying pretty well,
but we were about five miles out and he puts
his hands up and goes, John, you go ahead land it.
And I'm like, well, we're only a few inches off
the ground. Nope, go ahead and land it again. We
want you to have fun with this. And he wanted
to see how I handle the airplane to land it
and look out the front window for a change. What
do you need? You know, we don't get to see
that as a power Yeah, yeah, that's true. So that's
what it was with him. He went to see what
(35:50):
it looked like without having to worry about concentrating on
flying the plane. He wanted to see just visually what
was going on as they're coming in for the runway.
So again, we can cater it to however you want
to make it fun for you. And I always ask
from the clients just communicate to me so I can
better provide what you're wanting to get out. The things
we don't do is fly upside down or anything like that.
We do have to try to fly it the right
(36:11):
way and of course, we don't fly into buildings. That's
why one of us are over there as well. We
have a pause button so they cannot do that. We'll
not let anybody come close to doing anything along those lines.
We take it serious. One of the questions we get
a lot is people I need to get fighter jets.
And I tell people, and again I'm not the answer
to everything on this, but I think fighter jets aren't
(36:31):
as fun as people think they would.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
I've heard you say this before.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Do we talk about this? I think so, yeah, it's
because what happens is you think it's great, we'll take
our buddies there, we'll go try to shoot each other.
But the thing is you're gonna fly by each other
at you know, I don't know, mocking like that and
one point five, and you're not going to see each other.
The next thing you know, you're flying around again trying
to find the other person, and you're where's the at
I don't know, And you're just gonna be flying around
(36:55):
chasing nothing for a while. So to me, that which
comes a little more video gameish and things like that,
and not sure. My vision, My vision is to have
that realism, to put the average person in the seat.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Judd as we wrap up here for more info, or
you just want to take a look. You've got some
pictures of the flight simulator right online.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
I think, yeah, definitely, we have some videos and that
type of thing there. And the other thing I would
recommend is, you know, feel free to give us a call.
This is a unique business. We're not a Starbucks, so
most people don't really understand what this business is. But
like we said, the minimum ages twelve, and it's because
of the sophistication of the aircraft and the simulation that
we do. But anybody can do this and we'll help
(37:37):
work you through it and have as much fun as
we can in the time period we have. And yeah,
so we can come into our location We're at forty
eight sixteen Sawmill Road in Columbus, Ohio, and or go
to our website. You can book a flight or purchase
a gift foucher. And our gift vouchers are good from
two years from data purchase, so they have plenty of
time to come in and see what it's like to
(37:57):
have fun flying a big jet. And by the way,
something we didn't talk about, which I think this is
a neat thing yes, two people can sit in the
back and watch your loved one fly. So if you
want to get one for your father or your husband
and have the two kids come along. And we still
have that minimum age of twelve years old because okay,
the younger ones will be too busy back there and born.
I get it, and it will. You know, the father
can enjoy the experience quite as much because he's got
(38:19):
to concentrate on what he's doing. But you can enjoy
the experience with him, and you can take pictures and video.
And my joke is you can either make fun of
him or encourage him whatever, whatever. Whatever your family likes
to go, I.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Think it should be Mama and my family. We get
my wife up there and we make fun of her.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Yeah, there you go and have some fun and get
some video evidence of it.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Yes, exactly, Well, John, I can't thank you enough for
your time, John Price of take Flight to Ohio Flight Simulation,
Congratulations on your success and if you keep up the
good work.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Yep, thank you very much. Have me out here.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
CEOs You Should Know is host it and produced by
Brandy Boxer, a production of iHeartMedia Columbus s
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